OUTRAGE: First, I feel compassion -- for the victims of this horrible mistake and for their families, and also for the soldiers who will have to live with their actions. I also feel outrage -- and not at the young soldiers, but at the tyrant who has turned his civilians into human shields, suicide bombers, and guerillas. No American soldier shoots women and children for sport. This is the byproduct of Saturday's cowardly suicide bombing.
3.31.2003
DUSTINY: Break up the Cubs!
GARAFA-NO: I was up late last night and happened across a repeat airing of the Bill Maher show on HBO. His panel included comedian/actors Larry Miller and Janeane Garofalo and conservative squawker Michael Graham (who somehow does a nice job, despite being perceived as raw meat by Maher's incivil, super-liberal audience). Anyhow, I guess I was shocked to notice how much my feelings have changed toward Janeane. I used to think of her as a cute alterna-chick with a razor wit. Now she just seems angry and ill-informed. Oh, and humorless. I mean, Larry Miller composes a clever little joke about how ironic it is that Iraqi cab drivers are angry that war protesters are denying them their livelihood in New York, and Garofalo misses it entirely, barking, "You don't know the cab drivers are Iraqi!" The rest of the panel looks stunned, if not embarrased for her. Meanwhile, she slinks down in her chair, trendy pink FREE SPEECH t-shirt slightly obscured by the slumping of her shoulders. She's still cute, but who can laugh at this woman anymore? Perhaps she'll need to begin seeking dramatic roles.
THIS IS THE YEAR: While my pal at the Cub Reporter (and most of the Chicago media, for that matter) are reticent to jump on the ESPN-fueled Cubs bandwagon this year, let me be the first to say: I'm on board with both feet. So far today Grudz is on pace to be the best Cubs lead-off man of all time, and Kerry Wood is kicking the crap out of Tom Glavine.
POETRY MATTERS: I heard the sleepy-voiced founder of PoetsAgainstTheWar.org on NPR this morning. I'm for the war (as much as you can be *for* a war), but I'm also pro-poetry, and I did love something he said: Poets should continue to write poetry because poems are powerful enough to change the way people think. I'm paraphrasing, but I think I'm doing him justice. And his words reminded me of my favorite poem of late, this from the late and legendary Kenneth Koch:
Paradiso
There is no way not to be excited
When what you have been disillusioned by raises its head
From its arms and seems to want to talk to you again.
You forget home and family
And set off on foot or in your automobile
And go to where you believe this form of reality
May dwell. Not finding it there, you refuse
Any further contact
Until you are back again trying to forget
The only thing that moved you (it seems) and gave what you forever will have
But in the form of disillusion.
Yet often, looking toward the horizon
There -- inimical to you? -- is that something you have never found
And that, without those who came before you, you could never have imagined.
How could you have thought there was one person who could make you
Happy and that happiness was not the uneven
Phenomenon you have known it to be? Why do you keep believing in this
Reality so dependent on the time allowed it
That is has less to do with you exile from the age you are
Than from everything else life promised that you could do?
- Kenneth Koch
3.28.2003
MEMO TO BUSH TEAM: Look, I support the war. I get the part about protecting ourselves from madmen and liberating an oppressed people. But here's what you need to get: Appearances do matter. You can't say we're not waging a Christian crusade and then yammer on about your faith at every opportunity. You can't have your foreign policy architect hanging out in France with Khashoggi. And you can't say the war isn't about profiteering and then fling contracts at Halliburton.
DO AS I SING, NOT AS I DON'T DO: I'm shocked. Lenny was my role model, and now this. (I love these zany protest songs! Why, as soon as the Beasties announced that war with Iraq was 'wack', I mean, I saw the light.)
3.26.2003
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