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Like many, I'm appalled at the unmitigated gall, insensitivity, and hypocrisy the Bush campaign has displayed in attempting to use the events of September 11th, 2001, to benefit his reelection campaign, but The Daily Misleader nailed it better than I could have:
Bush Exploits Photo of Dead Bodies, Despite Ban
As the nation headed for war last year, President Bush "clamped down" on the media, extending and expanding a controversial policy that banned reporters from photographing flag-draped caskets of soldiers killed in combat. The White House said the policy was enforced to "spare the feelings of military families." Yet, in the very first television advertisement of his 2004 campaign, the president has blanketed the nation's airwaves with an image of "firefighters carrying a flag-draped body" from the 9/11 wreckage at Ground Zero.
The hypocrisy of preventing Americans from receiving a "reminder of the toll of war" at the very same time the president exploits an image of a dead body for his own political gain has caused an outrage among victims' families. Chris Burke, whose brother Tom died in the attacks, said, "Using my dead friends and my dead brother for political expediency is dead wrong. It's wrong, it's bad taste and an insult to the 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11."
The president's actions have also raised new credibility questions because he previously promised not to exploit the 9/11 attacks. Speaking of 9/11 in January 2003, President Bush told the Associated Press that he had "no ambition whatsoever to use this as a political issue."
That's "compassionate conservativism" at work, I guess. I assume the purportedly devout Dubya hasn't asked himself lately "WWJD?", because -- and I think I stand on reasonably firm theological ground in saying this -- J. wouldn't stoop to exploiting the death of innocents to further political ambitions.
NPR's Morning Edition featured a lovely story yesterday about the recently discovered diary of Lt. Charles C. Winnia. Lt. Winnia was a Marine pilot in World War II who used the diary to record his experiences overseas during 1943.
Lt. Winnia had a sweetheart back in Nashville who was waiting patiently for his return. Violet Jane Watkins and Winnia were classmates at Vanderbilt University, and they had dated for three months before Winnia left school after the fall semester of 1940 intending to join the fight against Hitler in Europe.
Winnia and Watkins didn't see each again after December of that year, but they kept in touch through the mail and grew closer as the months passed. Winnia even stated in a diary entry, written on January 7, 1943, that "I hope someday to make her Mrs. C.C.W."
In fact, Winnia had contacted Watkins' father via the mail in the hope, she thinks, of getting preliminary permission to ask for her hand upon his return.
Sadly, Mr. Watkins, a physician who was inordinately busy in those days, with so many of the younger doctors serving overseas, did not manage to send a response before Winnia was shot down in mid-July of 1943; Charles and his V.J. were, alas, never to be reunited.
Ms. Watkins, who is now 85, is utterly charming and a delightful interview, and in the feature, she regales NPR's Bob Edwards and us listeners with details of her long-distance relationship with Lt. Winnia and her life since the war.
I strongly urge all B&Y readers to give this delightful and moving feature a listen at NPR.org. You might find yourself brushing away a tear, but you'll get a chuckle or two out of it as well.
I contributed to the campaign of my fourth Democratic candidate today.
Howard Dean got my first contribution, many months ago. I'd never heard of him, but read a speech of his that was widely distributed and definitely wanted to help give this new guy a boost.
Next up was Wesley Clark. Hey, he's a Democratic general -- how can you go wrong?
When John Edwards started to make some noise, I sent him some dough, too.
Why send money to competing candidates? Well, I felt then (and am still convinced) that keeping this impressive array of qualified, dedicated candidates before the voters was good for the Democratic Party and even for the country. It served us all to let voters see the Democratic Party as a vibrant, viable, idea-driven alternative to the cynical, underhanded, and bullying ways of the Republican party.
Mind you, I couldn't (and didn't) get behind every single one of the Democrats, but I was happy to send a modest sum to each member of the aforementioned trio.
Now, I've added John Kerry to the list, and he's the recipient of my largest contribution to date.
Mind you, the list of people I wouldn't support in pursuit of booting this bunch of thieves and liars from office is exceedingly short, but, thankfully, I was not the least bit ambivalent in contributing to the Kerry campaign.
I urge my readers to consider sending what they can, too. The Bush camp has amassed a huge war chest, the vast majority of which has come from coporate interests; the only way John Kerry can compete is for millions of individuals to contribute as much as they can afford -- five bucks, 100 bucks, a thousand dollars, whatever you can spare.
I honestly believe the very future of America as we know it and love it is at risk in this election; if you share that opinion, please give what you can.
I sympathize with those readers who accidentally stumble upon this site. One day I'm blathering on about the Oscars or the fact that I prefer the way phone rings sounded twenty years ago; the next I'm tackling header subjects (which are probably well beyond my ken) like the Iraqi casualties that have resulted from our invasion of that country.
So many blo ... er, web journals have a specific slant or topic, and mine's all over the map. It's probably a little confusing, and it's not likely to get better.
Here's hoping most visitors to B&Y find something of interest hidden somewhere among my erratic ramblings.
"We don’t do body counts"
-- General Tommy Franks, US Central Command
From CNN.com:
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Suspected insurgents killed scores of people Tuesday in well-organized, simultaneous attacks in Baghdad and the holy city of Karbala on the holiest Shiite Muslim day of the year, U.S.-led coalition officials said....
It was the deadliest day in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003.
At least 100 people were killed in Karbala with about 300 wounded, a doctor at a hospital told CNN....
The death toll in Baghdad was at least 58 people, Kimmitt said, and 200 others were wounded....
* * *
More than 150 dead, more than 500 wounded.
And yet, the Bush administration continues to push for a politically expedient but otherwise indefensible pullout -- they want to be able to proclaim Iraq a job completed (if not well done) in the weeks and months leading up to the election. They were in an inexcusable hurry to invade; now, they're shamelessly rushing to depart, with seemingly little thought given to what happens to the Iraqi innocents left behind.
I've been distressed from day one of this war at the paucity of coverage given Iraqi casualties. After all, the Iraqi people themselves were not the enemy -- they were friends we were seeking to liberate; it was Saddam Hussein and his henchmen we were after.
So how is it we have not collectively reported, mourned, and honored dead and maimed Iraqis as we (rightfully) have American casualties?
Why are there no widely distributed figures citing the number of Iraqis killed and injured as a direct result of our invasion of the country?
One organization that is striving to keep the Iraqi losses foremost in the minds of concerned citizens is The Iraq Body Count Project. They claim there were as many as 10,000 non-combatant civilian deaths in Iraq in 2003.
Hawks will rush to remind us that Hussein killed many more than that during his regime, and of course those deaths too are to be noted and mourned, but most of those deaths occurred more than a decade ago. These Iraqis have lost their lives under our watch. Given the growing evidence that UN inspections were, in fact, working -- that Hussein posed no imminent threat to the US or the world, what does one say to those who mourn these 10,000 souls? Did they have to die? Could a more considered, careful but just as concentrated approach to ousting Hussein have spared many, if not most, of their lives?
It's hard to argue the point.
In any case, these lost innocents most certainly deserve to be mourned.
But the American media largely ignores them.
They are not the enemy, but we collectively treat them as such. And we should all be ashamed.
We've had a tough winter here in NYC, but we're currently being teased by a sneak preview of spring. It's sunny and 58 in Manhattan right now. It's so nice out that I was moved, as were many others, to spend my lunch hour soaking up the sun on a park bench in Union Square.
One can't help but hope that spring is here to stay, for when New York is treated to a nice, long spring, there are surely few better places to be in the world. Spring is all too often, though, the briefest of respites between the chill of winter and what David Letterman some years ago referred to as "New York's summer-long Festival of Humidity."
Still, even if spring isn't here to stay, one is grateful for even a brief bonus visit.
It's interesting to note that Salon readers agreed with the Academy on every single major category -- except, like me, they went for Bill Murray as Best Actor by a sizable margin over scenery-chewing Sean.
I'll be stewing over this one for a while, as will, no doubt, Murray himself.
I waited on Murray a couple of times back in my bartender days. Once at the old Tuesday's restaurant at 17th and Third. He came in on a winter's evening with his brother, Brian Doyle Murray. Bill had a cap pulled low so as to avoid being recognized, and it mostly worked, but, of course, as the guy serving him, I certainly recognized him. I kept to myself at first, giving him his space (since he seemed a little skittish), but before long, he was relaxed and at ease and we chatted a little. He seemed a very decent guy, if a bit reserved.
A few years later, he came into Mickey's Mantle's sports bar on Central Park South with Ahmad Rashad and Dan Ackroyd. I reminded him that I'd served him before at Tuesday's, and he was kind enough to pretend to remember me. He and Rashad wisecracked a bit while watching the Knicks game on the tube, and it became obvious to me then that Dan Ackroyd was the relative dweeb in the trio, the dork hanging around the cool kids.
They hung around for quite a while that evening. I wish that I could remember specifically what was said, but you'll just have to take my word for it that Mr. Murray proved very entertaining for those of us near enough to eavesdrop, and he was pleasant, if a bit cool, to the two or three fans who recognized and approached him.
So I was definitely pulling for him last night. Damn it.
A few passing thoughts on last night's underwhelming Oscars telecast:
Let me say right up front that I love the Academy Awards. I know that, in the grand scheme of things, they're just silly -- the most deserving films so often don't get recognized, and some of the major winners simply don't hold up over time. But I don't care. I love them. I love cheering and jeering. And, corny as it sounds, I love the fact that we set aside one night a year to celebrate the cinema.
That said, last night's ceremony came up short in almost every way.
Regarding the LORD OF THE RINGS sweep: Never has such a successful film held less interest for me. The fact that not a single actor from the film was nominated tells me all I need to know -- special effects rule the film, and I am so very over special effects. If I never saw another CGI creation in a film, it would be too soon.
I hereby suggest a new rule regarding Oscar eligibility: Any movie that inspires its devotees to wear costumes when attending a screening should automatically be ruled ineligible for an Academy Award.
And how about that Peter Jackson? What a snappy dresser! Listen, I am second to no one in leading a casual lifestyle, but there are certain occasions that simply demand one gussy up a little. And a ceremony at which one's film will be awarded eleven Oscars certainly qualifies. So, for Pete's sake, Jackson, next time button your shirt, tighten your tie, and stop off at a 7-11 on the way to the theatre to pick up a comb.
The women, for the most part, looked quite lovely. The gowns (Uma's atrocity aside) were glamorous and classy. But I'm not down with the recent trend toward wearing straight ties, not bow ties, with tuxes. It cheapens the tuxedo, rendering it just a notch above a business suit.
It's a special occasion, fellas. Treat it like one.
In large part because of the LotR sweep, the evening proved to be a pretty dull one, overall. No one behaved in remotely outrageous fashion. There were few displays of wit or charm. Nothing at all occurred (the LotR sweep aside) to make the evening stand out as years go by. There were no great suprises among the winners (oh, that there had been). Billy Crystal was entertaining enough, but not stellar.
Give me Steve Martin or, as someone I know suggested, Jon Stewart next time. A little less Borscht Belt and a little more bite, please.
And damnit, Bill Murray should have gotten the Best Actor nod. Sean Penn's scenery chewing was such prototypical Oscar bait that it would have been nice, just once, to see the Academy go against its usual tendencies.
One fears that this was Murray's one shot, and I was saddened to see him looking so blue after Penn's name was called.
You dropped the ball on this one, voters. Shame on you.