Thursday, September 07, 2006

What a Surprise

From CNN:

The five-hour miniseries [The Path to 911] is set to run [on ABC] without commercial interruption. Director David Cunningham said it was a massive undertaking, with close to 250 speaking parts, more than 300 sets, and a budget of $40 million. Cunningham has said he shot 550 hours of film. Among the actors in it are Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Donnie Wahlberg.

What a surprise to learn that Patricia Heaton stars in this "movie".

That would be this Patricia Heaton.

Heaton is a conservative, pro-life activist and is the honorary chairperson of Feminists for Life, an organization opposed to abortion. She is a very outspoken Republican and supporter of both President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Although she has been quoted as saying "once a Catholic, always a Catholic," Heaton now attends an evangelical Presbyterian church with her husband and their four sons. She has not renounced her Catholic faith nor converted to Presbyterian faith and may be attending because of family unity.

Again, I am shocked, surprised, and amazed by this development.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Martydom and Torture

I didn't know what else to title this post, but I've been thinking about the connection between conservatives who, on the one hand, want to give the government free reign to torture "terrorists-insurgents-liberals" and who on the other hand, express anger, shock, disappointment--whatever the source of the vitriolic spit is--at western hostages (in this case, journalists) who opt to make canned confessions-accusations at the behest of their captors so as to save themselves.

As to the first, conservatives seem to think that prisoners of our war on terror will, under the threat or implementation of torture, truthfully confess the whereabouts of their comrades, the details of their Islamistist-fascisitist plans to conquer America, as well as their most secret western fetishes.

As to the second, conservative trackball warriors seem to demand that western hostages under the same or similar conditions clam up, not co-operate with their captors, and devoutly embrace the martydom the conservatives' war of civilizations requires, even if and though, as is likely the case, the heathen western journalists are neither Christian Nationalists United Against Islamcisticis Fasicistim or made of the same hearty, fearless stuff of the right-wing Internets militia.

Make sense to you?

Me neither.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

A False God

Wolcott:

"What we're hearing from pundits, bloggers, and likeminded belligerents this August is a baying to a false God, a nostalgic need for motivational clarity and a macho yearning for deliverance that the facts on the ground will deny them. Their commando belts tied up in knots, their umbrellas unfolded, they can turn on Bush, or on Condi Rice (as Richard Perle has done), but who can they turn to? Nobody. That's why they're egging each other on, flexing their biceps, and clinging to Mark Steyn for warmth. It's the only way to hold on to their fading relevance."

I've been saying this for awhile. The kind of war the War Party wants doesn't exist anymore and can't be conjured up absent both a mass mobilization for war and mass carnage, neither of which people or markets will stand for.

The problem with the war vitriolicism is that it's anger will not easily be dissipated, meaning that it will ultimately have to find another outlet, and that most likely outlet will be the War Party's domestic antagonists--meaning us, pointy-headed university intellectuals, liberals, secular humanism, modernity, tolerance, gays, abortionists, freedom of thought, freedom itself.