the REAL Supremacists

http://www.slate.com/id/2155723

ISN'T SHE A BETTY?

From the front lines on the War Against Christmas:

http://www.bettybowers.com/nl_christmas2006.html

THAT LEFT IS WRONG, AND RIGHT IS RIGHT

A legend once sang a great song. One verse that caught my attention:

Well, I don't believe virginity
is as common as it used to be
that left is wrong and right is right
that black is black and white is white.


I particularly liked the third line. I'm afraid the legend did not know at the time how the second object of that line turned the fourth line into a religion, but life is full of surprises.

Example of why the legend included the fourth line can be found all around us. Today brought us a particularly humorous one, as a conservative commentator met Joy Behar's comment that Donald Rumsfeld was "Hitlerish" by asking "How would she know? Did she ever meet him?"

Of course, conservatives have an expanding Hitler of the Month club (just fork over $9.95 a year to Charles Krauthammer and be given a monthly update as to what world tyrant or would-be tyrant is the next Hitler. It's kind of like the Fruit of the Month Club - without the nutritional value), and of course, the conservative commentator presumably did not meet Hitler either, so he would in theory be in no better (or worse) position to know whether the comparison was accurate. But, of course, he is right because he is right. And vice versa. And I believe in miracles.

"I'LL BE THE VICTIM,"

the perky little girl in Addams Family Values said when her camp counselors wanted to demonstrate swim safety by having a camper pretend to drown.

"All your life," monotoned Wednesday. Still one of the funniest lines uttered in a movie.

Perhaps the exchange has been studied by Judith Regan, the hack publisher who up until recently worked for Rupert Murschlock, only to be fired by him. When Rupert Murdoch is calling you a degenerate, that's the time to move up the meeting with St. Peter that you've long been pushing off.

As you may remember, Regan was the publisher - although thankfully no copies were ever sold - of a particular piece of grotesquerie known as "If I Did It" by OJ Simpson, the rare book that contains a lie as early as the first word of its title. Lillian Hellmann, take note.

Regan, adopting the role of spokeswoman, says she secured the publication of the book "for the victims" of domestic violence. She found the experience of publishing the book "cathartic," she says, having known someone who had long suffered from domestic violence, and whose story, through publication of the book, was finally being "told," somehow. Would-be readers of the book, especially those with stomachaches, may have found the book equally cathartic, but one will never know.

Poor Judith is no longer just fantasizing about being a domestic violence victim. She is now the victim of, you guessed it - a "Jewish cabal":

In an explosive telephone argument that led to her firing, publisher Judith Regan allegedly complained of a "Jewish cabal" against her in the book industry and stated that "Of all people, Jews should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie."

A spokesman for Regan's former employer, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., told The Associated Press on Monday that the remarks were based on notes taken by HarperCollins attorney Mark Jackson, with whom Regan was discussing the future of a controversial new novel about baseball star Mickey Mantle.

The spokesman, Andrew Butcher, released the comments in response to a threatened libel suit from Regan's legal representative, Hollywood attorney Bert Fields (who, in a Michael Richardsian twist, is Jewish), who had called earlier reports of anti-Semitic remarks "completely untrue" and added that the publisher "didn't have an anti-Semitic bone in her body." (Note to cliche non-watchers: stop using this phrase. It leaves you too open to attack - i.e. one can make a weak yet effective response simply by saying, "Your right, she didn't have an anti-Semitic bone - she had an entire anti-Semitic skeleton!")

I tell you, I am going out on strike until I find this Jewish cabal. I can't help but think of what Prior Walter said in "Angels in America" in his final dream sequence, as he stood before the angels decrying the existence of God: "Tell God," he told the angels, "That if that son of a bitch ever shows his face again, he's got a hell of a lot to answer for."

GEOGRAPHICALLY CHALLENGED

I suppose there truly is a euphamism for just about every horrible, offensive, sad, unfair or cruel concept or thing. Michael Richards' rant was just described by British bigot John Derbyshire as an "etiquette malfunction." The Menendez brothers were described as "parentally challenged" after they shot their parents (please, no jokes about them throwing themselves upon the mercy of the court because they were orphans).

Now comes "geographically challenged," a phrase which was used to describe a non-existent relationship. Today, at my firm's holiday luncheon, the managing attorney asked me about the one-man play also known as my love life, and I am not being Wildean here but am rather merely identifying by default or process of elimination. I told here that I didn't have a GF (when I first heard this term, I thought it meant "George Foreman!") in Atlanta. She then asked if, since I went to college a decade ago, I ever, while in Ithaca or some other God-forsaken wasteland (other than Atlanta) ever had a long-distance relationship. After I told her that my fingers really WEREN'T all that long, I told her that I never did have such a relationship. "That's a good thing," she cheerfully observed. "Take it from me, geographically challenged relationships don't work." Kind of like telling a man who is dying of hunger and incurable pain that it would be unwise for him to wear a jacket, I guess.

What will the PC mavens think of next? With someone like me, they'd probably have to keep a straight face and a clear head when coming up with the appropriate term. I initially had a preference for "non-challenged challenged," but that phrase does sound rather stupid. Doesn't it?

A PISS BEFORE DYING....

is what lies in store should Senator Tim Johnson (D-The Wire Hanger State) fail to hang on. A United States Senator does not automatically lose his seat unless he dies (or in John Ashcroft's case, loses to a dead man) or resigns. Therefore, Mr. Johnson, who suffers from a rare heart disorder that pronounced itself about two weeks ago, driving him to unconscionsness (and a possible coma) is not about to leave the Senate just yet.

Yet the Repubarbarians are literally at the gate, openly praying for death or resignation. (Shocked? Don't you remember Jerry Falwell praying for a death on the Supreme Court? He actually didn't care whom God offed, so long as the replacement would do his bidding). Why? Simple math, of course. As of today, Democrats control the Senate, 51-49. Should Johnson die or resign, Governor Mike Rounds (R-Mouth Foaming Bigot) gets to appoint a new Senator, one to serve until 2008. No points for guessing from which party that person will come. In that event, the Senate is deadlocked, 50-50, with Darth Cheinous casting the tie-breaking vote. The last time the Senate was split was 2001 through a brief period of 2002. The two parties agreed shortly before the tied incoming Senate took its place that the Republicans would control the Senate, but the Committee assignments would be split equally. As you might recall, this arrangement gave the Democrats nothing. Which is of course why the Republicans will not enter into it again - because they won't settle for nothing - they'll only settle if the other side gets less than nothing.

So, I send my fetid prayers tonight in the direction of South Dakota, toward Tim Johnson. I can't say I like the guy - he was the first and only one of four Democrats to vote for Supreme Court hack Samuel Alito - but I am praying that he doesn't die or resign. So, Tim, please hear my prayer: please don't die or resign. And if you do resign, can you please do it AFTER you're dead?

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GO FUCK YOURSELF

I was in Savannah (the place that's the hottest club south of the Copacabana, as someone who was about to spend the summer there once joked to me after he first listened to the Barry Manilow song, although he didn't quite put it that way, of course) last week for a mediation - last Thursday. Thanks to a co-defending attorney's failure to read the mediation notice, I go there three hours early (or he, three hours late), so I had some time to walk around downtown. Ever buy the kind of tupperware with multiple pieces, each smaller one fitting, piece by piece, into the next bigger one? Savannah is literally designed like this concept - a concept, which as visualized as a street, and experienced as such, comes off looking like a maze. It's a very nice city, easy to get lost in one a "cross-street." For all of you Vulcan fans, the city dyes the river green on St. Patrick's Day, by the way.

As I walked through the maze, I observed a CourtTV truck, with a cameraman stading outside of it, doing what appeared to be reporting. What was the occasion, I wondered? Why was it Court TV and not Town and Garden?

I found out soon enough when I walked into a local bakery. "The Debutante Murder Trial" had just come to a conclusion that day, and the verdict was announced the next day. What was the Debutante Murder Trial? What is a debutante?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/12/18/debutante.murder/index.html

(Link only answers former question). The trial involved the killing of a "Debutante Ball" girl. I have actually heard of this uniquely Southern tradition, and have even met a few Belles of this Ball (and no doubt others' - er, other, balls) since I began to live in Georgia. Naturally, since I had never heard of this story, it was national news.

Apparently the murderer forgot to realize that the excited utterances are typically made BEFORE the trial and not after.

By the way, in the interests of bizarre, irrelevant and full disclosure, the word "tummy" is a very special word to me. No joking here. I once, looking back on all of the problems that my stomach has had in recent years, commented to my mother, "Will it ever get a rest?" and then started crying as I patted my stomach and whispered mentally, "Poor Tummy." I now associate this word with sadness, and whenever I hear it in the context of a sad story, I cannot help but shed a tear (or more).

Sometimes, I enjoy hearing the word, though. I have a leopard gecko and couldn't help but smile as a veteriarian's book written in otherwise technical language simply referred to a leopard gecko's stomach area as "the tummy area."

Yes, I really have lost it (lost it a long time ago). But at least, as Tolstoy never said but others have said for him, trying to find a bright spot in his musings about unhappy families, I have lost it in my own way. Kind of Tolstoy mixed with Frank Sinatra. There's a song for ya!

I should note that Savannah is a beautiful town. Little did I know, though, that I was under surveillance in that most old-fashioned of public places, where everybody's gold hands are in their neighbors' lined pockets, and where the hands used to be in the pockets without a camera recording either. What next? The mouse finds the cheese?

MAKING A MESS OF MELANGE

Check another item off the list of things I want to do before I die. This list does not include only to-do's that I think will generate pleasure or provide meaningful experiences. Some items are on the list simply so that once I have done them, I can say that I have done them. Why? In some cases, because I've tried in the past, and failed....

With good reason, with respect to item # 10191: Watch the 1984 film version of Frank Herbert's novel Dune. Many science fiction fans consider this the greatest science fiction book not written by Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, Verne, or Wells. I have not read the book, which has spawned countless sequels, including ones written by Herbert's children.

My father, who has a finely honed sense of detecting junk movies (and just as finely honed an appetite for watching them), I have observed, cannot bear to tear himself away from this movie whenever it is one. He thinks the film is great. So, astonishingly, do many critics - and not just ones who now claim the film was "misunderstood" when it came out.

In situations where I was too tired to walk out of the room - or not enough of an adult yet to demand the remote, I watched the film as he did. Perhaps "watched" is the wrong word - I observed the images and sounds emitting from my television, but the story, from when I was about eight until twenty-eight, seemed by turns murky, non-existent, convoluted, self-indulgent, nonsensical, overstuffed and yet overthin. The visual effects and photography - Yuck!, I thought. The movie is shot in some kind of brownish hue that makes the characters appear that they are always against a backdrop of grime, must, mildew and pus (some of the characters are literally against that last one. You'll have to watch for yourself).

One day, after having "observed" little snippets, each wholly unsatisfying and none memorable, I tried to watch the whole film on my own. This was about, I think, five years ago. I couldn't get past the opening narration. Since then, I've tried watching it whenever it is one, and regardless of what point the movie is at. I've failed each time.

Subconsciously, after these experiences, watching this film became a "to-do" that I had to...do. Since I wasn't about to plunk down three dollars (or less, or more) to rent the DVD or the VCR, or to watch the VCR copy at home (my father might have interrupted me, and he knew that every time the movie was on, I would yell, "This is garbage"; I did not want to give him the satisfaction, however false, he would derive from noticing that I was watching something I called garbage), somewhere, in the cobwebs of my mind, in its darkest recesses where ideas are never formed yet somehow activate themselves on a moment's notice, I decided, without deciding, that the next time the film was on, I would watch it. All of it.

It was on this past Saturday night. Three nights of viewing, and now I'm done. To call the movie "good" or "bad" is to call cheese "belligerent" or "tranquil". David Lynch makes movies in a way that forces you to either dismiss them altogether or to evaluate them, to some degree, on his terms - how good are his dreams, and that sort of thing.

I would give the film two stars, and a C-. It was surprisingly watchable once I committed myself to watching it. It has some of the most wretched dialogue ever written, a soundtrack that deserves to be vomited out the window, some truly awful performances, one of the biggest messes of a screenplay the film world has ever been made to suffer, and the worst closing line in movie history. The special effects are atrocious, as is the music. Not a minute is anchored in reality, or manages to replicate so much as the tiniest sliver of what most of us would recognize as human emotions.

And yet.... And yet... It is often said about certain films that they are so bad that they are good. As I said above, I cannot evaluate this film by describing it as "good" or "bad," so this maxim does not apply to this film. The following, however, does: never, EVER have I been at such an utter loss when it comes to describing the qualities - the qualities that make a film a film - of a film as I have been with this film. It somehow defies critical analysis in a way that I cannot explain. I cannot even explain what I mean when I say that I cannot explain.

So, please go forth and see this film. It's an experience that you won't forget, although you won't know why, or how....