Swami Uptown

Thought for….a good long time

2006-09-18T17:39:00.000-04:00

It was then that I got up to leave
But she said, "Don't forget,
Everybody must give something back
For something they get."

--Bob Dylan, “Fourth Time Around”

Quittin’ Time

2006-09-18T17:35:00.000-04:00

Cherish every word of this one, kids, because that’s all he wrote--Swami closes his doors with this column, though I will return to Beliefnet from time to time in the persona of Jesse Kornbluth to opine on matters spiritual.

I’m stopping for a very simple reason: I’ve said it all.

I’ve said it all, and it’s worked out pretty much the way I said it would, and by now that’s certainly clear to most of you who show up here, so why not get out of the way and let someone else have the floor before I bore you--and myself?

Which is to say: We have finally devolved to about the 14^th century.

In a single week--last week--we saw the Pope make an ill-advised historical reference to Islam. And what did he get for his erudition? One dead nun and some bombings. Who knew these Muslims were so sensitive? Now the Pope has had to issue a first-ever contemporaneous apology--or spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder to see if he’s being stalked by a suicide swordsman on a flying carpet. Score one for the 14^th century.

Also last week, George Bush confessed his love of torture, a l4th-century art. He wants to know--like a frat boy on a date with a girl from a junior college--just how far he can go. Can he squeeze the testicles…just a little? How much water is too much? And is Megadeath cruel and unusual? The right answer, of course, is that all of this stuff is against everything we believe. (And, worse, that it doesn’t work.) But that answer only applies to those with an appreciation of the soul--the torturer’s as well as the so-called terrorist’s. If your head is in the 14^th century, however, who cares? Score two for the 14^th century.

And the war. You may have seen it in the news: They’re going to dig a ditch around Baghdad, the better to keep the bad guys out. But that’s just preamble. They’ll need water. And gates. And, later, helmets (not that the Bushies will actually get them to our soldiers.) And then we’ll have a perfect Middle Ages kingdom inside those walls--with children rushing out to swim in the moat during the day. Score three for the 14^th century.

Kinda depressing. Especially for those of us who said, again and again, only crazy people turn the clock back. Not that it would have mattered if the entire nation had shouted--these guys are not just wrong, they’re cracked. They could give a damn about you (and that includes the idiots among you who voted for them).

Bush, for the record, may not be entirely committed to the 14^th century. Last week, he seemed pretty rhapsodic about re-creating the 19^th century….which lasted until l960, as he and I both recall.

As Bush put it:

“A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me. There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s--boom--and I think there's change happening here. It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening.”

And there we complete the circle. Some of you think I have sex on the brain--and why not? It’s a good place for sex to start--but I come back to my theory that these dull white Christian men are a bunch of lousy lays, and they know it, and they want revenge on the world, which would take the form of making sure nobody gets any.

The jihadists hate women. So do far-right Christians in America.

The jihadists see only one path to God. So do far-right Christians in America.

And so on.

A long time ago (the '60s), in an institution far away (Harvard), I learned that enemies tended to resemble one another. Well, it took Bush almost six years, but he’s now made it clear to pretty much everyone who’s not too scared to think: He hates your freedom--of every kind--just as much as the people he says he’s trying to protect you from.

Frankly, it demeans me to write a column, week after week, about a guy that addled and damaged.

And yet I have. Didn’t plan to--I showed up, hoping to explore what committed Buddhism would look like in the millennium--but once I saw what was happening to my country, I had to change focus. You can’t have a spiritual conversation in a language that’s debased. Ideas and words must match.

But the White House and the Religious Right have declared war against language and ideas, so I joined the battle in the place where it was being fought. And I could go on and fight that battle some more in this column--I’ve got items of interest about Scholastic and that dreadful ABC 9/11 movie, and a new documentary about camps for Christian kids, and Katie Couric’s spectacular calves (kidding; just wanted to see if you were really reading)--but why? Those items are merely anecdotal. You get the big picture. If you don’t by now, no way can I help you.

I’ve decided I’ll do better fighting a culture war in the culture itself. I’m going to throw more energy into HeadButler.com. And I like to think I’ve got some other tricks up my sleeve. Please contact me there if you have thoughts to share, or even the random hello.

“There are few things about which one can say with pleasure, ‘This is the end,’ ” Samuel Johnson said, and the dictionary-maker and moralist was never wiser than when he wrote those words. Even when I’ve been in a blind rage, I’ve enjoyed this forum. Thanks to my saintly Beliefnet editors and enablers--so you don’t get sent to Gitmo, I won’t name you here. Thanks to Mrs. U and the Little One, who got turned into copy fodder far too often. And thanks to you, who are the reason I came. Here’s hoping we all make it through, safe and healthy and sane. And loved, loved more than we know, by a God we can dimly perceive. That, yes, most of all. Hugs. Amen.

Thought for the Week

2006-09-11T17:16:00.000-04:00

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that phase.
Even your emotions had an echo
In so much space

And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Probably

And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice
Come on now, who do you think you are,
Ha ha ha bless your soul
You really think you're in control

Well, I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
Just like me

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them
Ever since I was little, it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done

Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably

--the lyrics for "Crazy" (the song of the summer), by Gnarls Barkley

Can We Have a Little Privacy in Here?

2006-09-11T17:11:00.000-04:00

Ok, maybe I'm self-congratulatory because I got 9/11 out of the way last week--in a piece about the importance of photography and the relative unimportance of words. But of course, I didn't get it out of the way. I'm writing about it now. Or, to be accurate, writing about talking about it.

Everybody East of the Mississippi has a good 9/11 story, and I do too. I dealt with it in public ages ago. I'm done. I would have thought, five years in, lots of us would be done.

I don't mean done grieving. That goes on. And so, I now see, does the media. And the politiciking. But to stand on the ashes of the martyred dead and talk platitudes, to have ignored explicit warnings and done nothing and then show up to mourn the forever lost--that takes some kind of nerve. The usual suspects have that nerve. And more.

And what do we get out of it? A wallow of feel-bad emotion. Some wimpy moralizing. If you came away from the 9/11 media orgy feeling better about anything, I have to wonder what you do when the words and motions aren't synthetic.

I have come to the conclusion--how reactionary is this?--that privacy is the answer. My first wife, the really rich one, had known this all her life: "All money can do is buy you privacy." My current and final wife knows that lesson by instinct--when we got married, she nixed the idea of a New York Times profile. If you've got nothing to sell, shut up--that's my life lesson.

I was on the elliptical trainer at the gym this morning when the ceremonies were held in the pit of the World Trade Center. I was listening to Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde"--in troubled times, always vote for a genius. I tried not to watch the TV screens, but who turns away from a trainwreck or grief?

I think it's great that the friends and families of the 9/11 victims got together--they had lots to offer one another. We brought nothing to the event but our voyeurism. Common decency should have made us turn away.

But it's not just 9/11, it's all media, all the time. In England in the 19th century, they put straw on the street in front of houses where someone had just died, so the horses' hooves clicking on pavement wouldn't distract the mourners from their important mission. And I remember how many friends have told me, after funerals of close friends or family, they felt compelled to have sex--the hotter the better. I understand: grief is a private matter. It's not to be shared with civilians.

Grief--active grief--takes many forms, including the twisted and raw. So spare me the solemnity of a Rudy Giuliani speech. Give me a screaming widow. A family holding itself together as they do in ancient Italian portraits. And, yes, a man or woman sobbing on the way to orgasm. Any of that--all of that--is one way to shake a fist at God, to curse Him out, to poke death in the eye, to cast a big vote for life and the future. Mourning: a beautiful process. Just keep it out of prime time.

Schooling Tim Russert

2006-09-11T17:03:00.000-04:00

He's too much of a hack to learn, but let me show you how it's done--or how it could be done if the lords of media didn't think that journalists need politicians more than pols need journalists. Or if I got a TV show. Or if "House" were a real person.

As you may know, there was yet another definitive report released on Friday: NO connection between 9/11 and Saddam. On Sunday morning, Dick Cheney went on Meet the Press." And there he said:

CHENEY: You’ve got Iraq and al-Qaeda, testimony from the director of CIA that there was indeed a relationship, Zarqawi in Baghdad, etc. Then the third...

RUSSERT: The committee said that there was no relationship. In fact...

CHENEY: Well, I haven’t seen the report; I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the fact is...

And that was it. Russert moved on--it's his crowning skill. What should he have done? This:

Really, Mr. Vice President? It's Sunday morning, 36 hours after that report was issued. Surely you knew I'd ask about this. And by the nature of your job, this is important information. Were you not briefed?

(Cheney responds with some evasion.)

Well, then, perhaps you could tell us: What's a day like in your office? Take us through your day.

(Cheney blows more smoke.)

Don Corleone--I'm not making an analogy--always wanted to hear the bad news first. Considering how often the administration has linked 9/11 and Iraq, this new report sure looks like bad news. Is there someone in your office who has the job of telling you what you don't want to hear?

(Cheney does whatever.)

So let's see. Not much interest in a dialogue with the media. No intrusion of bad news. Tell me, Mr. Vice President, what American institutions do you respect?

(Cheney blathers.)

I've got some other questions to ask, but I'd rather explore this. Let me read you the relevant passages from the report, and then perhaps you'll comment....

I know: too much to hope for. Cheney would never appear again. Gee, wouldn't that be just awful?

Thought for the Week

2006-09-05T17:41:00.000-04:00

I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold. I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'

--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Essence magazine, comparing the war in Iraq with the American Civil War and explaining why slavery might have lasted longer if the North had decided to end the fight early.

Runner-Up Thought for the Week

2006-09-05T17:39:00.000-04:00

You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you? I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell.

--George W. Bush, as governor of Texas, in conversation with a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman. Quoted in Raw Story

Why Osama Hearts George Bush

2006-09-05T17:36:00.000-04:00

From ABC News:

“The Pakistani military will no longer operate in the area where Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda operatives are believed to be hiding, according to terms of what the Pakistan government calls a "peace deal," signed today with militant tribal groups allied to the Taliban and al Qaeda.”

“Under the agreement, the Pakistan military will stop monitoring the activity of the militants, who will pledge to "live like good citizens," General Sultan said. More than 30 militant prisoners have been released, and the military will pay compensation for property destroyed during the fighting.”

Seems only fair. George Bush couldn’t be bothered finishing Osama off at Tora Bora. Later, Bush said he rarely thinks about Osama and that we shouldn’t pay so much to one guy. And, later, Osama returned the favor by making an announcement--just before the ’04 election--that the Republicans could spin to Bush’s advantage.

But after all that, the Pakistanis never quite got the message. They persisted in thinking we wanted Osama. Silly Pakis--they’re just soooo 9/11.

Just a Few Things About Israel

2006-09-05T17:33:00.000-04:00

You know how sports coaches tell you to play your hardest right up to the end of the game? Armies do the same thing. At least, the Israeli Armed Forces do. From the Financial Times:

"The United Nations described as 'shocking and immoral' the fact that Israel dropped well over 90 percent of its cluster munitions in Lebanon during the last three days of the conflict--when it was already clear there would be a cessation of hostilities.”

"Israel intensified its military offensive in southern Lebanon in the 72 hours between Security Resolution 1701 being signed in New York and the ceasefire on August 14.”

"Cluster weapons contain dozens of small explosives which spread over a wide area and are either air-dropped or ground launched. The U.N. said it had identified 359 cluster bomb-strike locations, and that 102,000 unexploded small bombs continued to maim and kill people every day.”

"'Civilians will die disproportionately again, after the war,' [Jan Egeland, U.N. humanitarian chief] said. 'This should not have happened. It’s an outrage.'”

No, I don’t think I’ll be planting any trees in Israel this holiday season. And considering what my brethren did in the war’s last days, I don’t think I have much to atone for later this month. I do think I’ll up my contribution to Doctors Without Borders, though--in the hopes that Jewish doctors will be treating Lebanese children. Now that’s heartwarming!

You Don't Even Have to Read the Story

2006-09-05T17:31:00.000-04:00

The headline and subhead say it all. From The New York Times:

40 Bodies Found in Baghdad on Violent Day

The violence occurred on a day when Iraqi officials announced a plan to take over operational command of Iraq’s army from the U.S. next week

Well, Actually, There Is More

2006-09-05T17:30:00.000-04:00

“The bodies of 40 people, including 25 who were found blindfolded and shot at close range, were found in Baghdad today, an Interior Ministry official said.”

But Wait, There Is Still More

2006-09-05T17:29:00.000-04:00

“The Iraqi government also announced that two of its most senior officials are scheduled to travel to Iran on Tuesday, a state visit that raises the possibility that Mr. Maliki could also visit the country, its powerful and predominantly Shiite eastern neighbor.”

“The two officials traveling on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih and the national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, will discuss ways to enhance economic ties and resolve political problems, including border security, according to Mr. Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh.”

Scorecard: The Iraqi security forces can’t do their job. Violence is so prevalent in Baghdad as to be almost random. And “democracy” has produced a government in Iraq who want to get tight with the target of our next war. Three strikes–but we’re not out.

Oops, There’s Even More

2006-09-05T17:27:00.000-04:00

Still from that Times piece:

“In a news conference today, Mr. Askary, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said Sunni Arab insurgents had started renting apartments and store fronts in Baghdad and packing them with explosives.”

“The insurgents used new ways like renting apartments and shops to booby-trap them by remote control,” he said in a news conference. Iraqi security officials, he added, have warned shop owners and real-estate agents to more carefully screen potential tenants.

Strike Four: The insurgents are smarter than we are, too.

A Terrible Beauty

2006-09-05T17:18:00.000-04:00

A few days after 9/11, Joel Meyerowitz--famed for landscapes of extreme beauty and serenity--went to the site of the World Trade Center and started taking pictures. He stayed there, day and night, for nine months, until the workers left and only “the pit” remained. During that time, he was the only photographer on site. Just those facts tell you that the 8,500 pictures he took--whatever he took--were remarkable.

Two years ago, my wife and I went to a show of this work. Like most other people, we walked through the exhibit in stunned silence, not knowing what to think. The images were completely brutal and oddly beautiful, challenging beyond our immediate ability to respond. Beyond my ability, anyway--as we left, my wife knew her mind well enough to say she thought we should buy one.

We never fight. We never yell. But I found myself on the sidewalk, screaming at Karen: “Are you out of your mind? How could you stand to see that horror every day? No one can live with that!”

We did not buy the picture. But time has changed me. I can no longer read about the people who died on 9/11. I can't look at the movies. Simply, I'm done with narratives that others create; I need to put 9/11 into my head my own way. And that leads me to photography. Yes, “every picture tells a story”--but not until I tell it to myself.

So the guy who couldn't bear these photographs on a wall was among the first to buy the massive book--15” x 11” pages, some double-spread, some that fold out--of these pictures. 340 pages of these pictures. Eight-and-a-half pounds of these pictures.

To see some of these pictures and learn about Joel Meyerowitz’s remarkable book, click here.

Thought for the Week

2006-08-28T16:59:00.000-04:00

The hour is early
The whole world is quiet
A beautiful morning's about to ignite
I'm ready for danger
I'm ready for fire
I'm ready for something to lift me up higher

Life's been good, I guess
My ragged old heart's been blessed
With so much more than meets the eye
I've got a past I won't soon forget
You ain't seen nothing yet
I'm still learning how to fly...

-- Rodney Crowel l, "Fate's Right Hand"

Nantucket, Week Two

2006-08-28T16:58:00.000-04:00

The days pass on a cycle. Not the news cycle. Time is what it is. Ditto weather.

After the initial collapse, the body and spirit heal. Ambition becomes proprtionate. Charity descends on the spirit.

Well, maybe not. Maybe I mean clarity--purer anger, sharper focus.

As follows...

The Return of Bill Maher, Laziest Man on TV

2006-08-28T16:56:00.000-04:00

Just like women who have a child, swear they'll never go through another delivery, and promptly get preggers again, we eagerly brought drinks and smokes to the couch last Friday night to watch the return of Bill Maher.

We had forgotten: For all his talent, he is an unforgivably lazy host. And as an interviewer, worse than the wonderful Jon Stewart, whose single flaw is his weakness in five-minute give-and-take.

Maher delivers a crisp opening monologue, snappy long-distance interviews, and closes with a tart segment called "New Rules." If only he'd do more in that vein. But the centerpiece of the show is a 35-minute panel, which invariably kicks around the Iraq War to absolutely no gain.

Either no woman wants to be on this show or Maher has a terrible booker, for he launched the season with a three-man panel. Four man, really, for Christopher Hitchens has enough testosterone for two--he not only supports the war, he gives the finger to those who don't.

Hitchens does not always seem sober on TV, but it makes little difference. He has that palmy Brit accent to give him gravitas, and he wears one of Graydon Carter's discarded cream suits for that suave look. In every other way, he's Ann Coulter--he makes it up as he goes along. He cites George Bush's State of the Union speech as if Bush's words meant anything. Ditto Colin Powell at the U.N. And Hitch seems to be the only one who knows that on 9/11 George Tenet said, "Gee, I hope those weren't the guys training at flight schools in the Midwest!"

Maher seems to think his job is to toss out a topic and watch until the panelists have eaten that bone clean. Or maybe he just doesn't know enough to jump in. In any event, HBO broadcast these lies and more--unchallenged. For Hitch, it was a four-star night.

Or maybe not. Earlier in the show, Maher interviewed Spike Lee and asked him a question, prompted by a lazy reading of a Bob Herbert New York Times column, about black-on-black violence. Hitch went out of his way to commend Maher for asking this question. And then Hitch's expression soured, as if to suggest a dark view of dark Americans. Maybe of all people of color. No doubt, in the late '60s, Hitch would have creamed his jeans over the carpet bombing of Vietnam.

This moment cried out for a wider audience. C'mon, YouTube, show us Hitch's expression as he talked about Spike. Let's see if that was a pro forma sneer or the rictus of racism. I'd put money on the latter.

As for Maher, I can't imagine many viewers found this dead zone in the middle of his show easy to sit through. If he continues to set the bar this low, he could find himself off the air--again. And that would be a loss, because you can count TV hosts of courage on one hand.

E-mail of the Week

2006-08-28T16:52:00.000-04:00

This is an excerpt from "Strongest Dad in the World," a Sports Illustrated piece by Rick Reilly:

Eighty-five times Dick Hoyt has pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day....

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. " 'He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life,' '' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. " 'Put him in an institution.' "

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. " 'No way,' '' Dick says he was told. ‘There's nothing going on in his brain.' "

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain...

After a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick wanted to do that...How was Dick, a self-described "porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that....in 1993, they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?"....

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii....

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time....

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago.''

The Day the President Cried

2006-08-28T16:48:00.000-04:00

Hildi Halley, a woman from Maine whose husband, an engineer, died under unclear circumstances in Afghanistan, recently met with President Bush. She got to say all the things Cindy Sheehan didn't. The best part:

"We literally sat knee to knee...I looked deep into his eyes and talked to him about love and losing people and that he was responsible for this. I said, `I didn't vote for you, but you are my President. And you're not serving me.'

"I said I believed it was time to put an end to this. His job is to find solutions. I said, 'You yourself have said you had erroneous information going into this....As a Christian man, you realize that when you've made a mistake it's your responsiblity to end this. And it's time to end the bleeding and it's time to end the war.'

"I said, 'What would truly bring healing is to start working on changing your policy towards the Middle East...as President, you're here to serve the people. And the people are not being served with this war....It's time as a Christian to put our pride behind us."

Halley said that the President appeared moved by what she'd said, but that she doubted it would bring about any real change. "He cried with me," she recounted. "I feel he responded to me emotionally. I don't know if that's going to change policy. It probably won't. But I hope it makes him think a little bit further."

MySpace: With 'Friends' Like These....

2006-08-28T16:42:00.000-04:00

Larry Magid--who knows as much about kids and Internet safety as anyone on the planet--sent me a copy of MySpace Unraveled": What it is and how to use it safely, the just-published “social networking” guide for parents that he co-authored with Anne Collier.

It comes at a good time: MySpace, the king of “social networking” sites, gained its 100 millionth member this month. That's huge. No, it's crazy big. Like a monster, eating everything in its path.

When Rupert Murdoch paid $585 million to buy MySpace, that seemed--to me, anyway--like an idiotic purchase, and for a very obvious reason: More than 20 percent of MySpace's members are under 18. As we know, kids are notoriously disloyal consumers and can always be expected to move on to the next cool thing before the year is out. If history is any judge, MySpace should be a ghost town by Spring 2007.

And yet Google just agreed to pay News Corp's Fox Interactive Media--that is, Murdoch--at least $900 million over the next 45 months for the right to sell ads on MySpace and some other Fox sites. Which puts Murdoch $315 million ahead already. Clearly, some very smart people think that MySpace is here to stay. Go figger.

There is an argument that MySpace fills an important need, especially for teens. Kids are scheduled like little executives, running from one activity to another until they rush home, do their schoolwork and collapse. They need time to hang out, relax, gab with friends. MySpace looks like an ideal solution. Not only can you blog and communicate, you can do that on a site whose very name suggests that the members own it, that it's a club.

If hanging out with friends from school and the 'hood were the sole--or even main--function of MySpace, I'd cheer. But there is also the matter of accumulating friends, of piling up the numbers. How do you do that? By becoming a “friend” of a rock band. The more cool bands you orbit, the more “friends” you have.

This is a time-consuming activity. At the suggestion of Atoosa Rubenstein, the relentlessly plugged-in editor of Seventeen Magazine, I joined MySpace. The idea was that I'd share some cultural opinions, which would then attract new visitors to my web site, from HeadButler.com. But for weeks, I had only one “friend”--the founder of MySpace, who is everybody's “friend.”

Then someone explained MySpace to me. You gotta work it. Two, three, four hours a day. (The “average” MySpace member spends between one and two hours on the site a day.) Hey, who ever said “friendship” is easy? Like marriage, it takes commitment and effort. Just keep loving those unknown bands…

Of course, there is an easier way to be popular: flaunt your sexuality. Pictures preferred, especially of teen girls. Accounts of debauchery will also work. MySpace says it patrols its screens, but really--how do you patrol 100 million profiles? Well, someone does: college admissions officers, who visit MySpace to compare the Goody Two Shoes of the application essay to the drunk girl who portrays herself as a 'ho. And, of course, weirdos.

Pervs and predators have been making a lot of parents nuts about this site, thanks to stories like these: a 14-year-old girl strangled, reportedly by someone she met on MySpace; a 13-year-old girl stopped by her grandfather on her way to a train station to meet a 38-year-old man she met through My-Space; a 15-year-old charged with harassment when police found what read like a "hit list" on her MySpace page.

These headlines make it seem that MySpace is a perv's paradise. In fact, most kids know better than to consort with adults. And, as Magid and Collier note, the kids who do agree to meet adults--and go on to have sex with them--are, more often than not, willing co-conspirators. Which leads Magid and Collier to conclude that MySpace is a safe space: “the new burger joint.”

I think not. I see something fundamentally fraudulent about the phenomenon of “social networking.” These sites are not services; they are businesses. Helping kids grow, communicate, expand their worlds--that sounds nice, but it's bullshit. As a critic has written, “We keep touting MySpace as 'Do It Yourself' media for the masses when it's basically just an ad-revenue generator built on the backs of its membership.”

Think not? Already movie stars and famed musicians can be your “friends” on MySpace. They'll be happy to take your money. Will they bring you chicken soup if you're sick? Of course not.

The exploitation of kids on MySpace is, mostly, exploitation by MySpace. Back in the day--warning: here comes the Old Fart Rant--kids had real experiences and made real mistakes, played real games and got real injuries. MySpace takes kids who need fresh air and real friends and addicts them to their computer screens. Pump them up with snacks and soft drinks, and they're just like their parents--only “interactive.” Whatever that means.

A hundred million people can't be wrong? Nonsense. A hundred million people are almost always wrong. Or to put it lest kindly, most of that hundred million are so unaware of the real transaction that they don't even sense they're being exploited. There's a word for people like that--losers.

Thought for the Week

2006-08-21T17:37:00.000-04:00

Living on the edge of the city limit line
This is where the boundary finally ends
And I swear that we're the last living souls
in a populated ghost town
All the billboards are our best friends
Which way did our last chance go
and can we get out if we go right now?
It seems that with the malls and the mega-church stadiums
We would get out if we knew just how
With the radio on

-- John Ritter, “Golden Age of Radio”

The Island View: Clear as far as I can see

2006-08-21T16:43:00.000-04:00

Nantucket—We’ve just arrived for a tradition-in-the-making: our second annual retreat. The ferry takes 2+ hours, and that trip through open water under a darkening sky is sufficient to bring on the first layer of chill. A day spent reading in the garden and walking the beach deepens the calm. The seals swim right to the edge of the beach—never saw that before.

By the end of two weeks, I might not recognize myself.

On the other hand, Katrina struck Louisiana while we were here last year. We were sharing a house with another writer. So when we weren’t in sweet, gentle water, we were watching CNN and writing and, mostly, wringing our hands.

So as much as I’m peaceful, I’m also wary—evil lurks.

Certainly, lying does. And that’s the topic of my sermon today: the prevalence of untruth.

Lie #1: the British-hatched terror plot that might have taken down as many as 11 passenger jets. We learned immediately that after a year of planning, these “terrorists” had bought no plane tickets. Several of them lacked passports.

Now it appears that their terrifying technology was as improbable as their plot. An English IT journal—what? You expected cable news to blow the whistle?—called The Register tells you what you’ll need to pull off a mission of this sophistication:

Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.

It's best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate—especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation—to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.

Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide/acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours—assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities—you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

The genius of this scheme is that TATP is relatively easy to detonate. But you must make enough of it to crash the plane, and you must make it with care to assure potency. One needs quality stuff to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," as Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson put it. While it's true that a slapdash concoction will explode, it's unlikely to do more than blow out a few windows. At best, an infidel or two might be killed by the blast, and one or two others by flying debris as the cabin suddenly depressurizes, but that's about all you're likely to manage under the most favorable conditions possible.

So what was that week of fear about? Politics. Bush up to his usual tricks, still looking for a lie so terrifying he’ll never need to tell another. Still, who would have thought that Tony Blair was so desperate he’d play along with this farce?

Today, the Brits indicted eight of the 11 suspects on “conspiracy to commit murder” and “preparing acts of terrorism.” It is hard to imagine weaker charges.

But it is not at all difficult to understand why we have gutted our economy, chucked our rights, mortgaged our future, destroyed our status in the world and Lord knows what else because 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11. It’s terrorism. 24/7 Arabs. Men who enjoy cutting throats.

The fact is, those were precious lives lost on 9/11—I can personally attest to that—but many fewer lives than are lost to handguns or drunk drivers each year. Indeed, we lose more children to diseases that could have been prevented. And who knows how many uninsured Americans die unnecessarily?

It’s heresy to say it, but terrorism just isn’t the threat it’s been cracked up to be. Oh, it’s terrible when it happens, but in context, it just isn’t the big deal that Bush & Company want you to believe. But then, when have they told you the truth about anything? Truly. Name one.

Lie #2. Every word our government tells us about our troops. Like: we’ll soon bring some home. Like: they are well-equipped. And, most of all: that they are gung-ho for “the mission.”

Cut to the 172nd Stryker Combat Brigade. Thirty-eight hundred men and women had done a year in Iraq. They were coming home. Three hundred-eighty were already in Alaska. Three hundred were waiting for planes in Kuwait. Now 300 of those in Alaska and all the soldiers in Kuwait are on their way back to Iraq, Destination: Baghdad.
Mission: keep Iraq from falling into the Civil War it’s been in for months.

Are those soldiers jiggy with the mission? Here’s a website for their families. And here’s a wife, raging:
“My world came crashing down. I sat down and cried, I didn't know what else to do. How was I going to keep going by myself. I had already spent a year away from my best friend, my husband, and now they want to keep him longer. My family is all the way on the other side of the country. I am alone. All I have is my kids. Ohhh, how am I going to tell my kids?

"President Bush said the soldiers have to stay in Iraq, but he didn't have to feel my heart breaking. He didn't have to look into my kids’ eyes and tell them that there daddy isn't coming home. He doesn't have to live on edge constantly and fear every time the phone rings. He is not loosing hair, having anxiety attacks, constant diarrhea, and sick to his stomach every minute of everyday. I try to act happy and 'normal' for my kids’ sake, but it’s all fake. Inside I feel like I am dying. I love my husband and I am proud of the work he does. However I feel he has done his job over there and now it is time for him to come home to his family. Please, I beg for your help to get our loved ones home.”

Click on the link for more heartbreaking stories.

Happily for me, my world is smaller than larger than the news. Large, in that I can think as big as the sky allows here. Small, in that the leading actors are my nearest and dearest. We have the first two years of “Entourage” on DVD, and the Yankees are winning and winning and winning. We have food and water and cozy shelter. Lucky? Believe it.

Not a politician in sight—I missed the Clintons last night—so the lies are at distance. My prayer for you: that your cable news channels don’t work, that you spend these last weeks of summer reading good books and listening to great music and watching fine movies. And that nothing “newsworthy” happens, so you don’t have to be offended by lies.

Thought for the Week

2006-08-14T18:03:00.000-04:00

What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information. We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants.
--Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

First I was afraid/I was petrified

2006-08-14T18:02:00.000-04:00

First I was afraid/I was petrified/Kept thinking I could never live
without you by my side/But I spent so many nights/thinking how you did me wrong/I grew strong/I learned how to carry on...

Ah, disco. The glory days, before AIDS. Funny how those lyrics came to mean something different. Funny how they grid neatly over the reality we face in Year 6 of George Bush's un-American America.

Is there anyone out there who still doesn't get the drill? Who doesn't understand that the United States is--by choice--in a state of permanent war?

The United States is at war not because we have enemies, but because the American people are the enemy. The people have power--we could vote this band of crooks out. So we must be convinced that the people who are oppressing us are the only people who can save us. We must, in short, be brainwashed, defeated or demoralized.

It is axiomatic that such a brain-bending domestic campaign would produce external enemies. That's all to the good. It proves that Bush and Cheney and their team were right--the world is a dangerous place. Best to knock our foes down before they get the first punch in.

Who are our foes? Cadres of revolutionaries. Not governments. But fighting cadres is to be engaged in asymmetric warfare--police actions, with unorthodox weaponry. That kind of warfare is cheap. And we have invested in expensive hardware. So we must go to war with governments, even if, in the process, we cause more cadres to form.

We had bin Laden at Tora Bora. We let him go. A criminal offense, if your name is Bill Clinton. Another day at the beach if you're George Bush.

Why did we let bin Laden escape? Because we need him alive. He's the bogeyman, and although Bush likes to say he's not important, he's totally the point. Bin Laden is 9/11. And as long as Bush can invoke 9/11, he's got 20-30% of the voters right there.

But the other point of 9/11 is less convenient: The same 30% of Americans who think Bush is doing a good job think that bin Laden and Saddam were brothers in arms. The rest of us want to cut and run. But we can’t say that loud and clear, because our government has assured us that we can’t leave Iraq without making these freedom-haters want to take the fight to us in other places --- like our shopping malls and soccer fields.

But there’s not much the government can do to juice a good headline out of Iraq. It’s in civil war mode. Our troops stand by most of the time, trying to avoid casualties. Meanwhile, the militias pretty much run the country. (In Fallujah, the police got messages: Quit or die. Overnight, that police force shrunk from 2,000 to a few hundred officers.)

So we need a new war. Iran will do. We could have dealt with Iran diplomatically, just as we could have dealt with North Korea and Syria (and, for that matter, Iraq). But talk is for wimps. Besides, if you talk, you occasionally have to listen, and our government has no interest in hearing anyone say anything but "you bet" and "how high."

And that is why the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers led to $10 billion in damage to Lebanon and to a quarter of the population suddenly homeless. We needed Israel to take care of Hezbollah so there were no distractions when we hit Iran. We don't want war on two fronts. Israel must be secure when our bombers and missiles do the death dance on Iran.

It could get complicated here, but only if you’re thinking. Don’t think. Just know that Al Qaeda equals Iran equals Syria equals Hezbollah equals Palestine. They’re just one big group of freedom-hating scary Muslims who want to destroy the American way of life. The new fascists.

The Israeli "defense" of its borders was such a done deal that Dick Cheney left for Wyoming on July 29 and has not been back since--he’s taking the vacation Bush can’t. And why? Because the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah was planned months ago. All Israel needed was the excuse. The kidnapping provided it.

But what’s interesting is that Israel got routed. No one expected it. (Our government is always surprised when "terrorists" are disciplined and well-armed.) What a monkey wrench in the American juggernaut. I never thought I would see the day where I cheer Hezbollah. (And I’m not cheering now. To flip the paradigm, the Israelis who died matter just as much as the Lebanese children and farmers who got slaughtered.) But Hezbollah has given Bush and Cheney a slap across the face with its PR victory over Israel. It may have saved the Middle East from going down in flames. For the moment.

But only for the moment. Come November, we have an election. And that means some bad guys have to die. (Remember: no thinking.) They can't be white. That leaves the Islamo-Fascists building atomic bombs (not!) in Iran.

The liquid-bomb terrorists gave Bush no bounce. Everybody seems to have heard they had no real "go" date. No plane tickets. Most had no passports. (Know how hard it is to get an EU passport now if you're Muslim?) And the news brought a fresh bummer: Homeland Security was trying to dump its research into weapons like these. Yowsa!

So hi ho hi ho, it’s off to war we go. We’re just weeks away. The cable news patriots can go nuts all over again. And we can hear how a vote for a Democrat is a vote for terrorism. And in November, we’ll find out if the American people still fall for this BS.

And then, after the election, we’ll deal with the war we started.

Are you afraid? I am. Mostly of my own government.

Thought for the Week

2006-08-07T17:10:00.000-04:00

The strategy for the Middle East is to keep Israel and Hezbollah/Lebanon fighting. Keep all attention on them. If they ever stop, then everybody would look at Americans dying [in Iraq].

--Jimmy Breslin