Marc Cooper observes the crowds lining up to look at the Gippercoffin: “Never before in human history has the funeral of any Head of State been attended by SO many people clad in tennis shoes, jeans or shorts.”, suggesting that they aren’t mourning so much as “cruising one more pop culture happening.” Like a Lord of the Rings premiere.
However let’s not underestimate the danger of pop culture. These are the top 2 stories in the Europe section of the Indy:
Fourth Milan death linked to Satanist rock band(Later:) Cooper’s right about the “mourners.” I know because C-SPAN ran something like 5 hours of people walking past the casket. You can always tell when the sweeps period is past. It wasn’t the most exciting television ever, but if Saint Ronny of the Jelly Beans rose from the dead, C-SPAN was going to be right there.
11 June 2004
New details have emerged this week of an alleged cabal of young Satanists connected to Milan's heavy metal scene, who are accused of murdering at least two people while drunk and high.
Woman denies part in fatal 'Jackass' stunt
11 June 2004
A British waitress working in Austria has denied charges of urging a drunken restaurant customer to ram his head into a wall, in a lethal stunt apparently inspired by the cult MTV show Jackass.
Best quote from one of the gawkers was someone who said that Reagan was the greatest human being who ever lived.
Elsewhere in Dress-Down Thursday news, Jacques Chirac was the only G8 leader who showed up in a tie, bucking Bush’s attempt to enforce Cowboy Casual in an attempt to achieve that natural macho crap seen in the picture of Saint Ronny of Death Valley Days featured on the covers of two newsmagazines (only to discover, just like his father did, that if you have to work at it, you’ve already failed). Bush got his own back by feeding his guests cheese burgers and forcing Chirac to pretend he liked it.
I haven’t mentioned the story about the US soldier who was told to pretend to be a prisoner at Guantanamo, just like Robert Redford in Brubaker, and was beaten into a pulp, so that he had to be invalided out. It would be funny, except it’s not.
In a story I can’t read yet, a London Times columnist says, “For the second time in a year, George Bush and Tony Blair have declared "mission accomplished" and a "victory for the Iraqi people." Another group of local people has been told to pretend to run the place.” Explains my sense of deja vu. Remember when Pete Wilson was running for president how he kept holding ceremonies announcing he was running for president, because no one had paid attention to the previous one?
Evidently there’s an antidote to chemical attacks by terrorists (mustard gas, sarin, etc). It has FDA approval, but the US Army isn’t letting anyone buy it, including local first responders, who still have to use soap and water.
PISSING CONTEST: The Post says “A military intelligence interrogator also told investigators that two dog handlers at Abu Ghraib were "having a contest" to see how many detainees they could make involuntarily urinate out of fear of the dogs”. It’s nice to have a hobby.
At Bush’s press conference at the G8, he defined his terms: “And we're waiting for the Iraqi government to assess the situation and make requests to the free world. We'll respond to their requests when sovereignty is fully transferred. That's the definition of full sovereignty. You see, when a government is fully sovereign, they then make requests on behalf of their people.” The question was about how none of the other G8 countries were offering troops, debt relief or anything else. Bush’s answer, evidently, is that they’re just waiting to be asked.
And there was this exchange:
Q Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?Wasn’t that a good question? Do I have to tell you the reporter wasn’t American, but British? You’ll note he specifically said it was a moral question, but Bush answered as if it was a legal one. When His Holiness George W. Bush avoids a moral question, you know you’re in trouble. At this point, he’d obviously prefer a math question to a moral one.
THE PRESIDENT: Look, I'm going to say it one more time. If I -- maybe -- maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of -- from me to the government.
The Post report (which is what had me search out the transcript, began, “President Bush said Thursday that he expects U.S. authorities to follow the law when interrogating prisoners abroad, but he declined to say whether he believes torture is permitted under the law.”
On that subject, Jess Bravin of the Wall St. Journal has yet another article, enumerating some of the 24 torture methods approved by Big Bad Apple Rumsfeld in December 2002 for Guantanamo: stress positions" for as long as four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, "fear of dogs", "mild non-injurious physical contact," "deprivation of light and sound," "use of hood as long as it does not restrict breathing and under direct observation," "removal of clothing" and "forced grooming (i.e., shaving of facial hair)." The Post has an article on the use of dogs, without addressing the status of dogs in Islamic cultures, which might make them scarier (or their use more demeaning) than they already are.
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1108/section.D-Day
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