Thursday, June 22, 2006

PJ, Misplaced Criticism, and Preemption

If you’ve ever looked at my profile you’ll know I list PJ O’Rourke as one of my favorite authors. Mr. O’Rourke is living proof Republicans know how to have Big Fun, and he amply demonstrated this in his book Republican Party Reptile, among others. If you’re “of a certain age” perhaps you remember that PJ was at the National Lampoon in its salad days (i.e., when it was actually funny), joining NL in 1973, advancing to managing editor in 1975, and editor-in-chief in 1978. He left in NL 1981. NL hasn’t been funny since.

I digress. I stumbled on a few “PJ-isms” and thought I’d share a couple with you…here we go!

ACCENTS

A midwestern nasal twang gives listeners the impression that you have lawn ornaments in your yard. The slurs and ellipses of California speech strike the hearer as the first three danger signals of drug abuse in teen-agers. And a New York accent sounds like somebody buggering a goose with an automobile horn.

A Texas accent is safe. Texans are all thought to have money. You can acquire a Texas accent by any of the usual means of getting brain damage.

THE CAT: TODAY'S DOG

Cats are to dogs what modern people are to the people we used to have. Cats are slimmer, cleaner, more attractive, disloyal, and lazy. It's easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favorite pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as some people (expensive girlfriends, for instance) that it's often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.

An interesting column by Joe Galloway in today’s Salt Lake Tribune concerning the fact our “elites” don’t serve in the military. The opening grafs:

WASHINGTON - A new book expands on a familiar subject: the absence of America's elite and its governing class - and their children - from the ranks of our nation's military.
The book is AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service - and How It Hurts Our Country. Its authors, Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, didn't embrace the military ethos so much as it embraced them.
Roth-Douquet describes herself as a former agitator, feminist, Ivy Leaguer and Clintonite. She just happened to fall in love with a Marine pilot and married him, she told me, thinking that within a year she would ''turn him around'' and get him out of uniform.
Instead she found herself falling in love with the military life, so much so that this year, when her husband made the list for promotion to colonel, she was delighted because it meant they could have a few more years on active duty.

There’s much more, including the disconcerting fact that only about a third of our CongressCritters are veterans. That one fact, in and of itself, is disturbing, and there are many more disturbing facts in this brief column.

I saw Mr. Schaeffer, one of the co-authors of this book, in an extended interview on C-SPAN2’s Book TV this past weekend. Mr. Schaeffer, a novelist, painter and filmmaker, saw his plans for his youngest son - ''top college, good grades, smart jobs . . .'' - go awry when his son enlisted in the Marines after he finished high school. SN1 happened to call during that interview and got an inadvertent earful, probably a lot more than he wanted or needed.

Don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way. Books like the one Ms. Roth-Douquet and Mr. Schaeffer have written are good things. Very good things, assuming these books reach their target audience, and said audience receives the message and takes it to heart. I’m glad Mr. Schaeffer had his epiphany, I’m glad he’s “converted,” and I’m glad he’s written not one, but three books on this subject.

But.

I found Mr. Schaffer’s attitude and demeanor during the C-SPAN2 interview to be more than a little off-putting. His various anecdotes about his immersion by association into the military culture and the veterans culture came off as the experiences of a detached observer, akin to Margaret Mead’s writings about the indigenous tribes of Borneo, who, in the end, “went native.” What I saw and heard was definitely a double-edged sword. I found myself, on the one hand, saying “Good for You!” while wondering, on the other hand, how someone could be so woefully ignorant of such a large portion of American culture that has always existed, if not literally next door to Mr. Schaeffer, but most certainly down the block or around the corner from his house. I know it’s just me, and I’m absolutely sure Mr. Schaeffer’s motivations are pure; after all, one doesn’t write three books on the subject if one doesn’t believe. Still, throughout the whole interview I couldn’t shake the feeling I was a resident of some Petri dish being observed for the first time. It didn’t feel good at all.

And there you have your misplaced criticism for today.

Several good editorials today on that impending North Korean ICBM test. My two favorites: An Act of War, Not a Test, by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen and If Necessary, Strike and Destroy, by Ashton Carter & William Perry in the Washington Post. The WaPo editorial is written by two former Clinton administration DoD officials. These individuals are right on the mark; we cannot allow the North Koreans to develop, deploy, and/or sell this technology to regimes hostile to the United States. If ever there was a case tailor-made for the Bush Doctrine of preemption, this is it. Kill it on the pad.

It feels like Mississippi outside this morning: 75 degrees with 52% relative humidity as I write. While we’re getting a minor reprieve from the heat today (our forecasted high is “only” 92), the increased humidity will cancel it out. And there are thunderstorms forecasted for later today.

6 comments:

  1. Fun stuff, Buck. Thanks for that Lileks link you posted yesterday. Shared it with my sons and they got a kick out of it, too.

    As for PJ's take on accents, that was hilarious!
    My whole family grew up here in Kahlifornia but we don't have that accent. People used to ask me if I was from the East Coast. My oldest son sounds like he's from the South (probably because of his immersion in the blues). I can't detect any accent at all from my husband or youngest son. However, I sure can pick it up if it's like that Valley Speak that like developed back in the 1980's. It sort of merged with the Surfer Dude sound. (My dad was a surfer back in the 1950's, but he was Navy/lifeguard). Texas always stuck out when I was growing up, but most people here are from all over so we're not all that homogeneous. (I grew up next door to Camp Pendleton, during the days of the draft.)

    Have you noticed that we seem to be deleting the "you knows" from our speech? But I don't know if anyone has picked up on the latest semantic tic that's heard from all the talking heads, from Cheney to Kerry. Can you guess what it is?
    "Blah blah blah?"
    "Look. (minipause for emphasis) Blah blah blah blah."
    It's just beginning to get under my skin.

    I understand your unease over the attitude by the author's of that book on the military. I'll bet it's the same dismay that any minority feels when someone from the "other side" suddenly converts. Maybe it's a little like falling in love and raving over the obvious, along with analysing it to death - forgetting that we're all just human beings. And you're right. What prevented him from understanding this before? Does he think he's discovered America? (Or as the Russians say, "broke in through a door that was already open?") But, like you say - there's some good in it, too.

    I'm not sure what I think about what action to take over the potential missile launch from North Korea. I'll be listening...Well, I'll be. Ashton Carter is on CNN right now. Hmm. Still not sure. Pretty short interview. Cheney thinks we are taking "appropriate" action. We'll see what develops, I guess. Glad I don't have to make the decision.
    I'm still troubled by what I heard on talk radio this morning. (I rarely listen to it since I no longer commute) The author who was interviewed rattled me a bit. It's a book called "Dunces of Doomsday:10 Blunders That Gave Rise to Radical Islam, Terrorist Regimes, And the Threat of an American Hiroshima" by Paul L. Williams.
    Do you think he has any real credibility? He states that terrorists have already smuggled in nuclear material across the border of Ontario, Canada and Buffalo, NY. Also, that bin Laden purchased several notebook-sized nuclear weapons from the Russian mafia (or Chechnyans) (I'm confused) and that bin Laden plans to detonate 7 in various American cities at one time. The author claims that "no one is doing anything about this." Please tell me the guy's a nut. If it's true, how does he know that "no one's doing anything about it?" That always makes me suspicious. What do you think?

    Sorry to end on a downer. :(

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  2. Bec sez: Do you think he has any real credibility?

    In a word, no. Anyone who claims to know what's running around in bin Laden's mind (re: specific plans, not generalities) has immediately blown his credibility with me. The flipping CIA/MI5 (or is it 6?)/Mossad don't really know, so how can some feather merchant with a book to flog know? Strains *my* credibilty to the breaking point.

    I would put more credence in the "nuclear material" aspect of the threat than an actual nuclear weapon. I think the possibility of a dirty bomb going off somewhere in America is a lot higher than an actual nuclear bomb being detonated. Nuclear weapons are pretty sophisticated things, nuclear waste is not. And about all we can do is hope and pray the powers-that-be are on top of the threat.

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  3. It feels like Mississippi outside this morning: 75 degrees with 52% relative humidity as I write.

    And in the REAL Mississippi, it is 94' with a relative humidity of 45% and a heat index of 100'. I had to peel my clothes off when I got home from work.

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  4. In Tuesday's post, you had this quote,"These people think the Right controls the mainstream media, which should give you an idea how out of touch they are." I thought that was well said. It seems that Kathy Rott-Douquet and Mr. Schaeffer were some of those "out of touch" people. It is nice that they have become enlightened and written books on the subject, but it rather irritating that they were so out of it before.

    I did laugh at the "accent" PJ-isms. When my husband worked for Allied Waste, he often had meetings with men from all over the country especially Chicago area. Many of those men made the mistake of thinking Toby was "less than intelligent" due to his Texas accent (I won't share what we thought of their accents). It never bothered Toby; he just let them think whatever and then let them have it with his slow West Texas wit. Once, a man snidely remarked to Toby, "I see you have not lost your Texas accent." Toby replied, "Why, thank you!"

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  5. Lou sez: Many of those men made the mistake of thinking Toby was "less than intelligent" due to his Texas accent

    My Best Man at TSMP's and my wedding is from Tennessee, has a Masters degree in Computer science and is one of the smartest guys I've ever known. He also posseses one of the best Deep South drawls I've ever heard, but he isn't quite as sanguine about people's perceptions of his intellect as Toby is. You want an extremely PO'd LARGE Tennesseean in your face? Just HINT at any connection between drawls and lack of intellectual capacity... I dare ya!

    :-)

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  6. Further on accents...

    My Mom was born and raised in Atlanta and had the most musical, sultry, and captivating southern accent you've ever heard. Straight out of a Tennessee Williams play, it was. One of my parents' favorite war-stories is about the time the two of them were laying in bed, in the dark, quietly talking one night shortly after they were married. According to the story, the Old Man (born and raised in Illinois) reached over and turned on the lamp on the night stand.

    "Why'd you do that?" Mom asked.

    "Because I need to read your lips to understand what you're saying."

    I was born in Georgia, too. But I have no perceptible accent; my speech is entirely neutral, and I think that's a pity. I love accents, any and all.

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