 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Remember the name of Jawad Ghussein: a man of some conscience from the Palestinian ruling class.
Oh, hang on: They put on bulletproof vests first? The Difference Between the Israelis and Their Enemies, Lesson 2,331.
Rumsfeld answered, “In a vicious, repressive dictatorship that exercises near total control over its population, it’s very hard to imagine that the government is not aware of what’s taking place in the country.” Made a difference that W. survived in Florida, huh?
It’s funny. Liz, originally a Texan, would obviously rather die than go back there. (A “super-Baptist town.” To her, it must surely be Hell.) Her friend, the Man from Hope, would obviously rather die than go back to Hope. George W. Bush, scion of an Eastern family — tot of Walker Point(e?) — long ago had his fill of Martha Stewartish living. To him, the Crawford ranch is better. Clinton is still wowed by his post-Arkansas life: New York City, the Vineyard. One of his parties was in Jackie O’s old house, hosted by Caroline!!! A lot depends on where you came from, wouldn’t you say? Not the profoundest observation ever made, but it’ll do for mid August.
It was a nice try, but in Martha Stewart’s case, it didn’t work. (Is she the Martha of the Vineyard? Never mind.)
Recently, he had a column on Hannibal — the Hannibal, not the man-eater — because, as he wrote, “two American film companies are evidently racing neck-and-neck to bring out a film about the great Carthaginian general.” He further informed, “The word on the street is that one of the companies is proposing to cast a fashionable black actor in the lead. That’s the stuff, boys. Africa! Cuddly Blacks v. Wicked Anglo-Saxon Romans! Great box office!” But the truth — the historical truth — is sadder: Hannibal wasn’t black. But never mind. Hannibal probably should’ve been black, in a world truer than the boring old real one. Black Athena and all that. Everyone’s gotta have his hero. Many years ago, a film was made of the life of Sadat, starring Lou Gossett Jr. That was the problem. Gossett was quite black; Sadat himself was the son of a Sudanese (black) mother. He didn’t bruit it about much, though. And the Egyptians are very protective of this awkward little skin fact. And that film, starring Lou Gossett Jr., was banned in Egypt. But as long as we get Samuel L. Jackson as Pushkin, we’ll be okay.
The AP ran a report on him, however, and here are some of the points he made: The political élite of Cuba is nervous, guarding against a “social explosion.” Food is scarce. The top brass of the military say that, if there’s an uprising, they’ll use force, Tiananmen style. Any officer balking will regret it. And, sure, Cubans have access to the country’s “free health-care system” — but there’s no medicine there, and hasn’t been for years. (In Cuba, of course, there’s strict “medical apartheid,” where certain hospitals and clinics are only for the elites.) Man’s “first right,” said Hidalgo, “is the right to independent thought” — and that’s one of the main things that drove him out. Finally, any lifting of the U.S. travel embargo would be, in Hidalgo’s words, “a gift for Fidel.” But what does he know, Alcibiades Hidalgo? Must be a Batista stooge, anyway. (Those Batista stooges are getting pretty old, don’t you think?)
Castro still lets ’em out once in a while — but they get while the gettin’’s good, so many of them. But don’t let anyone tell you that’s indicative of anything — except, perhaps, the iniquity of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
A neat phrase: “as long as they remain generalized.” Every day, I hear of fresh horrors in Cuba, and I comment on very few of them. Cuba’s like a vast, ugly thing on the side of the road, that you strain not to look at, having seen it a few times, and recoiled. But, now and then, you have to gulp and stare. I must do more of it. A Cuban-American friend of mine told me something I’ll remember forever: that, merely to be “a decent human being” in Cuba, you have to have a “martyr-level courage”: not to steal, not to lie, not to spy, not to debase oneself, or exploit the self-debasement of others. There are many, many books to be written. Let the floodgates open once the old SOB kicks — or is kicked.
This has some Ann Arborites in a tizzy, because there’s no such referendum there. The News ran a story titled, “Just How Liberal Is Ann Arbor? Some Wonder If City Has Grown Conservative — or If It Always Was.” Said the report, “While Berkeley continues its headline-making ways, some wonder if Ann Arbor has lost its reputation as a liberal mecca. [Mind you, by liberal they mean Stalinist.] Others insist it’s simply become more diverse and tolerant to other views. [I love that sentence. I could kiss the News for it.] They note that Ann Arbor still joins Berkeley in penning progressive city ordinances; both cities are among only seven municipalities across the country that have challenged the USA Patriot Act.” So, Ann Arbor has Berkeley envy. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the leftest of them all?” But that last bit, about the Patriot Act, reminded me of something. Years ago, when cities like Ann Arbor were declaring themselves “nuclear-free zones” — as if Cap Weinberger were just dying to put bases there — I wished that such people could somehow opt out of the American nuclear umbrella. What I meant was, these people benefited from the protection of that umbrella, that deterrent, all the while declaring it evil. And it would have been neat, in a sci-fi, fantasy way, if that protection could have been withdrawn from them, leaving Ann Arbor, for example, naked, but Cody, Wyoming, say, protected. You could apply that to individuals too. Anyway, as I said, just a fantasy — and by now quite dated.
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
ere in ol’ New York, our junior senator, Hillary Clinton, has come
out strongly against a pay raise in the Senate. Indeed, why would a girl
with an $8 million book contract want a pay raise? Self-sacrificing thing.
She could vote for a raise for the sake of some less affluent colleague.
A modest rancher from out West or something — to whom the Senate
salary isn’t peanuts.
On
the subject of money, we know that Arafat has over a billion stashed away
(I’m talking dollars, not whatever they spend in the P.A.). A former
top Arafat aide, Jawad Ghussein, has spilled the beans. He escaped the
P.A. within an inch of his life, going to Jordan — with Israel’s
help — and then on to London. Because he has fingered Arafat as a
thief, Ghussein is now being denounced by the PLO as a thief himself.
Thus do these goons behave in time-honored Soviet fashion.
