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Friday, July 22, 2005
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Where Are They Now?
The popular new Wo'C reality TV series that looks up last year's wingnuts and finds out if they've been committed yet.
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Today our guest will be Annie Jacobsen, who got her 15 minutes of fame last summer by getting scared by some Arab men on a plane who all seemed to know each other. When it turned out that they DID know each other because they were all members of a band, did she forget the whole thing? Nope! And when NOT A FRIGGING THING HAPPENED TO THE FLIGHT, did Annie say, "That's a relief. Silly me for getting my knicker in a twist that way?" No, she wrote a long, detailed column about it, and then told her story on various talk shows and to other wingnut reporters until eventually a congressional hearing was held to ask what the hell was wrong with her. That's the Annie Jacobsen story
So, you won't be surprised to learn that what Annie has been doing lately is still writing about that flight she took last summer.
Oh, and she also had a baby -- since it was a boy, he could grow up to marry Meghan Cox Gurdon's as-yet unborn daughter Phlanx, and together they could breed a new race of clueless people.
Anyway, April's chapter in the sage was entitled "Part XIII: Annie Jacobsen Gets a Visit From the Feds." They take her to Gitmo for being such a goose and wasting so many people's time, and they let her know what REAL terror is. The End.
No, wait, Annie has more:
The call came a little over a month ago, on my cellular phone -- which is not listed.
That's how you know it really was the feds -- they used the Patriot Act to get Annie's unlisted cell phone number.
It went like this:
Hello Annie, this is [name withheld, and name withheld, and name withheld and name withheld]. We're from the Department of Homeland Security."
"Yes."
"We'd like to set up a time to talk with you."
"Okay, now is good."
"Actually, we'd prefer to come to your house. How is March 15?"
"Not so great. That's three days before I'm due to have a baby…"
They came anyway. To my house in Los Angeles. By plane from Chicago.
The fact that they came by plane from Chicago is significant, in that if they had taken the bus or hitched or something, it might mean that they took Annie's Scary Skies stuff seriously. Oh, and from all this we learn that Homeland's Security's Office of the Inspector General is the division in charges of nutcases.
The four federal agents showed up exactly on time, in a rented green mini-van, carrying briefcases and wearing suits (it was 75 degrees).
And now you know the REST of the story.
My husband led them to our house through the garden and, from where I sat in my kitchen, I could hear their comments: nice garden, pretty plants, too bad palm trees don't grow in Chicago. So, I thought, federal agents are people too.
And they thought, "I guess gardners really are retards with spaces."
Anyway, there are four pages of this kind of blather, so let's cut to the chase: the visit from the Homeland Sercurity agents proves that ANNIE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG!
On the telephone, the agents explained to me that the Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General, has been investigating flight 327 and flying DHS agents around the country to talk to various parties -- the flight attendants, pilots, federal air marshals and the passengers. They had saved me for last.
I always put off the worst until last too.
Here's what I find fascinating: while one arm of the government (the Federal Air Marshal Service) has vehemently maintained all along that "nothing happened on flight 327," the other, more muscular arm (the Department of Homeland Security) has been conducting a rather large investigation about it. Based on my 4 ½ hour meeting with the agents, I can tell you that not only have they been investigating what did happen during the flight, but they've also been investigating who botched the subsequent investigation as well as how it got botched.
When I worked for the government, I once had to investigate a woman's claim that the Russians were following her, had bugged her house, and had placed a tracking device on her car. While I and my bosses were pretty certain that the woman had mental problems (because why the heck would the Russians go to all that trouble to spy on a housewife married to a man who no longer had any access to anything), she had written to her congressman, and he had requested an investigation. (And since he belonged to HPSCI, we had to oblige him.)
A few years previous to that, a colleague of mine had to investigate a man's claims that the Cubans regularly snuck into his house and re-arranged his furniture -- had to, because the man was a congressman. (Well, at that time he was a former congressman, but we still had to do an investigation.)
Anyway, my point is that if Homeland Security's OIG really is investigating Annie's silly story, it's most likely because some nitwit in Congress requested that they do it. Or else, it's because Homeland Security is trying to score points against the Air Marshalls and/or FBI, possibly as part of a turf battle.
Besides, even if somebody did "botch the investigation," it still wouldn't mean that there was anything to Annie's claim that the Syrians were conducting a terrorism dry-run on her flight --so she can hardly claim this as vindication, just because some agents interviewed her.
And if these men in suits really were from the Office of the Inspector General, somebody should investigate them, because, per Annie, they said things that would be inappropriate to tell an uncleared, civilian witness in a case involving possible national security concerns.
For instance:
Standing in my kitchen, one of the agents said, "What I can tell you is this: Mohammed Atta was one of the passengers on that flight with James Woods." (Apparently, this information has never been made public.)
And apparently, Annie was the journalist that Homeland Security chose to break this important story. Because Womens Wallstreet is the nation's most influential paper.
And Homeland Security must want the item publicized if they told it to blabbermouth Annie, but they also must think that she did an effective job of getting the story out, since it hasn't been confirmed by Homeland Security or any other journalist.
Either that, or (a) these are some shockingly indiscreet agents; (b) They were testing Annie ; or (c) there was some kind of a misunderstanding and/or some lying involved on somebody's part.
They continued to ask my husband and me question after question but, in the course of the morning, here are some additional details I gathered -- things that I didn't otherwise know:
And if only the pilot would have landed at one of those airports, the lives of everyone on board might have been saved.
Oh, wait, NOTHING HAPPENED, and the plane arrived safely at its destination.
- The Federal Air Marshal (FAM) supervisor at LAX took statements from my husband and me on the back of an envelope, borrowing a notepad from another FAM.
Not only didn't we know this before, now that we do know, we care even less
This passenger also didn't see the so-called musicians play "Danke Shoen" at the Las Vegas Hilton, proof positive that these guys were terrorists!
There's more stuff that we didn't otherwise know, except I'm pretty sure I knew it before. So, let's skip to where Annie tells us what it all means.
The agents who sat with me all morning going over the events of flight 327 seemed sincerely committed to getting to the bottom of what happened on that flight. It seemed obvious that they believe something happened. Was it a probe? A dry run? A training exercise or an intelligence gathering mission? My sense is that the jury's still out on a hard and fast answer. But flight 327 was far from a situation involving 13 hapless Syrian musicians and a case of bad behavior.
No, it was a situation involving 13 hapless Syrian musicians who may have behaved in a culturally inappropriate manner, lingering 9/11 fears, and a ninny. (A new sitcom on NBC this fall!)
There were 13 men on a domestic flight acting in such a way that many passengers felt their lives might be in danger. And yet not one of the individuals responsible for that threatening behavior was detained. Only two were put under light questioning, let alone medium or heavy questioning.
Let alone interrogation with rubber hoses, let alone the full Gitmo-style treatment they deserved for making a white woman nervous.
Okay, here's what bothers me the most about Annie's continual ravings: her belief because she was scared, somebody should be punished for it. Bottom line: The men's behavior wasn't "threatening" just because Lil' Panic Annie felt threatened. It isn't terrorism just because Annie was terrified. Geez, can't she just face the fact that even though she got scared because a group of Arab men acted all foreign-y, that doesn't prove that they did something wrong? Can't she even consider the possibility that SHE's the jerk?)
The latest chapter in the never-ending Terror in the Skies™ (really -- they claim that trademarked it) adventure series is from June. Let's take a quick look at it, even though I can't take much more Annie today.
Part XIV: Will the Ambassador of Syria Stay Silent?
Ambassador Imad Moustapha, Syria's number one diplomat in Washington, has been making headlines again -- ones that hardly seem diplomatic. In late May, Syria cut all military and intelligence ties with the United States.
Yeah, he's in the news now that relations with Syria are strained, but the really important thing you should know about Moustapha is that he refused to admit to Annie that those musicians were really terrorists.
I am personally familiar with Moustapha's persecution complex, as well as his resistance to getting to the truth via the facts.
Annie is claiming that HE has a persecution complex and a resistance to truth and facts???
Let me remind readers of my own tangle with Ambassador Moustapha. It came on the heels of a Letter to the Editor he wrote to the Washington Times, attacking award-winning journalist Audrey Hudson by labeling her paranoid verging on hysterical
Annie, he was referring to YOU there -- he said the claims in Audrey's piece were "paranoid bordering on hysterical," and they were your claims, honey.
and lambasting an article she wrote, "Scouting Jetliners For New Attacks." In this July 22, 2004 piece, Hudson detailed several examples in support of the ongoing theory that dry runs have been taking place on U.S. airplanes. Hudson at that time had interviewed me as well and wrote about my harrowing experience on flight 327 with 14 Syrians as a possible example of one such dry run.
And if Annie got scared, the flight was "harrowing."
Since our run-in last summer, I've followed Imad Moustapha in the news, not only because Syria has taken center stage but also because I have some additional questions for him. Questions that could likely solve the mystery as to whether or not the men on flight 327 might have been conducting a dry run.
Here's why: I've located a photograph of Nour Mehana and his Syrian back-up band taken when the group played one of its gigs last summer -- a gig they specifically told Federal agents (when questioned at Los Angeles airport) they had played. But here's the problem: The band members in the photograph are not the same group of men from flight 327 who identified themselves as such to Federal agents. Maybe Moustapha can explain why.
Is Annie's theory that Nour came to the U.S. with a group of real musicians, played with them at his various U.S. gigs, and then had them killed and replaced by terrorists so they could do a terrorism dry-run on the flight from Chicago to Los Angeles? If so, I hope she gets a chance to ask somebody about it. (Maybe a shrink would be a good person to start with.)
Anyway, "Now that military and intelligence ties with the U.S. have been severed," Annie wants to use the situation to focus attention on her harrowing flight, because heaven knows, it still the most important thing that has ever happened. She suggests that we all send Moustapha a form email asking him to "to please put journalist Annie Jacobsen in touch with Nour Mehana and his back-up band immediately." But what I want to know is: what's to stop "journalist Annie Jacobsen" from going to Syria, locating Nour Mehana and his back-up band, and interviewing them? I mean, if she's going to make this one story her life's work, shouldn't SHE be the one who does the heavy lifting? Geez, what kind of a wuss demands that the people whom she's maligned do all her work for her?
And that, people, is what happened to Annie Jacobsen. Next week's guest will be Judson Cox. At one time he was the editor-in-chief of North Carolina's largest circulation newspaper. Then he mysteriously vanished from sight. Did he happen to cross NC's Dr. Mike Adams, and tear-gassed to death? Was he eliminated by Justin Darr, the former hottest young conservative writer on the internet? And speaking of THYCWOTI, what role does Yosef play in all of this?
We don't know. But maybe by next week we'll find out something that we can print. Or maybe not -- this may be a short-lived series.
8:57:14 AM 
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Ultimate Wingnut Challenge: Killing Off Two of Our Life-Style Contestants
The votes are in, and it seems that Kathleen Parker has been banished from Wingnut Island. We would give her some lovely parting gifts, but frankly, we don't want to, because she bugs the heck out of us.
So, instead of Rice-a-Roni and Turtle Wax, she will receive this rendition of one best-loved columns from the past, "Gay marriage: A trip to the moon on Gossamer wings?"
I figure I'm a fairly typical middle-of-the-road heterosexual married woman when I say: I love gays and, well, the whole gay thing. I love all my gay friends and relatives, not to mention my hairdresser; I love what gays do to urban neighborhoods; I love gay humor, gay style and whatshisname in "My Best Friend's Wedding."
I was what we used to call a "fag hag" when you could still use the term affectionately without fear of offending - before most of today's gays were out of diapers (changed most likely by a mom or a dad, not by Heather's two mommies or Douggie's two daddies). Thanks to my very best friendship with my gay first cousin, I've had many a gay time as a token belle in the heart of San Francisco's Castro district.
In other words, no one who knows me would call me a homophobe.
No, the people who know her probably call her a ninny. But I do love her unashamed use of the "Some of my best friends are gay" claim to preface her her argument against gay marriage.
Leaving God out of the equation, it is irrefutable that Nature had a well-ordered design. Male plus female equals offspring. It is a certainty that male/male and female/female unions don't meet Nature's standard. They may occur "naturally" in that one does not consciously elect to Be Gay, but such unions fall short of any design that matches Nature's intentions.
So, if Nature intended sex to propagate the species, that means that the government shouldn't grant some citizens certain rights and benefits. Makes sense to me.
If the state goes out of its way to make marriage attractive, it is because marriage is so difficult and, in many ways, unnatural. It is far more natural for humans, animals that we are, to enjoy gratification whenever and wherever than it is to settle for decades into a system of monogamy.
But wait! I thought Kathleen just said that homosexuals should be penalized by the state for not doing what Nature intended. Now she's saying that nature never intended monogomay, so the state should reward it. She is either brilliant in her stupidity, or one of the finest wingnut minds who ever lived.
And anyway, shouldn't we as a society be happy that gays want to give up the "gratification whenever and wherever" thing, and settle for decades into a system of monogamy? I mean, why should they get off easier than anybody else?
But I'll quit now -- Kathleen is just too irritating to take in large doses.
And that brings us to our other banished contestant, Carrie Lukas. Carrie put up a good fight with her call to make it illegal for girls to serve as interns, have sex, or drink beer, but she just couldn't beat the name-brand contestants -- which is why I recommend that she change her name to Carrie Nation. But it was a close race, and if Adam Yoshida starts blogging again, James Lileks may be rafting back to Minnesota in search of Bath and Body Works Mint/Eucaplyptus shampoo and those cute seasonal paper towels they sell at Target.
But as Carrie walks the Gangplank of Shame, here are a couple of her clips. The first is from "Last Call on Ladies' Night:
In New Jersey, it's last call on Ladies' Night. This week, director of the state division of civil rights, J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, announced that the Garden State will henceforth ban the longstanding practice of offering drink and admission discounts to women on designated ladies' nights.
[...]
Of course, the ladies' night ruling is also laughable for its unchivalrous nature. What's next, ticketing men for opening doors or giving up their seats on the bus? Yet this is the logical outcome of a campaign to eradicate any acknowledgement of difference between the sexes.
Yeah, Ladies' Nights are all about chivalry. Bar owners give women cheaper drinks on those nights because they know that women make less money than men (as they should -- Carrie has made that claim several times), and so the bars want to help out these damsels in distress.
Get real, Carrie -- Ladies' Nights are about drawing in the men with the promise of a roomful of tipsy women. It doesn't seem all that chivalrous to me.
The second clip is taken from "Mass-Scare-A":
In Europe, activists have convinced the government to ban the use of certain substances, known as phthalates, in cosmetics.
So are women being silently massacred by our mascara? Not exactly. In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the effects of these substances on rats. Analysts concluded that rats that became ill had absorbed the equivalent of four and a half bottles of nail polish a day for 70 years. The Food and Drug Administration examined this and other data and concluded that these ingredients are safe as used in cosmetics.
Why, then, did the European Union ban the use of phthalates in cosmetics? Because something called the "precautionary principle," says, in effect, we must assume every chemical is dangerous until it's proven safe.
Proving something safe, of course, is an impossibly high standard. No one can prove that something will never, ever be harmful. But it's a principle that these activists want to apply to our cosmetics.
Not our sacred cosmetics! The fiends!
Each day, people take calculated risks when we decide how to get to work and what to have for lunch. There is always a possibility of danger, but the risks need to be kept in perspective. Unfortunately, oftentimes, people overestimate some risks and overlook others. People who inflate the likelihood of a plane crash may opt to make a cross-country drive - actually increasing their odds of having a deadly accident.
And people who inflate the liklihood of getting cancer from fingernail polish may opt to keep their fingernails bare, and thus run the risk of not attracting a man, getting married, and having children. And since the earlier you have children and the more children you have, the lower your risk of breast cancer, this means that not wearing fingernail polish COULD LEAD TO BREAST CANCER!!!
(Since Carrie didn't actually make this point, you were wise to vote her off the island).
Anyway, Carrie's parting gift is the following classic column by Peggy Noonan. Glenstonecottage suggested we reprint it to remind people of our proud wingnut heritage. (It's also Brad's first nominee for the Wingnut Top Ten Columns of All Time.)
So, with no more ado, here are the highlights of Peggy's "Dolphin Angels Sent By St. Ronald Reagan Saved Elian; Meanwhile, Clinton Was Getting a Blow-Job and Committing Treason, Probably":
From the beginning it was a story marked by the miraculous. It was a miracle a six-year-old boy survived the storm at sea and floated safely in an inner tube for two days and nights toward shore; a miracle that when he tired and began to slip, the dolphins who surrounded him like a contingent of angels pushed him upward [,,,].
And of course this Saturday, in the darkness, came the nightmare: the battering ram, the gas, the masks, the guns, the threats, the shattered glass and smashed statue of the Blessed Mother, the blanket thrown over the sobbing child’s head as they tore him from the house like a hostage. And the last one in the house to hold him, trying desperately to protect him, was the fisherman who’d saved him from the sea -- which seemed fitting as it was Eastertide, the time that marks the sacrifice and resurrection of the Big Fisherman.
[...]
The great unanswered question of course is: What was driving Mr. Clinton? What made him do such a thing?
[...]
Was Mr. Clinton being blackmailed? The Starr report tells us of what the president said to Monica Lewinsky about their telephone sex: that there was reason to believe that they were monitored by a foreign intelligence service. Naturally the service would have taped the calls, to use in the blackmail of the president. Maybe it was Mr. Castro’s intelligence service, or that of a Castro friend.
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
[...]
And some of us, in our sadness, wonder what Ronald Reagan, our last great president, would have done. I think I know. [...]
Mr. Reagan would not have dismissed the story of the dolphins as Christian kitsch, but seen it as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God’s creatures had been commanded to protect one of God’s children. [...]
But then he was a man.
And that, children, is how you do wingnuttery.
Anyway, the Sadly, No-ers reminded me of another special wingnut, Annie "I Was Terrorized by a McDonald's Sack" Jacobsen. Later, I'll let you know what she's been up to since the Syrian Wayne Newton and his terrorist cell caused her to fear for her life by failing to smile at her. (Okay, I'll give you a hint: Terror in the Skies, Parts XIII and XIV.)
But for now, here is our Life-Style Team roster, and the number of negative votes they received:
Captain Mrs. Peggy Reagan (6)
Lt. Dennis Judeo-Christian Prager (8)
Private Gnat's Daddy Lileks (15)
2:12:37 AM
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2005
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