The Raven

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Lawyers and Painters

According to an old proverb:

Lawyers and painters can soon make black white.

Another one, of Spanish province, holds that:

When two dogs strive for a bone and the third runs away with it, there's a lawyer among the dogs.

Which goes to show you that people have mistrusted lawyers ever since the evil breed began to walk among us. "That's just a lot of legalese," and "It sounds like a legal argument," are other ways of saying that sophistry is edging out the facts of a matter.

So. We watched the UNSC dog-and-pony show this morning, and we reviewed the transcript of Powell's presentation, and the overall impression is that where a spell-binding exhortation to take decisive action was needed, we instead got a cartload of courtroom antics gussied up with a pile of PowerPoint panels.

It's the lawyer thing. Powell tried to lead us along an "If A and B, then C and D" syllogism but I couldn't have been the only one scratching my head at the weakness of the evidence. If there was a zinger in the bunch, it was this tape:

A: "Remove. Remove."

B: "I got it."

A: "Nerve agents. Nerve agents. Wherever it comes up."

B: "Got it."

A: "Wherever it comes up."

B: "In the wireless instructions, in the instructions."

A: "Correction. No. In the wireless instructions."

B: "Wireless. I got it."

A: Nerve agents. Stop talking about it. They are listening to us. Don't give any evidence that we have these horrible agents."

Why isn't this enough? Because it's courtroom evidence. This is a lawyer showing slides to a jury in order to solicit a guilty verdict. That's not how or why a nation moves to war.

The Yo Generation

Pepsi's in trouble. Seems that they've run afoul of Russell Simmons and his Hip-Hop Summit Action Network over their Superbowl ad that featured the delightful family banter of the Osbournes.

The story begins a few months back, when Pepsi yanked an ad featuring rapper Ludacris. They did that due to pressure from conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly, who had read some of Ludacris's lyrics on his program and urged a boycott to protest Pepsi's use of the rapper as a role model. The Hip-Hop lobby sensed a double standard at work:

"The boycott is being called in response to Pepsi dropping Ludacris as spokesman and subsequently picking up the Osbournes, who are no less vulgar."

I'm no expert in the calculus of vulgarity, but can we say that Ozzie and Ludacris are precisely equivalent in terms of foul mouthedness? The Raven senses a shakedown in progress.

They're On a Roll

For a final look at today's adventure in legal maneuvering, we have this story in which a Panama City Beach couple is suing McDonald's over their being served a stale bagel.

They contend in the suit that John O'Hare broke teeth and bridgework on Feb. 1, 2002 when he bit into the bagel. The suit alleges the wife "lost the care, comfort, consortium and society of her husband."

Tracey Johnstone, the owner of the branch is mystified, saying she's never had such a complaint before and doesn't understand how someone could be injured this way, "It's a bagel," she said.

Ah, but a deadly bagel.

5:21:30 PM

A Dog's Breakfast

That's what an Australian I worked with used to call anything that was discordant and unfocused. Not unlike the signals pinging in about the economy, NASA, our foreign policy—the orchestra hasn't started playing yet and the crowd murmur communicates only a jangled air of expectancy.

Eyes are on the UN this morning, where Colin Powell will be addressing the Security Council to wrangle a consensus for our military action against Iraq. To succeed, he'll need to employ the full power of rhetoric, not unlike the Roman orator Cato, who used to end every one of his addresses to the Senate in 150 BC with the words, "Oh, and I think Carthage must be destroyed."

Night Gravity

While we're on that subject, you might take a look at this interview the Atlantic Monthly held with poet Stanley Plumly. What caught my attention here was the tremendous value Plumly places on the power of words. For example:

Language, at its best, is not easy, even though the task of the poem, in Yeats's famous phrase, is to make it "seem a moment's thought." For me, language rests in a state of night gravity, and I must work very hard to bring it effectively to light.

It is rather distressing to note that so many blog writers seem to view their efforts as solely confined to the act of transmitting information; the ability of words, joined well, to engage and persuade the reader to not only reach the destination but also to enjoy the journey along the way is something not to be underestimated.

A Pajama-Wearing Buffoon

That's how playwright and director Justin Butcher has cast the character of George Bush in a satirical play titled, "The Madness of George Dubya," now gathering momentum in London.

Long a staple of political commentary, the satiric play has fallen out of favor and it's nice to see this form being used in precisely the right way—to get people laughing first, then thinking deeply about the embedded messages. Here's an excerpt:

"Often times I get confused and forget stuff," he says, as he rails against the risk from "Islamic tourist states."

"Tourists are brown folks who get on planes and come to America and do bad things, so we're having a war on tourism," he says in one of various risque wisecracks in the play.

Wouldn't it be appropriate for someone on Broadway to whip something like this together and use the strength of drama to engage the body politic? Instead, they keep grinding out pointless, vapid musicals that are burying the artform beneath the weight of its own irrelevance—and it doesn't have to be that way. Details on "The Madness" here.

It's a busy day at Raven HQ; more later if possible.

9:42:31 AM