Author: jp

President Bush, despite his being a longtime proponent of repetitive mantras, really ought to look into hiring a new set of speechwriters, lest we have to endure, yet again, his uttering the following lines when asked about protests against his administration’s policies.
November 20, 2003, on London’s protesters:
“Freedom is beautiful,” Bush said today, adding he was happy to be in a country where people were allowed to speak their minds freely. “All I know is that people in Baghdad weren’t allowed to do this until recent history.”
November 17, 2003, anticipating London’s protesters:
“I am so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their mind. That’s fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing,” he told the Press Association.
May 21, 2003, on Berlin’s protesters:
“That’s good. That’s democracy,” Bush said of the protests. “See, I love to visit a place that is confident in her freedom, a place where people feel free to express themselves, because that’s what I believe in.”
February 15, 2003, on worldwide protests:
“The president views force as a last resort. He still hopes for a peaceful resolution and that is up to Saddam Hussein,” White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo said. “The president is a strong advocate for freedom and democracy. And one of the democratic values that we hold dear is the right of people to peacefully assemble and express their views.”
Have we reached saturation yet?

Welcome to multimedia corner here at low culture!
In keeping with this week’s visit to the United Kingdom by President Bush, the British comedian- cum- scandal-artist -cum-filmmaker Chris Morris has re-posted his two “Bushwhacked” cut-and-paste parody collages of the President’s 2002 and 2003 State of the Union addresses.
While these have circulated as audio files since, well, a few days after the initial speech(es) were made, those of us with “digital divide-less” broadband connections are now treated to the full audio-visual experience, which is a vast improvement on the nearly year-old MP3s.
To borrow a phrase that the papers seem so fond of citing, “nearly seven months since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq,” there’s something quite perverse about seeing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi grin wickedly at Bush’s butchered announcement that “the American flag stands for…cutting out tongues…and rape.”

President Bush, who apparently reads People magazine just like the rest of us, is hip to B-level pop culture. According to Fox News, when the president was asked about the large-scale protests that greeted his arrival in England this week, he indicated his appreciation of the phenomenon by acknowledging that
"the last American to cause such a ruckus in the city was illusionist David Blaine, who recently spent 44 days in a self-imposed fast in an elevated plastic box above the Thames River. For the first few days, Blaine’s box was pelted with food and the people jeered at him.
‘A few might have been happy to provide similar arrangements for me," Bush said, adding that he was grateful to the Queen for interceding and allowing him to stay at Buckingham Palace."
Oh, and one other point about this article. While it’s so, so passé to marvel at the amazingly limited worldview of Fox News and its audience, some of their antics continue to provide fresh opportunities for amazement. Such as today’s headline (since relegated solely to an appearance on the front page) for this "Blaine-dropping" article: "Bush Gets Royal Treatment."
"Royal treatment" apparently no longer implies "pampering," "adoration" or a waitstaff tending to your every need. This new iteration somehow incorporates negative poll numbers indicating that a majority of British citizens were opposed to and inconvenienced by his visit, as well as managing to invoke the plans for nearly 100,000 protesters to march upon and topple a Saddam-esque effigy of the President in Trafalgar Square on Thursday.

Hello, anglophiles and throne-watchers! Quick: what have you been missing out on here in the U.S. for the past six years? That’s right, a visit by Prince Charles, the future King of England, who hasn’t set foot on American soil since coming to New York in 1997.
While this may seem topical only due to President Bush’s current visit to the United Kingdom, or maybe recent events in Massachusetts’ judiciary, it has nothing to do with American intolerance of homosexuality. We think. The Prince of Wales, after all, isn’t gay, for one thing (just check out the photo above: President Bush would never, in good conscience, shake hands with a gay bloke).
But he can shake hands with the “pro-Palestinian” Prince Charles. The Guardian quotes a source close to the issue as saying,
“It [concern over Charles travelling to the US] revolves around the perception that the Prince of Wales is fairly Arabist. He has, in American terms and international terms, fairly dodgy views on Israel.
“He thinks American policy on the Middle East is complete madness and he used to express that quite loudly to a lot of people, including ministers and various ambassadors.”
The source added: “The system basically thinks that he is unsound on America and he has not really wanted to go anyway. He doesn’t much like American culture.”
But, Charles, don’t be so unfair! Americans love both selective inbreeding and tampon reincarnation.
It’s just this “gay” thing we need to work on. And the Middle East, I guess.

Brace yourself for the most embarrassing interview by a G.O.P. politician to appear in a porn mag since Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared in Oui two decades ago…
Washington Post White House correspondent Dana Milbank, who’s received some praise here before on at least a few occasions, has fallen a bit short with today’s piece detailing President Bush’s gift of an all-too-rare exclusive print interview with a Rupert Murdoch-owned topless tabloid in the UK.
The article’s good enough, mind you, and does a good job of illustrating the fact that it’s a bit hypocritical for this most Christian of presidents to be appearing in a paper that features nude women and Enquirer-type stories…it’s just the headline that misses its mark. The Post goes with “Prez in Topless Tabloid,” which, though theoretically meant to parody the headlines of the tabloid in question, comes off more like an Army Archerd-esque Variety lead.
Come on, Dana…be a little more adventurous! “Boobs, Bullies, and Bollocks: Bush meets Blair,” for starters. Or “Dish n’ Hips,” perhaps. Or even the oh-so-blunt “Topless Girls–Featuring Bush!”
We here at low culture know you’ve got a sense of humor, Dana. Check out your closing paragraph:
After McClellan’s bombshell at yesterday’s briefing, this correspondent asked whether the other publications present would get Bush interviews if they ran nude photos. “I hope you’re not talking about yourself,” McClellan replied.

Sigh.
That’s the sound of a global sigh of relief, mind you, now that El Presidente has decreed that the U.S. will begin expediting the transition to Iraqi “self-rule”. Apparently, the Iraqi people have been expressing interest in becoming “more involved in the governance of their country,” according to President Bush in yesterday’s remarks on the subject of the post-war transition of power.
Well, with that in mind, it’s nice to know the United States has been victorious in the cliched “battle of hearts and minds” that Rumsfeld et al kept championing throughout the spring and summer. Just check out these editorial cartoons from the Arab press as collected by Al-Jazeera, the noted television news mouthpiece of the Arab world. The caption for the strip above, incidentally, is as follows: “You see! Democracy is good. Isn’t it?”
Why, there’s hardly any anti-American sentiment in sight.

Today’s New York Times features an odd little piece in the “Washington” section of the paper entitled, “G.O.P. Leader Solicits Money for Charity Tied to Convention.” The article, by one Michael Slackman, is a mildly infuriating examination of leading Congressional Republicans’ tactics for working around the McCain-Feingold limitations on soft-money acquisition for campaign purposes, and has some informative anecdotes about the various methodologies that House majority leader Tom Delay and Senate majority leader (Dr.) Bill Frist have begun using to effectively channel campaign funds through the guise of charitable causes. For children, of course.
Not a “must-read” at all, save for the closing three paragraphs, in which the author goes off on a completely irrelevant (but laugh-out-loud funny) tangent about the outdatedness of the Republicans’ fundraising terminology:
Whatever its ultimate virtues, the DeLay fund-raising brochure displays a certain out-of-date understanding of the New York scene.
The brochure, in which the size of donations are named for more — or less — exclusive neighborhoods, starts at the Upper East Side as the top $500,000 tier and it ends with Greenwich Village for $10,000, perhaps suggesting Mr. DeLay’s people have not surveyed the recent asking prices of town houses in the downtown neighborhood. He also placed Midtown (at $50,000) above SoHo (at $25,000).
“Midtown would be a lot less expensive than SoHo or the Village,” said Tory Masters, of Intrepid New Yorker, a relocation firm in Manhattan. “I don’t know what they are talking about.”
Looks like this Michael Slackman fellow undoubtedly has a pretty severe case of liberal bias.

Wow, those writers and editors at the New York Times really have a flair for irony, huh?
How else to explain today’s solemn and daring exposé on the manner in which various companies have abused and manipulated public funds to obtain subsidies for various corporate endeavors, largely under the pretext of either retaining or luring jobs to the relevant locality? The Times’ article features an illustrative anecdote about United Airlines’ usage of subsidies from the state of Indiana to construct a $320 million aircraft maintenance center that has since been abandoned by the airline. Of course, the promise of jobs at this defunct plant has long been abandoned, too.
So, the Times’ thesis is pretty clear: Corporate Welfare is Bad. Why, they’ve been on this issue for years and years, and have even got Op-Ed pieces from way back in 2002 asserting this very same point! Not just any Op-Ed, mind you, but one written by He Who Spoiled Florida for All of Us in 2000.
For what it’s worth, if you search the Times’ archive for relevant terms, like, say, “corporate welfare” and “New York Times,” you most certainly will not find articles like this one in the June 17th, 2002 edition of the Village Voice documenting the Times’ own political manipulation and abuse of public subsidies to construct a new office complex for the paper in the heart of the city.
As a consumer of New York media, however, I’m so very glad the city and state of New York was able to pony up the resources to allow us to keep the New York Times here in, well, New York. Because the absurd prospect of the New York Times’ relocating to New Jersey or Pennsylvania wasn’t absurd enough, I guess.
And United Airlines sure makes a better villain.

Despite over-hyped phenomena such as “rocking the vote” and last year’s 33-year-old Newark, New Jersey mayoral candidate Cory Booker, it’s most certainly not an exciting time to be young and in love with politics.
Unless you live in the Bay Area, where San Francisco’s mayoral race has been winnowed down to two candidates, Gavin Newsom, 36, and Matt Gonzalez, 38. From the Los Angeles Times:
“Newsom, a liberal Democrat by the standards of most other cities, has been cast by opponents here as a socialite “Republocrat.” He is allied with billionaire Gordon Getty and lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion in Pacific Heights, one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, with his wife, a prosecutor and CNN commentator who is a former lingerie model.
By contrast, Gonzalez, an arts aficionado and poetry buff, doesn’t own a car and rents an apartment in the considerably less fashionable Western Addition neighborhood. Newsom’s supporters portray Gonzalez as an ultra-left “cafe brat” whose support won’t extend beyond the city’s young hipsters.”
In any other circumstance, anytime one encounters the word “hipster” in an article about politics, giant warning signs should go off in your head. I mean, it’s one thing to write about “Deanie Babies” and “Liebermaniacs,” but “hipsters”? Last I checked, Sarah Records was not a political party and The Rapture wasn’t running for office on the DFA ticket (and just how many electoral votes are Greenpoint or Silverlake worth, anyway?).
Regardless…this election in “the City by the Bay” is a promising blip on the otherwise shameful map of Californian politics. I’ll refrain from commenting on the “lingerie model” and “poetry buff” aspects of this mayoral race, but it’s nonetheless heartening to have to choose between voting for a “liberal Democrat” and a Green party candidate with at least a fighting chance.
Then again, this is San Francisco, so I guess it’s to be expected.