Today’s Papers

today’s papers
Iraq, the Vote
By Sam Schechner
Updated Monday, Jan. 31, 2005, at 4:32 AM PT

Everyone leads (online, at least) with Election Day in Iraq, where the turnout was unexpectedly high and the mood jubilant. As many as 8 million people, or almost 60 percent of eligible voters, cast ballots, sometimes within earshot of insurgents’ repeated mortar, rocket, machine gun, and suicide attacks, which proved less deadly than feared but still killed 44. "The election was a victory of our own making," Iraq’s national security chief told the New York Times. "Today, the Iraqi people voted with their own blood."

Or, put another way: "It’s like a wedding. I swear to God, it’s a wedding for all of Iraq," the director of a polling station in a Sunni area of Baghdad told the Washington Post. "No one has ever witnessed this before. For a half-century, no one has seen anything like it. And we did it ourselves."

According to the Post‘s ambitious lead—which wraps together reporting from several staffers and 12 Iraqi stringers in eight cities—the battle-weary country "took on the veneer of a festival, as crowds danced, chanted and played soccer in streets secured by thousands of Iraqi and American forces." Everyone notes that many voters ventured to the polls in their best clothes, often accompanied by their children, and returned proudly brandishing their indigo-stained fingers. In a Baghdad scene piece, the NYT‘s John Burns writes, "Foreigners who have been visiting Iraq for 15 years and knew the tension that crackled under Mr. Hussein could remember no other day when the city, in wide areas, seemed so much at ease."

And so it was a rare day in which, according to USA Today and the NYT, both Al Jazeera and Fox News broadcasted much of the same upbeat news. The newspapers, for their part, all post moving photo galleries.

Most of the papers say up high that voting in some Sunni areas exceeded the meager expectations. In one Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, election officials told the WP that 1,500 of 2,500 residents made it to the polls. The Post implies that turnout in Sunni areas increased throughout the day as attacks turned out to be less deadly and widespread than advertised.

But the more you read, especially in the regional dispatches in the Los Angeles Times and WP, the more the Sunni story becomes mixed. While some small Sunni towns reportedly ran out of ballots because of unexpected demand, the LAT says only 1,700 votes were cast in the entire insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, a city of 400,000. (Apparently, insurgents telephoned some potential voters, warning them to stay home.) In Baji, the NYT‘s lead says election workers didn’t bother to show up.

Meanwhile, in Sunni-majority melting pot Mosul, which has seen fierce fighting in recent months, the NYT and LAT say voters were lined up outside many polling stations, but a WP reporter who visited all of the poll sites in the city’s ravaged southeast quadrant only saw four voters over the course of the day. "Of course I want to vote; we all want to vote," said one resident there, who was visited at home. "We waited 50 years for this. But everyone is afraid." On a wall across the street, graffitti offered a warning: "Anyone who votes will be beheaded."

By contrast, Kurds and Shiites voted in droves: In Irbil, two Kurdish women spent more than nine hours attempting to vote, after being turned away from several polling stations where the ballot boxes were full. And the NYT, WP, and LAT all file reports from the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where some 85 percent of eligible voters turned up at the polls.

The Wall Street Journal‘s front-page story (subscription required) is, bizarrely, alone (as far as TP can see) in putting the casualty count in perspective by mentioning the total number of insurgent attacks yesterday: 175, well more than the recent average of 50 to 60, not that the U.S. makes these numbers public any more. Inside, the Journal also highlights the role of homegrown militias (sub. req.), such as the "Defenders of Baghdad Brigade," in securing polling sites across the country. Many such groups began spontaneously springing up over the last month and U.S. forces decided to back them, outfitting some with weaponry and body armor. The NYT, for its part, fronts a story on the massive security effort that helped keep the deaths from mounting.

The WP has a separate, must-read story on the aftermath of a morning suicide bombing in an affluent section of Baghdad. Although the polling station initially closed, voters refused to go home. Some even volunteered to man an additional security perimeter, even "though this duty meant standing amid flecks of the flesh of the last officer who had the job."

Everyone flags the downing of a British C-130 transport plane in Iraq, killing about 10 soldiers.

And all the editorial pages—boldly—come out in favor of democracy, while attempting to weave yesterday’s events into their respective master narratives. The WSJ clucks at liberals who it says opposed the election. The NYT rejoices in Iraqis’ courage but reserves "grave doubts about the overall direction of American strategy." Meanwhile the WP distills a welcome moral to the story:

Yesterday, however, Americans finally got a good look at who they are fighting for: millions of average people who have suffered for years under dictatorship and who now desperately want to live in a free and peaceful country. Their votes were an act of courage and faith—and an answer to the question of whether the mission in Iraq remains a just cause.

Elsewhere in the world: The Israeli defense minister said yesterday that Israel is ready to hand over control of four West Bank cities to Palestinian security forces. Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas are set to meet on Feb. 8. … SBC Communications and AT&T have agreed to a deal in which SBC will likely buy its former parent for approximately $16 billion, creating the nation’s largest telecommunications company. … The WP reports that congressional Republicans have emerged from a weekend retreat with a confidential 104-page marketing plan for their partial privatization of Social Security, replete with focus-group-tested phrasing and a golden nest egg on the cover.

Please accept this label … The Post‘s Al Kamen flags a direct-mailing sent out to potential supporters by the Alliance for Retired Americans, a group set up to oppose Social Security privatization. One such packet, sent to a man named Herbert Kaiser, was addressed as follows, (Kamen says he changed the street address to protect the man’s privacy):

Mr. Herbert Kaiser
Jewish
201 Main Street
Palo Alto, CA

The complimentary address labels included in the package were pre-printed with the same helpful demographic information. "Jews were not singled out," clarified an Alliance spokeswoman. "I know for a fact that people of other religions, Catholic and Hindu, for instance, were labeled."

Sam Schechner is a freelance writer in New York.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2112889/

Book Review Women’s role in Society

Monday, January 31, 2005
3:52:04 PM
Viewed 1 time January 30, 2005
‘Lot’s Daughters’: Sodom and Lewinsky
By KATHRYN HARRISON
LOT’S DAUGHTERS
Sex, Redemption, and Women’s Quest for Authority.
By Robert M. Polhemus.
Illustrated. 432 pp. Stanford University Press. $29.95.
LET’S free-associate. Monica: Bill; thong underwear; oral sex in the Oval Office; Ken Starr; impeachment; semen on a blue dress; Linda Tripp; and, if you’re Robert M. Polhemus, the reason that ”the full Lot text moved from relative obscurity into new prominence in the 20th century.”

”Lot’s Daughters: Sex, Redemption, and Women’s Quest for Authority” is Polhemus’s dispatch from the place he calls Daughterland, where Oedipus is irrelevant, his filial complex eclipsed by a sister condition, ”the Lot complex.” Remember Lot? It’s his wife we’ve been told to keep in mind, that pillar of salt Christ made the indelible image of failing to renounce past corruption altogether. Lot we prefer to forget. As told in Genesis 19, Lot fled the annihilation of Sodom, lost his mate because she couldn’t resist a backward glance and ended up in a cave with his two daughters, who conspired to get him drunk and then seduced him.

”The Lot story is shocking,” Polhemus says, ”does describe offensive behavior, does probe shameful erotic secrets,” which might not be so troubling were it not included in the Judeo-Christian canon. But it is; what’s more, biblical genealogy traces Lot’s seed through David all the way to Jesus. Ultimately, the hope of mankind, of ”a new heaven and a new earth,” arrives through an act of incest. The intercourse described is not iconoclastic so much as it is desperate, the price of having a future. Lot’s daughters believed themselves and their father the sole survivors of universal destruction; humankind, they thought, depended on their breaking taboo by having sex with their father.

The story becomes a complex — the Lot complex — because its ”primal interest imposes itself upon history, religion, art and individual psychology, and people in turn impose their history, experience, personal mind-sets and imaginative skills on the biblical text.” Polhemus doesn’t invent the Lot complex any more than Freud invented the Oedipus complex. What he does — thoroughly and brilliantly — is identify what has existed for millenniums of recorded history, introducing diverse examples of the archetypal transaction between a young, sometimes very young, woman and the man who, if he isn’t actually her father, is old enough to substitute.

So welcome to Daughterland, where we don’t read much Hemingway, or grill meat outdoors, and where we’re mystified, and a little bored, by all the hysteria over Oedipus, who didn’t even know it was his mother he was sleeping with. Oh, he was unlucky, certainly, so unlucky that he happened into what’s more usually the female contretemps of being sullied by sex. But can you imagine if every woman who discovered herself the unwitting accomplice to her own defilement thrust pins into her eyes? Seeing Eye dogs would march cheek by jowl down supermarket aisles.

Polhemus is the chairman of the English department at Stanford University, but ”Lot’s Daughters” is not (or not merely) an academic unpacking of text. Its material includes paintings and movies and scandals — an exciting array of opportunities, from Midrash to Monicagate, each offering an answer to Daughterland’s eternal, critical question: what do young women want? What do Jane Eyre and Catherine Earnshaw want? Is their deepest desire distinguishable from that of their creators, Charlotte and Emily Bronte? What will Dora take from Dr. Freud in exchange for his penetrating her unconscious? For what does Lolita use Humbert’s lust? Why did Soon-Yi Previn choose Woody Allen as her benefactor over Mia Farrow? And what about Monica Lewinsky — did she get it, whatever it is, from Bill Clinton?

Men have power. At this late date, they still run everything — churches and states and multinational corporations. They invent — machines, institutions, ideas. They claim the moral high ground, make and enforce laws, break them when it’s advantageous. They’re potent; they have seed women require to project themselves — and men — into the future. And the coupling need not necessarily be sexual. Knowledge, position and money are disseminated, too. Sometimes the woman who trades fecundity for position in this world, and in the next, is a girl and the man is her father, symbolically if not biologically. (If her mother isn’t as dead as a pillar of salt, she’s past bearing life, and looks it.) The moral of ”Lottish” tales is that incest (and, to a lesser degree, the intercourse of older men and younger women) is ”the human experience that epitomizes the vulnerability of women, the potential for moral degeneration in family structure, and the need to control raw male lust.”

Whether Monica Lewinsky, one of the ”disposable hotties who serve as moral warnings about bad parenting and the evils of libido” (i.e., the anti-Chelsea, who represents ”nice daughters who deserve and need paternal protection”), succeeded in ”controlling” male lust is a matter of debate. Certainly she parlayed it into fame, her blue dress the means of literally following the original Lot’s daughter’s command to ”preserve seed of our father.” Polhemus, writing ”on the side of the angels, telling of women’s progress and men’s progress too,” implies that Lewinsky’s refusal to present herself as a victim may be news as good for women as Monica herself was bad news for Bill, ushering in an era in which women needn’t apologize for ambition, even when it’s vulgar and destructive. After all, she didn’t.

”Educational history of the last two centuries features an academic Lot complex,” Polhemus observes, a little slyly. Indeed. ”Lot’s Daughters” raises consciousness of a permanent and morally ambiguous fact of life. Reading Polhemus will make it difficult to enjoy a novel, watch television or follow the lives in People magazine without remembering the complex he identifies. He’s that rare teacher whose class you don’t cut because what you get isn’t information but an essential way of seeing the world around you.

Kathryn Harrison is the author of the memoir ”The Kiss.” Her new novel, ”Envy,” will be published in July.

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Iraq Elections

Monday, January 31, 2005
12:17:57 PM
Viewed 6 times January 31, 2005
Groups Criticize ‘Baby’ for Message on Suicide
By SHARON WAXMAN

When the Clint Eastwood film "Million Dollar Baby" came out last month, critics praised the film for its subtle power, moving performances and the quiet confidence of its director. But not wanting to give away its ending, few mentioned that a controversial social issue was buried in its plot.

But now that it has been nominated for seven Oscars, social activists and conservative commentators have emerged to criticize the film, which they say sends a message advocating assisted suicide.

Defenders of the film say its intention is not to make a broad political statement, and that it is the filmmakers’ right to tell the story he or she chooses. (Those who have not seen the movie and do not wish to know the plot may not want to read further.)

The movie is not principally about assisted suicide and euthanasia. "Million Dollar Baby" tells the story of a young woman (Hilary Swank) who strives to be a champion boxer, being groomed by a crusty old trainer, played by Mr. Eastwood.

But when her character is badly injured and paralyzed, Mr. Eastwood’s character must decide whether to help her die, and ultimately – despite the urging of a priest to do otherwise – does so.

Both Ms. Swank and Mr. Eastwood were nominated for their performances, along with Morgan Freeman, playing an ex-boxer, who is up for best supporting actor. Mr. Eastwood was also nominated for his direction, and the film is up for best picture.

Conservative critics including Michael Medved, Rush Limbaugh and Debbie Schlussel have criticized the film widely on the air and elsewhere, with Ms. Schlussel calling the film "a left-wing diatribe" on her Web site, a somewhat unusual claim given Mr. Eastwood’s status as a gun-slinging Dirty Harry and real-life history as a Republican former mayor of Carmel, Calif.

But advocates for the rights of the disabled are also taking aim, saying the character’s decision to die sends the wrong message to those struggling to deal with spinal cord injuries.

"Any movie that sends a message that having a spinal cord injury is a fate worse than death is a movie that concerns us tremendously," said Marcie Roth, executive director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association. She cited a letter from a mother with a paralyzed son, who said the film had made it more difficult for her to keep hope alive in him.

Others are angrier still. "This movie is a corny, melodramatic assault on people with disabilities," wrote Stephen Drake on the Web site of a Chicago-based activist group called Not Dead Yet, which picketed the film there this month. "It plays out killing as a romantic fantasy and gives emotional life to the ‘better dead than disabled’ mindset lurking in the heart of the typical (read: nondisabled) audience member." Mr. Eastwood said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he was not surprised at the protest, but that the film was not about the right to die. "The film is supposed to make you think about the precariousness of life and how we handle it," he said. "How the character handles it is certainly different than how I might handle it if I were in that position in real life. Every story is a ‘what if.’ "

Mr. Eastwood noted that the movie is based on a story by F. X. Toole and hews closely to his plot. "That’s one person’s feeling," he said of Mr. Toole’s story. "He wrote that as her desires. Probably no quadriplegic has ever not asked himself that question, or ever broached that subject. It’s the ultimate trauma a person could suffer, short of losing all bodily control."

Gannon Boyd, a son of Mr. Toole (who died in 2002), said that his father suffered throughout his life from heart trouble and had strong feelings about not wanting to live in a reduced state. But, he stressed, it was Mr. Toole’s personal choice, not something he preached for other people.

"My dad was never saying, ‘This person isn’t worth anything, so kill him,’ " said Mr. Boyd. "That wasn’t it. If you see the movie, Clint Eastwood’s character is doing the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, and if you read the story you’ll see, it’s the same thing. It’s never a rubber stamp approval, and that was never his intention."

What is puzzling about some of the protest about the film is that another Oscar-nominated, and critically lauded film this year, the Spanish-language "The Sea Inside," up for best foreign-language film, is primarily about assisted suicide and euthanasia. But it seems to have attracted little controversy.

The film, by director Alejandro Amenábar, tells the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro, a quadriplegic who fought a 30-year battle with the Spanish government for his right to end his own life. In the film, Javier Bardem plays Sampedro, who is ultimately helped to die by a woman who loves him.

Ms. Roth of the Spinal Cord Injury Association said she had not seen that film yet, but intended to.

With pitched campaigns now part and parcel of Oscar season, controversy over nominated films has become a part of the lobbying process, with suspicions rife over competitors smearing films in the lead for best picture.

While there is no evidence that this is the case with "Million Dollar Baby," in response to the film’s attackers, the critic Roger Ebert has questioned whether movies are supposed to make choices that will satisfy the concerns of all viewers.

"The characters in movies do not always do what we would do," he wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday. "That is their right. It is our right to disagree with them." He added, "What kind of movies would there be if everyone in them had to do what we thought they should do?"

Said Mr. Eastwood: "You don’t have to like incest to watch Hamlet. But it’s in the story."

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Michael Jackson Trial

Monday, January 31, 2005
11:34:14 AM
Viewed 1 time January 31, 2005
Jury Selection Begins in Jackson’s Trial
By JOHN M. BRODER

SANTA MARIA, Calif., Jan. 30 – Fourteen months after a small army of sheriff’s deputies laid siege to Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch seeking evidence of lewd acts by Mr. Jackson with a 13-year-old cancer patient, jury selection began today in California’s latest and greatest celebrity show trial.

Mr. Jackson arrived at the courthouse here today just before noon Eastern time, dressed all in white and surrounded by a team of lawyers and bodyguards, one of whom held a parasol to shade him from the sun. As he got out of a black vehicle, he waved to the throngs of fans and other onlookers, and the hundreds of news media representatives who have crowded the steps of the small courthouse here.

This will be the setting for what promises to be a months-long legal saga, whose every procedure and turn will be televised, pored over and otherwise dissected by the industry spawned by celebrity trials.

Mr. Jackson, who has said he is not guilty of child-molesting charges brought against him, did not say anything today before going through the metal detectors at the entrance to the courtroom, and a strict gag order will limit what is known about the proceedings.

But this morning, Mr. Jackson’s parents, Katherine and Joe Jackson, told CBS’s "The Early Show" that their son’s accuser was only after his money.

"I know my son, and this is ridiculous," Mrs. Jackson said in the interview. She said people who believe her son is guilty "don’t know him."

Mr. Jackson’s father said racism was behind the accusations, as well as financial gain: "It’s about money."

On Sunday, with his liberty, his livelihood and what is left of his reputation riding on the outcome of the trial, Mr. Jackson himself made a pre-emptive move by releasing a videotaped statement, approved by the judge, in which he proclaims his innocence. In the videotape, Mr. Jackson responded to reputed grand jury reports leaked to the news media over the last few weeks that said his accuser, who is now 15, had testified that the entertainer groped him and plied him with alcohol two years ago.

On the videotape, Mr. Jackson denied the accusations against him, pleaded for a fair hearing from the jury and the public, and predicted he would ultimately be "acquitted and vindicated."

"In the last few weeks, a large amount of ugly, malicious information has been released into the media about me," Mr. Jackson, 46, said in the video, which he released on his Web site, http://www.mjjsource.com. "Apparently, this information was leaked through transcripts in a grand jury proceeding where neither my lawyers, nor I, ever appeared. The information is disgusting and false."

The entertainer said he had invited the boy and his family to stay at his Neverland ranch because they had told him the boy was ill with cancer and needed his help. Over the years, he said, he has helped thousands of similar children who were ill or in distress.

"These events have caused a nightmare for my family, my children and me," Mr. Jackson said. "I never intend to place myself in so vulnerable a position ever again.

"I love my community, and I have great faith in our justice system. Please keep an open mind and let me have my day in court," he continued. "I deserve a fair trial like every other American citizen. I will be acquitted and vindicated when the truth is told."

Mr. Jackson’s life and music career have seemed on a downward spiral for the past decade, beginning with similar accusations involving sex with a young boy in 1993, which Mr. Jackson settled out of court for $15 million to $20 million.

The attention this new case has generated has further damaged the onetime King of Pop’s already bizarre image and slashed his economic value. Music industry executives said conviction on some or all of the counts against him could effectively end his career as a public performer, although he still stands to profit from royalties on music catalogs he controls.

Hundreds of prospective jurors are expected to be screened for service on a trial that court officials project will last into the summer. Nearly 1,000 reporters, photographers, television technicians and courtroom artists have applied for credentials to cover the trial, which will be re-enacted nightly by a combined British-American television group that includes E! Entertainment.

Months of pretrial maneuvering have already produced thousands of pages of legal pleadings and teased a global audience awaiting the lurid details of Mr. Jackson’s extravagant and eccentric life at his 2,700-acre private Xanadu in the hills between Santa Maria and Santa Barbara.

The case itself offers all the elements of a pop culture roundelay, including a music superstar who likens himself to Peter Pan; a grandfatherly prosecutor who has pursued him for 12 years; a silver-maned chief defense lawyer who is a colorful defender of the famous and the downtrodden alike, and a scandal-saturated media horde, many of them fresh from the Scott Peterson murder case. And throngs of Jackson groupies are promising daily courthouse rallies.

Court documents and pretrial arguments indicate that evidence will include testimony from experts on Mr. Jackson’s finances, sexually explicit books and magazines taken from Mr. Jackson’s bedroom, notes written by the performer to his young accuser, and a pair of white briefs, boy’s size small.

The stern ringmaster in the case, Judge Rodney S. Melville of Santa Barbara County Superior Court, has conducted the pretrial action under extraordinary secrecy. The judge sealed virtually every piece of paper and silenced all the lawyers and other parties to the case under threat of jail time.

The lawyers have complied with the judge’s order silencing them. But hundreds of pages of explicit grand jury testimony recently leaked out and have hurtled around the globe on the Internet and on ABC News programs.

In the final pretrial hearing before Judge Melville on Friday, Gordon Auchincloss, one of the lead prosecutors, said he expected the trial to produce "scorched-earth combat." "There’s no mystery this will be a very contentious lawsuit," Mr. Auchincloss said.

Judge Melville, offering his final commentary before the legal winds begin to howl on Monday, noted dryly that he had felt a marked increase in tension around the courthouse. "Tempers are beginning to get short," he said. "There is a lot of pressure on everyone to have a case of such public scrutiny."

The defense team, led by Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., has made it clear it is going to put the accuser and his family on trial, accusing them of changing their stories and seeking to extort millions from Mr. Jackson. And the defense lawyers clearly intend to put the state on trial as well, beginning with the Santa Barbara County district attorney, Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., who they contend has a long-running vendetta against Mr. Jackson.

After his first run-in with Mr. Sneddon over the 1993 pedophilia accusations, Mr. Jackson wrote a satirical song about a "Dom Sheldon" who "really tried to take me down by surprise." The song’s refrain, rendered "Dom Sheldon is a cold man" in the liner notes, sounds very much like "Tom Sneddon" on the album.

Mr. Sneddon, in his sixth and final four-year term as district attorney, is leading the prosecution himself. He was asked early on if he believed Mr. Jackson had gotten away with a crime in 1993.

"I think there’s a sense in the public that he did that," Mr. Sneddon said. "My feeling about this is I’m sad that there’s another victim out there."

The trial will exert pressure on Mr. Jackson’s financial empire, which has appeared increasingly fragile in recent years. Even his close advisers say he is an extravagant spender whose wealth has been eroded by an overly lavish lifestyle, poor investments and a rogue’s gallery of business associates.

Mr. Jackson has taken out an estimated $270 million in loans from Bank of America Corporation, backed by his two major music-publishing catalogs, and at least part of the debt must be repaid – or refinanced – – by early 2006, according to advisers close to Mr. Jackson.

For his income, Mr. Jackson relies heavily on the profits from the two publishing companies, which generate sales when the songs they own are recorded or licensed for commercials, films and the like. There has been speculation for years that Mr. Jackson might put his publishing assets on the auction block to pay off his loans, and there is little doubt that such a move could help clear his balance sheet.

Mijac Music, which holds the copyrights to Mr. Jackson’s own hit compositions and other songs, including "People Get Ready" by Curtis Mayfield, has been valued at roughly $75 million. Mr. Jackson’s share of Sony/ATV, a joint venture with the Sony Corporation that holds rights to the Beatles hits, is worth perhaps $400 million or more, music executives say.

Mr. Jackson’s worth as a performer, once of incalculable value but steadily declining for years, hinges on the outcome of the trial, industry executives said.

"If he’s convicted, that’d be a tough mountain to climb," said Steve Rennie, the former West Coast general manager for Sony’s Epic Records label, which releases Mr. Jackson’s albums. But even if he is acquitted, the prospects for a lucrative new contract appear dim, Mr. Rennie said, noting that Mr. Jackson’s music is extremely expensive to produce.

Nevertheless, Mr. Rennie said, Mr. Jackson still could cash in on the international concert circuit, and even perhaps profit from his new notoriety.

"Forgetting Michael Jackson’s personal circus, there was never a more electrifying performer, ever," he said. "It’s a big world out there. I think there are promoters that would step up."

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Torture and Detention in Military Prisons Run By Military

Monday, January 31, 2005
11:15:02 AM
Viewed 6 times January 30, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Torture Chicks Gone Wild
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

By the time House Republicans were finished with him, Bill Clinton must have thought of a thong as a torture device.

For the Bush administration, it actually is.

A former American Army sergeant who worked as an Arabic interpreter at Gitmo has written a book pulling back the veil on the astounding ways female interrogators used a toxic combination of sex and religion to try to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba. It’s not merely disgusting. It’s beyond belief.

The Bush administration never worries about anything. But these missionaries and zealous protectors of values should be worried about the American soul. The president never mentions Osama, but he continues to use 9/11 as an excuse for American policies that bend the rules and play to our worst instincts.

"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the former sergeant, Erik R. Saar, 29, told The Associated Press. The A.P. got a manuscript of his book, deemed classified pending a Pentagon review.

What good is it for President Bush to speak respectfully of Islam and claim Iraq is not a religious war if the Pentagon denigrates Islamic law – allowing its female interrogators to try to make Muslim men talk in late-night sessions featuring sexual touching, displays of fake menstrual blood, and parading in miniskirt, tight T-shirt, bra and thong underwear?

It’s like a bad porn movie, "The Geneva Monologues." All S and no M.

The A.P. noted that "some Guantánamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by ‘prostitutes.’ "

Mr. Saar writes about what he calls "disturbing" practices during his time in Gitmo from December 2002 to June 2003, including this anecdote related by Paisley Dodds, an A.P. reporter:

A female military interrogator who wanted to turn up the heat on a 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before 9/11 removed her uniform top to expose a snug T-shirt. She began belittling the prisoner – who was praying with his eyes closed – as she touched her breasts, rubbed them against the Saudi’s back and commented on his apparent erection.

After the prisoner spat in her face, she left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner’s reliance on God. The linguist suggested she tell the prisoner that she was menstruating, touch him, and then shut off the water in his cell so he couldn’t wash.

"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," Mr. Saar recounted, adding: "She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee. As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, ‘Who sent you to Arizona?’ He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred. She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward," breaking out of an ankle shackle.

"He began to cry like a baby," the author wrote, adding that the interrogator’s parting shot was: "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

A female civilian contractor kept her "uniform" – a thong and miniskirt – on the back of the door of an interrogation room, the author says.

Who are these women? Who allows this to happen? Why don’t the officers who allow it get into trouble? Why do Rummy and Paul Wolfowitz still have their jobs?

The military did not deny the specifics, but said the prisoners were treated "humanely" and in a way consistent "with legal obligations prohibiting torture." However the Bush White House is redefining torture these days, the point is this: Such behavior degrades the women who are doing it, the men they are doing it to, and the country they are doing it for.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to squeeze information out of detainees. But isn’t it simply more effective to throw them in isolation and try to build some sort of relationship?

I doubt that the thong tease works as well on inmates at Gitmo as it did on Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.

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Chris Rock Academy Awards Host 2005

Friday, January 28, 2005
8:25:36 PM
Viewed 1 time Addressing concerns about his brand of comedy and the Academy Awards, Chris Rock said: "I’ve been on ‘Oprah’ four times. That’s four hours of daytime television, and I had a good old curse-free time."

January 20, 2005
This Oscar Host Is Willing to Call It as He Sees It
By LOLA OGUNNAIKE

Correction Appended

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Jan. 18 – The Oscar nominations have yet to be announced, but Chris Rock, the host of next month’s Academy Awards ceremony, has already decided who one of the evening’s big winners should be: Jamie Foxx, the star of the biopic "Ray."

"I am rooting for Jamie, and if he doesn’t win, I’m going to talk about it on the show," Mr. Rock promised, a sly grin tiptoeing across his face. And if Mr. Foxx comes up empty? "I’ll take an Oscar from one of the sound or light people that win and give it to him," Mr. Rock said. "Jamie Foxx is not going to walk out of that place without an Oscar."

He was no less forthright about his pans. Of "The Aviator," Martin Scorsese’s drama about Howard Hughes, the germ-phobic Hollywood mogul, Mr. Rock said: "It’s a weird movie; it’s well made, but a story about a rich guy who gets things done doesn’t excite me. Oooh, he overcame obstacles, like how much money to spend. And he washed his hands a lot."

The casting of the acerbic Mr. Rock as host of the 77th annual Oscars, which ABC will broadcast on Feb. 27, is an untraditional move for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which in recent years has chosen less caustic comedians like Billy Crystal and Steve Martin to serve as M.C.

"Edgy is the word that keeps coming up," Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive director, said. "I like to hear that people are nervous, because that means you’re more likely to watch."

With ratings for NBC’s Golden Globes broadcast down 40 percent from a year ago and few of the expected nominees doing huge box-office numbers, an even heavier weight to both attract and keep an audience is being placed on Mr. Rock’s narrow shoulders. Gilbert Cates, the executive producer of the broadcast, said he was also hoping that Mr. Rock would draw more young male viewers than have watched recent Oscar shows.

ABC has yet to decide if it will impose a time delay on the show, but Mr. Cates said that he and the academy were opposed. Mr. Rock said he expected a delay in the wake of Janet Jackson’s performance at the Super Bowl last year. "What Janet pulled out was not a breast," Mr. Rock said. "You pull out breasts for mammograms. You pull out breasts to feed children. What Janet pulled out was – " Here the comic used a word that a delay would most certainly bleep from the Oscars.

In 1999 when the director Elia Kazan received an honorary Oscar, Mr. Rock called him a "rat" during a brief but biting routine on the show, making reference to Mr. Kazan’s McCarthy-era conduct. Still, Mr. Rock said that he could understand what all the fretting is about. "I’ve been on ‘Oprah’ four times," he said. "That’s four hours of daytime television, and I had a good old curse-free time."

He turned serious briefly. "This act works everywhere," he said picking at a cheeseburger in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. "I’ll play the Apollo and the Senate in the same day and tear both places apart. Bill Cosby works everywhere. Richard Pryor works everywhere. Ray Romano used to open up shows for me in front of all-black audiences and he would kill. He would kill so much I would be nervous to go on after him."

"If something is funny," Mr. Rock continued with a shrug that read, duh, "people like it."

He has hired a team of 10 writers, including Ali LeRoi and Wanda Sykes, who both worked with him on his HBO series, "The Chris Rock Show." On Mr. Martin’s advice, the team also includes John Max, a "Tonight" show writer who has worked on the Oscars with Mr. Martin and Mr. Crystal. "Sight unseen I hired the guy," Mr. Rock said. "And you know what? He’s really good." He said he also planned to seek pointers from Mr. Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg – who was criticized for off-color humor when she was the host in 1999.

Mr. Cates said no restrictions had been placed on Mr. Rock. "He doesn’t need me to explain what the realities of network television are," he said. "I think it would be both undignified and inappropriate."

So what subjects, if any, will Mr. Rock avoid?

"A ‘Vera Drake’ joke probably won’t play," he said, nor will a "Motorcycle Diaries" riff. "You’ve got to talk about ‘Passion of the Christ,’ whether it gets nominated or not. And you’ve got to talk about ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’. You’ve got to play to what the audience at home went to see."

His days now consist of screening past Academy Awards shows and catching as many movies as possible, at least three a week now, a pace that will have to pick up as the broadcast approaches. Mr. Rock is also tweaking material at comedy clubs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The comedian said he would probably try out some jokes at senior citizen homes, too. He was not kidding.

Mr. Rock is no awards show novice. He was a host of the MTV Video Music Awards in 1997, 1999 and 2003. Van Toffler, president of the MTV Networks Group, called the academy’s choice of Mr. Rock "brilliant."

"I’ve seen Chris at benefits and I’ve seen him do clubs," Mr. Toffler said. "He is scientific about who is watching and will work that crowd."

It was Mr. Rock who, during the 1999 MTV awards, joked that Jennifer Lopez’s bottom was so big it needed its own limousine. "Chris definitely increased my expenditures for apology gifts," Mr. Toffler conceded. "I think the production team at the Oscars should prepare for flowers and candy because he might insult a few people."

While Warren Beatty, Tommy Lee Jones and David Carradine tucked into power lunches at the Polo Lounge, well-wishers stopped by Mr. Rock’s banquette. The actor Stephen Dorff asked Mr. Rock if he was ready for his gig. "I’m in shape," the comic said. "Put the money on me." A high-ranking executive at William Morris, the talent agency, urged Mr. Rock to keep the telecast under nine hours.

The most beloved V.I.P.’s to interrupt the lunch interview, however, were Mr. Rock’s wife, Malaak Compton Rock, and his precocious 2-year-old daughter, Lola. When asked what her father does for a living, she answered with a smile and one word: "Jokes."

Mr. Rock, who Time magazine once declared "the funniest man in America," has won three Emmys and two Grammys. While he easily sells out arenas, his appearances in films like "Pootie Tang" and "Bad Company" have not earned him the movie-star status of Oscar hosts like Mr. Martin or Mr. Crystal.

So what is he doing as host of the Academy Awards? At this point in his career, Mr. Rock, said he has outgrown the MTV awards – "I’m too old; it’s Dave Chappelle’s time" – and finally feels mature enough to take the Oscar post. Mr. Rock still ran his decision by a few friends, something he said he rarely does.

"Some people were like, can you be cutting edge and host the Oscars?" Mr. Rock said. "Is doing this going to hurt your brand?

Don’t expect Mr. Rock to imitate Billy Crystal, whose host turns have included singing and dancing through elaborate production numbers. "I like what Billy did, but I can’t do that," Mr. Rock said. "Nobody wants to see me out there singing about ‘Sideways.’ If I sing about ‘Sideways,’ I’m playing Caroline’s. If I keep it like how I do it, I’m at the Garden."

Besides the material he’s developing for the show, Mr. Rock is also working on jokes for an "after-gig." Emulating one of his idols, Prince, who often holds intimate jam sessions after his concerts, Mr. Rock plans to do a 45-minute show at a club after the Oscars.

"I’m working on that as much as I’m working on the ceremony," he said, laughing. "How funny is that?"

Correction: January 21, 2005, Friday:

Because of an editing error, an article in The Arts yesterday about the comedian Chris Rock, who is to be host of the Academy Awards ceremony next month, omitted a word, reversing the meaning of a sentence about concerns that he might be too acerbic or profane. The sentence should have read: "Still, Mr. Rock said that he could NOT understand what all the fretting is about."

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Yahoo Buzz Rumors

The Buzz Log – Search Spikes and Trends Rumor Control
Friday January 28, 2005 4:00AM PT

50 Cent Your local rumor mill is nothing compared to what happens when a juicy bit of gossip hits the Internet. Too bad for the likes of John Goodman and 50 Cent (+47%). Though unrelated in every other way, they are the center of much search speculation this past week. Just as rumors of Goodman’s death proved to be a hoax, reports that 50 Cent may have lost a hand in a freak accident started circulating. Assisted by faked news articles and messageboards, the rumor sent hip-hop lovers to the Search box. Searches on "50 Cent hand" and "50 Cent hand injury" shot out of nowhere and seem to be on a direct course back that way as no reliable reports could be found to substantiate the rumor. But the Buzz proves that everyone loves a little gossip, so we’ve compiled the top 10 "rumors" searches to give you a little water cooler talk as we head into the weekend:

1. NBA Rumors
2. MLB Rumors
3. NFL Rumors
4. Wrestling Rumors
5. Halo 3 Rumors
6. New York Mets Rumors
7. Spider-Man 3 Rumors
8. Chicago Cubs Rumors
9. Harry Potter Rumors
10. Mac Rumors

Eagles Trash Talking

 

Friday, January 28, 2005

Friday, January 28, 2005
1:29:52 PM
Viewed 1 time Super Talker: Eagles’ Mitchell stirs trouble with Patriots

By ROB MAADDI, AP Sports Writer
January 28, 2005
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Freddie Mitchell’s big mouth struck again.
The Philadelphia Eagles’ other loquacious receiver — the one without the Pro Bowl pedigree and ankle injury — offended some Patriots when he dissed their secondary in a television interview.
Mitchell, a starter only because All-Pro Terrell Owens is hurt, said he just knew the numbers — not the names — of New England’s cornerbacks. He singled out Rodney Harrison, saying he “has something” for the veteran strong safety.
“It just shows he doesn’t have respect for us,” Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel said Friday, responding to Mitchell’s comments from a day earlier.
The Patriots’ defensive backs will see Mitchell up close when the defending champions meet the Eagles in the Super Bowl next Sunday.
“You have so many young guys nowadays, so many young guys that don’t have respect for the game,” Harrison said. “Some people are just immature. Some people really haven’t experienced certain things.”
The Patriots have a patchwork secondary that includes a rookie free agent (Randall Gay), a converted wide receiver (Troy Brown) and a guy (Hank Poteat) who was taking college courses before the playoffs started.
Starters Tyrone Poole and Ty Law have been sidelined with injuries most of the season, but the fill-ins shut down Peyton Manning and the rest of the Colts in a second-round playoff game, and intercepted Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger three times in the AFC championship game.
“Freddie Mitchell is a guy who is getting time now because Terrell is hurt,” Patriots linebacker Willie McGinest said. “We don’t worry about what he’s saying. He will have to deal with that on the field.
“All I can say is, Rodney Harrison is the wrong guy to mention, especially if you’re a receiver. He (Mitchell) is not humble. He hasn’t done enough in this league to be on TV talking about that. Philly has a lot more class than that. It’s just one guy.”
Mitchell’s response to the Patriots’ reaction?
“I was joking. I don’t care. It’ll all be solved on Sunday,” he said.
A first-round pick in 2001, Mitchell hasn’t lived up to his potential in four seasons with the Eagles. He had five catches for 65 yards and two touchdowns, including one on a fumble recovery, in Philadelphia’s second-round playoff win against Minnesota. But he caught just two passes for 20 yards in the NFC championship game against Atlanta.
“I’m a special player,” Mitchell said after the win against Minnesota. “I want to thank my hands for being so great.”
Mitchell and the rest of the Eagles’ receivers clearly are tired of hearing about Owens, who had surgery to repair torn ankle ligaments on Dec. 22. and is trying to return for the Super Bowl despite his doctor’s orders.
“We got there without T.O.,” Mitchell said. “He’s going to be a great addition if he comes, but we’re going to stick with our guns. When he comes back, he’ll be a huge help for us because he’s one of the best receivers in the game. Until then, let’s talk about Greg Lewis, Todd Pinkston and Freddie Mitchell, the receivers who are here and won the NFC championship.”
Mitchell later grabbed a reporter’s microphone and bombarded Lewis with questions in a mock voice.
“What about T.O.? Is he 80 percent? When is he coming back? How do the receivers get it done without T.O.?” Mitchell said.
Lewis replied: “Everybody said we weren’t capable of winning without T.O., but we proved them wrong.”
Mitchell has something to prove to the Patriots.
Updated on Friday, Jan 28, 2005 4:12 pm EST
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Las Vegas McCarran

Friday, January 28, 2005
1:20:40 PM
Viewed 1 time Las Vegas Airport Shatters Annual Mark

by Howard Stutz

Las Vegas Gaming Wire

LAS VEGAS — Local aviation officials may have celebrated a bit prematurely last month when it was touted that McCarran International Airport would welcome 40 million passengers in 2004, an accomplishment claimed by a handful of other airports.

In reality, McCarran hosted more than 41.4 million travelers last year, vaporizing all previous 12-month records and keeping the Las Vegas airport within the upper echelon of the busiest American airports.

McCarran’s final count topped the 2003 total of 36.3 million passengers, an increase of 14.3 percent. The previous 12-month record was set four years ago when 36.9 million arriving and departing travelers came through the airport.

"The airport is a reflection on how the city is doing. If the hotels are doing well, then the airport is doing well," said Randall Walker, Clark County director of aviation.

December was also a busy month at McCarran, with 3.3 million passengers, an average of almost 107,000 travelers a day. That was an increase of 13.2 percent from the previous December, when 2.9 million passengers were recorded.

Brian Gordon, a partner in Applied Analysis, a Las Vegas-based financial consulting firm, said McCarran’s overall statistics reflected Las Vegas’ positive economic trends. He said the increase in passengers indicates a large amount of high-value customers flocking to Strip resorts.

"December was good for air travel in and out of Las Vegas because of the National Finals Rodeo at the beginning of the month and the holiday weekend at the end of December," Gordon said. "Las Vegas has also had a large number of international visitors. The numbers at McCarran are another sign of continuing interest in Las Vegas."

Gordon said drive-in traffic from Southern California has decreased while air travel is on the rise, which also indicates higher-value customers willing to spend more on airline travel.

In 2003, only four U.S. airports reported more than 40 million passengers, according to the Airports Council International-North America, a Washington-based trade group. They were Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson (79 million), Chicago O’Hare (69.5 million), Los Angeles International (54.9 million) and Dallas-Fort Worth (53.2 million).

In 2003, McCarran was the seventh-busiest airport in America, trailing both Denver International and Phoenix Sky Harbor. Walker said airport officials won’t know until March or April how McCarran International Airport ranks nationwide.

Southwest Airlines was McCarran’s busiest carrier last year, serving just under 13 million passengers, a 10.8 percent increase from the 11.7 million in 2003. Southwest also flew just over 1 million passengers in and out of McCarran during December.

America West, the airport’s second-busiest airline, increased its passenger count 12.5 percent for the year, shepherding 6.8 million passengers, a jump from 6.1 million in 2003.

American Airlines had the largest percentage increase in December of any airline, flying 208,265 passengers in and out of McCarran during the month, a 23.3 percent jump over December 2003. For the year, United Airlines had the largest percentage increase, reporting almost 3.2 million passengers, an increase of 16.7 percent over 2003’s total of 2.7 million.

Both Southwest and America West are expected to add more flights in and out of McCarran this year.
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Michael Jordan

Friday, January 28, 2005
12:45:51 PM
Viewed 1 time sports nut
Citizen Jordan
A basketball legend’s soulless retirement caps his soulless career.
By Charles P. Pierce
Posted Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005, at 6:13 AM PT

Michael Jordan, a once-famous basketball personage, announced last week that he had teamed up with a Chicago development firm to build a brand-new casino resort about a half-block east of Caesars Palace, just off the Strip, in Las Vegas. There is no place in America demonstrably more homogenized or more corporatized than Vegas. Logos have swarmed in from every point on the compass. Las Vegas now differs from, say, Charlotte only in that it has casinos instead of Gaps and Banana Republics, except that it has those, too. This is Michael Jordan’s kind of sin. This is Michael Jordan’s kind of town.

The last couple of months have been a triumph of banality, even by Jordan’s standards, which always have been considerable. He’s lent his name to a motorcycle racing team; Michael Jordan Motorsports began testing at Daytona on Jan. 3. He’s turned up at his son’s basketball games, complete with an entourage to shoo away the curious. He appeared on My Wife and Kids, a truly godawful ABC sitcom on which his fellow guest stars included Al Sharpton and Wayne Newton, who at least share a similar taste in pompadours and amulets. And now, he will bring to Las Vegas yet another banging, clanging neon corral, with a fitness center, a spa, and a rooftop nightclub. The surprise is not that Michael Jordan has become such an unremarkable, boring old suit. The surprise is that we ever saw him any other way.

Michael Jordan was a great player. He also was a great salesman. And that was all he ever was, and that seems to be all that he ever will be. There’s nothing wrong with that. He made some great plays and some pretty good commercials. Has anyone so completely dominated his sport and left so small a mark upon it? From the very beginning of his professional career, and long before he’d won anything at all, Michael Jordan and his handlers worked so diligently at developing the brand that it ultimately became impossible to remember where the logo left off and the person began. He talked like a man raised by focus groups. He created a person without edges, smooth and sleek and without any places for anyone to get a grip on him. He was roundly, perfectly manufactured, and he was cosseted, always, by his creators and his caretakers, against the nicks and dings that happen to any other public person. He held himself aloof from the emerging hip-hop culture that became—for good and ill—the predominant culture of the NBA. Remember, he once warned us, Republicans buy shoes, too. He always sold himself to people older than he was.

He gave of himself very little, and that only to sell us something. Now, the NBA has moved on—to people like Dwyane Wade, and Carmelo Anthony, and, especially, to LeBron James—and it seems to be experiencing something of a competitive renaissance, and Michael Jordan seems like nothing more than a strategy the NBA once used to sell itself, his career an abandoned TV commercial. He’s gone from the game without a single footprint. He built upon the work of others, but he left very little of his own behind.

The instinctive genius of James Naismith was that he put his goal in the air, thereby ensuring that basketball would untether itself from gravity and that the people who played it would have no choice but to fly. In that, Jordan was merely the latest and greatest in a long evolutionary line that stretched back through Julius Erving, and Gus Johnson, and Elgin Baylor, and Jumpin’ Johnny Green. The NBA prospered when Jordan was at his peak, but that process was well under way behind the talents of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, and because of the brilliant labor-management compromises forged between Larry Fleischer of the NBA Players Association and the late commissioner Larry O’Brien, who saved the league from the actual economic apocalypse that baseball is always pretending to have.

In all things, Jordan was the Great Culmination. He was uniquely suited—both through his transcendent abilities and, most important, through his essentially conservative-with-a-small-c temperament—to focus powerful forces that already were in play. Again, there’s nothing essentially wrong with that. Powerful trends will find their focal points and, as such, Jordan was relatively benign. Publicly, anyway, he was an amiable countenance to slap on a globalized corporate economy. And he came along in the mid-1980s, a good time to be a centrist superstar.

However, too often, Jordan’s vast success as a pitchman is misinterpreted as being as revolutionary a development as Elvis’ first appearance at Sun Studios or Jackie Robinson’s first appearance at Ebbets Field, when it actually was soulless and almost completely devoid of any lasting resonance outside of pure consumerism. Seriously, how many fewer hamburgers would McDonald’s have sold had the young Michael Jordan taken up the saxophone instead? The man determined early on to be a walking blue-chip portfolio; his choice of conglomerates was of a perfect piece with his entire public life, of which it can be fairly said that Michael Jordan never took any risk that might cost him a dime.

(His private life, unsurprisingly, was rather the opposite. We now know that he embarked on a series of risky extramarital affairs, and it has been more than an open secret for years that Jordan’s approach to games of chance makes William Bennett look like Scrooge McDuck. Had Jordan been as willing to be as reckless with his influence on the stump as he was with his money at the blackjack table, poor Harvey Gantt might now be in his third term as senator from North Carolina.)

He drowned even his competitive legend in banality with that preposterous stint with the Washington Wizards. In When Nothing Else Matters, Michael Leahy, whose job at the Washington Post was to essentially be the paper’s Jordan-beat writer, meticulously paints a portrait of Jordan’s heading toward a point at which he’ll be only a chain of newspapers and an opera singer shy of being Charles Foster Kane. In Washington, Jordan seemed like nothing more than a gambler shoving good money after bad, and in retirement he looks like an anachronism, a faintly ridiculous relic of a time when America thought salesmen were romantic and greed was good, when the country looked at Wall Street and thought it saw the Spanish Main. Now, he’s unstuck in history, past his time, and he has nothing deeper and more abiding upon which to rest his legend. He’s just another guy in a limo now, looking for a deal to close before the sun goes down.

Charles P. Pierce writes for the Boston Globe Magazine and Esquire. He also appears regularly on National Public Radio.

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