I think Hillary Clinton is a secret double agent for the Republicans. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I’ve written before about how she’s no friend of homos, and the NY Times has written about how much she’s being attacked from the left. In that article, we learn the charming fact that she’s afraid to meet with the family of Barry Winchell, a gay soldier who was beaten to death with a baseball bat as he slept in his cot. The Senate Armed Services Committee, of which Hillary is a member, has decided to hold a closed door session on the promotion of Major General Robert T. Clark to Lieutenant General. MG Clark is former Commanding General of Fort Campbell, where Winchell was murdered in 1999 by fellow soldiers. Targeted because he was believed to be gay, PFC Winchell endured constant anti-gay harassment in the months leading up to his murder.

Now, as the media could be talking about the mass deception involving weapons of mass destruction that Iraq doesn’t seem to have had, instead we are treated to a repraisal of the blowjob scandal that nearly led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, thanks to the release of her new memoir. While doing very little of use to New York or anyone else, Hillary has managed to find time to write a memoir. Its release gives the press another chance to remind us that lying about sex is an impeachable offense, but the treason of lying about weapons to start a war to distract us from the corporate scandals of Enron and Worldcom is just business as usual.

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Updated: I left out the fact that the GOP uses the threat of Hillary becoming President in its fundraising letters.

I haven’t posted much lately, so here are a few items of note:

• After 18 years, the U.S. has decided to start contributing to, and getting active with, UNESCO, the UN’s cultural arm. They’ve decided it might be a useful tool as part of the “War on Terrorism.” When the Republicans say they’re getting interested in culture, it’s time to get worried.
  
• The Guardian has an interview with Susan Sarandon. My friend the lovely and talented Anees sent me the URL. We recently watched Bull Durham, since I hadn’t seen it in over a decade, and James had never seen it. One of my favorite lines in the movie is spoken by her character:
  

  The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.

  
  
• Cabinet Magazine has a graph illustrating the destruction of the idea of public domain by our copyright system and the abuse of it by corporations.

A conservative Christian group is challenging a U.S. Department of Transportation policy that bans planes from Disney World’s airspace because the group wants to make sure Gay Days revelers see its messages flying overhead this weekend.

We went to Fresh Tracks at Dance Theater Workshop last night, plus went to the opening for Dearraindrop at John Connelly Presents — no web page, so see the announcement on Flavorpill.

Fresh Tracks is exactly the kind of thing I look for at DTW: a showcase of emerging choreagraphers and performance artists. Beyond a doubt the highlight of the show was the last work: “American Crane Standards” by Ann Liv Young. The title comes from a brand of toilets — the company no longer exists — which are carried out by the two dancers at the beginning of the piece. I have borrowed an image from her web site so you can see an example. It’s a photo of one of the truly great moments in the work, so I hesitated to put it up.

I’m a lousy dance critic — I just know what I like — so I will post the New Yorker blurb that recommended seeing her:

Ann Liv Young’s madcap choreography mocks strip-club routines, cheerleading, and feminine demureness with dancers who know how to flout the male gaze while flaunting their stuff. This week, only days after her college graduation, Young presents “American Crane Standards” as part of Dance Theatre Workshop’s “Fresh Tracks” showcase of up-and-coming choreographers. Two women in mint-green skirts and chiffon blouses lug parti-colored toilets onto the stage and undertake a synchronized dance, responding to verbal cues barked from offstage. The toilets, pink, green, and yellow, coordinate perfectly with the deadpan dames who straddle them, performing midair splits. Endlessly inventive, tacitly confrontational, the show is as fun to discuss as it is to watch.

She also does purses and skirts. Maybe I can commission an interesting bag. I at least need to get her in touch with my friend Kim Johnson, who runs Johnson on Orchard Street.

Update: Here is a video of an excerpt of the piece:

I had dinner with a friend a few nights ago who shocked me by saying the U.S. had the most diverse media in the world. He is someone I respect as an AIDS/queer activist, who was arrested at the Matthew Shepard march in 1998 plus a number of other times, but who seems to have bought into what our government and the mainstream press are selling. He was also untroubled by the stifling of dissent, even to the point of arresting legal protesters standing on a sidewalk or questioning them about their political beliefs, feeling that it was mostly “foreigners” who should be worried.

It’s one of the main reasons I stopped posting for over a week. If people like him feel that way, I’m not sure I see much of a point in doing anything or even writing about what’s going on. I’m feeling that maybe I should devote my energies to trying to make more of a difference locally: spending my money and time on helping NYC and the most physically or economically vulnerable people here and elsewhere in the U.S. (but mostly in NYC). Probably my biggest concern outside of NYC is for gay kids, like the kid in Arkansas who was outed by school officials and forced to read the Bible.

After that complaint, to illustrate my point about the media, the British press is all over the story of “hyped” intelligence — or lies if you prefer — as the reason to go to war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction. The Independent also has a story about the illegal use of cluster bombs. A selection:

The Independent

• Government blames spies over war
  

  A senior minister warned yesterday that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would constitute “Britain’s biggest ever intelligence failure” and would trigger an overhaul of the security services.</p>

  The minister told The Independent that the security services were responsible for Downing Street’s uncompromising stance on Saddam Hussein’s weapons. He spoke after a row erupted between politicians and the intelligence community over the Government’s justification for going to war.

  A senior intelligence official also told the BBC that Downing Street had wanted the Government dossier outlining Saddam’s capability “sexed up” and that Downing Street included information against security service advice.

  Meanwhile, Washington dealt another devastating blow to Tony Blair, who was visiting troops in Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, said that disarming Saddam of illegal weapons was nothing more than a “bureaucratic reason” for war.

  He told Vanity Fair magazine that members of the divided White House cabinet pushed the issue because it was the only way they could present a united front. </blockquote></li>
  

  Allied use of cluster bombs illegal, minister admits
  

  The Government admitted during the war on Iraq that the use of cluster bombs against civilian targets would “not be legal”, a letter obtained by The Independent has revealed.</p>

  Anti-landmine charities claimed last night that the letter by Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, proved that the Ministry of Defence had broken international law by using the munitions in towns and cities.

  …

  Mr Ingram stressed that the British armed forces strove to act in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. “It is clear that when we apply these principles there will be occasions when the use of cluster bombs against certain targets would not be legal,” he wrote. “There will be occasions when the use of other munitions would be legal but the use of cluster bombs would not.”

  Richard Lloyd, director of the charity Landmine Action, said the letter, with yesterday’s admission, proved the Geneva Conventions were knowingly breached. “Mr Ingram has admitted the Government acted outside the law,” he said.</blockquote></li></ul>

  The Times
  

  • Britain and US urged to show arms evidence
    

    PRESSURE was growing on Tony Blair and President Bush last night to publish the evidence on weapons of mass destruction that they used to justify going to war in Iraq.</p>

    Scores of MPs are backing an early day motion demanding that the Government spell out its case after a minister admitted that an important claim about Saddam Hussein’s weapons was based on uncorroborated information.</blockquote></li></ul>

    The Mirror
    

    • No10’s ORDER: MAKE SADDAM DOSSIER SEXY
      

      EVIDENCE against Saddam Hussein was “sexed up” on Downing Street orders because it was not damning enough to justify war on Iraq, it was claimed yesterday.</p>

      An intelligence source said No10 spin doctors ordered them to distort the dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. It was “transformed” before publication to make it “sexier” – including a claim that WMDs could be ready for use in 45 minutes.</blockquote></li></ul>

      The Guardian
      

      • Blair: WMD dossier claims ‘absurd’
        

        Tony Blair today made an angry but opaque denial of accusations that Downing Street asked for a dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to be “sexed up”.</p>

        Speaking in Poland ahead of a speech on the extension of the EU, Mr Blair said it was “completely absurd” to suggest that MI6 was made to “invent some piece of evidence”.

        However, the actual allegation, made to the BBC yesterday by a senior security official, was that the government had asked for the document to be “sexed up”.

        Explaining why it had taken 24 hours for the prime minister to answer the allegations, Mr Blair said he had “only caught up overnight” with the claims, although he spent yesterday in Iraq, with a mobile office.</blockquote></li></ul>

        BBC
        

        • Iraq’s ‘weapons’ doubts
          

          So is the Bush administration backing away from its insistence that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the war?</p>

          The public justification for the British and American decision to go to war to oust Saddam Hussein was the clear and imminent threat said to have been posed by his regime’s weapons of mass destruction.

          …

          While the Americans and British have insisted that significant resources are being deployed in the hunt, the fact remains that many sensitive sites – including Iraqi nuclear facilities – may well have been looted and potential evidence destroyed. </blockquote></li></ul>

          If I search on Google News for the Wolfowitz story about WMD being “just a bureaucratic reason” for war, at the moment I don’t get too much U.S. media. The NY Times is a Krugman column (worth reading), and The Boston Globe story that shows up is from Reuters:

          ‘For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,’’ Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair magazine’s July issue.
          
          …
          
          Wolfowitz said another reason for the invasion had been ‘’almost unnoticed but huge’’ — namely that the ousting of Hussein would allow the United States to remove its troops from Saudi Arabia, where their presence had long been a major Al Qaeda grievance.
          
          ‘’Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door’’ to a more peaceful Middle East, Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.
          
          The magazine said he made the remarks days before suicide bombings, attributed to Al Qaeda, against Western targets in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Casablanca, Morocco, two weeks ago that killed 75 people.

          I think Israel should be worried. It sounds like we found a new “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East.</blockquote>

“We’re rich, you’re dead.” Finally, an honest tobacco company.

Happy monkey drawing, courtesy of Witold Riedel

See, I read Liz Smith for the culture. I only saw this story in her column — that the bronze dancing satyr found four years ago by Sicilian fishermen, and believed to be by Praxiteles(!) has gone on display at the Palazzo Montecitorio, the Italian Parliament.

Here is an article (in Italian) in Panorama, and one (in English) from ekathimerini.com.

David Beckham has cornrows!

Get your War Profiteers playing card deck here.