YEAR-END REVIEW 2002 (12.25.2002)

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BY PETER KURTH

The mice check their options

Well, it’s got to be the biggest news of the year. Nothing else can compete.

In early December, scientists announced that they’d mapped the genetic code of the mouse, and guess what? Mice are just like us! “The mapping process revealed that about 80% of the mouse's genes correspond directly to similarly functioning genes in humans,” according to a story from Reuters Health. “The other 20% are in `families’ that correspond to human sequences, though less directly.”

Hmm. How much less directly? “In all, about 5% of total genetic material in humans and mice is identical, preserved from when the two species split from a common ancestor some 75 million years ago.”

Hmm, encore. Looking back on the events of 2002, I don’t see any split between mice and men at all. But with “mouse models for hundreds of human diseases,” scientists can now “compare the human DNA code directly to that of a related mammal, a potential boon to the continuing hunt for undiscovered disease-causing genes in humans.”

“Undiscovered disease-causing genes in humans,” of course, means designer breeding. Or call it what you want. Its goal is the perfection of the race. I wish I could say “of the species,” but I think race is more like it. All manner of people around the world live grotesquely squalid, impoverished, starved, stunted and disease-ridden lives—diseases for which the cures are known, and cheap. Many of them will not be receiving the benefits of stem-cell technology if they lose an arm or a liver, however. The women of India won’t be selling their eggs to infertile Ivy Leaguers for $50,000.

You won’t either, probably. The economic news isn’t exactly bright. This column is written with a two-week lead, so I don’t know how the cliffhanging drama of Christmas sales actually turned out. Retailers were predicting “a disappointing holiday season.” Midway through, the unemployment rate hit 6 percent, consumer confidence was down, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill got the boot, Iraq came out spitting, war came closer—and Newsweek ran a cover story about “The New Virginity” among American teens, more and more of whom, apparently, are just saying no to illicit, disgusting, unmarried sex. How’s that for relevance?

Dr. Rice checks your patriotism

A week later, it was “The Real Condi Rice.” Newsweek says: “The Most Powerful Woman in Washington is Black, Brainy and Bush’s Secret Weapon.” She’s black, all right, but there’s nothing “secret” about either her or her evil thinking. How thrilling to discover in Bush at War, journalist Bob Woodward’s bestselling blow-job of a book, that Dr. Rice plays the piano, takes walks around Washington and never strays far from salad on the menu! Sort of like Whitney Houston, who remarked while promoting her new album, “I've always been a thin girl. I am not going to be fat, ever. Let's get that straight. Whitney is not going to be fat, ever. OK?”

After the forced resignation of Secretary O’Neill, in the Bushmen’s equivalent of the Night of Long Knives, O’Neill’s spokeswoman assured the press, “There are lots of other important things to do in life. Back in December of 2000, he was planning to retire and devote himself to improving health care and education in Pittsburgh. I'm sure he will return to those important projects.”

I’m sure he will—just as soon as he recovers his $100 million in Alcoa stock, which his Cabinet position had obliged him to give up. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of US economic activity, and these are the people the government wants to drive into bankruptcy. The despicable bankruptcy “reform” bill in last year’s Congress died the ignoble death it deserved—thanks for nothing, Senator Leahy—when it got pinned to a rider exempting anti-abortion protestors from the new rules. But if the Boston Archdiocese can cut its losses, why not Operation Freedom? Go on—ask Pat.

Banished to the boardroom with Paul O’Neill was Bush’s economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, who “raised hackles,” according to The New York Times, “when he publicly predicted that costs of a war in Iraq could reach $200 billion—significantly higher than other estimates.”

Indeed, the cost of dumping Saddam will be much, much higher than it looks, inasmuch as a “war on terror” is a war that can’t be won. There will be no victory. It won’t be possible to eliminate “weapons of mass destruction” wherever they exist, under whichever dictator, any more than we can prevent “human cloning” and experimentation with life forms. As I write this, North Korea has announced that it will resume its nuclear weapons program—in 1997, two million North Koreans, mostly women and children, died of starvation—and Iran apparently also has a breeder, or whatever they call it, for assembling nukes. This is not to mention India, Pakistan, Russia, China, Israel and, of course, us.

The Cheneys check their retirement plan

The various urgencies intermingling here—terror, war, a “stagnant” economy and Brave New World science—have rendered planet Earth as dangerously unhinged as it’s been in many decades. The Washington Post reports that “loud construction blasts at Vice President Dick Cheney's official residence” are upsetting his neighbors: “The blasts, which last anywhere from three to five seconds apiece, have been going off two to three times a day, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., in recent weeks. No one knows what is going on, and officials at the Naval Observatory—where Cheney lives—say their lips are sealed because of security concerns. The leading theory: an underground bunker is being built for the Cheney clan.” And you thought “gated communities” were a bad idea!

At Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where an uncertain number of Taliban foot soldiers are being held with an equally uncertain number of “enemy combatants,” the US Army has been offering rewards for “cooperative behavior,” says the Associated Press: “Benefits include the opportunity to sleep, eat and pray together in a new medium-security detention wing under construction.” Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the “task force commander” at Guantanamo Bay, thinks that “having more incentives will make our interrogation much more successful. Medium-security is a recognition of cooperation and adherence to the rules. It gives them hope. Hope is of enormous importance.”

I’ll say. What we should do is give the prisoners shopping privileges at the mall. Get them to understand that money spent is money made somewhere else. I’m sure Dr. Rice would agree.

There’s plenty of hope in Afghanistan, now ruled by a scrappy coalition of drug dealers and “warlords.” Opium production was up this year by some thousands of percentage points. One thing about the Taliban, they didn’t want you getting high. But since “warlords” aren’t “terrorists,” I suppose we want to stay on their good side. And The Los Angeles Times reports that the government’s disastrous “war on drugs,” a failure wherever it’s been fought, will be prosecuted in the future “only as it relates to the war on terrorism.”

Did you know that? It’s an easy way to round up lots of undesirables. As Dr. Henry Kissinger remarked so aptly a few decades back, “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

Dr. Kissinger checks the exits

Anyhow, it’s just semantics. In Italy, where it all began with Mussolini in 1922, the extreme right has been redefining the word “fascism” to fit the times. “The right has given up fascism as a model," says Domenico Fisichella, a professor of political science at the University of Rome. “And at the same time, the historiographical debate on the fascist period has grown more serene, more balanced.”

Dr. Fisichella is also a senator in the Italian parliament, representing the National Alliance, a once overtly fascist party and about as serene as Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France or Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party in Austria.

"It was clearly an authoritarian government but not a totalitarian one," Fisichella remarks about Mussolini’s regime. “Fascism committed serious errors that led to the tragedy we all know. But it also passed a great deal of social and economic legislation that was quite valid, that was innovative for its time and even copied in part by the New Deal in ending the Depression. The gospel of left-wing historiography failed to make these distinctions and simply bunched fascism with Nazism."

Here’s a hint, Domenico: The bunch got bunched when “fascists” deported Italian Jews to “Nazi” death camps. Sheesh!

Also in Italy, Nemo Cianelli, a man who told his family in 1958 that he was leaving on a trip to the United States, was found dead at his former house in Tuscany. An American woman recently bought the place and was “carrying out renovations,” according to Reuters, when she knocked down a wall and found a skeleton, two packed suitcases, a rusted rifle and a suicide note: “Police said it appeared Cianelli had packed his suitcases, written the note, built a wall up around himself and then shot himself. He said he had invented the tale of going to America to avoid upsetting his family.”

Cianelli checks out (photo guaranteed spurious)

How times have changed! A worldwide poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that “favorable ratings” for the US are down across the board, with these “ratings” falling lower and lower the closer you come to the Middle East.

“Do you reckon American policy towards Saddam is driven by getting its hands on Baghdad's oil?” the pollsters asked. Forty-four percent of Britons said that it was, 54 percent of Germans, and 75 percent of the French. Don’t ask about Turkey, still barred from the European Union. Even in Canada, where an adviser to Prime Minister Chrétien was fired this year for calling Bush “a moron,” 73 percent of respondents think that the United States “doesn’t consider others” in fomenting its ghastly global policies. But none of the major news organizations in this country, while acknowledging that our numbers have declined precipitously “just in the last two years,” can apparently do the math and put blame where it belongs.

There’s a reason for this. The LA Times reports that American journalists are “losing touch with the man on the street.” No wonder, since most journalists in the US are white, college-educated males in their thirties and forties, and most men on the street are Hispanic and black. It’s the dream of every reporter to cover a war—don’t deny it—and what’s good for reporters is good for news. For one thing, war takes care of the ratings problem. Who won’t be watching when Bush’s creatures work their will on the globe? “Open societies could grow closed,” London’s Guardian meekly warns. “They could demand obeisance with menaces.” And they will. They already have.

Royalty wasn’t looking too hot this year, at least the only royals Americans care about, the Windsors. It was the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, an event that her ancestress, Queen Victoria, celebrated in 1887 with a banquet for 50 foreign kings and princes. Drawn to Westminster Abbey by six cream-colored horses, Victoria modestly wore a bonnet instead of a crown, but the crowds in London, said Mark Twain, “stretched to the limit of sight in both directions.”

The Queen checks her crown -- Dame Elizabeth checks hers with Brinks

No more. After the deaths of her sister and mother, Elizabeth II managed to throw a couple of gratifying pop concerts in the garden of Buckingham Palace. And I don’t need to tell you it went downhill from there, what with the butlers and the rape. We did discover, at long last, that Prince Charles has a retainer who actually squeezes the toothpaste for him onto his brush. We could do the same for our own King George if he’d only get out of Dodge.

Somewhere in her busy season, the Queen also found time to make Elizabeth Taylor a Dame of the British Commonwealth—although “broad” would be a better word, since that’s Dame Elizabeth’s favorite term for ladies everywhere. Years ago, when Richard Burton presented her with what’s now called the Taylor-Burton Diamond (69.42 carats), Princess Margaret told Taylor that it looked “very vulgar.”

“Would you like to try it on?” Taylor asked sweetly.

“Oh, yes, please!” said Her Royal Highness, practically grabbing the thing from Taylor’s neck (Margaret’s grandmother, Queen Mary, was a notorious kleptomaniac).

“There now,” said Taylor, as Margaret put the pendant around her own throat. “It’s not so vulgar, is it?”

Dame Elizabeth has just published a book about her jewelry and I urge you all to buy it. She can do anything she wants, as far as I’m concerned, if only for the good work she’s done for people with HIV—about 42 million worldwide, with more on the way. In July, Scott Evertz, an openly gay Republican and Dubya’s “AIDS czar,” resigned under pressure for “advocating the use of condoms and supporting contentious AIDS prevention workshops.”

Evertz was “the first openly gay official appointed by a Republican president,” but not the first or last Republican to be caught with his hands where they don’t belong. By decree, gays are no longer welcome in the Catholic priesthood—women weren’t welcome already—though where they’re going to find their servants of God I have no idea.

Lott checks Thurmond’s trash for “discarded policies”

On Capitol Hill, breaking a record for longevity, South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond celebrated his 100^th birthday while still in office. Thurmond was “born before airplanes,” as the press pointed out, and “was considered too old to fight” in World War II. In 1948, he ran for president as a segregationist, a regrettable fact of history that gave his cohort in piggishness, ex-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a run for his money. “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him,” Lott declared. “We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Paging Dr. Rice! “A poor choice of words conveyed to some that I embraced the discarded policies of the past,” said Lott, in the first of many ridiculous apologies. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” It’s doubtful that Thurmond even took note of the controversy: “The former segregationist has taken up residence in a Washington hospital and is virtually carried around the Senate by aides, who also do much of his talking for him. But female interns who have worked in the Capitol building recently reported that the Senate's most notorious womanizer still has sufficient energy to drawl a complimentary remark as they walk by.”

Did they say drawl or drool? Some things get lost in the telling. In October, they had to prop up Charlton Heston, stricken by Alzheimer’s, when he delivered his last (?) demented speech to the National Rifle Association. Now the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, covering a great swath of the West, has ruled that the Second Amendment doesn’t, in fact, give Americans the right to bear arms. These are the same judges who ruled in June that the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional, so you can imagine how long this ruling will stand up on review.

Heston checks his sightlines

And about those damned “forensic science” shows on television: The Sniper case should have taught us that “CSI,” in Las Vegas or Miami, is feeding us a load of bull about how easy it is track criminals. “Oh, look, I found this piece of yellow carpet fiber! Only 38,000 identical carpets were manufactured in the United States last year, and only three of them were sold here!”

“Great! Take it down the hall to the geek with the bad hair and see if he can narrow it down further!”

Right. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued revised guidelines for increasing security at labs that handle smallpox, anthrax and other “pathogens.” Among them was the recommendation to “limit access to the pathogens and keep everything securely locked up.”

I knew you’d be impressed. My favorite criminal of 2002 will always be Bad Mom, Irish Traveler Madelyne Toogood, who was arrested in Michigan recently on her third offense of the year, this time for giving “false information on a license application.” For a woman who was shown on national television beating her daughter in a car, and who’s currently facing charges in two other states, she seems to slip out unnoticed quite a lot. I say she deserves a prize just for pluck.

And just as the Sniper was once diagnosed as “an intelligent white man,” “highly organized,” all kinds of criminals don’t conform to your stereotyped image of them. Aileen Wuornos, described as "America's most notorious female serial killer,” was executed this year in Florida, having said that “she looked forward to meeting God so that she could punish those who had mistreated her.” Keeping her alive, she agreed, would be a waste of money.

Ms. Wuornos checks ”all of the above” (photo guaranteed authentic)

“I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the rock and I'll be back,” Ms. Wuornos remarked in her last words, “like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, on the big mother ship and all. I'll be back, I'll be back."

In other religious news, George Bush’s own Methodist Church has condemned his plans for war. The Miss World contestants fled Nigeria when riots broke out over beauty pageants and what Mohammed might have thought about them. “I think it's the right move coming back to London,” said Miss England, “because 50% of Nigerians are Muslim and don't want us out there, so I think we should respect that.”

Miss Scotland disagreed: “Riots are continual in Nigeria and people are always dying there.” No wonder Miss Turkey won. A crackdown on homosexuals in Egypt, where the sin was invented, also got justified by reference to Allah (and if I could just tell you about my trips up the Nile!).

Golf legend Sam Snead, actors Rod Steiger, Richard Harris and James Coburn, stuntman Merlin Santana, singer Rosemary Clooney, activist Philip Berrigan, designer Bill Blass, Chandra Levy, Rumpole of the Bailey, Gwyneth Paltrow’s father and American democracy were all found dead this year. The judge who sentenced Winona Ryder to three years’ probation for shoplifting told her sternly, “I have a 16-year-old son named Ryan who asked, `Why would Winona Ryder steal from Saks Fifth Avenue when she has enough money to buy anything?’” Ryan’s got a lot to learn. Ryder had no comment, but Mark Klaas, father of slain pre-teen Polly Klaas, remarked in admiration, “Winona Ryder may be a double-felon, but she’s a double-felon with a heart.”

Ryder --at last -- checks her cool

Finally, Woody Harrelson got squealed on by “three British babes who claim to have bedded him in an all-night orgy,” after smoking marijuana with him in a London hotel, according to The New York Post. “His staying power was breathtaking," said one. “There wasn't any foreplay," said another. “We just lay down on the carpet and did it. He was quite well-endowed and went on and on.” Harrelson's rep replied, “He's happily married with a couple of kids. These tabloids ride that fine line of semi-truth all the time.”

I’m trying to think what fine line of semi-truth there might be in the orgy these ladies are describing. Where would that semi-truth lie? Somewhere between “staying power” and “breathtaking”? Between “well-endowed” and “marijuana”? I give up. As gossip maven Liz Smith remarked sadly in July, “It's certainly no fun for us when stars won't talk, but what are we anyway, other than mosquitoes?”

Mice, Liz. We’re mice.

"No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say `Heil' to him, nor will they call him `Führer' or `Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of `O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'" -- Dorothy Thompson, 1935

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