What is this Downing Street Memo? And why are you bugging me about it when you're supposed to be funny?

To help the Big Brass Alliance, we at the Pepper wanted to develop a definition, a caveat, and timeline surrounding the Downing Street Memo.

DEFINITION
The Downing Street Memo, written by British National Security aide Matthew Rycroft, resulted from a meeting of Tony Blair's security team. The memo is of the opinion that the Court of George II was hellbent on attacking Iraq long before it claimed it had any war plans. Tea was probably served. They're Brits, you know.

CAVEATS
The memo is the result of a meeting among British advisers and does not contain quotations that bust the court. That said, the memo does raise questions, which has led John Conyers to gather signatures for a letter that asks George II some "What did you know and when did you know it?" questions. With or without the memo, the questions are still legitimate. It's not a call for impeachment - it's a call for an investigation. We as American citizens have the right to as much.
Oh, and just because they're Brits, we can't assume they drank tea.

TIMELINE
Much of this timeline is taken from the Chicago Tribune piece about the Downing Street Memo. The timeline helped us grasp just how far in advance the administration was planning to invade Iraq ... as opposed to other, higher-threat nations. We at the Pepper did indeed drink tea while compsing the timeline.

September 11, 2001
Something horrible happens. Someone must pay. Iraq is not on anyone's minds.

July 23, 2002
Less than one year later, Tony Blair and his national-security advisors meet, and Matthew Rycroft takes notes. Rycroft records that "Military action [on the part of the United States] was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
We at the Pepper: We will now use "to fix around the policy" as a euphemism for "to lie."
AND
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."
We at the Pepper: Even though the memo reflects only the opinions of British intelligence, one must always have something from which to reflect ... and the United States had enough planning in motion that Blair's staff felt the need to respond.

October 16, 2002
Congress authorizes the use of force in Iraq.

February 5, 2003
Secretary of State Colin Powell speaks to the United Nations Security Council, simulates the voice of a reasonable individual, drops facts that were later proven to be bunk, and waves around a little bit of anthrax, just to lighten the mood.
We at the Pepper: We will give credit where credit is due. The choice of Powell as the voice of reason speaking the words of nuttiness was genius. Powell's presence and solid rhetorical skills helped convince moderates that the only people who could be against the war were crazed hippies from San Francisco.

March 20, 2003
Bombs fall on Baghdad.

May 2, 2003
George II dons his party gear and flies a plane onto the USS Abraham Lincoln. A sign above him says "Mission Accomplished."

May 3, 2003
Insurgents agree to disagree with George II and unleash a wave of violence against both our troops and the Iraqi people. The violence persists to this day, despite the slow establishment of an Iraqi government.

May 1, 2005
Britain's Sunday Times releases the Downing Street Memo.

May 17, 2005
The Chicago Tribune reports on the memo, but the writers, Stephen J. Hedges and Mark Silva, admit that the memo was "something of a dud" that has resulted in "something less than a robust discussion." See Francesca's Liberal Wingnut Corner for discussion of how loudly the media is yawning.

May 28, 2005
According to the AP, at least 1,655 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. And who knows how many Iraqis?

May 31, 2005
Robust??? By golly, we'll show you robust. The Big Brass Alliance makes its public debut.

BACK TO THE BRASS
Again, Shakespeare's Sister has done a top-notch job at getting together a group of rowdy bloggers and harnessing their voices so the nation can hear more about the leadup to the war on Iraq.

Yesterday, we at the Pepper explained the nature of the Big Brass Alliance, but Shakespeare's Sister has a far more detailed post:

Memorial Day: Honor Our Troops with the Truth

Even if you supported the war, even if you thought the war on Iraq was justified for reasons beyond those publicly stated, even if you were impressed by Colin Powell's willingness to handle anthrax for his nation, please follow the link and read this memo so you can decide. Because you're not hearing about the memo on the national news - all you're getting is crap about Runaway Brides and Tom Cruise's War on Psychology.

FINAL NOTE
Remember that obscure little British movie called "Brassed Off!" with Ewan McGregor? And how "brassed off" doesn't mean you really think brass instruments are cool? Well, by golly, after hearing about the Big Brass Alliance, we at the Pepper are officially "brassed off!"

Posted by Pepper at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We at the Pepper never thought we'd see the day that we would give a macrame award to ourselves. Oh, but we have. Because ...

Does anyone else find it funny that the real Deep Throat's last name is Felt?

Shame on us!

Posted by Pepper at 05:33 PM | Permalink

George II regarding treatment of detainees:

"Some of these people have been trained to disassemble ... that means to not tell the truth."

dis·sem·ble
George II, will you please start trying for once? Wow, we at the Pepper feel bad for Yalies who had to work for good grades and who aren't as powerful as you.

We at the Pepper are thinking of that cute little robot in Short Circuit who would run around squealing, "No disassemble! No disassemble!"

We think we'd rather watch that than watch George II flounder at this conference!

Posted by Pepper at 08:16 AM | Permalink

"What's this Big Brass Alliance image thingy?" some of you may ask.

Well, Shakespeare's Sister has been wildly busy this Memorial Day weekend. Shakespeare's Sister put out the call for liberal/left bloggers who join together in protest of George II's actions in Iraq. The following explains the alliance's purpose:

The Big Brass Alliance was formed in May 2005 as a collective of progressive bloggers who support After Downing Street, a coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups formed to urge that the U.S. Congress launch a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The campaign focuses on evidence that recently emerged in a British memo containing minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security officials.

More information about the memo is available at After Downing Street, of course, and Raw Story. Here's Raw Story:

The memo, official minutes of a 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, members of British intelligence MI-6 and various members of the Bush administration, noted that MI-6 director Richard Dearlove said, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Fixed around the policy. Hum. Congressman John Conyers is trying to push the memo to the forefront with his own memo asking George II specific questions. Head to Conyers' personal site for more. You can, if you wish, sign the memo here. Read more about the memo here, as it was reported by the NYT (we link to the International Herald Tribune so you can avoid NYT subscription issues).

As to the specific ties to After Downing Street, Shakespeare's Sister writes, "My hope is that they will use this collective of willing and able Lefty bloggers as a source to disseminate information about their efforts."

And we at the Pepper are willing and able! Because the seemingly legit media outlets aren't doing it. Even the Chicago Tribune, which covered the story, admitted as much:

But the potentially explosive revelation has proven to be something of a dud in the United States. The White House has denied the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war.

We at the Pepper have heard arguments from liberals and conservatives that holding the Court of George II accountable for the Iraq was is like banging on a dead drum, flogging a dead horse, gazing into the proverbial navel, etc. But we at the Pepper strongly disagree. We're amateur presidential historians here, and Dr. Pepper studies the writings of the Founding Fathers for a living. And we don't think the Court of George II's shenanigans are what they had in mind when they created the United States of America. Um, it's called accountability. How many Americans have forgotten that concept?

Posted by Pepper at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As of Saturday, at least 1,655 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

So many discussions of Memorial Day involve symbols, flags waving, sculpture, and reverence. And they have their place, but we at the Pepper want to praise the human beings who have suffered physically and mentally. They've given up so much for the nation - whether or not we think these wars are justified.

The following writers also give the troops their due:

The Heretik: For the Good and the True, In Memory 2005
The Heretik writes: "War Must Be Fought Only for the Good and the True. Or soldiers die for falsehoods." And more. The Heretik follows with poetry, which sometimes is the only way to express that which cannot be expressed.

Norbizness: Memorial Day, 2005
Discussion of Sam Fuller, director and veteran. Norbizness ends with the resounding line, "Here's hoping that as many as possible escape next year's tribute from Nightline."

Rox Populi: In Memoriam, Write Your Own Caption #199
The first post provides links to scholarship funds for children of military families. If you really want to do something for the soldiers, this is a good start. The second post is an image of George II, in full military regalia. Ours was "Oh, goody! Halloween came early this year!"

Suburban Guerilla: A Hole in the World
SG captures the emptiness left behind with the death of every soldier. The last lines: "Each and every one of these deaths left a hole in the world. That is why we count them. They mattered."

It's all too easy for us to think of soldiers as part of the larger army, to assume that they are a group protecting our freedoms, but they are individuals with their own sets of relationships. It's called "personhood." Pepper just finished Atonement, and we read All Quiet on the Western Front, both of which depict the unmitigated horrors and agonies of war. Those of us safe and snug cannot possibly understand what our soldiers have gone through no matter how many combat movies we watch or video games we play. We can't know what they went through as individuals. The pain of a soldier is one that cannot be expressed in words - the only memorial that got it right was the Vietnam War Memorial ... and many people despised that precisely because its form did not stimulate easily recognizable emotions.

All we want is for this war to stop and for the troops who are there now to make it home alive. And that's the purpose of the Big Brass Blog, which we'll explain in the next post!

Posted by Pepper at 11:33 AM | Permalink

The "Class Matters" series at the NYT has taken several interesting field trips to take the pulse of Americans' opinions on class.

They ventured beyond Manhattan into Brooklyn. Tamar Lewin went to Pikeville, Kentucky (and we at the Pepper salute her because it's more than most writers these days would have done). They hit the South to talk with National Guard members on the verge of George II's Folly. But then, to get to the heart of the matter, they went to ...

The mall.

Yes, the NYT got down and dirty and sent a reporter to a Cleveland suburb. The reporter, Jennifer Steinhauer, found her angle by proving something entirely new to us and new to you. Here it is:

You can't tell how much money people make by what they look like!

No kidding! Honest!

Okay, we at the Pepper were just being mean, but we knew that the "Class Matters" series was going to go there and talk about the link between what Americans buy determines their class.

The article kicks off with some tear-your-hair-out discussions over how it was once easy to tell who had class in America. And now, anyone can buy Godiva chocolates and Saks suits.

We at the Pepper giggled because the NYT got it all wrong. It was once easy to tell who was rich - that doesn't mean it is easy to tell who has class. And we know full well that Godiva ain't exactly top-of-the-line.

Heck, the NYT even labeled Dick Cheney upper class:

Everyone, meanwhile, appears to be blending into a classless crowd, shedding the showiest kinds of high-status clothes in favor of a jeans-and-sweatsuit informality. When Vice President Dick Cheney, a wealthy man in his own right, attended a January ceremony in Poland to commemorate the liberation of Nazi death camps, he wore a parka.

A classless crowd? Cheney's obnoxious behavior is a sign of "classlessness," all right, but it isn't the kind of "classlessness" the NYT had in mind. Cheney's a jerk, and an upper bourgeois in the worst sort of way.

Also, class is relative. The upper class in Cleveland (one of which sports a diamond pinky ring in the article) would get kicked to the curb trying to fraternize with the upper class in New York. Cheney would get kicked to the curb trying to fraternize with the upper class in New York. Heck, most people can't find where the upper class in New York is hiding!

The entire article tries to show how the class structure in America has changed, but the only revelation is that nothing has changed at all. The truly upper class evolves away of the rest of us. Paul Fussell, in a book originally published in 1983, called this class the "top out-of-sight."

And they are still out of sight, a fact Steinhauer admits but considers fresh information. Steinhauer writes,

Then there are the new badges of high-end consumption that may be less readily conspicuous but no less potent. Increasingly, the nation's richest are spending their money on personal services or exclusive experiences and isolating themselves from the masses in ways that go beyond building gated walls. (emphasis Pepper)

New? Fussell noted this in 1983, but the NYT seems to think that Veblen was the only American to ever write about class.

We at the Pepper will break it to all of you - the second the rich start to mingle, they have lost class. When they really mingle, when they plaster their faces everywhere (no need to name names), they have truly lost class because - by turning themselves into commodities - they are actually working for a living. The true upper class never mingles.

And if a rich person must show off a servant or a nanny in public, then you've got nouveau-riche, in all its glory.

To give proper credit, Steinhauer does discuss the only significant change in American social class - it is even easier for Americans to go into debt to finance their attempts at rising. Then again, debt as a result of great expectations is as old as ... Great Expectations.

Posted by Pepper at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's what we at the Pepper have noticed about any review regarding Sleater-Kinney:

Critics are so boggled by this band that they will compare them to any act the critics happen to have floating in their heads. We at the Pepper read a review that compared Corin Tucker's vocals to Mariah Carey's in one paragraph and then turned around to inform us that Sleater-Kinney is "now picking up where pre-Starship Jefferson Airplane left off."

Huh? What is that supposed to mean? Blame Entertainment Weekly, not us.

Pitchfork also rides the 70s nostalgia train by using the phrase "Tucker stitches it together with a low Led Zep riff."

Gee, funny to us, but one of the lyrics in the record is "Nostalgia, you're using it like a whore," and the critics just assume the band is referring to The Killers, Interpol, and their arch-decadent ripoff rock. And they are. Maybe the band is referring to ... the critics as well.

Hence, we at the Pepper have vowed not to use the words "monster riff," "backward-looking," or "Keith Moon" anywhere in the remainder of this post.

Then again, maybe critics feel they must compare drummer Janet Weiss to a certain famed classic-rock drummer and Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein's work to that of a certain famed classic-rock band because they're saying, with such gentle subtlety,

Congratulations, ladies, you are now rocking with the big boys.

No, really. There might not be a better drummer out there than Janet Weiss. You listen, eyes closed, you'll see. In fact, there's no comparison between Sleater-Kinney and any other straight-up rock band out there.

Sleater-Kinney is one of the rare bands who can shake off the excess baggage surrounding their music. Reviews mention their politics, their gender, their relationship to the Riot Grrrl movement, and oh their gender again.

But if we at the Pepper were to hold the musical equivalent of a blindfolded taste test and stripped out the vocal track, no guy would know this music was made by women. Without the vocal track, some might ask, "Why isn't this band absolutely effing MASSIVE?"

Their music is a release, it's smart, and the members of the band are real musicians. The Woods is a breakthrough in that they loosen up and show what they've learned in Rock 'n Roll Graduate School instead of limiting themselves to their earlier supertight song structures.

That's not to say that "The Woods" is a perfect album. The band tends to stay in the same vein the entire time, which is a flaw with most Sleater-Kinney albums. They find their theme, and they do not divert. They don't do different shades well. And when they do, the resulting song tends to be a bad idea. "Modern Girl" is a stumble in which the band reveals all its cards with some cloying lyrics that needed to be buried at the base of an oak. At least the song allows listeners to take a breather after the full-on rock assault, or maybe it's a foil to the two best songs on the album, "Entertain" and "Rollercoaster." Alone, though, it's a yawner.

"Entertain" is brilliant, though, and not just for its lyrics, which savages American culture's current plundering of the past. The song kicks off with rolling-thunder drums and a "whoa-oh" that cuts into Brownstein's vocals, which is a textbook "up yours." The reference to “Johnny Get Your Gun” is most likely one to Dalton Trumbo and his relegation to McCarthy's blacklist – or maybe not, but the song dares both the average rock fan AND conservatives to blacklist the band.

"Rollercoaster" is one of the most appropriate song titles in ages. The song features a swirling sound, a tumbling chorus - and a COWBELL. Maybe it was the cowbell that set all those critics back to the 1970s. Or maybe the cowbell set them back to that Will Ferrell 'Saturday Night Live' skit - a representation of the 1970s instead of the 1970s themselves. Oh, who cares? The song is perfect rock - kinda dirty, kinda rebellious, kinda snotty and scathingly brilliant.

We at the Pepper are tough graders, so we'll give the record an 8 given the occasional weak spot. However, this band is better than most of the ones out there - particularly the ones who are championed as rebellious or groundbreaking. America might not be ready for this band, but, boy, does America ever need it right now.

Posted by Pepper at 04:53 PM | Permalink

Whilst cruising the IMDB this evening, we at the Pepper stumbled across a curious headline:

Cruise Launches War on Psychiatrists

Or, as we at the Pepper would say:

Big Honking Deal

We at the Pepper hate it when actors start to think they're experts on anything. Cruise played a doctor in Eyes Wide Shut, which was a piece-of-crap movie, so he didn't play a doctor well, either, and now he thinks he knows the secrets of the mind. And the same goes for Patricia Heaton, who was certain that Terri Schiavo was as alive as you or me - without ever having been in the same room with her.

We also love it when shows like "Access Hollywood" get involved with causes. Gee, if they were so concerned about causes, maybe they should have kept a closer watch on Pat O'Brien!

Posted by Pepper at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The "Class Matters ... Because We Discovered It!" series at the NYT may have reached new levels - or descended to new lows - with last Sunday's cover story.

The story, "On a Christian Mission to the Top," focuses on the increased buying power of evangelical Christians, which they link to a corresponding rise in class and an interest in Ivy League students.

Hey, shouldn't someone tell the NYT that it is gauche to think you can buy your way into the upper class? And shouldn't someone tell them - and the people they profile - that it is tres gauche to think you can buy your way into heaven?

The NYT follows an evangelical student at Brown who will soon attend medical school and plans to work in a remote area of the South that hasn't had a permanent doctor in years ...

Just kidding! This guy might be praying, but he's off to make some dough! Good works, good schmerks!

The religious, young doctor-in-training doesn't even consider returning to give back to the community he came from, as Bats Left, Throws Right points out (and links to us, thank you!):

Unlike most of his heathen schoolmates, Mr. Havens comes from modest circumstances ... Not one word about returning to help people like his neighbors. Not even a word about healing the sick. What apparently excites him is the coming windfall and the opportunity to pray with patients.

We at the Pepper couldn't have said it better ourselves. Havens does say that how much he makes "will depend on how much I keep," suggesting that he has a philanthropic streak, but the sheer materialism that keeps popping up in this article suggest that he will do exactly what his future father-in-law did:

And he has been considering the example of his future father-in-law, Daniel Chalmers, a Baptist missionary to the Philippines who ended up building power plants there and making a small fortune. Mr. Chalmers has been a steady donor to Christian causes, and he bought a plot of land in Oregon, where he plans to build a retreat. (emphasis Pepper)

So father-in-law bought a retreat, and it appears to be a retreat for other like-minded and like-monied Ivy League Christians.

Now, Havens' father-in-law made his money building power plants in the Philippines, which no doubt helped Filipinos get electricity. We at the Pepper are pragmatists, and that's good, but the little "... and making a small fortune" addition jarred us.

Last we at the Pepper heard, the "... and making a small fortune" bit wasn't really the end goal of Christianity.

However, the whole focus of the article - and the focus of the interviewees - is money: how to raise it, how to get it, how to spend it on buildings and fun activities for upper-class Christians. Helping others seems be an activity performed on the way, not as the end goal.

We would make a safe guess that Havens feels "chosen." Why should he worry about the heathens or those who aren't lucky enough to be "chosen" like him? The article doesn't make a single reference to community activities on the part of Mr. Havens, other than leading prayer groups.

Of course, what the reporter could have left some parts out, and the reporter didn't talk to students who organize Alternative Spring Breaks (in which students give up partying to help others - and it's nondenominational) or the students who are Christian and who are not as obsessed with money and status. But the NYT and the people they speak with are absolutely obsessed with linking cash and Christianity in an unhealthy, very non-religious, nouveau-riche way.

We at the Pepper list the references to money and status in the direct quotes of the interviewees:

Geoff Freeman, head of the Brown Campus Crusade: "It is easy to sell New England in the Midwest."

"God owns the cattle on a thousand hills," [Havens] often told himself. "God has plenty of money."

"God has always used wealthy people to help the church," Mr. Havens said.

Havens on selling out: "So far so good," he said. But he admitted, "I don't have any money yet."

Beyond direct quotes, these "chosen ones" constantly appear to have their eyes on the bottom line. Again in the series on class, the NYT and the people they interview are more interested in the acquisition of stuff - but having lots of stuff doesn't mean you have class. And, though we're not experts on this sort of thing, it probably doesn't mean you're "chosen" either.

The NYT simply points out that Christians are getting richer - but there's not one word about giving back to the community.

Of course, America's not a Socialist state, and we shouldn't get all Bastille on Mr. Havens' butt ... we're not Mother Theresas either ...

Then again, the entire profile rages with discordant notes, of something being a little stinky underneath. Havens may be a first-rate guy. Maybe we didn't hear about his mission work or his research to stop malaria. But the type of Christianity presented by that article is clearly one that uses religion more as a business and marketing decision than as a way to find meaning in the world.

For example:
Three years ago a group of evangelical Ivy League alumni formed the Christian Union, an organization intended to "reclaim the Ivy League for Christ," according to its fund-raising materials, and to "shape the hearts and minds of many thousands who graduate from these schools and who become the elites in other American cultural institutions."

We at the Pepper may as well plug in "shape their wallets." Now, at age 18, a teenager should be old enough to decide if he or she wants to attend an educational institution with religious ties. But the whole point of the nondenominational institutions like the Ivies is to let students learn so they can make up their own minds about who they will be in this life. The Ivies - or any other secular educational institution - should not be a training ground for a specific faith.

Students should feel free to join Campus Crusade for Christ or become one of the Bahai Guys - but that's up to the student. Here, it seems as if the Christian Union is rubbing its hands at the thought of getting into some rich kids' pockets.

It's also clear that these guys know the Ivies graduate people in power, and they want the powerful pushing their agenda. And that agenda may not be the most solid in the world, as the man who founded the Christian Union "said he got the idea [for the Union] during a 40-day water-and-juice fast, when he heard God speaking to him one night in a dream."

Well, in college, we at the Pepper knew people who thought they saw god after drinking a whole bottle of Robitussin and chewing on Morning Glory seeds. Did anyone believe them? No. Why's it believeable for a guy to put himself in a state in which he would be susceptible to hallucination as long as he does it for 40 days? Think about it:

"I toured with Phish for 40 days and took acid the whole time! I saw God!"

"40 days? and 40 nights? Oh, please tell us about it, prophet!"

Not a likely scenario. But, for some reason, this guy has grasped the imagination of Tim Havens and other students - all of whom are trying to pray their way into the upper classes.

Posted by Pepper at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Would a better title for this segment be "Semi" Weekly Specials? It's been a really snotty week for us - literally. Lots of Kleenex at home and at the office. Luckily, when we peeked at blogs during Ye Olde Lunch Break, we found some soothing, health-inducing material:

Alley Rat: Jobs I Have Known: SnotFired
"SnotFired" is the latest in a series of posts in which Alley Rat describes the strange jobs she's had. We at the Pepper were in fits of sneezy laughter when Alley Rat drops code words for her previous employers, such as "a fast-food restaurant known for its eccentric chicken" and "The Slippery Sea Mammal." But we really loved the description of San Francisco dot-com excess - we at the Pepper also worked for one of the big dot-coms, but we didn't get anywhere near that amount of liquor!

Dealing in Subterfuges: Wax On, Wax Off
A blog discovery! This has nothing to do with Pat Morita, and everything to do with a Brazilian! We at the Pepper have not laughed that hard in a long time.

Posted by Pepper at 09:31 PM | Permalink

Some of my smartest friends can't believe I am obsessed with sports. If it isn't the waste of time they're lamenting, there's a certain sense of betrayal, like I’m sleeping with the enemy. I watch the usual all-male sports, so maybe my friends also see something masculinist about the whole endeavor, like I should be devoting equal time to women's sports. Forgive me if I have yet not managed to get excited about the WNBA. (Before you express your righteous indignation, I would point out that this has everything to do with the crummy situation of the WBNA. After all, NBA commissioner David Stern used his upstart affiliate to crush the ABL, then held the threat of cancellation over the 2003 WBNA season when the players tried to unionize. When women's pro basketball actually has media exposure and a chance to cultivate some fans, I'll let you know if I get into it.)

In my friends' looks of non-comprehension, I think I also sense something more primal and instinctual. Intellectual types on the left harbor memories of the Ogres of their youth, those bullies who ate nerds for breakfast after they emptied the contents of the latter's Battlestar Galactica lunchboxes. There's a latent acceptance among some that they will always be uncool, as the so-called “cultural theorists” try to tell them. Even when an athlete comes out with a congenial political stance, they tend either to take little notice of it, or to classify it with other welcome political statements from cultural icons.

But they ignore or underestimate such statements to their peril. There has been a tendency to under-cover our kindred spirits in the sports world. What non-baseball fan (or even most fans, for that matter) knows that the great first baseman Carlos Delgado, then a Toronto Blue Jay, silently absented himself from the field when "God Bless America" got played in the seventh inning of every game, denounced Iraq as "the stupidest war ever," and protested the military's use of a site in his home, Puerto Rico, for weapons testing? Who, other than that national treasure, Dave Zirin, has pointed out that 2004-2005 NBA MVP Steve Nash protested the war as “some sort of distraction?” Nash went on to explain: "I think that Saddam Hussein is a crazy dictator but I don’t think he’s threatening us at this point in time. We haven't found any nuclear weapons -- no matter what anyone says -- and that process is still under way. Until that's finished and decided I don't think that war is acceptable." Both Delgado and Nash took harsh criticism from owners and fellow players for bravely expressing their views. There are countless lesser-known athletes who have taken similar stances.

Let's be clear about what we're talking about here. While political questions do come up once in a while in sports, I am considering these of a lesser degree of importance--questions like those of whether NCAA athletes should receive stipends (as used to be the case 30 years ago), whether golf courses should be open to both sexes, whether the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins should change their names, etc. There are some important question here, and while I say "Yes" to each one, I do think the discussion about how to reform sports is a rather limited one. Just look at the recent intervention of senators in the steroid mess. Instead of asking why baseball needs steroids testing, let's ask why senators sniffed political capital and felt the need to stick their noses in the whole silly mess.

What I am calling for goes deeper: for athletes to think about what they can do politically. Now, there's a great deal of nervousness about applying sports to politics. This does lead us down a dangerous road. When I was in a German-language class, I discovered that they came up with a pejorative term for this trend: Versportung, or "sportification," which refers to the supposedly insidious tendency to think of social processes in terms of sports. This is reflected, for instance, in representations of wars as competitions in which human lives become mere tokens in a game. Or, on a more everyday level, the "winner takes all" attitude is a kind of Versportung of economic relationships. The Germans are obviously still dealing with the terrible memory of their complicity with Hitler's use of the Olympics to promote his ideas about racial competition.

But America tends to be an exception to a lot of rules, and I'm not sure that I see the same dangers in thinking of athletes as political role models in the way that the Germans do. For better or worse, we citizens of a long-standing democracy have always been enthralled by the cult of the Representative Personality, and athletes have often filled those shoes. Anyone who thinks sports and politics don't mix should ask Jesse Jackson, who says his training in the art of politics began when he rejected the racial prejudice of his first college and moved to the North Carolina A &T Aggies team, where he took up the quarterback position he'd been denied at the University of Illinois. Athletics has always been a natural route to leadership in communities which have historically been denied access to the best educational opportunities.

As a matter of fact, I have tended lately to be more captivated by athletes' political stances than I have by the political viewpoints of popular entertainers. If I agree with many of Bono's political stances, for instance, I still have to think that anyone who listens to music for cues on how to vote is an idiot. Cultural expression only goes so far as a conduit for politics; I'm not ever going to start buying U2 records.

If the depressing political complacency of our cultural icons is going to change, it should come from athletes, not from Hollywood or Warner Brothers. Why should this be the case? It's quite simple: Sports is the first lesson most of us kids get in the antagonistic nature of politics. Some of you may disagree with me about this, but in my view there is no way that political identification is going to become entirely rational. If I root for the San Francisco Giants and hate the L.A. Dodgers, it's not because I've reasoned myself into that position, or could cite a plausible rationale for it. It's just a fact of my existence, and is not all that remote from the fact that I am American. Let's be perfectly clear--I haven't necessarily chosen to be an American, but my sense of the public good tends to derive from my sense of what is American and what isn't. So when George Will sounds off on "the time honored American traditions" of baseball, he makes me want to barf. Sports is about learning to find our identities through fundamental antagonisms, not about feeling love for unifying traditions.

So when pundits attack athletes for getting into politics on the grounds that fans don't want the two to mix, these pundits just show that they don't understand politics. As Dave Zirin reports it, columnist E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post argued in the October 3, 2003 issue of the Washington Post: "Most of us who love sports want to forget about politics when we watch games. Sports, like so many other voluntary activities, creates connections across political lines. All Americans who are rooting for the Red Sox in the playoffs are my friends this month, no matter what their ideology." Zirin's response is brilliant: "Of course, you don't have to believe sports is political -- just as you don't have to believe, as the saying goes, in gravity to fall out of an airplane, and not just because of the national anthem."

That is to say, sports partisanship is, like political identification, just a fact of life, like gravity. Now, that does not mean we have to agree with the new Republican Dicks who believe that political views are rooted in our anatomies, that we can't change and that we can't try to bring others to our cause. Quite on the contrary! People forget that Ogre, too, became one of the Nerds. Let's not underestimate what happened in this moment in the movie: Ogre did not change sides because he recognized that being a Nerd has its advantages, but because he realized that he had been a Nerd all along.

In our effort to win others over to our side, we Democrats can learn from this true conversion moment. (Collecting our forces to stop the godawful-sounding remake of Nerds due next summer might not be a bad place to start.) Let's consider the possibility that what commits us to social action is something deeper than the beliefs, political or quasi-religious, we may hold. It's our deep sense of identification with all those who have struggled and won against all the odds -- not just with the historical victims, not just with the downtrodden, but with those who have clung to their identities and fought back. While looking at these struggles as sports contests massively oversimplifies things, let's not forget to applaud the athletes who have recognized the connection between their own struggles and those of the people they represent, and have put their public stature to good use.

Posted by DrPepper at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We at the Pepper set the Google News homepage as our standard when we open up a new browser window at work - because some of their links are oh-so-Weekly World News worthy.

Headline in lower right-hand corner from an outfit called "WebProNews":
Infected Hamster Kills Three People

And did we at the Pepper click right through? Of course we did, because we had visions of salivating hamsters going after innocents, just as the bunnies did in Night of the Lepus.

The real story is a tragedy rather than a cheap horror flick, and other copyeditors gave it a more accurate headline, including the more sedate NYT:
Transplant Patients Die of Rodent Disease

Needless to say, the WebProNews OOPS did not stay on the Google News front page for long. But, oh, that vision of salivating hamsters! Writers of WebProNews, we at the Pepper salute your imagination!

Posted by Pepper at 02:56 PM | Permalink

We at the Pepper have been trying to "glad game" the filibuster compromise as much as we can.

What makes us glad?
1. Bill Frist got caught in a bear trap and now must chew off his own leg. He will grow paler in the process.
2. The compromise demonstrates how the Senate is supposed to function, as Rox Populi (and NTodd) makes abundantly clear. Instead of acting like hogwild raving idiots, some people - not the leadership, by the way - acted like adults.
3. Speaking of the adults, those who solved the problem included a scruffy mix of Republicans and Democrats. It was like the Bad News Bears: Capitol Edition.
4. A judicial filibuster can take place "under extraordinary cirucmstances." Does this apply to John Bolton? Because if that's not extraordinary circumstances, we at the Pepper don't know what is.

What makes us sad?
1. Who is going to define these "extraordinary circumstances"? Whoever is in charge? And ... exactly how nefarious do you have to be to get filibustered?
2. Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen. You should know by now that Pepper is feminist, and these self-hating cretins who have consistently given the finger to the legions of people who fought to get them where they are DO NOT AND NEVER WILL DESERVE SUCH A HIGH POST. Cretins. Cretins. The heart rate rises ...

Right now, the glad is outweighing the sad. Not half bad. Gratuitous rhyming will stop now - we'll blame it on the DayQuil we've ingested today.

Posted by Pepper at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

New Sleater-Kinney and Stephen Malkmus records out today.

Did we at the Pepper just date ourselves? Who cares? Let the par-tay commence!

Pepper and the Doctor might be too busy rocking out to get all serious about the blogging and stuff, but we'll try!

Expect reviews of said records soon.

Posted by Pepper at 09:57 AM | Permalink

Today, World of Crap schooled those who think colleges and universities are bastions of liberals smoking pot, having wild orgies, and worshipping obscure Norwegian deities.

Really, these conservatives who think the kids' rights are being trampled by louche profs and grad students must not know any profs and grad students.

Because we at the Pepper can testify that these people are uptight. Their idea of a wild time is joining a Finnegan's Wake reading group that meets of Friday night. Oh, yeah, their minds are genuine dens of iniquity.

But one college student, Nicole Krogman, is banking on the conservative belief in academic satyrs - because, if Americans don't believe that academics are hogwild liberals out to get conservatives, her plagiarizing, lying butt will get kicked out of school.

Oh, and we at the Pepper found that Krogman, who is blaming one professor by the name of Linda Lohn for all her troubles, had eye on that professor for quite some time. Krogman and her fellow College Republicans posted a photo of Lohn's office door, which they found to be too liberal for their tastes.

Well, well, Krogman, seems like you had it out for Lohn instead of the other way around. And all the other profs in the Liberals@Wells slideshow should watch out that they aren't accused of discriminating against conservatives.

We at the Pepper don't need to repeat the article because World of Crap tears Nicole Krogman apart limb from limb - but we will say how thrilled we are that college students won't be able to use "You flunked me because I'm conservative" as an excuse for their own stupidity.

Posted by Pepper at 08:41 PM | Permalink

Now, class, a little history lesson for you. Remember France's Maginot Line, the fortification that was supposed to keep the Germans out of France in the event of World War II ...

... except for a tiny little flaw called Belgium that enabled the Germans to pour into the nation like a spilled bottle of red wine?

Big military theories have a tendency to collapse when put into practice, especially when strategists cling to those theories as if they themselves are fighting the war instead of real live human beings.

Well, Donald Rumsfeld has tipped his hat to Maginot with his quest for a svelte military.

Newsweek reports - or, they are reporting until the Pentagon gives the editor a menacing phone call - that the base closures indicate a "broad shift of bases away from the North and the East - the epicenter of defense through the 19th and 20th centuries - and out to the South and, to a lesser extent, the West."

We at the Pepper visited the Department of Defense's website, specifically the BRAC project (it refers to "Base Realignment and Closure" - no, we don't think Rummy's a fan of Space Ghost). What shocked us was that all installations in the Washington DC area were recommended for "realignment minus." Military-speak is so cute.

Um. We're just bloggers, webbies, and academics here. What do we know? But didn't the United States get attacked on its own soil in precisely the region that will lose bases? We're not fans of bloated military budgets, but we're not against protecting the nation's capital! And, in New York state, the only installation that will benefit is West Point.

Rummy, like all other crazed military "visionaries," is interested solely in getting his name attached to a brilliant strategy. He will adhere rigidly to this idea until he, if given the chance, squeezes every last drop of blood out of the troops.

More likely, he'll wind up in the history books as one of the greatest military idiots of all time. And we at the Pepper propose a name for his folly: The Rumsfeld Effect.

Posted by Pepper at 06:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We at the Pepper are feeling our oats. We had a controversial post (including a big-deal author getting up in our grill!). We found out our parents are on the national security watch list. The NYT is running a series on class that is just as silly as we expected and has given us cannon fodder for months. Dr. Pepper's grading is almost over. And, to top it off, Super Troopers was on tonight! Dang!

And we read some swell posts today, too, and we wanted to share the wealth with Pepper's Weekly Specials:

Bats Left, Throws Right: Sunday Coupons
This week's special is "chipotle chicken caesar flavored."

Feministe: Laura Bush urges women’s rights in the mid-East
Somebody's gotta figure out what the Laura Bush 'So Sorry' World Tour really means for women, instead of a bunch of old dudes sitting in the White House - one thumb in their mouths, and the other thumb up their butts. The poor Mrs. has to do the heavy lifting for those lamebrains every time.

Liberal Avenger: In Defense of Institutional Racism by Michelle & Jesse Malkin
LA throws down on Malkin, Inc., their foul endorsement of internment based on race, and their attempt to, as LA puts it, "excise the naughty bits from our nation's history." Keep throwing down, LA! Malkin, Inc., boggles my mind ... they raise our blood pressure ...

Trish Wilson: This Is What We're Having for Dinner Tonight
A recipe for chicken-fried steaks - perfect for the Pepper menu theme! Gives new meaning to our fave saying, "Good Gravy!"

Shakespeare's Sister: He Might Be My Brother, But He’s Getting’ Pretty Damn Heavy
Great title and analysis of how the fallout of Court of George II's war games is raining down disproportionately on the Blue States.

The Heretik: The Burning Desire of Laura Bush: On Modesty and Men
The Heretik takes a quick peek inside the head of the Mrs. when she sees Saddam in his tidy whities. She's had a rough week.

Somehow, during web trolling, we at the Pepper also ran into a blog solely about drywall. A dude drywalling his house. The heart goes pitter-pat. We'll be nice, and we won't link to it.

And, oddly enough, ESPN just uttered the name of Kentucky's Very Own Peyton Place (K-VOPP, where Pepper spent her formative years) because a golfer who chooses to live there won a major tournament. Will wonders ever cease?

Posted by Pepper at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The NYT would like to introduce you to someone you don't usually see in the supposedly class-flexible US of A - someone who crossed from the lower class to the upper.

The rise of Della Mae Justice is a riveting story, but the NYT spends far too much time feeling sorry for her and highlighting how she is ashamed of herself instead of praising her achievement. So the Daily Pepper will praise her:

Della Mae Justice is the cat's meow. And she has no idea.

I also pulled myself out of a hole in Kentucky (No names - it wasn't Pikeville, and I didn't face nearly as many challenges as Justice did, but it is a long, strange trip from rural Kentucky to San Francisco). She's incredible. She's done more in her life than most of us ever will. But neither she nor Tamar Lewin, author of the article, spends much time accentuating the positive.

The real tragedy of the article is that Justice can't sit back and enjoy her success. But the entire NYT series - at least what we at the Pepper have read so far - assumes that it isn't the relaxed confidence of knowing your options that determines your social class - it's solely what you can buy, buy, buy. Which is so bourgeois.

And Justice buys into that argument, hook, line, and sinker, especially when it comes to raising her niece and nephew:

Because Ms. Justice is self-conscious about her teeth - "the East Kentucky overbite," she says ruefully - she made sure early on that Anna got braces. She worries about the children's clothes as much as her own. "Everyone else seems to know when the khaki pants the boys need are on sale at J. C. Penney," she said. "I never know these things."

Even though Justice is an achiever, she feels out of place and doesn't know when to shop at JC Penney. Who cares? Justice is a lawyer. She can get those two kids into good schools whether they've got khakis on or not!

Again, the NYT - and Justice - assume that what you own and consume determines your social class more than anything else. Plus, given that she's in Pikeville, her vision of "middle class" might be different from a New Yorker's vision of class, as A Pilgrim's Digression over at the communal blog Sod's Brood points out. According to the Pilgrim, who knows Pikeville, Justice is pure upper class.

Of course, Justice doesn't spend the entire time fretting over how to masquerade as middle - or what she thinks is middle. She truly knows how the game of class works: "I think class is everything, I really do," she said recently. "When you're poor and from a low socioeconomic group, you don't have a lot of choices in life. To me, being from an upper class is all about confidence. It's knowing you have choices, knowing you set the standards, knowing you have connections."

The article is at its best when Lewin lets Justice talk instead of focusing on dinner parties and Jacques Penney, for Justice explains how really feels to be in a lower class - especially where power is concerned:

Most of all, [other Lexington lawyers] all had connections that fed into a huge web of people with power. "Somehow, they all just knew each other," she said.

Here's where the article hits its stride. When individuals come from a lower-class region or situation, they don't even know who to talk to when they have a problem. They assume that, because of who they are and because of who the powerful are, no one's going to listen to them. They assume that other people simply navigate through the social network into which they were born. Getting your foot in the door is harder than it looks on television.

But the point is that Justice did it. She made it in, she can pull her niece and nephew in, and she should be thrilled. Her life has offered her a shot at the "X class." She can choose to be as middle as she wants, but she has an exciting opportunity for herself and for the kids she's raising.

Paul Fussell describes the existence of the X class as such:

X people constitute something like a classless class. They occupy the one social space in the USA where the ethic of buying and selling is not all-powerful. Impelled by insolence, intelligence, irony, and spirit, X people have excaped out the back doors of those theaters of class which enclose others.

Justice clearly has the brains and the spirit - she just needs the little lights showing her the way to the exit. Instead of fretting over how her trinkets reveal her class - and revealing how middle she is becoming - she should simply say that she doesn't care in the slightest.

Posted by Pepper at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The NYT's "groundbreaking" series on social class in America, called "Class Matters," got us at the Pepper all in a tizzy. When we at the Pepper started this blog, we planned to go all Veblen on everything because very few people are talking about social class, much less admitting that it exists in the United States.

Finally! Someone is about to discuss the widening gulf between rich and poor, wanted and unwanted, hip and dorky, you name it.

Alas, in their introduction to the series, the writers are more concerned with reassuring the middle class that everything is all right. They take a truly bourgeois approach to the subject, assuming that what people own automatically determines their social class -and they make the serious error of raising quantity above quality.

Today, the country has gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness. Americans of all sorts are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents. Social diversity has erased many of the old markers. It has become harder to read people's status in the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the votes they cast, the god they worship, the color of their skin. The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared.

Well, isn't that just like an American to assume that size matters? A crate of Yellowtail at Cost Plus is not the same as a bottle from Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, even if they cost the same.

The authors go out of their way to console the company men that they might be miserable, but, hey, they still have a lot of stuff!

The benefits of the new meritocracy do come at a price. It once seemed that people worked hard and got rich in order to relax, but a new class marker in upper-income families is having at least one parent who works extremely long hours (and often boasts about it). ... In downtown Manhattan, black cars line up outside Goldman Sachs's headquarters every weeknight around 9. Employees who work that late get a free ride home, and there are plenty of them. Until 1976, a limousine waited at 4:30 p.m. to ferry partners to Grand Central Terminal. But a new management team eliminated the late-afternoon limo to send a message: 4:30 is the middle of the workday, not the end.

They are clearly mixing up their class markers. What's happened here is downward mobility, not the elimination of class or luxuries making classes irrelevant. According to Paul Fussell, who, along with Tom Wolfe, remains one of the few individuals to get class in America right, the middle-class is the class that is owned by another.

They may make more money, which makes them middle, but they still answer to somebody. If someone can make them stay late, and if they feel that they can't say no, then they are middle. Period. They are owned. Even if their wages are higher, they are still wage slaves.

The whole article seeks to soothe people that we aren't all moving down, that we have all these "luxuries" (aka cheap trinkets made in China), but we are still on the brink. If your life will change drastically with one shift in fortune, you're lower. If your life will change drastically with one shift in the stockholder's whims, you're middle. If your life doesn't change because you're in charge of your whims or your fortune, your high.

The end of the article reaches the peaks of the Namby Pamby Mountains. We at the Pepper will insert our dialogue here:

The idea of fixed class positions, on the other hand, rubs many the wrong way. Americans have never been comfortable with the notion of a pecking order based on anything other than talent and hard work.

The existence of George II and, heck, even Paris Hilton seems to indicate that Americans are darned comfy with the spectacularly untalented receiving rewards.

Americans as a whole get it backwards: They assume that if you've got "it," then you did something to deserve "it." That's not necessarily true.

Class contradicts their assumptions about the American dream, equal opportunity and the reasons for their own successes and even failures. Americans, constitutionally optimistic, are disinclined to see themselves as stuck.

Actually, plenty of them are stuck. Those stockbrokers chained to their desks, for example. They simply have no language to articulate how "class" is and has always been keeping them down. This article is a start, if it would make a commitment to how it feels about class:

Blind optimism has its pitfalls. If opportunity is taken for granted, as something that will be there no matter what, then the country is less likely to do the hard work to make it happen. But defiant optimism has its strengths. Without confidence in the possibility of moving up, there would almost certainly be fewer success stories.

Did an editor tack that paragraph on to the end? "Blind optimism has its pitfalls ... But defiant optimism has its strengths." NAMBY PAMBY. What is "defiant optimism"?

We at the Pepper would love it if they came out and said it - Americans better get over their class qualms - they've gone and embraced Mother England, and it's too late to fix the mess. Now, if Americans at all levels would just admit that social class exists, then maybe they can do a better job of subverting it.

Posted by Pepper at 09:14 PM | Permalink

Rick Santorum up and compared the Democrats blocking the filibuster to Hitler's actions: "It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 declaring," "'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city. It's mine."

Why are we seeing a staggering epidemic verbal diarrhea the past few weeks? Vicente Fox letting it all hang out. Newsweek doing the diarrhea cha-cha-cha at the bidding of the Court of George II. See Suburban Guerilla, South Knox Bubba, Digby, and Shakespeare's Sister for more information. Bill Frist losing ever more bodily fluids as he sells his soul by the ounce. And Heretik notes that accurately with the line "Frist is no Doctor Pepper."

We at the Pepper like to think of Frist as the political version of Tab. And we all know what happened to Tab.

We at the Pepper also believe that North America is suffering from hoof-and-mouth disease. Really. We looked it up. Here's what one site has to say about hoof-and-mouth:

Hoof and mouth disease is a viral infection that afflicts animals with cloven hooves such as cattle, pigs, and sheep.

Cloven hooves? Santorum's all over it. Somebody put his doctor on speed dial!

The disease is not necessarily fatal, and symptoms can clear up after several weeks, but the disease generally leaves animals underweight and sometimes disabled.

Frist isn't exactly underweight and disabled, but he doesn't have the healthy glow of someone in the medical profession, unless you're thinking about a cadaver.

Because of the highly infectious nature of the disease, and the condition in which it leaves animals even after they have recovered, farmers almost always destroy infected animals and burn their carcasses.

Burning carcasses - or whatever credibility they had left? Definitely Newsweek. Obviously they've decided that serving George II is the only way to stay alive.

Think we're stretching to make a point? Here's one last line regarding hoof and mouth:

While not susceptible to the hoof and mouth, humans can carry and transmit the disease without even realizing it.

Posted by Pepper at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Pepper has big news: My parents are on the terror alert "watch list."

And you thought your parents were cool.

No, really, they are on the "watch list" when they are the last people on earth who deserve that distinction.

Of course, one's looks should not determine whether a person is harmless or not (I think my parents look downright cuddly, but perhaps I'm biased). But my parents have done nothing to be on a watch list. They are American-born. In the 60s, they weren't even hippies. They voted Bush I AND II. Their only vices are the local Chinese food buffet and cigarettes.

In short, they're model citizens per Court of George II politics ... and per anyone else's standards besides. The Department of Homeland Security owes them. Yet, when they flew to Tampa a while back and when they got into San Francisco yesterday, they discovered they had to go right to the desk because the government flagged them as suspicious. According to the TSA,

Individuals on the watch lists pose, or are suspected of posing, a threat to civil aviation or national security. Based on threat assessments, TSA divided the watch list into two separate lists – the No Fly List and the Selectee List.

Good gravy. Well, my parents can fly, but they still have to go through additional screening, and they understandably wanted to know how they could get themselves off that list.

That's about as easy as breaking into Fort Knox. Here's what the TSA has to say:

The passenger can now download the Passenger Identity Verification Form from the TSA website. The form will request biographical information and requires the person to submit notarized copies of government issued identification such as passport and/or state issued driver’s license.

Notarized? And they don't even want a urine sample? Even after you perform all these tasks, you STILL might get stopped at the airport according to the official downloadable Passenger Identity Verification Form: "Clearance by TSA may not eliminate the need to go to the ticket counter in order to check-in."

If Mother and Father Pepper get flagged after keeping their noses clean, then does that mean they're flagging the right people at all? Does that mean this new "national identity card" hurrah will help matters?

One thing is true: none of this will eliminate bureaucratic mistakes.

For that reason, in honor of the "watch list," I'm adding the current terror alert level, as interpreted by "Sesame Street," to our sidebar because that's about how seriously I'm taking it right now.

Posted by Pepper at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When We at the Pepper first started reading Michael Wolff's Vanity Fair piece, "No Jokes, Please, We're Liberal," we took umbrage because we see funny liberals everywhere. Bats Left, Throws Right? Norbizness? TBogg? World of Crap? We think they're funny ... is he saying our funny bone is broken?

Then we realized what he was really talking about. Here's a paragraph from his article, in which he clearly states that conservatives are cool and liberals are uptight prigs:

"... in defensive mode, and in a careful estimation of our market opportunities, we are all - we well-employed, Ivy League-ish, culturally engaged, upper-middle-class chattering types in the mainstream news media - self-serious, earnest, striving, humorless, correct people, seeking to become ever more earnest, faultless, evenhanded ... Conservative opinionists ... are, on the other hand, often facile, funny, irreverent, eccentric, jaunty, pithy, as well as aggressive and wrongheaded ... (The character note of a liberal these days is sobriety - no drinks, no carbs, no jokes. The conservatives run amok while the liberals are corporatized.)"

Well, if it were that easy to make liberal causes more palatable to the masses, then give us Zimas and some smokes, and we'll lie and say we went to crappy colleges!

But that's not what this is about. Wolff is performing the same old self-flagellating quasi-lib schtick popularized by David Brooks and, to a lesser extent, Eugene Robinson. What Wolff is talking about is popularity, and conservatives are better at acting like the cool kids.

Let us get this right ... Conservatives are fantastic at cocktail parties, and they're popular, too! So, basically, they are just like the Alphas in Revenge of the Nerds!

Throw a "Hung Like a Republican" tee-shirt on Ogre, and you get what we mean, doncha?

Wolff's article melds perfectly with Dr. Pepper's comments on the New Republican Dicks, in which machismo and popularity is all, and the Dems are the nerds who get the sand in the face.

What's bothersome about this piece is that Wolff isn't saying Democrats aren't funny. He's saying they aren't "cool," and "coolness" has become the reason to support a political party.

Growing up nerdy, we always thought that eventually we would reach a special world in which "cool" was not a currency. Silly us. Now, we see legitimate columnists at legitimate publications preaching the gospel of cool ... in relation to our politics.

We don't know that David Brooks was ever funny ha-ha - he may have been clever at times with his "I'm a naughty liberal, spank me!" schtick. And Ann Coulter has never once been funny - if you think that's funny, then you are drinking enough to be a Republican.

But Republicans seem to have a magnetic pull on the types of people who are searching for someone to be and a place to fit in. Robert Altman describes this kind of person perfectly when he discusses Shelley Duvall's character Millie in the film Three Women:

"She read all the magazines and she knew how she was supposed to be and look ... because there was no Millie ... in today's world, she would be a Republican. She wanted to be accepted. She wanted to be with the majority of the people - that's all she wanted was love."

We at the Pepper don't mean that to be a slam against the Republicans. If the Democrats were the cool, cocktail-swilling kids of the moment, and if Altman were talking about his movie a decade ago, he could have replaced "Republicans" with "Democrats." Reading the right magazines and spouting off eccentricities just like Coulter's might make you feel better, but that doesn't mean you're in the club.

Booger knew that all along. And Michael Wolff should have known that, too.

Posted by Pepper at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Gracky Frogg over at the Frogg Files Lily Pad has an amazing, thought-provoking post analyzing Harper's article about the New Life Church and the religious right in America.

Grackyfrogg, who is a Christian, was upset by Lewis Lapham and Jeff Sharlet's portrait of Christians as blind followers of charismatic leaders. And she's right to be upset. Lately, we at the Pepper have seen more "Christian = sheep" or "religious = sheep" rhetoric, which will serve only to alienate more people from the left.

Don't worry - we at the Pepper aren't getting all Centrist here and preparing to bow down to the extreme religious right. We also believe in the separation of church and state and every other liberal concept you can think of. We're not even religious. But we think that all religions should be respected, and we shouldn't let the actions of a few bad apples (or many bad apples, depending on how you see it) poison our views of an entire group.

We at the Pepper realize that we've also been guilty of making broad generalizations about those who choose to be religious. Religion is often dangerous when mixed with poltiics, but religion itself isn't the problem. By making such statements, we are falling into the trap set by those who are in power right now - and they are in power by fragmenting society and turning everyone against each other. It also allows opportunists like Tom DeLay to cry out that Christians are being persecuted - and then they use that to hide their own crimes and misdemeanors.

So, from one liberal to all those liberals who are tempted to hop on the "all those Christians are crazy" bandwagon, please stop, pause, and think first. (And we at the Pepper send that message to ourselves.) We at the Pepper aren't religious, but religion can do some good in this world.

Don't assume that religion always equals corruption. Sure, there are many Elmer Gantrys (or Tom DeLays, for that matter) who are abusing religion for their own purposes, but, as I posted over at Liberal Avenger, I think that faith is hard. Not all of the faithful are followers - they struggle every day to maintain their faith - and we liberals could gain a little strength not by sucking up to the religious right but by simply remembering that not all Christians are like Tom DeLay.

FYI: Grackyfrogg is also on to the religious leaders who are using their flock for free enterprise. Grackyfrogg doesn't like it when religous leaders abuse their religion to advance more mundane agendas. For example, when Pastor Ted Haggard of New Life Church is quoted as saying that "evangelical" means "pro-free-market," she responds,

I am not against capitalism per se. But I'm firmly against using Christianity as a defense for it. That's not what Christianity is for. And that's not what "evangelical" means.

Exactly. Some people have abused Christianity or other religions since the beginning of time, and we must learn to distinguish between obvious power grabbers and those who truly believe.

Posted by Pepper at 08:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

A few months ago, William Bowers had a fine column announcing academic titles forthcoming from university presses that would be of interest to us musically hip people. He led us to salivate in anticipation of such savory works as Cort Munscombe’s The Statue Got Me High: Kafka’s Diaries, Jewish Mysticism, and They Might Be Giants and Maureen Tewl’s Blister in the Sun: Gordon Gano and the Dawn of Whiteness Studies, the latter promising to offer new understanding of how a band can avoid “polarizing itself against an oppressive or ancestral Other.”

As you might have guessed, all of these titles were completely fictional. Alas, I had been awaiting Logan Doan’s Trigger Cut: Castration Fear in the Art of Stephen Malkmus with special excitement. But every week I am reminded of the fine line between parody and reality.

You see, I subscribe to the largest academic call for papers, which is distributed by the University of Pennsylvania’s listserv. These get sent out to more or less everyone associated with academic conferences, from grad students to faculty. There are even quite a few conferences for precocious undergrads.

After browsing these for a couple of years, you start to see that there are certain clichés that many of them indulge in. How refreshingly different it is, then, to see some of the offerings that come down the wire. Alas, even the weirdest find some way of disappointing the jaded academic. Here are just a few announcements from the last few months:

CALL FOR PAPERS: “Why Pamper Life’s Complexities? A Symposium on The Smiths”
(Manchester Institute of Popular Culture, Manchester Metropolitan University, April 8th and 9th 2005)

The Smiths have had a singular impact on popular culture. They looked like nobody else and sounded like nobody else. The music of The Smiths contained an emotional depth and a technical virtuosity that moved people in a way that almost no other band has managed before or since. In spite of their enormous cultural significance and personal resonance, The Smiths have yet to receive sustained academic attention. To date, there have been remarkably few serious examinations of the band. The purpose of this symposium is to put that right. The event seeks to draw together academics and others who wish to critically examine what The Smiths meant and continue to mean almost two decades after their untimely demise. Among the themes that we hope to address are: gender and sexuality, race and nationality, a sense of place, the imagination of class, the significance of Manchester in popular music, the aesthetics of the band, fan cultures and musical innovation.

This one made me laugh, but not because I thought the subject was totally unworthy (after all, these guys are from Manchester, and there is something authentic about having the conference there). I don’t have a problem with people getting together to discuss something they’re passionate about. It was just that little cliché of academic discourse: “In spite of their enormous cultural significance, The Smiths have yet to receive sustained academic attention.” As though there were a giant academic conspiracy of silence to deny this band its just due. As though it’s necessary for the academy to bestow upon these guys their deserved reputation for intellectual gravitas.
Then this appeared today:

CALL FOR PAPERS: “Panel on the ABC-TV series DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES”

Panel on the ABC-TV series DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES for the 2005
Conference of The Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES is one of the most discussed television series in recent years. It is the focus of many serious discussions, one of which is situated within Jungian theory: the Shadow, anima/animus (take your pick!), Synchronicity, etc. Of course, any other Jungian and/or post-Jungian approach to DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES is fine to propose.

Proposals by mail are submitted to:

Dr. Barbara Silliman
P. O. Box 19722
Johnston, RI 02919-0722
U.S.A.

In case the description didn’t give away how goofy this concept is, check out the name of the academic involved. Again, I don’t have a problem with the particular choice of subject matter, because one academic’s T.S. Eliot is another academic’s fascist trash. But why dress up the desire to talk about Teri Hatcher’s hotness with “Jungian interpretations”?

So far, these very real academic conferences seem silly--not because they are way out in left field but because they bend over backwards to make a concession to orthodox seriousness. Here, however, is one final call for papers that Pepper has already covered. I feel the need to display it in all its grandeur:

CALL FOR PAPERS: “Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets” (1/15/06; collection)

Editors:
Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
Barbara Penner (University College-London)

We invite contributions for the edited book collection “Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets.”

We also welcome the submissions of design and art projects that expose the gendered nature of the “functional” toilet spaces and objects.

Pepper and I are pretty sure the "Toilet Papers" book will soon be excreted by a certain exceedingly snotty university press in the Southeast (rhymes with "puke").

Posted by DrPepper at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Monster-in-Law is out, and it stinks - 17% rotten according to the Rotten Tomatoes Tomato-Meter. Even the dusty LL Cool J vehicle Mindhunters (which SAT ON THE SHELF for three years after it was made) did better with critics.

We at the Pepper would guess that the entire world is out to get Jane Fonda - and that includes Jane Fonda herself. The bulk of the USA must be hating on Fonda because the movie is number one at the box office.

But we're not concerned with hatin' Jane Fonda the Person. We're concerned with Jane Fonda the Actress. (The person is not always the same as the persona - this is a fact many Americans have trouble understanding; hence, the distinction.)

Jane Fonda's transformation into J. Lo's punching bag is yet another unsavory reminder America's continuing demonization of successful women.

That's not to say we at the Pepper think Jane Fonda the Person is successful. We've read interviews with her, and we don't think she's the brightest bulb on the planet. She was none too bright to get herself in that Hanoi Jane mess, for starters. (Had to get that out of the way.) However, she was a smash as an actress in both comedies, dramas, and sexy sci-fi extravaganzas. And now she's starring in this steaming hunk of poop they call a comedy?

Fonda's role in the movie is representative of a trend that Lisa Schwartzbaum accurately tracks in her review of Monster-in-Law for Entertainment Weekly. One of her lines is priceless:

"...Fonda joins a select sorority of mature, serious actresses made silly by the movies, including Candice Bergen ... Isabelle Huppert ... and Barbara Streisand. Who's come a long way, baby?"

The answer is not especially far. In this case, both Fonda the Person and Fonda the Actress are relentlessly punished for their sins.

Amy Biancolli, reviewer for the Houston Chronicle, sees the whole plot as a glorious comeuppance. She mixes up person and persona as everyone else seems to be doing in her review, referring to Fonda's acting "her peculiar brand of full-body haute-bourgeoisie indignant meltdown." (Props to Biancolli for her phrasing, though.)

But she misses the hidden message of the movie that Schwartzbaum and Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of the Atlanta Journal Constitution caught.

In this movie, Fonda is serving as the proxy punching bag for the feminist movement.

And, no, we at the Pepper are not exaggerating. Ringel Gillespie describes the incident that sends Fonda's character to the nuthouse and serves as an explanation for her character's behavior in the film:

"Fonda plays Viola Fields, a celebrated TV anchor in the Murphy Brown mode. Unceremoniously dumped by her network for a younger woman, Viola then loses it on-air when a Britney-clone says she really doesn't have an opinion on Roe v. Wade because she doesn't follow boxing. After trying to strangle her guest, Viola is shipped off to a fancy rehab center."

Hum. Why couldn't Viola have lost control simply because the pop star is cracking her gum as Britney Spears is prone to do? The movie is clearly pitting two generations of women against each other - and the women who are dependent on their sexuality or their men for success are the big winners. Every review makes hay over the fact that Fonda's character is accomplished and Lopez's character is, well, not-so-accomplished. But few of the ones we read even made a mention of the "Roe v. Wade as boxing" incident.

We're not upset at the Roe v. Wade joke - it's actually a funny gag that the youth of today would think it's a boxing match. But the gag is one of many bombs lobbed at the feminist movement.

Most of the time, in the case of bad movies, we can shrug and say, "It's only a movie," but isn't it possible to have a funny movie with an older woman in it that doesn't involve having her face shoved into a plate of food or punching her?

The only episode in recent American movies in which an older female character received decent treatment was Pam Grier's title role in Tarantino's Jackie Brown. The actress got the respect, the character got the respect, and it wasn't done in a cloying way. Some might argue that Tarantino is a misogynist dawg after 'Kill Bill,' but he is, surprisingly enough, the only director who didn't take the lazy way out and who tried to get a female character right for a change.

Posted by Pepper at 03:10 PM | Permalink

Last night, Spoon played a free show at Amoeba Records in the Haight. In the midst of the show, we at the Pepper realized that Spoon fills an important gap for music-lovers everywhere.

Spoon performs sleazy music for polite people.

We at the Pepper have listened to many Spoon albums and enjoyed them, but the Amoeba show was the first live experience, and the lead singer walked out looking like a wholesome Gary Busey. (We were expecting someone dirtier ... Gary Busey, perhaps.)

But Spoon performs strutting, fuzzy rock that would perfect in any bar of ill-repute. Whether they are sleazy strutters is unimportant because they certainly attract a clean-cut crowd. So why are they at Amoeba performing for a crew of hipsters who clap at the right times and don't shove too much and wear tidy newspaper boy hats?

There's a lyric in a Spoon song that goes: "We get high in backseats of cars / We break into mobile homes" and so forth. And the kids who look like they would never dare damage anyone else's public property go nuts! For example, Dr. Pepper saw a crew of college kids form a line dance in an Ameoba aisle that acted out those lyrics.

But that's what bands like Spoon are for - their lyrics catalogue dirty deeds ... but they don't seem like "Behind the Music" types. Bands like Spoon are perfect for the indie crowd like to hear about breaking into mobile homes without actually incurring redneck wrath. It's a beautiful concept for a band.

And they say we liberal hipsters don't know how to have fun!

Posted by Pepper at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to ABC News for the headline. We at the Pepper didn't need to add anything more to it.

Deeper within the article:
"The crowd dined on filet mignon and salmon and a dessert of red-white-and-blue frosted cake decorated with candy hammers, a reference to the nickname DeLay earned when he was House majority whip." (emph Pepper)

Candy hammers? It couldn't have been tackier if DeLay's bakers slapped candied hot-chick silhouettes that some truckers like to slap on their mudflaps!

Posted by Pepper at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)