Very interesting chart from the Jan. 21 New York Times:

James has a good post on what’s really going on in Venezuela.

Is the press starting to realize that Bush isn’t the Teflon® man?

AIDS Nominee Withdraws From White House AIDS Panel

‘Made in China’ labels hidden at Bush event

Of course, there are plenty of fundamentalist bigots still on the AIDS panel.

Nathan Newman has a good post titled In Defense of Al Sharpton.

Several facts about Al Sharpton:

• I saw him get arrested at one of the demonstrations for Amadou Diallo.
  
• He is the only presidential candidate I have ever seen at an AIDS demonstration, marching with sundry queens, ACT UPers, and other activists.</a>
  
• He is the only (Democratic) presidential candidate who is not in favor of the death penalty.</p>

I’m so glad their gay dollars and efforts help support the party that just appointed a man who calls AIDS the “gay plague”, homosexuality a “death style”, and runs a ministry to “cure” homosexuals to the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS.

Atrios has a good post on this.

If I see one more “Thanks Ralph Nader”-type post regarding stories like this I’m going to scream. It’s been 2 years since that election and we’ve watched the Democrats behave like sheep.

Our government is pissing off most of the world. At this rate we’re not going to have any allies. Being the supreme military power without any allies will be very expensive and dangerous in the long run. Calling the two most powerful states in Europe “Old Europe” is not useful.

From the BBC:

Mr Rumsfeld made the remarks in Washington after French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed to work together to oppose US threats of war in Iraq.

“Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem,” Mr Rumsfeld told Washington’s foreign press corps.

“But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe, they’re not with France and Germany… they’re with the US.

“You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t,” he said. “I think that’s old Europe.”

Mr Rumsfeld pointed to the planned expansion of Nato, with seven eastern European and Baltic countries invited to join the alliance.

“If you look at the entire Nato Europe today, the centre of gravity is shifting to the east,” Mr Rumsfeld said.

If the centre of gravity is shifting, it’s because we’re basically using U.S. tax dollars to give military hardware to the more eastern countries via favorable “loan” terms.

Meanwhile, China joins Russia, France and Germany in opposition to immediate military action against Iraq.

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Brian Eno, writing in Time Magazine(!) has it about right:

When Europeans make such criticisms, Americans assume we’re envious. “They want what we’ve got,” the thinking goes, “and if they can’t get it, they’re going to stop us from having it.” But does everyone want what America has? Well, we like some of it but could do without the rest: among the highest rates of violent crime, economic inequality, functional illiteracy, incarceration and drug use in the developed world. President Bush recently declared that the U.S. was “the single surviving model of human progress.” Maybe some Americans think this self-evident, but the rest of us see it as a clumsy arrogance born of ignorance.

Europeans tend to regard free national health services, unemployment benefits, social housing and so on as pretty good models of human progress. We think it’s important — civilized, in fact — to help people who fall through society’s cracks. This isn’t just altruism, but an understanding that having too many losers in society hurts everyone. It’s better for everybody to have a stake in society than to have a resentful underclass bent on wrecking things. To many Americans, this sounds like socialism, big government, the nanny state. But so what? The result is: Europe has less gun crime and homicide, less poverty and arguably a higher quality of life than the U.S., which makes a lot of us wonder why America doesn’t want some of what we’ve got.

Go here. It’s not one of his strongest, but still worth reading.

I’m feeling very good about the state of NYC theatre after two nights in a row of interesting work. Last night we saw Art, Life & Show Biz, by Ain Gordon, at P.S.122. It’s subtitled “a non-fiction play”, and the substance of it is the lives of Ain Gordon and three fabulous women performers: his mother Valda Setterfield (modern dance), Lola Pashalinkski (downtown theatre), and Helen Gallagher (Broadway/musicals).

I’ve seen the first two several times, but, not really being a musicals person — don’t take my homosexual membership card away — I had never seen Helen Gallagher before. It’s amazing that certain people just have “it” when you see them in person. She was a star, and you couldn’t help but feel her presence even when she was just sitting still.

I think I was most moved by Lola, since hers is the world to which I’m most connected. She was a member of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. It was wonderful to hear her stories of being a teenager in the 50s and coming out, realizing that there were others like her. I saw her at one of the memorial events for my friend Paul Schmidt, but I didn’t go up and introduce myself, because it felt weird to be at such an event and run up to tell her I was a big fan. One of her stories involved the Ridiculous doing a play at Christopher’s End, a gay bar at Christopher and West Streets, in the early 70s. One night Lotte Lenya came to see it. She was in NYC starring in Cabaret at the time. She told people she loved it — that it reminded her of the old days in Berlin.

I also liked some of the stories from Helen about older days on Broadway. When she talked about Jerome Robbins, she said he was very talented, but he was very mean. He was the reason Equity rules require performers to be paid for rehearsals.

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Tonight we saw The Ladies, by The Civilians, at HERE. It’s a look at four women who were famous (or infamous) for their relationships to dictators: Eva Peron, Imelda Marcos, Madame Mao and Elena Ceaucescu. The work was created by Anne Washburn and Anne Kauffman, and the two of them are characters in the play as well. I know Anne (Annie) Kauffman, so it was wacky to watch someone play her on stage. I talked with Jennifer Morris (the actress who played her) afterward, and she had noticed me laughing and reacting to her performance.

There is a lot of interesting material in this. James commented on one of the things that Anne K’s character mentions that is so interesting about them: they didn’t care what people thought of them — which is a very powerful thing. It’s also interesting to think about whether these women were the product of a very specific time in history: the point of the simultaneous decline of traditional monarchies/aristocracies and the rise of women’s independence and power. Will there be any more of these — to use Anne W’s phrase — “glamourpuss wives” in the future?

It runs next weekend also at HERE — Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — and I really recommend going. The text itself is very smart, and the cast is brilliant. It’s fabulous to see a group of highly intelligent actors work on a script like this. I hesitate to say more, since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who will see it, but the way the play bounces off of certain 19th “heroines” like Nora in A Doll’s House and Anna Karenina is fascinating.

One last quote: The two Annes are talking at one point about how awful most of the books are about these women — that they are all either “scurrilous or froufy”.

As a follow-up to my earlier article, I’m posting a story that says Powell disagrees with President Bush’s position on the University of Michigan case.

If we go to war with Iraq and any Americans actually die, it’s not going to be pretty. I’m also baffled by the idea that the number of people who think Bush hasn’t provided adequate proof of Iraq’s crimes has decreased.

A poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press indicated 76 percent of Americans support a war if United Nations inspectors find evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. That support drops to 29 percent if no such weapons are discovered, even if the Iraqi government cannot prove it doesn’t have them. And if U.S. soldiers were to suffer thousands of casualties, then 48 percent would oppose the war, compared with the 43 percent who would support it. And slightly more than half do not believe Bush has sufficiently explained reasons for war.

…

According to the Pew poll, the number of respondents who say they believe Bush has clearly justified an attack on Iraq has dropped significantly since his September address at the UN. Back then a majority (52 percent to 37 percent) said they believed he had adequately explained his reasons for using military force. In the latest poll, a majority (53 percent to 42 percent) said they believe he has not clearly voiced his reasons.

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Another one: 50% of Americans think one or more of the September 11 hijackers was an Iraqi citizen.