“Make it personal, tell the truth and then write ‘Burn this’ on the bottom.”

We saw Burn This last night, and it was awesome. I’ve been going to Signature Theatre for years, and this was not the typical crowd for one of their plays. This was much more like a Broadway audience, and believe me that’s not a compliment: plenty of scary suburban New York Magazine types. It was a gayer crowd than usual, but I suspect that was as much a function of having Ed Norton in it (who was great despite someone’s opinion of him), rather than the fact that it was a gay-themed play by a great playwright. I don’t typically see that many pretty, blank Chelsea boys at a serious play — perhaps they were brought as arm candy by more serious playgoers. I much prefer smart pretty boys.

I first saw Ed Norton in 1994, in the world premiere of Eward Albee’s “Fragments” at Signature. I still remember how he looked and talked, and not just because he was hot. Apparently this was Catherine Keener‘s stage debut, and she was excellent, with a great presence on stage. I would not have guessed that she had concentrated only on film before. I’ve only seen her in one movie, “Being John Malkovich”. Given that Mr. Malkovich played the Ed Norton role in the play’s debut, there is a nice symmetry at work here. The entire cast of four was pretty amazing.

There were a few celebrities in the crowd. The ones I spotted: Monica Lewinsky (I think I was cruised by her!), Paul Lombardi (yes Sam he’s quite hot in person too), and Paul Rudnick.

Here are some reviews.

Znet has a very informative interview with Noam Chomsky on Iraq. He sounds pretty reasonable for a man many paint as a lefty fanatic madman.

A few highlights:

Saddam’s worst crimes, by far, have been domestic, including the use of chemical weapons against Kurds and a huge slaughter of Kurds in the late 80s, barbaric torture, and every other ugly crime you can imagine. These are at the top of the list of terrible crimes for which he is now condemned, rightly. It’s useful to ask how frequently the impassioned denunciations and eloquent expressions of outrage are accompanied by three little words: “with our help.”</p>

The crimes were well known at once, but of no particular concern to the West. Saddam received some mild reprimands; harsh congressional condemnation was considered too extreme by prominent commentators. The Reaganites and Bush 1 continued to welcome the monster as an ally and valued trading partner right through his worst atrocities and well beyond. Bush authorized loan guarantees and sale of advanced technology with clear applications for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) right up to the day of the Kuwait invasion, sometimes overriding congressional efforts to prevent what he was doing. Britain was still authorizing export of military equipment and radioactive materials a few days after the invasion. When ABC correspondent and now ZNet Commentator Charles Glass discovered biological weapons facilities (using commercial satellites and defector testimony), his revelations were immediately denied by the Pentagon and the story disappeared. It was resurrected when Saddam committed his first real crime, disobeying US orders (or perhaps misinterpreting them) by invading Kuwait, and switched instantly from friend to reincarnation of Attila the Hun. The same facilities were then used to demonstrate his innately evil nature. When Bush 1 announced new gifts to his friend in December 1989 (also gifts to US agribusiness and industry), it was considered too insignificant even to report, though one could read about it in Z magazine at the time, maybe nowhere else. A few months later, shortly before he invaded Kuwait, a high-level Senate delegation, headed by (later) Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, visited Saddam, conveying the President’s greetings and assuring the brutal mass murderer that he should disregard the criticism he hears from maverick reporters here. Saddam had even been able to get away with attacking a US naval vessel, the USS Stark, killing several dozen crewmen. That is a mark of real esteem. The only other country to have been granted that privilege was Israel, in 1967. In deference to Saddam, the State Department banned all contacts with the Iraqi democratic opposition, maintaining this policy even after the Gulf war, while Washington effectively authorized Saddam to crush a Shi’ite rebellion that might well have overthrown him — in the interest of preserving “stability,” the press explained, nodding sagely.

That he’s a major criminal is not in doubt. That’s not changed by the fact that the US and Britain regarded his major atrocities as insignificant in the light of higher “reasons of state,” before the Gulf war and even after — facts best forgotten. </blockquote>

I love stories like this:

Grade tampering scandal hits Christian college

Gardner-Webb University has been embroiled in controversy ever since the school’s president admitted he wrote a memo two years ago ordering a star basketball player’s GPA to be calculated without an F he received for cheating — in, of all things, a religion class.

Without the change, Carlos Webb would have been ineligible in 2000-01, the season Gardner-Webb won the National Christian College Athletic Association championship.

… and we all know how important Christian athletic leagues are in the grand scheme of life.

I feel the need to quote TBOGG’s title for this:

We’d love to look into this…but we’ve got a war to fight…

Harvard University’s financial relationship with President Bush’s former oil company was deeper than previously understood, with the university’s management fund creating a separate ‘’off the books’’ partnership with Harken Energy Corp. that helped keep afloat the financially troubled company, according to a report to be released today.

HarvardWatch, a student-alumni group that monitors the school’s investments, plans to issue the report and say that it has analyzed documents showing that the Harvard fund, an independent entity that manages the university’s endowment, formed a partnership in 1990 with Bush’s oil firm called the Harken Anadarko Partnership. The partnership effectively removed $20 million of debt from Harken’s books, relieving the Texas company’s short-term financial problems.

About the same time, the Harvard fund invested about $30 million in Harken, which also helped keep the firm afloat. The partnership has not been mentioned in recent accounts of Bush’s financial dealings in the oil business.

The Boston Globe article may be found here.

On a happier note, there is an exhibit at the NYPL on New York City wildlife — yes there actually is some here other than the kind of people Mr. Swill meets on the subway.

I recommend going to see it. It’s free!

In These Times has an interview with Scott Ritter, who served as Chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998. In case you haven’t heard, he is opposed to our attacking Iraq, warning “If the United States unilaterally invades Iraq, we will go to war as a rogue nation ourselves and join the short list that includes North Korea, which invaded South Korea, and Saddam Hussein, who invaded Kuwait.”

I want to start screaming everytime I read or hear someone talk about the weapons inspectors being expelled. Here is Ritter’s account:

Saddam Hussein didn’t kick out the U.N. inspectors. They were ordered out by the U.S. government, which then used information they provided to bomb 100 locations that had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. So the weapons inspectors were used by the United States. This is the reality: When Madeleine Albright called up Richard Butler and said, “Jump!” Richard Butler always said, “How high?” It was obvious from day one.

Apparently Bush and his masters think there’s enough money to spend $9+ billion per month on Iraq, but there’s not enough money to provide pension benefits for disabled veterans. Rumsfeld and Bush think it’s “double dipping” for a veteran to get any extra money if they’re retired AND disabled.

Bush Threatens Veto of Defense Bill – President Wants Costly New Disabled Military Pension Benefits Eliminated

The Republicans seem to feel the same way about soldiers that they do about babies. They’re OK at the beginning, but we don’t care what happens to them later.

Statistic: Nearly one quarter of all homeless people are veterans.

Walter LaFeber, distinguished historian, has a good column in the Washington Post</a> on our country’s Wilsonian split personality when it comes to engaging the outside world.

Wilsonianism, more than any other -ism, has shaped the foreign policy thinking of Americans in the early 21st century. Articulated in Wilson’s 1917 speech asking Congress to declare war, it rejects neutrality in an age where the conduct of “civilized states” was at issue.</p>

Wilsonianism has been glorified, especially since the American triumph in the Cold War. But it is less a policy than a disorder. That is because at its core, Wilsonianism has a split personality. One Wilson preached the ideal of worldwide democracy and free enterprise under the aegis of the League of Nations. The other Wilson was the greatest unilateral military interventionist in U.S. history.

He sent troops into Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, and it took generations of diplomacy to clean up the results. This was the Wilson who pledged to teach Mexico “to elect good men,” even if he ended up sending in U.S. troops to do rather intense, if irrelevant, teaching. This was also the Wilson who, when asked whether he was going into World War I in concert with “allies,” replied that the United States would maintain its freedom of action and thus enter the conflict only as an “associated” power. </blockquote>

I just found this column, courtesy of TBOGG.

Some readers may have gotten the impression that I am unequivocally against a war with Iraq. As a matter of fact, that is not true. But one reason that I am against an attack upon Baghdad is because I do not think our military leaders are the best ones to lead it.

To the contrary, I think that our many superzealous civilian officials who are impassionedly leading the fight should be right up there in the front lines. Wars always need the most aggressive and “warlike” at the front. Instead, we find ourselves today in a virtually unheard-of situation where most of the men planning this abstruse war are hawkish and agenda-prone intellectuals who seem to think that war is the ultimate metaphysical experience — for someone else, of course.

…

Richard Perle revealed his own deep concern for American soldiers when he was asked on a recent “Wide Angle” TV show about the threat of chemical and biological weapons to troops landing in Iraq. All he could do was announce, without any emotion, “These are not effective weapons in terms of the outcome of the engagement.”

Protesters Jeer Gephardt

“Gephardt, Gephardt has no spine! He just follows Bush’s line,” the crowd loudly repeated, holding signs and banging drums, standing a few feet away from the high-ranking Democrat. The age of protesters ranged from college students to middle-aged parents to white-haired seniors.