September 30, 2006

Woodward's "thoughts"

UPDATE: In some respects, I think the following post may be too unfair to Woodward. Rethinking here... although not about the general concept of ascribing "thoughts" to others in journalism.

Bob Woodward embodies the kind of vieux media self-importance that now seems to come from a distant era. His style of writing - which combines novelistic flourishes of a second-rate sort with a journalistic voice that fairly screams "I am Woodward - this is history!" - is as fake as it is fusty. A good example of this faux Flaubert (or perhaps more accurately Jacqueline Suzanne) technique is his frequent attempt to inform us of what people are thinking. Never mind the obvious that these "thoughts" are often a direct conduit for someone who is leaking unsubstantiated information - in situations of crisis, few of us really know what we are thinking anway, even assuming we could remember. Our thoughts are a confused jumble of the rational and the emotional, with a heavy emphasis on the latter. Anyone reporting in hindsight what someone "thought" is only taking a wild guess or serving somebody or a point of view.

But this doesn't stop Bob. From Bloomberg's Carlos Torres:

George Tenet, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, warned Condoleezza Rice of a mounting threat by al-Qaeda two months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to Bob Woodward's new book.

In a July 10, 2001, meeting with then national security adviser Rice and J. Cofer Black, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, Tenet warned that intercepted messages among al-Qaeda operatives and a mass of other intelligence pointed to an imminent threat, according to the book. Tenet and Black hoped Rice would convey the urgency of the situation to President George W. Bush.

"Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, Tenet thought, but she just didn't get it in time," says the book, titled "State of Denial," which went on sale yesterday. "He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:49 PM
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Back on the Bainbridge Ferry (again)

Sheryl and I are up here in the Seattle area where we have bought some property. This news, via Breitbart, reminds us why.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:16 PM
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September 28, 2006

My interview with Lieberman

I had the fascinating experience of doing a video interview with Senator Joe Lieberman late Wednesday afternoon. I confess to some nervousness beforehand because this was a big opportunity for our fledgling Pajamas Media. With the one-time Democratic Party vice-presidential candidate now fighting for his political life as an independent, there is little doubt that the Lieberman - Lamont race is the most interesting, certainly the most dramatic, of the 2006 election.

Some details: Producer Andrew Marcus and I met the Senator's staff at his office in the Hart Office Building. But since election laws prevent interviews from being conducted in congressional offices, we were led down the street to the small apartment of a friend in the lower floor of a Capitol Hill townhouse. There, our crew rearranged the furniture for shooting and set up the lighting while I fidgeted and made small talk with Lieberman's staff.

At about 5:15 the Senator walked in by himself, not surprisingly a little late. Lieberman's a busy man these days. We made some small talk of our own - Lieberman and I had attended Yale at the same time, he in the law school and I in the drama school, both of us participating in the active campus civil rights movement of the period. We both squinted at each other, pushing back in our minds forty misty years, trying to recognize a youthful face hidden behind decades of life. But then, no time to waste, we set about the interview.

What I thought of him: I have always admired the Connecticut Senator more than most politicians, but I must also confess that I was occasionally put off a bit by the earnestness - that Holy Joe thing, the whiff of sanctimony. But I saw no evidence of that in the time we were together. In fact, the reverse: I was impressed with his genuineness and warmth. Was I wrong before or is this a new Lieberman? I'm not qualified to say.

But I offer this observation: In response to one of my questions, the Senator allowed that he felt running as an independent to be "empowering." I could see in his eyes that he meant that in deep way. I empathized. I know from my own life how empowering shaking off the old clothes of rigid received ideas and alliances can be. At best, you can be reborn. Not a bad deal for someone whose age has a 6 in front of it.

I was also surprised at the honesty of his responses. The process of running for office makes people guarded in the extreme. His answer to one of my later questions particularly impressed me with its directness. I had been taken aback and moved by the decoration on the wall of his office reception room. Still lined up next to each other for the world to see were a number of smiling photos of Joe Lieberman cavorting with some great old friends in happier times - Connecticut's other Senator Chris Dodd (now said to have presidential ambitions himself), Teddy Kennedy and Al Gore. Not one of them is supporting Lieberman for reelection. They are all backing his opponent. I asked Lieberman if he could ever forgive them. His answer, I promise you, will interest you.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:17 AM
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September 27, 2006

Pajamas Media at the Nat'l Press Club

Our new Washington Editor Richard Miniter accepts his position in his pajamas (plus Turnbull & Asser robe). Beside him, Glenn Reynolds. Photo cred: Michael Totten. (More on PJ with reactions)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:30 AM
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September 26, 2006

Hindsight is 20-3

If Democrats and Republican spent half as much time bashing Bin Laden as they do each other, he'd be dead a hundred times over. [Maybe he's dead anyway.-ed. I know, I know, but you get my point.] The latest salvos come from Condi who seems to have missed the point that Bill self-immolated the other day when wagging his finger (again!), this time at a perplexed Chris Wallace. (Off topic: Don't you think sometimes that comparing Chris to his father is a proof point for nature in the nature vs. nurture debate?) Nevertheless, Condi felt constrained to defend herself after her opponent had already done it for her. Hello, Condi, time to reread Sun Tzu. This tawdry self-involved debate, naturally arising as an election approaches, is an example of American partisanship at its most self-destructive. The present objectives disappear in a blur as people turn backwards and rage.

Similarly, attempts to analyze the recent past like the "9-11" Commission and the newly-revealed National Intelligence Estimate throw off far more heat than light. Indeed, I question whether recent events can be analyzed in a a dispassionate manner. There are far too many living and breathing parties grinding their axes. The documents of these biased and perforce perfunctory investigations are then accepted by as gospel by whatever side thinks they have scored a victory. Sometimes, as with meretrricious news organizations like the New York Times, analyses are proffered to the public based only of partial readingss of the conclusions. What a disservice to our country!

But rather than blame the Times, et al, which I do admittedly, I think it is time to discard criticism and look to the present and future. The great American success has been problem solving. Rather than blame each other, we should roll up our sleeves. What about the putting the vast resources of the NYT on the task of finding solutions. Now there's a thought. [They're great at finding small Armenian restaurants in Brooklyn.-ed. Not as good as Chowhound.com. I thought you were being positive.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:59 AM
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September 24, 2006

Not Necessarily the News

Sunday's lead story in the New York Times ("Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat") carries the newspaper's tradition of utilizing anonymous sources to the edge of self-parody. "More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article," the fifth paragraph begins, "and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document." [itals. mine, obviously]

Reporter Mark Mazzetti is referring to a National Intelligence Estimate none of whose details are revealed in the story, although the details would seem to be the very devils upon which this analysis depends. Never mind - it appears to be the Times' practice to present veiled editorials on their front page despite a pledge to be more stringent in the separation of news and opinion (see Byron Calame in their own "Week in Review" section for Sunday). Never mind too that this particular piece, based on an intelligence review from April, suddenly appears at the height of a political season. We have come to expect this. All's fair in love and war, as they say. But just don't expect to be considered the newspaper of record or anything close. There's no such thing and never should be. The Times is just another representative of a specific "class interest," albeit an especially potent one.

Still the question raised by this April study is an important one, indeed seems to me the heart of the matter. How do we judge our policies and actions in the War on Terror? This is no easy matter. We Westerners live in a McLuhan-Warhol culture that exists for the moment, hurtling into the future in increasingly rapid bursts or bytes. We want answers - now, now, now. Then, on to the next. Our adversaries, most of them anyway, couldn't be less interested in that. They are living out ("acting out"?) a Seventh Century belief system that, even when appropriating our technology, looks backwards to the imposition of a caliphate with religious law. We are a short haul civilization; they are an ultra long haul one.

The implications of this distinction are, I would think, immense and increase the difficulty in determining just how much the Iraq War fanned the flames of Islamism. The conventional wisdom is that this strain, if it is a strain, of Islam comes in waves. The same CW has it that the current version evolved from the ideas of Sayed Qtub, the Egyptian who spent some time in the United States and didn't like what he saw. He played on the disaffections of his society, the failures of Nasserism, etc, which gave rise to the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn metastasized to Al Qaeda and others and so it went.

I imagine this is true to some extent. But I suggest this view is also a Western (short haul) one and ignores the continuing and basically unchallenged doctrines of Islamic jihad referred to recently by Pope Benedict (for which he was attacked in a New York Times editorial). One of the problems here - and I am, like the Times' Mazetti, at a distinct disadvantage not having read the intelligence report - is that by assuming that we are the ones who most fan the flames of Islamism we do not take the Islamists seriously. We are in a sense solipsistic and racist. Obviously jihad is a very powerful doctrine. It has lasted for fifteen hundred years - the terrorists of the Atocha Station cited the reconquista as their motivation - and is still growing in adherents, a record other extremist doctrines (Marxism-Leninsim, Nazism) should envy.

Looked at from that angle, the Iraq conflict is not more than a blip in a long war. In fact, you could argue that it brought to a head what was already inevitable and that it has hastened the resolution of this hugely difficult historical problem. [To be followed by the next one Herr Hegel?-ed. Of course.] Am I making that argument? Not necessarily. I just don't know. But what does intrigue me at the moment, far more than the predictable political posturing of our leading newspaper, is the role of the Pope. He has challenged Islam on religious grounds to reform the doctrine of jihad and forever remove its violent component. Interestingly, the reaction on the vaunted Arab Street has been relatively subdued, nothing by comparison into the orgy over a few banal cartoons some months ago. I would suggest to the editors of the Times that they examine this. The Pope's bold criticism of jihad may not fit their narrative, but it is proving to be one of the more heartening events in some time, ultimately far more "progressive" than anything offered by the newspaper.

UPDATE: PJ has more, including White House reaction to the Times.

MORE form the invaluable Spook86, a blogger you should bookmark, if you haven't/

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:15 PM
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September 23, 2006

I'm Beltway Bound...

Well, not immediately... on Monday... I'm first stopping in Westchester County on family business (checking in on mom). Then on to DC for the Pajamas event on Tuesday night at the National Press Club (note to self: don't forget suit). So far the evening is shaping up pretty well, but you're always worried these things will turn into a disaster. What if nobody came? [That's why you have an open bar, idiot.-ed. Right, right.] In any case, I don'thave much to say at the moment (Is bin Laden alive? Who knows? And does it matter?) but I was inspired to write this post by an email that came through the editorial topic area in the Pajamas Media contact bin. It discussed me and this blog, regretting how after Pajamas Media started, comments began to dwindle here. That made me (and the corresondent) kind of sad. She liked the comments and commenters But there was good news. The writer, a woman in China, after going about other business, had rediscovered Pajamas Media lately and made it her homepage. She lovesit. So there's good and bad. Onwards.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:20 PM
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September 22, 2006

What is it about some folks...

... that when they shake their fingers at us, they arouse our suspicions? But as I have said umpteen times on this blog, what people ... anyone... did before 9/11 is of scant interest. What they did and do after 9/11 says everything. Those still playing the blame-game over 9/11, whether Republicans, Democrats or whatever, should get over themselves and start keeping their eyes on the ball - live in the now, as the shrinks say. We have a continuing crisis on our hands. Deal with that - not what happened in April 2001. (That includes Clinton. A man as intelligent as he is should know to keep his mouth shut. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse, as the French say. What he should tell his party, including his wife, is to come up with some concrete plans how to handle Ahmadinejad, et al. Bush bashing just doesn't cut it, as the American public is evidently making clear. Time to come up with an actual program. And that's not just for the benefit of his party. We are in a serious situation vastly transcending partisan politics.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:00 PM
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HAPPY JEWISH NEW YEAR!

From the Boys in the Band! (ht: Richard Landes)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:06 AM
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September 21, 2006

Kofi vs. Ahmi... Bring on Lear's fool

Everything moves faster these days, even Marx's famous dictum "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. " Now both happen at once as when Mad Ahmad tells us Krafty Kofi gave him permission to ignore a UN resolution against Iran. Kofi, of course, denied this in a New York minute lest he be run out of New York. Who knows who's lying on this one? One? The other? Both? Farce indeed, with nuclear overtones - ergo tragedy. Meanwhile, to add farce to farce, Mad Hugo regrets the "death" of the living Noam Chomsky before Hugo could meet him and some wizard named George Palast, in the employ of the BBC of all places, opines on Fox News that Chavez is a "great stateman". Marat/Sade anyone?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:27 PM
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Moving up, moving down

John McCain and Lindsey Graham must have been getting a lot of nasty mail from their constituents, given the rapidity with which they caved in on their stance on the Geneva Accords and Presidential freedom to act against terrorists. Only a week ago the Arizona Senator had stood firm for his ideals, whatever they may be. Big winner in all this: '08 frontrunner Rudy Giuliani.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:41 PM
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Runnin' scared

Nancy Pelosi's taking umbrage at the whacko pronunciamentos of Comandante Chavez is an indication that the Democrats, riding high only a few weeks ago, are suddenly beginning to run scared. They realize they may have overplayed their hands in the Bush bashing department and now, with the Iran/Venezuela International Debating Society enlightening the "cognescenti" in the General Assembly, they are in a rush to disassociate themselves. Even Charlie Rangel, no stranger to demagoguery himself, is telling Hotbreath Hugo "Not in my house!"

Perhaps this has all been a conspiracy to once again elevate the reputation of Karl Rove. I was always something of a skeptic msyelf - I mean what's the big deal? It's only politics, not, as they say, rocket science. But I think the Rovester really does have a secret and that is just to do nothing - a kind of Zen meets Hippocrates approach to political game playing. ("First do no harm, Bodhidharma.") If you wait long enough, all your enemies will come crashing down around you from their own energy. The Plame Affair was an interesting example. Rove just sat there with barely a response as his opponents (great truth-seeking journalistic Children of Watergate) filled nearly every issue of Newsweek with Talmudic analyses of this non-event, projecting the writers' own paranoid fantasies and agression on an object that clearly did not exist. It is all very reminiscent, I imagine Shrinkwrapped might tell us, of behavior patterns described by the Chicago School of Psychoanalysis. Or maybe it just comes down to the oft-quoted words of old Gretrude: "There's no there there." Only now there is. An election once universally handed to the Democrats is again approaching deadlock.

UPDATE: One of my predictions from the post below is alreay proving accurate. [Braggart.-ed.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:10 PM
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September 20, 2006

Good News for Bush and Chomsky, Bad News for the UN

Today's Hugo Chavez 'stemwinder' at the UN - which saw the Venezuelan Mussolini wannabe calling Bush Satan, replete with sulphurous fumes, while waving around a tome by Noam Chomsky - was certainly a plus for both subjects ... Bush, already recovering in the polls, gets a further boost from the thug's almost comical attack ("Live in New York... it's Hugo Chavez!") and the the multi-millionaire marxiste gets another goose to his already copious book sales. [Will there be Chomsky t-shirts a la Che?-ed. Nah, not good-looking enough.]

The big loser was, of course, the United Nations, not the least because Chavez was saluted for his efforts by a hearty round of applause. As I have written numerous times on this blog, I am a supporter of the UN. (That is why I was so outraged by Oil-for-Food.) But now I wonder if it's salvageable as do, no doubt, many Americans whose tax dollars provide the primary support for what looks increasingly like a social club for sociopaths (Chavez, Ahmadinejad) and kleptocrats (Chirac, Kofi and the whole Oil-for-Food crowd.) What started out as a great liberal idea has turned into an almost perfectly reactionary institution - a common metamorphosis, alas. And after this change, as is also often common, an entirely new class has risen up to protect the institution and its perquisites. The question confronting us now is how to break this pattern.

UPDATE: Claudia Rosett - who, as we know, is a close student of the UN - may have found the answer. [Certainly makes sense to me.-ed. For once we agree.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:14 AM
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Good Morning America ... to disinformation

As my colleague PJM in Barcelona put it is so pithily on PJM this morning, "First it was fauxtography, now its faux TV guests." Apparently three Southern women went on Good Morning America Friday to tell us how they were leaving the Republicans to be Democrats. Trouble is, cursory Internet research showed two of them, at least, weren't really true Repubs in the first place.

The big credit on this story goes to Brent Baker of Newsbusters who does a lot of fine work at the Media Research Center. It's not surprising, of course. We're used to this kind of disinfo from the MSM and the reason it happens couldn't be more obvious. It's not deliberate in cases like this. Someone comes to them with a story that fits their (the network's) narrative and they don't really bother to check. The results are pernicious. I don't watch GMA or Today - I'm too busy and it's not my thing anyway - but as we all know their audiences are huge. Let's see if GMA has the honesty to take a second look at this. Your average blogger would be in serious trouble for this kind of distortion. But we're supposed to be slapdash.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:03 AM
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September 19, 2006

Ascher on NGOs ...

... on PJM (definitely worth your time.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:19 PM
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"We get packages from home

We get movies, we get shows,
We get speeches from our skipper
And advice from Tokyo Rose ... "

UPDATE: Actually, he's not Tokyo Rose, according to an article in Al-Jazeerah. He's a double agent! [Are they off their meds?-ed. I don't know if they ever got any.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:40 AM
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September 18, 2006

Dartmouth's in Town Again

That's an old (and fairly dumb) college song, for those of you who (justifiably) don't recognize it. But I put it up just to amuse myself while I publicly announce my vote, as a Dartmouth alumnus, in the latest round of college alumni voting. Not long after some of us Green alums online waged a minor insurrection against the moribund manner in which Ivy League trustee "elections" are conducted and, to our surprise, won... the inevitable thermidor began. Today, I voted "no" on thermidor (an amendment not-so-cleverly designed to keep "wild men" like Peter Robinson and Todd Zywicki out of the hen house - or so it seems.) I have no idea how the results will go.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:03 PM
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Be Careful, Lieuwe!

This video, recommended by one of our commenters, is a must watch on YouTube. After everything that has happened, the son of Theo Van Gogh is now being threatened ... without support from the Dutch police, according to this video. Where is the film industry in all this?.... Hello! ... Hello!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:22 PM
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"I find myself in the weird position of sympathizing with the Pope." - Salman Rushdie

Yes, the author puts his foot in his mouth again (well, not really - he was witty and brilliant and on the nose, as he often is) in front of a packed house in the banquet room of Los Angeles' Four Seasons. I was sitting there, listening to him do it (opine), scribbling down some other things he said, including, re: Islam, "It wasn't always like this - this religion of permanent outrage. This isn't the religion I grew up with..." and "I am tired of hearing how Islamic [thinkers] invented algebra. That was a long time ago. A lot of things happened since."

The event where Rushdie was letting his thinning hair down was the annual banquet of the American Jewish Congress. This year it was SRO because its LA leadership - Gary Ratner and Allyson Taylor - had the progressive (in the real sense) foresight to center the dinner ("Profiles in Courage -Voices of Muslim Reformers in the Modern World" ) on honoring Muslim moderates.

And some pretty incredible and courageous reformers they were: Besides, Rushdie... Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Tashbih Sayyed and Salim Mansur. These people have more guts than just about anybody in the world right now -and are more necessary. Sultan, a psychologist, may have had the most poignant line: "Get to know your enemy. He might turn out to be your best friend."

Also in attendance, the parents of Daniel Pearl. I asked Judea Pearl what he knew about rumors that the murderers of his son have been released in Pakistan. He told me that our government has told him nothing. He knows no more than you or I. Go figure.

Because I am busy, I can't go further with my description of this moving event, but I will come back later in the day and amplify (with links). Look for many of the above to appear on Pajamas Media in coming days - also Cyrus Nowrasteh, the screenwriter of The Path to 9-11, who was at the dinner as well.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:27 AM
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September 16, 2006

Ratzinger's zinger

In a BBC News article concerning the current crisis over the Pope's words about Islam, we find the following:

The BBC's David Willey in Rome says Pope Benedict, a theologian who has led a sheltered life in the Vatican for more than two decades, may not have understood the potential implications of his remarks.

When this is pointed out, the Edward Said crowd says we materialistic Westerners just don't understand what jihad means. But when we ask for it to be explained, we come out with ... jihad. No wonder the Pope's remarks engender brainless riots. There is no logical response. One can only applaud his honesty as opposed to our politicians who endlessly repeat the polite lie about a "great religion being hijacked" (by Wahabis, Salafists, Shiites ... pick your hijacker). I question the efficacy of this lie. I prefer the Fallaci approach - direct and not dictated by fear (pace Tunku Varadarajan of the WSJ who seems to think the late Oriana was "afraid" of Islam). What we are dealing with here is a malignant belief system - and I say this not just because I am an agnostic. I recognize value in a whole host of religions, even in parts of Islam. But it is clear that this religious belief has oppressed its people (women particularly), kept masses of them in poverty and backwardness while enriching their rulers, and fomented deranged violence across the world from New York to Bali. What is an honest Pope supposed to say? Good on you?

In this post-cartoon universe, I guess he is. In Europe especially panic about Islam has set in. I for one applaud the Pope's non-apology apology. I hope he sticks to it.

MORE from VDH.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:36 AM
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September 15, 2006

Heartstopper

Our "ally" Musharaff has apparently released the killers of Daniel Pearl.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:29 PM
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How rich is Kofi?

Claudia wants to know. Wouldn't you?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:08 PM
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Oriana Fallaci Dies

One of my personal heroes is dead. What can you say about Fallaci except that she was a human being of tremendous courage? She was also an extraordinarily beautiful woman and a great writer. To say that she will be missed is a vast understatement. She was crucial to our times and leaves a void. Her death makes me cry as if I had lost a family member.

An obit by Michael Ledeen, who knew her, will appear on Pajamas later today.

UPDATE: Ledeen tribute now up.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:56 AM
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September 14, 2006

The Yellowcake-for-Food Program

A perfect storm is brewing between the IAEA and a subcomittee of the US House of Representatives over the extent of Iran's nuclear capabilities. The U. N. nuclear watchdog has written a letter saying part of the subcommittee's case against Iran is "outrageous and dishonest," according to CNN. The subcommittee had reported that Iran is already enriching weapons grade uranium.

Do I know the level of Iran's nuclear activity? Of course not. But I can offer a couple of obvious observations.

In the wake of the Oil-for-Food scandal, anyone who takes the word of the United Nations or its subdivisions at face value is either a liar or a moron. Secondly, if the Iranians are not rather far along in their nuclear program, there's something very wrong with them. The United States had these weapons over sixty years ago, the Soviet Union shortly thereafter. No one really knows (or no one reliable is saying publicly) how many countries have nuclear weapons at this time, but poor Third-World Pakistan, nuclear armed from at least 1998, had weapons grade uranium in 1985. It's almost racist to assume their Iranian friends are not similarly capable (or nearly) more than twenty years later.

My further guess is that the excessive and distinctly non-diplomatic language used by the IAEA is an indication of some kind of guilt. From the same CNN article: "The subcommittee's report also insinuates that the IAEA may be in cahoots with Tehran in covering up Iran's nuclear ambitions." Hmmm... sound familiar? How about a Yellowcake-for-Food Program... or U-238-for-Oil... you fill in the blanks.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:54 PM
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September 13, 2006

Hydrogen Beemers

BMW is producing high end hyrdogen cars next year. Time for Ford and General Motors to get on the stick. What Detroit needs is infusion of Silicon Valley innovation. Give GM to Steve Jobs for a couple of years. Change the mentality, which is so stodgy. And if you're serious about the War on Terror, take the petrodollars away from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Watch the War on Terror end in minutes. (Are we serious?)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:54 AM
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September 12, 2006

A new record in election stupidity

Who are the dumbest people in America? The media or the politicians? It's a close race. The new brouhaha over Schwarzenegger's alleged statements about hot Latinas or whatever breaks all records for stupidity or political correctness - a redundancy, in any case. Of course the flames of this inane controversy are being fanned by the political party that brought you Robert Byrd, a full-fledged ex-member of the Ku Klux Klan we are asked to revere as a statesman. If this is what democracy is about, we might as well cede to Al Qaeda.

UPDATE: Bill Bradley has much more to say about this (and knows much more) on his new PajamasXpress blog. (Yes, he's left the LA Weekly site for Pajamas.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:36 PM
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Nidra's column

I hate to sound like a PJM promo guy - well, that's part of my job - but there are, increasingly, more interesting things to promote. Nidra Poller has begun her weekly column from Paris - Frogs to Princes - for us. She's a novelist and it shows in the level of the writing. She's starting at the very moment of something quite interesting in Paris - the trial of several people who have criticized the government television channel (France 2) for the promulgation of the Al Doura video or, as we call it at PJM, The Father of All Fauxtography.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:35 PM
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VDH's blog

If you haven't yet seen Victor Davis Hanson's blog on PajamasXpress, it's already taking off like the proverbial rocket. We're really proud to have Victor, of course, and to read the responses of his audience, which is large indeed. We just got laudatory email from a journalist in Helsinki.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:13 AM
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September 11, 2006

An example of how bad things are

If you're looking for ratification of my gloomy post below (let's hope you'r enot), you need go no further than Publius Pundit yesterday. Robert Mayer's blog is one of the best and frequently covers interesting events ignored by the MSM. This time it's the protest of Khatami's appearance at Harvard. According to Robert, 150-200 people showed up. Robert, keeping some kind of good face, pronounced this a success. No, it's not. 200 people in a city the size of Boston is an abysmal failure. Nobody cares.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:47 AM
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September 10, 2006

The last five years - looking at 9/11

9/11 changed my life forever. I think when I watched those planes striking the Twin Towers I had a suspicion it would. Almost immediately I sensed that things would never be the same. And they haven't been. My relatively sedate existence as a novelist and screenwriter ended, no matter how I fought to hang onto it, to be replaced by that of a kind of literary activist I had never anticipated being, either in its form or its point of view. First this blog, then Pajamas Media. They both exist because of 9/11. There is no greater reason.

In a sense 9/11 freed me from the narcissistic self-involvement and vicissitudes of an artist's life at the same time that it depressed me and continues to depress me. Like my friend Michael Ledeen I am filled with rage at the mainstream media and my old comrades on the left, but my reaction to this anger may be slightly different from his. It is not vengeance for 9/11 I seek, but victory for our civilization. For this reason I am all the more depressed. Here is what I mean: I think the political extremes of our culture are so mired in self-justification that they cannot see clearly enough to win the war. In some cases they do not even see the war. And the situation appears to be getting worse, rather than better. The recent debate over who is to blame for 9/11, exacerbated by a turgid miniseries of all things, is not only pointless but hugely destructive. It looks backwards in the most mindless way while continuing to divide us. And make no mistake about it - our society is too thoroughly divided for one part to win this war by itself, especially against an enemy united by a monolithic belief system (or two monolithic belief systems, if you separate Sunnis and Shia).

Those of us who voted for Bush need at least a portion of those who voted for Kerry on our side to defeat this enemy. But that hasn't happened. Of course we could blame the mainstream media for this (and, yes, many of them are wretched) or the dim bulb moveon.org crowd. But blame gets you nowhere, except the dubious honor of proclaiming yourself to be "right." It doesn't get the job accomplished. So what do we do? Not easy is it. Do we have to sit here and wait for another 9/11, perhaps even a bigger one, before our society is united? Depressing thought, isn't it? Maybe too depressing for me, particularly since that second 9/11 might so big it would be more than we bargained for, decimating our economy or, worse, bringing nuclear winter or illness to many thousands of people. On this five year memorial day, the only way I can see to lighten my mood is to tell myself to continue to write and to argue with my political opponents, endeavoring to convince them by reasonable means. I will do my best to resist gloating or preaching to the choir (although it can garner a lot of Internet hits) because I don't think it does any good. And I will hope.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:19 PM
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9/11 by Michael Ledeen

Just published on Pajamas Media Politics Central.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:42 PM
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Who's associated with the Associated Press?

I can't say I was surprised when I read on Tapscott's Copy Desk about Saddam having an agent inside the Associated Press, informing the dictator of the activities of UNMOVIC. Any reader of spy fiction (especially spy fiction written by one-time spies) knows that news organizations are historically hot beds of such activity. The Associated Press has a history of its own as well. Its Pulitzer Prize for war photography in Iraq is a subject worthy of serious investigation in and of itself. (If only Pajamas had the time and energy for that...)

Of course this is yet another indication of why an intelligent person does not believe what he reads in the mainstream media. He shouldn't believe what he reads in the blogs either. Becoming a "trusted source" has become a highly complex matter. We live in a "competitive market" for trust. Many factors go into it. The primary one for me is the admission of point-of-view. Clarity of "where you are coming from" is ground zero for reader confidence. The Associated Press has just received another serious body blow in that regard. Look for this blow to be ignored by the mainstream media, however. This is increasingly about money and markets and the MSM has a vested interest in sticking together on these issues, no matter the ideology of the outlet.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:14 AM
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September 9, 2006

Roman's Opening

I am going to the opening of Roman Genn's show at the James Gray Gallery tonight (Saturday) at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Roman, as many of you know, is terrific caricaturist - he did Pajamas' podcast-loving dog and is working on other projects for us. He is moving over to a bigger palette (oils) and I'm anxious to see it - and to drink some of that cheap chardonnay they always have at openings. Hey, it's free.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:48 AM
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September 8, 2006

The Middle Ages - They're Bad and They're Back!

There may be more to be gleaned about the problems of our times from this article than from all the movies about 9-11:

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's religious police, normally tasked with chiding women to cover themselves and ensuring men attend mosque prayers, are turning to a new target: cats and dogs.

The police have issued a decree banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence.

What can you say to that, other than what Chico once said to Groucho: "Whaddya mean? There is no 'Sanity Clause.'"

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:52 PM
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Miniseries are to film as Chef Boyardee is to pasta

Let's start with this - miniseries almost invariably stink. Or are completely mediocre filler ranging from the pretentious to the pseudo-sexy. In particular, those done by our major networks are the kind of industrial entertainment product, made by diverse hands at the mercy of artistically talentless executives, that leaves me running to the Home and Garden Network (which I actually like - you occasionally learn something). These enterprises are about as far from La Docle Vita or The Bicycle Thief as you can get and still be (relatively )in the same medium.

So the continuing brouhaha over ABC's 9-11 saga stikes me as an embarrassment for all concerned - Bill Clinton (who should keep his mouth shut), ABC (that should stick to sports events) and anybody, including me, for engaging in a discussion of this silly event. The 9-11 Commission was phony enough, but at least it consisted of a group of blowhard politicians doing what blowhard politicians do (posturing). But to take their conclusions seriously as the "source" of a movie is absurd. Their conclusions were a political compromise. (Well, come to think of it, that may be perfect for a miniseries, which is an artistic compromise in the first place... wait, sorry, scratch the word "artistic" and just make that compromise.) Time for the chattering and political classes to get some therapy and move on. Democrats and Republicans should both be sent to the woodshed for playing the blame game over 9-11 at this point. How humiliatingly stupid and self-destructive for all concerned.

UPDATE: Crix Nix Binny Pix.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:51 PM
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September 7, 2006

Is Bill Clinton in the pay of ABC?

How else to explain the behavior of the normally politically savvy Clinton in trying to suppress ABC's 9/11 miniseries? He's only adding millions of viewers for the show, reminding them that while Bin Laden was concocting the World Trade Center catastrophe, our president was playing hide-the-cigar with Monica in the White House corridors. [I thought he was great at multi-tasking.-ed. Sorry. I forgot.] But the blame game for 9/11 is one of the biggest wastes of time imaginable. Nearly everyone on both sides of the aisle was asleep. Or clearly not awake enough. It doesn't take a commission to figure that out. What we should be focusing on is how people responded after 9/11. The reason I have left the Democratic Party is that most of them seem to want to go back to politics as usual, a weird inversion of the Clinton-Gore theme of "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." They seem to be dreaming of the past when everything has changed. And whatever the quality of ABC's film turns out to be - yes, I suppose I'll watch - the flick that really interests me is the bit of cinéma verité just released today by Al Qaeda Studios. Filming on location in Scenic Afghanistan, my guess is their resident videographers were hard at work while in the good old USA our two political parties were biting each other's throats over impeachment. Pathetic when you think about it.

UPDATE: Has ABC caved in to Clinton? Even more pathetic. I thought one of things we were fighting for was free speech. Oh, well...

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:04 PM
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It's politics... no, it's not.... okay, maybe it is a little, but what choice do we have?

I watched Geraldine Ferraro last night on the Neil Cavuto Show as she spouted the Democratic Party line. Bush running around making all these speeches about terrorism (he should never have stopped) is all "about politics." Other tedious voices of the quondam left are now even saying the Islamist threat is essentially inflated and that reputations of the likes of Khalid Sheik Mohammed puffed up for propaganda purposes. (I wonder how those supposed wizards would feel if their families were in an airplane or a subway car during an attack - sudden conversion out of one of those cheesy Hollywood Bible flicks of the fifties...).

Meanwhile, the war continues and the "fictional" Ahmadinejad is rumored to be trying to speak to the UN General Assembly again after he has continually defied the same organization on nuclear weapons (and the show of Holocuast denial cartoons continues its triumphal run in a gallery in Tehran). And he has a good chance of succeeding. Does anyone think this man isn't serious? Well, never mind.

The situation is grim. Really grim. The US is not "winning the war on terror." The war has only begun, as Newt Gingrich, one of the few politicians capable of doing his own writing, says today in a WSJ editorial:

Just consider the following: Osama bin Laden is still at large. Afghanistan is still insecure. Iraq is still violent. North Korea and Iran are still building nuclear weapons and missiles. Terrorist recruiting is still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and across the planet.

Gingrich is not the first to make comparisons between our times and the Civil War but he does it well.

The first and greatest lesson of the last five years parallels what Lincoln came to understand. The dangers are greater, the enemy is more determined, and victory will be substantially harder than we had expected in the early days after the initial attack. Despite how painful it would prove to be, Lincoln chose the road to victory. President Bush today finds himself in precisely the same dilemma Lincoln faced 144 years ago. With American survival at stake, he also must choose. His strategies are not wrong, but they are failing. And they are failing for three reasons.

(1) They do not define the scale of the emerging World War III, between the West and the forces of militant Islam, and so they do not outline how difficult the challenge is and how big the effort will have to be. (2) They do not define victory in this larger war as our goal, and so the energy, resources and intensity needed to win cannot be mobilized. (3) They do not establish clear metrics of achievement and then replace leaders, bureaucrats and bureaucracies as needed to achieve those goals.

These are issues that far transcend the partisanship of an election year. Yet the media and the pols are locked in the banality of that process. To some degree that's human nature, to another the laudable workings of a democracy that cannot and should not stop, but to another a blindness that seems frighteningly oblivious to real danger. The political merry-go-round is spinning out of control. The Democratic Party appears to be run by clueless careerists bound to some tired playbook labeled 1972 and the Republicans only slightly (very slightly) better. In this mess, Bush needs to be more courageous and more eloquent. Can he do it? I'd hate to be in his shoes.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:34 AM
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September 6, 2006

The Return of Holllywood - not the movies, the dullards

You know it's a slow news period when Drudge begins to fill up again with news of Hollywood stars, by now the most tedious people on the planet. Billions have babies but we are supposed to be interested in Tom Cruise's baby. How vulgar. Yesterday it was something again about Madonna. Are people still interested in these creepy self-aggrandizers in the post 9-11 world? Hard to fathom. Even Ben Stein, the perpetual Mortons glad-hander, has turned away. Couric too is part of this celebrity culture that seems from another era. It is not just the anchorwoman thing, outdated as that it is, but the heroine worship implied, so distant from real accomplishment. I guess if I found these people to be in any way fun, I could excuse it. But they're not.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:25 AM
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September 5, 2006

Endangered Species Alert (and not one we should be worrying about)

Tonight begins the tenure of Katie Couric as the anchor of CBS Evening News with the "astonishing new wrinkle" that for the first time a WOMAN will be holding this job. (Yawn, zzzz.... did you forget your Ambien?).... Back on January 10, 2005 I had something to say about this matter - and included a photograph of a woolly mammoth (or was it a mastadon?). Cathy Seipp, writing on Politics Central, is somewhat less critical than I. I can't give such an event more than a few sentences. May the brain-drilling begin.

UPDATE: The AP's David Brauder calls this an "historic" event: "She ended the historic evening by asking viewers for help in crafting a distinctive signoff." The possiblities are endless.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:41 AM
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September 4, 2006

Something for Labor Day

Who is Adam Gadahn's speech writer? on Pajamas. (Do the mullah's work on Labor Day?)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:05 AM
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September 3, 2006

What's It All About, Alfie?

I couldn't agree more with Michael Caine who calls today's cinema "banal." [He was being kind.-ed. No kidding.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:56 PM
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September 2, 2006

"It's Chinatown, Jake..."

Another day, another terror arrest in London. As usual, Pajamas has been following the story closely while the rest of us slept.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:49 AM
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September 1, 2006

Dissidents at Dartmouth

As a professional writer, I do my best to respect commercial boundaries put up by publishers, but in this rare instance I think a subscription-only editorial from the Wall Street Journal merits breaking my rule and publishing here in its entirety. It criticizes reactionary behavior by my alma mater Dartmouth College that is emblematic of a cancer spread across the American academy. Pretending to be "progressive," these institutions are turning into the most rigid insular communities threatening freedom of expression and even thought. The folks at Powerline (also Dartmouth alums) have previously published this editorial but I am doing so here because of the open comments. Please have your say.

Dissidents at Dartmouth
September 1, 2006; Page A14

And so a pattern emerges at Dartmouth, one interminably replicated on other campuses: The academic establishment wants to consolidate its authority and exclude those who might deviate from the party line. But in a democracy, the results are not supposed to be foreordained. The new constitution will be put up for ratification by the alumni on September 15. Despite Dartmouth's troubles in recent years, we trust its graduates are bright enough to see this power play for what it is.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:58 PM
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Why it all happened

This is a momentous morning. The Washington Post has written a remarkably honest editorial about the Valerie Plame Affair:

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.

No kidding. After giving 'Scooter" et al a perfunctory slap on the wrist, the editorial goes on to say what was obvious to many of us from the get-go:

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Of course Mr. Wilson's narcissistic drivel was bought hook, line and sinker by that bastion of reactionary liberalism the New York Times and parroted by its myriad followers. Wouldn't it be interesting to be a fly on the wall of their editorial offices at this moment? In a loose-lipped moment, Bill Keller once called blogs a 'circle jerk,' one of the most classic uses of projection since Freud. What will they do now? Their onetime employee Judith Miller went to jail over this farce (and speaking of hooks and lines - we at the burgeoning PJ Media bought into the whole charade, inviting Ms. Miller to our debut).

But what interests me is how the Plame Affair fits into the whole framework. It may be opera bouffe, but it is far from unrelated to the way the press has conducted itself in recent years. Is it so different from Pallywood and the Mohammed Al Doura case, the Reuters photographs, the Jenin "massacre" and so forth - all lies swallowed whole by a gullible Western media? At first glance they would seem far apart, but in this small world one concept draws them all together - narrative. The truth is less important than the weltanschauung of the publication. But we knew that, didn't we?

So next step - why this phenomenon? Why the acceptance of this narrative whose result is so negative to world history and seems in continuous aid of the destruction of the Enlightenment itself? Is it just Bush Derangement Syndrome? Well, I think that's a large part of it. But the term (BDS) is too narrow to encompass the phenomenon. A variety of psychological forces are in the mix, but most notable to me is a sense of deprivation. 9/11 stripped the left of its self-perceived idealism that was the mainstay of its "personality." Forces (like Bush) that lefties once dismissed as reactionary were taking the lead in the preservation of the West instead of supporting dictators as they once did. Furthermore, in the old days the left could take concilation that the enemy (communism) had at least a theoretical rationale - economic fairness to all. The new enemy was more troublesome - on the one hand poor (only seemingly, of course, considering the oil rich) and on the other hand medieval, anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-modern... essentially anti-liberal. What to do.... what to do?

In the beginning the left went along with Bush, but the minute things began to lag in Iraq, they deserted him in a flash. At first glance the reason was political but on a deeper (and I believe more important) level the reason was psychological. The left was in a rush to reclaim its lost idealism (the "it's about oil" nonsense was but an obvious example of this), to preserve its disintegrating sense of self. Of course the big loser in all this is the truth. Sure Bush made a bunch of mistakes (who wouldn't?) but it should be obvious to anyone that we are at the earliest stages of a very long war. Nevertheless, a culture of media corruption set in almost instantly that ended up creating absurdities like the Plame Affair. We are lucky this one got unmasked. We will also be lucky if the conclusions drawn in the WaPo editorial stick for that publication at least. We shall see.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:40 AM
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