Archives for September 2004

In a really important essay, Carlin Romano reviews a concept described this way: “It is worshiped like a god, and as little understood. It is the cause of untold strife and bloodshed. Genocide is perpetrated in its sacred name. It is at once a source of power and of power’s abuse, of order and of anarchy. […]

David Remnick describes, in this week’s New Yorker, “a paranoid President who refuses the burdens of democratic accountability and the need to reshape a policy that is good for little but more bloodshed.” Remnick’s subject is not our Maximum Leader. He’s talking about Vladimir Putin. But it’s eery. Consider the top story in the print […]

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Apropos The stars according to Peter Bogdanovich, who cites John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda as stars able to make audiences “instantly suspend their disbelief” — which many of today’s stars can’t do — David Nuzum writes that he’d rather see unknowns. When he saw “Maria Full of Grace,” he says, he “totally forgot” the […]

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a story headlined “Bloggers hoping to become fabulously wealthy may have a long wait.” Hell, how about just plain wealthy? I posted this a month ago: “A pal of mine who writes for CounterPunch complains that the Web site doesn’t pay anything. Face it, pal, about a million other sites […]

Sy Hersh is getting the royal treatment from Rummy Boy & Co. Here, just for fun, is the official Department of Defense Statement on the Seymour Hersh Book. It’s not often an author gets such a send-off, even if the title of the book, “Chain of Command : The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib,” […]

What’s weirder? Time’s poll last week, showing that the idiot in the White House continues to lead John Kerry by double digits among likely voters, or Time’s interview, showing that the double-digit leader has a double-digit ego telling him: “It’s all about me.” This is how the interview began: TIME: What’s the most important thing you’ve […]

Seymour Hersh hit the airwaves this morning on “Meet the Press” and is scheduled tonight on “Dateline NBC” to talk about (OK, promote) his new book “Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib,” which is being released Monday. I didn’t watch “Meet the Press” because it had Colin Powell about to do his […]

Yours truly has a review of “Who the Hell’s in It” in today’s Chicago Sun-Times. It begins: Peter Bogdanovich’s superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews — a sequel to “Who the Devil Made It,” his interviews of top film directors — begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us of just how […]

On the third anniversary of 9/11, the best way for Americans to honor the dead is to look to the future by realizing that the upcoming presidential election will be a referendum not on the candidates for the White House but on the conscience and convictions of the electorate itself. Will there be no accountability on Abu […]

By Jan Herman This portrait of George W. Bush is composed of photos of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. It is our version of “The Roster of the Dead,” a two-and-a-half page spread of 900 photos published yesterday in The New York Times. We don’t know who created the GWB death mask. It came to us in g-mail — uncredited […]

How come when Kerry does it, it’s called “a flip-flop,” but when the Nincompoop in Chief does it, it’s termed “a sharp shift from an earlier position”? How come when the ninny makes a U-turn, does a back flip, lands a belly flop, or pulls his head out of his ass, it’s called crossing a […]

Is anybody listening? More than 1,000 dead U.S. soldiers and $132 billion already spent in Iraq, with insurgents in control of key regions. Bunker Boy’s latest scare tactics. A record federal budget deficit. Medicare data illegally withheld from Congress. Freshly detailed charges of a 9/11 cover-up by the White House. A Bush the Cokehead scandal brewing, with attendant media […]

He’s not the only “impoverished Caribbean orphan who immigrated to the United States,” as the flack for the New York Historical Society describes him in a press release. But I’d bet he’s the only one ever to be given an exhibition by the society. The reason, of course, is that this particular impoverished Caribbean orphan immigrant was Alexander Hamilton. […]

Doing it the Putin way, here’s a new approach to the “war on terror”: During School Siege, Russia Took Captives in Chechnya: “Soldiers entered homes of rebel leaders’ relatives and seized 40 people, including children. … One day into the seizure of more than 1,000 hostages by suspected Chechen separatists in the town of Beslan, […]

And now for an irresponsible video report from Iraq that might make you laugh. But seriously, without subtitles, take your pick: Thomas Powers on How Bush Got It Wrong: “No tyrannical father presiding over an intimidated household was ever tiptoed around with greater caution than is the figure of President George W. Bush in the […]