The New York Times (continued)

Anybody reading this blog is entitled to ask, “Why does this guy waste so much effort writing about a moribund piece of junk like The New York Times?” Good question.

At a dollar a pop, it’s not worth the money. A dollar will buy me a 20 oz. Budweiser at the 7/11 or a fantastic used paperback at the basement sale of my local library branch.

I have cut down reading The Times to its Sunday edition, which I read thoroughly. Since I live in New York, I might as have some concept of the latest thinking of the city’s moth-eaten meritocracy. And a tedious task it is, let me tell you!

In the December 11 edition there is a piece about how the FBI is chafing at the restrictions placed upon it in its utilization of the Patriot Act. An agent complains in an e-mail that he is sick of being “kicked around by radical militant librarians[!]” Well, the FBI hasn’t had a good day since it was giving Monica Lewinsky the third degree during its investigation of Clinton’s blow job at the behest of then-director Louis Freeh.

Freeh, interviewed by Wolf Blitzer during the promotional tour of his self-serving memoirs was forced to attribute all his attacks on Clinton to “anonymous sources.”

When asked by Blitzer whether FBI leadership should have responded to two separate field agents’ reports of known Islamic militants receiving flight training at American schools, Freeh became indignant, responding icily, “Maybe it’s easier to connect the dots in retrospect,” as though it might be considered too much of a stretch for a highly trained, highly paid police agency to interpret and act on the reports, even after the embassy bombings in Kenya, the Khobar Towers bombings in Saudi Arabia and the attack on the USS Cole.

Freeh knows more than he is telling, and he probably figures that when the whole story of 9/11 comes clear, the final conclusion of history will greatly inculpate him for his blunders as FBI Director. Seen in that light, his book can be considered a desperate attempt to prevent him from going down in history as one of the great Bozos of American civilization.

Am I beginning to emulate the senile musings of Andy Rooney? God Help Me!

The Times Sunday Styles section delivered its usual tedious swill, devoting an entire page to the reminiscences of Manhattan bartenders; the anguish of a surrogate mother who agreed to be inseminated for free, she says (oh, sure!), by a homosexual male couple; a huge article called “What Men Want, Neanderthal TV,” about young males, bored with their wimpy lives, who get thrills watching male characters commit larceny and mayhem on cable TV shows; and an article about Anglo-Saxon males who gather surreptitiously in bars to watch Spanish bullfight videos, and applaud at the end. It shows a couple of turkeys practicing with a cape and horns in Central Park.

I have no idea if Sunday Styles is aimed at a female or male audience. Without knowing anything, I would assume it’s directed at women who are interested in knowing what their little kitty-kats are doing during the short intervals that they are let off the leash.

This brings me to the paper’s True Morons who write the opinion pages for the Week In Review. There is an article about a neo-conservative nerd who has pronounced himself in favor of torture in the hypothetical case that applying pliers to a guy’s testicles will save the world.

Sure, but what the article omits is there is no documented case of that happening. Right-wingers, bless ‘em, will respond: that’s because you never hear about it. My riposte to that is, it would be better to publicize a successful case of torture actually accomplishing something so the public can make an informed decision instead of having to depend upon the credibility of Dick Cheney. As it is, all we hear about is the 99.9% of the cases where they tortured the wrong guy.

(If the FBI had done it’s job before 9/11, we wouldn’t be having this discussion)

I once had occasion to get drunk in a midtown bar with this Frenchman who showed me his military ID and told me he had worked at Guantanamo as a translator. He said the detainees there, most of whom had had nothing to do with 9/11 and some of whom have been released and are now suing the government in civil court, are being treated as badly as those videos on Larry King of dogs and cats being tortured and skinned alive for their fur in China.

Torture didn’t do anything for the British in Northern Ireland, it didn’t help the French to retain Algeria, it has not been as effective for the Israelis as normal intelligence and police procedure and it is causing us as a nation to lose our immortal soul, or what’s left of it.

In his column, that obese reactionary, David Brooks, insists that Steven Spielberg’s new movie, “Munich,” bends over backwards not to dehumanize the Palestinians. He writes that Spielberg does not go far enough in delineating the distinction between good and evil. He goes on to state that real Israeli fighters are vastly tougher than Spielberg portrays them.

This is the fantasy of Brooks, a plump little matzo ball who graduated from college and has worked as a hack newspaper writer ever since. This guy has never held a productive job or even got punched in the nose in a barfight, I bet. What would he know about tough men? I’m convinced Brooks doesn’t know any more in general than any scaffolding guy working in Brooklyn. He just knows Strunk's Elements of Style. Big Deal! Like that other deep thinker, Christopher Hitchens, Brooks has been writing since the day he left school and only knows what he has read and the theoretical musings centrifuging around in his fat head.

The most important item I read in The Times was a little tiny piece buried in the National section dealing with the fact that Las Vegas is fast running out of water, has overrun its allocation from the Colorado River, and is scrambling around for replacement sources. This article only refers to the water as drinking water, but golf courses and lawns also require fresh water. Watch out for this issue, it is a MONSTER! It’s only a matter of time before we start casting about for new sources of fresh water, and the closest and most abundant of those is Canada, which does not permit wholesale export of its water, only in tiny designer bottles. 200motels

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Posted on 12/12/2005 ( Permanent Link )
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