THIS MODERN WORLD

Sometime last winter, I was commissioned by Harper’s magazine to do a page for a theme section they were planning, on how the Bush administration’s time in office would be taught to future generations of schoolchildren. My piece was accepted but for whatever reason the section was killed, leaving me with an orphaned cartoon page. It was too long to recycle into the weekly strip, and I guess too specifically focused for the other shortlist clients that might run a piece of mine on occasion, so for awhile it was looking like something that might never find a print home (and I’m still old school enough to care about things like that). But then someone from Tin House magazine sent me an email, and they were wondering if maybe I had anything that hadn’t been published yet, that they might use in their upcoming comics and graphics issue. Happily for both of us, I did and they did and you can read more about the issue here.

Spent a number of hours in the car this weekend, due to a family gathering (happy 90th, Martin!), and along the way heard Bill O’Reilly complaining to his radio audience, at length, that Oprah won’t have him on her show. Apparently this is one of Bill’s new crusades, because he just spent at least five or ten minutes on his tv program exposing Oprah’s liberal bias! O’Reilly is especially miffed that Frank Rich was recently given a full hour on the program.

O’Relly: In the interests of full disclosure, Oprah has declined to interview me, even though I’ve had four number one best selling books including the current one, Culture Warrior. But it was the O’Reilly Factor for Kids that really confused me, here we have the bestselling non fiction children’s book of 2005, Oprah as you know is very interested in protecting the kids, so why then was there no interest in talking about the Factor for Kids? You can call it sour grapes if you want, I know I’m gonna get those kind of letters, but facts are facts.

Well, this is just a crazy guess, maybe Oprah didn’t think that a married man who likes to talk dirty on the phone to his female employees was actually a terrific role model for kids. (Incidentally, a little key to decoding O’Reilly — whenever you see him go off on a rant about “far left websites who just want to destroy people,” what he’s talking about is the fact that the Smoking Gun published Andrea Mackris’ court filing. The only reason O’Reilly still has a career as a public moralist is that Mackris was paid what was presumably a very large sum of money to quietly go away.) (Also: I swear, I don’t understand why any liberal who goes on that show and wants to throw O’Reilly off his game doesn’t bring up loofahs and falafels and sexual harassment. Mister Splotchy Face’s head would explode before the end of the segment.) (But I digress.)

Later in the segment, he brings Michelle Malkin in to back him up.

Malkin: It’s not just Oprah and the View that are dominated by liberals, but you have liberal women’s magazines too. You know, the question for us is, who represents us, who is giving voice to us, you know, we like fashion and beauty tips, we like to talk about celebrities too, and we don’t want to have Frank Rich rammed down our throat at three in the afternoon.

Anything I could add to that would be superfluous.

Short pre-post mini-post: Dennis Perrin’s regular job is trending downward, and as he lines up new stuff he needs to raise a few bucks to justify the time he spends on his site. Unlike some people (e.g., me), Dennis actually is a productive member of society with a family to support, so I hope his regular readers can head over and drop some money in the tip jar. As a bonus, at the same link there are clips from South Park, the Ben Stiller Show, SNL, and Fridays.

Now, back to the regular post.

• • •

Ralph Peters, a columnist for the New York Post, is one of America’s premier frothing lunatics. He famously took a trip to Iraq earlier this year, after which he explained the situation there “is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe.” Also, morale in the Iraqi army has “soared” and there’s been a “surge in the popularity of U.S. troops.” This wonderful news has been kept from us by the secular rootless cosmopolitan media.

Recently Peters wrote an article for something called the “Armed Forces Journal.” (While it calls itself “the leading joint service monthly magazine for officers and leaders in the United States military community,” it’s actually owned by Gannett, not the government.) The article explained what REALLY needs to be done in/to the Middle East: a massive redrawing of every country’s borders based on ethnicity and religion. Peters’ suggested map of the future appears below. Sure, this would require staggering ethnic cleansing, but as Peters says, “ethnic cleansing works.”

Now, when I first read this article I made a prediction to myself: this will be circulating among the mideast’s frothing lunatics for DECADES. This is standard. The frothing lunatics in any society seize upon the statements of the frothing lunatics on the other “side,” and scream incesssantly that these statements represent actual plans with actual power behind them.

GEORGE BUSH: If we don’t stop them, Al Qaeda will create a caliphate across the mideast! After all, that’s what Ayman Zawahiri said they’ll do!

OSAMA BIN LADEN: If we don’t stop them, the crusaders will invade our countries, kill our leaders, and convert us to Christianity! After all, that’s what Ann Coulter said they’ll do!

One amusing results of this is the statements by one side’s frothing lunatics are sometimes far better known in other countries than their own. (E.g, that specific burst of Coulter’s insanity may well be spoken of more often in Saudi Arabia than it is here.)

Certainly this turns out to be the case with Peters. His wee screed was likely read by fewer than ten normal Americans. Meanwhile, among his counterpart frothing lunatics in the mideast…

NEWSWEEK’s Michael Hastings first heard the article being discussed at a dinner party in Amman, Jordan, while he was on his way into Iraq last summer. “I saw it next in a Sunni mosque in Baghdad,” Mike wrote me over the weekend. “The imam had actually printed the map and put it up on the bulletin board with an article in Arabic attached explaining it was the American-Zionist plan to shaft the Sunnis.” A couple of weeks ago, Mike was on the trail of the Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK (branded terrorists by Ankara and Washington), who are fighting to break off a big chunk of southeast Turkey. He found them holed up in the quasi-independent Kurdish portion of Iraq. “They were talking about the same map,” says Hastings.

YES, I WAS OH SO RIGHT.

I love understanding the world, even when this understanding indicates that we’re all going to die.

Zeyad of Healing Iraq:

One problem is that the people dismissing – or in some cases, rabidly attacking – the results of this study, including governmental officials who, arguably, have an interest in doing so, have offered no other alternative or not even a counter estimate. This is called denial. When you have no hard facts to discredit a scientific study, or worse, if you are forced to resort to absurd arguments, such as “the Iraqis are lying,” or “they interviewed insurgents,” or “the timing to publish this study was to affect American elections,” or “I don’t like the results and they don’t fit into my world view, therefore they have to be false,” it is better for you to just shut up. From the short time I have been here, I am realising that some Americans have a hard time accepting facts that fly against their political persuasions.

Now I am aware that the study is being used here by both sides of the argument in the context of domestic American politics, and that pains me. As if it is different for Iraqis whether 50,000 Iraqis were killed as a result of the war or 600,000. The bottom line is that there is a steady increase in civilian deaths, that the health system is rapidly deteriorating, and that things are clearly not going in the right direction. The people who conducted the survey should be commended for attempting to find out, with the limited methods they had available. On the other hand, the people who are attacking them come across as indifferent to the suffering of Iraqis, especially when they have made no obvious effort to provide a more accurate body count. In fact, it looks like they are reluctant to do this.

There’s much more. Read it all.

George Bush on Darfur, May 8, 2006:

About 200,000 people have died from conflict, famine and disease…

Iraq:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

George Bush on Darfur, May 8, 2006:

…And more than 2 million were forced into camps inside and outside their country, unable to plant crops, or rebuild their villages…

Iraq (July 16, 2004):

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled into Jordan to escape the chaos in their country…

Iraq (February 2, 2005)

Syrian officials say 700,000 Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion…

Iraq (October 13, 2006):

Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing the country every day in a “steady, silent exodus”…

Up to 1.6 million Iraqis now live outside their country — mostly in Jordan and Syria, and in increasing numbers in Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, the Gulf states and Europe.

George Bush on Darfur, May 8, 2006:

I’ve called this massive violence an act of genocide, because no other word captures the extent of this tragedy.