 |
|
 |
|||||
links
|
|
Friday, April 11, 2003Wow, The New Republic agrees with my take on the CNN situation. Maybe I'm not the raving right wing nutcase everyone thinks. the more you think about the piece, the more it starts to look like a pretty pathetic attempt by the network to preemptively cover its ass. After all, once all the details about Saddam's sadistic reign of terror start trickling out, people are inevitably going to wonder why CNN wasn't reporting this stuff all along. Far better to get the mea culpa over with sooner rather than later. posted by Nate on 11:23 PM link CNN's chief exec Eason Jordan had this New York Times op-ed today. He recounts how CNN knew how brutal the Iraqi regime was, that "Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed," yet did nothing. Why didn't they report it? Because they feared for their journalists and its Iraqi staff. Right. Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home. Uday Hussein even confided to Eason Jordan that he planned on murdering three people, yet CNN did nothing. (Mr. Jordan told Jordan's King Hussein about the plot, but let the other two return to Baghdad to get slaughtered.) CNN didn't report on this, lest they get kicked out of the country or have their international ratings go down. They didn't even take an editorial position on toppling the Hussein regime, despite all they knew. Fucking ridiculous. posted by Nate on 4:36 PM link Thursday, April 10, 2003Hrmmm... My alma mater lost their Frozen Four game in OT to Minnesota 3-2. The Red Wings are in the process of losing to an inferior club right now. Oh well. I didn't have to work today. There was hockey all afternoon and evening. I enjoyed a glass of bourbon a fine T-bone during the first intermission. Allah Ackbar and stuff. God is great 'cause he gave us hockey, and liquor, and steak. Oh, and cheese. Cheese kicks ass, also. posted by Nate on 9:51 PM link Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! And other cool freedoms, like this: the movie version of 70's cop show "Starsky and Hutch" begins filming this week. Guess who's playing Huggy Bear? Snoop Dogg. Like Dave Barry, I am not making this up, fo shnizzle. posted by Nate on 1:22 AM link Wednesday, April 09, 2003There are no words that can describe the images coming in from Baghdad this morning. People hauling down Saddam statues, burning the ubiquitous twenty foot tall posters of the dictator. Iraqi immigrants taking to the streets near Detroit, waving American flags and singing in jubilation. We're doing the right thing in liberating these people, even if its just a byproduct of (a) Bush's Insane War on Children and Old People In a Quest for Cheap Oil and Haliburton Profits, or (b) Bush's Just War On Crazy, Terrorist-Supporting People Who Have Chemical and Biological Weapons. (Select choice (a) if you have enjoyed a book by Noam Chomsky that is not about linguistics.) This makes me damn proud to be an American. The only problem is that I've developed this weird sinus condition; every time I turn on the news, my eyes tear up. SARS, no doubt. posted by Nate on 11:41 PM link Tuesday, April 08, 2003War update: last night we killed Saddam again. Cool deal. Win a lousy six straight basketball games and Luther Vandross sings the heart-warming "One Shining Moment" in your honor; spend twenty years conducting bloody, Stalin-inspired purges on the populace of medium-sized country, and you get massive amounts of ordnance dropped on your head. It's harder work being a dictator, you say; I mean, your kind of motivational techniques are far more effective than Bobby Knight's. Throw a chair and choke somebody vs. poison gas and mass rape. No contest. Life is so unfair, you say: they never did this sort of torrential bombing shit to Castro. posted by Nate on 2:03 PM link Syracuse pulled the upset, in no small part due to a great few minutes by overlooked center Craig Forth. Having watched several Syracuse games this year, I've deduced Forth's usual role as: enter the game at the beginning of the second half, get three rebounds or so, and foul anyone who gets within ten feet of the basket. He gives Syracuse's other tall people a breather, but is otherwise as important as any other awkward white seven foot center. Only last night he went off, blocking three shots and scoring his only six points of the tournament, including a dunk to disrupt a momentum-filled Kansas comeback with three minutes left. He also got Collision and Graves into foul trouble, huge given KU's early success inside. The fact that he impossibly contorts his face in concentration whenever he attempts a free throw is an added bonus. (He's a fifty percent shooter.) I wonder if this super sophomore can make it to the NBA; every team needs an oversized gawky Caucasian as the eleventh man, just like former Buck Brad "the Vanilla Gorilla" Lohaus. posted by Nate on 1:46 PM link Monday, April 07, 2003Some jokers at CBS decided to put the basketball game on at 9pm tonight. A tad late for little kids and the like. Heck, I'm not as young as I used to be, and even in my halcyon days I slept an awful lot; in college once I slept over 22 hours straight, awakening to voices outside my dorm room speculating "Have you seen Dogg the last few days? I wonder if he went home for the weekend, or died." "If he died, God forbid, I call dibs on his Sega Genesis!!!" Good times, good friends. Anyway, this is just the latest attempt by TV execs to move sports toward a ridiculous ideal of youth culture. Sporting events must take place after 8pm, so college-age people have ample time beforehand to get hosed on lite beer and crappy bottled vodka drinks, then, if the television commercials are to be believed, dance drunkenly in the bathroom. Feh, maybe I should tune in to a rerun of Matlock instead; it's on earlier, and I distinctly remember Andy Griffith being light in the drunken-bathroom-dancing department. posted by Nate on 7:57 PM link Sunday, April 06, 2003Ken Grifffey Jr. dislocated his shoulder, one more raindrop in a typhoon of gimpiness. Too bad; just a few years ago he looked like he'd be the Willie Mays of his generation. A tremendous all-around ballplayer. Tremendous. I can't help but find ESPN's headline funny, though: Junior taunted while down with dislocated shoulder. "Yon nefarious brigand of the Base Ball Ampitheatre; I taunt thee, I taunt thee!" Anyway, what's with baseball players' shoulders coming unhinged this season? That is not a fun nor easy injury to come back from. My college roommate Oliver, who dislocated his shoulder twice since 2000, was just ahead of the curve it seems. posted by Nate on 11:42 AM link Got an email regarding my "Gulf War I: The Phantom Menace" comment below. Was I just being silly (well YEAH) or did I mean that the first war was an attempt by Darth Bush 41 to consolidate American power in the Middle East under false Palpatine-like pretenses, and that America is some sort of fascist Empire led by Republicans and J-E-W-S? Err, no: Donald Rumsfeld does not have blowing up Alderaan with a gargantuan death ray as part of the current battle plan. If anything, the metaphor is the other way around. War between modern Arab nations has never been a big deal, at least to the extent that an international coalition would get involved. But we went because of our "friend," Saudi Arabia. After Saddam was kicked out of Kuwait, our "friend" begged us to keep a larger than normal contingent stationed in our bases there, in case Saddam tried to rip shit up in their country. We're nice guys, so okay, sure thing. Our military presence there convinced a large number of Arabs (many of them Saudi), that the Great Satan had designs on inhabiting the Middle East forever, and that the Crusaders had to be driven out By Any Means Necessary. So we got the World Trade Center bombing, Khobar Towers, embassy bombings, the USS Cole, and 9/11. because our "friend" (Darth Saudi-ous?) insisted we stay and protect them. Of course, I don't think the current international situation was part of some grand conspiracy that no-one has yet figured out except for George Lucas. Although the time commitment involved in uncovering a Massive Transnational Islamist Plot explains why he seems too hurried to bother with writing passable dialogue. And the Star Wars saga has a hell of a lot of desert prominently involved. Or maybe I'm just stark-raving nuts, and need to get out more. Well YEAH. posted by Nate on 11:27 AM link
|
|
words
of wisdom
|
|||
| Copyright 2004. All
your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson. Questions or comments? Email nate@swankypimp.com |
|||||||
