Friday, February 24, 2006

Today

Happy 85th birthday to Abe Vigoda who, according to his website, is still alive.

• Posted at 10:43 PM · LINK

Who Banned Roger Rabbit?

China has passed a law against films that combine live-action footage with animation. You read that right. Here are the details.

• Posted at 5:31 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

William F. Buckley writes, "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed." I'm sure a lot of people do doubt that, but it's interesting that he thinks so.

• Posted at 5:27 PM · LINK

Today's 2nd Political Rant

A number of people have written to try and convince me that "Portgate" (can't have a scandal without a "gate" nickname) is a much greater outrage than I think. Among my correspondents are several folks whose opinions I respect and their arguments, plus some of the latest revelations in the matter, have me thinking they may be right. Note that I wrote "may be."

As you might imagine, I also got a couple of insulting messages. I don't think, these days, you can type the name of an elected official on the Internet without getting one of those. And I had a nice Bizarro World exchange with someone who has previously accused me of not giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, but thinks the White House is braindead on this one.

Here's a news story about the deal that I found remarkable. Note that this is from the Washington Times, a newspaper that routinely twists itself in knots to portray the current administration as flawless...

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was not aware a Dubai-owned company was seeking to operate terminals in six U.S. ports and that his agency was leading the review until after the deal's approval, an administration official said yesterday. Mr. Chertoff's spokesman, Russ Knocke, told The Washington Times the issue rose no higher than the department's assistant secretary for policy, Stewart Baker. "[Chertoff] was not briefed up to this until after this story started appearing in the newspapers," Mr. Knocke said. Mr. Chertoff is the third Cabinet official to acknowledge he did not know his agency had signed off on the plan as a member of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS). Both Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow have publicly said they were unaware of the deal. But Mr. Chertoff's exclusion is more noteworthy because his department headed the CFIUS review and is in charge of security at all U.S. ports.

My first thought on reading this was, "So what? It's Michael Chertoff, the man who didn't know New Orleans was underwater." But it looks like everyone in the Cabinet was blindsided by this one. Even if the port deal was uncontroversial, this is not how we want our government to work, especially in the not-unimportant area of Homeland Security.

• Posted at 11:42 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Michael Kinsley makes a good point on the new prescription drug program. I'll quote one paragraph here but go read the whole thing...

Thus Bush's only major domestic accomplishment in six years as president has not achieved its intended purpose of cementing the affection of senior citizens for the Republican Party. Many Republicans are sobbing with frustration, too. It is one thing to put aside your principles and spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society if it is going to help you to win elections (so you can pursue your dream of smaller government). It is another to sell your soul and not get anything for it. No one looks more foolish than a failed cynic.

Health care costs in this country are insane. The bill for my four days in the hospital recently came to $30,251.68 and that doesn't yet include doctor fees. I did not have surgery or a lot of special equipment. That was the price tag for just laying in a hospital bed for four days, eating the fabulous cuisine and having intravenous antibiotics pumped into my system. My insurance will cover most of the tab but even my out-of-pocket costs could wreck the lifestyle of some family living near the edge, just barely able to make routine expenses. (I've heard from a number of people who had what I had but who were in a hospital for three or four weeks with it. Imagine what that cost. By the way, I consider myself fully recovered and my doctor seems to concur.)

During the Terri Schiavo controversy last year, there were a lot of folks who were deeply concerned about prolonging the breathing of a total stranger whose life was probably, in any meaningful sense of thinking or communicating, already over. I wonder how many of those people are concerned that every day, out-of-control medical costs are killing people who are much more "alive" than Ms. Schiavo was by the time any of us heard of her.

• Posted at 11:25 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

I think you still have to watch advertising to read articles on Salon if you're not a subscriber. But you might find it worth it to read this piece by political cartoonist Doug Marlette. He writes about the Danish cartoonist flap and death threats and things like that.

I was e-mailed by a reporter the other day who wanted me to answer the question, "How do you feel about cartoonists being threatened with death for drawing cartoons?" I don't think he understood my answer, which was that I'm opposed to human beings being threatened with death for anything they do, short of inflicting death or physical harm on another human being. It's not just cartooning that shouldn't result in death threats. Death threats are a bad thing in almost every situation except maybe cutting ahead of me in the checkout line at the market.

Anyway, the reporter thought I was unwilling to take a stand against censorship so I wrote a more formal statement of the obvious, about how it is inhuman for anyone to be harmed or punished for expressing an opinion, however offensive it may be to some. I actually think most people in the world believe that. Some just believe there are exceptions for certain things they hold dear.

You have to wonder what they're so afraid of. When I was attending U.C.L.A. many moons ago, there was a gentleman who showed up outside the Student Union every Friday around the lunch hour. He was an aspiring derelict who'd deliver a semi-coherent discourse about what was wrong with the world. I heard a little of it once and I couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about...something about false prophets and bold men on horseback dressed in rags. This all led up to his big finish, which was always the burning of a Bible. He had a seemingly-endless supply of them and I don't recall if he told someone or if I imagined the reason, which was that he'd spent the previous twenty years as a travelling salesman. In every town, he said or I theorized, he'd swipe the volume the Gideons had placed in the top drawer of the bedside table and take it home for, I guess, possible future burning.

The Bible-burner was around for months, generally ignored. If he drew an audience at all, it was of students who wanted to laugh at his hysterical manner and wild-eyed fanaticism. But then someone took umbrage at the guy's finales and for a few weeks, there were petitions out and articles in the school newspaper about some proposal to ban the burning of sacred religious symbols or books or I don't know what the exact wording was. All I know is that it got the Bible-burner a lot of undeserved attention and that the folks who wanted to make him arrestible made even less sense than he did. One who harangued me to sign his petition seemed to have a genuine fear that the sacred tome was in some kind of actual jeopardy and had to be defended against one drunk with a Zippo lighter. I feel that way when people want to make it a crime to burn an American flag...or when it actually is a crime to deny the Holocaust.

In Austria, a British author was just sentenced to three years in prison for doing that. While one can understand why some countries are sensitive about the subject, I don't think the evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz is so flimsy that it can't withstand a few people arguing against it. Using violence or imprisonment to stop an idea from being questioned or ridiculed is to demean the power of that idea. If something really is an eternal truth, it shouldn't matter if someone argues against it or draws an insulting cartoon about it or burns a copy of it. Instead, let's make it a crime, punishable by death, to mock or burn my work. That's the kind of stuff that needs protection.

• Posted at 1:02 AM · LINK