Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis 2 is out. Here are the dates for her book tour.

Neal Pollack sells out
Maud Newton reports:

While the news is of little interest to me personally, Neal Pollack’s many fans may be interested to learn that the film rights to Never Mind The Pollacks, “the totally untrue adventures of Neal Pollack – world’s greatest living rock critic,” were sold last week to Warner Bros., for a price between $250k -$500k.

He better not beg us to buy his books anymore.

Icelandic system
"... a practice, supposedly based on child-rearing methods in medieval Iceland, of sending teenagers to live with other families in order to learn adult skills and behavior from grown-ups they have not yet learned to manipulate and despise."

This is Katha Pollitt's contribution to The Future Dictionary of America, a dictionary in the tradition of Gustave Flaubert's "Dictionary of Received Ideas," (1880), and Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary," (1911).

(via Newsday)

Not Quite
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd usually hits on interesting issues and raises thought-provoking questions, but her conclusions are always off. In her latest, she quotes a sports columnist writing about American Olympic atheletes: "Somehow, intimidating others is motivating to them." Then, she attempts to tie this in with American foreign policy.

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld thought they could change the American identity by invading Iraq, that they could toughen up our 'tude and remove the lingering post-Vietnam skittishness about force and the "blame America first" psychology.

They thought our shock-and-awe war would change America's image, adding some muscularity that would make Arab foes cower and the world bow down to the U.S. as an unassailable hyperpower.

This is no doubt an ancillary effect, but notice how she fails to mention 911. In his regular column, Fareed Zakaria hits on the more practical, material, real-world choice involved in the decision to liberate Iraq:

By the late 1990s, American policy on Iraq was becoming untenable. The U.N. sanctions had turned into a farce. Saddam was able to siphon off billions for himself, while the sanctions threw tens of thousands of ordinary Iraqis into poverty every year. Their misery was broadcast daily across the Arab world, inflaming public opinion. America and Britain were bombing Iraqi military installations weekly and maintaining a large garrison in Saudi Arabia, which was also breeding trouble. Osama bin Laden's biggest charges against the United States were that it was occupying Saudi Arabia and starving the Iraqi people.

Given these realities, the United States had a choice. It could either drop all sanctions and the containment of Iraq and welcome Saddam back into the world community. Or it had to hold him to account. Given what we knew about Saddam's past (his repeated attacks on his neighbors, the gassing of the Kurds, the search for nuclear weapons) and given what we thought we knew at the time (that his search for WMD was active), conciliation looked like wishful thinking. It still does. Once out of his box, Saddam would almost certainly have jump--started his programs and ambitions.

Democrats, from President Clinton to candidate Kerry, all agree with this. Its disingenuous for partisan liberals to deny it.

Granted, Dowd no doubt agrees with Zakaria that the choice made was executed poorly to say the least, given the US's resources. But it is just more disingenuousness to complain:

Iraq is making us wring our hands over whether to blast our way into Najaf and Falluja, quavering with uncharacteristic sensitivity even as the White House fires verbal mortars at the domestic enemy, John Kerry, for suggesting that we be more sensitive.

Does she want us to behave as Russia did in Chechnya and engage in a scorched earth policy? There's sensitivity and then there's sensitivity.

The new Pew Research Center poll finds the country ever more divided. "The public takes a paradoxical view of America's place in the world," the poll reports, with 45 percent of Americans saying the U.S. plays a more important and powerful role as world leader than it did 10 years ago, and 67 percent saying the U.S. is less respected.

The president who promised a humble foreign policy ended up with a foreign policy inflated by hubris - which is, after all, a Greek idea.

Perhaps the U.S. is playing a more important role as world leader - we are the only superpower - *and* is less respected. Furthermore, the loss of respect could be undeserved or deserved. Why is this a paradox?

In 2000, Bush also promised not to engage in nation-building, nor to halt Rwandan-style genocides. Here, he was playing to his provincial, conservative isolationist base, but 911 demonstrated what a hubristic, naive philosophy that base holds.

Invisible Hand Gives Invisible Middle Finger to the Unfortunate

ORLANDO, Fla., Aug. 17 - Greg Lawrence talks about the $10 bag of ice. Kenneth Kleppach says he was clipped for nearly three times the advertised price for a hotel room. And a man with a chain saw told Jerry Olmstead that he could clear the oak tree off his roof, but it would cost $10,500.

So much for a friendly, helping hand in a time of crisis. Since the winds of Hurricane Charley subsided, officials say a wave of price gouging has swept across central and southwest Florida, putting law enforcement officials into high gear and infuriating storm victims already faced with damaged homes, shuttered workplaces and long lines for basic commodities.

"Why do people try to capitalize on other people's hardship and misery," Mr. Olmstead asked as he fumed over the tree removal. "Of course it angers me. They see an opportunity and, fine, if you want to make a little money. But there's a limit. This is ludicrous."

Charlie Crist, Florida's attorney general, said Tuesday afternoon that he had received more than 1,400 complaints of overcharging from throughout the disaster area. This morning he filed formal complaints against the Crossroads Motor Lodge in Lakeland and the Days Inn Airport Hotel in West Palm Beach, accusing them of price gouging and deceptive business practices.

This past weekend I turned 34 and celebrated Thursday, Friday and Saturday with Gen Y A.(we're sort of together again). Sunday was a day of recovery and sloth, culminating in a viewing of Under the Tuscan Sun which stars Diane Lane. The movie was surprisingly good given the plot and premise, mostly because of the intelligent, charming Lane. Her character hires some Polish laborers to fix up a Tuscan house she purchased and one of them gives her a book by Polish poet and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz who coincidently died on Saturday.

When Communism was smashed in Poland, Mr. Milosz returned to what he called "the country of my first immigration." Arriving in Warsaw after an absence of three decades, he received a hero's welcome. Mr. Milosz was regarded as one of the world's literary immortals. When he chose, he walked and talked with the great men of his time, but he remained humble.

I once had the pleasure of seeing him read in college. He had some great lines, like in his poem No Way Out where he says Irony is the "glory of slaves."

The always interesting but rather sedate Josh Micah Marshall is getting a kick out of Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for the open Illinois senate seat. He posts about him almost every day.

For those who are unfamiliar with Keyes, here's Peter Bagge's report on him from the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.

Keyes is one of those politicians who enjoys engaging in hyperbole and must drive the professional political consultants batty. For instance, in an unusual pitch to Illinois's apathatic non-voters, Keyes argued US Senate candidates shouldn't be directly elected.

Tucker Carlson had Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox on his show when they were both covering the Democrats' convention.

I'll never forget how Carlson reported that candidate Bush mocked Karla Fay Tucker, the Christian fundamentalist who was on Texas's death row at the time. Bush impersonated her saying "Please don't kill me" which Carlson found odd.

In his latest collection, he has a good piece on Dick Morris's fall from grace. Morris was caught with a prostitute and actually had a phone conversation with President Clinton while the hooker sucked his toes, according to her.

Christopher Buckley wrote a perceptive take on the Democratic convention.

On Tuesday night there was the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle, on the podium saying - I wrote it down - "Americans aren't asking for special deals from Washington!" That giant snorting sound you heard was a year's worth of California chardonnay being expelled from the nasal passages of 15,000 K Street lobbyists.

He's predicting the Republicans will put on doozy of a show, too.

For the Red Team next month, I see a darkened Madison Square Garden. On the huge screen above the stage, dramatic images of American tanks roaring into Baghdad, the speakers suddenly booming Queen's "We Will Rock You!"

The Atlantic Monthly has an interview with him.

(via Bookslut)

21st Century Franz Ferdinand
In his Op-Ed, Jeffrey Goldberg reports Israel's extreme right wing are openly discussing their desire to kill Ariel Sharon.

Avi Dichter, the chief of the Israeli internal security service, has been for months running around - to borrow a phrase from George Tenet - with his hair on fire over the threat. He has warned of the potential for attacks against the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque, on the Temple Mount; such a strike, he said, would set off global war between Muslim and Jew - a goal the radical yeshivas of the West Bank share with Al Qaeda.

Here are some letters to the editor about the piece.

Scotland's Franz Ferdinand will be touring the States in September.

Amy Poehler, comic genius, was on Celebrity Poker. She's silly cubed.

The Group of 20 extracts concessions from the "Capitalist Center"

Do I detect a change of direction in the winds? Ever since the Battle of Seattle, respectable opinion has focused on American, European, and Japanese agricultural subsidies - to a tune of $300 billion a year - as the great injustice of the global economic system. Almost 5 years later, the poor nations of the world, led by Brazil, China and India, have convinced the US and EU to confront their powerful agriculture lobbies.

Although the proposed deal would only create a framework for further talks, it would for the first time commit the European Union to eliminating its controversial farm export subsidies

and

The United States yielded to pressure from developing countries on Friday and agreed to make a 20 percent cut in some of the $19 billion in subsidies it pays to American farmers each year.

This during an election year, no less.

Not everyone was satisfied with the concessions. A delegate from the Dominican Republic said the proposed framework agreement was still a betrayal of developing countries. And Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam International in Geneva, said that the rich countries could create new subsidies by using loopholes in the agreement.

Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, the Dutch economy minister and chairman of a delegation of ministers from the European Union, disagreed. He argued that the proposed agreement reflected the growing muscle of the developing world, especially of countries like Brazil, China and India.

"The world has changed; we now live in a truly global world,'' he said, adding that these developing nations had changed the geopolitical boundaries of the talks and forced the new agreement.

I thought the Bush administration was chronically unilateralist. What gives? Even the hated WTO is impinging on our beloved rogue state's sovereignty:

Since the failure of the talks in Cancún, the United States lost a case brought by Brazil that challenged its cotton subsidies as illegal. That case, before the World Trade Organization's dispute body, could force the United States to lower its cotton subsidies even without these negotiations.

The trade talks aren't a done deal, however.

But talks could run aground on such issues as how much Japan can protect its rice or Norway its dairy products. Celso Amorim, the top trade negotiator for Brazil and an important negotiator here, said there were still several disputes to be resolved.

If the talks succeed, they are expected to lead to as much as a $3 trillion gain in the world economy.

Oh, is that all?

"... rallying a nation of television viewers to hysteria, to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy!"

Hard to believe I was unfamiliar with this line from the orginal Manchurian Candidate until I came across it reading about the remake. It has a little more "umph" now that government officials regularly predict another atrocity on US soil before the Presidential election.

What always struck me about the original was the brainwashing sequences in the Soviet/Chinese military hospital. The white, brainwashed American soldier saw a room full of white women in place of the Chinese and Soviet brass, whereas the black soldier saw a room full of black women.

This reminded me of the Xenophanes quote about religion:

Ethiopians imagine their gods as black and snub-nosed; Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired. But if horses or lions had hands, or could draw and fashion works as men do, horses would draw the gods shaped like horses and lions like lions, making the gods resemble themselves.

A film about Che Guevara is in development. Steven Soderbergh will direct and Benicio Del Toro is rumored to be playing Guevara, which gives me chills. Remember Del Toro's Academy Award winning performance as a Mexican cop in Traffic? He was also memorably intense in China Moon and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Not to mention 21 Grams.

The excellent actor Javier Bardem will also be in the cast. He starred in the wonderful films The Dancer Upstairs and Before Night Falls.

Mass Delusion

Francis Wheen has a new book out titled How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World.  He wrote a fascinating and entertaining biography of that great debunker and theoretician Karl Marx, so I'd be surprised if his new one isn't wonderful as well. Recently, the Guardian published his list of Top Ten Modern Delusions.

Julian Sanchez interviews Martha Nussbaum

oh well

For those keeping track, my relationship with "Generation Y gal" A. didn't work out. Must have been my mild case of Lackadasia.

Looking back, the past three months do seem like one of those too-good-to-be-true TV commercials, you know, where a couple is giddily running slo-mo through the green fields and it's a beautiful spring/summer day. Usually it's an ad for tampons or diamonds or some other non sequitur product. I believe Beck used this archetypal footage in one of his videos.

The Minor Fall, The Major Lift has been one of the things cheering me up, so keep him in mind if a relationship of yours abruptly ends. Who says blogs are overrated?! They do keep your mind fairly occupied, when it might otherwise be frantically romanticizing the recent past and raking you over the coals.

The passing of Marlon Brando causes Heather Havrilesky to do a little Rabbitblogging in her Salon column.

She's sort of a younger, less-political, whackier version of Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich is a guest columnist for the New York Times this month which caused Timothy Noah to start a "Draft Ehrenreich" movement amongst Times readers. She did once write for Time magazine.
 

This New York Times Magazine article on graphic novels includes a nice interactive feature.

Irony in Iraq
It's easy to forget the reptiles whose power allows them to be the cause of so much suffering and fear are merely flesh and blood like you and me, however chilly their blood is. Stripped of power, they inevitably come across as shrunken and pathetic.

Saddam Hussein and much of the former Baath leadership appeared before the Iraqi Special Tribune this past week.

During the long months that most of the defendants had been held, they appeared to have had little or no information about what was happening in Iraq. One man, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, 56, a former bodyguard and secretary to Mr. Hussein, named the Iraqi he would like as his lawyer, only to look puzzled at the chuckles about him in the court. The man in question, Malik Dohan al-Hassan, was named justice minister recently in Iraq's new interim government.