Category: Best

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Go to Bed Crying for Scott Twaddle: He will be Your Inspiration

The United States Navy likes to take civilians on joy-rides on their submarines.

You can’t wait for your turn? You’ll have a long wait, unless you’re rich or famous, or well-connected. No, no, these rides are not for the people who pay for the submarines. These thrilling excursions are for people who, at a time of a threatening peace, are in a position to promote massive expenditures of your money on more, bigger, faster, deadlier submarines.

You see, there are a whole raft of deadly submarines out there, just waiting to whack us one with a big nuclear missile. These submarines come from our deadly foes, like… well, Britain might get mad at us someday. The Russians still aren’t fond of us, really. China? Someday they might well have a sub that comes back up after it submerges. And North Korea– rumour has it that they are plotting our final destruction at this very moment. So, yes, by all means, more $2 billion submersibles, please.

That’s why there are the joy rides. You see, Congress is not always as forthcoming with the money for these toys weapons deterrents as they should be. So they must be promoted. So if you are a Congressman and you and your famous or rich loved one would like a thrilling ride in a giant steel cigar, the navy will oblige.

But there are some limitations, my friends. If you and your significant other– one can’t imagine a submarine hosting Elton John and “friend”– go joy-riding together and the excursion happens to last more than a day, you are not allowed to bunk down together. Oh no, no, no! You must sleep in separate bunks. And the rules are spelled out in case you still don’t get it: no sex. We can’t have love on a submarine!

When the nuclear-powered attack submarine Greeneville hit a Japanese trawler, it was not out on a training mission as first reported. No, the training mission had been cancelled. But important visitors had been promised a ride so, at an operating cost of $25,000 a day, the navy obliged. The Greeneville was out on a joy ride. The Ehime Maru, the Japanese Trawler whose name barely rates a mention in the follow-up news stories, was out on a genuine training mission, teaching young people how to fish. They were out in the middle of a very big ocean. Then a nuclear-powered submarine on a joy ride bashed into their hull and sank them, and twelve people died.

The New York Times has published a lengthy article about the grief and despair experienced by the crew of the Greeneville! I may have missed a similar article on the families of the dead fishermen. I must have missed it. If I didn’t miss it, this weird apologia is a pathetic joke in extremely bad taste.

But if they ever published an article about the families of the dead fishermen, it is not listed in the links to this article. I’m afraid the suffering of these families did not rate the New York Times.

This article is interesting in a perverse way. I wouldn’t normally argue that the grief of the submariners or their wives should be completely over-looked or ignored. There is a place for genuine sympathy for crew members who didn’t make the mistake but worry about public perception that they were responsible for needless death.

We only honor them, after all, when they are responsible for needful death. We give them medals.

But this article attacks a perception that does not exist. Who out there, in his right mind, thinks that the working crew were responsible for this disaster? No one. We all know that it was the Navy brass that made the decision to go joy-riding, and the Navy brass that wanted visitors to experience the thrill and excitement of riding a death machine, and the commander of the sub who did not take adequate measures– measures that are normally required as a matter of policy– to ensure that no vessels were above them when they pulled their stunt.

The New York Times quotes a submariner’s spouse: ”

In 16 years here I’ve never faced that kind of crisis. It makes you get more loyal, more defensive. I’ve gone to bed crying for Scott Waddle. And his crew — it’s going to affect them for the rest of their lives.

One hopes she shed a tear or two for the families of the dead fishermen.

Why does the New York Times publish this drivel? Remember, we’re talking here about the poor submariners who got to sail back into port alive. Are you supposed to forget all about the Japanese fishermen and go, “oh, those poor submariners…”?

Well, we know why. Somebody got to the New York Times. I don’t mean in a sinister way. I mean that someone high-ranking in the Navy or government called an editor or the publisher at the New York Times and gave them a big lecture about how they were ignoring the sufferings of the poor crew and how they were needlessly damaging the reputation of the brave and courageous men of the armed forces. God help us, they might even have accused the New York Times of undermining NATIONAL SECURITY by giving needless focus to the families of the dead.

Like a rotting fish.

10 Years Later (2011)

How about that! Here it is about ten years later and all those people lamenting the fate of Commander Scott Twaddle… well, he’s now a motivational speaker. Here he is on Youtube.

Yes, people are paying a lot of money to hear Scott Twaddle twaddle about his astonishing courage in dealing with his own astonishing incompetence.  I hope part of his speech is about how people are so stupid that you can actually make a lot of money bragging about your biggest mistake.

Is this where Donald Trump got the idea of running for president?

You couldn’t make this shit up.

Sometimes I am truly flabbergasted by the turn of events… And other times, I am silenced by the unspeakable, incomprehensible absurdity of human behavior.

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Harold Shipman

In Great Britain, if you took a sampling of 1000 women between the ages of 65 and 74 who see a doctor regularly, you would normally find a death rate of 4.5 per year.

Of 1000 patients of Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman, the death rate was 45 per year. He began his own practice in Hyde in 1992. He was caught this year.

Uh yes… the numbers are not the result of chance or coincidence. Dr. Shipman has been injecting some of his patients with a fatal dose of diamorphine. He seems to have murdered 300 this way. Yes, does seem like it took a little while for anyone to notice.

Sometimes he would go into a patient’s file and alter significant facts, in order to establish the “illness” of which the patient died at his hands. No one noticed because the families of deceased patients do not get access to the deceased’s medical records.

A few people over the years became suspicious. The police were even called. But when the police went to the General Medical Council, which oversees doctors in Great Britain, they told them that unless an official complaint was received they could do nothing.

Since Dr. Shipman never summoned an ambulance or called for a coroner after any of the suspicious deaths, there were no records except his own, and therefore, no details about the exact circumstances of death, except those which he provided.

The local health authority investigated and found nothing suspicious. Again, it appears that they relied on Dr. Shipman’s records to verify Dr. Shipman’s performance. There is no system in place to monitor the performance of doctors. Think about that. There is no system in place to monitor the performance of doctors. In other words, a doctor could kill 300 patients and no one would be the wiser. Well, yes. That’s what happened.

The first public reports of the investigation of Dr. Shipman were met with outrage by the citizens of Hyde who felt that a good doctor was being tarred with a broad brushstroke. Obviously, the good citizens of Hyde hadn’t noticed anything odd either. Here was a doctor who murdered patients with great frequency. The patient’s families were notified of the death. The bodies were cremated or buried. Nobody kept score.

The police finally seized Dr. Shipman’s medical records. Ah, but they didn’t obtain the proper paperwork beforehand and had to return them. Imagine the police seizing a knife or a gun from a suspected murderer, and then being ordered to return it to the suspect because they hadn’t said “may I”? To get around this little technicality, the police charged him with homicide. Then they were permitted to investigate.

Altogether, as I said, Dr. Shipman may have killed more than 300 women.

Sometimes he did the killing in his office and saw several more patients before reporting the death.

Now this may sound like a bit of stretch, but ask yourself this, in connection with Dr. Shipman’s offenses: how do you know that your doctor is doing a good job? I’m serious. I mean, you know that your doctor is not likely to inject fatal quantities of diamorphine into your veins, but if a doctor in a developed country can get away with doing this to hundreds of women over a period of ten years, how much less likely is it that your own doctor can get away with being completely incompetent?

In other words, who is keeping score?

You can read the sports pages every day to find out if Delgado is earning his millions for the Blue Jays. How many home runs did he hit? What’s his batting average? Is he making a lot of errors over there at first base?

Why don’t we have the same thing for doctors? It doesn’t have to be ridiculously detailed. Just a simple table of visits, total number of operations, drugs prescribed, x-rays, cures, improvements, and… deaths.

There were signs of trouble with Dr. Shipman back in 1976 when he was convicted of stealing drugs and issuing fake prescriptions. But he was able to pay a modest little fine and move on. This was his minor league record. Mediocre. Not expected to make the big leagues.

But he worked at it and re-established himself and went on to establish a new record: 300 murders. That’s about 287 more than Klebold and Harris at Columbine. How many Nightlines do you think they’ll devote to this story? How many Newsweek Covers?

How many people are going to throw up their hands and scream, “What’s happening to our society! We should have zero-tolerance for deaths at the hands of doctors!”

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Demonstrations

Some editorialists– including the Globe and Mail– are complaining that these demonstrators at these big trade conferences are a) wrong and b) undemocratic. Naomi Klein went on the CBC to set the record straight. Unfortunately, she stunk. So I’ll have to do it.

There is some legitimacy to the point of view that demonstrators try to short-cut democracy. We have elections here. The people voted for Al Gore and Jean Chretien in the U.S. and Canada, respectively, and they got their wishes: George Bush Jr. and Jean Chretien. So what right do these demonstrators have to try to change the law by short-circuiting the democratic process and trying to get their way by bullying and shouting?

Naomi argued that, well, what these big corporations are planning is so awful, well, somebody just has to do something. Of course, that begs the question of who gets to decide when something is so awful that undemocratic means must be used to change the law. Like abortion.

What she should have pointed out is that while “nobody elected the demonstrators” nor did they elect the lobbyists for those multi-national corporations. And under the Bush administration, those lobbyists often actually write the law, and they certainly play a powerful role– behind closed doors– in influencing legislators on how to write the law.

One example. When Tom Delay ran for election to the U.S. Congress, he did not campaign thusly: if you vote for me, I will hold expensive breakfast meetings with highly paid lobbyists for the biggest corporations on the planet so they can tell me what they would like to see in the next round of legislation governing mergers and environmental regulations and minimum wages and so on, while you, you working taxpayer dependent on your wages, why, you’d be lucky to smell a fart from my executive assistant. No sir. Mr. Delay tells everyone that he will represent their interests and do what’s right, regardless of “the special interests” and lobbyists. He campaigns on his sensitivity to the needs and aspirations of the majority of his voters. Then he turns around and spends all of his time– and I mean, all of his time– with corporate hacks, and meaningless totemic symbols like the boy-scouts and baseball players.

Does anyone seriously believe that corporations donate millions of dollars to election campaigns for nothing? Because they are civic minded??? Because they really think that what is good for America is good for IBM?

Those lobbyists see to it that Mr. Delay receives big fat contributions come election time, so he can run big fat television ads that show what a sensitive, caring, unimpeachable character he is, and get re-elected, so he can continue to serve his corporate masters.

As long as the election laws in the U.S. continue to permit this entrenched system of corruption and distortion, demonstrators can certainly make a case for the fact that they are trying to restore a balance to this democracy. Since they can’t get in those $300-a-plate fundraisers and since they can’t offer Mr. Delay a weekend at an exclusive private Hawaiian resort, and since they can’t send a couple of lawyers over to actually help Mr. Delay write the legislation– they have no choice but to take their issues to the streets.

Why don’t the leaders get smart: they should have initiated talks with Greenpeace and other issue-oriented groups– who do legitimately represent various interests– and brought them to the table. They should have invited them in. And they should have listened seriously to their concerns.

Ha ha ha! Had you going, didn’t I? You thought for one minute that I seriously believed that George Bush Jr. might want to meet with people who care about the environment!

Ha ha ha!

April Fools!

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The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that four con artists can’t be extradited to the U.S. to face charges because the prosecutors in the case, who have wide discretion over sentences and terms, have threatened to see to it that the malfeasants are sodomized in prison. They can do this because “get tough” U.S. crime laws give them considerable discretion over which charges, exactly, will be laid, how long the prison terms will be, and where the terms will be served.

My friends, the United States is a backwater, sometimes, of spiteful hicks and idiots.

What happened? What made these guardians of public morality so damn mad?

Well, these guys simply decided to fight extradition. The prosecutors (shall we have the evidence now, or after sentencing, your honor?) were hopping mad. How dare you exercise your legal rights! They made threats, including the afore-mentioned sodomization.

Well, it cost them. The four were sure to be extradited until the Supreme Court of Canada got wind of the threats, which, in it’s honorable opinion, amounted to a kind of extortion. The suspects were being asked to give up their constitutional rights, now, this minute, or else face cruel and unusual punishment.

The Supreme Court of Canada, bless their hearts, ruled unanimously that the men don’t have to face that kind of U.S. justice. It’s a start. I’d be quite happy if they would make a blanket ruling that Canada, as a civilized country, never sends anyone to be tried for any crime in the U.S.

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The Master of Soul-less Self Sufficiency

When Timothy McVeigh, sentenced to death for murdering 276 people in the Oklahoma bombing, dies, it is reported in Salon, he intends to quote the poem “Invictus” by William Henley:

I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

Now now– that’s not traditional. You’re supposed to turn to the families of the victims and say, “I am truly sorry.” But McVeigh isn’t sorry. He believes in what he did. He believes he was right to do it. It was good and necessary.

The Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, believes that it is an act of compassion to grant, to the families of his victims, the privilege of seeing Mr. McVeigh get murdered himself, on that peculiar cross-shaped table upon which they will strap him before this charming little game of “which tube contains the liquid cyanide” that they play when they put him to death.

When they executed people by firing squad, they used to put one blank in one of the rifles, so each of the shooters could go home that night thinking that he might not have been the one responsible for the man’s death. How honorable, for an institution that claims to pride itself on honor, courage, and integrity— how honorable, to cop out at the crucial moment: I might not have done it. I can sleep at night.

What a great idea. What a great way to help people– men (do you know of any female executioners?)– feel better about themselves. It’s cheaper than Prozac or Zoloft.

What amazes me is that they don’t do this in war. Why not?  Every soldier gets a gun but some only fire blanks. Every air plane gets bombs but some are duds. One in five torpedoes carries only the admiral’s laundry. That way, after committing hundreds or thousands of atrocities, we can all go home and say, I didn’t do it. When our children ask us what we did in the war, we can all say, “fired duds, mostly”.

Why didn’t they think of this when they dropped the nuclear bomb? They could have sent ten planes with ten similar fat bombs and they could all have dropped them at the same time and then they could all have gone home and said to their wives, “mine was a dud”.

Of course, the real captain of the Enola Gay, Paul W. Tibbets, is actually proud of the fact that the dropped the real bomb, and I guess his wife didn’t mind, so, in that instance, the idea is wasted.

Anyway… Ashcroft wants to give the relatives of the victims the “sense of closure”– or is it vicarious thrill? — or “satisfaction”– of seeing McVeigh die. The language is nebulous– no one wants to admit they are simply out for revenge, since our society knows well enough that “revenge” is not a noble virtue. Nobody really believes that McVeigh’s execution will stop anybody else from doing the same thing– not, especially, when we have suicide bombers in the world.

Revenge is an attribute of pugnacious, small-minded thugs and felons. But we are not thugs and felons. We are honorable and pure and we want to watch McVeigh die so we can get a sense of …. “closure”.

After the grandmother of one of Floyd Allen Medlock’s victims witnessed his execution, she expressed disappointment. It was too quiet, too peaceful. She wanted to see him die but our society, at cross-purposes with itself, now resorts to the antiseptic ritual of lethal injection. Not enough horror for her, I guess. More to the point: his death didn’t bring back her grand-daughter, and didn’t remove one ounce of the pain she suffered and didn’t prevent a single crime from being committed. It just added to the total sum of misery in the world.

I know this seems strange, but she reminds me of those fanatic Palestinian mothers who raise their sons to become martyrs to the faith. These devout boys strap explosives to their bodies and then get onto buses or wade around busy market places and set themselves off. Their mothers approve, so it appears. They wish death upon their own sons.

The deaths of their sons help them bring “closure” to their anguished feelings about the atrocities the Israelis have committed upon the Palestinians.

Do you buy that? Or do we prefer: they will feel closure about the deaths of their sons when every single last Israeli citizen is driven into the sea?

And the biggest joke of all: McVeigh announcing, as he is helplessly strapped to a table and poisoned to death, that he is the master of his soul, the captain of his fate. He is now the master of nothing. He is utterly helpless and useless and impotent. He is less important than a beggar on the streets who, at least, could beg or not beg, or cross the road, or not cross the road. He could imagine he is the King of Spain and prance down the alleyway singing at the top of his lungs.

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The West Wing

Just about the only television show I watch semi-regularly nowadays is “West Wing”. And The Simpsons. But let’s stay with “West Wing” for a minute.

I have to note here though that the only reason I don’t watch very much television is not because most television is crap, though it is. The fact is that there is a lot of good shows on television too. The trouble is that there are way too many commercials. Did you know that the Dick Van Dyke Show, in the early 1960’s, was about 28 minutes long? The average sitcom today is about 20 minutes. Where did the other 8 minutes go? You need to ask?

In tonight’s episode of West Wing, the President had to make some fateful decisions about possible military action to rescue hostages in Columbia. The story, which parallels reality rather closely, develops after the government gives Columbia $15 billion to fight the drug trade. After a remarkable speech about the utter futility of the drug war, the waste of money, the 80% of the U.S. prison population that consists of drug users, and so on, the dialogue takes a turn on Viet Nam. One of the President’s top advisors warns that he should not repeat the mistake of Viet Nam, which was… what? What was the mistake? The advisor said the mistake was that the U.S. entered the war on the side of a corrupt and unpopular government, and that it did not have clear objectives, and did not have a clear exit strategy. That was the mistake of the Viet Nam War.

The West Wing is one of the few television shows that really is unabashedly liberal. Don’t believe for one minute all that nonsense from Conservative commentators on the so-called “liberal” media– it simply aint true. West Wing is the exception, not the rule.

But the advisor’s explanation about why the U.S. lost the war in Viet Nam buys into a conservative revisionist position that is itself a desperate attempt to rehabilitate the idea of U.S. subterfuge of foreign governments for its own self-interest.

The Viet Nam War began because the U.S. and France refused to accept the results of an election in 1956 which produced a socialist government of a united Viet Nam. With both French and American encouragement, a group of rebels seized power in the South and created a pro-capitalist regime. When the new regime proved unpopular– after all, the people elected the socialists– the U.S. was forced to step in to support the government, and fight a proxy war against the North Viet Namese government, which, reasonably, was determined to reunite the country.

Where did France go? Those silly Frenchmen! They decided that backing a self-seeking, corrupt, illegitimate government against the popular wishes of its own people was a losing proposition! The fools!

The North did not remain democratic, really, but we don’t know what would have happened if the South had not seceded and the U.S. had not involved itself. It doesn’t really matter– the fact is that the U.S. interfered in the domestic policies of a sovereign state and paid the price for it. That’s why they lost Viet Nam. It had nothing to do with unclear objectives. The objective was, in fact very clear: the maintenance of a pro-American proxy state in the region at whatever cost to civil rights and democracy. The problem was not that the Americans did not have an exit strategy: given the objectives, there was no need for an exit at all. And the problem was not that the government of South Viet Nam was unpopular and corrupt: that was at least partly a consequence of U.S. policy, not an impediment to it. Had the U.S. stayed out, chances are quite good that that corrupt government could never have sustained it’s position.

The writers and producers of “West Wing” should know better.

But it’s a great show. It’s subtle, sophisticated, topical, and relevant. That’s rare in television. What’s even more rare is the overt political nature of the program: it is quite frankly Democrat in perspective. The Democrats should be proud.

The Republicans, if they were really smart, would be working on their own television drama by now. On the other hand, they already have a dozen: Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and just about every other cop show on television. They almost all show that respect for civil rights and the assumption of innocence is an impediment to justice and fairness. They almost all propagandize for unlimited police powers. They almost all feed into the right wing paranoia that has led to the creation of America’s idiotic drug and gun laws.

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Baptized Banality

The Banner, a magazine of the Christian Reformed Church, reports that a Christian screenwriter and a Christian actor have put together a company called “Act One” which is designed to provide Christians with training in screenwriting for Hollywood Movies. Barbara Nicolosi and David Schall are the two entrepreneurs– or missionaries– depending on your point of view.

Some of the teachers in this program have writing credits for shows like “Batman Forever”. I’m not kidding.

It only cost $1800 U.S. for one month, including room and board. That’s pretty steep, in my view. A red light goes off in my head. Aren’t there a lot of scams in Hollywood? So many people want so badly to become celebrated Hollywood writers, directors, actors…. there’s a lot of snakes out there quite eager to take advantage of them. This couldn’t be one of those scams, could it? Do Mr. Schell and Ms. Nicolosi give their students a realistic assessment of their chances of actually selling a script to a Hollywood producer?

And what are their chances? About a million to one?

The truth is, if you don’t know somebody in a key position at a studio in Hollywood, your chance of selling a script is almost nil.

Schell says, “I know Christians on the sets of several sit-coms and soap operas who make a positive difference in what is shown on the screen by creatively intervening in productions whose messages or stories are heading into areas that run counter to a Christian worldview.”

That’s the key right there. That tells you a lot about where Schell and Nicolosi are headed.

When, I asked myself, does a sitcom or soap opera begin to head into areas that are counter to a Christian worldview?

1) at the moment they insert advertising?

2) at the moment they promote their actors as “celebrities” who deserve our admiration and emulation because they are famous for being famous?

3) at the moment they engage in escapist fantasies that allow viewers to avoid confronting real life issues?

4) at the moment they pass off inane and repetitious formulaic plot devices stolen from “Mr. Ed” and “Gilligan’s Island” as “original” work?

5) at the moment they add a laugh track, to convince the audience that these tired mindless jokes are actually funny?

6) at the moment they eliminate every brand name, political party, identifiable religion, pop song, television show, social issue, and financial concerns from every episode of every show, in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator?

7) at the moment they select only actors who are physically beautiful or colorfully ethnic or comically fat?

Who knows?

Well, I suppose we do know. We know that what they mean is that when the script editors of a soap opera want to have two of the characters commit adultery with each other, the Christian on the set will pipe up with, “Whoa Nelly!” and put a stop to it immediately.

The main problem with Christians and the arts is that most Christians see art has having a function beyond the revelation of things seen and unseen. This function is propaganda. The trouble with most Christians who see themselves as more sophisticated than that is that they see art as having another potential function: to entertain and make money.

What we need are more Christians who, like Bruce Cockburn, see art as the revelation of things really seen and unseen– a very biblical standard that most great atheist artists and almost no Christian artists adhere to religiously.

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The London Defibrillation Choir

The New York Times, which never lies, has an article today about a movement to train everyone on how to use defibrillators. Apparently about 90% of the people who have cardiac arrest– which is not the same as a heart attack or a heart with no companion– die in the first 10 minutes. But if you have a defibrillator handy (in your purse or your camera bag or something, I assume), about 53% of the victims survive. That is amazing. Now the heart can have a companion.

They were even able to demonstrate that the average grade six student, who doesn’t know the state capital of Alaska where the oil is, can nevertheless be trained to operate a defibrillator in just a few hours. They tell them it’s just like a Sony Playstation.

Still, I find it somewhat alarming. New York State has passed a law that released from liability anyone who uses a defibrillator to try to save someone. You see, if you use a defibrillator on someone who is not having a heart attack, you can actually kill them. So I think the first thing we need to do, after making defibrillators available to everyone in order to save lots of lives, is to restrict their availability in order to save lots of lives.

Another thing I find alarming about defibrillators is that you have supposed to shave the person’s chest before applying the two little paddles and shouting “all clear”, so everyone knows you watch ER. I mean, some guy is dying (most likely in a Casino where there is a disproportionate number of cardiac arrests as well as tacky double-knit pantsuits), and you rush over to help and everyone’s standing around watching and you have to say, “anyone got a razor– while he’s down, I might as well shave his chest.” What if it was Burt Reynolds or someone? “Oh my god, this is going to take hours. Anyone got a Philishave?” What if it was Dolly Parton? “Bigger paddles, quick! We need— yes, those satellite dishes will do quite nicely….”

Another thing is — which is why Cohen’s explicit poetry is actually good for our society– what if it is a woman undergoing cardiac arrest and you’re kind of a shy young man and all these people are watching…. Can New York State also make an exception for sexual harassment lawsuits? But then, if they did, you’d have all these guys walking around the beach with defibrillators on their shoulders instead of boom boxes, and they’d be targeting good looking girls who fall asleep while tanning. “All clear. Leon! I said ALL CLEAR! Now. I mean it. All right, see if I care. ZZZZZZAAAAAPPPPP. Oh my God! Leon’s down! Someone get a razor, quick!”

I’m only bringing this up because if Leonard attends Hydra 2002… well, he is getting on in years, and I hope they have a defibrillator handy just in case. You know how women react around him. If Fiona or Judith or Ania actually met Leonard, you’d have to be ready to use those paddles, I think, though I would be very nervous about it myself. And, instead of shouting out “all clear”, I think, apropos of the occasion, I would shout “did you ever go clear?” ZZAAAAPPPP. “Bill, Bill, stop! She’s only taking a nap!” “Not any more. We better do it again. It’s like the reset button on a computer, isn’t it?”

And before I go to bed, I want to note that they have an actual video of a 77 year old man having cardiac arrest in a Las Vegas Casino. He falls over. The security guards rush to his aid. They look like they are in grade 6. They rip off his shirt and shave his chest. They apply the goo, the little sensor pads, and then — “Go Clear!”– the paddles. ZAAAAPPPP. He’s up. An old man who had fainted was revived. And everyone agreed twould be a miracle indeed…. except that the video also shows all the other people in the Casino basically ignoring him. I’m not kidding. They took one look at the guy and went back to their slots and blackjacks.

I think hell is… you’re in a Casino. Wayne Newton is singing “Dunkeshein”. Fat ladies in pastel-plaid double-knit pantsuits are working the slot machines. The décor resembles Andy Warhol repackaged by Walmart. You have a heart attack. Your soul starts to rise from your body and you look down and notice that not a single person gives a damn. What depresses you even more is that these are not the kind of people you wish would give a damn about you, but Ania and Fiona and Judith and Corisa and Tim and both Mikes and Mark and Jarkko and Nancy and Barbara …. are all in Hydra jamming to an aud and eating roast sheep. They don’t give a damn, and the guards stand helpless by: no one remembered a shaver. They try the paddles on your butt instead. With every zap you return to your body and the whole experience starts over again.

Did you ever go clear? No. ZZZZZAAAAAPPPPP Ow! Now I am.

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The Exorcist

“The Exorcist”, one of the most chilling, horrifying films ever made, has been re-released by Warner Brothers 27 years after it’s initial release stirred controversy and fascination.

There a few things you should know about “The Exorcist”, though you may not want to.

Now, when I say “you may not want to”, you probably think I’m going to tell you that demons are real and demon possession is a growing problem in our society so you better stay away from Ouija boards and stop listening to Marilyn Manson or AC/DC, backwards and forwards.

Actually, the truth is that people love these stories. They love them because something in us wants to believe that there are demons out there. The public is endlessly fascinated by villains, serial killers, poltergeists, ritual Satanic abusers, and so on. If you try to convince someone that there really isn’t as much evil out there as they think there is, they are frequently disappointed or alarmed.

Actually, the truth is that there really is a lot of evil out there. But, as Bob Dylan once observed, “the evil I see wears a cloak of decency”. Sure, there are rapists and pimps and pushers and thugs. But there are also executives and politicians and kings. Who is responsible for most of the misery in the world? How many people have died in this century, unnecessarily, as the result of war and starvation? What makes us think that because a man wears a suit and works in a gleaming office tower and drives in a limousine– what makes us think this man or woman is not “evil”, when they sometimes make decisions or policies that result in human catastrophes?

It isn’t even close.

But something in us prefers to see evil embodied in specific persons, whom we can ritually exorcise (pardon the expression) from our lives. Why? Because, at the most fundamental level, these stories allow us to believe that evil is not us.

Anyway, back to The Exorcist:

1. William Peter Blatty, the author of the book, The Exorcist, was brought up in a Catholic household and once considered joining the priesthood.

2. The novel was allegedly based on a “true story”, and the movie, of course, was based on the novel. Several priests served as “consultants” to William Friedkin, director of the movie. Now, when it comes to Hollywood, we all know what a “true story” is and the worthlessness of “consultants”. This particular “true story” concerns a 14-year-old boy who was possessed by a demon which was exorcised by several Roman Catholic priests. These events took place in 1949 in Mount Rainier, Maryland– so we are told–and were reported in various newspapers including the Washington Post. According to some researchers, the boy in question, the real boy, upon whom the Exorcist is based, had some serious emotional problems long before the possession episode. William F. Bodern, a Jesuit, was the officiating priest at the exorcism.

The boy is alive and well and has been located. He refuses to talk about the incident.

3. The boy’s grandmother was, in modern parlance, a religious fanatic, fascinated with all things cultic and spiritual, and she passed on this fascination to the boy. So those of you looking for a more naturalistic, psychosomatic explanation don’t have to look too far. Add to this the fact that Blatty’s own mother was very “spiritual” and you might begin to get the picture. Blatty also attended a Jesuit High School. He served time in the U.S. Air Force. His parents moved around a lot while he was growing up.

4. People attach great weight to the “true story” business. In fact, William Peter Blatty has not kept a secret of the fact that he made up most of the details in the novel and the movie. On the other hand, at times he does sound as if he sees himself as a journalist, rather than a writer of fiction. This doesn’t keep most people from believing that some demon-possessed child somewhere did the things shown in the movie.

Two interesting interpretations of the movie: a) a allegory of dominant, controlling males attempting to restore innocence to a adolescent female whose emerging sexuality threatens them, b) an allegory of teenage rebellion, plain and simple. Neither interpretation is really interesting. They don’t survive the dynamics of the story itself.

5. In the movie, the words “help me” appear on Regan’s body, in broken letters, as if punched there from within. You might draw the logical conclusion that it is the spirit of Regan, inside the body, begging to be relieved of the presence of demons. I thought it was the dumbest thing in the movie. What is the supposed explanation for this? Obviously, Regan before possession was not capable of stenciling words onto the surface of her stomach through sheer will-power.  Was a little Regan inside her stomach doing it?

Oh, come on– it was downright hokey.

6. The British Board of Censors banned the film for 15 years after it’s release. I’m told the ban was lifted in 1999, which is strange, since the film was released in 1973. What was it doing between 1973 and 1984? Perhaps what they banned was the video release. [Do you live in a free, democratic society? Then why does the government tell you which films you are allowed to watch?]*

7. It won Oscars for best sound and adapted screenplay. Blatty initially wanted to use well-known actors, including Paul Newman, in the film, but later decided to use relative unknowns, including Jason Miller, Ellen Burstyn, and Max Von Sydow. This was a very, very smart decision: the film is much more forceful and convincing.

8. Aside from the special effects and the horror elements, the film is actually a good drama. In some ways, the story of Father Karras’ mother was more horrifying than the demon possession.

How does nonsense spread? Very easily. William Peter Blatty supplied the initial myth– that the movie bore some kind of substantive relationship to real events in Mount Rainier in 1949. This, as it turns out, is utterly false, other than the fact that a boy appeared to suffer from convulsions and some Roman Catholic priests performed what they called an “exorcism”. The boy’s convulsions eventually subsided, and at least one of the priests involved in the exorcism acknowledges that nothing really weird happened. But most news stories simply quote Blatty, and cite other books that were dependent on the same sources, and perpetuate the myth. Why? Because people love the story. They are fascinated by it. It’s a heck of a lot more exciting than mental illness.

You have to know this: Blatty was a lightweight Hollywood comedy writer before he turned out “The Exorcist”. Since then, he’s taken pains to try to establish his credentials as a “deep”, serious author. If you’ve only seen “The Exorcist” you might buy it, because, like I said, the drama is exceptional.

But what you are really seeing is William Friedkin’s wonderful direction and the superb acting of Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Max VonSydow, and Linda Blair.

There are four full-time exorcists in the Archdiocese of New York, appointed by Cardinal O’Connor. The Pope himself has attempted three exorcisms (and failed). In an average year, according to Time Magazine, they investigate 350 cases and conduct 10-15 exorcisms. They only perform exorcisms after all possible “natural” causes of the phenomenon have been ruled out. Mind you, this judgment of what is “natural” and what might not be is being made by someone who believes that people occasionally can be occupied by sentient evil beings.

Added 2011-03

The “director’s cut” of the movie proved that Directors should not always get final cut. Actually, I’m sure Friedkin knew that the scenes “restored” to the “director’s cut” deserved to be cut.  The scene of Regan spider-walking down the stairs upside down is downright ridiculous.

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The Curious and Unfortunate Fate of Wen Ho Lee.

Without the big bad Russians to kick around any more, what is the U.S. military-industrial establishment to do? There must be somebody out there scary enough to drum up another $300 billion or so for preposterous defense schemes. Cuba? Pretty scary, you must admit, but with Castro getting a little long in the tooth and a population of only about 4 million of which 3.999 million are more interested in baseball and mariachi bands, there’s not much to muster there.

Well, hey, you don’t have to look too far. There’s the red devil himself, China, just sitting there with about two billion people, and a communist government.

Of course, China hasn’t even been able to scare Taiwan into submission yet, so first you’ve got to puff them up a little. What if they had nuclear bombs? Oh dear! Oh my! The Chinese with nuclear weapons! But how did they get nuclear weapons? They already had them? They must have stolen them from us! They must have been spying on us. They probably have spies everywhere. Just look around you. Just look at those scientists working at the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Laboratory. Hey… look at that guy....

This week, a U.S. District Judge, James Parker, apologized to Wen Ho Lee for the idiotic persecution of the 60-year-old Taiwan-born scientist for allegedly selling nuclear secrets to the Chinese. Attorney General Janet Reno– possibly the worst attorney general in the recent history of the United States– refused to say she was sorry. She said, in essence, that if only Mr. Lee had cooperated as he should have he never would have been in so much trouble. How nice to know that the chief law enforcement officer of the United States has officially pronounced that innocent citizens have no need to fear incarceration as long as they “cooperate”.

Not much is known any more about what really happened to start this mess, but it is clear that there was never any significant reason to believe that Lee had sold vital nuclear secrets to the Chinese. But prosecutors claimed that Lee had downloaded thousands of megabytes of information about nuclear weapons onto his laptop computer without permission. They figured he was ready to pack them all off to China.

Lee, and others who work in the field, immediately insisted that though downloading the files was technically against the rules at the Los Alamos Research Laboratory, “everybody did it”. Everybody did it, but not everybody looked Chinese.

Wen Ho Lee was the victim of a right-wing paranoid fantasy. Prosecutors and politicians chose Lee to bear the brunt of their irrational hysteria that somehow the Chinese were getting ready to take over the world. Chances are that many of the individuals involved in persecuting Mr. Lee actually thought he was born Chinese. After all, he had slanty eyes, didn’t he? I’d love to be able to lay this exclusively at the feet of the Republicans but the truth is that high officials at the Department of Energy and the Executive– eager to be more paranoid than thou when it came to military security– were at least equally responsible. Clinton, playing the centrist, did nothing to help Lee even though most sane observers were very quick to point out the absurdities in the prosecution’s case. Al Gore hasn’t said a single decent, respectable thing about the case. Bush would like to have you believe that he is so smart that all spies will be caught under his administration.

The Republicans, meanwhile, after encouraging the prosecution with their paranoid hysteria, are now trying to politicize the case by demanding an inquiry into the investigation!

Lee was held for 278 days in solitary confinement after being charged with 59 counts of espionage. The prosecution’s case fell apart when an FBI official named Robert Messemer admitted that he had distorted an interview he had with Lee. In other words, he lied— to a judge– about Lee’s responses to questions he had asked him before last December.

But even before Messemer’s confessions, reputable experts and analysts were insisting that none of the “secrets” Mr. Lee is alleged to have copied to his laptop computer were actually “secret”. In fact, virtually all of the information was already available in trade documents and on the internet.

As usual, grossly incompetent lawyers know how to protect themselves. They argue that Lee probably really is guilty, but they just can’t prove it. So while asserting, on the one hand, that he really did intend to sell “the crown jewels” of U.S. nuclear research to some other country– a capital offense– they admit that they have such a weak case that they will release him after time served already.

There is an ugly dynamic here. The prosecutors, possibly dimly aware of looking like idiots, are now desperate for any kind of vindication, no matter how meager. They got it with this perverse deal with Lee: he pleads guilty to a very minor charge, and they call off the hounds. This is called bullying, harassment, extortion, when it is performed by anyone but the police or the government or lawyers.

You can’t have it both ways. Either he’s guilty and you’re incompetent and you bungled the investigation, or he’s innocent and you are cold-blooded liars, as well as incompetent.

Clinton should do the right thing for a change. All the persons involved in persecuting Mr. Lee should be summarily dismissed. Mr. Lee’s good name should be cleared and he should be restored to his position at Los Alamos.

Last minute note: I just read that President Clinton did at least part of the right thing. He has chastised the Department of Justice for the way they handled the investigation and indicated that he believes Mr. Lee’s rights were violated. Meanwhile, Attorney-General Janet Reno continues to insist her department did nothing wrong. But then, Janet Reno’s initial claim to fame (and stepping stone into a political career) came from the dubious prosecution of a Satanic Ritual Abuse case in Florida in the 1980’s. And we all know what THAT was about….

More on Janet Reno’s colourful past.