I have a day job. So every word of this is my opinion, not that of my employer. This offer IS void in Wisconsin. Except, of course, that some material in this column comes from incoming e-mail; such material is usually reproduced in the Sans Serif type font to distinguish it from the (somewhat) original material.

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Tales of Teaching 2004
Tales of Teaching 2005

January 2, 2006 Vol. 8, No. 1

General News

• What A Week
• Thinking About The South: An Apology

Craig Reynolds' Technobriefs

• Taking a week off

Humor

• The Three Wise Men

Movies

• Match Point, Memoirs of a Geisha, Walk The Line
• Munich

Letters

• Malchman on the Fourth, Dumb Iraq Visit, Carroll Finds Snoring Cure, Dinner for One, Dan Grobstein File

General News

What A Week

Vicki returns from India (including a four hour air traffic delay), Marlow, Rae and I spend two days at my parents' house in Portland, Oregon (sorry Portlanders, we were booked solid from dawn to dusk), we celebrated Rae's 21^st birthday (belatedly) with a quiet family dinner. A whirlwind of activity and emotion--how cool is it to have my two adult daughters at home for another week with two more weeks in prospect (albeit weeks when I'll be working again)? As cool as it gets, says I.

Happy New Year

11am

I have had occasion to regret the tone and tenor of recent remarks here about the South. I have, apparently, carried some unresolved and unexamined bile with me for a very long time, and made the mistake of spewing it here in the column. I will not describe in detail a column item you can look up if you're that interested, because I choose not to repeat the libel. Suffice it to say that numerous people whose opinion I respect, including my own parents, have told me in no uncertain terms I was out of line.

My mother commented, in an echo of a comment made by a friend who asked that his remarks be kept confidential. How would I like it if people said Portland was a place they never wanted to visit because of the Meth epidemic or the regular police shooting of African Americans? And how would I feel if someone suggested that we'd be better off without Oregon in the Union because some Oregon politicians have behaved badly (including our once-sainted Bob Packwood and Neal Goldschmidt--one from each party).

I teach my students Freud's dictum that we most hate the people we are most like, and advise them to look to their own souls when they find themselves hating someone. On top of that, one of the things I find most despicable about the right is its demonization of its opponents. As the Cold War proved so vividly, when you are in the heat of battle, it is easy to become the thing you hate. I demonized a region and its politicians, as I have done for 40 years--and for 40 years I was wrong.

We must get out of the miasma of poisonous politics that descended on this country in 1998. People of good will on both sides of the aisle are going to have to accept that there is good in all of and that we can agree to disagree and meet in the center, not ram radical changes and solutions down the throats of our opponents.

Republicans are not bad and evil people. At the risk of being trite, some of my best friends are Republicans. They honestly believe they are doing what is right for the country. I honestly believe they are wrong. We need to keep the discussion at that level, or else experience eternal gridlock.

If not for the Orwellian implications, I would be tempted to remove my rant about the South from the Internet, which would make it difficult, albeit not impossible, to find. I have no desire to use Big Brother's memory hole, and I have mocked, in this column, GOP efforts (and/or failures) to cleanse websites of embarrassing historical artifacts. On the other hand, I frequently laud the Internet for its ability to allow us to correct mistakes that one could never correct in the dead tree media.

And so I ask--what do you think? Should I delete the offensive rant, in addition to recanting it, apologizing for it and promising to try not to write anything like it ever again?

And, of course, I am revising my opinion about the Civil War. I am now, as I always have been, sorry that our nation's regional disagreements had to be settled by force of arms. We were right to insist on an indivisible union and a federal system and we were right to accept the South's return.

I was even right that the South was responsible for a number of indignities in American political history. But the Bible advises us to judge not, lest we be judged. Matthew 7:3 asks, "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye." To say we'd have been better off without the South is to judge a region and its people by the behavior of a few--something I wouldn't appreciate if it were done to me and my region of the country.

The North has made mistakes, and done awful things to African Americans as well as others (e.g.: the Japanese in WWII). The North also was responsible for a number of indignities in American political history. The first step towards healing and reconciliation is for both sides to admit they've made mistakes.

I honestly believe the GOP side find it difficult to admit error and culpability, but someone has to take the first step. I was wrong and it was my fault.

Let the healing begin.

10:00

Political Notes

Inquiry into leak of spying program launched
George W. Bush, having been aware for over a year of what he now claims is a leak of classified information failed for over a year to call publicly for an inquiry into the source of the leak to The New York Times of the information that he advocated the unconstitutional and illegal warrantless interception of the communications of U.S. citizens. If there were a real leak worthy of a Justice Department inquiry, why did Bush remain quiet instead of calling for an investigation in October, 2004?

***

• Jose Padilla: enemy combatant? Padilla's Dec. 30 response to government application for extraordinary relief (pdf file). Analysis: Padilla urges court to wait on transfer. Sacramento Bee editorial noting objections to moving Padilla. Requires lengthy but free registration
• For Agency's `Rendering' Teams, A Lavish Overseas Lifestyle
• What do you call a political party that thinks postage for a Presidential cat's fan club requires a full-on Congressional investigation, but a President who admits on national television to breaking Federal law, repeatedly, only merits some committee "oversight," and spotty oversight at that? Republicans.
• Fear destroys what bin Laden could not by Robert Steinback, Miami Herald. One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.
• Putin's Show of Strength Triggers Fear of Fresh Nuclear Arms Race
• Ukrainian Cruise Missiles Transported Via Russia to Iran, Israel
• Norman Solomon: NSA Spied on U.N. Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq
• Bush turns on Iraq give columnist whiplash By Helen Thomas
• Marine jeep contract under fire Newspaper says the Corps is harshly criticized for new vehicles that cost $100K each.

• Bob Barr, a rabid attack dog during Clinton impeachment, can see the forest. Clear headed analysis, an admission Congress won't impeach a president of its own party--but where is the call for impeachment? Perhaps I missed it? Maybe it's coded. Presidents all the same when scandal strikes
• Impeachment is Now Real
• George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably By John W. Dean. FindLaw.com
• Press Clips Checks and No Balance: The story is Bush's spying, not the story's messenger by Sydney H. Schanberg

8:00

Craig Reynolds' Technobriefs

Off this holiday week

7:00

Humor

The Three Wise Men

In a small Southern Alabama town there was a "Nativity Scene" that showed great skill and talent had gone into creating it. One small feature bothered me. The three wise men were wearing firemen's helmets. Totally unable to come up with a reason or explanation, I left.

At a "Quick Stop" on the edge of town, I asked the lady behind the counter about the helmets. She exploded into a rage, yelling at me, "You Yankees never do read the Bible!" I assured her that I did, but simply couldn't recall anything about firemen in the Bible.

She jerked her Bible from behind the counter and ruffled through some pages, and finally jabbed her finger at a passage. Sticking it in my face she said, "See, it says right here, 'The three wise men came from afar.'"

6:50

Movies

6:00

Neal offered a much more subtle and nuanced review of Munich on Dec. 19. I finally got around to seeing it this week. Well, what did you expect me to say: it is much too long. It is a clever film, demonstrating Spielberg's mastery of the medium of film, and in particular his deft ability to switch back and forth between drama and comedy while keeping an audience engaged. Tony "Angels in America" Kushner's ability as a screenwriter is now beyond question. He's not a one-shot wonder, nor is he limited to writing epochal plays. Maybe if we all chipped in, the Hollywood studios would hire some editors...It is strangely not moving, in my estimation. It is, as Neal noted, not about the attack on the athletes, but on rather Israel's response to those attacks, and the thorny philosophical issues raised by assassination. I'll give it four stars, but with reluctance.

5:30

Letters

Robert Malchman writes about the Fourth Amendment

Was there a newspaper in America that didn't run this one on the front page? And what was this kid thinking? I don't think I'd hire him...

• High School Student Flies Alone To Iraq
  By Jason Straziuso Associated Press Writer
  BAGHDAD, Iraq - Maybe it was the time the taxi dumped him at the Iraq-Kuwait border, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. Or when he drew a crowd at a Baghdad food stand after using an Arabic phrase book to order. Or the moment a Kuwaiti cab driver almost punched him in the face when he balked at the $100 fare. But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation.

Chuck Carroll found this:

I lost track of who sent me this one;

• The Mystery of Dinner for One: How an obscure British skit has become Germany's most popular New Year's tradition. By Jude Stewart, Salon.

I was on the road a lot this week, so some of Dan Grobstein's submissions may have run elsewhere in the column. Sorry Dan.

• Special Forces dispelling myths. Special forces agent on torture and wiretapping--we don't need them and they don't work.

Dave Methvin's PC Pitstop