Month: March 2003

Fleeing from History.

Speaking of silence and smokescreens, Dubya chose the biggest night of fighting yet to rewrite the disclosure rules for government documents, gutting Clinton administration policies that facilitated the declassification of papers. One could argue that Dubya is merely trying to keep WMD knowledge out of the hands of America’s enemies, but given his track record on the Reagan papers, the President doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. There’s a lot of information out there that might “impair relations between the United States and a foreign government,” and most of it has very little to do with WMDs. And, sadly, this looks to be only the first of many such wartime night massacres.

Smokescreen.

A Texas D.A. has achieved what once seemed impossible: getting the Exterminator to shut up. GOP freakshow and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay remains mum on reports that one of his PACs is on the wrong side of the law. Another story that hopefully doesn’t get lost in the crevasses between war coverage.

Taxing Times.

Despite the administration’s attempt to use the war to promote tax cuts, the Senate does the right thing and slashes Dubya’s tax giveaway in half. As I said last week, it’s almost obscene to even consider this type of deficit-busting sop for the rich when America’s fighting men and women are laying their lives on the line. In times of war, even (gasp!) the affluent must bear their share of sacrifice.

Stick ‘n’ Move.

On Thursday morning, 3/4ths of the way to Las Vegas, I was ambling across LAX to catch my last connecting flight, and everywhere I looked the war was on. Airport lounges, fast-food places, and even the sports bars had foregone the beginning of March Madness so that travelers could keep abreast of the then-unchanging greenscreen views of Baghdad. An hour later, I stepped off the plane into Las Vegas and the war had disappeared. TV’s everywhere were tuned into the basketball games and – should a station break in with some news on the events in Iraq – all the televisions switched immediately to another feed. By the time I entered the taxi-line at the McCarran Airport, which looked and moved exactly like the line for Pirates of the Caribbean, my suspicions were clinched – On the Strip, there is no war, nor much of an outside world, for that matter. Vegas will be Fantasyland, whether you like it or not.

It’s probably unfair to the people of Vegas to contrast the environment with what was going on in Iraq, particularly as I never got off the Strip and saw the local scene. Nevertheless, it was that discrepancy between war on the Strip and war everywhere else that weighed on my mind most of the trip. As I was exploring all the various casinos one morning (to be honest, once you get past the lobby, they’re basically the same – low lighting, ugly carpets, intentionally confusing layout, and depressed-looking, bleary-eyed people glued to their Skinner box of choice), I took in the Fountains of Bellagio, wherein a number of impressive water jets danced in unison to the strains of Lee Greenwood‘s “Proud to Be an American.” To be fair, this was as close to a concession that a war was going on that I saw all weekend – nevertheless, something about the faux-opulence at that moment just turned my stomach.

Even putting the war aside, though, I think I’d be a bit down on Vegas. For one, there was something inherently unrelaxing about the beeps, blips, and whistles resounding from every corner – as the weekend went on, I found myself spending more and more time outside just to take in the breathtaking landscape and find sweet respite from the flashing lights of the casinos. For another – and I know this is hypocritical – after a few days all the vacationers were getting to me. Everywhere I looked, there were gangs of drunk guys constantly hooting, hollering, and acting like they owned the place. True, I was with a group of male college friends, and while we weren’t raging drunkards, we too were comping free drinks like they were going out of style. Nevertheless, I often got the sense I was stuck at the world’s largest neverending frat party, and as the weekend wore on we all spent more and more time staying in our room, where we could watch the games and keep up on the war without being surrounded by rampaging hordes of Men Behaving Badly and vacationers blowing off steam. Most of the locals working on the Strip must have a really depressing view of the human condition, a suspicion confirmed by what conversations I managed to strike up with bartenders, dealers, etc.

So, to sum up, I had a good time, I suppose. But the carefree veneer of Vegas glitz barely concealed the sick undercurrent of desperation that seemed to permeate the Strip, and should I visit again, I’d rather (a) leave the vacationer spots and get a sense of local culture and/or (b) head out into the desert and see a bit more of nature. It was great to see all my friends, of course, but by 48 hours into the trip we were already making plans to meet up next time here in NYC rather than at NY, NY (a mid-range and kinda tacky casino – we spent most of our gambling time elsewhere.)

Speaking of gambling time, a quick note on how I made out. I had allotted a small amount of cash to be used as losses for the weekend, and it barely lasted the first day and a half of blackjack. But as I was leaving for the airport, I threw in one last twenty into a Deuces Wild Video Poker machine, a game which my friend Danny had been telling me all weekend was the best bet in Vegas. On the last hand, I improbably hit the jackpot, and flew out of Vice City $2000 richer than when I entered (That money has since been transferred to my good friends at Mastercard.) Clearly, the city wants another chance.

Freedom of the…oh, never mind.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia accepts a free speech award…while muzzling the press. War or no, the blatant examples of conservative doublethink lately are getting outrageous. In loosely related news, the FBI track down a long-lost copy of the Bill of Rights. Think they could let Ashcroft take a gander before they return it to NC? The Attorney General seems to have gotten caught up somewhere around the Second Amendment.

Unfortunate Sons and daughters..

The party of sacrifice? Get your priorities straight. As Ari Fleischer warns America to expect American casualties in the coming conflict, the Republican Congress promises the Iraq war will have no bearing on tax cuts. As CCR put it, Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Well, they help themselves, yeah. Then as now, the poor may lose their sons and daughters, but the rich will get their rebates.


Regarding another recent facet of GOP hysteria, I know it’s fun to pick on the French, what with the Maginot Line and the Rainbow Warrior and all that. But next time you hear some idiot like Tom DeLay say the French are good-for-nothing, remember Lafayette. The fact of the matter is, we would never have gained our freedom (or our freedom fries) without the aid of the French during our Revolution. Something to consider before our former Gallic friends are written out of the history books in a fit of revisionist patriotism.

Nothing Succeeds like Failure.

Daschle catches flak from Dubya’s yes-men for stating the patently obvious – that this administration’s amateurish diplomacy has embarrassed us before the world and led us to the brink of a globally unpopular, non-UN-sanctioned war. (And as David Chess pointed out by way of Medley, “the idea that the U.S. must defy the U.N. in order to punish Iraq for defying the U.N. is simply absurd.“) Of course, Daschle’s comments notwithstanding, there’s also a convincing case to be made (as Maureen Dowd does here) that the Bushies wanted diplomacy to fail from the very beginning, so as to further weaken the UN’s international standing. Inept or corrupt…take your pick. Update: Kerry gets involved as well, although, in what’s becoming a troubling pattern, he’s hedged his bets a bit.

Vegas, Baby.

GitM will be silent over the weekend, as I’m off on my first trip to Vegas for my college friends’ yearly March Madness reunion. I must say, I’m quite curious to see what Vegas is all about. And, although I have neither the resources nor the inclination to do much serious gambling, particularly given the state of world affairs, it never hurts to know the odds…

No More Tears.

Caught Tears of the Sun over the weekend and was underwhelmed — Trying to be a cross between Black Hawk Down and Rambo, It basically ends up as Three Kings without the irony. In fact, hamhanded pro-interventionist polemic aside, Tears even fails as an action film, since the first hour and a half moves at a snail’s pace. There might have been a good movie in here somewhere despite all the over-the-top heroism and war movie cliches (if you can’t figure out who is and who isn’t going to die for their country early on, you haven’t seen enough men-on-a-mission flicks), but Antoine Fuqua didn’t find it. Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci do what they can, and the cinematography is occasionally striking, but sadly this film just falls on its face.