Monday, May 12, 2008

Today's Bonus Video Link

Oh, wait. I just found it. Here's what I was talking about in the previous message. This is Jon Stewart's interview this evening on The Daily Show where he chatted with Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and one of the chief planners of the Iraq War. This first part runs about eight minutes...

And here's Part Two, which runs a little more than eleven more...

• Posted at 9:23 PM · LINK

Loss of Feith

Anyone here see Douglas Feith on The Daily Show just now? I'll embed a clip when one's available but it was an amazing discussion. Feith was one of the main architects/boosters of the Iraq War in the Bush administration and even some folks on his side have been known to refer to him as "the stupidest man in Washington." Even leaving aside Iraq, for him to go on that show and think he could hold his own in an interview with Jon Stewart suggests that the insult is not far off the mark.

Feith is pushing a book and in it (and in interviews now), he says that there were an awful lot of mistakes made by the war's planners. I can remember a time not so long ago when if you said that on a blog, you got angry e-mails from people accusing you of hating the troops and longing to kiss the tush of Saddam Hussein, you traitor. And now here we have Doug Feith, who was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the invasion, essentially throwing his fellow planners under the proverbial bus. He's reduced to saying — this is a quote — "Errors are not lies."

He's right, of course, but errors are also not to be easily dismissed when thousands of people die because of them. Not when they reach the level where even Feith has to own up to them and try to get the public to view them as well-intentioned.

The guest chair on The Daily Show is becoming the single best way to sell a book these days. A publishing exec I encountered while promoting mine told me, "There's nothing like it. Just watch the ranking on Amazon before and after some author you never heard of before appears with Jon Stewart." So maybe it was worth it for Mr. Feith to make the appearance, or maybe he has some macho thing about walking into enemy territory. But I thought Stewart, with great charm and manners, confronted him in a way that the mainstream press does not confront these people...and Feith's responses were childish.

If you can catch the interview, do. Stewart said at the end that it was edited and that the entire discussion was up on the website. It's not yet there but when it is, I'll either link to it or embed it.

• Posted at 9:13 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

There are some clips you just can't see too many times. This is the third time I've linked to William Shatner's famous (infamous?) interpretation of Elton John's "Rocket Man," as performed at the Science Fiction Film Awards in 1978.

But! — and you'll be excited about this "but" — this version has much higher video quality than most of the copies that have been floating 'round the Internet. So think of this as Shatner — The Special Edition. It's just too, too good.

And then after you savor that, you might want to enjoy the Chris Elliott version again.

• Posted at 1:00 AM · LINK