Blather

My New Favorite TV Show

As Jon Stewart pointed out on last night's Daily Show, people with jobs really missed out on something yesterday, unless their jobs permitted them, as mine did, to sit and stare at the TV coverage of the 9/11 hearings. The opening statement by witness and BushCo whipping boy Richard Clarke was so simple and eloquent, and offered such a stark contrast to the "What, us? Noooo, them" of other witnesses, that it seemed to knock even the panel's most aggressive Clarke-hunters off their game. (Former Navy Secretary John Lehman took a good nasty swing but missed by a mile, and Clarke never rattled.) Streaming video: The Washington Post excerpts Clarke's opening statement; C-Span has Clarke's complete testimony, plus the subsequent appearance by deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who really should think about playing silent-movie villains in his next career. The Post also has David Montgomery's take on panel member Bob Kerrey's open disgust over witnesses' buck-passing. Slate's Fred Kaplan weighs in here on Clarke's day before the cameras.

Rummy Ruffled

"You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't...It's become kind of folklore that that's what happened."

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Face The Nation (CBS), 3/14/04

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq."

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02, quoted back to Rumsfeld by NYT reporter Thomas Friedman

"It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know."

-- CBS transcript of Rumsfeld's response

(Via The Progress Report. Squirmy, uncomfortable video clip here. I guess one could make a word-parsing argument that "more immediate threat" is not the same as "immediate threat." It'd be hard to make the same distinction about White House spokesman Scott McClellan's remark from February of last year: "This is about imminent threat." I mean, it--I--we--heh! Phew! Hey, look over there!)

...Then they came for my breasts and there was no one left to speak out for my breasts

Jeff Jarvis rounds up the latest news in the Janet Jackson breast flap, which is a really unappetizing combination of words that just looks worse and worse the longer I stare at it. (By the way, isn't it about time somebody started a Janet Jackson Breast Flap weblog?) Charles Taylor at Salon singles out Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico for special mention in the competitive "Helen Lovejoy 'Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children'" category, where she's been doing some very nice work, and points out an inherent flaw in the morality crusaders' argument. The scariest news of the day, though, comes not from Salon or even the Hindustan Times, where they're just flummoxed by this whole attraction/repulsion thing we Americans have going on with breasts, but from the tiny Delaware County Times: A local art dealer has a nude in her window. Area bluenoses complain. Cops come calling. Art dealer removes painting from window.

Uh oh.

You Can Have Friday Night on Cinemax When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead Hands

The skin police at the FCC now want to extend their wrath from the broadcast networks to cable and satellite operators. The pretext, of course, is Justin 'n' Janet's shameful display of a quarter-inch of nudity a half a mile away in the Super Bowl halftime show, which this AP story notes also "featured provocative dancing and lyrics laced with sexual innuendo." Mercy! House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, not to be shoved out of the way when there's a camera around and a disapproving populace to demagogue, wants somebody to do something about all those awful commercials, too, which he described as "lewd and crude," apparently deciding that "rude and nude" would just have been gilding.

Curse You For Your Unflappable Imperturbability, George Bush!

This is pretty wonderful: The official White House transcript of an exchange between the president and pool reporters during a visit to the Nothin' Fancy Cafe in Roswell, NM. It shows Bush to be both funnier and more adept at flustering the press than I'd previously had reason to suspect. I'm not saying these are good things, just that they're surprising. Best bit:

REPORTER: But Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?

REPORTER (visibly cowed): Yes.

(Via Tim Porter's First Draft.)

Me No Understand New Money

The Treasury Department has invested in one of those spiffy "web sites" to hip Americans to the new $20 bills. Accessible from the site are a press kit, a fact sheet, and links to current TV spots, all of which are apparently predicated on the assumption that average citizens will be so flummoxed by the slightly new color scheme and minor redesign that they'll stare slack-jawed at the new bills the first time they receive them in change, turning them over and over in their hands, folding them into awkward shapes and attempting to use them to start their cars or shampoo their hair.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Next Jackass Governor of California

As Arnold Schwarzenegger cynically rides a say-nothing strategy toward Sacramento, the LA Times' Mark Arax sketches a time when the actor/politician wasn't so shy. One anecdote from Schwarzenegger's gym-rat days is more telling than anything the candidate has said so far on the campaign trail: After sleeping with a friend's girlfriend, he tricked the girl into getting the guy on the phone, then stood in the background yelling "I JUST [MADE LOVE TO] HER! I JUST [MADE LOVE TO] HER!" over and over. (This is the LAT's delicate redaction of Schwarzenegger's tasteful comments.) So now we know: Our next governor is the guy who asked you to smell his applesauce in the high-school cafeteria, then smashed your nose into it and made everybody look. Only much, much worse. Arax's piece is creepy and disturbing, and should be required reading for anybody who watched the recent "debate" and came away thinking Schwarzenegger is anything other than an empty suit with a mean streak.

Up By Her Blahnik Bootstraps

"I know that I would not be where I am today in my career, as a woman, without [Arnold Schwarzenegger's] support," Maria Shriver tells a campaign crowd, drawing cheers for the courageous way in which she has overcome the career-crippling traits of being rich, razor-thin and a Kennedy.