Letters from Tucson

RIP

2007-04-22T00:13:00.000-07:00

www.nickadamsweb.com

2006-10-18T01:24:00.001-07:00

2006-10-18T01:19:00.001-07:00

All in the game.

2006-09-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

So, The Wire is back.

Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about this show. In fact, I’ve written about it on this very blog before. It’s far and away the best damn thing on television. There isn’t even a close second. Whenever I’m at a party or making conversation at a wedding and someone starts going on and on about Lost or 24 I just chuckle quietly and wait for them to finish. Then, I launch into my twenty minute dissertation.

I know that most people don’t expect that much from television. The average viewer just wants a brief diversion between the time they get home from work and the time they have to go to bed. People just want to turn on the television and turn off their brains. But The Wire is proof that television can be much more than a diversion. Television can be art. Is Desperate Housewives telling stories as detailed and nuanced as The Godfather? The Wire does. Is Nip/Tuck laying bare the factors that cause the decaying of an American city? The Wire does. Does Weeds employ award winning novelists on its writing staff? The Wire does.

And still American ignores it. And so does the Emmy’s. And the Golden Globes. What a damn shame. We’ve just past the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina; the natural disaster that brought so many issues of poverty and race to the forefront of our consciousness. You’d think that people in this country would be more receptive to a television show that addresses many of the same racial and socio-economic issues that were exposed last year. To the contrary. Despite rave reviews in newspapers and major magazines, The Wire still labors in relative obscurity. People who have never missed one single episode of The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, Carnival, Deadwood and Rome say things like, “I tried to watch it, but I couldn’t get into it.” That’s because it’s not an easy show to watch. It’s not easy. It doesn’t pander. Things don’t wrap up at the end of an episode like most network dramas. They don’t explain the meaning of the police jargon or the street slang. It unfolds slowly and deliberately like a great novel. And much like a great novel, you can’t truly appreciate the story until it’s done.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s the best fucking show on television. For my money, it’s the best television show ever.

It's been one of those days.

2006-08-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

I need this right now:

This almost makes me want to sex Mutombo.

2006-08-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Mutombo gives $15 million for hospital in Congo

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2549321

NEW YORK -- Dikembe Mutombo will fulfill a lifelong dream soon, opening a hospital in the Congo named for his late mother.

The Houston Rockets center, who donated $15 million to the project, will open the doors to the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital and Research Center on Sept. 2. The 300-bed hospital will provide health care to people in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Mutombo was born.

"We were very close," Mutombo said Monday in a telephone interview. "To do something of this caliber in the name of your beloved mom, it will mean a lot not just to me but to the people of Congo."

He created the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation in 1997, the year his 64-year-old mother died. She was unable to get to the hospital because streets were closed due to civil unrest. His father, Samuel, was turned back from the hospital, just 10 minutes away.

"My mom played a big role, giving us all the tools to make us great human beings," Mutombo said of his nine siblings. "She did what moms are supposed to do -- raise a child with a good understanding of life."

The $29 million hospital and research center will include a pediatric wing, surgery suites and a women's center.

The health care crisis continues in the Congo, where one of five children dies before age 5. Malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, measles and cholera have reached epidemic proportions and continue to infect millions of adults and children. The average life expectancy is 42 years for men and 47 for women.

"Malaria is taking more lives than any other disease, especially children under age 5," he said.

Mutombo had a life-threatening bout of malaria after returning from the Congo in 1999. He had a "huge headache" and passed out after an early season game. His temperature rose to 104 degrees while at a suburban Boston hospital, but after 12 hours the doctors couldn't determine what was wrong until a Kenyan intern entered his room.

"Brother, are you from Africa?" she asked. "Which spot?"

When she heard Congo, she asked if he'd been home lately. He'd been back the previous month.

"She saved my life," Mutombo said. "We got the malaria results 40 minutes later. We waited two hours for the malaria medicine from the CDC . I wish I knew her name to thank her."

Mutombo came to the U.S. in 1987 on an academic scholarship to attend Georgetown. As a premed major, he expected to return to the Congo as a doctor.

In his second year, Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson invited the 7-foot-2 Mutombo to try out for the team. He grew up loving soccer, but eventually came around to basketball under Thompson's guidance.

"He took me by his wing," Mutombo said. "He made me who I became today, he's like a father figure to me. I don't call him 'Coach,' I call him 'Pop.' He gave me all the tools to succeed -- maturity and education."

Georgetown was ranked No. 1 and reached the final eight twice in his three years of play. He was Big East defensive player of the year, averaging 15.2 points, 12.2 rebounds and 4.71 blocks his senior year.

College basketball altered his plans to become a doctor, and he graduated instead with degrees in linguistics and diplomacy. He speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and five African dialects.

Mutombo has averaged 10.6 points and 10.8 rebounds in his 15-year career.

Now he's satisfied to assist on the medical front. His goal is to get 100,000 people to contribute $10 a month on his Web site to support the hospital and research.

"I'm still a doctor, serving the people," Mutombo said.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press

I can't decide which one is worse.

2006-08-08T11:44:00.000-07:00

Ya'll Must've Forgot
By
Roy Jones

Roy Jones gets points for:

-Being the baddest man in the fight game and making a rap video about it. That shit is just inherently cool.
-The “Every Breath You Take” inspired swinging heavy bags.
-That gamecock move he popped James Toney with.
-The Run DMC homage.
- Vinny Pazienza shout out!

Roy Jones loses points for:

-The skin tight, short-sleeved mock neck he’s wearing.
-Rhyming already with already.
-The shorts set. (Is he a 12-year-old? Are we at Kings Dominion?)
-Bragging about beating Reggie Johnson. Who?
-Nappy chest hair. No no homo.

Must Be the Money
By
Deion Sanders

Deion Sanders gets points for:

-Being a two sport superstar and making a rap video about it.
-Mocking his old hairstyle.
-Was that Darryl Strawberry getting his grind on?
-“My library card is gone change into credit cards.” Rich people don’t need to borrow books.

Deion Sanders loses points for:

-I’ll just go ahead and address his buttons. What the fuck?
-S Curl.
-Suit with no shirt on.
-Finger wave sighting!
-Vest with no shirt underneath.

When you get down to it, Roy Jones is a bad rapper who made a pretty run of the mill music video. Deion committed a crime against nature.

Now this is a shrewd deal.

2006-07-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

From the Los Angeles Times

The TV Deal the NBA Wishes It Had Not Made
The Silnas of the ABA's St. Louis Spirits still cash in on the contract that began with the merger in 1976.
By Jonathan Abrams
Times Staff Writer

July 31, 2006

Roughly once a month, the NBA cuts 31 checks to NBA teams as revenue from its multibillion-dollar national television contract.

There are only 30 NBA franchises, so who gets the extra check?

The money goes to brothers Ozzie and Dan Silna, co-owners of the long-forgotten ABA team, the Spirits of St. Louis.

Thirty years ago, Ozzie Silna, with attorney Donald Schupak, negotiated a deal that cleared the way for the ABA to merge with the NBA. It ranks as one of the best sports deals in modern times, one that has paid the Silnas about $168 million and continues to pay off.

"I would have loved to have an NBA team," said Ozzie Silna, 73, a Malibu resident and environmental activist. "But if I look at it retrospectively over what I would have gotten, versus what I've received now, then I'm a happy camper."

Part of the Silnas' deal called for them to receive one-seventh of the annual TV revenue from each of the four ABA teams entering the NBA. The deal turned out to be so lucrative that several NBA teams have tried to break it, without success.

"We honor the deal," said Donnie Walsh, the Indiana Pacers' chief executive. "I can't say we haven't met and tried to settle it. But it's the greatest deal known to man. What more can you say?"

The key line in the Silnas' TV contract that makes NBA executives cringe reads: "The right to receive such revenues shall continue for as long as the NBA or its successors continues in its existence."

In other words, the deal lasts as long as the NBA does.

Another key component is that Silna, anticipating the NBA expanding, capped the brothers' portion of shared television revenue at a maximum of 28 teams. The other NBA teams share their revenue among all 30 teams.

The Silnas' contract stands ironclad, despite occasional court challenges. Harry Weltman, former general manager of the Spirits, argued to the Supreme Court in 1991 that he was entitled to a share of the revenue to no avail.

Still, the four ABA teams now in the NBA — the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New Jersey Nets (formerly the New York Nets) and San Antonio Spurs — have spent plenty in legal fees searching for wiggle room out of the Silnas' contract.

"I think nearly every single attorney and sports executive from those four franchises has taken a look at the deal to see if they can break it," said Gary Hunter, a former Nuggets executive. "I've yet to talk to anybody who can say it can be broken. Every year, when it came down to take a look at the budgeting process we would all just shake our heads."

Three decades ago when the Silnas struck their deal, the renegade ABA, known for its red-white-and-blue ball, three-point shots and star Julius Erving, was struggling financially.

In 1976 the ABA reached a merger deal with the NBA. The NBA agreed to take four of the six teams from the dismantling ABA. The Spirits and the Kentucky Colonels were not invited to join the league. However, the ABA owners needed to reach unanimous approval for the merger to take place.

John Y. Brown, owner of the Kentucky Colonels, quickly accepted a $3.3-million buyout as compensation. That deal was also offered to the Silnas.

But Ozzie Silna kept haggling for more, and he finally reached a deal in a swank Massachusetts hotel room. The Silnas would get $3 million, plus a share of the TV revenue from the four teams entering the NBA.

"When we accepted the arrangement, the big thing was that the NBA had television" and the ABA didn't, said Silna. "But still, the TV revenue was minuscule compared with baseball and the NFL."

Initially, the contract netted the Silnas about $300,000 a year as the NBA struggled with spotty attendance and weak TV ratings until the '80s, when Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan catapulted the league to a higher profile.

As the NBA's popularity rose, so did the league's TV contract and the Silnas' cut. For the NBA's last contract, they averaged $15 million a year.

"The process never even entered our minds of how high it would get," Ozzie Silna said. "We just wanted a piece of the action."

They are due an even larger jackpot from the NBA's current contract, which began in 2002. That six-year, $4.6-billion deal with ABC/ESPN and TNT could earn them upward of $24 million annually, according to Silna.

Without having to dole out salaries or money on stadium leases, the Silnas earn more each season than most NBA teams.

Silna is quick to point out that today's NBA teams are worth hundreds of millions. Indeed, the Lakers are worth $529 million, and the lowly New Orleans Hornets are valued at $225 million, according to Forbes.

The irony is that Ozzie Silna said he never thought the Spirits would be one of the ABA teams that folded.

The Silnas, who originally earned their money as textile manufacturers, purchased the North Carolina franchise and moved it to St. Louis in 1974. The colorful team featured future NBA players Marvin Barnes, Maurice Lucas and Moses Malone and young radio announcer Bob Costas.

Attendance stagnated in the team's second year, and it soon became apparent the Spirits would not survive the impending merger. In all, the Silnas spent about $5 million on the Spirits.

In 1982, after several years of cashing TV checks, the Silnas came close to accepting a new buyout. The NBA offered them $5 million over eight years, but the Silnas countered with a demand of $8 million over five.

The league balked at that number, so the Silnas have kept cashing in.

You can't buy press like this.

2006-07-06T02:18:00.000-07:00

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/mis/177283164.html

atlanta craigslist > missed connections > Barnes and Noble Cumberland - m4w
last modified: Fri, 30 Jun 20:55 EDT

please flag with care : [miscategorized] [prohibited] [spam] [discussion] [best of]

email this posting to a friend

Barnes and Noble Cumberland - m4w - 23
Reply to: pers-177283164@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-06-30, 8:55PM EDT

I was reading Nick Adams' "Making Friends with Black People" and eating a slice of chocolate cheesecake. You were in a lovely business suit and had a lesson with a Spanish tutor across from me. I wanted to tell you that you were one of the most naturally beautiful women that I had seen in a long time.

* this is in or around ATL-Cumberland
* no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

177283164

George Bush does not like blind people.

2006-06-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

Classic.

From now on, I want to be known as Nickilinho

2006-06-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.slate.com/id/2143404/

explainer
Why Ronaldinho Has No Last Name
How Brazilian soccer players get their names.
By Nick Schulz
Posted Saturday, June 10, 2006, at 9:09 AM ET

The World Cup kicked off on Friday, and defending champ Brazil will take the field against Croatia on Tuesday*. The South American squad features FIFA World Player of the Year Ronaldinho, along with stars like Ronaldo, Cafu, and Fred. Why do so many Brazilian soccer players go by one name?

That's the Brazilian convention. Nicknames and first names are used in all settings, no matter the gravity. Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is known to all by his nickname, Lula. Clergymen, doctors, and other professionals are frequently known by an informal name. The phone book for the town of Claudio even lists inhabitants by their nicknames rather than their surnames.

Brazil's affinity for nicknames might stem from the country's historically high illiteracy rate. As such, shortened spoken names are typically used more often than longer birth names. In Brazilian society, the use of a first name or nickname is a mark of intimacy. It's also often a class signifier. Lula, for one, is known for his working-class roots.

Some scholars speculate that the use of single names could have its roots in the slave system. (Slavery was abolished in Brazil in the late 19th century.) When they were documented, slaves would be referred to either by their first name only—say, Joao—or by their first name and country of origin—say, Joao Congo.

When the English introduced soccer to Brazil in the 1800s, Brazilians referred to players in the English manner, by their surnames. But as the sport grew in popularity, nicknaming took over. When the Brazilian national team played its first match in 1914, the squad featured a forward called Formiga, which means "ant" in Portuguese.

Seventeen of the 23 players on Brazil's current World Cup roster go by a single name. There are no hard and fast rules, but naming conventions reflect the Brazilian adoration for goal-scorers and their relatively diminished affection for the players defending their own end. The most famous forwards in Brazilian soccer history, Edson Arantes do Nascimento and Manuel Francisco dos Santos, are better known as Pele and Garrincha. Defenders typically do not have nicknames—the given name of fullback Roberto Carlos is Roberto Carlos da Silva. Goalkeepers tend to be known by their surnames as well as their first names. In almost a century, there has been only one major keeper known by a nickname: Dida, Brazil's starting goalie in this World Cup.

Players with the same first name often change their moniker to differentiate themselves. In recent decades, there have been several Ronaldos at the national level. One became known as Ronaldao, meaning "big Ronaldo." Another became Ronaldinho, meaning "little Ronaldo." When another Ronaldinho came along in the late 1990s, he was called Ronaldinho Gaucho—that is, "little Ronaldo from Rio Grande do Sul." Eventually, the first Ronaldo left the Brazilian national squad, so Ronaldinho became Ronaldo. Ronaldinho Gaucho became Ronaldinho.

Three other nations in this year's World Cup feature lots of players known by only one name. Portugal, Brazil's former colonial overseer, has 10. Portugal's neighbor Spain has six players known by a single moniker. Angola, another former Portuguese colony, has 16, including Jamba, Loco, and Love.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Alex Bellos, author of "Futebol: Soccer, the Brazilian Way of Life"; Thomas Skidmore of Brown University; and Laird Bergad of the City University of New York.

Correction, June 12, 2006: This piece originally misstated the day of Brazil's opening World Cup game. It is Tuesday, not Monday. Return to the corrected sentence.
Nick Schulz is editor of TechCentralStation.com and Transition Game, a blog focusing on the intersection of sports and technology.

Cat haters come and take your L.

2006-06-12T01:46:00.000-07:00

New York Post

BEAR'S A WUSSY VS. PUSSY CAT

AP

June 10, 2006 -- A black bear picked the wrong New Jersey yard for a jaunt this week, running into a territorial tabby who ran the furry beast up a tree - twice.

Jack, a 15-pound orange-and-white cat, keeps a close vigil on his property, chasing small animals when he can, but his owners and neighbors in West Milford say his latest escapade was surprising.

"We used to joke, 'Jack's on duty,' never knowing he'd go after a bear," cat owner Donna Dickey told The Star-Ledger.

Neighbor Suzanne Giovanetti first spotted Jack's accomplishment after her husband saw a bear climb a tree on the edge of their North Jersey home's back yard on Sunday.

After about 15 minutes peering down at the cat from the tree, the bear descended and tried to run away, only to have Jack chase it up another tree.

At this point, Dickey, who feared for her cat, called Jack home and the bear scurried back to the woods.

"He doesn't want anybody in his yard," Dickey said.

Home

No disrespect to Judy Woodruff, but...

2006-06-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

...THIS is a commencement speaker.

2006 Commencement Address
Stephen Colbert, June 3, 2006

Colbert's Report to Knox: Improvise!

More about the 2006 honorary degree recipients

Stephen Colbert[Pours water into a glass at the podium, splashes face and back of neck]

Thank you , thank you very much. First of all, I’m facing a little bit of a conundrum here. My name is Stephen Colbert, but I actually play someone on television named Stephen Colbert, who looks like me, and talks like me, but who says things with a straight face he doesn’t mean. And I’m not sure which one of us you invited to speak here today. So, with your indulgence, I’m just going to talk and I’m going to let you figure it out.

I wanted to say something about the Umberto Eco quote that was used earlier from The Name of the Rose. That book fascinated me because in it, these people are killed for trying to get out of this library a book about comedy, Aristotle’s Commentary on Comedy. And what’s interesting to me is, one of the arguments they have in the book is that comedy is bad because nowhere in the New Testament does it say that Jesus laughed. It said that Jesus wept, but never did he laugh. But, I don’t think you actually have to say it, for us to imagine Jesus laughing. In the famous episode where there’s a storm on the lake, and the fishermen are out there, and they see Jesus on the shore, and Jesus walks across the stormy water to the boat. And St. Peter thinks, “I can do this. I can do this. He keeps telling us to have faith when it comes to anything, and I can do this.” So he steps out of the boat and he walks for—I don’t know, it doesn’t say—let’s say a few feet, without sinking into the waves. Then he looks down, and he sees how stormy the seas are. He loses his faith and he begins to sink. And Jesus hot-foots it over and pulls him from the waves and says, “Oh you of little faith.” I can’t imagine Jesus wasn’t suppressing a laugh. How hilarious must it have been to watch Peter—like Wiley Coyote—take three steps on the water and sink then, into the waves.

Well it’s an honor to be giving your Commencement address here today at Knox College. I want to thank Mr. Podesta for asking me two, two and a half years ago, was it? Something like that? We were in Aspen. You know...being people who go to Aspen. He asked me if I would give a speech at Knox College, and I think it was the altitude, but I said yes. I’m very glad that I did.

On a beautiful day like this I’m reminded of my own graduation 20 years ago, at Northwestern University. I didn’t start there, I finished there on the graduation day, a beautiful day like this. We’re all in our gowns. I go up on the podium to get my leather folder with my diploma in it. And as I get it, from the Dean, she leans in close to me and she smiles, and she says...[train whistle] that’s my ride, actually. I have got to go, I’m sorry. [Heads off stage.] Evidently that happens a lot here. ...So, I’m getting my folder, and the Dean leans into me, shakes my hand and says, “I’m sorry.” I have no idea what she means. So I go back to my seat and I open it up. And, instead of having a diploma inside, there’s a scrap—a torn scrap of paper—that has scrawled on it, “See me.” I kid you not.

Evidently I had an incomplete in an independent study that I had failed to complete. And I did not have enough credits. And, let me tell you, when your whole family shows up and you get to have your picture taken with them—and instead of holding up your diploma, you hold up the torn corner of a yellow legal pad—that is a humbling experience. But eventually, I finished. I got my credits and next year at Christmas time, they have mid-year graduation. And I went there to get my diploma then, they said that I had an overdue library fine and they wouldn’t give it to me again. And they eventually mailed it to me...I think. I’m pretty sure I graduated from college. But I guess the question is, why have a two-time commencement loser like me speak to you? Well, one of the reasons they already mentioned...I recovered from that slow start. And I was recently named by Time magazine one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World! Yeah—give it up for me! Basic cable—the world! I guess they have more in Sub-Saharan Africa than I thought. I’m right here on the cover between Katie Couric and Bono. That’s my picture—a sexy little sandwich between those two.

But if you do the math, there are 100 Most Influential People in the World. There are 6.5 billion people in the world. That means that today I am here representing 65 million people. That’s as big as some countries. What country has about 65 million people? Iran? Iran has 65 million people. So, for all intents and purposes, I’m here representing Iran today. Don’t shoot.

But the best reason for me to come to speak at Knox College is that I attended Knox College. This is part of my personal history that you will rarely see reported. Partly, because the press doesn’t do the proper research. But mostly because…it is not true! I just made it up, so this moment would be more poignant for all of us. How great would it be if I could actually come back here—if I was coming back to my alma mater to be honored like this. I could share with you all my happy memories that I spent here in...Galesburg, Illinois. Hanging out at the Seymour Hall, right? Seymour Hall? You know, all of us alumni, we remember Seymour Hall, playing those drinking games. We played a game called Lincoln-Douglas. Great game. What you do, is act out the Lincoln-Douglas debate and any time one of the guys mentions the Dred Scott decision you have to chug a beer. Well, technically 3/5 of a beer. [groans from audience] You DO have a good education!

I wasn’t sure if anybody was going to get that joke.

I soon learned that a frat house—oops—divided against itself cannot stand.

How can I forget the cheering on the team—the Knox College Knockers? Oh, no it’s the Prairie Fire. Seriously, the Prairie Fire. Your team is named after something that can get you federal disaster relief? I assume the “Flash Floods” was taken.

Oh, yes, the memories are so fresh. It seems like just yesterday I made them up. But the history, you don’t have to tell me the history of Knox College. Your Web site is very thorough. The college itself has long been known for diversity. I am myself a supporter of diversity. I myself have an interracial marriage. I am Irish and my wife is Scottish. But we work it out. And it is fitting, most fitting, that I speak at Knox College today because it was founded by abolitionists. And I gotta say, I’m going to go out on the limb here, I believe that slavery was wrong. No, I don’t care who that upsets. I just hope the mainstream media give me the credit for the courage it took to say that today. I know the blogosphere is just going to explode tomorrow. But enough about me.... if there can be enough about me.

Today is about you—you who have worked so hard to pack your heads with learning until your skulls are all plump like—sausage of knowledge. It’s an apt metaphor, don’t question it. For now your time at college is at an end. Now you are leaving here. And this leads me to a question that just isn’t asked enough at commencement. Why are you leaving here?

This seems like a very nice place. You have a lovely Web site. Have you seen the world outside lately? They are playing for KEEPS out there, folks. My God, I couldn’t wait to get here today just so I could take a breather from the real world. I don’t know if they told you what’s happened while you’ve matriculated here for the past four years. The world is waiting for you people with a club. Unprecedented changes are happening in the last four years. Like globalization. We now live in a hyperconnected, global economic outsourced society. Now there are positives and minuses here. And a positive is that globalization helps us understand and learn from otherwise foreign cultures. For example, I now know how to ask for a Happy Meal in five different languages. In Paris, I’d like a “Repas Heureux” In Madrid a “Comida Feliz” In Calcutta, a “Kushkana, hold the beef.” In Tokyo, a “Happy Seto” And in Berlin, I can order what is perhaps the least happy sounding Happy Meal, a “Glugzig Malzeiht.”

Also globalization, e-mail, cell phones interconnect our nations like never before. It is possible for even the most insulated American to have friends from all over the world. For instance, I recently received an e-mail asking me to help a deposed Nigerian prince who is looking for a business partner to recuperate his fortune. Thanks to the flexibility of global banking, a Swiss bank account is ready and waiting for my share of his money. I know, because I just e-mailed him my Social Security number. Unfortunately for you job seekers, corporations searching for a better bottom line have moved many of their operations overseas, whether it’s a customer service operator, a power factory foreman, or an American flag manufacturer. They’re just as likely to be found in Shanghai as Omaha. In fact, outsourcing is so easy that I had this speech today written by a young man named Panjeeb from Bangalore.

If you don’t like the jokes, I assure you they were much funnier in Urdu...

And when you enter the workforce, you will find competition from those crossing our all-too-poorest borders. Now I know you’re all going to say, “Stephen, Stephen, immigrants built America.” Yes, and here’s the thing—it’s built now. I think it was finished in the 70s sometime. From this point it’s only a touch-up and repair job. Essentially if Congress enacts it, soon English will be the official language of America. Because if we surrender the national anthem, the next thing you know, they’ll be translating the Bible. God wrote it in English for a reason! So it could be taught in our public schools.

So we must build walls. A wall across the entire southern border. That’s the answer. Obviously that may not be enough, maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And another across our northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants can swim, we’ll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while we’re at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And we’ll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. Time for illegal immigrants to go—right after they finish building those walls. Yes, yes, I agree with me.

There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and, as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don’t think you are. I don’t know if you’re tough enough to handle this. You are the most cuddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products.

My mother had 11 children: Jimmy, Eddie, Mary, Billy, Morgan, Tommy, Jay, Lou, Paul, Peter, Stephen. You may applaud my mother’s womb. Thanks, I’ll let her know. She could never protect us the way you all have been protected. She couldn’t fit 11 car seats. She would just open the back of her Town & Country—stack us like cord wood: four this way, four that way, and she put crushed glass in the empty spaces to keep it steady. Then she would roll up all the windows in the winter time and light up a cigarette. When I die I will not need to be embalmed, because as a child my mother hickory-smoked me.

I mean even these ceremonies are too safe. I mean just this mortarboard...look, it’s padded. It’s padded everywhere. When I graduated from college, we had these edges sharpened. When we threw ours up in the air, we knew some of us weren’t coming home.

But you have one thing that may save you, and that is your youth. This is your great strength. It is also why I hate and fear you. It has been said that children are our future. But does that not also mean that we are their past? You are here to replace us. I don’t understand why we’re here helping and honoring them. You do not see union workers holding benefits for robots.

You seem nice enough, so I’ll try to give you some advice. First of all, when you go to apply for your first job, don’t wear these robes. Medieval garb does not instill confidence in your employers—unless you’re applying to be a scrivener. And if someone does offer you a job, take it. You can always quit later. Then at least you’ll be one of the unemployed as opposed to one of the never-employed. Nothing looks worse on a resume than nothing.

So, say “yes.” In fact, say “yes” as often as you can. When I was starting out in Chicago, doing improvisational theatre with Second City and other places, there was really only one rule I was taught about improv. That was, “yes-and.” In this case, “yes-and” is a verb. To “yes-and.” I yes-and, you yes-and, he, she or it yes-ands. And yes-anding means that when you go onstage, they provide a theme, no script. You have no idea what’s going to happen, maybe with someone you’ve never met before. To build a scene, you have to accept. To build anything onstage, you have to accept what the other has provided or initiated on stage. They say you’re doctors—you’re doctors. And then, you add to that: We’re doctors and we’re trapped in a cave. That’s the “-and”. And hopefully they “yes-and” you back. You have to keep your eyes open when you do this. You have to be aware of what the other performer is offering you, so that you can agree and add to it. And through this agreement, you can improvise a scene or a one-act play. And because, by following each other’s lead, neither of you are really in control. It’s more of a mutual discovery than a solo adventure. What happens in a scene is often as much a surprise to you as it is to the audience.

Well, you are about to start the greatest improvisation of all. No script. No idea what’s going to happen, often with people and places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say “yes.” And if you’re lucky, you’ll find people who will say “yes” back.

Now will saying yes get you in trouble at times? Will saying yes lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blinder, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. Yes is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.

And that’s The Word.

I have two last pieces of advice. First, being pre-approved for a credit card does not mean you have to apply for it. And lastly, the best career advice I can give you is to get your own TV show. It pays well, the hours are good, and you are famous. And eventually some very nice people will give you a Doctorate in Fine Arts for doing jack squat.

Congratulations to the class of 2006. Thank you for the honor today.

We have a new champion!

2006-06-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

So my MF Doom only phase is officially over. For the past several months, I’ve become quite acquainted with all things Metal Face-related. King Gheedra, Viktor Vaughn, Madvillian, DangerDoom, etc. And it’s not like I’m not still listening to a ton of Doom. But he’s just not in the top spot anymore. The Meters are. Thanks to a great feature story in Wax Poetics a while back, I got my hands on some of their stuff. Fire on the Bayou jumped out at me right away. I don’t want to get carried away and say that they are the funkiest band in the history of the earth, but…they might be the funkiest band in the history of the earth. It’s like Bill Withers mixed with delta blues and a little Steely Dan thrown in.

Speaking of Steely Dan…I’ve got my tickets. Oh, it’s going to be great to stand so irony free in the Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine, CA and enjoy a full face worth of Fagen and Becker, bitches!!!

Affirmative Action

2006-05-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513563

News
Bush’s Personal Aide To Enroll at Business School
Gottesman, college dropout and former beau to Bush daughter, to begin in the fall
Published On 5/22/2006 2:12:14 AM
By PARAS D. BHAYANI
Crimson Staff Writer

A 26-year-old college dropout who carries President Bush’s breath mints and makes him peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches will follow in his boss’s footsteps this fall when he enrolls at Harvard Business School (HBS).

Though it is rare for HBS—or any other professional or graduate school—to admit a student who does not have an undergraduate degree, admissions officers made an exception for Blake Gottesman, who for four years has served as special assistant and personal aide to Bush.

Gottesman, a Texas native who attended Claremont-McKenna College in California for one year, has long had ties to the Bush family. He dated the president’s daughter, Jenna Bush, nearly ten years ago when he attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal School of Austin.

After completing his freshman year at Claremont in 1999, he left to join the Bush presidential campaign and later served as a junior aide to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. In February 2002, he became the president’s personal assistant.

In his current role, Gottesman performs a wide range of duties, from dog-sitting the president’s Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, to carrying the president’s speeches and giving him the “two-minute warning” before a speech begins.

Gottesman has declined all requests for comment on his business school admission, but White House staffers have described him as loyal, warm, and fun-loving.

“He is a friend and adviser to every employee of the White House, from career maintenance workers to cabinet secretaries,” Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin told The Myrtle Beach Sun News. “He is consistently kind and warm and generous with his time and provides extraordinarily good advice.”

Gottesman has likened his role at the White House to that of Charlie Young on the NBC television program “The West Wing.” When asked about his similarity to Young in an interactive question-and-answer session on the White House’s Web site, Gottesman wrote, “Charlie seems to be smarter, funnier, and better-looking. But, from what I remember—our jobs are probably pretty similar.”

HBS spokesman James E. Aisner ’68 explained the decision to accept Gottesman, even though he is not a college graduate, by telling The Economist that “extraordinary circumstances will sometimes compel it to drop [its] rule” of only admitting students who hold bachelor's degrees.

He refused to comment specifically on Gottesman, citing Harvard’s policy of not commenting on the admission of any individual student.

Aisner also pointed out to The Economist that Harvard would surely admit applicants like Bill Gates and Michael Dell, both of whom are college dropouts.

But the often-snarky British weekly noted: “Needless to say, holding the president’s hand-sanitizer is a far cry from heading a Fortune 500 company.”

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.

Baghdad ER

2006-05-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

Talk about keeping it real. HBO--as usual--kept is really real with this doc. Regardless of your political leanings are, every American citizen should see this damn movie. If you truly believe that we should be in Iraq, you need to see first hand what the consequences are. If you truly believe that we should not be in Iraq, this movie could spur you into action.

A bit of warning, it's not for the faint of heart. This is an actual quote from the movie: "It's the worst thing I've ever seen, sir. My best friend didn't have a face."

Rolling Stone: The Worst President in History?

2006-04-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

The Worst President in History?

One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush
George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.

Historians do tend, as a group, to be far more liberal than the citizenry as a whole -- a fact the president's admirers have seized on to dismiss the poll results as transparently biased. One pro-Bush historian said the survey revealed more about "the current crop of history professors" than about Bush or about Bush's eventual standing. But if historians were simply motivated by a strong collective liberal bias, they might be expected to call Bush the worst president since his father, or Ronald Reagan, or Nixon. Instead, more than half of those polled -- and nearly three-fourths of those who gave Bush a negative rating -- reached back before Nixon to find a president they considered as miserable as Bush. The presidents most commonly linked with Bush included Hoover, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan. Twelve percent of the historians polled -- nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success -- flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.

Even worse for the president, the general public, having once given Bush the highest approval ratings ever recorded, now appears to be coming around to the dismal view held by most historians. To be sure, the president retains a considerable base of supporters who believe in and adore him, and who reject all criticism with a mixture of disbelief and fierce contempt -- about one-third of the electorate. (When the columnist Richard Reeves publicized the historians' poll last year and suggested it might have merit, he drew thousands of abusive replies that called him an idiot and that praised Bush as, in one writer's words, "a Christian who actually acts on his deeply held beliefs.") Yet the ranks of the true believers have thinned dramatically. A majority of voters in forty-three states now disapprove of Bush's handling of his job. Since the commencement of reliable polling in the 1940s, only one twice-elected president has seen his ratings fall as low as Bush's in his second term: Richard Nixon, during the months preceding his resignation in 1974. No two-term president since polling began has fallen from such a height of popularity as Bush's (in the neighborhood of ninety percent, during the patriotic upswell following the 2001 attacks) to such a low (now in the midthirties). No president, including Harry Truman (whose ratings sometimes dipped below Nixonian levels), has experienced such a virtually unrelieved decline as Bush has since his high point. Apart from sharp but temporary upticks that followed the commencement of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and a recovery during the weeks just before and after his re-election, the Bush trend has been a profile in fairly steady disillusionment.

* * * *

How does any president's reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

* * * *

THE CREDIBILITY GAP

No previous president appears to have squandered the public's trust more than Bush has. In the 1840s, President James Polk gained a reputation for deviousness over his alleged manufacturing of the war with Mexico and his supposedly covert pro-slavery views. Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois congressman, virtually labeled Polk a liar when he called him, from the floor of the House, "a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man" and denounced the war as "from beginning to end, the sheerest deception." But the swift American victory in the war, Polk's decision to stick by his pledge to serve only one term and his sudden death shortly after leaving office spared him the ignominy over slavery that befell his successors in the 1850s. With more than two years to go in Bush's second term and no swift victory in sight, Bush's reputation will probably have no such reprieve.

The problems besetting Bush are of a more modern kind than Polk's, suited to the television age -- a crisis both in confidence and credibility. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam travails gave birth to the phrase "credibility gap," meaning the distance between a president's professions and the public's perceptions of reality. It took more than two years for Johnson's disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll to reach fifty-two percent in March 1968 -- a figure Bush long ago surpassed, but that was sufficient to persuade the proud LBJ not to seek re-election. Yet recently, just short of three years after Bush buoyantly declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq, his disapproval ratings have been running considerably higher than Johnson's, at about sixty percent. More than half the country now considers Bush dishonest and untrustworthy, and a decisive plurality consider him less trustworthy than his predecessor, Bill Clinton -- a figure still attacked by conservative zealots as "Slick Willie."

Previous modern presidents, including Truman, Reagan and Clinton, managed to reverse plummeting ratings and regain the public's trust by shifting attention away from political and policy setbacks, and by overhauling the White House's inner circles. But Bush's publicly expressed view that he has made no major mistakes, coupled with what even the conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. calls his "high-flown pronouncements" about failed policies, seems to foreclose the first option. Upping the ante in the Middle East and bombing Iranian nuclear sites, a strategy reportedly favored by some in the White House, could distract the public and gain Bush immediate political capital in advance of the 2006 midterm elections -- but in the long term might severely worsen the already dire situation in Iraq, especially among Shiite Muslims linked to the Iranians. And given Bush's ardent attachment to loyal aides, no matter how discredited, a major personnel shake-up is improbable, short of indictments. Replacing Andrew Card with Joshua Bolten as chief of staff -- a move announced by the president in March in a tone that sounded more like defiance than contrition -- represents a rededication to current policies and personnel, not a serious change. (Card, an old Bush family retainer, was widely considered more moderate than most of the men around the president and had little involvement in policy-making.) The power of Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, remains uncurbed. Were Cheney to announce he is stepping down due to health problems, normally a polite pretext for a political removal, one can be reasonably certain it would be because Cheney actually did have grave health problems.

* * * *

BUSH AT WAR

Until the twentieth century, American presidents managed foreign wars well -- including those presidents who prosecuted unpopular wars. James Madison had no support from Federalist New England at the outset of the War of 1812, and the discontent grew amid mounting military setbacks in 1813. But Federalist political overreaching, combined with a reversal of America's military fortunes and the negotiation of a peace with Britain, made Madison something of a hero again and ushered in a brief so-called Era of Good Feelings in which his Jeffersonian Republican Party coalition ruled virtually unopposed. The Mexican War under Polk was even more unpopular, but its quick and victorious conclusion redounded to Polk's favor -- much as the rapid American victory in the Spanish-American War helped William McKinley overcome anti-imperialist dissent.

The twentieth century was crueler to wartime presidents. After winning re-election in 1916 with the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War," Woodrow Wilson oversaw American entry into the First World War. Yet while the doughboys returned home triumphant, Wilson's idealistic and politically disastrous campaign for American entry into the League of Nations presaged a resurgence of the opposition Republican Party along with a redoubling of American isolationism that lasted until Pearl Harbor.

Bush has more in common with post-1945 Democratic presidents Truman and Johnson, who both became bogged down in overseas military conflicts with no end, let alone victory, in sight. But Bush has become bogged down in a singularly crippling way. On September 10th, 2001, he held among the lowest ratings of any modern president for that point in a first term. (Only Gerald Ford, his popularity reeling after his pardon of Nixon, had comparable numbers.) The attacks the following day transformed Bush's presidency, giving him an extraordinary opportunity to achieve greatness. Some of the early signs were encouraging. Bush's simple, unflinching eloquence and his quick toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan rallied the nation. Yet even then, Bush wasted his chance by quickly choosing partisanship over leadership.

No other president -- Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War -- faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president's own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies -- including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president's supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security. The wise men who counseled Bush's father, including James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, found their entreaties brusquely ignored by his son. When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, "There is a higher Father that I appeal to."

All the while, Bush and the most powerful figures in the administration, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were planting the seeds for the crises to come by diverting the struggle against Al Qaeda toward an all-out effort to topple their pre-existing target, Saddam Hussein. In a deliberate political decision, the administration stampeded the Congress and a traumatized citizenry into the Iraq invasion on the basis of what has now been demonstrated to be tendentious and perhaps fabricated evidence of an imminent Iraqi threat to American security, one that the White House suggested included nuclear weapons. Instead of emphasizing any political, diplomatic or humanitarian aspects of a war on Iraq -- an appeal that would have sounded too "sensitive," as Cheney once sneered -- the administration built a "Bush Doctrine" of unprovoked, preventive warfare, based on speculative threats and embracing principles previously abjured by every previous generation of U.S. foreign policy-makers, even at the height of the Cold War. The president did so with premises founded, in the case of Iraq, on wishful thinking. He did so while proclaiming an expansive Wilsonian rhetoric of making the world safe for democracy -- yet discarding the multilateralism and systems of international law (including the Geneva Conventions) that emanated from Wilson's idealism. He did so while dismissing intelligence that an American invasion could spark a long and bloody civil war among Iraq's fierce religious and ethnic rivals, reports that have since proved true. And he did so after repeated warnings by military officials such as Gen. Eric Shinseki that pacifying postwar Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of American troops -- accurate estimates that Paul Wolfowitz and other Bush policy gurus ridiculed as "wildly off the mark."

When William F. Buckley, the man whom many credit as the founder of the modern conservative movement, writes categorically, as he did in February, that "one can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed," then something terrible has happened. Even as a brash young iconoclast, Buckley always took the long view. The Bush White House seems incapable of doing so, except insofar as a tiny trusted circle around the president constantly reassures him that he is a messianic liberator and profound freedom fighter, on a par with FDR and Lincoln, and that history will vindicate his every act and utterance.

* * * *

BUSH AT HOME

Bush came to office in 2001 pledging to govern as a "compassionate conservative," more moderate on domestic policy than the dominant right wing of his party. The pledge proved hollow, as Bush tacked immediately to the hard right. Previous presidents and their parties have suffered when their actions have belied their campaign promises. Lyndon Johnson is the most conspicuous recent example, having declared in his 1964 run against the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater that "we are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." But no president has surpassed Bush in departing so thoroughly from his original campaign persona.

The heart of Bush's domestic policy has turned out to be nothing more than a series of massively regressive tax cuts -- a return, with a vengeance, to the discredited Reagan-era supply-side faith that Bush's father once ridiculed as "voodoo economics." Bush crowed in triumph in February 2004, "We cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket." The claim is bogus for the majority of Americans, as are claims that tax cuts have led to impressive new private investment and job growth. While wiping out the solid Clinton-era federal surplus and raising federal deficits to staggering record levels, Bush's tax policies have necessitated hikes in federal fees, state and local taxes, and co-payment charges to needy veterans and families who rely on Medicaid, along with cuts in loan programs to small businesses and college students, and in a wide range of state services. The lion's share of benefits from the tax cuts has gone to the very richest Americans, while new business investment has increased at a historically sluggish rate since the peak of the last business cycle five years ago. Private-sector job growth since 2001 has been anemic compared to the Bush administration's original forecasts and is chiefly attributable not to the tax cuts but to increased federal spending, especially on defense. Real wages for middle-income Americans have been dropping since the end of 2003: Last year, on average, nominal wages grew by only 2.4 percent, a meager gain that was completely erased by an average inflation rate of 3.4 percent.

The monster deficits, caused by increased federal spending combined with the reduction of revenue resulting from the tax cuts, have also placed Bush's administration in a historic class of its own with respect to government borrowing. According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever -- with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush -- sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that "prosperity is just around the corner" -- insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!

The rest of what remains of Bush's skimpy domestic agenda is either failed or failing -- a record unmatched since the presidency of Herbert Hoover. The No Child Left Behind educational-reform act has proved so unwieldy, draconian and poorly funded that several states -- including Utah, one of Bush's last remaining political strongholds -- have fought to opt out of it entirely. White House proposals for immigration reform and a guest-worker program have succeeded mainly in dividing pro-business Republicans (who want more low-wage immigrant workers) from paleo-conservatives fearful that hordes of Spanish-speaking newcomers will destroy American culture. The paleos' call for tougher anti-immigrant laws -- a return to the punitive spirit of exclusion that led to the notorious Immigration Act of 1924 that shut the door to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe -- has in turn deeply alienated Hispanic voters from the Republican Party, badly undermining the GOP's hopes of using them to build a permanent national electoral majority. The recent pro-immigrant demonstrations, which drew millions of marchers nationwide, indicate how costly the Republican divide may prove.

The one noncorporate constituency to which Bush has consistently deferred is the Christian right, both in his selections for the federal bench and in his implications that he bases his policies on premillennialist, prophetic Christian doctrine. Previous presidents have regularly invoked the Almighty. McKinley is supposed to have fallen to his knees, seeking divine guidance about whether to take control of the Philippines in 1898, although the story may be apocryphal. But no president before Bush has allowed the press to disclose, through a close friend, his startling belief that he was ordained by God to lead the country. The White House's sectarian positions -- over stem-cell research, the teaching of pseudoscientific "intelligent design," global population control, the Terri Schiavo spectacle and more -- have led some to conclude that Bush has promoted the transformation of the GOP into what former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips calls "the first religious party in U.S. history."

Bush's faith-based conception of his mission, which stands above and beyond reasoned inquiry, jibes well with his administration's pro-business dogma on global warming and other urgent environmental issues. While forcing federally funded agencies to remove from their Web sites scientific information about reproductive health and the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV/AIDS, and while peremptorily overruling staff scientists at the Food and Drug Administration on making emergency contraception available over the counter, Bush officials have censored and suppressed research findings they don't like by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture. Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science -- dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to "the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."

The Bush White House's indifference to domestic problems and science alike culminated in the catastrophic responses to Hurricane Katrina. Scientists had long warned that global warming was intensifying hurricanes, but Bush ignored them -- much as he and his administration sloughed off warnings from the director of the National Hurricane Center before Katrina hit. Reorganized under the Department of Homeland Security, the once efficient Federal Emergency Management Agency turned out, under Bush, to have become a nest of cronyism and incompetence. During the months immediately after the storm, Bush traveled to New Orleans eight times to promise massive rebuilding aid from the federal government. On March 30th, however, Bush's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator admitted that it could take as long as twenty-five years for the city to recover.

Karl Rove has sometimes likened Bush to the imposing, no-nonsense President Andrew Jackson. Yet Jackson took measures to prevent those he called "the rich and powerful" from bending "the acts of government to their selfish purposes." Jackson also gained eternal renown by saving New Orleans from British invasion against terrible odds. Generations of Americans sang of Jackson's famous victory. In 1959, Johnny Horton's version of "The Battle of New Orleans" won the Grammy for best country & western performance. If anyone sings about George W. Bush and New Orleans, it will be a blues number.

* * * *

PRESIDENTIAL MISCONDUCT

Virtually every presidential administration dating back to George Washington's has faced charges of misconduct and threats of impeachment against the president or his civil officers. The alleged offenses have usually involved matters of personal misbehavior and corruption, notably the payoff scandals that plagued Cabinet officials who served presidents Harding and Ulysses S. Grant. But the charges have also included alleged usurpation of power by the president and serious criminal conduct that threatens constitutional government and the rule of law -- most notoriously, the charges that led to the impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and to Richard Nixon's resignation.

Historians remain divided over the actual grievousness of many of these allegations and crimes. Scholars reasonably describe the graft and corruption around the Grant administration, for example, as gargantuan, including a kickback scandal that led to the resignation of Grant's secretary of war under the shadow of impeachment. Yet the scandals produced no indictments of Cabinet secretaries and only one of a White House aide, who was acquitted. By contrast, the most scandal-ridden administration in the modern era, apart from Nixon's, was Ronald Reagan's, now widely remembered through a haze of nostalgia as a paragon of virtue. A total of twenty-nine Reagan officials, including White House national security adviser Robert McFarlane and deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver, were convicted on charges stemming from the Iran-Contra affair, illegal lobbying and a looting scandal inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Three Cabinet officers -- HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce, Attorney General Edwin Meese and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger -- left their posts under clouds of scandal. In contrast, not a single official in the Clinton administration was even indicted over his or her White House duties, despite repeated high-profile investigations and a successful, highly partisan impeachment drive.

The full report, of course, has yet to come on the Bush administration. Because Bush, unlike Reagan or Clinton, enjoys a fiercely partisan and loyal majority in Congress, his administration has been spared scrutiny. Yet that mighty advantage has not prevented the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges stemming from an alleged major security breach in the Valerie Plame matter. (The last White House official of comparable standing to be indicted while still in office was Grant's personal secretary, in 1875.) It has not headed off the unprecedented scandal involving Larry Franklin, a high-ranking Defense Department official, who has pleaded guilty to divulging classified information to a foreign power while working at the Pentagon -- a crime against national security. It has not forestalled the arrest and indictment of Bush's top federal procurement official, David Safavian, and the continuing investigations into Safavian's intrigues with the disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, recently sentenced to nearly six years in prison -- investigations in which some prominent Republicans, including former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed (and current GOP aspirant for lieutenant governor of Georgia) have already been implicated, and could well produce the largest congressional corruption scandal in American history. It has not dispelled the cloud of possible indictment that hangs over others of Bush's closest advisers.

History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution. There has always been a tension over the constitutional roles of the three branches of the federal government. The Framers intended as much, as part of the system of checks and balances they expected would minimize tyranny. When Andrew Jackson took drastic measures against the nation's banking system, the Whig Senate censured him for conduct "dangerous to the liberties of the people." During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's emergency decisions to suspend habeas corpus while Congress was out of session in 1861 and 1862 has led some Americans, to this day, to regard him as a despot. Richard Nixon's conduct of the war in Southeast Asia and his covert domestic-surveillance programs prompted Congress to pass new statutes regulating executive power.

By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn't bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases -- using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush's violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.

Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. "The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door," warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton's chief accusers. In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening.

The president's defenders stoutly contend that war-time conditions fully justify Bush's actions. And as Lincoln showed during the Civil War, there may be times of military emergency where the executive believes it imperative to take immediate, highly irregular, even unconstitutional steps. "I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful," Lincoln wrote in 1864, "by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation." Bush seems to think that, since 9/11, he has been placed, by the grace of God, in the same kind of situation Lincoln faced. But Lincoln, under pressure of daily combat on American soil against fellow Americans, did not operate in secret, as Bush has. He did not claim, as Bush has, that his emergency actions were wholly regular and constitutional as well as necessary; Lincoln sought and received Congressional authorization for his suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. Nor did Lincoln act under the amorphous cover of a "war on terror" -- a war against a tactic, not a specific nation or political entity, which could last as long as any president deems the tactic a threat to national security. Lincoln's exceptional measures were intended to survive only as long as the Confederacy was in rebellion. Bush's could be extended indefinitely, as the president sees fit, permanently endangering rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution to the citizenry.

* * * *

Much as Bush still enjoys support from those who believe he can do no wrong, he now suffers opposition from liberals who believe he can do no right. Many of these liberals are in the awkward position of having supported Bush in the past, while offering little coherent as an alternative to Bush's policies now. Yet it is difficult to see how this will benefit Bush's reputation in history.

The president came to office calling himself "a uniter, not a divider" and promising to soften the acrimonious tone in Washington. He has had two enormous opportunities to fulfill those pledges: first, in the noisy aftermath of his controversial election in 2000, and, even more, after the attacks of September 11th, when the nation pulled behind him as it has supported no other president in living memory. Yet under both sets of historically unprecedented circumstances, Bush has chosen to act in ways that have left the country less united and more divided, less conciliatory and more acrimonious -- much like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover before him. And, like those three predecessors, Bush has done so in the service of a rigid ideology that permits no deviation and refuses to adjust to changing realities. Buchanan failed the test of Southern secession, Johnson failed in the face of Reconstruction, and Hoover failed in the face of the Great Depression. Bush has failed to confront his own failures in both domestic and international affairs, above all in his ill-conceived responses to radical Islamic terrorism. Having confused steely resolve with what Ralph Waldo Emerson called "a foolish consistency . . . adored by little statesmen," Bush has become entangled in tragedies of his own making, compounding those visited upon the country by outside forces.

No historian can responsibly predict the future with absolute certainty. There are too many imponderables still to come in the two and a half years left in Bush's presidency to know exactly how it will look in 2009, let alone in 2059. There have been presidents -- Harry Truman was one -- who have left office in seeming disgrace, only to rebound in the estimates of later scholars. But so far the facts are not shaping up propitiously for George W. Bush. He still does his best to deny it. Having waved away the lessons of history in the making of his decisions, the present-minded Bush doesn't seem to be concerned about his place in history. "History. We won't know," he told the journalist Bob Woodward in 2003. "We'll all be dead."

Another president once explained that the judgments of history cannot be defied or dismissed, even by a president. "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history," said Abraham Lincoln. "We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

SEAN WILENTZ

Party!

2006-04-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

Hey George, answer the fucking question.

2006-04-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

This week in Nick

2006-04-02T23:15:00.001-07:00

This past Wednesday, I had my first book

reading/signing at Book Soup. I haven't been that nervous for a performance since my "bringer" days. I kept thinking, "If I can't get people to show up in my own town, I'm screwed when this show hits the road." Thankfully, plenty of family, friends and radio listeners showed up and the whole damn thing came off great! I even got to meet the first white woman to ever be on Soul Train. Here's some photographic evidence of the event:

Thursday was the High Times comedy show at the Improv. Needless to say, that show is always fun. Felt good to be back on stage in front of a real crowd. Book stuff has been my focus for a while now, and for good reason. But I can't let the instrument get too dull.

Flickr

2006-04-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Legalize it? Almost half of America thinks so.

2006-03-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

From the good folks over at NORML.

Zogby Poll: Nearly Half Of Americans Believe Pot Should Be Regulated Like Alcohol -- Majorities In The East And West Coasts Back Legalization

March 16, 2006 - Washington, DC, USA

Washington, DC: Nearly one out of two Americans support amending federal law "to let states legally regulate and tax marijuana the way they do liquor and gambling," according to a national poll of 1,004 likely voters by Zogby International and commissioned by the NORML Foundation.

Forty-six percent of respondents -- including a majority of those polled on the east (53 percent) and west (55 percent) coasts -- say they support allowing states to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. Forty-nine percent of respondents opposed taxing and regulating cannabis, and five percent were undecided.

"Public support for replacing the illicit marijuana market with a legally regulated, controlled market similar to alcohol -- complete with age restrictions and quality controls -- continues to grow," NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said. "NORML's challenge is to convert this growing public support into a tangible public policy that no longer criminalizes those adults who use marijuana responsibly."

Respondents' support for marijuana law reform was strongly influenced by age and political affiliation. Nearly two-thirds of 18-29 year-olds (65 percent) and half of 50-64 year-olds think federal law should be amended to allow states the option to regulate marijuana, while majorities of 30-49 year-olds (58 percent) and seniors 65 and older (52 percent) oppose such a change.

Among those respondents who identified themselves as Democrats, 59 percent back taxing and regulating marijuana compared to only 33 percent of Republicans. Forty-four percent of Independents and 85 percent of Libertarians say they supported the law change.

Respondents' opinions were also influenced by religious affiliation. Nearly 70 percent of respondents who identified themselves as Jewish, and nearly 60 percent of respondents who said they were non-religious believe that states should regulate cannabis, while only 48 percent of Catholics and 38 percent of Protestants support such a policy.

A previous Zogby poll of 1,024 likely voters found that 61 percent of respondents opposed arresting and jailing non-violent marijuana consumers.

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, or Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at (202) 483-5500.

Remember when. What they said about the Iraq War.

2006-03-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

3/15/06

[Please see the correction to this advisory at the bottom of the page.]

Weeks after thse invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)

"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/13/03)

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)

Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)

"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)

Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)

"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)

"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."
(Newsweek, 3/17/03)

"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad guys. I saw them."
(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)

"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

CORRECTION

This advisory mistakenly included an out-of-context quote from William Raspberry’s April 14, 2003 Washington Post column. FAIR's advisory inaccurately presented Raspberry’s column as an example of overly optimistic pundit commentary about the invasion of Iraq. Contrary to FAIR’s presentation, Raspberry’s column called attention to and rejected the same sort of premature triumphalism and marginalization of critics that was the subject of FAIR's media advisory. FAIR should have presented the Raspberry column as an exceptional example of a media figure challenging the conventional wisdom early in the Iraq War.

FAIR sincerely regrets the error and offers an apology to William Raspberry and to our readers.

Also in the advisory, the Tony Snow item originally dated 4/27/03 has been corrected to 4/13/03.

Take two and pass, Walter Cronkite.

2006-03-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

I remember watching Walter Cronkite when I was a kid and liking him for some reason. There was no pretension or preening like there is with the smirk masters of today's network news. Years later, he surprises the hell out of me and gives me even more reason to like him. This is a recent blog entry from his column over at The Huffington Post.

Telling the Truth About the War on Drugs

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is."

To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire - least of all in a time of war.

I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost - and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens.

I am speaking of the war on drugs.

And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.

While the politicians stutter and stall - while they chase their losses by claiming we could win this war if only we committed more resources, jailed more people and knocked down more doors - the Drug Policy Alliance continues to tell the American people the truth - "the way it is."

I'm sure that's why you support DPA's mission to end the drug war. And why I strongly urge you to support their work by giving a generous donation today.

You see, I've learned first hand that the stakes just couldn't be higher.

When I wanted to understand the truth about the war on drugs, I took the same approach I did to the war in Vietnam: I hit the streets and reported the story myself. I sought out the people whose lives this war has affected.

Allow me to introduce you to some of them.

Nicole Richardson was 18-years-old when her boyfriend, Jeff, sold nine grams of LSD to undercover federal agents. She had nothing to do with the sale. There was no reason to believe she was involved in drug dealing in any way.

But then an agent posing as another dealer called and asked to speak with Jeff. Nicole replied that he wasn't home, but gave the man a number where she thought Jeff could be reached.

An innocent gesture? It sounds that way to me. But to federal prosecutors, simply giving out a phone number made Nicole Richardson part of a drug dealing conspiracy. Under draconian mandatory minimum sentences, she was sent to federal prison for ten years without possibility of parole.

To pile irony on top of injustice, her boyfriend - who actually knew something about dealing drugs - was able to trade information for a reduced sentence of five years. Precisely because she knew nothing, Nicole had nothing with which to barter.

Then there was Jan Warren, a single mother who lived in New Jersey with her teenage daughter. Pregnant, poor and desperate, Jan agreed to transport eight ounces of cocaine to a cousin in upstate New York. Police officers were waiting at the drop-off point, and Jan - five months pregnant and feeling ill - was cuffed and taken in.

Did she commit a crime? Sure. But what awaited Jan Warren defies common sense and compassion alike. Under New York's infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws, Jan - who miscarried soon after the arrest - was sentenced to 15 years to life. Her teenage daughter was sent away, and Jan was sent to an eight-by-eight cell.

In Tulia, Texas, an investigator fabricated evidence that sent more than one out of every ten of the town's African American residents to jail on trumped-up drug charges in one of the most despicable travesties of justice this reporter has ever seen.

The federal government has fought terminally ill patients whose doctors say medical marijuana could provide a modicum of relief from their suffering - as though a cancer patient who uses marijuana to relieve the wrenching nausea caused by chemotherapy is somehow a criminal who threatens the public.

People who do genuinely have a problem with drugs, meanwhile, are being imprisoned when what they really need is treatment.

And what is the impact of this policy?

It surely hasn't made our streets safer. Instead, we have locked up literally millions of people...disproportionately people of color...who have caused little or no harm to others - wasting resources that could be used for counter-terrorism, reducing violent crime, or catching white-collar criminals.

With police wielding unprecedented powers to invade privacy, tap phones and conduct searches seemingly at random, our civil liberties are in a very precarious condition.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort - with no one held accountable for its failure.

Amid the clichés of the drug war, our country has lost sight of the scientific facts. Amid the frantic rhetoric of our leaders, we've become blind to reality: The war on drugs, as it is currently fought, is too expensive, and too inhumane.

But nothing will change until someone has the courage to stand up and say what so many politicians privately know: The war on drugs has failed.

That's where the Drug Policy Alliance comes in.

From Capitol Hill to statehouses to the media, DPA counters the hysteria of the drug war with thoughtful, accurate analysis about the true dangers of drugs, and by fighting for desperately needed on-the-ground reforms.

They are the ones who've played the lead role in making marijuana legally available for medical purposes in states across the country.

California's Proposition 36, the single biggest piece of sentencing reform in theUnited States since the repeal of Prohibition, is the result of their good work. The initiative is now in its fifth year, having diverted more than 125,000 people from prison and into treatment since its inception.

They oppose mandatory-minimum laws that force judges to send people like Nicole Richardson and Jan Warren to prison for years, with no regard for their character or the circumstances of their lives. And their work gets results: thanks in large part to DPA, New York has taken the first steps towards reforming the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws under which Jan was sentenced.

In these and so many other ways, DPA is working to end the war on drugs and replace it with a new drug policy based on science, compassion, health and human rights.

DPA is a leading, mainstream, respected and effective organization that gets real results.

But they can't do it alone.

That's why I urge you to send as generous a contribution as you possibly can to the Drug Policy Alliance.

Americans are paying too high a price in lives and liberty for a failing war on drugs about which our leaders have lost all sense of proportion. The Drug Policy Alliance is the one organization telling the truth. They need you with them every step of the way.

And that's the way it is.

Maximum Fun

2006-03-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

I was recently a guest on my good friend Jesse Thorn's kick ass radio show/podcast, The Sound Of Young America. Imagine a typical radio show. Now, imagine that it doesn't suck. That's what TSOYA is like. He describes it as Fresh Air with Terry Gross meets Conan O'Brien. If that doesn't interest you, then you just plain don't like awesome.

You can listen to the show here. Or, better yet, subscribe to his podcast and listen to the show every week.

Earlier in the week, I did an interview on NPR's News & Notes with Ed Gordon. Ed is a fellow BET survivor, so he gets love from me. After a week and a half of talking to drive time DJ's at 6:00AM, the public radio vibe was a welcome change.

And we're off.

2006-03-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

So Making Friends with Black People is officially out in the ether. It's odd. I've been looking forward to the day when the book is actually out there for so long now, it's kind of anti-climactic. I walked to our local Borders to see if they had it, and it was on one of the tables in the front of the store. Very cool. Then I checked on the shelf and there were a few more copies...right next to Woody Allen's book Getting Even. Trippy.

A few days ago the folks over at Daily Candy ran a piece on the book. If you aren't familiar with their site, here's a testament to their reach on the 'net. The night before their piece ran, the book was #41,000 something on Amazon.com. After their piece, I got as high as #180. That's right. Of all the books for sale on Amazon.com, I was in the top 200. Since then, I've plummeted down to somewhere in the 500 region. What's the matter, book readers? Don't love me anymore. Speaking of Daily Candy, be on the look out for their book DailyCandy A-Z. Here's the piece they ran on me. Thanks Eve!

http://www.dailycandy.com/article.jsp?ArticleId=25317&city=4

Racial Recognition
make new friends!

White people have mastered some tough stuff. The goth look. Ice hockey. Tax evasion. Dancing to Earth, Wind, and Fire without any evidence of soul whatsoever.

And with the publication of Making Friends with Black People, everyone (read: all the colors in the Crayola box) can get one step closer to true racial harmony. The new book by L.A.-based comedian Nick Adams is a smart, hilarious look at the conflicted, all-too-often misguided relationship white people have with African-American culture.

Adams is black, but some of his best friends are white, so he knows what he's talking about. From when to open a conversation with talk of Jay-Z's new album (never) to how to avoid ridicule on the dance floor (flamboyance is the enemy), he breaks it down for the pigmentally challenged.

Wondering if it's okay for white people to use black slang? Well, sure, but he warns, "When you guys start using our words, that's when we know it's time for us to stop using them. Every time a white, middle-aged math teacher calls a student "dog", black people all over the country are notified via e-mail. Believe it."

Don't be surprised if it makes you laugh at yourself and your assumptions.

That's something everyone could use a little more practice at.

Available online at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.

Ladies...Damon Wayans wants to see your vagina.

2006-03-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/etc/138180412.html

los angeles craigslist > etcetera jobs > NUDITY NEEDED FOR TV SKETCH COMEDY SHOW
last modified: Wed, 1 Mar 16:17 PST

email this posting to a friend

NUDITY NEEDED FOR TV SKETCH COMEDY SHOW
Reply to: job-138180412@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-03-01, 4:17PM PST

A new sketch comedy show for Showtime called "D. Underground" is looking for a few women who would be open to nudity in a sketch that will be shot in the month of March.

The sketch requires getting a direct shot of a woman’s vagina. To be specific, the role would have a woman walk onto a stage and sit on a stool with her legs open. Her face would not be shown, the camera would only show from the waist down.

THIS IS NOT PORN. THERE WOULD BE NO TOUCHING OF ANY KIND.

This would be shot in a closed set (meaning only the director and crew absolutely necessary to shoot) would be present.

We are looking for women of all ages (over 18) and ethnicities. We will be casting three women between the ages of 18 to 30 and one woman over 50.

Payment for this job would be AFTRA scale, which would be $370 for the day.

Because of the close-up camera shot this sketch requires, we need to be able to see a picture of the vagina beforehand to make sure there are no birthmarks, etc.

We understand that this may seem like a strange request. Feel free to call me with any questions (or to verify legitimacy) by calling 818-238-0215 and speaking with Sara.

Our goal to treat each woman with dignity and respect with this sensitive position.

Because the shot would be from the waist down, we don’t need a photo of your face, but we do need to see a photo of your vagina. To be considered for this role please email a tasteful photo of your vagina with a contact phone number.

We also need to cast women who can dance as strippers for another sketch. Each woman would be fully clothed, with her face showing, dancing seductively.

If you would like to be considered for this role as well please let me know in your email and include a photo of your full body (clothed, we just need to see your body shape and face).

Thank you.

* Job location is Burbank
* Compensation: $370
* no -- Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* no -- Please, no phone calls about this job!
* no -- Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
* no -- Reposting this message elsewhere is NOT OK.

138180412

----------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.sho.com/site/announcements/060120underground.do

"IT'S IN LIVING COLOR ON STEROIDS!"
THIS FALL, SHOWTIME PREMIERES SKETCH COMEDY SERIES,
DAMON WAYANS' THE UNDERGROUND

LOS ANGELES (January 19, 2006) – Iconoclastic comedian Damon Wayans brings his patented brand of insightful, take-no-prisoners humor to SHOWTIME with DAMON WAYANS' THE UNDERGROUND, a half-hour sketch comedy series to premiere on the network this fall, it was announced today by Robert Greenblatt, President of Entertainment for Showtime. Currently in pre-production in Los Angeles, the series has received a 10-episode order.

Referring to the riotous, groundbreaking '90s sketch comedy show that launched careers for him, his siblings, Jim Carrey, and David Alan Grier, Wayans says of DAMON WAYANS' THE UNDERGROUND: "It's 'In Living Color' on steroids…it will be everything we weren't allowed to do on broadcast television." Dean Lorey ("My Wife and Kids") will direct Wayans and fellow writer/ensemble cast members, including Groundlings players Edi Patterson and Mikey Day ("Nick Cannon Presents Wild 'N Out"), and heir apparent, Damon Wayans Jr., among others.

"Damon Wayans is one of the most original and most versatile comic actors and writer/producers working in this business today," said Greenblatt. "He's done everything from hit films to a hit sitcom, but I know he has a very warm spot in his heart for the days of 'In Living Color,' and he intends to push the boundaries of the almost-forgotten sketch comedy genre with 'The Underground.' I'm thrilled to bring him to SHOWTIME where we will provide him the freedom to express his unique comedic voice in a way that only premium television can offer."

While the show will feature recurring sketch characters, parodies of pop culture and a new generation of sketch performers alongside Damon, it will also feature more sketches filmed outside the studio along with an eclectic mix of dance, music, and other visual arts used as interstitial moments. There may also be some fly-on-the-wall glimpses into behind-the-scenes moments showing how this show is put together and how the sketches develop, a complex and funny process that the audience will enjoy.

A middle child of the ten preternaturally comic Wayans brood, the actor/comedian gained a loyal following in the early '80s as a New York-based stand-up comic, ultimately landing a brief stint as a featured player on "Saturday Night Live." After wowing audiences with a trio of HBO specials, Wayans headed to Los Angeles to join the cast of "In Living Color," the Emmy® Award-winning show created by elder brother, Keenen Ivory Wayans. His writing and portrayal of over-the-top characters like "Homey the Clown" and film critic "Blaine Edwards" thrilled audiences, spawned catchphrases ("Homey don't play dat!," "Hated it!") and earned him two Emmy® nominations. For five seasons, Wayans headlined the successful ABC sitcom, "My Wife and Kids," currently in syndication. In addition to television roles, Wayans has starred in several feature films, including Spike Lee's Bamboozled, Marci X, and Mo' Money. In 1999, he penned a best-selling novel, Bootleg.

Video Shows Bush Was Warned Before Katrina

2006-03-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

March 1, 2006

Video Shows Bush Was Warned Before Katrina

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage -- along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press -- show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Linked by secure video, Bush's confidence on Aug. 28 starkly contrasts with the dire warnings his disaster chief and a cacophony of federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.

A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

"I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe," Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

--Homeland Security officials have said the "fog of war" blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. "I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done," National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

"I don't buy the `fog of war' defense," Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. "It was a fog of bureaucracy."

--Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility -- and Bush was worried too.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.

"I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One," Brown said. "He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches."

--Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. "I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off," Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.

It wasn't long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.

"We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what's going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up," Smith said Aug. 30.

Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.

"We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we'll have people dying -- not because of water coming up, but because we can't get them medical treatment in our affected counties," said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.

Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government's disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.

"We're going to need everything that we can possibly muster, not only in this state and in the region, but the nation, to respond to this event," Brown warned. He called the storm "a bad one, a big one" and implored federal agencies to cut through red tape to help people, bending rules if necessary.

"Go ahead and do it," Brown said. "I'll figure out some way to justify it. ... Just let them yell at me."

Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him. Neither asked questions in the Aug. 28 briefing.

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," the president said.

A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security's operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina's reach, for a bird flu event.

One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.

Chertoff: "Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?"

Brown: "We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now."

Chertoff: "Good job."

In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.

The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.

"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield told the briefing.

Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

"They're not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they're leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I'm very concerned about that," Brown said.

Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.

Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome -- which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response -- would be safe and have adequate medical care.

"The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level.... I don't know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane," he said.

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.

"Not to be (missing) kind of gross here," Brown interjected, "but I'm concerned" about the medical and mortuary resources "and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe."

------

Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this story.

On the Net:

Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov

Federal Emergency Management Agency: http://www.fema.gov

It's coming...it's coming...it's coming...it's here!!!!

2006-02-28T02:11:00.000-07:00

In 7 days my book is officially released. Its 12:18 AM on February 28, 2006; two days after my 33^rd birthday. Last of the early 30s. After this one I’ll officially be mid-thirties. I’m not having a crisis or anything about it. I’m just saying.

I’m a little high. OK right after I typed that, I got that head rush that makes you admit that you’re more than just a little high. I think I’m going to go get a little drunk. I have two sitcom scripts to finish. I have three letters to write. For some reason I just can’t get myself to focus on the tasks at hand. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that this damn book is actually going to be in stores. Thanks to Amazon.com and a few apparently over zealous Barnes and Nobles, quite a few people have already let me know that they already have their hands on it. It’s out there. Now the task is busting my ass to try and make this thing successful. I’ve already gotten some pretty good press, USA Today ran a piece that was picked up Associated Press style by a bunch of smaller papers. They called the book a “flip but frank take on pop culture and race relations.” Newsday quoted the piece in this story.

And the Hartford Courant was pretty complimentary: “There is plenty of astute commentary on the state of race relations in America tucked into this very funny book. Don't laugh so hard that you miss the serious points he is making.” Maureen at Kensington has already scheduled a ton of radio interviews on shows like NPR’s News & Notes with Ed Gordon and The Air America Network’s “Harrison on the Edge.” Tally ho!

The other night—for the first time, actually—I crunched the numbers to see how many copies I have to sell before Kensington makes back their advance and I start seeing royalties. It’s actually not as much as I would have thought. For a few minutes, I entertained the notion of this book as a money making venture; something I’ve been able to keep out of my mind pretty easily during this entire process. Of course, there were nights when I lay in bed and imagined myself on Oprah with my wife, mother-in-law, grandmother and sister sitting on the front row dressed for the day time Emmy awards. And, I have to admit that I do have my entire appearance on The Daily Show scripted in my head. But all along I’ve mostly thought about this as a launching pad. A stepping stone to other things that might actually allow me to make a living with comedy.

So I have a new favorite show. Not really. The Wire is my favorite show of all time and far and away the best thing on television. When the new season starts I’m going to unleash the full power and fury of my technological capabilities on downloading the entire reason and watching them all in a one day marathon. What’s amazing is that I could pull that off easily and my setup isn’t even that hi-tech. That’s how easy this stuff is. Concerned about me pirating from HBO? Don’t be. I pay for HBO every month and I’ll watch the episodes when they air on TV too. That’s how I roll with The Wire.

So I don’t really have a new favorite show. I have a new show that I really like. It’s called The Thirsty Traveler on the Fine Living Network. The host, Kevin Brauch officially has the best job in the world. Here’s the show, he travels all over the world tasting that country’s alcohol. That’s it. That’s the show. I’d watch that regardless. But it’s even better because it’s well-produced and Brauch actually knows his shit. If I’m ever in Northern Scandinavia, I’d love to get my hands on some Aquavit.

Haven't we evolved beyond this?

2006-02-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

Fernando Vargas reacts after losing to Shane Mosley during their junior middleweight boxing match at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006. The fight was called by referee Joe Cortez due to swelling on Vargas's left eye.
(AP Photo/Eric Jamison)

Damon Wayans wants to make "Nigga" jeans?

2006-02-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70259-0.html

Actor Tries to Trademark 'N' Word

By Rogers Cadenhead | Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Feb, 23, 2006 EST

The actor Damon Wayans has been engaged in a 14-month fight to trademark the term "Nigga" for a clothing line and retail store, a search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's online database reveals.

Wayans wants to dress customers in 14 kinds of attire from tops to bottoms, and use the controversial mark on "clothing, books, music and general merchandise," as well as movies, TV and the internet, according to his applications.

But, so far, his applications have been unsuccessful. Trademark examiner Kelly Boulton rejected the registration dated Dec. 22, citing a law that prohibits marks that are "immoral or scandalous." A previous attempt by Wayans was turned down on identical grounds six months earlier.

"While debate exists about in-group uses of the term, 'nigga' is almost universally understood to be derogatory," Boulton wrote to Wayans' attorney, William H. Cox, according to the application.

Cox and other representatives of the actor did not respond to interview requests about the registration.

Wayans can appeal the rejection, but experts in trademark law differ on his chances for success.

Lynda Zadra-Symes, a trademark lawyer in California, said Wayans may be successful. She compared "Nigga" to the successful registration of Dykes on Bikes. The San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent fought the Trademark Office for three years to overturn an initial rejection of a Dykes on Bikes trademark. The mark was published Jan. 24.

"Because the application was by a group of lesbians it was eventually allowed to publish," Zadra-Symes said.

"This is a great victory," the group proclaimed on its website. "It affirms our right to determine who we are and how we present ourselves to the world."

However, Tawnya Wojciechowski, another trademark attorney practicing in California, compared Wayans' application to the ongoing legal case where Washington Redskins trademarks have been challenged by seven Native Americans. "They're going to have a really tough time," Wojciechowski predicted.

The word "nigga" is ubiquitous in hip-hop music, where it provides half of a rhyming couplet radio listeners never get to hear in the Grammy-winning song "Gold Digger" by Kanye West.

Ol' Dirty Bastard used the term 76 times in the 1999 album Nigga Please, not counting repetitions in a chorus.

In January, an episode of the late-night Cartoon Network series Boondocks was criticized for putting the word in the mouth of a fictionalized Martin Luther King Jr.

The effort to commercialize "nigga" drew a sharp response from a black school official who participated in a forum about the word earlier this month at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

"I don't care for it in any form," said Dr. Lonnie Williams, associate vice chancellor for student affairs. "Either way you pronounce it, spell it, anything associated with it -- I find it offensive."

If Wayans succeeds in persuading the Trademark Office to permit the mark, he may have to deal with Keon Rhodan, a 29-year-old entrepreneur in Charleston, South Carolina, who has been using "Nigga" on a line of T-shirts, hoodies and other attire for six years in a part-time, trunk-of-his-car business.

Rhodan attempted to register "Nigga'Clothing" as a trademark in 2001 and was denied by the Trademark Office.

"They said it was disparaging," he said.

Rhodan, who is black, said that he's sold around 2,000 of the shirts at events. When he began selling the shirts, emblazoned with the term "Nigga," he thought he would take criticism, especially from older people.

"I was in the mall with one of the shirts on, and an old lady said, 'Where did you get that shirt from?'" he said, expecting the worst. "She followed me to the car and bought five shirts for her grandchildren."

Rhodan believes that affectionate use of the term within the black community should make it an acceptable mark, but the Trademark Office has thus far has not been persuaded by that argument.

"The very fact that debate is ongoing regarding in-group usage, shows that a substantial composite of African-Americans find the term 'nigga' to be offensive," Boulton wrote in rejecting Wayans.

Though attempts to commercialize "Nigga" coincide with a generational shift in how the word is perceived, the clothing is still likely to test some boundaries, as Rhodan demonstrated in a phone interview.

"You couldn't wear it," he said.

Let me get this straight. The VP shot a motherfucker?

2006-02-14T02:31:00.000-07:00

This administration is going to go down in history as the most bass-ackwards of them all.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/12/cheney/index.html

Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter

Texas lawyer struck in face, chest with birdshot

From Dana Bash
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a campaign contributor during a weekend quail hunt on a friend's South Texas ranch, local authorities and the vice president's office said Sunday.

The wounded man, 78-year-old Harry Whittington, was in intensive care at a Corpus Christi hospital after being hit by several pellets of birdshot Saturday afternoon, hospital spokesman Peter Banko told CNN.

"He's doing well and in stable condition today," Banko said.

Whittington, an Austin attorney who gave $1,000 to President Bush's 2000 campaign and $2,000 to his 2004 re-election bid, was among a handful of people accompanying the vice president when the accident occurred Saturday afternoon.

Cheney, 65, visited him Sunday afternoon at the hospital, "and was pleased to see he is doing fine and in good spirits," Cheney spokeswoman Lee Anne McBride said. (Watch when Cheney's office decided to release information -- 1:23)

The shooting occurred about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Kenedy County Sheriff Ray Salinas said. He said his deputies are investigating the shooting but consider it an accident.

Cheney, an avid hunter, was shooting at a covey of quail on the Armstrong Ranch near Kingsville, about 30 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. The ranch's owner, Katharine Armstrong, said Whittington was about 30 yards from Cheney when the vice president fired.

Armstrong, who was with the group when the accident occurred, said Whittington was "peppered" with birdshot. Pellets hit him in the face and chest, but he never lost consciousness, she said. (Watch how a witness described the accident -- 6:34)

She said Whittington had just shot a quail and had dropped back to retrieve it. He was hit upon rejoining the group and "apparently came up unannounced" as Cheney prepared to fire.

Whittington, a prominent Texas Republican, has been active in state politics since the 1960s and served as chairman of the state Board of Corrections from 1979 to 1985.

In 1999, then-Gov. George W. Bush named him to the state Funeral Services Commission, which had been stung by allegations of widespread corruption and mismanagement in the industry.

Armstrong told CNN that Whittington was a guest of hers, not someone Cheney invited, and she did not know whether the two men had met before.

The vice president, his Secret Service detail and other companions rushed to the wounded man's aid, Armstrong said.

Similar accidents occur "not frequently, but often" among hunters in the area, Salinas said. He said an ambulance that was posted at the ranch while Cheney was visiting took Whittington to the hospital.

Armstrong said Cheney was firing a 28-gauge shotgun, a small-bore weapon commonly used for hunting birds. Cheney has come to her ranch to hunt quail once a year for at least 15 years, and she called him "a very conscientious hunter."

"I would shoot with Dick Cheney everywhere, anywhere, and not think twice about it," she said. But she said, "The nature of quail shooting ensures that this will happen. It goes with the turf."

Super!

2006-02-03T03:31:00.000-07:00

Super Bowl City on the Brink

By Dave Zirin, AlterNet
Posted on February 3, 2006, Printed on February 3, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31635/

"A celebration of concentrated wealth." That's what Washington Post sportswriter Tony Kornheiser called the National Football League's two-week long pre-Super Bowl party binge. Every Super Bowl Sunday, corporate executives and politicians exchange besotted, sodden backslaps, amidst an atmosphere that would shame Jack Abramoff. Only this year the bacchanalia -- complete with ice sculptures peeing Grey Goose vodka and two tons of frozen lobster flown directly to the stadium -- is happening in the United States' most impoverished, ravaged city: Detroit.

Detroit's power elites in government and the auto industry are rolling out the red carpet while many of its people shiver in fraying rags. This contrast between the party atmosphere and abject urban suffering has been so stark, so shocking and so utterly revealing that news coverage on the city's plight has appeared in the sports pages of the New York Times and Detroit Free Press, among others.

Only a Bush speechwriter couldn't notice the gritty backdrop while limos clog the streets and escort services are flying in female reinforcements like so much shellfish. Detroit -- and there is no soft way to put this -- is a city on the edge of the abyss. Its 2005 unemployment rate was 14.1 percent, more than two and a half times the national level. Its population has plummeted since the 1950s from over two million to fewer than 900,000, and more than one-third of its residents live under the poverty line, the highest rate in the nation. In addition, the city has in the past year axed hundreds of municipal employees, cut bus and garbage services, and boarded up nine recreation centers.

As the Associated Press wrote, "Much of the rest of Detroit is a landscape dotted with burned-out buildings, where liquor stores abound but supermarkets are hard to come by, and where drugs, violence and unemployment are everyday realities."

Ryan Anderson of Detroit, wrote me a chilling email saying, "The mood is one of Orwellian-flavored siege: dire warnings of a 30-day police speeding ticket bonanza, designed to raise $1 million for the construction of a damn bridge welcoming out-of-towners to the Motor City; the mayor, the governor, and every other notable on the radio urging us all to 'show 'em what we got' [read: Don't further sully our already bad reputation]; and the homeless being taken to a three-day 'Superbowl Party,' where they'll get the actual food and shelter they need until the big game's over, after which they'll be kicked back out on the streets. Welcome to the Poorest City in America, sponsored and enabled by lily-white Oakland County."

Anita Cerf, a teacher in Detroit also wrote to me, "I am appalled by the living conditions of its residents as contrasted with the hype for the Super Bowl and the fancying up of downtown for all the rich out-of-town guests. I live on the East Side, which probably has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, and I teach high school dropouts on the Southwest Side. My students have horrific problems, many of which stem from these economic and social conditions. It's disgusting."

Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press described the shelter, called the Detroit Rescue Mission, throwing the "three day party" to cleanse homeless people from the city's landscape. As Albom wrote, "Lines formed before sunset, dozens of men in dirty sweatshirts, old coats, worn-out shoes. They had to line up in an alley, because, [the shelter's director says], the city doesn't want lines of homeless folks visible from the street. Even at a shelter, they have to go in the back door."

But these days Detroit is dealing with more than normal tough times. While the Super Bowl is played at Ford Field, the Ford family announced last week that it would eliminate up to 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants in the next six years. The cuts mean it's the unemployment line, and maybe Albom's shelter, for about a third of the 87,000 Ford workers who are members of the United Auto Workers (UAW).

For a city that built a stable "middle class" out of union struggle and the auto plants, this is injury added to insult. But have no fear. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, will be flying sorties over Ford Field to protect everyone from terrorist missile attacks. There is no NORAD however on the streets of Detroit to protect people from Operation Enduring Class War otherwise known as the Super Bowl.

(If instead of betting on the big game, you want to give to the Detroit Rescue Mission, call 313-993-4700 or send a check to Detroit Rescue Mission, 150 Stimson, Detroit, MI 48201.)

Dave Zirin is the author of "What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States." Read more of his work at Edgeofsports.com.

Lee Greenwood must be pissed

2006-02-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=55212

BLOG Posted 02/01/2006 @ 1:05pm
The War on T-Shirts

Minutes before the President of the United States would tell the Congress how much he appreciates "responsible criticism and counsel," the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was dragged from a gallery overlooking the House chamber where Bush would speak, handcuffed and arrested for the "crime" of wearing a T-shirt that read: "2245 Dead. How many more?"
Cindy Sheehan, who had been invited to attend George Bush's State of the Union address by Representative Lynn Woolsey, the California Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, did not put the "dangerous" shirt on for the event. The woman whose protest last summer outside the President's ranchette in Crawford, Texas, drew international attention to the antiwar movement, had been wearing it at events earlier in the day.
Indeed, as Sheehan, who had passed through Capitol security monitors without incident, noted, "I knew that I couldn't disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket and I didn't want to be disruptive out of respect for her."
No one has suggested that Sheehan was in any way disruptive.
So why was she arrested?
Because, as Sheehan recounts, she was identified as a dissident.
Before the arrest, media reports buzzed about official concern regarding Sheehan's presence. And, as she was being dragged from a room where the President would shortly extol the virtues of freedom and liberty, police explicitly told Sheehan that she was being removed "because you were protesting."
Capitol Police and other security officials, whose rough treatment of Sheehan was witnessed by dozens of people who attended the State of the Union event, said she was arrested for "unlawful conduct." Conveniently, she was held until after the President finished speaking.
Is there really a law against wearing a political T-shirt to the State of the Union address?
No.
The Capitol Police do have protocols that are followed in order to avoid "incidents" during major events. But their own actions Tuesday night confirm that Sheehan was singled out for rough justice.
Beverly Young, the wife of Representative C.W. Bill Young, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, showed for the State of the Union address up sporting a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops--Defending Our Freedom." When Capitol Police asked her to leave the gallery because she was wearing clothing that featured a political message, Mrs. Young says, she argued loudly with officers and called one of them "an idiot."
But Mrs. Young was not handcuffed. She was not dragged from the Capitol. She was not arrested. She was not jailed.
Sheehan, who caused no ruckus, was arrested not because she engaged in "unlawful conduct." Rather, by every evidence, she was arrested because of what her T-shirt said--and, by extension, because of what she believes.
That makes this a most serious matter. Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is one of the senior members of the House, is right when he says that Sheehan's arrest by officers he refers to as "the President's Gestapo," tells us a lot more about the George Bush and the sorry state of our basic liberties in the midst of the President's open-ended "war on terror" than anything that was said in the State of the Union address. "It shows he still has a thin skin," Stark says of the President who claims to welcome dissent.
It also shows that the father of the Constitution, James Madison, was right when he warned that, in times of war, the greatest danger to America would not be foreign foes but Presidents and their minions, who would abuse the powers of the executive branch with the purpose of "subduing the force of the people."
This one incident involving one T-shirt is a minor matter. But seen in the context of the mounting evidence of constraints on legitimate protest, warrantless wiretaps and the abuses of the Patriot Act, it reminds us of the the truth of Madison's warning that: "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

Finally. An explanation of Chappelle's behavior

2005-12-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

I really, really wish I knew Dave Chappelle personally. And not because it could potentially be a shot in the arm for my career. (Although that would be nice, too.) No. I wish i knew him personally so I could be the one to show this to him and see the look of amazement on his face.
Find a few moments and read the entire thing. Trust me. You will not be dissapointed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.chappelletheory.com/

A Word Before you BeginThis account of Dave Chappelle's fall from grace has been pieced together by me, a retired public relations executive who wishes to remain anonymous. my contacts, many of whom were closely related to the individuals involved, enabled me to fairly accurately recount the events that took place. You can take this for what you wish, but it is the truth - the abhorrent byproduct of the industry I used to hold to such a high esteem.I have written this account without the need for embellishments or exaggerations for the truth is appalling enough. Let this site serve as a drawn curtain to the entertainment industry which is blindly adored by the entire world. On August 3, 2004 comedian Dave Chappelle signed a contract with Comedy Central valued at $50 million.The contract committed him to two more seasons of his hit television series Chappelle's Show.Chappelle's Show was a runaway success. It was lavished with praise by mainstream and underground media alike, and was Comedy Central's most talked-about series.It was a juggernaut on DVD - selling more than 1.7 million copies of its first season, a record for any television show.All seemed right in the world of Dave Chappelle, and all seemed right with Chappelle's Show. After years of hard work, Dave had reached the pinnacle of his chosen profession, largely on his own terms, and had been rewarded handsomely for it.Personally, Dave's life was also prosperous. He had a beautiful wife and lovely children, and was close to both his mother and father, though the two had divorced years earlier.He was also a devout Muslim, and his faith had been a source of strength throughout the tumultuous production schedule of the first two seasons of Chappelle's Show. But nothing, not even religion, could prepare him for what lay ahead. After signing the contract, Dave looked forward to returning to his rural Ohio home to spend some time with his family before hunkering down to begin work on show's highly anticipated third season.But Dave was haunted by a secret. One that only he was aware of, and one he couldn't share with anyone, lest his comedy empire crumble.He knew that at the same time he was signing his record-setting deal, there was a secret cabal of powerful African-American leaders from the business, political, and entertainment industries working together to ensure that the third season of Chappelle's Show would never happen.At one time or another, each member of this loosely knit, informal group had played a key role in Chappelle's rise to stardom.They had been instrumental in securing movie and television roles, offering counsel, and simply aiding Chappelle financially when his stand up work couldn't pay the bills during his lean early years.Over the last two years, they had watched warily as Chappelle's Show had become Comedy Central's premiere show, eclipsing even South Park and The Daily Show in terms of buzz. It was reported that they had voiced their concerns about Chappelle's Show to Dave many times over those two years, showing their displeasure with the direction that the show was taking. However, their actions could not steer Dave away from the comedy that was most natural to him.Collectively, they felt Chappelle's Show reinforced negative stereotypes about African Americans, and that its content was, in the words of group leader Bill Cosby, "setting race relations back 50 years."The $50 million deal that Chappelle signed was the straw that broke the camel's back. The group - informally known as "The Dark Crusaders" - knew that a deal of this magnitude would guarantee increased attention for the third season of Chappelle's Show, not to mention sending his already robust DVD sales through the roof.In what was an attempt to ensure that this would not happen, the group was seen holding a closed-door meeting at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta's affluent Buckhead neighborhood over the weekend of August 7th.During that weekend meeting, recovered documents by the hotel's staff revealed that they finalized a comprehensive five point plan to bring an end to what some of the members had termed the "Chappelle Problem".This complex, well funded, and well thought out plan was to employ a "by any means necessary" approach to ensure that the 3rd season of the Chappelle's Show would never air on Comedy Central.What follows is the story of the events that led up to, and ultimately were responsible for Dave Chappelle's fall from grace. The "Dark Crusaders"An ad-hoc organization whose members were all an integral part of Dave Chappelle's early life and career, the group known as the Dark Crusaders came together to sabotage Chappelle's career because they felt the material on Chappelle's Show was not reflecting well on the black community.Using a mix of measures, the Dark Crusaders achieved its primary goal - the cancellation of Chappelle's Show third season, and the near crippling of Chappelle's comedy career.Al SharptonBio: Former Mayoral, Congressional and Presidential candidate, civil rights activist, reparations advocate, Pentecostal minister. Sharpton spearheaded the controversial efforts to bring Tawana Brawley's rapist to justice, and continued to do so even after authorities unearthed evidence that Brawley's accusations of rape were fabricated.Connection to Chappelle: Was a rabid fan of standup comedy who took an early liking to Chappelle and offered support and encouragement early on in his career.Jesse JacksonBio: Former Martin Luther King confidant and Presidential Candidate. Founder of the Rainbow Coalition, and prominent Civil Rights leader for over forty years. Presidential hopes were dashed when it was revealed that he once referred to Jews as "hymies" and New York as "hymietown" during an off the record conversation with reporters. Has been dogged by controversy ever since, including accusations of infidelity, and unethical behavior while securing a Budweiser distributorship for his two sons in the lucrative Chicago market.Connection to Chappelle: Friend of Chappelle's mother, Yvonne Seron, and has known Chappelle since he moved to Washington, D.C. with his mother after his parent's divorce.Louis FarrakhanBio: Leader of the African American Nation of Islam, Founder of the Million Man March, and former confidant of both the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Rumored to have been involved in the assassination of Malcolm X. Has elicited controversy by espousing his views that the white race was invented by an evil scientist named Yacub in one of the craters on the dark side of the moon, and by publicly stating that "Hitler was a great man."Connection to Chappelle: Has advised Chappelle on spiritual matters related to the Islamic faith. Bill CosbyBio: Philadelphia-born star of I Spy, Fat Albert and The Cosby Show. Purveyor of respectable black family television. Cosby has raised the ire of the black community recently by being openly critical of low-income blacks, whom he believes are deprioritizing education in favor of sports and fashion. He has been accused of fathering an illegitimate daughter, and drugging and groping former female acquaintances.Connection to Chappelle: Helped secure the role of "Achoo" in Mel Brook's Robin Hood: Men in Tights for Chapelle. Advised Chappelle against taking the role of "Bubba" in the film Forrest Gump.Whoopi GoldbergBio: Academy Award winning comedic actress and staunch civil right supporter. Goldberg broke into show business with her one woman Broadway show - The Spook Show - and ever since, has been one of the leading proponents of charitable causes in Hollywood. She has managed to remain relatively controversy free throughout her career - save for the infamous "blackface" incident involving her then boyfriend, Ted Danson.Connection to Chappelle: Gave Chappelle one of his early breaks when she offered him the chance to appear on Comic Relief VI in 1994. Oprah WinfreyBio: Billionaire talk show host and the most powerful women in show business. Winfrey has successfully defended herself against a spurious lawsuit brought by the Texas Cattlemen's Association, brought Dr. Phil and William Faulkner to unsuspecting middle-American housewives, and single-handedly bought the Hermes Corporation to its knees. She has also supported black charitable causes throughout her career, and strives to convey a positive image for the community.Connection to Chappelle: Worked briefly with Chappelle when he was an extra on the set of The Women of Brewster Place, and offered mentoring early on in his career.Robert L. JohnsonBio: Founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), first black-controlled company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. First black owner of a major sports franchise - the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats. Serves on the Board of U.S. Airways, Hilton Hotels, and General Mills. Divorced from Sheila Johnson, yet still remains a staunch supporter of family values.Connection to Chappelle: Used his influence in corporate America to help broker deals for Chappelle to be the pitch man for both Pepsi and Coca-Cola at different times in his career. TimelineThe first episode of Chappelle's Show aired on January 22, 2003. It was a lightly promoted thirty minute show that Comedy Central executives hoped would perform as well as earlier shows such as Strangers with Candy, or The Man Show. The budget was modest, the stars were modest - Chappelle's biggest success up until this time had been the cult stoner comedy Half Baked - and expectations were modest.Chappelle was looking forward to the show's debut, but was nonplussed about its chances for success.Clearly, neither Comedy Central nor Chappelle had any inkling of the impact Chappelle's Show would have on pop culture. January 22, 2003Chappelle's first show set the tone for much of the content of the upcoming series. It featured a sketch on a blind, black white supremacist, Clayton Bigsby, who was raised by white foster parents and taught from a young age to abhor the black race.The sketch, inspired by the true to life circumstances of Chappelle's grandfather, was considered the high point of the show, and concluded with Bigsby taking off his KKK-hood at a Klan rally and shouting "WHITE POWER" to the horrified reactions of his fellow Klansmen.According to Nielsen ratings, the show was seen by approximately 2.5 million viewers in on its opening night - a small, but respectable, audience for the debut of a basic cable show.One of viewers that night was Bill Cosby, an old friend of Chappelle who had helped him secure movie roles early in his career. Bill later recalled being eager to watch the show to see how Dave's career was progressing.To summarize an interview with Cosby by the Philadelphia Metro, he wasn't pleased.January 29, 2003The show's' second episode aired, featuring the debut of what will soon become one the show's most identifiable characters, Tyrone Biggums - crackhead. In his first appearance, Biggums lectures at a grammar school's drug awareness week. The wisdom he dispenses to children includes that dog food is delicious, and that he has sucked dick for crack.Bill Cosby had tuned in to this show as well, and according to friends of his, was reportedly livid with the portrayal of the black community that Chappelle was foisting on viewers. This may have been when he began to think about doing something to send a message to Chappelle about the "show's outrageous tone." February 5, 2003Chappelle's Show third episode featured a take off on the making of Roots, a topic that many upper-income, baby-boomer blacks hold sacred.Soon after the airing of this show, a friend of Minister Louis Farrakhan recalled a heated phone call discussion between Farrakhan and Cosby. It appeared that, already upset from having seen Chappelle's Show before, Cosby had been pushed over the edge and decided to seek out help from his influential friends.Chappelle remained blissfully unaware that he was a topic of heated debate amongst some of the most powerful members of black American society - in interviews it seemed he was completely engrossed in the growing success of his show.February 12, 2003Episode four of Chappelles's Show, which by this time was beginning to pick up a head of steam with the public and critics alike, featured a sketch fantasizing about what would happen if black people were given reparations. The outcome was that Tron, a ghetto hustler, supplants Bill Gates as the world's richest man, and stock market prices for fried chicken related companies surge.It's about this time that Al Sharpton, a staunch reparations supporter, and longtime fan of Chappelle, noticed the show's growing popularity. Sharpton began writing letters to his contemporaries concerning Chappelle, unaware that Cosby was also displeased and taking action.February 26, 2003Episode six of Chappelle's Show featured the sketch "It's a Mad Real World" a take off on MTV's Real World series. In the Chappelle version, a white, suburban male rooms with six black inner city youth, and is terrorized throughout his stay. His dad is stabbed and his girlfriend is molested by his inner-city, African-American roommate Tyree.Robert L. Johnson, alerted by the rumblings coming from the Cosby, Farrakhan, and Sharpton camps, decided to tune into this show to see what Chappelle had been doing that was getting so many black leaders rankled. After watching the show, Johnson reportedly thought to himself, "Bill, Al and Louis may be right - if this really blows up, it sets us up to be minstrels again." Just as Cosby and Farrakhan did, Johnson decided to get involved as well. March 5, 2003Episode seven of Chappelle's Show skewered the Star Wars franchise. It had a bit based around sexual molestation that occurs at the Jedi Academy. A reportedly furious George Lucas, demanded that his secretary place a call to Whoopi Goldberg, a long time friend of Lucas as well as an early benefactor and friend of Chappelle. Lucas wanted her to see if she could get word to Chappelle that he is not amused. According to Lucas's secretary, it seemed as if Goldberg — like Bill Cosby — did not agree with the message that Chappelle's Show was sending to the African-American youth. March 12, 2003Episode eight of Chappelle's Show saw the reemergence of the Tyrone Biggums — crackhead character. During his appearance, Tyrone is lured to an intervention with the promise of free crack. After the show's conclusion, a reportedly furious Cosby got Farrakhan and Al Sharpton — who he had heard was also concerned about Chappelle's effect on the African American community — on a conference call. The three men decided to meet for lunch at Farrakhan's Chicago residence to discuss what action to take. March 19, 2003Episode nine of Chappelle's Show was the one that captured the attention of Black America's biggest power broker — Oprah Winfrey. The sketch that alerted Goldberg to the growing Chappelle phenomenon came to Oprah's attention in a roundabout way. "The Player Hater's Ball" sketch featured an aside by the Silky Johnson character talking about how Rosie O'Donnell wears "underwear with the dickhole in them." O'Donnell mentioned the remark while lunching with Winfrey at the Palm in West Hollywood the next day. Winfrey, who had supported Chappelle early on, had her staff get a tape of Chappelle's Show so she could take a look at the sketch. She was appalled at the subjects Chappelle mined for humor, and immediately began calling friends in the black entertainment and business communities to see what they thought of the show's content. March 26, 2003The season's 10th episode features the R. Kelly "Piss on You" video. This contraversial sketch ignited a world of criticism and, unsurprisingly, caught the attention of Bill Cosby. In a call on March 27, Cosby voiced his concerns directly to Chappelle. In an aside to a co-worker, Chappelle reported telling Cosby how he was thankful for his insight, but while the show was riding a wave of acclaim, he didn't want to tinker with a successful formula. He believed Cosby was just over-reacting and didn't think much of the phone call. April 9, 2003The season finale of Chappelle's Show featured a sketch spoofing the popularity of "mate-swap" reality television programs. It revolved around a black family and a white family trading spouses, and plays on long held stereotypes about black male virility, while willfully promoting racial miscegenation. Louis Farrakhan, most likely under the direction of Cosby, sought out the opportunity to speak with Chappelle. Farrakhan, who had advised Chappelle on his conversion to Islam in 1998, visited Chappelle on location days after the episode aired. His concerns fall on deaf ears, as Chappelle was resistant to pressure to tone down the show's content. April 1, 2003While in Philadelphia, visiting her good friend Patti Labelle, Oprah Winfrey was seen meeting with Bill Cosby, who was also in town attending a function at Temple University. The two of them were witnessed dining at the exclusive Walnut Street eatery Le Bec Fin. While the two were catching up, Cosby was overheard casually mentioning his concern over Chappelle's Show, and his failed attempts to convince Dave to change his brand of humor. "...funny you should mention that, I've had the same concerns," Winfrey reportedly responded. The two spend a long dinner talking about how to exert covert pressure on Chappelle to change the show's content. Winfrey offers to reach out to friends she's spoken with regarding Chappelle. And just like that, the Dark Crusaders are born. April 20, 2003With Chapelle's Show on hiatus before production for season two commences, Chappelle took some down time at his Ohio area farm. It was here that he received a strange package. As told by Dave himself, at around noon, in the middle of an early season Cincinnati Reds game, there was a knock at his door. Chappelle was a bit concerned, as no one except his close family and friends were aware of where he was. When he opened the door, all he found was a crudely wrapped package, with the inscription "For Chappelle" on it. Inside the package was a voodoo-doll style replica of Chappelle dressed as Clayton Bigsby — the African American Klansman from his first show. The doll was riddled with safety pins, and had a noose tied sharply around his neck. Accompanying the doll was a message in a childlike scrawl that read, "what you're doing is hurting the African American community — it needs to stop." Chappelle was extremely bothered by the development, but later chalked it up to a local group of black nationalists — "probably some college kids from Antioch looking for kicks." Though Chappelle was unaware of it at the time, this was the first assault by The Dark Crusaders aimed at shutting down his comedy career. July 4, 2003While enjoying a holiday weekend with his wife at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara, Chappelle alerted the staff that he received a late night phone call to his room that told him "If you know what's good for you, you'll stop using your show to denigrate African-Americans." While telling his wife about the package he received in Ohio, Chappelle began to think that maybe the voodoo-doll package was not an isolated incident, but part of a larger, coordinated campaign. Shaken by the phone call, he stayed awake with his wife and executives of the hotel for the rest of the night. August 31, 2003As Chappelle began production on the second season of Chapelle's Show, strange things started to occur. Scripts for the sketches began disappearing, featured players weren't showing up on the set, and illnesses were plaguing key members of the crew. Additionally, Chappelle voiced his concern to one of the extras of the show that one of the replacement cameramen looked like the Nation of Islam bodyguards Farrakhan had with him when he visited the set earlier in the year. Upon confronting him, Chappelle learns that the replacement cameraman was originally from Chicago, was a fellow Muslim, and was a member of Farrakhan's congregation. After this incident, Chappelle confided in cast member Charlie Murphy and head writer Neal Brennan that he thinks some powerful black people are out to get him to tone down the show's content, and that they may have infiltrated the set. Both tell him not to worry — that it's just the pressure getting to him. But personally, both worry that the pressure to succeed may have been getting to Chappelle, and express concern to other crew members. September 15, 2003While in Washington, D.C. on a weekend break from shooting, Chappelle and his mom decided to catch a movie. Shortly after the movie started, witnesses reported a man who looked like Al Sharpton taking a seat behind Chappelle and his mother. When Chappelle's mother excused herself to go to the bathroom, Sharpton was seen moving into the seat beside Chappelle. Chappelle would later recount what Sharpton had whispered: "I didn't appreciate the mockery directed at reparations in last season's shows. You should be ashamed of selling out the community for cheap laughs and ratings." Sharpton was seen quickly leaving the theatre immediately after. When Chappelle told his mother about this upon her return, she was in disbelief. She asked if he was feeling alright and if the pressure of success was getting to him. She then offered to take him to see her physiatrist. It was around this time, and understandably so, that Chappelle began to sink deep into paranoia.January 1, 2004With the debut of Chappelle's Show's second season growing closer, Dave began receiving phone calls at all hours of the day when he was in his family's house alone. The phone calls all said the same thing "Tone down the show, or you will have to go." When Chappelle contacted the local police department and phone company in an attempt to trace the calls, they report that they have no record of the calls ever being made. When Chappelle confided in his wife that he thinks he is being targeted by a group of powerful black showbiz folks and politicians, she tells him that he's acting "crazy" and he should relax and enjoy his success. With everyone in Chappelle's life doubting his sanity, it was only a matter of time before the media started to report Chappelle acting strangely. January 21, 2004 Season two of Chappelle's Show aired. The debut episode featured the infamous "Racial Draft" sketch, where Tiger Woods is declared "all black" and chosen by the black race with their draft pick, and the Wu Tang Clan is declared Asian, and drafted by the Asian race. After the show played, Chappelle was seen having dinner with friends at Pastis in New York City's fashionable meatpacking district. When he tried to pick up the tab, embarassingly he found out that his credit card had been rejected. He tried several other credit cards, and found that surprisingly, they were rejected too. After his last credit card was declined, Chappelle received a call on his cell phone. Chappelle confided to his friends that the voice on the line advised him that "this is only the beginning if you don't do what we want — try your credit cards now." Chappelle, clearly rattled, told the wait staff to run his credit card once more. When it did, this may have been when Chappelle began to realize the seriousness of the situation. January 28, 2004Despite what appeared to be a growing conspiracy against him, Chappelle forged ahead with his show, refusing to rewrite skits. That week's show featured the "Niggars" sketch, and following its run, Chappelle began feeling the pressure again. On Tuesday, while watching an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show, Chappelle recalled being completely stunned when Winfrey turned to the camera in the middle of interviewing Tom Cruise and said "Dave Chappelle, you should be ashamed of yourself for airing that Niggars sketch on your show this week, I'm going to make sure you never work in Hollywood again." The image, allegedly taped by Winfrey, and transmitted to Chappelle's house under the direction of Robert L. Johnson who called in some favors with Chappelle's local affiliate station manager, terrified Chappelle. At that time he considered telling the show's cast and producers what was happening to him, but decided against it. He feared it would alienate him from his staff; making them think he was delusional, which, by that point, Chappelle was fairly certain he was. February 11, 2004 The catchphrase "I'm Rick James bitch" made its debut on this week's show. What was once a somewhat successful, cult television show was now a full blown phenomenon. Season one DVD sales begin to blow up, and Chappelle's Q rating soars. This caused the Dark Crusaders to really turn on the pressure. Most likely sensing that their window of opportunity to silence Chappelle was fast closing, they convened at Oprah Winfrey's Chicago production offices to coordinate yet another assault on Dave. February 18, 2004The next episode of Chappelle's Show aired, and it once again featured the Tyrone Biggums — crackhead character. All was quiet in the life of Chappelle after this show, no reports of harassing phone calls, or strange packages delivered to his house — no message form Oprah arriving via television. To Chappelle, it appeared that the "Dark Crusaders" had stopped, but soon he would find out it was just the eye of the hurricane. What laid in store for him next would be worse than anything that came before. March 3, 2004After a relative lull in their campaign against Chappelle, the Dark Crusaders came back with a vengeance. That week's Chappelle's Show featured a sketch that parodied anti-drug commercials, and shows a little girl on a bike being hit by a car of stoned teenagers. In this rendition however, Dave and his crew hit the kid, freak out, and then decide to chop her body up and stuff her remains down a drain. This is perhaps the raunchiest skit ever to appear on the show, and it is Dave's way of thumbing his nose at his harassers, saying, no, he won't back down. After this show airs, Chappelle began to notice that he is being shadowed by a group of three large, crisply attired, African American gentlemen. Where ever he went they never seemed far behind. He asked his family and close friends if they noticed this too, but they never seemed to catch a glimpse of the men. This reached its apex when Chappelle emerged from the shower one morning to find the three men sitting in his bathroom. By Chappelle's account, they told him "If we can get into your home this easily David, imagine what we can do to you if we really wanted to hurt you. If you don't tone down your show, maybe the next time we're in your bathroom, we'll be waiting for your wife or children to get out of the shower — not you." Chappelle was found on the bathroom floor by his wife several hours later — most likely having fainted due to shock. When he tried to relate the story to her, she immediately called for an ambulance, thinking — and rightfully so — that her husband was having a nervous breakdown. The incident was hushed up by Chappelle's agent, who was in negotiations with Comedy Central to produce a third season of Chappelle's Show. March 10, 2004Figuring that he had nothing left to lose, Chappelle went ahead with his decision to air a sketch he knew would be patently offensive to every one that was after him, as well as catering to the base tastes of his white middle-class audience. The sketch, called "I Know Black People," centered around Chappelle asking people who claim to know black people questions about black culture. Some sample dialogue between Chappelle and contestants includes: Chappelle: What is a chickenhead?Professor: That's a woman who umm puts her mouth on the member of a — or sometimes called a crackwhore.(Ring)Chappelle: That is acceptable. That is one of the many definitions of a chickenhead.Chappelle knew there would be retribution for this, but at that point, he probably figured if he was going to go down, he was going down fighting. The next day a friend recounted a frantic phone call from Chappelle at 2pm. Dave described the following story of the previous night, which his friend assumed, at the time, to be a dream: (paraphrased) I was in bed next to my wife when I got woken up by a heavy pressure on my chest. I opened my eyes to find one of the three men — that appeared in my bathroom days before — perched on top of my stomach, wielding a Colt 45 handgun with an enormous silencer. The other two men were holding me down. It seemed like my wife had been drugged, as she laid motionless but breathing next to me. Oprah Winfrey leaned forward and whispered in my ear "you better watch your step — we're representing interests more powerful than you can imagine. You do remember that Farrakhan killed Malcom, and that Cosby, Johnson and I have more money than God — we can keep this harassment up forever. Is this what you want your life to be like Dave?" The last thing I remember, someone knocked me out. I woke up with my wife the next morning and I thought it might have been a dream, but I still have a bruise on my head and I really think this all happened, despite the fact that my wife shows no signs of anything having ever happened. Chappelle then said he was afraid to tell his wife this story because he was nervous that she would call the ambulance again. He told his agent that he felt he needed body guards — but his agent advised against it for fear that it would make him look too paranoid and jeopordize his career. Since it seemed like he could get no outside help, he decided to take matters into his own hands. March 24, 2004On the next show Chappelle decided to attack Oprah directly, as he now knows she is behind all of the harassment. The skit, called "Dave Gets Oprah Pregnant" centered around Dave getting a call from Oprah informing him that she is going to have his baby. After hearing the news, Dave quits his job and moves in with Oprah, spending her money like its going out of style. Chappelle felt that he had the leverage to get away with this, as Winfrey wouldn't want her involvement to unseat Chappelle made public. He soon realized his leverage wasn't as strong as he thought. Nothing seemed to happen immediately following the airing of that show. Like before things seemed oddly quiet. Chappelle began to noticably gain more confidence on the set and grow a bit more comfortable with the situation — despite all that happened so far. April 7, 2004Chappelle again decided to send a message through his show's material by opening with a sketch called "Dave Quits Chappelle's Show." The sketch had him doing exactly what his antagonists wanted him to do: stepping down from the show. In the sketch, executives at Comedy Central replace Dave with Wayne Brady. The show ended with a sketch that has Wayne Brady acting like the thugs Chappelle's characters often portray on the show, with Wayne killing police officers, beating Chappelle, and partaking of copious amounts of drugs. Dave, after this episode's production, reached out to Brady, who he knew was a close friend of Oprah, to see if he could intercede on his behalf. Brady acted like he didn't know what Chappelle was talking about and as Dave recounted later — "looked at me as if I was nuts." Chappelle failed yet again at reaching out for help. April 14, 2004Technically, the second season finale aired, as the following two episodes were compilations of season 2 sketches. Chappelle treaded lightly during this episode; the constant harassment has had a deep psychological impact on him. Sketches include the "First Black Man to Use a White Toilet," which poked fun at black historical figures, and more insight into the "Life of Little John." According to a stage hand, after the show, when Chappelle returned to his dressing room, he found a package containing pictures of Malcom X, Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur, and himself, with the words "You're Next" scrawled across his picture. August 7, 2004In the wake of Chappelle's record-breaking deal, The Dark Crusaders likely realized they had very little time to formulate a plan to shut Chappelle down once and for all. The third season of the show would reach an even broader audience than the previous two seasons, and if they were to do anything, timing was important. The entire group was seen meeting over the August 7th weekend at the posh Omni Hotel in Atlanta. They were able to keep the meeting out of the press, as Robert L. Johnson owns an interest in the hotel and arranged for the entire top three floors of the hotel to be reserved for the group. However, the underpaid staff was quick to vent their frustrations on the organization of this event, which is how I came to know this information. According to some of the documents left behind by the group, they seem to have emerged with a definite plan — a plan developed largely by Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, and most likely financed by the deep pockets of the rest of the group. August 31, 2004While Chappelle was in Yellow Springs preparing to spend the Labor Day weekend with his friends and family, he received a phone call from his father, who is a Professor at nearby Antioch College. His father told Dave that Louis Farrakhan will be passing through town on a lecture tour, and that he had called his father — an old friend, the two had met in the 60's when Mr. Chappelle was a black radical — to invite him to dinner. He also mentioned that Farrakhan said he would enjoy seeing Dave during his visit, according to interviews conducted with Mr. Chappelle. Chappelle allegedly tried to warn his father: "...don't go see Farrakhan, I think he's involved in a group that's trying to shut me down, and you may be in danger." However, his father did not take this very seriously, he recalls, as Mr. Chappelle told Dave he thought the stress of being famous may be getting to him. "I told him to stop acting ridiculous...why would Minister Farrakhan bother himself with something like that..." his father reported. September 5, 2004Chappelle received an anonymous letter in the mail that said "Only those who wish to be led to hell or to their doom will follow Chappelle..." it echoed what Farrakhan wrote in the Nation Of Islam paper Muhammad Speaks regarding Malcolm X, two weeks before his assassination. As he recalled, Chappelle thought about going into hiding after this — legitimately beginning to fear for his life — but the pre-production and filming for the third season of his show was set to begin shortly. September 10, 2004Farrakhan dined with Dave Chappelle and his father while he was in the Yellow Springs area. When Mr. Chappelle excused himself to go to the restroom, Farrakhan leaned in to Dave and said "it certainly would be a shame if anything were to happen to your father..." nearby diners reported. Chappelle said nothing when his father returned, most likely because he felt his father would have no reason to distrust his old friend, Louis Farrakhan After dinner, Chappelle placed a call to his close friend and fellow comedian Mario Cantone — who he thought he could count on for help — to reveal what has been happening to him. September 25, 2004Following the call, Cantone seemed to have vanished. Despite numerous attempts, Chappelle was unable to reach Cantone, co-workers recall. Chappelle then contacted the police in an effort to locate his friend. The police were resistant to begin an investigation — partly because Cantone's voicemail message reported that he was out of the country (with no return date) and partly due to Chappelle's unwillingness to file a missing person's report, most likely because he did not want the press to get involved. On September 25, Cantone showed up at the studio where Chappelle was filming the third season of his show. Chappelle told Cantone that he's been very worried about him and asked where he has been. Staff members recall Cantone then pulling Chappelle aside and telling him "You're dealing with very dangerous people here...I have to advise you to halt production of the show immediately." Cantone then exited the studio very quickly. Chappelle was seen following Cantone and saw him getting into a car that looked to be driven by one of Louis Farrakhan's bodyguards. After this incident, Chappelle halted the day's work on the show, and went back to his Los Angeles-area hotel. October 15, 2004During this time, Chappelle began slipping into paranoia. He called his agent and told him he was thinking of pulling the plug on the show. When his agent asked why, Chappelle told him about the Dark Crusaders and how they were out to end his career. His agent reportedly laughed, but after realizing Dave was being serious, he recommended that Dave see a psychiatrist. Chappelle began to retreat further into his shell. People close to him noticed that he began to start drinking heavily and occasionally taking drugs. Word of this got out, and rumors began to fly in the press about troubles with Chappelle's Show. The Dark Crusaders appeared finally to have reached Chappelle. November 12, 2004After another talk with his agent, Chappelle rallied himself and tried to give the Show one last shot. With a $50 million dollar contract on the line, it wasn't surprising. During the show's production, Dave's secretary appeared on the set to give him his messages for the day. One of those messages was from Dave's wife who had run into Bill Cosby in Ohio. The message said that Cosby had invited Dave's wife and her friend to a screening of Cosby's show and that they were going. After hearing this, Chappelle immediately told his secretary to book the next flight to Ohio and left the set of the show running. This raised further concern with the show's cast members and Comedy Central. The entertainment press continued reporting that the Chappelle show was troubled. Comedy Central summoned Chappelle to a meeting to discuss the show's problems. December 10, 2004Chappelle missed his scheduled meeting with Comedy Central to discuss the production problems with the show. At this point, six shows had been completed, and Comedy Central was growing anxious waiting for production on the remainder of the shows to be completed so they could put it on their schedule. They had already sunk a substantial amount of money into marketing the upcoming third season, and were planning to make it the centerpiece of their upcoming lineup. Stories began to appear in the mainstream media about the problems with the show. December 26, 2004The day after Christmas, Chappelle and his family were home, trying to enjoy the holidays. Dave has taken to sleeping with a gun under his pillow and won't let his wife or children leave the house without him. Privately, his wife had consulted with her Doctor about institutionalizing Dave. On that day, Chappelle received a package that made him decide to halt the show's production for good. The package — which arrived via UPS — contained a picture of Chappelle's sleeping children, taken the night before in Chappelle's house. A person who appeared to be of Al Sharpton's build was standing next to their beds. Chappelle called his agent, immediately. Hinting at what just happened, Dave told him that he would like to cancel the production of the third season. His agent advised Dave not to tell anyone else yet, as he'd like some time to see what he can work out with Comedy Central. Chappelle made one more phone call that evening to Bill Cosby...all he said to Bill was "it's over...call off the dogs." "Only when I see an announcement in the press," Cosby responded. January 15th 2005While Chappelle laid low — biding his time until a resolution with Comedy Central could be worked out — he and his family were continually harassed. They complained about being followed wherever they went, the windows of their house being broken repeatedly, and receiving harassing phone calls at all hours of the night. The local police appeared to have been doing nothing to ensure the protection of Chappelle and his family. There was talk of the department being in negotiations with BET and Oprah's production company — which may explain why. Chappelle began talking about leaving the country for awhile, at least until his show's cancellation was publicly announced. April 2, 2005Chappelle made contact with his friend Salim in South Africa. Salim, who was later interviewed in the Time Magazine article about Chappelle's trip to South Africa, agreed to provide him with a place to stay while he was in South Africa and not to ask too many questions. April 28th, 2005Chappelle left the country for South Africa, as the heat from the Dark Crusaders was getting to be too much. His secretary reported contacting Bill Cosby for him, though the details of the conversation are not known. Immediately following that conversation, Chappelle drove his family to a safe location in rural Ohio and booked a flight to South Africa at the Cincinnati Airport. May 15, 2005Time Magazine ran the article that effectively announced the ending of Chappelle's Show. In an interview with a time reporter done in South Africa, Chappelle spun the decisions for cancelling the show. He talked about how "things...overwhelmed " and how he didn't want to "dance and shuffle" for the show. Chappelle also denied rumors of drug and alcohol abuse. Later he reported having thought about going into the campaign waged against him by the Dark Crusaders, but he just wanted to put it all behind him and not take a chance of any harm coming to him or his family. May 16, 2005The Dark Crusaders met again at the Omni Hotel to celebrate the publication of the Time article, and the delay on production of the Chappelle Show. All members agreed not to be seen together publicly in the next 12 months, and deny any involvement in the cancellation of Chappelle's Show if ever asked about rumors. According to documents, they designated Farrakhan as the man to "silence" any member who appears to be considering talking about their involvement. They all left from separate entrances at the end of the party, and at staggered intervals. Their mission was complete.

Thanks, Rich.

2005-12-11T04:26:00.000-07:00

You funny motherfucker.

Fuck you, Starbucks.

2005-12-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Fuck you.

http://www.dailyastorian.info/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=29498&SectionID=2&SubSectionID=&S=1

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Coffee shop’s name gets bucked from business
Judge rules that Sambuck’s infringes on the Starbucks trademark; business must change name

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The “Buck’s” has been washed from a sign that used to read “Sambuck’s” in downtown Astoria after the local company lost a lawsuit to coffee giant Starbucks this week.
Kara Hansen — The Daily Astorian
Astoria business owner Sam Buck must change the name of the downtown coffee shop she dubbed after herself, a federal district judge ruled Tuesday.

She also must pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the legal fees incurred by Starbucks Coffee following a legal battle that lasted three and a half years.

Buck doesn’t know the details of the opinion laid out by Judge Ancer Haggerty of the U.S. District Court of Oregon, because she just heard the news Tuesday night, but “the judge said I willfully infringed on (Starbucks’) trademark, that I diluted their trademark,” she said.

The coffee shop’s employees spent Wednesday morning crossing out “Sambuck’s” from the coffee cups, bags and signs at 1154 Commercial St. Then they moved on to the gift certificates and business cards.

Workers have even changed the way they answer the phone, although they haven’t come up with a permanent solution. For now, they just answer with “coffee house,” manager Stephanie Murray said.

“People are going to wonder if they have the right place,” she said.

All traces of the name must be gone by the end of today.

“You’re throwing away thousands of dollars worth of stuff,” owner Buck said, “and you’re left paying thousands of dollars more to have new things made.”

The coffee purveyor opened her shop in October 2000. In March 2002, Starbucks sent her a cease-and-desist letter that called her company’s name confusing and misleading and demanded a change of the title dangerously close to theirs, which came from a character in the famed novel “Moby Dick.”

The Seattle-based coffee giant, which licenses and operates more than 8,000 stores in more than 30 countries, also offered Buck $500 to drop the name, which she refused. Starbucks filed a lawsuit later that year.

Buck has maintained that her company’s title is not a play on the corporate giant’s but an amalgamation of her maiden name, Samantha Buck. She has also said she doubts people have trouble distinguishing her 10-foot-wide shop from

a Starbucks, and the coffee-cup logo stamped in orange on her cups and bags doesn’t reflect the green image used by the international corporation. And there is no Starbucks in downtown Astoria for customers to confuse her store with – the nearest one is about one mile east, inside the Safeway building.

Buck found out around 6 p.m. Tuesday that she lost the battle waged by Starbucks “to protect the value of our trademark, and protect the public from confusion or deception.”

When asked how the case’s outcome might affect Starbucks’ reputation in its dealings with small businesses, company spokeswoman Lara Wyss said the company is “pleased with the court’s decision.”

“While it is always Starbucks’ preference and desire to resolve disputes of this nature informally... we will seek the assistance of the courts to protect our trademark when we are unable to resolve the matter through alternate means,” Wyss said in an e-mailed response. “Under trademark law, companies are required to take action against infringing uses of their trademarks. Even where it may seem playful, this type of misappropriation of a company’s name (and reputation) is both derivative and dilutive of their trademark rights.”

Buck doesn’t know the details of the verdict but said she must cover the corporation’s legal costs, which will be a stretch for her small business.

Although “it will be tighter than tight,” Buck doesn’t think her store will close.

“I’m not a giver-upper,” Buck said, noting she wouldn’t have endured years of litigation otherwise. She said community support has and will continue to keep her business open.

“It keeps your motivation going,” she said. “I think it will be OK.”

And she hopes the community will help to bolster all small businesses in the area.

“We’re standing up for small business because corporate America is squeezing out the small businesses,” Buck said. “It’s real and it’s going to happen if we don’t do something.

“Please support the many small, independently owned coffee houses and drive-through coffee places in Clatsop County. That money circulates in our community 10 times before it leaves, but if you go to a corporate giant, it’s gone.”

Comedy

2005-10-31T01:40:00.000-07:00

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.

http://vdridesagain.ytmnd.com/

One step closer

2005-09-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

Jessica Simpson: Comedy Genius

2005-08-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

No, I didn't see The Dukes of Hazzard. She's hot, but she's not that hot. This gem falls under the heading of unintentional comedy. During a particularly long cut scene in the super-awesome Playstation 2 game, God of War, I was thumbing through my wife's copy of Elle. I happened upon the following paragraph.

She's in no hurry to have children but plans to adopt, as she actually tried to do at age 16 after visiting an orphanage in Mexico with her church group. "That's what I wanted for my birthday," she says. "But I couldn't legally get a baby across the Mexican border."

I'm done writing comedy. No matter what I do, I'll never write anything funnier than that.

Jimi Hendrix: Gay Like a Fox

2005-08-01T12:48:00.001-07:00

Book: Hendrix Used Gay Ruse to Avoid 'Nam

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press WriterMon Aug 1,10:37 AM ET

SEATTLE (AP) — Jimi Hendrix might have stayed in the Army. He might have been sent to Vietnam. Instead, he pretended he was gay. And with that, he was discharged from the 101st Airborne in 1962, launching a musical career that would redefine the guitar, leave other rock heroes of the day speechless and culminate with his headlining performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969.

Hendrix's subterfuge, contained in his military medical records, is revealed for the first time in Charles R. Cross' new biography, "Room Full of Mirrors." Publicly, Hendrix always claimed he was discharged after breaking his ankle on a parachute jump, but his medical records do not mention such an injury.

In regular visits to the base psychiatrist at Fort Campbell, Ky., in spring 1962, Hendrix complained that he was in love with one of his squad mates and that he had become addicted to masturbating, Cross writes. Finally, Capt. John Halbert recommended him for discharge, citing his "homosexual tendencies."

Hendrix's legendary appetite for women negates the notion that he might have been gay, Cross writes. Nor, Cross says, was his stunt politically motivated: Contrary to his later image, Hendrix was an avowed anti-communist who exhibited little unease about the escalating U.S. role in Vietnam.

He just wanted to escape the Army to play music — he had enlisted to avoid jail time after being repeatedly arrested in stolen cars in Seattle, his hometown.

"Room Full of Mirrors," titled after an unreleased Hendrix tune, is being published this summer to coincide with the 35th anniversary of his Sept. 18, 1970, death from a sleeping-pill overdose. It is Cross' second biography of a popular musician who died at age 27; "Heavier Than Heaven," a 2001 bio of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, was a New York Times best seller.

The new bio is culled from nearly four years of research, including access to Hendrix's letters and diaries, along with military records provided by a collector the author won't name. Cross focuses on Hendrix's complex personal life and psyche more than his music.

"It's not how much I know about Jimi's B-sides; it's how much I know about the emotional arc of his life," Cross said in an interview.

The portrait that emerges is similar, in many ways, to that of Cobain. Both men grew up in poverty in Washington state, dreamed from an early age of becoming rock stars, found themselves with more fame than they knew how to handle and eventually retreated into a haze of drug use.

Cross, who lives just north of Seattle, describes Hendrix's troubled childhood. Jimi's father, Al Hendrix, and mother, Lucille, both had drinking problems. Al, a landscaper, rarely found decent-paying jobs and frequently split with Lucille. Jimi and his siblings were often left by themselves, or in the care of family friends. Jimi eventually flunked out of high school.

Before Hendrix even owned a proper guitar, he played air guitar using a broom, then a beat-up hunk of wood with a single string. When he was 16, his father bought him a right-handed electric guitar that Hendrix had to restring to play lefty.

"Room Full of Mirrors" is filled with nuggets: After a show in Seattle, he had a star-struck teenager drive him around his old haunts; he allegedly had an affair with French actress Brigitte Bardot, precipitated by a chance meeting at the Paris airport; promoters at Woodstock refused to let him play an acoustic guitar. (Cross doesn't cite a source for the Bardot liaison, and says the actress didn't respond to his attempts to contact her.)

After his discharge, Hendrix formed a band with former Army pal Buddy Cox and began touring Southern clubs on the "Chitlin' Circuit." During those years, from 1963-65, Hendrix played to black audiences with the King Kasuals and as a backup to Solomon Burke, Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield and Little Richard.

Unable to make a living in the States — primarily because of his color — Hendrix went to England in 1966 and took London by storm with his now-polished blend of soul, blues and rock. Within eight days of his arrival, he floored guitar gods like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Hendrix remained in London for nearly a year, forming the Jimi Hendrix Experience and releasing his first album.

On his way to the Monterey Pop Festival in summer 1967, he was mistaken for a bellhop by a woman at the Chelsea Hotel during a layover in New York.

It was a cold reminder of his ethnicity, Cross writes.

Hendrix was always uneasy being one of the first black stars to attract a white audience; he wanted to be welcomed by blacks, too. Following Woodstock, his friends tried to arrange a show for him at the Apollo in Harlem, where his friends teased him about his drug of choice — LSD — being a "white" drug. The legendary theater refused, afraid the concert would draw too many whites.

___

On the Net:

http://www.charlesrcross.com

Jimi Hendrix: Gay Like a Fox

2005-08-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Book: Hendrix Used Gay Ruse to Avoid 'Nam

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer

Mon Aug 1,10:37 AM ET

He just wanted to escape the Army to play music — he had enlisted to avoid jail time after being repeatedly arrested in stolen cars in Seattle, his hometown.

"It's not how much I know about Jimi's B-sides; it's how much I know about the emotional arc of his life," Cross said in an interview.

On his way to the Monterey Pop Festival in summer 1967, he was mistaken for a bellhop by a woman at the Chelsea Hotel during a layover in New York.

It was a cold reminder of his ethnicity, Cross writes.

Pray for Omarion

2005-07-08T03:34:00.000-07:00

Right now, everyone over 30 who isn't a total pop culture sponge like me should be asking themselves, "Who the fuck is Omarion?" Well, read on. Classic material.

In London, uninjured singer Omarion seeks prayers

Thu Jul 7, 4:45 PM ET

London was the scene of carnage on Thursday after a series of deadly blasts but American R&B crooner Omarion, who suffered no injury or inconvenience, wants people to pray for him.

"Omarion was in London during the tragic bombings that struck this morning," a statement by the singer's publicist AR PR Marketing, released hours after the bombings, said.

Making no mention of the fatalities or casualties of the blasts, the singer's statement concluded, "He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home. He appreciates your support."

He was in London for Saturday's Live 8 show, his publicist Shana Gilmore told Reuters from Los Angeles. Asked why anyone should pray for him, Gilmore said, "He wasn't hurt or anything, but just the fact that he was there and all that."

Omarion was the teenaged lead singer of the chart-topping band B2K before going solo. The 20-year-old's first solo album "O" debuted at No. 1 of Billboard charts earlier this year.

Friends in high places.

2005-06-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

June 29, 2005

Mr. Nick Adams
xxxx xxxxxxxx Ave.
Los Angeles, California 90048

Dear Mr. Adams:

Thank you for writing to me about the use of medical
marijuana. I appreciate your thoughts on the recent legal
developments regarding this subject, and welcome the opportunity
to respond to your letter.

While I certainly understand your concerns regarding the
use of medical marijuana, the judicial branch of the U.S.
Government is independent, and the U.S. Supreme Court's recent
decision on this subject must be adhered to. However, now that
the Court has ruled, making clear that States do not have the power
to resolve the complex problems associated with marijuana and its
potential for medical uses, I am examining what, if any, changes to
Federal law are called for. Please know that I do recognize that
marijuana may have medicinal properties that could alleviate
conditions such as AIDS-related wasting and chemotherapy-
induced nausea and vomiting, and will certainly keep your
thoughts in mind should the Senate consider medical marijuana
related issues in the 109th Congress.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope that you will continue
to write on matters of importance to you. Should you have any
further comments or questions, please feel free to contact my
Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

-------------------
My response

Senator Feinstein,

Thank you for your email response. Automated or not, it's a refreshingly civic feeling to get a letter from my very own government representative. You're absolutely right. The judicial branch of the government operates independently. But they work to uphold the laws of the land as legislated by you and your fellow senators.

If the leadership of this country would stop lying to themselves and the American people and do the logical, intelligent and humane thing--completely decriminalize marijuana--the Supreme Court wouldn't not have been put into the position of potentially making life more difficult for sick Americans.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

2005-06-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Our time in Tucson has come to a close. Two days ago, we packed up a 24 foot moving truck, loaded the cats in our trusty Honda civic and put The Old Pueblo in our rear view mirror for good.

Let me say this. I'm never doing the self-move thing again. Ever. I don't care if we move across the street when this lease is up. I'm paying someone to do that shit. In fact, unless it's a family member or this man right here, I'm never touching another box as long as I live. That's my friend Jamal by the way. If you ever need someone to do backbreaking labor for very little compensation, don't ask him. He's already done his fair share for Tasha & I.

Our new joint here in LA is great and we love our neighborhood. I'm just so freaking excited to be back in the city I don't know what to do. Oh wait, I do know what to do. Go to the nearest bar and get shit-faced; which is exactly what we plan to do tonight. Next blog entry...total comedy immersion.

Hear that?

2005-05-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

You don't, do you? That's because the rumbling, gurgling noise of the 5-year-old Toshiba Satellite that I've been using has been replace by the whisper soft hum of my brand spanking new Compaq Presario. I'd been contemplating getting a new laptop since I sold the book, but I was able to talk myself down from the ledge successfully. Then the old computer did it's part. The CD/DVD drive conked out months ago. That was around the same time that it started moaning and groaning like the ghost of Christmas past. Then the casing cracked. The hard drive was so small, I couldn't enjoy the fruits of this cable modem without having to delete stuff every other day. The playback on big video files was so choppy, I may as well been just listening to them. The battery was so old and worn down, that if you unplugged the AC adapter, you had about 15 seconds before the computer just shut down. Then there was the wireless aspect. While I was tied to my desk at all times, I was forced to look on in envy as my wife carried her Powerbook all over the damn place; taunting me. While I was sitting on the couch watching basketball, she would browse LA apartments on craigslist. Once I started giving the woman I love dirty looks over a computer, I knew something had to give.

A few days worth of research later, I'd figured out everything that I had to have and what that was going to cost me. I got tired of waiting for one of those Dell coupon deals. Not to mention the fact that it takes up to a week before they even ship your computer. If I was going to lay down a grand, I wanted that thing to at least be on the way to me the next morning. So, I hauled my ass over to CompUSA and got the least expensive laptop with a Pentium processor that they had. I hadn't totally made up my mind that I was going to do the deed until I walked in and heard Steely Dan playing in the store. If that's not an omen, I don't know what is.

Next time...our LA apartment hunt has begun!

Way to go, Georgie!

2005-04-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

World Terror Attacks Tripled in 2004 by U.S. Count

2 hours, 8 minutes ago

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said on Tuesday.

Reuters Photo

The number of "significant" international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

The aides were told the surge partly reflected an increased tally of violence in India and Pakistan related to the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which both countries claim, and the devotion of more manpower to the U.S. monitoring effort, which resulted in more attacks being counted overall.

The State Department last year initially released erroneous figures that understated the attacks and casualties in 2003 and used the figures to argue that the Bush administration was prevailing in the war on terrorism.

It later said the number of people killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said "significant" terrorist attacks -- those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things -- rose to a 20-year high of 175.

The State Department last week unleashed a new debate about the numbers by saying it would no longer release them in its annual terrorism report but that the newly created National Counterterrorism Center that compiles the data would do so.

A spokesman for the CIA, which is handling media inquiries for the NCTC, last week said no decisions had been made although other officials expected the data to be made public.

Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), a California Democrat, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday asking her to release the data, which include only international attacks and exclude violence that is classified as purely domestic.

"The large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people," Waxman said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

BETTER TALLY RESPONSIBLE

Former intelligence official Larry Johnson last week first disclosed the 2004 increase in his Web log, saying the 2004 numbers would rise at least 655 from about 172 in 2003.

Waxman's letter said that of the about 650 significant attacks last year, about 300 reflected violence in India and Pakistan, leaving some 350 attacks elsewhere in the world -- double the total 2003 count.

He suggested this reflected enhanced U.S. efforts to monitor media reports of violence, thereby leading to the identification of "many more attacks in India and Pakistan related to Kashmir." He also said congressional aides were told of about 198 attacks in Iraq in 2004, up from 22 in 2003.

Congressional aides said about 10 full-time employees worked on the 2004 count, up from about three in past years, and that this produced a more complete count.

"What it effectively means is that the Bush administration and the CIA haven't been putting the staff resources necessary and have missed (two thirds) of the world's terrorist incidents," said a Democratic congressional aide. "How can you have an effective counterterrorism policy from that?"

A Republican congressional aide said it would be unfair of Democrats to claim terrorism was getting worse under the Bush administration, stressing that the 2004 and 2003 numbers were not counted in the same way and hence were not comparable.

"That is a conclusion that cannot be drawn because we have no baseline and certainly last year's revised numbers offer no accurate baseline of the universe of terrorist incidents," he said. "Without that you cannot reach an accurate conclusion."

...like Oklahoma City

2005-04-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=calendar&story_id=040705ca_stage_listings

Monolog Cabin: Check out the new faces and new jokes in the fifth edition of Tucson's own domestic comedy group Monolog Cabin, premiering at 7 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday in Club Congress at the Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. For a taste of what real life is really about, not what it looks like in the movies, the writer/performers of Monolog Cabin tell it like it is. Or at least how it happened to them.

Making their MC debut are two performers, one with actual professional experience. Nick Adams (above) has worked as a comedy writer for both the Oxygen Network and Black Entertainment Television and as a stand-up comic, appearing at the Improv in Hollywood and at San Francisco's Punchline. Adams will be describing some of his experiences dating white women.

Sean Murphy is the other new face, dipping into the deep well of nostalgia for his story of being in a group of 13-year-olds who dress up as the rock band KISS for Halloween. But the real audience these kids want to impress is the college women who live in the house across the street.

Returning with new material drawn from their own lives are Charlotte Lowe-Bailey, her daughter Faitha, Sara Regezi and Steve Barancik. Admission is $5 at the door. For details, call the Hotel Congress at 798-1618.

Kensington Books throws down the gauntlet.

2005-04-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. The folks over at Kensington were wondering if I could get them a draft of the manuscript by June 1st. To my agent's surprise, I was cool with the idea. 1. I work better with some sort of deadline. 2. The sooner I finish this thing, the sooner I get all of my advance and the sooner it gets published. So, for the next two months I need to be on the ball.

Mercifully, the NCAA tournament has ended. After my Deacons were eliminated in that double overtime heartbreaker, I just couldn't get myself to watch any games until the final four. Combine the lack of college basketball with my Lakers' fall from grace and I have very little reason not to be writing my ass off now.

Currently the greatest and best song in the world: MF Doom & MF Grimm, Bottle Rocket, Special Herbs & Spices Vol. 1.

A Republican hypocrite? No way!

2005-03-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads

Sun Mar 27, 7:55 AM ET

By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek Times Staff Writers

CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.

•	Latimes.com home page
•	Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times

AP Photo

AP Photo
	Slideshow: Tom DeLay

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — Rep. Tom DeLay (news, bio, voting record) (R-Texas).

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention in the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through Congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do not resuscitate."

On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family in attendance."

"The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely different than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the majority leader, who declined requests for an interview.

"The only thing keeping her alive is the food and water we all need to survive. His father was on a ventilator and other machines to sustain him," said Dan Allen, DeLay's press aide.

There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were severely brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared from being kept alive by artificial means. And neither of them had a living will.

This previously unpublished account of the majority leader's personal brush with life-ending decisions was assembled from court files, medical records and interviews with family members.

It was a pleasant late afternoon in the Hill Country of Texas on Nov. 17, 1988.

At Charles and Maxine DeLay's home, set on a limestone bluff of cedars and live oaks, it also was a moment of triumph. Charles and his brother, Jerry DeLay, two avid tinkerers, had just finished work on a new backyard tram — an elevator-like device that would carry family and friends down a 200-foot slope to the blue-green waters of Canyon Lake.

The two men called for their wives to hop aboard. Charles pushed the button and the maiden run began. Within seconds, a horrific screeching noise echoed across the still lake — "a sickening sound," said a neighbor. The tram was in trouble.

Maxine, seated up front in the four-passenger trolley, said her husband repeatedly tried to engage the emergency brake, but the rail car kept picking up speed. Halfway down the bank, it was free-wheeling, according to accident investigators.

Moments later, it jumped the track and slammed into a tree, scattering passengers and debris in all directions.

"It was awful, just awful," recalled Karl Braddick, now 86, the DeLays' neighbor at the time. "I came running over, and it was a terrible sight."

He called for emergency help. Rescue workers had trouble bringing the injured victims up the steep terrain. Jerry's wife, JoAnne, suffered broken bones and a shattered elbow. Charles, who had been thrown head-first into a tree, was in grave condition.

"He was all but gone," said Braddick, gesturing at the spot of the accident as he offered a visitor a ride down to the lake in his own tram. "He would have been better off if he'd died right there and then."

But Charles DeLay hung on. In the ambulance on his way to a hospital in New Braunfels 15 miles away, he tried to speak.

"He wasn't making any sense; it was mainly just cuss words," recalled Maxine with a faint, fond smile.

Four hours later, he was airlifted by helicopter to the Brooke Army Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston. Admission records show he arrived with multiple injuries, including broken ribs and a brain hemorrhage.

Tom DeLay flew to his father's bedside, where, along with his two brothers and a sister, they joined their mother. In the weeks that followed, the congressman made repeated trips back from Washington, his family said. Maxine seldom left her husband's side.

"Mama stayed at the hospital with him all the time. Oh, it was terrible for everyone," said Alvina "Vi" Skogen, a former sister-in-law of the congressman. Neighbor Braddick visited the hospital and said it seemed very clear to everyone that there was little prospect of recovery.

"He had no consciousness that I could see," Braddick said. "He did a bit of moaning and groaning, I guess, but you could see there was no way he was coming back."

Maxine DeLay agreed that she was never aware of any consciousness on her husband's part during the long days of her bedside vigil — with one possible exception.

"Whenever Randy walked into the room, his heart, his pulse rate, would go up a little bit," she said of their son, Randall, the congressman's younger brother, who lives near Houston.

Doctors conducted a series of tests, including scans of his head, face, neck and abdomen. They checked for lung damage and performed a tracheostomy to assist his breathing. But they could not prevent steady deterioration.

Then, infections complicated the senior DeLay's fight for life. Finally, his organs began to fail. His family and physicians confronted the dreaded choice so many other Americans have faced: to make heroic efforts or to let the end come.

"Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," said Skogen, one of his daughters-in-law at the time. "There was no decision for the family to make. He made it for them."

The preliminary decision to withhold dialysis and other treatments fell to Maxine along with Randall and her daughter Tena — and "Tom went along." He raised no objection, said the congressman's mother.

Family members said they prayed.

Jerry DeLay "felt terribly about the accident" that injured his brother, said his wife, JoAnne. "He prayed that, if [Charles] couldn't have quality of life, that God would take him — and that is exactly what he did."

Charles Ray DeLay died at 3:17 a.m., according to his death certificate, 27 days after plummeting down the hillside.

The family then turned to lawyers.

In 1990, the DeLays filed suit against Midcap Bearing Corp. of San Antonio and Lovejoy Inc. of Illinois, the distributor and maker of a coupling that the family said had failed and caused the tram to hurtle out of control.

The family's wrongful death lawsuit accused the companies of negligence and sought actual and punitive damages. Lawyers for the companies denied the allegations and countersued the surviving designer of the tram system, Jerry DeLay.

The case thrust Rep. DeLay into unfamiliar territory — the front page of a civil complaint as a plaintiff. He is an outspoken defender of business against what he calls the crippling effects of "predatory, self-serving litigation."

The DeLay family litigation sought unspecified compensation for, among other things, the dead father's "physical pain and suffering, mental anguish and trauma," and the mother's grief, sorrow and loss of companionship.

Their lawsuit also alleged violations of the Texas product liability law.

The DeLay case moved slowly through the Texas judicial system, accumulating more than 500 pages of motions, affidavits and disclosures over nearly three years. Among the affidavits was one filed by the congressman, but family members said he had little direct involvement in the lawsuit, leaving that to his brother Randall, an attorney.

Rep. DeLay, who since has taken a leading role promoting tort reform, wants to rein in trial lawyers to protect American businesses from what he calls "frivolous, parasitic lawsuits" that raise insurance premiums and "kill jobs."

Last September, he expressed less than warm sentiment for attorneys when he took the floor of the House to condemn trial lawyers who, he said, "get fat off the pain" of plaintiffs and off "the hard work" of defendants.

Aides for DeLay defended his role as a plaintiff in the family lawsuit, saying he did not follow the legal case and was not aware of its final outcome.

The case was resolved in 1993 with payment of an undisclosed sum, said to be about $250,000, according to sources familiar with the out-of-court settlement. DeLay signed over his share of any proceeds to his mother, said his aides.

Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill specifically designed to override state laws on product liability such as the one cited in his family's lawsuit. The legislation provided sweeping exemptions for product sellers.

The 1996 bill was vetoed by President Clinton, who said he objected to the DeLay-backed measure because it "tilts against American families and would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured by a defective product."

After her husband's death, Maxine DeLay scrapped the mangled tram at the bottom of the hill and sold the family's lake house.

Today, she lives alone in a Houston senior citizen residence. Like much of the country, she is following news developments in the Schiavo case and her son's prominent role.

She acknowledged questions comparing her family's decision in 1988 to the Schiavo conflict with a slight smile. "It's certainly interesting, isn't it?"

She had a new hairdo for Easter and puffed on a cigarette outside her assisted-living residence as she sat back comparing the cases.

Like her son, she believed there might be hope for Terri Schiavo's recovery. That's what made her family's experience different, she said. Charles had no hope.

"There was no chance he was ever coming back," she said.

Verhovek reported from Canyon Lake, Texas; Roche reported from Washington. Also contributing to this report were Times researchers Lianne Hart in San Antonio and Nona Yates in Los Angeles.

Nick Adams. Published author.

2005-03-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

It’s official. I’m getting published.

Yesterday, upon my agent’s recommendation, I accepted an offer from Kensington Books. She called me on Wednesday and told me that they had made an offer, but she thought it was just a tad low. She wanted to take a day and see if she heard anything solid from a few other people to whom she had some feelers out. After a no, and a maybe, we decided a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush and gave them a yes.

I’ll be honest. I don’t know shit about Kensington, but Claudia was excited. She called them a “large house, a really good house” and said that they do very well. The editor she sent it to loved it and thought it was hilarious.

Part of me wants to jump up and down and scream for joy. Part of me isn’t going to believe that it’s real until I get a check in my hand. The other part of me is ready to get down to work and pound out the rest of this manuscript. It’s been a long haul just to get to this point, and there’s still a lot of work to be done. But at least now I feel like I’m in the game. Almost. The challenge for me now is to deliver a kick ass manuscript and convince them that I’m worth getting behind in a major way. If they’re willing to kick in some serious $ for marketing this thing, who knows what might happen?

March Sadness

2005-03-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

Most men's NCAA tourney teams failed to reach 50 percent graduation rate

March 16, 2005

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- A new study says 42 of the 65 teams playing in the men's NCAA tournament graduated less than 50 percent of their players.

The graduation rate statistics, compiled in a study released Tuesday by the University of Central Florida, also found that women's teams in the NCAA tournament continue to graduate players at a much higher level. The numbers are based on athletes who entered the universities from 1994 to 1997 and were or were not able to graduate in six years.

If the NCAA's new academic reform plan was in place, the teams with less than 50 percent graduation rates would face penalties that include loss of scholarships and a ban on postseason play.

The NCAA has said penalties won't be issued until 2004-05 graduation data is included, which will happen in the 2005-06 academic year.

``Regarding graduation rates for women, we can cut down the nets in celebration. As for men's graduation rates, especially for African-American student-athletes, the dance has barely begun,'' said Richard Lapchick, director of UCF's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

The study also found an increasing disparity between the graduation rates of white and black student-athletes on NCAA tournament teams.

Two men's team, LSU and Minnesota, failed to graduate even one basketball player, according to numbers supplied by the 2004 NCAA Graduation Rates Report. Two No. 1 seeds -- Illinois (47 percent) and Washington (45 percent) -- graduated less than half its players.

Bucknell and Utah State both graduated 100 percent, but only four other schools topped 70 percent.

Numbers looked much better for women's teams, where only six schools in the 64-team field failed to graduate at least 50 percent, while 35 graduated at least 70 percent. Eight schools graduated at least 90 percent with Holy Cross, Vanderbilt and Montana registering 100 percent.

All four of the top-seeded women's team graduated at least 53 percent.

When the numbers were broken down by race, the study showed 40 women's teams graduated at least 70 percent of their white players and 24 graduated at least 70 percent of their black players -- more than double the numbers for the men's teams.

Only 17 men's teams graduated at least 70 percent of white players while just 10 had the same percentage for black players.

Ten women's teams failed to graduate a black student-athlete while only two failed to graduate a white player. On the men's side, nine schools each failed to graduate white or black student-athletes.

``Race is an ongoing academic issue, reflected in the continued gap between graduation rates for white and African-American student-athletes,'' Lapchick said. ``While rates for both groups have improved over the last few years, a significant disparity remains between graduation rates for white and African-American basketball student-athletes.''

Graduation rate numbers did not include Ivy League schools -- Dartmouth women and Pennsylvania men -- which do not report graduation rates.

U.S. troops deaths in Iraq top 1,500

2005-03-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

TODD PITMAN
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq has topped 1,500, an Associated Press count showed Thursday after the military announced the deaths of three Americans, while car bombs targeting Iraqi security forces killed at least four people in separate attacks.

Two suicide car bombs exploded outside the Interior Ministry in eastern Baghdad Thursday, killing at least two policemen and wounding five others, police Maj. Jabar Hassan said. Officials at nearby al-Kindi hospital said 15 people were injured in the blasts, part of the relentless wave of violence since the Jan. 30 elections.

Another car bomb targeting a police convoy exploded in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of the capital, killing one Iraqi policeman and a civilian, the U.S. military said. Six police and 10 other civilians were also wounded.

Amid the violence, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi extended the state of emergency, first announced nearly four months ago, for another 30 days until the end of March. The order remains in effect throughout the country, except in northern Kurdish-run areas.

The emergency decree includes a nighttime curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems necessary.

The latest reported American deaths brought the toll to 1,502 since the United States launched the war in Iraq in March 2003, according to the AP count.

The military said two U.S. troops died Wednesday in Baghdad of injuries suffered when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle. Another soldier was killed the same day in Babil province, part of an area known as the "Triangle of Death" because of the frequency of insurgent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.

At least 1,140 Americans have died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,364 U.S. military members have died, according to the AP count. That includes at least 1,030 deaths resulting from hostile action, the military said.

The tally is based on Pentagon records and AP reporting from Iraq.

The U.S. exit strategy is dependent on handing over responsibility for security to Iraq's fledgling army and police forces. Forming Iraq's first democratically elected coalition government is turning out to be a laborious process.

The car bombers in Baghdad were trailing a police convoy that was trying to enter the Interior Ministry, Hassan said. Iraqi security forces opened fire on the vehicles and disabled them before they could arrive at a main checkpoint, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Iraqi forces also killed one Iraqi man during clashes with gunmen in the northern city of Mosul, army Capt. Sabah Yassin said. Two soldiers were injured.

Also in the north, insurgents blew up a gas pipeline that links Kirkuk to Dibis, about 20 miles away, said Col. Nozad Mohammad, a state oil security official in Kirkuk. Mohammad said the blast would cut gas production, but he could not say by how much.

Talks aimed at forging a new coalition government faltered Wednesday over Kurdish demands for more land and concerns that the dominant Shiite alliance seeks to establish an Islamic state, delaying the planned first meeting of parliament.

Shiite and Kurdish leaders, Iraq's new political powers, failed to reach agreement after two days of negotiations in the northern city of Irbil, with the clergy-backed candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, leaving with only half the deal he needed.

The Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which has 140 seats in the 275-member National Assembly, hopes to win backing from the 75 seats held by Kurdish political parties so it can muster the required two-thirds majority to insure control of top posts in the new government.

Al-Jaafari indicated after the talks that the alliance was ready to accept a Kurdish demand that one of its leaders, Jalal Talabani, become president. However, he would not commit to other demands, including the expansion of Kurdish autonomous areas south to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Kurdish leaders have demanded constitutional guarantees for their northern regions, including self-rule and reversal of the "Arabization" of Kirkuk and other northern areas. Saddam relocated Iraqi Arabs to the region in a bid to secure the oil fields there.

Politicians had hoped to convene the new parliament by Sunday. But Ali Faisal, of the Shiite Political Council, said the date was now postponed and that a new date had not been set.

"The blocs failed to reach an understanding over the formation of the government," said Faisal, whose council is part of the United Iraqi Alliance.

The Kurds, he added, were "the basis of the problem" in the negotiations.

"The Kurds are wary about al-Jaafari's nomination to head the government. They are concerned that a strict Islamic government might be formed," Faisal said. "Negotiations and dialogue are ongoing."

In another twist, alliance deputy and former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi was to meet Thursday with Allawi, whose party won 40 seats in the assembly. It was unclear why the meeting between the two rivals was taking place.

Both are secular Shiites opposed to making Iraq an Islamic state. Concerns over a possible theocracy are especially pertinent because the main task of the new assembly will be to write a constitution.

Elsewhere, Saddam Hussein's lead lawyer said Tuesday's shooting deaths of a judge and his lawyer son, both appointed to the Iraqi Special Tribunal to try the former Iraqi leader and his top henchmen, show the country remains too dangerous for such trials. The shootings marked the first time any legal staff working for the court have been killed.

"I can't imagine how the court would begin," Ziad al-Khasawneh told the AP in Tokyo. "The streets are burning, the judges are killed. ... The advocates and the judge, they need a quiet area to read, to study, to discuss. It is impossible to make these things this year, or after this year."

Even the crime in Tucson is odd.

2005-03-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

Tucson police search for partially nude man who escaped custody

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Tucson Police are searching for a man who escaped from Tucson City Court this morning, ditched most of his clothes and kept running.

Joe Ochoa, 41, of the 6700 block of East 17th Street, was supposed to appear for a drug paraphernalia violation and also had pending felony charges of burglary, theft and probation violations.

Police say his hands are cuffed to his waist and he is wearing only gray boxers. They found his clothing just outside the court.

Ochoa was being taken from the Pima County jail to the court when he escaped the custody of a city marshal around 8:35 a.m. Police have been searching the Downtown and North Fourth Avenue areas since just afterward.

Tucson High Magnet School, Roskruge Bilingual Magnet School and Mansfeld Middle School went into lockdown around 9 a.m. Students were staying inside their classrooms, but the restrictions have been lifted as police pare down their search efforts.

Ochoa is about 6 feet tall, weighs 185 pounds and has blond hair.

Police ask anyone who sees him to call 911.

Sometimes, I hate this country. Part Two.

2005-02-21T19:36:00.000-07:00

I take back every thing I said about their shitty state.

Montana House Dumps Bill to Protect Gays

Mon Feb 21, 5:10 PM ET

HELENA, Mont. - The Montana House on Monday killed a bill that would have extended the state's hate crimes law to protect gays.

The bill would have made it a crime to target people based such factors as age, economic condition, disability, gender or sexual orientation. It was rejected 54-46.

State law already outlaws intimidating or harassing someone because of race, religion, color, creed or national origin. Offenses carry a minimum two-year prison term.

Debate focused mainly on whether the law should cover crimes against gays and lesbians.

Republicans, who accounted for all but five of the opponents, warned the bill would stifle free speech and could prevent clergy from speaking out against homosexuality in their sermons.

Supporters said the bill aimed to protect people who could be targeted because they belonged to a certain group.

Similar bills have failed in each of the six preceding legislative sessions.

A similar bill in the state Senate has been stalled in committee since January.

Sometimes, I hate this country.

2005-02-21T19:34:00.000-07:00

'Minutemen' to Patrol Arizona Border

Mon Feb 21, 1:14 PM ET

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Intent on securing the vulnerable Arizona border from illegal immigrant crossings, U.S. officials are bracing for what they call a potential new threat this spring: the Minutemen.

AP Photo

Dear St. Petersburg, FL NAACP

2005-02-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

Get your head out of your ass.

NAACP chief asks for bill to stop sales of 'death utensils'

Darryl Rouson says he's willing to go to jail if it helps stop stores from selling pipes and glass tubes that are used to smoke drugs.

By MARCUS FRANKLIN, Times Staff Writer
Published February 19, 2005

The candy-colored hand-blown glass pipes started it all.

They drew Darryl Rouson to the Purple Haze Tobacco & Accessories Shop, where the pipes fill display cases. Rouson asked the owner to stop selling "death utensils under the guise of tobacco accessories," alluding to the contention that the pipes and glass tubes are used to smoke drugs like crack.

Purple Haze's owner, Leo Calzadilla, and other employees repeatedly asked Rouson to leave the store at 1427 34th St. S, Calzadilla told police. Rouson said he didn't leave because he was frightened by pit bullterriers in the store.

In April, the St. Petersburg NAACP president will stand trial on a misdemeanor charge of trespassing. But the possibility of jail time hasn't ended a campaign Rouson - a former drug addict who will mark his seventh drug-free year next month - started waging years ago.

On Friday, the 48-year-old attorney took his cause to Tallahassee, trying to strengthen support for proposed legislation to "cripple" retailers' ability to sell the merchandise, or close some shops altogether.

"The law allows them to operate behind a curtain that says tobacco accessories," Rouson said. "Everybody and their cousin knows that these pipes are rarely used for smoking tobacco."

Rouson spoke Friday to the state's 25-member Drug Policy Advisory Council appointed by the governor and the Legislature to consider drug policy.

"I think his message was well-received," said James R. McDonough, director of the state Office of Drug Control and co-chair of the council.

State law now defines "drug paraphernalia" broadly and includes "glass pipes" to "ingest or inhale" illegal drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. But sometimes the pipes sold in tobacco shops contain decorative roses, some say disguising their real use.

Police and prosecutors often have trouble proving a person's intent to use a glass tube bearing a rose to smoke illegal drugs, McDonough said.

"It's not even a wink and a nod," he said. "Owners often know that the purpose of the item they're selling is for the use of . . . illegal drugs."

Rouson already has gained support among state lawmakers.

Earlier this month, state Sen. Stephen Wise, a Republican from Jacksonville, filed a bill for the new legislative session that begins next month to create a yearlong Drug Paraphernalia Abatement Task Force. It would recommend "strategies and actions for abating access to and the use and proliferation of drug paraphernalia," according to the bill.

Even before Rouson first visited the Capitol on the issue in December, Wise said his constituents in Jacksonville had been showing up with glass tubes containing roses to complain at his office.

"It's not something you give your girlfriend for Valentine's Day," he said. "I would suspect people on the street know exactly what it's used for. People who are selling it have a pretty good clue what it's for, too."

Wise and Rouson said potential changes include tougher state rules for tobacco shops that sell the pipes such as requiring at least 51 percent of sales to come from tobacco or restrictions on locations.

Rouson pointed out that Purple Haze is four blocks from Gibbs High School.

Calzadilla, the store's owner, said he was not worried about the legislation.

"It's not going to affect my business because I don't sell drug paraphernalia. I sell tobacco products," Calzadilla said. He said he also sells cigarettes, cigars and 1-pound bags of tobacco bought increasingly by former cigarette smokers fed up with rising costs.

Signs outside Purple Haze warn customers who say they intend to use illegal drugs will be put out of the store.

"If a customer came in my store and said they were going to use it for something illegal, or I even sensed that they were going to use it for something illegal I won't sell to them," said Calzadilla. He said about 55 percent of his sales come from tobacco and about 25 percent from pipes.

"You could go into Home Depot and buy spray paint and use that for illegal purposes," Calzadilla said. "Is (Rouson) going to got into Home Depot and say we don't want you to sell spray paint? Anything can be used for a wrong thing."

Rep. Frank Peterman, D-St. Petersburg, said he has followed Rouson and the issue for years. In 2001, Rouson was arrested on a petty theft charge after he took 11 glass tubes sold with silk roses from Sam's Shell. The charge was later dropped.

Recently he asked Peterman if he could introduce the bill in the house. Peterman said yes.

"We need to do something about them being very accessible to people who are suffering from the use of it," Peterman said.

In the meantime, Rouson said he will deal with the trespass charge. He said State Attorney Bernie McCabe's office offered to resolve the charge if he wrote Calzadilla a letter apologizing and "saying that my method was wrong but my cause was right."

Rouson declined.

"But if convicted I will neither pay a fine nor costs and will go to jail under a hunger strike until the law changes and the deception is set aside," he said.

"The idea is to keep the public focused. The issue is not Darryl Rouson and a trespass charge. The issue is a legal lie we allow to exist in our society. Police and state attorneys have felt helpless to change it."

Marcus Franklin can be reached at mfranklin@sptimes.com or 727 893-8488.

Cats and dogs are yesterday's news.

2005-02-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

You need to get yourself a pet chicken.

http://www.omlet.co.uk/homepage/homepage.php

A sad day in Playstation 2 history.

2005-02-15T07:15:00.000-07:00

I had to give up my Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game made me sick to my stomach. No. I don’t mean that I was morally outraged by the tremendous violence and moral degradation in the game. I loved that. I mean the game literally made me sick to my stomach.

There are a few video games that give me motion sickness. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is about them, but both the GTA and Tony Hawk: Pro Skater series both leave me feeling ill. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t two of the best video game franchises of all time.

GTA: SA is amazing. The game has gotten a lot of attention because of the level of brutality, and make no mistake, it’s not for the kids. We’re talking about a game that allows you to walk up to a car at a stoplight. Open the door. Beat the driver to a bloody pulp, and then drive off. The game also allows you to not only have sex with prostitutes, but also beat them up afterwards and take your money back. You can be a pimp, a vigilante, kill rival gang members, kill drug dealers, rob houses, or you can just ride around the neighborhood on your bike. The scope and breadth of activities is mesmerizing. Invariably, when I was done playing for the night I would come to bed shaking my head and muttering to myself, “That game is so good!”

Needless to say, it isn’t going to be easy to part with. But it wasn’t worth feeling queasy every night. Some lucky bidder is getting a real bargain over on Ebay.

And people ask me why I left North Carolina.

2005-02-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

Study: Southern Blacks Die at Higher Rate

Wed Feb 2, 5:08 PM ET

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer

NEW ORLEANS - Blacks in the South apparently get a double whammy of stroke risk: They die at much higher rates than either Southern whites or blacks who live elsewhere.

Yahoo! Health

Have questions about your health?
Find answers here.

Researchers have long known that stroke deaths are greater among blacks and people in the "Stroke Belt" across the eastern part of the nation's midsection. But they thought the combined risk posed by race and geography was small.

"Much to our surprise, the finding is: No, it's not," said George Howard, a biostatistician who presented his research Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference in New Orleans.

The rate of stroke deaths among black men in the South was 51 percent higher than it was among blacks in other parts of the country. And black men in the South had roughly four times the risk of dying of a stroke as white men living outside the South.

"That's a pretty big difference," Howard said.

Howard, chairman at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, compared stroke deaths in 10 Southern states to those in 11 non-Southern states with large enough black populations to make comparisons possible, including California, Texas and New York.

He used information from the National Center for Health Statistics from 1997 through 2001, and adjusted it to take into account how many blacks and whites live in each state.

Among white men ages 55 to 64 living in the South, the stroke death rate was 49 deaths per 100,000 people — 29 percent higher than the rate among white men living elsewhere. Among black men in the South, the rate was 159 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 105 for black men living elsewhere.

Trends were similar among women.

Leading theories for the racial and geographic differences are that Southerners are more likely to smoke, be overweight, have high blood pressure, and be in poor general health. Lack of good medical care also may be involved.

"Some of those Stroke Belt states are some of the poorest in the country," said Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine.

As for whether moving from the South would help, that is not clear at all.

"I was brought up in what's called the buckle of the Stroke Belt," and then moved to Alabama, Howard said. "Did I bring the risk with me or did I leave it in eastern North Carolina?"

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke funded his study and another presented at the conference which found that whites were twice as likely as blacks to have "prehypertension," a new category the government set last year for mildly elevated blood pressure — a reading of 120 to 139 over 80 to 89.

But blacks with prehypertension were far more likely to suffer strokes or heart disease as a consequence, the study of more than 80,000 around the country found.

"The population should be aware of this category and know that this is a new risk," said Daniel Lackland, an epidemiologist at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

Blood pressure drugs are not recommended for prehypertension unless people have diabetes or other conditions. Instead, doctors urge people to watch their diets and salt intake.

Other studies at the conference hinted that genetic differences may play a role in higher stroke risks for blacks. Three separate teams found that stroke victims were more likely to have variations in a potential "stroke gene" recently identified in Iceland. One of the teams found that such variations were more common in blacks than in whites.

___

On the Net:

www.strokeassociation.org

I ♥ Chomsky

2005-01-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Netflix, I spent part of this weekend watching Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Chomsky is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant minds of the 20^th century, and until the other day was a member of my brain’s embarrassingly large “I know the name, but I don’t know who he is” file. Who he is, is a MIT linguistics professor, author, scholar, rabble-rouser and bona fide badass. He describes himself as a “libertarian socialist and a supporter of anarcho-syndicalism.”

The title of the documentary is taken from his seminal work that he co-wrote with E.S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. The book is an explanation of how the media and the press are manipulated by the powers that be into shaping the social agenda of the country. The 2 hour and 47 minute doc is worth the investment, unless that is you would rather keep your head in the sand about how this country really works. I think the filmmakers knew they were working with some seriously heavy content, so they employed a lot of interesting devices to make their points. Instead of just showing the statistic that the New York Times is 40% content and 60% advertising, they demonstrated it by separating the ads and the news from one issue and laying them out side by side. Little visual touches like that helped to make this 7-course meal of a movie go down a lot easier.

Combine that with a Sunday matinee viewing of Hotel Rwanda—2 thumbs of from the wife and I—and you’ve got the makings of one angry black man.

My wife bought a copy of The Chomsky Reader at a used bookstore some time ago, and I was tempted to dive into the day after watching the documentary. After a lengthy internal debate, I’ve decided to put the book to good use this weekend when we make the trek from Tucson to The Bahamas for my best friend’s wedding. Unless, of course, the in-flight movie is Shark Tale. I’m not a total idiot.

Johnny Carson's race problem.

2005-01-27T02:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.panopticist.com/archives/12.html

Two Johnny Carson Clips You Won't See on CNN This Week

The six-minute video linked at the end of this post contains two compelling and somewhat disturbing Tonight Show clips from the mid-'70s. The video is from an episode of the superb Manhattan public-access program Media Shower, a clip show that was on the air from 1997 until 2000. The Tonight Show clips are introduced by Media Shower's host and creator, Jamie Greenberg, a New York comedy writer and performer.

What's special about these two clips? Well, let's just say that they wouldn't win Johnny Carson any racial sensitivity awards. At the very least, they show that Carson was capable of egregious lapses in judgment. I don't have any reason to think these clips reveal something dark about Carson himself, but they do reveal a lot about the sort of race-oriented humor that was acceptable on television even in the late 1970s.

In the first clip, an apparently unscripted incident from 1977, a mock-angry Carson gets up from his desk and walks down the hall to confront Don Rickles, who is taping an episode of the sitcom C.P.O. Sharkey in an adjacent studio. After a few seconds, Carson points at a black cast member and shouts, "Hey, a black man! Yo, black man! How's it goin' there, daddy?" Carson walks over to the actor and gives him five. And then he walks back over to Rickles and says something incredibly shocking. You may not catch it the first time, but Jamie comes on after the clips and explains what to listen for, and then he shows that part of the clip again.

The second clip is from 1976 and features a jive-talking Carson in blackface—or, to be more accurate, half-blackface. Johnny Carson! In blackface! In 1976! As Jamie says in his setup, "Kind of shocking that this was still airing in 1976 on The Tonight Show."

You can learn more about Media Shower in this piece I wrote for The Village Voice in 2000. The very rudimentary Media Shower website is, much to my surprise, still online, four years after the show went off the air. Jamie Greenberg's email address is on that site, in case you'd like to reach him.

Thanks to Daniel Radosh for nudging me to get this video online. Here is Daniel's take on these clips.

Here's the video in Quicktime format. I wanted to put it online in MPEG format but couldn't find a program for OS X that would do the conversion. If someone wants to do a conversion and send it to me, or point me to a place I can download it from, I'll put it online...

Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee...

2005-01-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

...lousy with Los Island Iced Tea.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Actress Stockard Channing Charged With DUI

2 hours, 45 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - Emmy-winning actress Stockard Channing (news) was arrested for investigation of drunken driving after she tried to drive around a roadblock on the Hollywood Freeway, authorities said Tuesday.

AP Photo

AP Photo
	Slideshow: Emmy Awards

Channing, 60, who won an Emmy for her role as first lady on NBC's "The West Wing," was stopped by California Highway Patrol officers on Dec. 14. She was jailed nearly three hours before being released without bail, the Sheriff's Department said.

Officer Alex Delgadillo, a CHP spokesman, said the freeway's northbound lanes had been shut down that night so a tow truck could remove a disabled tractor-trailer.

Officers then saw Channing's car passing traffic on the right shoulder of the freeway, Delgadillo said.

Officers who pulled the car over smelled alcohol and administered a field sobriety test. Delgadillo said Channing's blood-alcohol levels were 0.12 and 0.13. The legal limit in California is 0.08.

Two misdemeanor counts of driving while under the influence of alcohol were filed Monday, said city attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan.

Channing's manager, Ernest Johns, didn't immediately return a phone call Tuesday seeking comment.

The actress was scheduled to appear for arraignment Feb. 9.

The maximum penalty for conviction is six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for each charge, Mateljan said.

File this under "duh."

2005-01-15T01:43:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost.com

Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground
War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 14, 2005; Page A01

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."

Low's comments came during a rare briefing by the council on its new report on long-term global trends. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 U.S. and foreign experts. Within the 119-page report is an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.

President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.

"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity."

Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.

Bush described the war in Iraq as a means to promote democracy in the Middle East. "A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East," he said one month before the invasion. "Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."

But as instability in Iraq grew after the toppling of Hussein, and resentment toward the United States intensified in the Muslim world, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders. They found tons of unprotected weapons caches that, military officials say, they are now using against U.S. troops. Foreign terrorists are believed to make up a large portion of today's suicide bombers, and U.S. intelligence officials say these foreigners are forming tactical, ever-changing alliances with former Baathist fighters and other insurgents.

"The al-Qa'ida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," the report says.

According to the NIC report, Iraq has joined the list of conflicts -- including the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand -- that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology.

At the same time, the report says that by 2020, al Qaeda "will be superseded" by other Islamic extremist groups that will merge with local separatist movements. Most terrorism experts say this is already well underway. The NIC says this kind of ever-morphing decentralized movement is much more difficult to uncover and defeat.

Terrorists are able to easily communicate, train and recruit through the Internet, and their threat will become "an eclectic array of groups, cells and individuals that do not need a stationary headquarters," the council's report says. "Training materials, targeting guidance, weapons know-how, and fund-raising will become virtual (i.e. online)."

The report, titled "Mapping the Global Future," highlights the effects of globalization and other economic and social trends. But NIC officials said their greatest concern remains the possibility that terrorists may acquire biological weapons and, although less likely, a nuclear device.

The council is tasked with midterm and strategic analysis, and advises the CIA director. "The NIC's goal," one NIC publication states, "is to provide policymakers with the best, unvarnished, and unbiased information -- regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to U.S. policy."

Other than reports and studies, the council produces classified National Intelligence Estimates, which represent the consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies on specific issues.

Yesterday, Hutchings, former assistant dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, said the NIC report tried to avoid analyzing the effect of U.S. policy on global trends to avoid being drawn into partisan politics.

Among the report's major findings is that the likelihood of "great power conflict escalating into total war . . . is lower than at any time in the past century." However, "at no time since the formation of the Western alliance system in 1949 have the shape and nature of international alignments been in such a state of flux as they have in the past decade."

The report also says the emergence of China and India as new global economic powerhouses "will be the most challenging of all" Washington's regional relationships. It also says that in the competition with Asia over technological advances, the United States "may lose its edge" in some sectors.

Staff writer Bradley Graham and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

The biggest over-reaction in history.

2005-01-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. We are a nation of idiots.

January 13, 2005

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) -- Randy Moss was fined $10,000 Thursday by the NFL for pretending to pull down his pants and moon the Green Bay crowd during Minnesota's playoff win last weekend.

Peter Hadhazy, the league's director of game operations, penalized Moss for unsportsmanlike conduct in a letter that the NFL released.

``Your actions were based on poor judgment, did not reflect well on you or the Vikings, and were insulting to many,'' Hadhazy wrote.

``They have resulted in widespread criticism and needlessly detracted from Minnesota's dramatic playoff victory. Fans should look to you and your teammates to see how to compete and win in football. But when you lose your focus on playing and engage in sideshows as you did on Sunday, you forfeit much of this,'' he wrote.

Moss also briefly bumped the goalpost with his back end before hugging teammates in the end zone following his fourth-quarter touchdown catch that clinched the Vikings' 31-17 victory.

League rules mandate discipline for ``obscene gestures or other actions construed as being in poor taste.'' A fine for the first offense under those guidelines is $5,000.

Moss hasn't previously been fined for such an action, but he paid a $25,000 penalty in 1999 for squirting an official with a water bottle.

His agent, Dante DiTrapano, said the fine was unnecessary.

``If you can't have freedom of expression on the football field, come on,'' DiTrapano said.

This is the greatest and best music video in the world.

2005-01-08T01:10:00.000-07:00

Tribute.

Sebastian Telfair did the right thing.

2005-01-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

Now shut up and go criticize Sasha Cohen.

MAN SLAIN, TWO WOUNDED AT HOOP STAR'S BUILDING

By PHILIP MESSING, LARRY CELONA and ERIN CALABRESE

February 9, 2004 -- Three men were shot last night, one fatally, on the third floor of a Brooklyn housing project near the apartment of high-school basketball star Sebastian Telfair, police said. The shootings took place at the Surfside Garden Houses on West 31st Street in Coney Island at about 7:15 p.m.

One of the victims was pronounced dead at the scene. He died inside an elevator.

The two other victims were found in the hallway. One was taken to Lutheran Hospital, the other to Coney Island Hospital, both in critical condition.

Police gave no motive for the shootings, but sources said one of the victims was arrested for another shooting in the building last year.

Jo Li Wingata, 48, who said she was a cousin of the dead man, said she believed it was drug-related.

Telfair is a star point guard at Lincoln HS who will be a top pick in this year's NBA draft should he pass up college at Louisville, where he said he'd go.

He lives on the floor where the shooting took place, sources said.

Telfair was not home at the time. Police did not believe any of the victims were related to him. Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury, who also starred at Lincoln and grew up in the project, is Telfair's cousin.

Police were leaning toward the theory that the shooter was one of the three victims, but hadn't completely ruled out the possibility that there was a fourth person involved.

"It's happened one too many times out here," Wingata said. "All these kids they want to fight one another.

"They're thinking fast money. It's all about drugs - all about drugs." The project has recovered from some rocky times recently. Major crimes rose 47 percent from 2001 to 2002, but then dropped back to the 2001 level last year.

My Ipod weighs a ton.

2004-12-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

Chris & Mary Claus came through big time as always. 40GB of music at my finger tips. Complete with Bose Sound Dock which essentially turns the little marvel of modern design into a shelf stereo.

I've been a downloading, importing, playlist creating fool since we got back from Seattle, and I'm loving every minute of it. The thing that makes music so addictive is that there's always something new to listen to. There's always a genre or a sub-genre that you can explore. There's always a legendary artists that you've never gotten around to. There's always a hip new band to check out.

In 2005 AP (after Pod), I've been really focusing on this album by Rae & Christian, Nocturnal Activity (Sleepwalking remixed). They're label mates of one of my favorite artists, Aim, and I had been meaning to give them a listen for a while. There is something about the Grand Central Records sound that I just can't get enough of it. One moment Kate Rogers is crooning over some sparse, downtempo number. One track later, the Pharcyde bounces through and does that thing that they do (did?) so well. It's fun to think that there a bunch of British white dude making the kind of music that I would love to make.

The 10 best shows on television.

2004-12-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

Criteria:

All shows must still be on the air, though not necessarily in production at this moment. If it hasn’t been cancelled yet, it’s in the running. I make no distinction between time of day, cable or network, or genre. Good television is good television no matter what channel it’s on or how long the show lasts.

Obviously, I haven’t seen every show on television. Anyone making that claim is a liar. But I watch a lot of TV, and I always make an effort to catch most of the shows that “everyone is talking about.” Here goes.

#10 The Oprah Winfrey Show

I’m a heterosexual male and I was completely unafraid to type those words. There’s a reason why she’s been on top for so long. She’s the best to ever do it. She has an uncanny ability to come off the screen and make you like her. It’s a gift that maybe only a handful of talk shows hosts have ever had and she has it in spades. We’re talking about a black female talk show host who became the most powerfully person in the publishing industry! And she didn’t do it by writing books. She didn’t do it by publishing books. She did it by simply recommending books. She introduced a fat, bald, belligerent moron and told America to take his advice…and they did. Then she told them to watch his show…and they did. That’s power.

#9 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Yes, I’m sure I’m straight. The heat has died down for the fab five, but the fact remains this is a damn good show. You can keep your race around the world, cow brain eating, match making, and match faking shows. I like my reality shows a little less in your face, and a little more feel good. The show works on so many different levels. 1. They’re all good at what they do. (Except Jai who doesn’t really do anything.) 2. They actually help people. People’s lives are better when they’re done. 3. They are damn entertaining to watch. Carson’s silly ass would make a better daytime talk show host than everyone on TV right now except the aforementioned Ms. Winfrey.

#8 Everybody Loves Raymond

It’s not re-inventing the wheel, but neither is most stuff on television. Very well written. Very well acted. And not nearly as generic as people make it out to be. This is a show that featured a middle-aged woman doing a sculpture of what appeared to be a giant vagina. I can understand people who say that Ray Romano rubs them the wrong way, but I’m not in that camp.

#7 Pardon the Interruption

Have you ever asked yourself why every sports show features 2 or 3 talking heads yelling at each other now? They’re all trying to duplicate Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon and failing miserably. Both have been columnist with the Washington Post for years and covering sports for even longer. They know what they’re talking about and it shows. And they actually exhibit some journalistic standards, which is rare in sports broadcasting. You can throw two people on a set and hope they have some chemistry, but these guys have already been friends for years. PTI also features the best on screen advance since the first down line in football games. They put the show’s rundown on the screen so you can see what they’re going to be talking about, and when.

#6 Scrubs

Hipper than Everybody Loves Raymond. Funnier than Arrested Development. So many sitcoms can be put into a category. Put down humor a la Just Shoot Me, quirky irreverent humor a la Malcolm in the Middle, or everything works out in the end stuff like Raymond. Not many can do it all at once and pull it off. Written with just the right blends of humor. Acting with just the right pitch. And absolutely refusing to take itself seriously. Except when they get sentimental at the end of the episode. But the whole thing is done so well, you don’t hold that against them at all.

#5 The Sopranos

Just when you thought you’d had enough of the mob story, along come Tony and the gang.
Still incredibly compelling. Still well acted. Still well written. One of the greatest feats in the history of television is David Chase and James Gandolfini creating a violent, racist, sexist, homophobic crime boss…and making all of American root for him. It’s definitely slipped a bit. They seem to be postponing the inevitable crash at the end of this race. But it’s still an amazing show.

#4 Curb Your Enthusiasm

Larry David sits very high on the TV comedy totem pole. (Although my wife, who’s Native American, once explained that the height of a figure on a totem pole doesn’t necessarily reflect their stature. But I digress.) The semi-improvisational tone of the dialogue gives the show a spontaneity that no other scripted show on television can match. People always focus on the many moments where Larry’s behavior makes you cringe, but just as often it makes you laugh out loud. Mistaking a baptism for a drowning and “saving” the guy? Priceless. Picking up a prostitute so that he can use the car pool lane? Priceless. Who knew that an all George Costanza show would be this funny?

#3 Chappelle’s Show

Chappelle and Brennan are the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the comedy world. In season one, they blasted out of the gate with a show that managed to be irreverent, scatological and smart all in the same show. And almost always funny. The “Clayton Bigsby” sketch is on the same level of Eddie Murphy’s famous “White Like Me” sketch from SNL. In season two, they settled into their comfort zone; secure in the fact that their fan base would be willing to go wherever they took them. The result? Hilariously absurd pieces like Rick James. I can’t even imagine how wild and weird season three will be.

#2 The Daily Show

In today’s pop culture, very few things live up to the hype. The Daily Show is one of the rare exceptions. Very smart and very funny is a damn tough combination to pull off. These guys do it four days a week with the news of the day. Impressive. If the folks over at Saturday Night Live had half a brain, they would be busy trying to steal some of their writers to rescue the perpetually moribund Weekend Update.

#1 The Wire

There isn’t even a close second. Not since Hill Street Blues has there been a more progressive police drama. Acting that’s nuanced yet, extremely raw and real. Writing that sounds sharp and true without being trite. Characters that refuse to be stereotyped. Storylines that demand twice as much attention as the next best drama but rewards the viewer for doing so. The Wire forces you to pay rapt attention to every second of every show. Each season unfolds carefully like a good novel. It should, since they have award-winning writers like George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and Dennis Lehane working on the show. It’s too bad that most television viewers confuse mouthy and snappy dialogue with good dialogue. Hence the perpetually fawning over The West Wing. Five years ago, and HBO drama broke new ground on television. The Wire blew past The Sopranos in its first season, and hasn’t looked back.

Citizens of Los Angeles. Good News.

2004-12-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

LAPD Plan to Curb Flashlight Beatings

LOS ANGELES - The city's police commission unveiled a plan Tuesday aimed at discouraging officers from using flashlights as weapons, except in emergencies.

The proposal comes months after a telvised beating by Officer John Hatfield showed him striking a motorist 11 times following a foot chase. The June 23 incident sparked widespread objection to the use of flashlights as weapons.

"Officers don't mind being held accountable as long as they have a clear policy to follow, and that's what we're providing here," said Alan Skobin, vice president of the police commission.

The proposed policy, to be considered Jan. 11, stops short of the near-total bans on practice enacted in other large cities. It states that flashlights should only be used for light and should only be used as a weapon in very unusual circumstances.

The proposal seems to permit officers to use flashlights to stop violent suspects, said Bob Baker, president of the Police Protective League, the Los Angeles Police Department officers' union.

"We support policies that, at the end of the watch, mean we are going home safe," Baker said.

Ricardo Garcia, criminal justice director of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) of Southern California, said the proposal was a good start.

"But I'd like to see them move away from even this permissive a use of flashlight," Garcia said. "On the positive side, at least this will give officers some training on how if they're going to strike with a flashlight to do it. Before this, they could pretty much do anything."

At the time of the Miller incident, the LAPD (news - web sites) had no formal policy on proper use of a flashlight to subdue a suspect.

After the beating, Chief William J. Bratton said he would forbid the use of heavy metal flashlights like the one used by Hatfield. Bratton said the department would develop small, lightweight rubber flashlights, which it is still in the process of doing.

The new proposal would require a written explanation and critical review whenever a flashlight is used as a weapon.

Where to?

2004-12-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

It’s been a rough few days over here in casa de Adams. There’s a TV show gearing up that I thought I’d be perfect for. No. I knew I’d be perfect for. I became acquaintances with the creator quite a while back, but lost touch with him over the past few years. I’d hoped to be able to get a spec that I wrote of the show in his hands before they made their decisions. It seems as if I’m too late.

The thing that frustrates me is that I know this persons point of view extremely well. The main reason is that he’s someone who thinks like I think on a lot of issues. Race, politics, music, etc. I also know the characters like the back of my hand. I honestly thought that this might be the thing to get me—and eventually, us—back to LA Now, it looks like I’ll have to cross my fingers and hope for a big fat advance for my book.

People keep asking us where we’re headed after Tucson, and we honestly have no idea. We’d both love to live in New York while we still have a little bit of party left in us, but we can’t even afford to live poorly in NYC right now. It’s frustrating because, creatively, it’s perfect for the both of us. A fiction writer/magazine writer and a comedian/non-fiction writer in NY sounds like a dream come true. The problem is that we need to really start getting a handle on things financially. Especially since we’re both ready to start banging out a few little Adamses.

We both love San Francisco, and Tasha has family there, but Frisco is just about as expensive as NY. And if I’m going to pay NY prices, you bet your sweet ass I’m going to live in NY. Or Tokyo.

LA seems like the obvious choice. We both have some professional connections there. We both have friends still there. I have some family there, and we’d be within driving distance of some of her family. Also, I want to beat LA. When we moved to Tucson, part of me felt like I was leaving LA with my tail between my legs. I made some progress in the comedy world there, but I didn’t accomplish nearly what I wanted to. Getting your foot in the door is almost worse than not gaining entry at all. It’s one thing to not be able to get a manager, but it’s worse having a manger tell you that, “You’re funny, you’re likable, you’re a really good joke writer. I just don’t know what we could do with you.” Someone actually told me that. And this was someone who’d had a client bomb at the Montreal Comedy Festival… and still was able to get a development deal. Imagine what he could do with someone who’s actually funny!

As much as the chance to live in NY excites me, I still want another crack at LA.

The Drug War Toll Mounts

2004-12-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-02-04.html

December 2, 2004

The Drug War Toll Mounts

by Radley Balko

Radley Balko is a policy analyst for the Cato Institute.

In Washington, D.C., a 27-year old quadriplegic is sentenced to ten days in jail for marijuana possession, where he dies under suspicious circumstances. In Florida, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patient now serves a 25-year prison sentence for using an out-of-state doctor to obtain pain medication. And in Palestine, Texas, prosecutors arrest 72 people -- all of them black -- and charge them with distributing crack cocaine. The scene bears a remarkable resemblance to a similar mass, mostly-black drug bust in nearby Tulia five years ago.

These examples aren't exceptional. They're typical. America's drug war marches on, impervious to efficacy, justice, or absurdity. Drug prohibition was nowhere to be found in Election 2004. There was no mention of it in the debates, the conventions, or the endless cable news campaign coverage.

In some ways, that was a blessing. Campaign discussion of drug prohibition has too often focused on which candidate took what drugs when, and who was more sorry for having done so.

While it's refreshing that we've moved beyond apologies, it's also true that under the laws many of today's politicians support, a kid who experiments with illicit drugs the same way many of them once did may not get the chance to finish school or go to college, much less run for political office.

The number of policymakers who've dared to question any aspect of the drug war could comfortably fit on the back of a pocket-sized edition of the Bill of Rights. This needs to change. America should reexamine its drug policy.

Today, federal and state governments spend between $40 and $60 billion per year to fight the war on drugs, about ten times the amount spent in 1980 -- and billions more to keep drug felons in jail. The U.S. now has more than 318,000 people behind bars for drug-related offenses, more than the total prison populations of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain combined.

Our prison population has increased by 400 percent since 1980, while the general population has increased just 20 percent. America also now has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- 732 of every 100,000 citizens are behind bars.

The drug war has wrought the zero tolerance mindset, asset forfeiture laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and countless exceptions to criminal defense and civil liberties protections. Some sociologists blame it for much of the plight of America's inner cities. Others point out that it has corrupted law enforcement, just as alcohol prohibition did in the 1920s.

On peripheral issues like medicinal marijuana and prescription painkillers, the drug war has treated chronically and terminally ill patients as junkies, and the doctors who treat them as common pushers. Drug war accoutrements, such as "no-knock" raids and searches, border patrols, black market turf wars and crossfire, and international interdiction efforts, have claimed untold numbers of innocent lives.

For all that sacrifice, are we at least winning?

Even by the government's own standards for success, the answer is unquestionably "no." The illicit drug trade is estimated to be worth $50 billion today ($400 billion worldwide), up from $1 billion 25 years ago. Annual surveys of high school seniors show heroin and marijuana are as available today than they were in 1975. Deaths from drug overdoses have doubled in the last 20 years.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the price of for a gram of heroin has dropped by about 38 percent since 1981, while the purity of that gram has increased six-fold. The price of cocaine has dropped by 50 percent, while its purity has increased by 70 percent. Just recently, the ONDCP waged a public relations campaign against increasingly pure forms of marijuana coming in from Canada.

So despite all of the money we've spent and people we've imprisoned, despite the damage done to our cities and the integrity of our criminal justice system, despite the restrictions we've allowed on our civil liberties, despite the innocent lives lost and the needless suffering we've imposed on sick people and their doctors -- despite all of this -- the drug trade isn't just thriving, it's growing. Illicit drugs are cheaper, more abundant, and of purer concentration than ever before.

Like alcohol prohibition before it, drug prohibition has failed, by every conceivable measure. Isn't it about time for America to take a hard look at its drug policy?

VidLit

2004-11-30T22:30:00.000-07:00

Hey, you know what someone should do? Someone should create a web site that shows movie trailers for books. But not those lame, formulaic action movie trailers. They should do them like those smart, noir thriller action trailers. Wouldn't that be a great idea?

Done. Ladies and gentlemen, VidLit.

Letters from Tucson

RIP

All in the game.

It's been one of those days.

This almost makes me want to sex Mutombo.

I can't decide which one is worse.

Now this is a shrewd deal.

You can't buy press like this.

George Bush does not like blind people.

From now on, I want to be known as Nickilinho

Cat haters come and take your L.

No disrespect to Judy Woodruff, but...

We have a new champion!

Affirmative Action

Baghdad ER

Rolling Stone: The Worst President in History?

Party!

Hey George, answer the fucking question.

This week in Nick

Flickr

Legalize it? Almost half of America thinks so.

Remember when. What they said about the Iraq War.

Take two and pass, Walter Cronkite.

Maximum Fun

And we're off.

Ladies...Damon Wayans wants to see your vagina.

Video Shows Bush Was Warned Before Katrina

Video Shows Bush Was Warned Before Katrina

It's coming...it's coming...it's coming...it's here!!!!

Haven't we evolved beyond this?

Damon Wayans wants to make "Nigga" jeans?

Actor Tries to Trademark 'N' Word

Let me get this straight. The VP shot a motherfucker?

Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter

Texas lawyer struck in face, chest with birdshot

Super!

Super Bowl City on the Brink

By Dave Zirin, AlterNetPosted on February 3, 2006, Printed on February 3, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/31635/

Lee Greenwood must be pissed

Finally. An explanation of Chappelle's behavior

Thanks, Rich.

Fuck you, Starbucks.

Comedy

One step closer

Jessica Simpson: Comedy Genius

Jimi Hendrix: Gay Like a Fox

Book: Hendrix Used Gay Ruse to Avoid 'Nam

Jimi Hendrix: Gay Like a Fox

Book: Hendrix Used Gay Ruse to Avoid 'Nam

Pray for Omarion

In London, uninjured singer Omarion seeks prayers

Friends in high places.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Hear that?

Way to go, Georgie!

...like Oklahoma City

Kensington Books throws down the gauntlet.

A Republican hypocrite? No way!

Nick Adams. Published author.

March Sadness

U.S. troops deaths in Iraq top 1,500

Even the crime in Tucson is odd.

Sometimes, I hate this country. Part Two.

Sometimes, I hate this country.

Dear St. Petersburg, FL NAACP

NAACP chief asks for bill to stop sales of 'death utensils'

Darryl Rouson says he's willing to go to jail if it helps stop stores from selling pipes and glass tubes that are used to smoke drugs.

Cats and dogs are yesterday's news.

A sad day in Playstation 2 history.

And people ask me why I left North Carolina.

I ♥ Chomsky

Johnny Carson's race problem.

Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee...

File this under "duh."

The biggest over-reaction in history.

This is the greatest and best music video in the world.

Sebastian Telfair did the right thing.

My Ipod weighs a ton.

The 10 best shows on television.

Citizens of Los Angeles. Good News.

By Dave Zirin, AlterNet
Posted on February 3, 2006, Printed on February 3, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31635/