A real leader

“Even more amazing than the President’s pragmatic power over military resources is his apparent spiritual power over so many minds. Bush is not the only one who decided rather suddenly that disempowering Saddam had to be the world’s top priority. When Bush decided this, so did almost every congressional Republican, conservative TV pundit and British Prime Minister. In polls, a large majority of Americans agreed with Bush that Saddam was a terrible threat and had to go, even though there had been no popular passion for this idea before Bush brought it up. You could call this many things, but one of them is leadership. If real leadership means leading people where they don’t want to go, George W. Bush has shown himself to be a real leader. And he now owns a bit of history to prove it.”

–Michael Kinsley, Time, April 21, 2003

Insightful words from Kinsley. I’m amazed that more people haven’t brought up the group hypnosis that created an instant “Saddam Must Go!” climate in this country. It sort of reminded me of the stage hypnotist who convinces the audience member that he’s a chicken. He’s clearly not – any objective observer would realize he remains a human – but he believes passionately (and instantly) that he could lay an egg at any moment.

Time also used their cover to depict Saddam’s face with a bloody X through it. The last time the magazine did this, the face was Adolf Hitler’s. Way to go, Time.

It’s been quite a Mac weekend. On Saturday, I helped my friend Mike with his new flatbed/negative scanner (he later returned it, but oh well) on his Mac desktop. And yesterday, I picked up my mom’s little-used iMac from 1999, bringing it back in preparation for donating it to NAMI Wisconsin. They will use it in their new library space so people can have a computer for internet searching. I’m pleased about this.

Since I needed to power the Mac up and delete her old files, I thought I would try hooking it up to my DSL connection. Worked flawlessly. In fact, I’m posting this from the iMac.

It’s times like these that I seriously think of switching back. I feel it like the pull of the tides. Maybe Steve Jobs will put me in an ad.

Things I’ve learned

Easter egg hunts can be fun for adults. But much more so when you’ve hidden the eggs, rather than had to find them.

So I’m driving back from a nice family Easter out at my Mom’s place, minding my own business, and lo and behold, on the radio comes a new (? new to me) Toby Keith song. I can’t believe that I’m still able to be flabbergasted by this guy, but he manages to do it by following up his pseudo-patriotic claptrap with a song celebrating, I still can’t believe it, the DEATH PENALTY. With a little frontier justice thrown in for good measure.

Toby Keith – Beer For My Horses

Well a man come on the 6 o’clock news
Said somebody’s been shot, somebody’s been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole a car
Somebody got away
Somebody didn’t get too far yeah
They didn’t get too far

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We’ve got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send ’em all to their maker and he’ll settle ’em down
You can bet he’ll set ’em down
————-

Memo to Toby: What’s the next subject for Mr. Songwriter? Tax cuts for the wealthy? Iraqi oil? Cutting down the rain forest? I await your next artistic endeavor with slack-jawed interest.

Oh and I almost forgot. Remember when you said getting booted off that Fourth of July special last year was “censorship”? Sort of puts the whole Tim Robbins/Susan Sarandon thing in perspective, doesn’t it?

For all those who labeled me a misanthrope after my post about retail greeters, I wanted you to know that I actually had quite a nice conversation with the woman who rang up my purchases at Borders today. We were talking about American Idol, since I was buying, among other things, the new Kelly Clarkson CD (who are you to judge me? :-). I enjoyed the interaction because she seemed genuinely nice, and not talking to me as part of some retail training strategy. So maybe I’m not an irredeemable hater of humanity after all.

Happy Easter

“He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two . . . morsels of . . . lumber.”

Had a good time listening to David Sedaris last night, with, variously, Paul, Joyce, Matt, John, Nik and Marty. (I think all these people would write interesting weblogs. But for now, only John has one. Nik, are you listening?) One of the pieces Sedaris read was one from “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” dealing with describing Easter in broken French. It’s not as funny just to read it on the page, but if you want to, you can.

My brother Matt, who’s coming in to town today for a week of visiting and other hilarity, will especially appreciate one anecdote from the reading. Beforehand, having a sandwich at Radical Rye, I said to Paul and Joyce, “I really hope he’s funny tonight. Because I need that.” Paul laughed and said, “Yeah, I can just see him getting up there and saying, ‘This is no time for humor. I think I need to TALK ABOUT THE WAR.'” We all agreed that if Sedaris did something like that, I would have to rush the stage and beat him senseless.

Then, when he asked for questions after the reading, one of the first ones was “What do you think about the war in Iraq?”

I kept my seat. And laughed. Which was good.

Operation Obfuscating Shield

In response to a Salon article recently about the lack of WMD (when did that acronym cease to be one you had to define?) found in Iraq, a letter-writer said something interesting I hadn’t thought of before.

In calling the invasion “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the administration paved the way for the change in focus I’ve talked about, away from disarmament and toward bringing glorious democracy to the Iraqi people. Bitterly clever, really.

I would challenge anyone to find a pro-war weblog or opinion site that is even mentioning the WMD at this point. But my question is, are they not mentioning it because they know it’s an Achilles heel, or are they so taken in by the propaganda that they think it doesn’t matter?

Words mean things.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it’s interesting that the American Idol vote-offs go in orderly boy-girl-boy-girl order, always leaving an equal number of boys and girls on the remaining roster? I’m not sure, but I think it was the same last time too. I guess I can understand starting with an equal number of each sex, as they did both times. But the orderliness of the ousters seems to strain probability a little.

Tim Robbins for President

Uplifting, eloquent stuff. Fierce. Pass this on.

(Link stolen, as usual, from lies.com. I used to promise not to steal so much from John Callender. I can’t do that anymore. It’s dishonest. 🙂

Rhetorical question of the week

Why?