Arnett Canned

Peter Arnett, correspondent in the prequel to the present conflict and one of the few U.S. Tee Vee reporters in Baghdad, has been canned by NBC. Arnett is famous for putting his foot in his mouth. His offense this time:

"It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war," NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said. "And it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview."

NBC says "state-controlled" like it's a bad thing -- but U.S. outlets have been serving the state's interests for a long time, without any formal "control" necessary. With regard to the present unpleasantness, check out fair and balanced Fox News.

Reaction to Frum II

Another target of David Frum's hit piece, Paul Gottfried, responds.

I love New Orleans

'Freedom Quarter' idea not too Swift:

Instead, 90 percent of the people White heard from raged at him for proposing an idea they saw as très stupide. The other 10 percent -- "the scary ones, in my opinion," White said -- thought renaming the Quarter made perfect sense.

Et tu, Louisiana?

Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster is making noises about disinviting Jacques Chirac from the bicentennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase in New Orleans this December. But wait, there's more:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he would pull the invitation to Chirac if elected, ignoring the fact that the new governor will not take office until January, weeks after the bicentennial event has concluded.

Apparently the major issue of the upcoming election is "stupidity." And finally, this:

Foster also took a shot at antiwar demonstrators for not supporting Bush and the nation in wartime. "Why don't they demonstrate against Saddam Hussein cutting people's tongues out and shooting his own people and murdering his own cousins?" Foster asked.

Let me take a stab at this. Maybe because Saddam Hussein doesn't rule this country? Just a thought.

France Again

Joe Sobran comments on the war on his web site. My favorite line:

"After watching a recent interview with the impressive Jacques Chirac, I reflected that France has one thing the U.S. doesn’t have: a president who speaks fluent English."

Vive la France

Speaking of jingoistic stupidity with regards to all things French, Chronicles has established a place where people so inclined can counter the, well, jingoistic stupidity regarding all things French. Sometimes I wonder if at least some of the "Two Minutes Hate" vitriol directed toward the French isn't the indirect result of banning ethnic jokes about a whole range of "protected minorities." Are Polish jokes still okay? I can't keep track anymore.

P.S. The blog I kept while visiting Paris last June is still up for anyone curious who never saw it. As I note in there, I found Parisians to be friendlier than New Yorkers.

No Sale, Canada

From the "War Does Funny Things to People Apart from Killing Them" department comes this tough talk from an eBay seller to a Canadian bidder, sent to me by a friend (thanks, Greg):

"At the present time, we do not ship to, or accept bids from, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany or any other country that does not support the United States in our efforts to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. If you are not with us, you are against us."

And I thought "freedom fries" was stupid.

"Outed" at Work

So now I've been exposed at work as an anarcho-Catholic-right-wing wacko. That is to say, I've begun the long process of acquainting a curious coworker with my deep and convoluted opinions on man, economy, and state (with God thrown in for good measure). In fact, at issue now is the whole "government is ordained by God" idea, which is derived at least in part from St. Paul's biblical admonition that Christians dutifully submit to the state.

While I'm not exactly known for "in-your-face" civil disobedience, being a nonconfrontational sissy, I don't really subscribe to the notion that an institution as dangerous and destructive as the state is God's own handiwork. I mean, indirectly I suppose it is. It's also true that all the evil that exists in the world does so with God's sufferance, and he will end it in his own time. But I don't think it follows that Christians or others need to be doormats for the nonce, or that they ought not protest injustice when they see it. Of course, I'm not particularly well versed scripturally, but as I've encountered the "state ordained by God" argument from a number of Christian friends (usually Protestants), I suppose I ought to work on a more systematic answer to it.

Frum's Gauntlet Taken Up

The "paleoconservatives" are responding to David Frum's hit piece. LewRockwell.com writers Daniel McCarthy, Ilana Mercer, and John Zmirak have each weighed in, as has Thomas Fleming, the editor of Chronicles magazine, who received particularly rough treatment from Frum. For his part, Robert Novak responds here. (For Novak's less-than-flattering review of Frum's book on Bush, go here.) Finally, Peter Brimelow of VDare.com also issued his own response.

It's a veritable pundit cage match.

I Miss Beer

This will just be soliloquies without the suds until after Lent. On the bright side, I've saved quite a bit of money and even lost a few pounds in the past couple weeks of beerlessness.

Excommunicated... Again

So I promise I won't write about politics all the time, but I can't resist commenting on David Frum's recent article on "paleoconservatives" in National Review. In the article, Frum, late of the White House speechwriters' stable, attempts to excommunicate from the conservative movement those whose opinions do not sufficiently match the opinions of National Review's editors, most notably on matters of war and the state of Israel.

Now, National Review has played the role of self-appointed guardian of "conservative" orthodoxy since its founding. From time to time, it conducts purges of the unworthy, and in the past, Bill Buckley's enterprise has sent such luminaries as Joe Sobran, Murray Rothbard, and Russell Kirk to their rooms without dessert. So Frum's piece is nothing new under the sun. But it has certainly stirred up enough controversy on some of the web sites I read regularly (see "Pub Crawl" on the righthand side of your screen) among those Frum calls "paleoconservatives."

Anyway, the article, titled "Unpatriotic Conservatives," is an interesting exercise in dark insinuations and breathless innuendo. If those on the right who criticize NR's bubbly enthusiasm for military conflict were strictly as Frum describes, I suppose I'd find them every bit as loathsome as he does. As it happens, however, his article -- how shall I say it? -- lacks subtlety where matters of political philosophy are concerned.

I'm not sure these sorts of dust-ups can be characterized as internecine fighting so much as the difference between those who are perfectly comfortable with big government when it suits their purposes, and those who believe there aren't any good purposes to which big government can be put.

Why Oh Why?

Don't say it. I already know "blogs" are generally pointless, vapid exercises in self-indulgence and narcissism. I never quite understood why all these people bothered to post a glorified diary consisting mainly of links to other glorified diaries accompanied by such insightful comments as "Hee hee! BlogGirl71 said something really cool!"

So why am I inaugurating my very own version of this silly new mania?

As the indispensable John Belushi put it in Animal House, "(Belch) Why not?" Or maybe you prefer Ring Lardner: "'Shut up,' he explained."

No? Well, all right. The truth is, I've recently embarked on an aggressive modernization project. In recent weeks, I've acquired both a new laptop computer and a wireless Internet router. That means I need something to do while I sit in the living room, at the kitchen table, or out on my balcony surfing the 'net in style.

Another quasi-justification is that a good number of my friends now live in far-flung places and, being the lazy slob that I am, a stupid blog seems like the most effortless way of "staying in touch."

But the main reason is that I'm self-indulgent and narcissistic, too.