And by "that" I mean whatever it is you're doing at the moment.
And by "awesome" I mean this interview of the great George Martin (the true "fifth Beatle" if ever there was one) for a BBC show called, aptly enough, "The Record Producers."
If you, like, like music and have even the barest hint of an iota of taste there-for, you'll be riveted und fascinated by selections from the Original! Master! Tapes! of several Beatles masterpieces coupled with Sir George's explanations thereof. Just the sub-divided tracks from "Come Together," one of the greatest damn songs of all freakin' time, will be far more than worth your while ifn' you've got even half an ear to hear.
Is it just me, or is this sort of article basically a complete waste of time? I mean, I'm not trying to pick on this Beinart guy in particular, and in fact he makes a couple salient points (particularly the one about Obama's wisdom in retaining Gates at Defense), but isn't his overall point, well, pointless? Has Petraeus even given any indication that he's interested in running for president? Even if he had (which, in fact, he hasn't), isn't it fairly asinine to discuss the possibly non-existent possibility in 2009, when any number of relevant events could, nay will, happen between now and the next election? Surely, the answers to the above questions are yes, yes, no, and yes, fer crissakes, yes.
Talk about premature speculation. This is how you get people actually wondering out loud if pols like Gray Davis and Charlie Crist -- bland big-state governors who both make Mr. Rogers look scintillating by comparison -- might one day be president. (Seriously, I actually heard talk about Davis pre-recall). At least Petraeus has a background that might make him a plausible candidate on the off chance that the stars align just right a couple years from now and he just maybe decides to run.
Meanwhile, anyone taking bets on Billy Bush in 2032?
Well, the world isn't all bad. Not every member of humanity is a detestable, lying, sack of crap. Take, for example, this BBC story about 16-year-old Babar Ali of India (well worth reading). Having created an unofficial school in his family's backyard that serves some 800 poor children at no cost, Ali is one individual who stands roughly at the opposite end of the morality spectrum from the insurance executives described lyrically here. Too bad the latter seem to be a dime a dozen and get to go on cable news shows constantly to spew their lies largely unchecked while people like Ali seem about as rare as unicorns.
It's hard to imagine there's much that hasn't already been said when it comes to this year's big health care debate. Listening to some tunes today, though, did provide a little food for thought. It occurred to me that "Dogs," the relatively overlooked but still epic second track off the Floyd's Animals LP, could very well have been subtitled "How to be an Insurance Executive." Consider the first two verses:
You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need. You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street, You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed. And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight, You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.
And after a while, you can work on points for style. Like the club tie, and the firm handshake, A certain look in the eye and an easy smile. You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, So that when they turn their backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in.
Crazy, huh? I mean, this is just like that Dark Side of Oz phenomenon -- it's just too freaky to be a coincidence! Somehow the Floyd recorded a song way back in 1977 that perfectly describes the behavior of present-day American health insurance executives!
Anyway, those who have had their lives ruined or seen loved ones die as a result of endless and callous insurance industry greed, may take some comfort in verses three and four:
You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder. You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older. And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south, Hide your head in the sand, Just another sad old man, All alone and dying of cancer.
And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown. And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone. And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around. So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone, Dragged down by the stone.
Well, that's karma for you. Still, as much as one can look forward to these a*holes getting what they deserve, I'd just as soon see Congress pass a solid public option so that no one can be victimized by them anymore. The biggest obstacle to that, though -- besides of course industry lobbyists themselves and their congressional lackeys -- are those dimwitted members of the public at large who for some mind-boggling reason seem to like getting abused by corporate vampires, those "thank-you-may-I-have-another-sir" types who protest tooth and nail to prevent changes that would actually benefit them personally at the expense of their corporate overlords. They go by many names -- teabaggers, troglodytes, masochists, morons -- and I think the next couple of verses are actually more about them than their beloved plutocrats:
Gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused. Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used. Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise. If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?
Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending That everyone's expendable and no one has a real friend. And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner And everything's done under the sun, And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.
Yes, they're a sad, cynical, and yet gullible bunch, but even they deserve a bill that treats health care as something more akin to a right than a privilege dependent on wealth and luck.
That said, if an opt-out option gets passed that allows some of the, er, stupider states to pass on the public option...well, it's their funeral, right? Then again, even the dumb states have children and some smart adults, so here's hoping they don't get left out in the cold thanks to the stupidity of their fellow citizens.
Right, so you'll have to just imagine a semi-decent imitation of Gary Coleman as I say, "Whatchoo talkin' bout, Nobel Prize Committee?"
I mean, in spite of various qualms, I basically support Obama's agenda, but even if he were to successfully enact most of it -- which is certainly an open question this early in his tenure -- I don't know that even then he'd be deserving of the freaking Peace Prize. Like, health care reform could still be an excellent change for this country (assuming it passes, and assuming it isn't just an insurance industry boondoggle without a solid public option), but even that would have very little to do with peace per se. Granted, this thing he's pushing about eliminating nuclear weapons sounds nice, and peaceful, enough, but that's a pipe dream that I'm sure even he doesn't take seriously. Meanwhile, the dude's presiding over a couple major wars, and even though he's obviously going to be far less belligerent and trouble making than his dimwitted predecessor, it's kind of a central part of his job description to, you know, be in charge of violent military operations.
In short, while Obama's election has already meant a significant change in tone, and while he may yet prove to be a great president, there's really not any plausible scenario in which he could really be deserving of the prize, at least not while in office. Ergo, this was an extremely stupid selection by the prize committee. And in fact, while they may have hoped to somehow encourage Obama with the award, it's hard to see how this will be anything more than a distraction and mild embarrassment to him considering how undeserving he is in comparison to countless activists around the world.
Of course, this is hardly the first time the prize committee has made a stupid decision, and while Obama's selection is something of a head-scratcher, to say the least, it's nowhere nearly as outrageous as the time they gave it to that war criminal Henry Kissinger. In fact, there are arguably plenty of other selections (Yassir Arafat, Menachem Begin, Teddy Roosvelt, etc.) that were significantly more ridiculous than today's. So, if anything, this will just serve to further blemish the award's already shame-stained reputation...Which is too bad, because it often does go to people who actually deserve it, just as it should every year.
Finally, how much does the prize committee hate George Bush? I mean, you'd think that with the Carter and Gore wins they'd have made their point, that maybe they'd give it a rest now that the fool has finally been put out to pasture. But no, it's hard to see this as not being at least partially a third rebuke to the cowboy president, a "here's-to-you-for-not-being-that-asshole" award for Obama. And while I, and I'm sure most of the rest of the world, can sympathize with the impulse, I think the award could certainly be put to far better use. History is already rendering its judgement against Bush, and it doesn't need anymore of the Nobel input to do so, thanks very much.
So today I'd like to inaugurate an occasional feature for which I'll no doubt have ample material. I'm calling it "Reading Between the Lies," and the basic idea will be to post interview clips of various public personages and officials and then point out the truth behind whatever lies, obfuscations, or non-answers they're peddling in the clips.
For this first clip, a little background is useful. If you have time, I'd recommend reading David Grann's much discussed piece in the New Yorker. Here's the short of it, though: My home state of Texas seems to have earned the dubious distinction of being the first state known to have executed an innocent man, namely Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death in 2004. As Grann's piece and other reporting makes clear, Willingham was certainly no saint (he beat his wife, among other things), but he could not reasonably have been found guilty of the murder of his three young children by arson for one very simple reason: there was no evidence that arson started the fire that killed them. Or so say all the leading fire experts who have looked at the evidence since his conviction and subsequent state-sponsored killing. And of course, if there was no evidence of the alleged crime (arson), then obviously a jury should not have have convicted Willingham of murder "beyond a reasonable doubt."
But they did. Why? Mainly, it would seem, because the prosecutor, John Jackson, did put forth investigators who testified that there was indeed evidence of arson. The problem, according to the aforementioned fire experts, was that these investigators apparently had no idea what they were talking about. What they said was evidence of arson simply wasn't.
So yeah, while the jury may be excused in light of that bogus testimony, the state of Texas executed an innocent man. Naturally, this has caused some consternation for various people, chief among them the aforementioned prosecutor John Jackson, who is now a judge, and Governor Rick Perry, who denied Willingham's appeals to halt the execution, in spite of the fact that serious questions had already been raised by then about the validity of the conviction. Depressingly, disgustingly, but in the end unsurprisingly, neither of these individuals has expressed any doubt, remorse, regret, etc. for the the central roles they played in putting an innocent man to death. Quite the contrary: in the loathsome tradition of politicians everywhere -- one which reached its most recent nadir in the person of fellow Texan George W. Bush -- these guys are all about the ass-covering, and have steadfastly refused to admit that maybe, just maybe, they made a mistake, and Willingham should not have been put to death...
Anyway, I think that's preamble enough. Here then, is the clip in question, and I direct your attention particularly to the first minute and a half:
So what's really going on here? How can this slug of a human being, John Jackson, dare to defend these ridiculous assertions about Willingham being a devil worshiper? Well, I think the truth is pretty clear: Jackson is one of those attorneys, one among all too many, who would do or say anything to win a case. And, in what was then a relatively obscure case in some podunk Texas town back in 1991, he figured (probably correctly, alas) that he could get some mileage out of the idiotic idea that the burn patterns suggested a pentagram, and that Willingham's affinity for Iron Maiden must've meant he loved Satan. Sure, why not? Hickville, TX, 1991 -- the jury would eat that up...
But then, fast forward 18 years -- the case has since become famous for all the wrong reasons, and now national media are asking Jackson to defend his prosecution. Can he do it? Well, he's damn well gonna try. But that's the most despicable thing about this clip: there's no way in hell that Jackson believes a single word he's saying. He may be dumb for a lawyer, but even he's not that stupid, and it's written all over his smug little face. He knows damn well that the devil worship charge is complete bullshit, but he's never gonna take it back now, come hell or high water...
Well, along those lines, if there is a devil, I imagine he's keeping a special spot warm for judge John Jackson.
Oh great, so it looks like that article about Ahmadinejad's Jewish ancestry was completely bogus. So says the Guardian anyway, and their refutation is, alas, far more convincing in its detail than the Telegraph's report.
So what's the real story here? I think one has to file this under "The Continuing Plummet of Journalistic Integrity and Accuracy." I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable that I and the hundreds of thousands of other people who read the article took it at face value when it contained firm declarations like the following: "he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver" and "a London-based expert on Iranian Jewry said that 'jian' ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews." And this in a "quality" paper that was founded, according to Wikipedia, way back in 1855.
Nonetheless, the Guardian's demolition of the above claims is quite thorough. So where the hell were the fact-checkers? And more disturbingly, will the Telegraph even truly regret their nonsense, or after the inevitable mea culpa, will they secretly not mind that the huge amount of traffic they drew was for piece that would've been better suited to the birther boosters over at World Net Daily? That I can even ask the question tells you something about the state of journalism (or "journalism"?) in the world today.
As for Ahmadi himself, no doubt he will cite this as proof of the myriad conspiracies against him and the regime. Which is not to say that he and his cronies have shown any compunction about making up lies out of whole cloth, but it certainly doesn't help matters to hand him a propaganda tool that'll actually seem to have some hint of truth to it. So thanks for that, too, Telegraph.
Anyhow, we all know that Ahmadinejad's an evil little worm, whatever his heritage, and we can only continue to hope that those he has oppressed will one day rise up to crush him beneath their feet, but it looks like this whole Telegraph episode will actually help rather than hurt him, assuming it makes any difference at all.
Update: Adam Sandler-inspired alternative post title: "Ahmadinejad...not a Jew! But you know who is? Hall of famer Rod Carew!"
