A thousand words worth: Torture and Yoo

In the hoity-toity world of literary criticism, there is a term used to designate something sorta opposite to "cooptation." Not quite an antonym, it is difficult to pin its wiggly self to the stiff black stock paper upon which we display our dead insect pests.

Under glass.

To void a term.
To empty a term.
To suck a freaking term dry.

The thing is slimy, too, so we sometimes add vacuum suction to the volume of air (really mites, mosquito dander, one frizzy and split multicolored human hair, two hydrogen atoms, at least, and oxygen).

We hope to desiccate; We hope to be exceedingly tedious; Death to the term!

Sure, first we tried other things, less drastic, less noticeable -- but those wacky words! They remained in use.

Neonate. Nigger. Necromancer. Nazi. (And that's just *part* of the N-words. Must I follow my fellows and begin with A for Aborigines or go backward with a start at Zygote? Thanks, I didn't think so!)

Before bed last night, I did some wholesome reading over at this psychotic café of aborted thought. Of course, yes, it was a bad idea. Slap an X for Xenophobe on that sucker!

Actually, had it not been time to sleep -- wayyyyy past time to sleep -- I might have had a qualified appreciation for the site. My area of purported expertise is precisely in the relationship between image and word. So what if I am supposed to stay in the confines of eighteenth century French literature? Diderot got to walk right out of the frames and pages of his Salons... Why can't I?

I arrived at PsyWarrior's place via a search for a photograph. I was thinking about the impact that PBS made with its decision to air photos of United States casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. By the way, to make a study of it, this is a well thought out place to begin -- Media Literacy: Images of War. As even the term death is voided by some kind of human immunological protective response, the war of words continues, but illustrated. We are marvelously still concerned about what is polite, what is couth, and how-shall-we-hold-our-teacups, must-i-really-curtsy-to-the-queen?

Bill Moyers even got to wondering whether respect is something that we really ought to owe, and, of course, if so -- to whom is the debt, and what is the currency?

I discovered that I do not have it in me to research the nag, nag, nag in my head. As I began to explain above -- I landed at PsyWarrior in the course of searching for visual impact. I wanted a picture of Iraqi war dead, civilian and military -- something along the lines of the poster-like spread that many newspapers published of victims after the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- those nine long years ago.

Google search led me to a poster published on Herbert A. Friedman's blog on the history, means, and uses of psychological warfare. He claims that it was created by an antiwar group -- but that it was coopted by Iraqi propagandists who used it in ad campaigns against the United States.

[Aside: Man-O-Man, another term in the process of being vacated, voided? "American." I try to be aware of my wrong usages, and the Jeux-O do help to drive the point -- but jeez, what are we supposed to call citizens of the United States? What? "Citizens of the United States"? Cute, very cute. Too many characters. That would mean death to my 140-limit tweets. And uscit sounds too much like ocelot, God forbid I be the Author of Confusion.]

Okay, so he's just another asshole, retired. However, knowing something of military men, I presume him honorable, in some technical chapter-and-verse Rules of Engagement kind of way.

But I cannot find another source for the poster he published! It's driving moi batty. If you find it, would you please let me know? He requires that *his* permission be granted to reproduce the thing... and I am just not dressed for going out. I need to wash my hands first.

As usual, it matters -- how one gets from Point A to Point B. We'd like to stake a claim for linearity, and for that line to go from vague and uninformed to perfect intelligibility, for logic as wielded by philosophers.

But words, and pictures, are tricksters.




1885 illustration from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, captioned "Misto' Bradish's nigger"



















After a steaming mug of coffee and a piece of whole wheat toast, I settled down to work a bit this morning, satisfied and sated, both.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue. I had a lot to do. If you're already humming "I read the news today, oh boy..." -- well, you must be one of My Beloved (but your demographics are safe with me!)

Report Faults 2 Authors of Bush Terror Memos
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
Published: February 19, 2010

WASHINGTON — After five years of often bitter internal debate, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Friday that the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct.

The report, rejecting harsher sanctions recommended by Justice Department ethics lawyers, brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.

The ethics lawyers, in the Office of Professional Responsibility, concluded that two department lawyers involved in analyzing and justifying waterboarding and other interrogation tactics — Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John C. Yoo, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley — had demonstrated “professional misconduct.” It said the lawyers had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice to the White House in possible violation of international and federal laws on torture. That report was among the documents made public Friday.

But David Margolis, a career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion in a report of his own released Friday. He said the ethics lawyers, in condemning the lawyers’ actions, had given short shrift to the national climate of urgency in which Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo acted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Among the difficulties in assessing these memos now over seven years after their issuance is that the context is lost,” Mr. Margolis said.

Indeed, the documents released Friday provide new details about the atmosphere in which Mr. Yoo and the Justice Department prepared their initial findings in August 2002, shortly after the capture of Abu Zubaydah, suspected of being an operative for Al Qaeda.

The report quotes Patrick Philbin, a senior Justice Department lawyer involved in the review, as saying that because of the urgency of the situation, he had advised Mr. Bybee to sign the memorandum, despite what he saw as Mr. Yoo’s aggressive and problematic interpretation of the president’s broad commander-in-chief powers in trumping international and domestic law.

Mr. Philbin said that “given the situation and the time pressures, and they are telling us this has to be signed tonight — this was like 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock at night on the day it was signed — my conclusion” was that it was permissible for Mr. Bybee to sign the memorandum. “They” apparently referred to White House officials....

It has taken a couple of years, but I no longer react to Mr. Yoo's name by leaping, cursing, or baking bread. True, I do pause to wonder about the direction in which my alma mater has gone. And, yeah, okay, I do quickly search out succor here, and sweeten my memory with this, and cheer on the SF Bay Area Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

But the fact, as they say, remains.

Yoo is still a professor in good standing. But now, by golly, I've planted so many asterisks after his name that he barely registers anymore on The Outrage Meter.

I've never made poppy seed bagels before, wish me luck!

{she pirouettes figures eight, nine, and ten -- into the kitchen -- toes taut, responsive, screaming damn:damn:damn}

Yoo, who?

the one where i break my leg...

hi there, sports fans! as usual, you will just have to trust that i have scintillating posts in the works for My Dear Readers.

in fact, on my list of sixteen things to do this week, item number sixteen reads: "kindly finish the two scintillating blog posts that you have on deck" -- {that'd be the requisite sporting terminology}.

la bonne et belle bianca castafiore is driving me and fred nigh unto insanity due to her obsession with all things "Jeux-O." last night, we caught her chatting online claiming to be québécoise, d'une vieille famille acadienne. she is a riot, though, when she affects the accent, when she really puts her prodigious nose into it.

plus, it is fashion week here at Marlinspike Hall, just as it is in the greater world of haute couture. for The Castafiore, though, its purpose serves a greater urgency, that of preparing her outfits for March Madness and College Basketball viewing. sports and fashion go hand-in-hand.

[you may recall "The ACC Semis," from last March:

"La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore is decked out in a bold, strapless, beaded animal print (specifically, leopard), her considerable self poured into the sweetheart neckline whose décolletage is set off by rhinestones, the fitted silhouette amply accenting her curves, the mid-thigh slit in the front allowing the bright orange lining to flash like a stroboscopic lamp. She is plopped next to me on the bed, rounding out her come hither look with a pair of orthopedic alpaca fuzzy slippers.

During the first semi-final, she kept up a steady effff-ah you! effff-ah you! -- despite my efforts to turn that into the more accurate chant of FSU! FSU! Eventually, The Castafiore burst out of the lace-up corset that constituted the back of that safari prom dress. She's been pretty quiet since."]


you sweet folks deserve an explanation for the dearth of original posting here at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle. lacking that, here is what i ranted just a bit ago to some acquaintances at my favored fetish site:

good morning! i am frustrated. that's the extent of the rant, really.

oh, why am i frustrated?

in a previous rant, i explained that i have crps in all 4 limbs + the lower part of my face -- i also have severe avascular necrosis pretty much everwhere thanks to years of steroids for lupus -- plus there is that pesky osteomyelitis in my shoulders (and probably one knee, too). are you up to speed? basically, my bones suck. sometimes they rot. sometimes they fester. and... very often! they break.

i fractured my tibia saturday morning. it was a brilliant moment. i am wheelchair bound (sniff, sniff) -- it's a power chair because i cannot use my shoulders, i mean, my fake shoulders, to self-propel. i was already doing what i am not supposed to do --i was rotating our mattress.

now, i keep the thermostat very low -- as in 58 degrees. so we don sweatshirts and sweaters and are just generally swathed in layers of fabric. i try to keep the various sleeves carefully rolled up, so as to avoid accidents.

what kind of accidents? ohhhhh, the kind where your sleeve catches on the "joystick" of your power chair and drives you willy-nilly at high speed into the METAL bedframe. not possessing intelligence, the chair continues to push, push, push until the idiot driver manages to smash the OFF button in between screams.

i love the various sounds of the erupting zit: schlurp! pa-pa-pop-splat!

i HATE the sound of a bone breaking: ccccc-r-aaaa-ccccc-k.

given that it was, of course, my right leg, the one my doctor suggested amputating back in november (?), the increase in pain is practically meaningless. going from a steady pain score of 8/10 to 9/10 just doesn't mean crap, y'know? i mean, what am i going to do, take more pain medication? i don't think so.

before crps, when my bones broke, i'd surround the offending skeleton with ice. after crps, ice is contraindicated.

so we sat around and watched it swell and change colors. more fun than a movie and popcorn.

and we discussed how annoying it was that my health insurance is no more. yes, i called the medic and my doc wanted it splinted right away. i knew he was going to say that, so we had already launched an expedition into our Orthopedic Supply Closet, crammed full of boots, splints (cloth and metal as well as air), velcro, exercise bands, a collection of walkers, canes, and wheelchair batteries. thanks to dislike of organization, there were also bedpans, tennis rackets, gallons of biofreeze and betadine, bendy shoelaces (back in the day, i used to wear shoes), and a few embarrassing romance novels.

my leg, though, had decided to swell quickly, too fast for the application of a splint.

PRAISE THE LORD, because if i cannot wear a sock on my feet due to pain? i surely can no longer tolerate the pressure, touch, and weight of a booted splint.

so, no weight-bearing is the rule, also the joke, as i cannot abuse that left leg either, and cannot use any type of crutch -- for those exciting trips of 15-20 feet to get from bed or chair to the bathroom.

whew. okay, thanks, y'all. i feel better. everytime i think, "oh, fuck, i *cannot* do this..."? it works itself out. not to say that i don't sometimes look forward to the day when i truly will give up! no time soon, no time soon.

wow, heavy-duty self-pity.

the good news is that having vented, i do indeed feel better.

news that you may or may not consider "good," i think i have it in me to write again. the problem is finishing. getting it to the point where it won't be a total embarrassment if viewed by others.

you dig?

Potpourri: The Stuff of Nightmares

It's more dried stinky stuff (That's potpourri to you.). This is what happens when I wake up agitated.

I'm reading a sub-par detective novel and fell asleep with it in the wee hours. It's a John Sandford book -- Hidden Prey. Without giving away the plot, let me just say that there is a "cell" of old school Communists hanging out in a small town in Minnesota -- Sandford's hero, Lucas Davenport, resides in Minnesota, and is something of a "fixer" for the governor. Anyway, there's this sleeper cell, and a bunch of confused Communists, also one or two assassins -- the most interesting still in high school, obsessed with boobies.

So there is that percolating in my head.

Also, I became somewhat upset earlier in the evening, after watching the Clijsters/Williams match. [Aside: Please note that my customary role as jinx and source of mala fortuna did not come into play; That is, my favored athlete did manage to win, albeit not in a way she, or anyone, liked overly much.]

Actually, I was babbling even before Serena was subjected to that IDIOTIC foot-fault call by The Timid and Conniving LinesWoman. No, the smashing of her racket at the end of the first set didn't set me off -- surprising, I know, given my reaction to Gonzalez yesterday.

No... it was Wozniacki's tennis dress. She is the second woman in the tournament to be a fashion disaster in what can only be described as a Failed Dropped-Waist Contraption. And it was beige. Ecru, if you like. Sand. Café con leche. Whatever.

All that beige really brought out Caroline's pale visage and blond hair.

Yes, I know that the dress is from the new fall/winter Adidas line by Stella McCartney. It certainly does not look bad on Wozniacki, a beautiful girl. But imagine it on your average woman. Imagine it on La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, for instance.

I'm sorry. No, I'm not! It reminds me so much of a schoolgirl's jumper, deliberately ugly, with a band that bisects the wearer at precisely her widest point. Oh, and then let's amplify that impression with... RUFFLES. Quite the philosophical construction -- all business up top, very hip, spare, monosyllabic, c'est-à-dire masculine -- and all fluff down below, very flouncy, excessive, babbling, c'est-à-dire feminine. Oh, the dichotomy. Oh, my. My.

Again, put The Castafiore in it and suddenly even the umpire would be howling "Foul! Foul! Fashion fault!" Alternatively, the tennis audience would cry out, in alarming syncopation, "My eyes! My eyes!"

In fairness, or at least in equal time, Wickmayer seemed to be wearing something terribly... polyester. It was shiny, an ugly blue. She was brought to us by Nike, I believe. That's a big negatory to Nike. Wickmayer even suffered from that well-known phenomenon of the inner pocket which tunnels its way out of the tight shorts to hang below the leg line. Yes, that well- known phenomenon. Did I mention polyester? [Shhh! Yes, I know that fabric has come a long way, that there's a wicking action, and blahblahblah. It's still POLYESTER and POLYESTER will always be, for me, a failed sign of the failed seventies.]

Anyway.

I also dreamed about George Carlin, and the "seven dirty words you can never say on television." Just to get it out of the way, those words are --

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits

Purists will remember that "motherfucker" constitutes a duplication, so for some, Carlin's bit is better known as "the six dirty words you can never say on television -- with an asterisk."

Now, I figure that the events of the evening were still at play in my dreams, because Carlin is not someone about whom I would normally build castles in Spain.

I was absolutely enraged on behalf of Serena Williams, even though I know that, technically, the supervisor had no recourse but to follow the rules, and the rules are clear enough. Technically, Serena behaved badly and got her just deserts, made her bed, and got what she deserved.

Still... what idiot makes a foot fault call (and makes it erroneously, making me really wonder about her motivations) in what appeared to be the final game of a semi-final professional tennis match? And, I swear, if one reviews the film, one sees a slight smirk on the face of the Dweeb Lineswoman, as she cowers behind the ref and the supervisor.

Remember Marat Safin, and his cool response to a foot fault call? Let me refresh your memory:



In short, my latest oneiric experiences seem to be an apt commentary -- crazed assassins running around in odd flouncy beige polyester leisure suits ... murdering lineswomen, especially of the Dweeb variety.

I have never been very complicated.

*I want to say that I've long been a fan of Brian Earley, the chief U.S. Open ref, and know that he must have felt very conflicted last night -- though he would never say it...