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logomachy--1. A dispute
about words. 2. A dispute carried on in words only; a battle of words.
logomachon--1. One who argues about words.
2. A word warrior.
Blogroll
Logomachon
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2006-06-26
One more slap at The DaVinci Code
Ever on the cutting edge of culture, today Logomachon notes that along with all the defects identified by cineastes and historians, including Tom Hanks’ haircut, no one has mentioned that the movie seems to have made Audrey Tautou look like Laura Bush. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)
Audrey before DVC
Which is Audrey, which Laura?
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2006-06-14
Dead head, dumb head
There is a strain of thought, if that is the word I want, that in America is peculiar to liberalism. At any signal success by national security forces, they warn us solemnly that in fighting our enemies we are in danger of becoming infected by them or just becoming them. It seems to be there all the time, perhaps because liberals are pretty much opposed to the U.S.’ fighting our enemies. Perhaps the word is cliché, or maybe prejudice.
Lee Siegel takes a ride on this trolley at The New Republic as he reflects, if that is the word I want, on the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week (Zarqawi's New Hostages). As is typical of non-Angry Left day-trippers, the monster down the track is evoked by projecting his own emotions upon the nation.
“[W]hy do I wince when I see the image of his death-face, bruised and distended, in all the papers and on all the airwaves?” he asks. Because we have “become inured to real images of death” he explains.It's not just the face of this sick and sadistic man that you take in when you look at his lifeless features. It's the fact of violent death in general, beyond Zarqawi. As you look at the--truly obsessive--repetition of his image, you are not just enjoying the profound satisfaction of seeing evil defeated. You are experiencing a greater intimacy with the fact of killing . . . Siegel is not only projecting his reactions on the rest of us, he is projecting his news-consumption habits on the vast majority of us who are not culture commentators and so do not have to read four newspapers and three news magazines before breakfast and obsessively surf news Web sites and cable channels. What struck me about the news coverage was how quickly the al-Zarqawi story disappeared or moved on.
The projection of his own guilty pleasure onto the general populace is even more obvious in his closing passage, which builds its case on utterly imaginary insights into the “national psyche”.Zarqawi was the mastermind behind the beheadings of Nicholas Berg and other innocent victims of his rage, a rare savagery that sickened, horrified, and perhaps also fascinated Americans. The act of cutting off a person's head, an American person's head, traumatized the national psyche. That is one reason why the image of the dead Zarqawi, which consists of only the beheader's head, is so cathartic to (sic) so many people. [How many people? What people? No one I know.]
But the fanatically reiterated image is also a way for this rare savagery to creep through the back door into our vindicated psyches. Zarqawi made beheading real, and now this image of Zarqawi makes it familiar, and just, and ours. Eye for an eye is a militant Muslim thing; it is their thing. . . . Now, with Zarqawi's head in all the papers, on all the airwaves--on all the poles of our culture-- this insanely archaic type of justice is becoming ours. Believe me, I like seeing that image of bloody extinction, too. I feel worried, and ashamed.[emphasis added] I think what Siegel really likes is pretending to flagellate himself because it shows how much more virtuous he is than the rest of us. His fervor carries him beyond coherence: What does he mean by “Zarqawi's head [is] on all the poles of our culture”? Oh, maybe he’s referring to the Philadelphia’s Symphony’s concert this weekend, where the stage was festooned with giant banners of Zarqawi’s bruised and distended mug.
I know the word for this, lots of words—horse-hockey, sentimental sludge, thumb-sucking blather—take your pick. Siegel has gone off to that special place that every liberals has, where he is purer and more sensitive and more virtuous than everyone else, and he can scold everyone else for how naughty they are.
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2006-06-11
Zarqawi wanted: Dead
I haven’t seen anyone comment on the fact that US special ops troops had Zarqawi’s safe house surrounded before the F-16s were called in. They could have tried to take him alive and so preserve computers and other items of intelligence value. Instead they flattened the house and occupants, and this seems to have been the plan all along; they held off doing it until the collateral damage could be minimized.
Why would they do that? Maybe they’ve figured out—after Gitmo, and Moussaoui, and “secret prison camps”, and Saddam’s trial—that Zarqawi in captivity would be almost as disruptive and more expensive than Zarqawi on the loose.
I’m sure UbL has noticed this.
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What goes around comes down on Snarlin' Arlen
Arlen Specter is chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He’s all out of sorts because VP Cheney talked to Republican members of the committee without clearing it with him.
MSNBC reported: "Specter complained that Cheney was lobbying other GOP Judiciary Committee members to oppose efforts to subpoena phone company executives."
He wrote Cheney a letter:
Specter said he was surprised that Cheney “sought to influence, really determine,” the committee’s actions without even calling first.
“This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators caucus lunch yesterday,” Specter wrote, “and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table.” Cheney replied, saying What’s the big deal. That’s how politics gets done. (Translation: Stuff it!)
Maybe Specter should remember the reputation he takes pride in: The 73-year-old Specter is one of the Senate's best-known but least-liked members. . . .
Specter may not be the most unreliable GOP senator . . . but he is almost certainly the most harmful, because he is smart, ruthless, and influential.” . . .
[Lawmakers] regard Specter as one of the prickliest pols in Congress — a humorless man who is cold to colleagues and cruel to staff.” . . .
"There are two kinds of senators: Republicans who don't like Specter and Democrats who don't like Specter," says a former leadership aide. In a Washingtonian magazine survey, Hill staffers rated him the Senate's meanest member. This has given rise to one of Specter's nicknames: Snarlin’ Arlen.
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2006-06-03
MSM is freedom's enemy
An Aussie TV station recently got caught trying to make an interview in East Timor—and the general situation—look more dangerous that it is, and in the process demonstrated how the Western media have become the enemy of the West.
Jessica Rowe of Channel 9’s morning Today show was interviewing the General commanding the Australian peacekeepers there.“I'm wondering how you feel about your safety given that you've got armed guards there standing behind you, armed soldiers," Rowe says.
"Jessica, I feel quite safe, yes," Brigadier Slater says. "But not because I've got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good." Not a problem, right? We just edit that out of the broadcast and no one will ever know.
Unless you are an Aussie TV station and your bitter rival gets the clip and releases it to your fellow ravening jackals of the media.
A h/t to the Belmont Club, where Wretchard notes that counter-insurgency theory downplays direct action against insurgents, because you can’t identify them. Instead, you attack them indirectly by snuffing out their local support system. Conversely, the insurgents can’t defeat Western military, so they too must act indirectly. The Channel 9 incident “suggests that since the media is part of the battlefield, the coverage of the media must be a vital part of” any theory of counter-insurgency.
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2006-05-29
Fumble tongues
An afternoon of carpentry listening to NPR yielded these blended gems:
HIV discoverer Dr. Robert Gallo said “in those days we were working in unknown waters”.
Not long afterward, the Rev. Thomas Sullivan said Enron “whistle blower” Sherron Watkins “paid the cost”, (Talk of the Nation).
Surely it must be part of being culturally literate to be able to get clichés right.
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2006-05-05
Hanging Judges
The Patriot Post reports that a U.S. District Judge has ordered the City of San Diego to cut down the Mt. Soledad War Memorial Cross. The city will face $5,000 per day fines if the Cross is not destroyed, or a settlement reached with the atheist plaintiff. The PP reports that the people of San Diego have voted several times to transfer the Cross as a war monument together with surrounding memorial plaques into private hands, but the judges involved in the matter have refused to allow such a settlement, instead insisting the monument be destroyed.
“A cross”, says the PP, “ has stood on the site for decades as a veterans' memorial, honoring their sacrifice and displaying the religious freedom our nation's veterans fight to preserve.
…Moreover, in the last go-round over maintaining the War Memorial intact, Congress on 20 November 2004 passed HR 4818, which was then signed into law by President Bush, authorizing the federal government to acquire the entire war memorial should the City of San Diego deed over the property. Last July, San Diego voters overwhelmingly approved this transfer by a 76 percent majority, but a Superior Court judge (who, a week before the election, declared a need for a two-thirds majority vote) prevented its finalization in yet another stunning despotic refusal to obey voter-enacted law.
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders has indicated he'll represent the will of the voters—and the rule of the voters' law—by pursuing appeals. I think appeals to the judiciary that is the cause of the problem are too weak a response. These California federal judges have interfered with the lawful democratic process. San Diego, or California, should arrest them for violating the Constitution, perpetrating insurrection, malfeasance, and general abuse of office. A raid by the police SWAT team, a perp walk before the press, and a long time in jail with an exorbitant bail would clear the air.
Too harsh? Un-Constitutional? Not at all.
Several years ago, a federal judge set aside a California referendum that limited social services for illegal immigrants. I suggested that under Art. IV, Sect. 4 of the Constitution, which requires that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them . . . against domestic Violence", governor Pete Wilson should arrest the judge for violating California’s Constitutional rights. A few days later, a relative happened to sit next to a US Supreme Court justice at a Washington, DC, dinner. She mentioned my proposal to the justice. He broke into a big grin, nodded, and said “I like that!”.
Our national discourse has become seriously distorted. All the civics class talk of checks and balances among three coequal branches of government is forgotten when enforcing the liberal agenda is a stake. We have come to talk and act as though the judiciary were a board of celestial eminences, an all-wise and all-beneficent super Legislature and super Executive.
This is not the way it is supposed to be.
The Court is the least branch of government; the civics class cliché is wrong right there. It does not have a positive or active rôle. The legislative and executive branches make the law and other decisions about governance and the executive enforces the law. The courts should just react and adjudicate disputes brought under the law. Instead, courts make up the law under a “living Constitution” that the people never approved, run school districts and direct the operations of corporations, and as in San Diego, simply impose a political-ideological agenda on a city. They get away with this for two reasons. Liberals in the executive and legislature are happy to achieve through judicial fiat what they could never do through electoral politics, and other officials are too brainwashed or spineless to assert their institutional rights vis-à-vis the courts.
Interestingly, the Executive and Legislature take oaths of office to defend and protect the constitution. The Judiciary does not.
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2006-04-10
"Bush Was Right"
A few days ago, Jason Zengerle wrote in The New Republic’s blog that Last year I wrote an article slagging Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, for his awful protest song "When the President Talks to God." . . . But recently, I've had a little change of heart about Oberst. In fact, if he's reading this, I'd like to extend a hand: Conor, all is forgiven. I now know what truly awful political music is . . . and it is this. The link is to a YouTube video of The Right Brothers performing “Bush Was Right”. Actually, the song is a not bad parody of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. I like that they actually get in the point that rather than "'tax cuts' increasing the deficit", they have increased revenue: Unemployment's staying down, Democrats are wondering how
Revenue is going up, can you say "Tax Cuts" What sets "Bush Was Right" apart from leftist political songs is its largely positive tone. Compare it with the Oberst song ("When the President Talks to God"). Like most leftist songs, especially the ones I've heard recently, it is a sneering attack, intent on seizing the moral high ground by demonizing its target.
The comments at the "Bush Was Right" page at YouTube show that on the issue of fighting WWIV, the left lives in a different, fantasy world.
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