(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
The State Department's Office of International Information Programs has helpfully undertaken an initiative to show the remainder of the world - anti-propaganda laws forbid State from distributing the materials in question domestically - that America is not the bad guy it is often erroneously mistaken for. Writers on America collects passages where noted authors discuss what it is that makes America so damn great. The collected works of A. Sullivan remain available online.
As per his usual, Mickey Kaus can be relied upon to force all manner of ill-fitting square pegs into undersized round holes. Ostensibly writing about Joe Strummer's output, death, and obituaries, Kaus manages to field all his hobby horses save his "End Welfare Now!" steed, his most exercised mount - though in fairness it must be noted that Kaus limited himself to 277 words. Aside from proving his complete ignorance of the milieu from which The Clash emerged and his inability to read a pair of enduring cultural documents ("Safe European Home" and "Rock the casbah"), famed liberal Kaus takes the predictable swing at Howell Raines, editor of a fine paper which ran a Strummer obit that allegedly "diminishe[d] The Clash," by titling his latest "Howell Don't Like It." This prompted the indefatigable Jeff Hauer to ask: "And HOW exactly does "Howell" fit into this picture? Mickey doesn't tell us explicitly because he assumes that his reader is bright enough to understand that those who run newspapers close-edit each sentence in the obit of rock stars."
And people say this present site is predictable. posted by Anonymous2:26 AM
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Sunday, December 22, 2002
Elie Wiesel, warblogger, writing in the Observer on Sunday, opened his piece by noting, "Since the unanimous resolution of the UN Security Council, the world has lived in anguish, anticipating an event that would profoundly affect the course of affairs in the Middle East" and closed it by quoting "the great French writer André Malraux" as saying "victory belongs to those who make war without loving it."
This report in Glasgow's Sunday Herald problematizes Wiesel's formulation somewhat: of what value is unanimity if most of those achieving it are less than fully informed, and why would an administration Wiesel believes has no love for war do everything in its power to make war as a first resort? posted by Anonymous11:02 PM
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Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Finally, I will be able to sleep more safely at night, starting in a couple of years. America will be safe from the threat of missile attack! Do you understand what that means? Safe at last! And what makes it even better is that we’ll be safer starting in an election year!
With Dack having assembled a portfolio limited to equities offered by the merchants of mass death - "The Perpetual War Portfolio," described as "an evenly weighted basket of five stocks poised to succeed in the age of perpetual war" - perhaps Stephen Green, a/k/a Vodkapundit, and his fellow warblogger-investors can buy and hold what seems their dream investment product. Doing so would save them the bother of following the market with closely, and would permit them to concentrate on generating further remarkably novel theses and astoudingly keen insights. posted by Anonymous10:55 PM
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The Watchers
WBW: Keeping track of the war exhortations of the warbloggers.
