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Ms.
Hilton in repose
"You come right over here and
explain why they're having another year!" -- Dorothy Parker, telegram to Robert Benchley, December 31, 1929
As
I sat down to write this review, I couldn't decide which
was the most important story of 2003 - the Bush administration's illegal
war against Iraq or the new charges of child-molestation against Michael
Jackson. It was a toss-up, since each of them got the same amount of
coverage in the press.
In
fact, I think Michael Jackson got a little more coverage than the war did,
and in much less time. I don't know what to say about that except the
obvious - it's a nightmare out there! On the one hand, thousands of people,
including 455 Americans, have already died in Bush's folly. On the other, a
few teen or pre-teen boys in Southern California are
apparently in danger of being interfered with if their star-fucking parents
are stupid enough to let them spend the night at Neverland.
What
to do? You can see the journalist's dilemma! And rather than confront it,
I've decided to write about the Paris Hilton sex video instead. Believe me, it's better for all concerned.
Until
recently, of course -- like many of you, I'm sure -- I thought Paris Hilton
was a hotel. It turns out she's a slut, a 22-year-old heiress to the Hilton
Hotel fortune, very leggy, blond and rich. Paris
is a woman who describes herself as "perfectly normal," but who
hops from city to city and bed to bed with the persistence of a cricket and
spends up to $1,000 a month on tanning sessions. When she isn't traveling,
she lives in New York with
her sister, who is not, as you might imagine, called London
or Bangkok or Carbondale,
but rather goes by the name of "Nicky." The Hilton sisters are,
indeed, Manhattan's leading
"party girls."
Anyway,
about three years ago, Paris
let herself be filmed by one of her boyfriends while they had sex. Now the
videotape has found its way onto the Internet and has the distinction of
being the most downloaded item of 2003.
Beat
that if you can! Paris is said to be "very upset about this
tragedy," "quite devastated from it all," hiding behind her
sunglasses in restaurants and bars and complaining in an interview with US magazine that she "can't
walk the streets" - although, if you ask me, she can and does.
At
first, Paris thought it was her ex-boyfriend (and co-star), Rick Salomon,
who sold the video to pornographers, but when she said so in public Salomon
hit her with a $10 million libel suit, which is roughly a third of her
inheritance. Worse, the scandal broke just before Paris made her debut on
Fox TV in her own "reality" show, “The Simple Life,”
in which she plays a rich girl who goes to live on a farm in Arkansas and
seduces the high school football captain, whose girlfriend --
What?
You'd rather hear about the war? Well, OK. But don't say I didn't try.
Sooner or later, I've got to make some money!
So
-- the war. Maybe I should turn it over to Senator Robert Byrd, one of the
few men in Washington who had
the courage to speak the truth last winter, when this country callously,
stupidly, vengefully and pointlessly sacrificed its wealth, its honor and
the lives of its children for the delusions of a fool.
Make
that a pack of fools, since George W. Bush, President Pinocchio, is just
the front, the public face, of a vicious and mercenary right-wing cabal
that will drag this country to ruin if it isn't stopped. Being a Senator, a
Southerner and, I suppose, a gentleman, Byrd said it more sweetly than I
would have.
"In
only the space of two short years," he declaimed, "this reckless
and arrogant administration has initiated policies which may reap
disastrous consequences for years to come ... This administration has split
traditional alliances, possibly crippling for all time international
order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This
administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats,
labeling and name-calling, of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the
intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders ... Frankly, many of the
pronouncements made by this administration are outrageous. There is no
other word."
Frankly,
there is. We could say that the pronouncements of this administration are fucking outrageous, but if we did
we'd be in a heap of trouble, like Democratic presidential contender John
Kerry of Massachusetts. Kerry
can't seem to do anything right, and was recently scolded by the White
House for saying that Dubya had "f--ked up" the war in Iraq.
"That's
beneath John Kerry," said Ding-Dong's chief of staff, Andrew Card,
demanding an apology. "I'm very disappointed that he would use that
kind of language." Card must have a screw loose and, like all of America's
corporate media, no memory. Because it was just four years ago that Dubya
himself, before he got all pious and "presidential," used "the
'f' word," over and over, in an interview with Tucker Carlson in Talk magazine.
Don't
you remember? At the time, it was taken as a plus, a positive thing, a sign
that Doofus, despite his privileged background,
was "just folks" like you and me, and that he ought to be elected
for that reason. How frank he
was, how refreshing, etc.
This
was the same interview in which Bush mocked condemned murderess Karla Faye
Tucker, whose death warrant he had signed, rolling his eyes, pursing his
lips and whimpering, "Please, don't kill me!" And it was also
where he summed up his entire political experience and philosophy by
saying, "I'm a decisive person. I'm not interested in process. I want
results. If the process doesn't yield the right results, change the process"
- as un-American a concept as ever rode a punk to power.
Well,
damn the torpedoes! Remember the Maine! Back then, the only one who
seemed disturbed by Bush's statements was conservative lickspittle George
F. Will, who remarked in his syndicated column, as delicately as he could,
that Poppy's spawn had some growing up to do, that his words gave off
"an atmosphere of adolescence, a lack of gravitas -- a carelessness,
even a recklessness, perhaps born of things having gone a bit too easily so
far."
The
Talk interview even led with a
pull-quote affirming Dubya's right to tromp on your sensibilities: "George W. Bush doesn't give a damn
what you think of him. That may be why you'll vote for him for
president."
How
times have changed! Dubya still doesn't give a damn what you think of him,
but the press that put him in office is determined to keep him there, and
"the 'f' word" just won't cut it anymore. Not when his supporters
are claiming that "George W. Bush wasn't elected by a majority of the
voters in the United States ... He was appointed by God," as stated in
October by Lt. Gen. William Boykin, Deputy Secretary of Defense for
Intelligence (so-called). That's why Kerry is taking such a beating right
now. And that's why we keep hearing how "angry" Howard Dean is,
and how Americans will never elect such an "angry" man. Just say
the name Dean on network television and see the pundits cluck.
"Yes,"
says CNN's Judy Woodruff, grinning idiotically as she interviews Democratic
National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, in the wake of Al Gore's
endorsement of the Dean "insurgency" - "but aren't you
worried about all those Democrats who think that Howard Dean can't win?
Aren't you worried that George W. Bush is unbeatable?"
Say
it louder, Judy - let's make sure they heard it: "Unbeatable! Can't win! Can't win!"
It's
the oldest trick in the press agent's kit, although Hitler said it best in Mein Kampf:
"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their
intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In
consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a
very few points and must harp on them in slogans, until the last member of
the public understands what you want him to understand ... As soon as you sacrifice
this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the
crowd can neither digest nor retain the material."
And
now - big drum-roll here -- they've captured Saddam Hussein. Mission
accomplished! "Woo-hoo!" as Dubya says,
whenever he puts on his bomber jacket and raves at the troops.
"Ladies
and gentlemen, the tyrant is a prisoner," said Paul Bremer, the U.S.
"administrator" in Iraq, after Saddam's capture, in words that
were described by the American media as "pithy." It's all we'll
be hearing about for a while, I'm afraid, just as we heard it ad nauseam
last winter and spring: "Saddam! Saddam! Saddam!" Why they don't
just feed him to the lions at Yankee Stadium, I'll never know. Maybe
because he'd recognize too many of his former cronies and business partners
in the faces of his captors. That's one advantage of a dead dictator -- he
can't spill the beans.
Well,
to the victor the spoils, as Iraq
has learned, and Afghanistan,
too. This despite Dubya's speech at Butts Army Air Field -- I'm not making
that up -- in Fort Carson, Colorado
in November. "Working with a fine coalition," His Majesty said,
"our military went to Afghanistan,
destroyed the training camps of al Qaeda and put
the Taliban out of business forever."
You
heard the man -- he said "out of business forever." How many more
children need to die over there, I wonder, before America
wakes up to this clown? An official of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul
confesses to London's Guardian
that his regime is "virtually powerless" outside the capital;
that the Taliban is resurgent throughout the south and east of Afghanistan
and, where they're not, our friends the "warlords" have joined
forces with "Pakistani criminal gangs" and are "looting with
impunity."
"There
was looting under the Taliban," this man confirms, "but it was
nothing compared to now. This is a total disaster, a complete free-for
all." The global market for stolen Afghan antiquities is now worth
more than the opium trade - about $32 billion a year: "This is a
tragedy, not only for us, but for all humanity. When you put an ancient
object in an Arab millionaire's living room, it loses its relation to
history. It becomes meaningless."
Welcome
to capitalism, Omar. Try sticking an "ancient object" on a Texas
oilman's ranch and see how fast it starts to look like a lava lamp. On
December 4, according to the New York
Times, "more than 400 people from 30 countries" gathered at a
Sheraton hotel in Arlington, Virginia "for a conference focusing on
how to rebuild Iraq and get a piece of the $18.3 billion Congress has
authorized for the effort.
"There
were bankers," said the Times,
"architects, lawyers, engineers, real estate developers, insurance
agents, construction specialists, transportation experts, communication company
owners, investment counselors," and so on. "If the participants
conveyed a common message it was this: despite suicide bombers, snipers and
attacks from Saddam Hussein loyalists, Iraq
is open for business."
Well
put! This was before Dubya made it clear that only American companies and
other "friendly coalition folks" would be invited to divide the
pot. You can skip what he said about "those who risked their
lives" in battle, because the vast majority of them - our soldiers and
ordinary Iraqis - are excluded from the equation. As I write this, the U.S.
Army is busy wrapping barbed-wire around every Iraqi village it suspects of
harboring "terrorists." And even at the trade fair in Arlington,
the Times reports, there were "sobering reminders of the daily dangers
that confront both military personnel and civilians" in Iraq
- among them an American firm, Therma Steel,
which is "selling walls so strong they [can] withstand .50-caliber
bullets."
"We're
working on one now that will be able to sustain a shoulder-fired rocket
attack," says Therma Steel's vice president,
Prentice Perry. His company's motto ought to be stitched on the American
flag: "We stand behind our walls."
What
else happened in 2003? I can barely remember. Bob Hope died. Scientists
discovered the world's oldest penis, belonging to a spider and fossilized
somewhere in Scotland.
A man in Germany
is defending himself against charges of cannibalism by saying that his
victim agreed to be eaten, and that he'd do it again if he could. Ho-hum.
Altogether,
it was a big year for homosexuals, who not only got their own Episcopal
bishop in New Hampshire, but
will soon have the right to get married in Massachusetts.
Conservatives are terribly upset by this idea, but, as I've been saying for
years, if self-respecting gays and lesbians will persist in aping their inferiors, that's bound to happen.
Certainly,
I don't like to see marriage put at the top of the so-called gay agenda,
which is, and should be, properly reserved for things that matter, such as
art, culture, manners, good taste and peace among nations. And that's all
I'm going to say on this subject. Don't ask me about it again, because I'm
through caring - I mean, I am finished.
Oh,
yes - a Medicare "reform" bill was finally hammered through
Congress, after some major rule-breaking and arm-twisting from the
corporate thugs in power. It's a bill that will enrich the pharmaceutical
companies, the HMO's and all sorts of private medical firms, but does
little, if anything, to relieve the burden of soaring drug costs on seniors
and the disabled, while sticking the next generation with a staggering
bill. Any idiot can see that this "reform" is a farce, and that's
just what the boys are counting on - a nation of idiots. But never mind - none of it will kick in until Junior is safely out of
office.
According
to the People's Weekly World
Newspaper, a refreshingly socialistic organ of the world proletariat,
there were officially 8.7 million unemployed in the U.S.
in December. "That does not count the millions who have stopped
looking for nonexistent jobs," the paper writes, "or the
'underemployed' who can't find full-time employment. Two million jobless
have exhausted the 26 weeks of state unemployment insurance and are running
out of the 13 weeks of extended benefits. Because Congress refused to
approve another extension, some 80,000 to 90,000 unemployed workers each
week will lose all benefits."
And
in just the last few months, says the Los
Angeles Times, "Congress, at Bush's request, has doled out $87
billion to rebuild and secure Iraq
and Afghanistan,
approved a $401-billion defense appropriation bill, the largest ever, and
completed a $1-trillion tax cut on top of the $1.35-trillion reduction the
president won in 2001. If his energy bill is revived next year, add to the
list at least another $26 billion in tax cuts for energy companies ... All
this comes when the federal government already faces its largest deficit
ever -- some $374 billion last year, $84 billion more than the previous
record held by Bush's father."
Now,
there's a "recovery" to be proud of! And that's not all:
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of hungry
families in the U.S.
increased 8.6 percent from 2001 and 13 percent from 2000. More than 30
million are described as "food insecure," which means, literally,
that they don't know where their next meal is coming from. And 35 million
are now officially below the poverty line, with their ranks swelling by
about 1.7 million a year. In fact, the US
has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the
world's industrialized nations.
But
why be gloomy? The Bushmen want to revive the space program, which will
give us all something to feel manly about. The White House regards this as
"a Kennedy moment for Bush," according to a story in the Washington Post, "referring to
the 1962 call by President Kennedy for the nation to land a man on the moon
and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade."
Well,
there are Kennedy moments and Kennedy moments. I'd better not say anything
else, because I don't want to end up on the list of people John Ashcroft
thinks should be sweating it out in Guantanamo Bay,
if you catch my drift.
Finally,
I leave you with some news that found wide circulation on the Internet this
year, but seems not to have fully penetrated the American mind. Pay
attention, please, because this is important:
"Aoccdrnig
to rsceearh at an Elingsh
uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe and the biran fguiers it out aynawy."
Got
it? Now, get out there and defeat Bush. As Eleanor Roosevelt said,
"You can gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in
which you really stop to look fear in the face ... You must do the thing
which you think you cannot do."
www.peterkurth.com
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