Gilbert Gottfried and the Discourse on Disaster

A Portrait of Gilbert Gottfried with a Dead Aflac Duck
on His Head by Dan Lacey (www.faithmouse.com). 
Used with permission of the artist.

As the world confronts escalating conflict and looming nuclear disaster, the Holy Prepuce has been ruminating on a more consequential matter: the Gilbert Gottfried sacking.

Why, exactly, did “tweeting” a series of earthquake / tsunami jokes get Gottfried summarily canned as the voice of AFLAC? Gottfried, after all, famously broke the ice at a post-9-11 Friar’s Club roast by recounting “The Aristocrats,” the classic improvised litany of incest, scatophilia, and a rotating menu of other horribles. So it’s not as if AFLAC was allergic to controversial material.

I suspect that Gottfried ran up against an unwritten rule of comedy: disaster jokes are not allowed to have identifiable authors.

The re-telling of disaster jokes is permissible because they are both ubiquitous and anonymous. Anyone of my generation could tell you, for example, how we knew Christa McAuliffe had dandruff, what “NASA” stands for, and why there were no showers on the Challenger. Elliot Orring’s “Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster” (1987) collects fourteen such examples, and I found no more than a handful unfamiliar twenty-five years after the Challenger explosion. Some were undoubtedly adapted from prior maritime or aviation accidents; several I have since heard re-purposed for Princess Diana or 9-11. Folklorists collect this material: Bill Ellis’s “A Model for Collecting and Interpreting World Trade Center Disaster Jokes” (October 5, 2001) identifies twelve discreet “cycles” addressing a range of events including the Kennedy assassination, the Jonestown suicides, and the Lockerbie PanAm 103 bombing.

The universality of these jokes allows us to rationalize their creation as an instinctive defense mechanism with a plausible genesis in evolutionary psychology. The impulse to detach from tragedy through humor serves as a counterbalance to our empathy and attachment, traits essential to social animals but paralyzing if unchecked in times of crisis. Laugh today about yesterday’s sabre-tooth tiger attack and you pull yourself together to hunt mastodon, eat, and live to pass along your genes.

When these jokes seem to rise from the zeitgeist, the telling itself can become the primary gag, the observational meta-joke that human beings are sick bastards who find this funny. It works because we’re all in this together: I’ve heard this one, you’ve heard that one, someone like us must have come up with this; everyone’s responsible so no one is.

But when Gottfried tweets Japan jokes as a professional comedian, there’s him and there’s us. We have no ownership, no liability as the kind of people who think this stuff up. He’s the sick bastard who finds this funny, we’re decent folk who need to take a stand against this trash.

I also think Gottfried is a victim of the Comedian On Twitter syndrome. Social media’s low-cost marketing comes at a price for comedians: fans expect free, instant funny. And so the temptation is to brain-dump ideas that might otherwise never see the light of day.

Looking through Gottfried’s tweets, and putting aside any question of taste, most of them are poorly constructed and don’t really work as jokes. A few would be salvageable with editing. One or two seem to stand on their own:

I asked a girl in Japan to have sex with me. She said “okay, but you'll have to sleep in the wet spot.”

This would be a decent mid-set gag, a supplemental laugh on an established subject. It trades on a mixing of taboos: sex and disaster, but in an understated, minimally-graphic fashion. It turns on clever incongruities of type, number, and scale. And it’s a rather sweet homage to its “sleep in the wet spot” precursor jokes, those Sexual Revolution-era meditations on negotiating casual sex and its aftermath in that brave new gender-equal world.

Here is the best of the lot:

I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said “is there a school in this area.” She said “not now, but just wait."

The central equivocation is actually a stroke of genius: the ambiguity in meaning is possible only in the apocalyptic conditions of this specific moment. Delivering the punchline in the agent’s voice furthers the uncertainty: Does she intend the meaning we perceive? If so, does she take Gottfried’s question so literally as to assume a flotsam schoolhouse would meet his needs? What is her attitude toward the catastrophe if she is breezily offering its consequences as a selling point?

The fundamentals are also solid: a classic setup-line-punchline, with a strong core incongruity between mundane and extraordinary elements. I award bonus points for the dependence on visual imagination, generating dual meaning through reliance on imagery highly specific to the present moment when footage of the deluge is seared into our collective consciousness.

Indeed, the imagery invoked softens the joke by substituting masonry for human flesh. Elliot Orring points out that a defining feature of the Challenger disaster was the “shield[ing]” of “the view of that human disaster miles above the earth . . . by flame and the opaque wall of the shuttle cabin,” whereas “beyond these speakable images of flame and falling debris lay the imaginable but unspeakable images of horrific trauma and mutilation.” Many Challenger jokes operated, Orring argues, by “forc[ing] us to confront what lies behind the speakable media images that are created or manipulated for our consumption.”

The disaster in Japan was not so antiseptic: cameras covered every angle of the destruction, making blanket censorship of death impossible. Gottfried’s text in some fashion works the reverse of a Challenger joke. Instead of laying bare an obscured mayhem, it renders the devastation more palatable by focusing on a cartoonish inanimate object, without speculation as to what could lie inside.

Pre-Twitter, Gottfried might have crossed out five of his ideas, tried the rest at a small club on a Tuesday night, and wound up with the “school” bit as the one piece of usable material. It’s an excellent joke, standing alone, whose merits may render the subject matter forgivable. But by surrounding this pearl with an unvarnished barrage of lesser attempts, Gottfried came across as desperate for laughs, and his use of the subject exploitative.

I’m a tough crowd.

"The Mosque at Ground Zero"

“Stop the mosque at Ground Zero,” screams the right-wing Internet campaign!

Newt Gingrich has weighed in: “Building this structure on the edge of the battlefield created by radical Islamists is not a celebration of religious pluralism and mutual tolerance; it is a political statement of shocking arrogance and hypocrisy.”

As has Sarah Palin: “This is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common moral sense. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks.”

We can quibble, of course, about whether 45 Park Place is “at Ground Zero,” whether Cordoba House will be a “mosque,” and whether it constitutionally could be prohibited. But arguing about these points may be counterproductive, because to do so risks conceding that they matter. It gives credence to the idea that if this is a “Ground Zero Mosque” and can be legally prohibited, then prohibiting it could be the right thing to do.

Gingrich and Palin certainly seem to think stopping Cordoba House is the right thing to do. Here is what I would like to ask them:

Newt and Sarah, let us assume arguendo that Cordoba House is “at Ground Zero,” that it is a "mosque," and that it legally could be prevented. Please tell me which one or more of the following statements you agree with:

1. No general moral right exists to build a house of worship on one’s own land; or

2. Such a general moral right exists, but it does not apply in this case because:

a. Islam--the religion as a whole in all its variants--was responsible for 9/11, and a mosque at the site of 9/11 would therefore profane the dead; or

b. Islam is a profane religion, and to allow a mosque on the “hallowed ground” of 9/11 would therefore profane the dead; or

c. Islam is the enemy of the United States, and it is therefore an act of surrender to allow a mosque at the site of an enemy attack; or

d. All Muslims bear collective guilt for 9/11, and as a result have forfeited this general moral right; or

e. Not all Muslims bear collective guilt for 9/11, but because 9/11 was committed in the name of Islam, to become or remain a Muslim is implicitly to approve of 9/11, an immoral belief that forfeits the general moral right.

I’m sure that Gingrich and Palin would deny believing any one of these statements, if each were put to them in isolation. But if they are sincere in calling for the project to be stopped, they must believe at least one.

Unless of course, they don’t, and they’re just pandering.

There is a separate line of argument in the anti-mosque talking points, which holds that whether or not Cordoba House can be stopped by its opponents, the builders should have the “sensitivity” not to build it. The idea being that so long as some Americans, particularly survivors of the 9/11 dead, are offended by the construction of Cordoba House, its builders have an ethical obligation to prevent that offense by cancelling the project.

The difficulty is, though, that to take offense at the building of a “Ground Zero Mosque,” one must logically believe one or more of statements 2a, 2b, or 2c. If Islam as a whole is not responsible for 9/11, is not a profane religion, and is not the enemy of the United States, then a “Ground Zero Mosque”--unless built in explicit celebration of the attacks--is not offensive. (A 9/11-celebrating mosque would of course be a different story, but so would a 9/11-celebrating ice cream stand or waterslide.)

So those who advance the sensitivity argument on the basis that they personally take offense are merely affirming their beliefs in statements 2a, 2b, or 2c, with the added implication that “even a Muslim should recognize these things about his religion.”

But what most intrigues me about the sensitivity argument is those who purport to raise it only on behalf of others. Such a person says in essence to the builders, “look, you and I both know that your entire religion is not profane, not the enemy, and not responsible for 9/11. But these people... they're hurting. They’ve lost loved ones, they've been through a trauma--if they believe those things about Islam, let's not rub their noses in it."

After all, the general proposition--that looking out for people’s feelings is usually the right thing to do--is uncontroversial. But could this duty really extend to respecting others’ feelings when they are born from prejudice? Even if the prejudice is against you? That seems a step too far. Which is why I have my suspicions that, from people who have thought it through, the “sensitivity” argument in the end reduces to a general condemnation of Islam.

Unless of course, it doesn’t, and they’re just pandering.

UPDATE: a conservative friend pointed out to me that the Anti-Defamation League has come out against Cordoba House as well, and he asks whether I am “implying that it is acceptable for a civil rights organization such as the ADL to be against the mosque, but it is not acceptable for conservative politicians to take that stand?” To answer in no uncertain terms: no. I was unaware when I wrote this post of the ADL’s position, which I find equally unsupportable, and indeed more troubling coming as it does from an organization dedicated to fighting anti-religious bias.

I would put the same questions to ADL director Abraham Foxman. And in particular, to his statement that “building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain--unnecessarily--and that is not right,” I would respond as follows: Explain to me, Mr. Foxman, why a victim would feel pain at the building of an Islamic center unless he believes that “Islam”--all of it--is the same entity that carried out 9/11? And assuming you can’t, tell me why it is “not right” for the builders of Cordoba House to ignore those victims’ bigotry.

Adam Wheeler, Conceptual Artist

Why can't prosecutors understand that indicted "Harvard Faker" Adam Wheeler is in reality a conceptual artist of the highest caliber? Ignorant accusations painting Wheeler as a simple fraudster who conned his way into Harvard malign his genius burlesque on the follies of elite academe.

For evidence of Wheeler's true purpose, one need look no further than the pastiche e-mail sent to his fellow transfer students upon their arrival at Harvard:

My own, brief, assessment of my character is that I am sententious, crypto-tendentious, slightly pedantic with a streak of contrarianism, a fascination with any pedagogical approach to Shakespeare, and a decent sense of humor . . . . [I view sports as] . . . a neighborhood faux-pas of epic proportions. . . . [At MIT], I was, to put it poorly, suckled upon the teat of disdain. That being said (fortified by a reflexive snort), I was inspired thereby to apply to Harvard, where the humanities, in short, are not, simpliciter, a source of opprobrium.

Who except a newly-arrived transfer student, overwhelmed at her good fortune to be accepted at a school where people actually talk like that, would not recognize this as the tongue-in-cheek drivel of a satirist impostor?

A con man seeking a Harvard degree might have started as Wheeler did, posing as a frustrated MIT comp lit major seeking a transfer up Mass Ave. But from there on, the paradigm fits Wheeler's oeuvre not a bit. In a virtuoso display of commitment to character, Wheeler immersed himself in the rôle of a comically incompetent hustler, planting a series of over-the-top "blunders" in service of two conceptual theses:

1. The ego validation of a wunderkind-at-my-institution is so intoxicating that elite scholars will swallow the most outrageous fabrications in support of that narrative;

2. The scholarly output of elite academe is for the most part complete bullshit.

Where a con man would have upgraded his pedigree to include some regional prep school outside the usual Harvard orbit, Wheeler brazenly selected Phillips Andover, where the college counselors are on Harvard Admissions' speed-dial. A con man would have forged not-quite-perfect SAT reports and transcripts; Wheeler awarded himself a perfect 1600 and straight As. The latter detail was particularly well-selected: MIT freshmen do not receive letter grades in their first semester.

Like Wheeler, a con man might have forged references from MIT professors--but a con man would have signed them with the names of actual MIT faculty. Wheeler signed the names of professors at Bowdoin College, the school that suspended him in 2007 for academic dishonesty. A con man claiming to attend MIT would have shown up to be interviewed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Wheeler requested a local interview at Bowdoin. When the interviewer inquired what an MIT freshman was doing in Brunswick, Maine during the academic year, Wheeler explained that he was assisting a Bowdoin professor with a book.

Once into Harvard, an institution from which one can easily graduate without once coming under adult scrutiny, a con man would spend the next three years laying low. If not quite up to the academic task, he would plagiarize or otherwise cheat to the least extent necessary to achieve passing marks. Another Wall Street analyst would be minted, with no one the wiser.

Wheeler's project required a different approach. As the climax of his performance, Wheeler applied for a Rhodes Scholarship, the most prestigious in the English-speaking world. True to form, Wheeler forged recommendations from Harvard professors, forged a Harvard transcript showing perfect grades, and--a master stroke--submitted a resume largely cribbed from chaired professor James R. Russell.

If the resume in Wheeler's Rhodes application is anything like the one he submitted for an internship at The New Republic, it boasts of Wheeler's mastery of French, Old English, Classical Armenian, and Old Persian. It also details his six invited lectures, including "From Parthia to Robin Hood: The Armenian Version of the Epic of the Blind Man’s Son (Köroghlu)" and "The Body in the Garden: The Metapoetics of Husbandry from More to Marvell." The resume promises two forthcoming books, including Mappings, Unmappings, and Remappings, abstracted as follows:

Critical work that has attempted to explain the experience of geographical and textual space in modern writing has focused predominantly on the map as an analytical tool of orientation that makes formal writing structures legible. My dissertation, however, articulates a positive and generative potential in the experience of getting lost. Disorientation, then, allows us to come to terms with the difficulty of modernist literature from the ground level--to view these works not as an abstraction seen from the "God’s eye" perspective that is implicit in most maps, nor a teleological outcome of the Enlightenment seen from retrospect. By restoring the experience of disorientation, I argue that getting lost becomes a radical discourse that reflects back to us how we orient ourselves--what we pay attention to as we move through physical space and how we construe meaning as we move through a text from page to page.

This is obviously complete nonsense. But no less obvious is Wheeler's artistic message in submitting it: it is exactly the sort of nonsense liable to garner a scholarship from a fawning Rhodes committee.

As was no doubt Wheeler's design, the Rhodes application proved a bridge too far. The inevitable investigation revealed not only his antics in gaining admission to Harvard, but a plagiarized Junior thesis for which Wheeler had been awarded the Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarship. Rather than face disciplinary proceedings, Wheeler withdrew from Harvard.

But in an audacious epilogue, Wheeler began his transfer routine anew, applying to both Yale and Brown. In a letter of recommendation from Harvard's McLean Hospital, Wheeler praised his work in an internship for which he had in fact been rejected after submitting a falsified application. To his principal letter of recommendation, Wheeler signed the name of the very Harvard dean who had confronted Wheeler with his Rhodes fabrications.

Alas, my profession is one of philistines, and instead of lionizing Wheeler's artistic contributions, the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office charged him with four counts of larceny, eight counts of identity fraud, seven counts of falsifying an endorsement or approval, and one count of "pretending to hold a degree."

I call on Massachusetts' esteemed judiciary to put an end to this assault on the First Amendment. Free Adam Wheeler!

Brown

When did "Brown" become the new thing that we self-important intellectuals are supposed to call everyone who is not of predominantly European, African, and/or East Asian origin? I don't actually object to the term as such. Assuming that we are not going to abandon anytime soon the project of categorizing people by racial or ethnic origin, "Brown" does a fairly good job of conveying American social attitudes toward the people it describes: not subject to the disabilities of Blackness, but not afforded the privileges of Whiteness, either. What bugs me is that everyone around me started using the word without explanation or acknowledgement, as if they had received a universal memorandum so unassailable in its logic as to preclude further discussion.

I did not receive this memorandum. Rather, I distinctly recall coming across the term by accident, in the unprepossessing forum of an "Ask Amy" column. Amy's correspondent complained that her mother disapproved of the writer's boyfriend: "the problem? He is Brown and I am not." There was "Brown" in the Washington Post, a daily newspaper of national reach, as if the term had been in common usage since Dr. Johnson retired to Gough Square. While I could puzzle out the writer's intention from the context, I felt entitled to a footnote, a word of explanation from the Post's copy desk to the effect of "attention readers: by virtue of Style Manual revision 234B, persons of other than predominantly European, African, or East Asian origin will henceforth be referred to as Brown."

I am only a little annoyed because this reminds me of what happened with the word "Asian." When I was a kid, everybody called people of East and South East Asian origin "Oriental." Self-important intellectuals called them "Oriental"; "Orientals" called themselves "Oriental." And then it was decided that the term should change to "Asian." The switch started on the East Coast--at the time I was applying to colleges, everyone I knew in the Midwest still said "Oriental," but I was scolded for using the term while on a college visit in the East. And I've used the word "Asian" ever since, not because I believe that even one person in ten knows why "Oriental" is offensive, but because saying it makes you sound like a redneck. My change in usage, and everyone else's, has made the transition self-reinforcing: anyone under the age of 70 who uses the term "Oriental" today is either unusually sheltered or being deliberately provocative.

(If you're curious, "Oriental" is supposed to be offensive because it divides the world into Occident (West, from the Latin occidere, "to set") and Orient (East, from the Latin oriri, "to rise") with it being Eurocentric to label someone as being "from the East," thereby implying that the speaker's society is located at the central reference point. Ask your Asian friend in the next cubicle over if she knew that.)

But the abandonment of "Oriental" has resulted in a net loss of linguistic specificity, because, again, assuming that categorizing others by ethnicity is an inescapable part of human experience, "Oriental" had a less ambiguous reach than "Asian." Today, when I say "Asian," the listener must decode whether I'm just using the substitute terminology for people we both grew up knowing as "Oriental," or whether I really could be talking about someone of Sri Lankan or Kazakhstani origin. And if I'm talking to a British person, they must guess whether I am translating for their benefit to the British meaning of "Asian," which refers to people of Indian subcontinental ancestry. In America, of course, such people are now "Brown."

And so, much as it vexes me, I too have caught myself saying "Brown." All I want to know is, who gets to decide these things? To whom have we ceded the power to crawl inside our brains and reprogram our labels for the world outside? No, don't answer that question. I fear the response will include a citation to an academic journal of which the title ends in "Studies," and an article making repeated use of "unpack."

***

On a related note, can I just take this opportunity to question the assumption held by many American office workers that Latino janitors don't know the English word "trash"? Whenever people in my office want to dispose of something too large to fit in a standard trash can, they tape a sign to it that says "basura."

Now, if you moved to another country and took a job where a significant part of your job responsibilities included collecting trash, don't you think that within the first day or two you'd probably pick up the word in that country's language for "trash"?

Really what those signs should say is "look, I know a word in Spanish!"

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

I've been working on a lengthy and pedantic follow-up to last Sunday's post about the Obama administration's brief in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. But in the meantime, I'm going to tell you why I love "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," which returned to the ABC Family Network last Monday.

First, Molly Ringwald is in it. Molly Ringwald!

Second, remember Olivia Hussey who played Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet? Well, her daughter India Eisley is in it, and she plays exactly the kind of sarcastic middle school girl I would be if I were a middle school girl.

Third, the season opener incorporated the following sequence of events:

Scene 3: Grace, abstinence-'till-marriage-pledged evangelical Christian, has not spoken to her father since he became angry at her announcement that God won't mind after all when she has sex with her boyfriend Jack. She's on the phone with her mother and brother, who are in the car after dropping the father off at the airport. Expository dialogue reveals that the father, not seen to this point, is taking off on a private plane to render medical aid in a third world country. Grace, who is sprinkling flower petals on her bed in preparation for Jack's arrival and the imminent loss of her virginity, refuses to call her father and apologize before the plane takes off.

At this point it is obvious to anyone watching that John Schneider (Bo Duke from "The Dukes of Hazzard") has not returned for a second season in his role as Grace's father, and the plane is going to crash. (Mrs. P: "Dude, the plane is going to crash." Holy Prepuce: "The plane is totally going to crash.")

Scene 7: Grace, no longer a virgin, delivers the most frank, mature, and empowered address about adolescent sexuality ever spoken on American television. She is happy, fulfilled, in love with her boyfriend, at peace with herself and God. Coming from this character, it is a stunningly bold alternative example for a generation made to feel dirty and fearful about its sexuality by abstinence-only curricula and the Promise Keepers.

Scene 8: Jack comes downstairs. Grace's mom and brother enter, crying. The plane has crashed. Jack announces that he and Grace have just had sex. Grace comes downstairs. Grace's brother, who has Down Syndrome, says (of their deceased father), "you killed him!"

Yes!

Easter Monday

The Holy Prepuce would like to make clear that, should he ever be nailed to an object, he does not want the anniversary celebrated as "Good" anything.

This year, as every year, Christians around the world celebrated Good Friday with reenactments of the Biblical Crucifixion. And, again as every year, residents of Bulacan Province in the Philippines took things just that one step further by actually nailing each other to crosses. The ritual is a perennial journalistic standby: it's easy to schedule coverage, it's always photogenic, and typically there's some hook. Last year's hook was the government health advisory warning penitents to receive tetanus vaccinations, to ensure that they self-flagellate only with "well-maintained" whips, and to disinfect their four-inch nails prior to hammering them through each others' hands and feet. More comprehensive health warnings, such as "don't nail yourself to crosses, you crazy bastards," apparently went unspoken. This year's angle was the revelation that Jewish Australian comedian John Safran was discovered among the penitents, being crucified under an assumed name.

Every now and again, I like to do some original reporting for this blog, so I asked the one person I know in the Philippines what she thought about the practice. Her comments suggest that middle class Manilans have approximately the same relationship to Bulakenyo crucifixion as most Americans have to Appalachian Pentecostal snake handling: it's deeply weird, it's faintly embarrassing that people in other countries know about it, and they've only ever seen it on TV.

My source, who prefers not to be named out of fear at what she described as a reflexive tendency toward "butthurt" against public criticism of Filipino cultural institutions, went on to say the following:

[M]y only opinion on the matter, with my limited knowledge on the subject, is "Holy SHIT that's gotta hurt." I mean, they use real nails and shit. (I always change the channel.) But for a more insightful opinion for your piece, I'll actually quote my Dad, who had some interesting comments when they showed it on TV: these people go through all of that excruciating physical pain every year, then they go home and beat their wives and children, gamble, drink, steal, and engage in all sorts of debauchery.

They're probably in it for the attention they get from the townspeople, like, "Wow, you're so brave and self-sacrificing." I think it takes the concept of the act of confession, in Catholicism, and then magnifies it hundredfold, so these people think that if they just commit to this torture once every year, it makes up for the less godly things they do the other 364 days, in God's eyes.

In other news on the Easter-related themes of corporeal punishment, resurrection, and redemption, I would direct your attention to:

• This article on Alabama judge Herman Thomas, indicted for (among other things) allegedly checking male inmates out of jail, taking them to a specially-furnished storage room near his chambers, and "forcing [them] to expose their buttocks to 'paddling and/or whipping.'"


• The reference, in this article, to the "National Organization for Victims of Juvenile Lifers." The NOVJL website does not disclose the source of its funding, but one suspects that like many "victims' rights" groups, NOVJL is a front organisation for the Corrections Corporation of America or the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. (Both lobby aggressively against bad-for-their-business reductions in incarceration.) But seriously, what kind of an asshole joins a group specifically founded to advocate continued sentencing of 13-year-olds to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole?


• This article on a Maryland plea bargain, under which all charges will be dropped in case of the victim's resurrection. Said a spokeswoman for the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office: "This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection. It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal."

Gaza

You know what I think we should do to solve the crisis in Gaza? I say we get a whole bunch of 747s and take out all of the seats so they can hold 1000 people each. Then we land them at Gaza Yasser Arafat International Airport (GZA), and when the stairways drive up we have a State Department official come out of each plane with a big stack of Green Cards. And then anybody who wants to can get on the planes, and we fly them all to Montana or Wyoming where we give them a big chunk of federal land that is twice the size of the current state of Israel, and everybody gets a brand-new doublewide with water/sewer hookup and premium cable.

Because you have to figure that despite all the rhetoric, a good percentage of Gazans have got to be saying to themselves, "Dude, death to Israel and all that, but this sucks. I'm living 6 to a room, my ass is full of shrapnel, and my mom wants me to blow myself up over some orange grove my grandfather supposedly owned in '48. In America, they have this shopping mall with a roller coaster right inside the goddamn food court. And also they have these chairs where you put in a dollar and the chair gives you a massage, but nobody even uses them because you can sit in the one at the Brookstone for free. And there are these machines that mix Coke with crushed ice and you drink it with a straw, but it's a special staw that opens into a little spoon at the bottom so you can scoop the ice out instead if that's what you want to do. Whereas here, the electricity works three hours a day and Hamas confiscated my spoon. Also, in America, there's this MTV show called 'A Double Shot at Love,' where twelve straight guys and twelve lesbians all live in the same house with these bisexual twin sisters. And every week the twins have to eliminate some of the guys and some of the lesbians, and at the end the winners and the twins have a big double wedding in a hot tub. Dude, screw orange groves."

I'm just saying.

The Politics of Fear -or- America Celebrates We Can't Take a Joke Day, courtesy of The New Yorker

In case you've spent the last 24 hours under a rock, below you will find "The Politics of Fear," the upcoming New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt.


In a display of monumental disingenuity, some members of the national news media are pretending not to recognize this image for what it is: a tongue-in-cheek depiction of certain idiotic beliefs currently bouncing around the right-wing echo chamber. Specifically: that Barack Obama is a Muslim (Mr. Obama shown sporting a dishdasha and taqiyah); that Michelle Obama is a Black radical who rails against "whitey" (Ms. Obama depicted with Afro); that the Obamas' celebratory fist-bump on June 3rd in St. Paul was a "terrorist fist-jab" (fist-bump featured at center of image / Ms. Obama wearing camouflage pants, combat boots, Kalashnikov, copious ammunition); that Obama sympathizes with al Qaeda (portrait of Osama bin Laden); and that the Obamas are unpatriotic (Stars and Stripes burning in fireplace). The blindingly obvious--and profoundly sad--message of this cartoon is as follows: some Americans are so mind-bogglingly bigoted and uninformed that they believe this idiocy.

Who knew that quatorze juillet was also We Can't Take a Joke Day in America? Reading news, blogs, and comment threads throughout the day, I have become increasingly despondent at the the vigor with which my fellow citizens insist on demonstrating their collective lack of any sense of humor. To rescue myself from this despondency, I have attempted to distill their commentary to four key objections, which I will now endeavor to answer as self-appointed defender of Mr. Blitt and the magazine.

1. How could The New Yorker make such libellous implications about the Obamas?

As stated above, where this objection comes from members of the national news media, it is surely disingenuous. I find it inconceivable that one could work for a media organization of national scope and be unaware of The New Yorker's editorial orientation. If you are a left-wing journalist, you probably read The New Yorker. If you are a right wing journalist, The New Yorker is well-known enemy territory. Is it remotely possible that this fiercely intellectual, resolutely pro-Obama publication would not only tack 180 degrees but also embrace the lunatic slurs of the Right's imbecile caucus? The image is satire, and anyone from Rush Limbaugh to Amy Goodman pretending not to understand that is insulting our intelligence.

Where this objection comes from someone else, that person is clearly unfamiliar with The New Yorker--not in itself a crime--but also rather dense: if we cannot hear the screams of "satire" as Old Glory burns in the Oval Office fireplace beneath a portrait of bin Laden, we are a nation struck deaf indeed with literality.

2. Okay, I get it, but lots of people won't, and so it will just fan the very rumors it is mocking.

I don't buy this. If there is still someone out there who a) has never heard that the Obamas are America-hating Black separatist Muslim terrorists, but b) would believe as much if he heard it--is it really very likely that the cover of The New Yorker will provide his first exposure to those ideas? I'm guessing that such fellows do not figure heavily in The New Yorker's subscriber base. Of course, the image has been disseminated widely in both mainstream media and the blogosphere, but anyone frequenting these outlets already has access to either the rumors, the truth, or both.

3. This is so racist.

No, it's not racist, and it's not even ironic-making-fun-of-racism-racism-that's-actually-still-racist. Given that Muslims can be of any race, the only racially specific elements of this image are Michelle Obama's Afro and, arguably, the fist-bump. But those elements are not included to say "ha ha, look at Black people's funny hair and greeting rituals." They're not even included to say "ha ha, look at the stereotypes White people have about Black people's hair and greeting rituals." Rather, those elements allude to specific accusations leveled at the Obamas--the Afro evoking a particular "radical Black activist" image cultivated by, e.g., Black Panther Angela Davis, and the fist-bump of course referring to the pair's much-discussed Minnesota greeting. The right's coöption of each concept is fair game for satire, and it's not clear how Blitt could have depicted them in a non-racially specific way.

4. I get it, but the fact that people are bigoted idiots is not funny; it's pathetic.

It is pathetic, and the most pathetic part of it is that we live in a society where almost no one, including Barack Obama, has the guts to stand up and say "shame on you, America, for making 'Muslim' into a slur" instead of "no, I swear to God I'm a Christian." But what makes life livable and humans interesting is our capacity to weep at the Holocaust Museum one day and scream with laughter at The Producers the next. If you don't believe that something can be both pathetic and funny, I will direct you to a syllabus beginning with Aristophanes, and continuing through Shakespeare, Chaplin, Brecht, Emmet Kelly, and The Sopranos. If you've completed my assignments and still object to this magazine cover, I will present you with the complete Family Circus and we will just have to agree to disagree about the nature of humor.

Carlin

It is said that you first confront your own mortality when a parent dies. Thankfully, my actual parents are very much alive, but with George Carlin's passing last week, the Holy Trinity of my youth has lost its final member. Carlin, Johnny Carson, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.--if I needed to know what was worth thinking about and what to think about it, these were the guys to start with.

I could not have been more than 10 years old when my father took me down to the used record store to buy my first Carlin LP. I memorized Toledo Window Box within days, even though, in retrospect, I must have understood no more than half its content. I was like the British audience hearing Bob Hope's "motel" punchline--they didn't know what a motel was, but they laughed because the joke was over and they knew Bob Hope was funny. I knew Carlin was funny because of what he said about God, farts, and urinals; if I didn't know what he meant by "Ho Chi Minh Trail" or "bong", I knew the material was good enough to land me in the Principal's office when I repeated it, and that one day I would figure out why.

Years later in Constitutional Law, we read Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation. I concluded that ten year old boys can have two types of fathers in this world, and Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" routine provides the litmus test. Some fathers file FCC complaints when their sons hear it on the radio; some fathers buy their sons the album. I was fortunate enough to have the latter, and the person I am today is in no small measure the result.

Yes, I Voted for Hillary Clinton. And What?

Sunday brunch found the Holy Prepuce on a Brooklyn street where the gentrification ratio of square to triangular awnings is still about 50:50. My companion, a surgeon, and I, a lawyer, met in a decidedly square-awninged establishment -- two members of the Barack Obama demographic in an outpost of creeping Obama country. Yet I found myself engaged, not for the first time, in an awkward dance: the coming-out of secret Hillary Clinton supporters. It starts with equivocal, tentative inquiries, and ends with the delight and relief of weary countrymen discovering each other while lost in a faraway land.

In hushed tones, we spoke of bewilderment at our peer group's wholesale ingestion of the Obama Kool-Aid, of our of bafflement at what "change" we were supposed to "believe in," and of our distaste for the calculation of an obviously brilliant man to run an anti-intellectual campaign of revival meetings. We grumbled over the media's penchant to spin any Clinton statement, however self-evident or innocuous, into coded race-baiting -- while laughing off (or participating in) the myriad, explicitly gendered attacks on Clinton's persona. Mostly, we lamented that the woman we think would make the more electable candidate and better President will not likely get to be either. All the while, I suspected eavesdropping diners of incredulity that a respectable establishment would serve such class traitors as ourselves.

Why have I been afraid to admit publicly that I want Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States? Have I been worried that my friends would desert me as an irretrievably racist war-monger? Anyone who knows me can't believe those things. Maybe it's just been easier not to correct the innumerable friends who have assumed in their emails ("we won Iowa!"), online status messages ("10,000 Grave Diggers for Hillary Clinton"), and general conversation that my ticket for the bandwagon was stamped long ago.

But Sunday's brunch has brought me to a critical mass of comings-out, and given me courage to think that there are other Clintonophiles lurking among the denizens of our over-educated demographic. So now I'm outing myself to the world. The Holy Prepuce is an Ivy League educated, East Coast urban professional, and he voted for Hillary Clinton. So there.

Now, as the only Clinton supporter you know, Dear Reader, I'm going to answer your question: should Clinton drop out of the race? Here's what I have to say about that:

Neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates to win, so the nomination is up to the superdelegates. The incessant suggestions that the superdelegates must "honor the popular vote" are nonsensical -- if superdelegates are supposed to rubber stamp the popular vote, what is the point of having superdelegates?

Despite media reports of x superdelegates for Clinton and y superdelegates for Obama, interviews and press releases are not the same as actual votes at the convention. When it comes time to cast their votes, superdelegates will have to ask themselves four questions: (1) Who would make the better President; (2)Who is more likely to beat John McCain; (3) Who is it publicly expedient -- e.g. to honor the primary popular vote -- to support; and (4) Who is it personally expedient to support? (While we may question the legitimacy of #4, this is politics, and politicians are a necessary evil thereof.)

Statements of support right now are probably based on a combination of #1 and #4, with increasing bits of #3 thrown in. But as the convention draws nearer, responsible superdelegates will need to take a hard look at #2. To do this, they will need to examine the polling data on electoral vote outcomes. As we learned in 2000 (and 1824, 1876, and 1888), it's electoral, not popular votes that matter. If either Democrat can beat McCain handily, then #2 is of little importance. But if the margins are small, or if one or both candidates actually trail McCain in the data, it's pretty hard to deny that #2 trumps the other factors. A losing ticket honoring the primary popular vote will not do the Democrats much good.

Indeed, elevating factor #2 above the primary popular vote is arguably the key purpose of superdelegates. They are intended as a countermajoritarian check on primary voters' penchant for selecting George McGoverns -- candidates pleasing to Democrats but unelectable in November. Is Obama the next McGovern? And could the superdelegates deliver a winning ticket by handing the nomination to Clinton? Take a look at the current (May 22) Obama vs. McCain and Clinton vs. McCain match-ups on Electoral-Vote.com. Obama trails McCain by 43 electoral votes; Clinton leads McCain by 99.

Will these numbers be the same in August? Will the superdelegates have the courage to overturn the popular vote? It's too early to say at this point. Which is exactly why Hillary Clinton should stay in the race.

High Stakes Softball at the FDOC • Brokeback Mountain ≠ Sodomite Recruiting Video

In a fit of nerdiness, the Holy Prepuce has added to the site a "random toke" feature. For those readers insufficiently puerile or pretentious to interpret H.P.'s direct allusion to drug culture and oblique reference to French obscenity, this means that if you click in the left-hand column where it says "[c]lick here for a random toke on the Prepuce," the site will redirect you at random to a prior Holy Prepuce post. (Feed and email subscribers will need to visit the website to make this work.)

But enough of the past -- what is tickling the Holy Prepuce right this minute? First, this article concerning "a startling list of alleged abuses and crimes" at the Florida Department of Corrections. The inmate abuse, kickbacks, and misuse of public funds are nothing remarkable for a state prison system. But worthy of note is FDOC's innovative personnel policy: the awarding of promotions based on home runs hit in the inter-departmental softball league! And how did department employees react to this policy? Why, just as anyone would adapt to an environment in which career advancement depends on slugging ability: steroids. Oh yes, and apparently each game was followed by an orgy.

Second, Heath Ledger's hasty addition to this year's "let's play John Williams music under a montage of everyone who's died since the last Oscars" reminds H.P. of the always-reliable Westboro Baptist Church, which picketed the actor's memorial services because of his role in Brokeback Mountain. According to WBC, Ledger's portrayal of a gay cowboy has rendered him a "fag enabler" and condemned him to an eternity of torment in Hell. (As this site has noted before, WBC believes Ledger will have a lot of company there, most recently the victims of the Northern Illinois University shootings, smitten by God because of a 2000 NIU "conference for fags . . . headed by some preacher who had a sex change operation.")

The thing that H.P. has never understood about the religious and other anti-gay opposition to Brokeback Mountain is this idea that the movie is some kind of recruiting commercial for gayness, ready to lead young Christian men astray. But if we take the film's plot as a sort of road map for the gay life that awaits young recruits, what is the take-home message? Basically that (warning: spoiler) your one carefree summer of mountaintop sex will be paid for with a lifetime of broken dreams, divorce, alienation, and either violent death or a middle age lived out in a ramshackle trailer, talking to your dead lover's cowboy shirt. This is an advertisement for the ways of Sodom?

Steroids / We ID Under 27

A.

I say screw it, let baseball players take all the steroids they want. Is juicing any more unnatural than forgoing all productive activity to spend four hours a day in a weight room and another eight practicing a game? Isn't that "cheating" compared to the 99% of human history in which athletes were amateurs who spent their days farming, smithing, or soldiering?

And if it's about setting examples for kids, do you really want your child's role model to be some jock who gave up any hope of an education for the one in ten thousand chance of making it to the big leagues? If you want to scare a kid straight, don’t show him some steroids-make-your-dick-fall-off public service announcement. Show him the 40-year-old shortstop on the AA team bus, screaming down his cell phone that this month's paycheck won't cover his child support either.

B.

Yesterday at the Seven-Eleven, while fumbling for my American Express (yes, I had the $1.01 in cash, but there are few things more satisfying than buying a Slurpee on credit and thinking "this is exactly why we have a subprime mortgage crisis,") I saw this familiar sign:


Now here's my question: if the Seven-Eleven clerk is so gifted that he can distinguish on sight a 26-year-old from a 27-year-old, can't he tell a 20-year-old from a 21-year-old? And if he can, why does he need to ask for ID? And why is he working at the Seven-Eleven, when he could make a killing down on the boardwalk hustling "Stump the Wizard"?

In-Transit Booty

Blogging about Senator Larry Craig presents many of the same difficulties as blogging about former Astronaut Lisa Nowak: how does one add value to the best thing that has ever happened? A conservative Senator who has consistently scored 100% on every anti-gay organization's voting scorecard gets busted in an airport men's room for toe-tapping out a gay sex solicitation to an undercover cop... where do you go from there?

Well, naturally I can provide you with the cover image, above, from this week's Washington Hispanic, because the whole story really is even better in Spanish.

But to be serious for a moment, what I can say is this: if by some fluke it turns out that Craig is telling the truth: that he is completely innocent but pled guilty fearing the consequences of going to trial, I have little sympathy. For the past 30 years, law-and-order conservatives like Craig have been ratcheting up criminal penalties and enacting wholesale transfers of power from judges to prosecutors, to the point that the average "trial penalty" (the difference in sentencing outcome between those arrestees for a given offense who plead guilty and those convicted at trial) has reached, by some estimates, 600%. In joining the tens of thousands of Americans who enter strategic but false guilty pleas each year, Craig would be reaping only what he and his ilk have sown.

Now, that out of the way, I have four additional comments.

1. Any time you find yourself explaining to the police that you employ a "wide stance when going to the bathroom," you probably need to rethink many of the choices you have made in the last twenty-four hours.

2. If any portion of the "Passenger Security Charge" I pay for every flight segment is underwriting gay sex stings in airport men's rooms, I would like to request a refund. If people are really lining up to suck off Members of Congress underneath the stall dividers at MSP International, who am I to stop them?

3. This whole thing just confirms all the stereotypes about male versus female attitudes toward sex. Can you imagine a woman looking to have sexual relations with a complete stranger next to a toilet?

4. According to the police report, the restroom in which Craig was arrested is a frequent venue for sexual activity. Craig was between flights, which suggests that the facility in question was through security and thus available only to ticketed passengers. Does this mean that travelers in the know are purposely routing themselves through Minneapolis for in-transit booty? And at what cost to the economy?

Runner-Up Teachers in Space

Too young to wax nostalgic for the Kennedy Assassination, my generation's childhood "I remember where I was when..." moment was of course the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion that claimed the life of "Teacher in Space" Christa McAuliffe.

I recall processing through my elementary school hallway that January day, past a line of younger students abuzz with the news: "the Space Shuttle blew up!" "Oh, sure," I chuckled, "and that teacher got killed." My disbelief was forgivable, in light of the popularity afforded to the dead-teacher motif in schoolyard humor. (Viz. such classic ditties as Joy to the World, the School Burned Down (And All the Teachers Died) and the redoubtable Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, Teacher Hit Me With a Ruler cycle.)

Flash forward nearly 22 years, and McAuliffe's original backup, Barbara Morgan, is preparing to fly on Shuttle Endeavour this evening. One must allow Morgan props on her cojones, given the 100% historical casualty rate for Teachers in Space.

As the launch approaches, more than half of the 119 original Teacher in Space program finalists have gathered at Cape Canaveral. According to a CNN feature, many of the finalists since "have worked in the aerospace industry, created space camps and established schools with a focus on science and technology." Gail Klink, a finalist from Ohio, has built a two-decade strong career as a motivational speaker on the subject of "launching your life."

I may be the worst person in the world for saying this, but doesn't it seem like the Challenger blowing up was the best thing that ever happened to these people? If the mission had gone off as planned, the Teacher in Space program would have been forgotten in a matter of months as the expensive publicity stunt that it was, a new coat of paint on a manned space program long since bereft of any credible scientific purpose.

And this field of also-rans would have been packed back off into obscurity with their commemorative plastic orbiters. Nobody would still be paying $39.95 to hear some Reagan-era runner-up explain why her honorable mention in a Cold War propaganda contest should inspire the audience to follow their dreams of mortgaging the house and starting that scrapbooking business.

Check your O-rings, Barbara Morgan; careers are waiting to be reborn from your solid rocket fuel flames.

Still More Creationism Museum Fun: Barista Wanted (The Damned Need Not Apply)

The Answers In Genesis Creation Museum is open at last! From previous posts, you will know of my fascination with this institution. The finished product has by all accounts exceeded my expectations. Animatronic tableaux feature human children frolicking alongside dinosaurs; videos demonstrate how metaphorical interpretations of Genesis lead inevitably to internet pornography and abortion.

And the really excellent news is that the museum is seeking a qualified barista. Faithful reader Eliza R. alerted me to this opening at the Museum's "Noah's Cafe." The key job responsibility is the preparation of "fine coffee and other related gourmet beverages," including espresso, latte, and something called "Frappes Chai." As one might expect, other duties include working the register, clearing dishes, and taking inventory.

But the ability to discharge these functions is hardly the sole qualification. Along with her resume, an applicant must submit a "creation belief statement," "salvation testimony," and a written confirmation of her agreement with the museum's Statement of Faith.

Exactly what must one believe in order to serve up a skinny half-caff at Noah's? Some key elements are as follows:

• "No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record"
  


• "The only legitimate marriage is the joining of one man and one woman. God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of marriage"
  


• "The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time"
  


• "Those who do not believe in Christ are subject to everlasting conscious punishment."
  

Nice. When I visit the museum (and I will), perhaps the successful applicant will kindly leave some room in my mocha. It sounds like there's no extra charge for a shot of eternal damnation.

Matzo Lab Bust / The 50-Foot Robot King of Pop

Looking back over the past few posts, I realize that I've been harping on some pretty heavy shit. First Ladies dying in the White House, smokers snuffing it before they can collect their pensions, families of slain police officers viewing graphic simulations of police officer slayings, racist tribal elections, Iraq . . . It's as though I had forgotten that the world is still, at base, a Zippy the Pinhead comic full of carefree aesthetic delights, free to be savored by all takers. In order to restore some balance, I would like to bring two items to your attention.

First, inspectors in Spring Valley, New York recently busted an illicit backyard matzo lab operating out of a converted school bus. Rabbi Aaron Winternitz had been running the operation for the last three Passovers, ever since he bought the derelict vehicle and installed an oven, a human-powered wheat mill fashioned from a stationary bicycle, and, more problematically, an unauthorized gas line from his house. The purpose of the gas line is unclear, since the matzo oven itself is wood-fired--as attested to by the shoulder-high stack of firewood surrounding the vehicle.

Not surprisingly, local officials found the combination of a massive open-flame oven, stacks of combustible wood and dried wheat, and do-it-yourself natural gas fittings problematic when operating 10 feet from a residential structure. Spring Valley matzo futures no doubt traded up on news of the reduced supply; at peak production, the bus was capable of turning out 100 lbs of product per day.

Second, Michael Jackson has announced plans to build a 50-foot robotic effigy of himself in Las Vegas. According to press reports, the device will wander through the surrounding deserts shooting laser beams out of its eyeballs. This is all fine and good, but I know where I'm not taking my 50-foot robot twelve-year-old boy.

Support the Troops!

The recent House of Representatives debate on the nonbinding Iraq War resolution was long on rhetoric and duration, and short on pretty much everything else. The one conclusion I was able to pluck from the bluster is this: our national discourse on the war has been hijacked, at the highest level, by a slogan. "Support the troops!" Whether yea or nay on the resolution, practically every speaker had to recite his or her "support" for the troops. Indeed, the phrase infects the resolution text itself "(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq."

We see it on bumper stickers, yard signs, and lapel pins. "Support the troops!" But what on Earth does it mean? Do I support the troops? Well, financially I sure do--their room, board, and housing gets withheld from my paycheck every two weeks, and the bill for what I'm not paying now will go to my children and grandchildren, with interest. But I'm guessing that's not what the banner on the overpass means.

Does it mean I'm not supposed to spit on them, Vietnam-style, in airports? Fair enough, I don't do that--I think most of us are over the idea that every nineteen-year-old kid in a uniform is a baby killer with personal responsibility for Pentagon policy. (Interestingly, the military justice system doesn't seem quite so progressive--it hung the enlisted staff of Abu Ghraib out to dry with nary a stain on the epaulettes of commanders who authorized the same sexual and religious humiliation techniques across multiple facilities.)

Perhaps "support" is meant in the sense one "supports" English football teams, as in "I support Manchester City, he supports Arsenal"? Are we meant to rush out and buy a new Army "kit" every time they change the camouflage design, then get into pub fights with insurgency supporters and slash their tires every time we lose a street battle?

Seriously, though... I "support" the troops in the sense that I don't want them to get killed. I want them to get letters from home and Xboxes and dental care. I don't want them to come home missing arms and legs--living two miles from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I've seen enough limbless soldiers in the supermarket these past few years for any one lifetime.

But wanting to see your fellow human comfortable and alive is something quite different from blind support of whatever fool errand the government happens to have sent him on. At least, that's the way I see it. Others argue that one can't "support" the troops without "supporting" their mission, and since the failure of a military mission typically involves a lot of soldiers getting killed, I suppose they have a point.

In truth, so long as "support the troops" remains on church signs and baseball caps, it doesn't much matter what meaning we ascribe to it. I can think it means "don't spit on soldiers," you can think it means "don't question the government," military families can be happy to read it, and we all can go home and watch our all-Anna-Nicole-all-the-time cable news.

But when the slogan infects a Congressional debate--and worse yet, hogties a coequal branch of government from exercising its constitutional function as a check on the executive--we've exited the realm of feel-good virtue. The notion of "supporting our troops" has made any serious proposal to cut off funding for the war a political non-starter. Americans believe--or so Congress seems to think--that our soldiers would view being sent home as a personal betrayal. Worse yet, the war's backers insinuate that a halt in funding would not bring the troops home, but rather leave them in the field without supplies or reinforcements. And so the resolution focuses on the sideshow of the President's "surge" of 20,000 troops, while pandering shamelessly to those who so "support" the 140,000 already in Iraq that they will not question the reasons for their presence.

American Relics

$1,500,000 is a lot of money--about the lifetime wages of the average American worker. But it seemed to me a fair price for the handwritten manuscript of George Washington's 1783 speech resigning his military commission.

This document is a relic not only of the man, but of an historic moment cementing the American principle of civilian rule over the military. In the hands of the State of Maryland, it is also a physical reminder of the most notorious event to occur in the state's historic Capitol Building--at that time the Capitol of the United States. The draft contains Washington's own edits, revealing, for example, that he replaced "I here deliver my commission" with the humbler "offer," and that he deleted the words "final" and "ultimate" from his "farewell,"--perhaps foreshadowing his return to public life as the nation's first President.

Yes, I thought, the State's commitment of $1,500,000 was a fine reflection of our values.

But then I discovered that bidding on Britney Spears' hair begins at $1,000,000.

Person of the Year!

Oh ye of little faith, who daily email to say, "Holy Prepuce, you will never be Time Magazine's Person of the Year," come now and repent! For as "Me," and thus, in the second person, "You," I am one of the select few chosen for this year's recognition.

Not only am I capable of anteceding a pronoun, but I would count myself a member of the "new digital democracy," to which this "You" refers specifically. As a blogger, I am apparently one of "the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing," one who "will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."

For all of you spoil-sports who say the editors copped out by naming such a large class of people, I would point out that the choice is not without precedent. Time named "the American Fighting-Man" in 1950, "the Hungarian Freedom Fighter" in 1956, "U.S. Scientists" in 1960, the entire world population under age twenty-five in 1966, "Middle Americans" in 1968, and all American women in 1975.

But this recognition of the great "You" of "Web 2.0" or whatever we choose to call the Internet these days has got me thinking. And what am I thinking about? That's right--porn. Because it occurs to me that Time is the same publication that in 1995 reported 83.5% of online content to be pornographic. Yes, the study on which that article was based has since been discredited, and a more recent estimate puts the number closer to 1%, but still and all, nobody can deny that there is an awful lot of smut out there.

Which means that, into the company of Gandhi, De Gaulle, Pope John XXIII, and yours truly, Time is impliedly placing the purveyors of "Sapphic Erotica," "Couples Seduce Teens," and "Big Sausage Pizza." The final site--I swear to God I'm not making this up--is devoted entirely to photo vignettes featuring unsuspecting pizza delivery men who arrive at girls'-nights-in, and are subsequently persuaded to introduce their members through the product.

I--we--stand on the shoulders of giants.

Ganja Goes Down at the Polls

Yesterday did not bud well for marijuana enthusiasts--voters in Nevada, Colorado, and South Dakota were not kind to Mary Jane as she ran for legalization on a green party ticket but failed to spark the bowl-game win she needed on election day.

America's favorite herb has made some good showings in the news recently, as in this Associated Press feature on the booming success of home and office pot delivery services, complete with corporate-style logos, call centers, and management structures. The granddaddy of them all was sadly busted last year when DEA agents brought down New York-based Cartoon Network, whose roving call center processed upwards of 600 orders per day for its hydroponic output. During one raid, agents found more than 30 pounds of cannabis, individually wrapped in dime bags labeled "Happy Holidays From Your Friends at Cartoon!"

But really, who didn't know that you could dial up weed in New York about as easily as egg foo young? What interests me more is this story out of the Isleta Pueblo reservation in New Mexico.

It seems that one evening last month, two tribal police officers stopped by the Los Lunas Burger King for some sustenance. After proceeding through the drive-through in a marked squad car and full uniform, they parked out on Tribal Road 69 to eat. About halfway through the meal, Officer Henry Gabaldon "noticed a taste in his mouth that he recognized as marijuana," and opened his burger to discover "several small pieces of a green leafy substance." As luck would have it, the officers had brought their field testing kit along on patrol, and the unusual condiment was quickly identified as the herb.

On the officers' return, the drive-through employee initially denied any knowledge of the burgers' contents, pointing out that he merely dispenses what the cook assembles. His story was diminished somewhat in its credibility, however, by the glass pipe protruding from his jeans pocket. When it was all over, the drive-through employee, the cook, and the manager were hauled off to the pokey, after the latter figure was discovered to be possessed of his own managerial pipe and stash.

But drive-through drugs are not exactly a novelty; the New York Avenue "McPharmacy" is a one-stop-shop for all your black market painkiller needs here in the nation's capital. What I like even better is this item from McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

When Leslye Creighton, 41, needed to pass an employment drug screen, she knew that her own urine would not make the grade. She therefore arranged to borrow some from her boyfriend Vincent Bostic, 31. Bostic deposited his urine in a fake penis, the source of which was not specified. Knowing that the old somebody-else's-urine-in-a-fake-penis trick won't fool anyone if the urine is not delivered at a believable temperature, Creighton and Bostic stopped at a GetGo! convenience store on the way to the test site. Creighton wrapped the artificial organ in a paper towel, and asked a store clerk if he would microwave it for her.

The exact sequence of events that followed is not clear. The clerk became sufficiently concerned that the item was an actual, severed human penis as to summon police, but not before doing something involving the microwave that would lead to the couple's plea agreement incorporating restitution for the cost of a new one.

The thing I find most intriguing about this incident is that Creighton had sufficient foresight to recognize that she needed someone else's urine, that it needed to be produced at approximately body temperature, and that she required a means of concealment and delivery sufficient to defeat an "observed urine test." Yet she seems not to have considered that the fake penis gambit tends to presuppose that the test subject is male.

Perhaps by the time Ms. Creighton next applies for a job, the legalization lobby will have been able to hash out a new strategy to reverse its chronic losses and smoke out its enemies. Delivery customers, drive-through chefs, and synthetic phallus microwavers across the land will then raise a collective cheer of victory as the election-day clock sounds its final bong.