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Hiaasen on Iraq

If you haven't read Carl Hiaasen's novels, you've been deprived of therapeutic, seering cynicism guaranteed to keep you laughing as he exposes and examines the excess and corruption of modern Florida.  If you ever feel mired in the malaise, give this trio a read.

He's always educational and relentless in pace.  If you're taking things too seriously, Hiaasen's the cure.  He serves brutal, always hysterical and cathartic ends for those who deserve no less.  You  get to vicariously enjoy just desserts for evil, rather than act foolishly on the righteous notions conjured in your own wrathful mind.  That's how it works for me anyway.  And I currently need the medicine, so I ordered his latest this afternoon. 

Since reading Tourist Season and Double Whammy in the late 80s, I knew he wrote a regular column in a major Miami paper, but I never bothered to check it out.   I did today. 

And found this.  His take isn't fresh or original, but he's onboard and the cynicism is as expected.

The number is there. Hunt hard enough through the newspaper stories and you'll find it.

Last week it surpassed 1,600. This week it will go higher.

You could write it on the blackboard in a hundred classrooms, and probably in 99 of them nobody could tell you what it stood for.

Here's the answer: As of Thursday, 1,609 was the number of American soldiers who died in Iraq since we invaded 26 months ago.

That works out to more than two soldiers killed every day, which in actuarial terms isn't a huge toll when compared to other long wars.

Unless it's your son or daughter or wife or husband coming home in the coffins, in which case the number is devastating.

Americans haven't completely lost interest in what's happening to our troops in Iraq, but an inevitable numbness has set in as the casualty figures rise steadily. The tragic has become the routine.

Lots more people could tell you the score of the Heat-Wizards playoff game or where the Dow Jones closed on Friday than could tell you how many soldiers died last week in roadside bombings.

They could tell you who got the most votes on American Idol. They could tell you how many times that ''runaway bride'' from Atlanta has been busted for shoplifting. They could tell you who won the NASCAR race at Darlington, and even the new Nextel Cup standings.

That kind of stuff isn't hard to find. Just park yourself in front of the TV or laptop, and relax. It's one big happy avalanche of entertainment.

Obviously we in the media have gone numb, too. And let's be honest -- it's much more fun to write about Paula Abdul than Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

There's more.

-- Zap

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Legere!

Pardon my latin on this historic day of pontification, but this is super cool. 

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed. [...]

Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a "second Renaissance".

They expect to discover new Christian epistles dating as far back as the earliest known canonical material.  Cool. 

-- Zap

Goodbye, Hunter

Too much will be written elsewhere for me to contribute satisfactorily to his legacy. But I like this very late excerpt, and an old photo.

~~~

Back in June, when John Kerry was beginning to feel like a winner, I had a quick little rendezvous with him on a rain-soaked runway in Aspen, Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet with a harem of wealthy campaign contributors. As we rode to the event, I told him that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service men didn't. Kerry quickly suggested that I might make a good running mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

That was the year I first met him, at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn.

We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out of the White House because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon -- which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.

That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.

~~~

I hope he found peace.

--TJ

The Watergate Papers, Released

In the midst of our discussions on Iraq and Washington state, please allow me a minor indulgence: if there's one story I can't nearly get enough of, it's Watergate.  I think my interest might go back as far as age six, actually; I vividly remember visiting relatives in Hamburg, Germany and seeing the giant headline of the morning paper that day in August. It was two words:

NIXON OUT

Obviously I had no idea at the time what was really going on, but in my mind's eye I can still see that headline (in German, it said "NIXON AUS"). As I made my way through high school, college and then graduate school, I became more interested in both the political story and the journalistic story. Watching how the MSM deals with political stories today, it pains me to think that the ethic of hard work and shoe leather is being subjugated to the easy headline and the he- said-they-said formula of reportage.

The University of Texas at Austin has paid $5 million for the materials surrounding "Woodstein's" efforts, and if you're a buff like me you can't help but be enthralled. If you're not altogether sure just what Watergate was, this probably isn't the best place to start, but they do reprint some of the key articles in the series to give you an idea.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled fisking and debunking activities...

(hat tip, Kos diaries)
--TJ