…unless you’re waiting in the wings to rescue your party in ‘08.

Al Gore’s son busted for drugs in hybrid car

Headline by Reuters.

Today, the WSJ reports more or less everything I posted about Gaza yesterday (which I painstakingly stitched together after five weeks of following this story).

 Uncertain Fate
Of Gaza Reporter
Deepens Concerns

 Fanatical Islamists of the type sowing chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be operating with increasing impunity in the Gaza Strip, heightening concern about the rising danger posed by al Qaeda-inspired groups or similar violent fringe groups in the Palestinian territories.

An unconfirmed statement on Sunday by a group saying it had killed abducted BBC correspondent Alan Johnston has added to these fears. Even if that claim turns out to be false, the kidnapping marks a low point for the already troubled Gaza Strip. Palestinian human-rights groups are documenting an increasing number of firebombings and other attacks against targets such as Internet cafes, libraries and cultural centers.

Concerns about such violence come amid an overall state of lawlessness that has prompted even the United Nations to keep nearly all of its foreign staffers out of Gaza. The convoy of a lead official for the world body was shot at last month, despite the use of clearly marked U.N. vehicles. Foreign charitable organizations working in Gaza are similarly concerned.

So I’ve been saying for quite a while now.

I’m not bragging—I’m noting the lag between the time an energetic amateur like me notices a straw in the wind (in this case the Johnston kidnapping, which I’ve been writing about for five weeks) and the time it takes for the MSM to use its megaphone to luanch the story into the news cycle.

Truth be told, despite its huge impact on journalists and on journalism—and despite its ramifications for the rest of us, who depend on journalists to report those things that we cannot see or hear for ourselves—this story may never make it into the news cycle. The WSJ doesn’t have much of a megaphone.

Much will depend on what happens to Johnston (and the kidnappers are hoping to hook us with that ongoing soap opera, to grab our attention with it, as kidnappers are wont to do [[see this June 2006 post, "kidnapping makes for good television," for a link to a study about how kidnapping is an excellent headline-grabbing narrative for terrorists who are looking to make their mark, or their point, in a shrug-it-off world.]] ).

But let’s not forget that Johnston’s kidnappers are competing with what’s  being called the ”deadliest shooting rampage in American history“. Those kidnappers don’t stand a chance. Because we’re now going to feast on this orgy for weeks and weeks and weeks.

In a photo gallery, Der Spiegel asks:

Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?

In Dissent, Pascal Bruckner (class of ‘68, French chapter, or, way more obnoxiously, soixante-huitard), ponders, among other things, the meaning of internationalism some forty years after our cohort came alive politically.

The third-worldism that set the wretched of the earth in opposition to the sated North is moribund as a political movement, yet it survives in our minds as a subtle poison, in the way we spontaneously denounce ourselves for the world’s disorders. We live off the dividends of our self-accusation. We are supposedly forever in debt to the poor, the oppressed, the immigrants, and our only obligation is to expiate endlessly. Consider the wave of repentance sweeping through the continent nowadays-like an epidemic, especially in the major religions. This is an excellent thing, a salutary realization of past offenses, provided that other cultures and other beliefs also recognize their errors. Contrition cannot be restricted to a few and innocence attributed to everyone who claims to be persecuted. For too many countries, particularly in the Arab world, self-criticism is confused with the search for a convenient scapegoat: it’s never their fault, always someone else’s.

Johann Hari, also writing in Dissent, reviews some current books about Islam in the West and concludes on a surprisingly hopeful note. He sees an exciting opportunity for Europe to play host to a reformation of Islam.

[A]cross the continent, groups of Muslim women are rebelling in the same way against the literalist, quasi-fascist interpretation of the Koran popularized by the mullahs. Tired of being its first victims, they are creating their own liberal lived Islams as an alternative. And if this rebellion is completed, European jihadism will be left literally unable to reproduce itself. …

The Ni Putains, Ni Soumises manifesto calls for “no more justifications of our oppression in the name of the right to difference and of respect for those who force us to bow our heads.” Multiculturalism has worked on the assumption that there is one “pure” Islam, represented by elderly mullahs. Now that Islam is splitting into liberal and literalist wings, this approach places European states closer to the reactionaries than to the feminists and liberals. We will have to ensure there are no more state-funded Muslim-only schools and youth clubs, no more privileged status for reactionary clerics. …
To host an Islamic civil war—one where the liberals win—Europeans need to junk both the conservative pining for an apocalyptic clash and the liberal fixation on multiculturalism. The potential prize is extraordinary.

I would like to believe this is possible. Unfortunately, things are just too damn weird. Anyone who says they know what’s going to happen tomorrow, much less next week or next month or next year, is just full of shit.

The world is upside down. A while back, Spengler said we should sit back and enjoy the chaos. I note that he hasn’t published a word about up-to-the-minute events since Tall Tales from Tehran went into heavy rotation in the global media

until it was thrown off the air temporarily by Sob Stories from the Royal Navy and Marines.

Meanwhile, here at home, Nancy’s Really Big Adventure

was quickly overshadowed by Don Imus’s Really, Really Bad Manners

which got him suspended from NBC.

I can’t wait to find out what happens next. Which is exactly the way the media wants it. They want our eyeballs, and they get ‘em. Because infotainment rules.

The NYT’s Caryn James is one person who gets this, although she doesn’t quite connect the dots. Today she writes about our other national obsession—Anna Nicole Smith:

From the Who’s the Daddy question to the trumped-up murder-mystery element attached to both her death and to her 20-year-old son’s, her true story has played out in real time, as breaking news. Yet to the public it has also taken on the qualities of a long-running entertainment series, part reality television and part online game show. As on any reality show, the audience has been offered characters to root for or to hiss against. Mr. Stern and Mr. Birkhead have had their personalities shaped by television producers in much the way editing turns contestants on “Survivor” or “Big Brother” into heroes or villains. In the Smith case, there are competing camps, with infotainment shows aligning with the man who has given them access, and rarely bothering with the pretence of objectivity.

My point is this: for the seemingly narcotized (if not depraved) West, the Anna Nicole Smith story is no different from the British Hostages Nabbed by Iran story. Interestingly, Iran’s master propagandists are way ahead of our guys, because they get that.

These are the days of our lives…

Because you feel so good when it stops! So says a brilliant commenter at BuzzMachine:

We don’t have O.J. (much), Michael Jackson or any other celebrity falling from a top spot at the moment, so the ANS story fills a void in our lives. This affliction we have is similar to why so many people love listening to the blues.
You feel so much better when it stops.