March 1, 2004

Oscar Telecast One Big Corporate-Whore-Mongering Sellout   Oscar bombs. "The Passion of The Frodo" sweeps, and more beautiful stars bravely impersonate the genuinely homely to great success. But all the crooked teeth in New Zealand can't save a dull, dull Oscar night. [Salon.com] It was a dud, wasn't it? Here you have the most contentious moment in US politics in many years, and the most anyone with a world stage at the Oscars could say was Sean Penn's allusion to the absence of WMDs in Iraq. I appreciate the bind the actors are in: if they "get political," people will say they have no business doing so; if they remain silent, people will say they missed an opportunity, or were cowards, or whatever. Still, it was a sad day to see Johnny Depp, Bill Murray, AND Sean Penn show up for the ceremonies AND not do something truly transgressive. It's as if they all came to the same conclusion in the same year: If you have to be a whore, you might as well be the best one. The one consolation was seeing Johnny Depp tell a reporter prior to the show (in not so many words) that right after the show ended he would be returning "home" (i.e., France). General Stuff doesn't want his Oscars to be staid and pleasant, friendly fare for Middle America. Fuck Middle America. The Academy Awards are the Gay New Year. They should be appalling to Middle America. They should be dripping with pinko liberal sentiment, self-righteous anger, and faux populism. I know the Academy Awards have never been a truly transgressive affair; in fact, quite the opposite. But I want them to be. I want the bi-sexual costume designers and sadomasochistic actresses and coke-snorting producers to offer their naughty little selves to the world, unashamed of their predilections. When Sean Penn accepts an Oscar, it is truly a sign that the terrorists have won.   1:03:51 PM    comment []

Even Though It Has No Bearing on Bush's Performance as a President, Bin Laden's Capture Looms as Bush's Ace in the Hole A while ago I was writing about the possibility of the US already having Bin Laden in custody, waiting for the fall election to announce his capture. I admitted it was "baseless speculation," but there seem to be enough people talking about it, with enough credible reasons for doing so. Here's another such piece of speculation I just came across: Although she has since claimed her comments were made ‘tongue-in-cheek’, in an December 18th headline run by online version of the ChinaDaily newspaper, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wondered aloud whether the Bush administration is holding Osama bin Laden captive, waiting to break him out as an "October surprise", to precede the November 2004 presidential election. Witnesses to Albright's comment said the ambassador did not appear to be joking when she made the suggestion, while waiting in FOX News studio's green room before an appearance on one of their programs. I personally can’t say with any confidence whether the U.S. has bin Laden in custody somewhere overseas, but given the well-documented relationship between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and Pakistan's military intelligence, the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI), and the fact that Al-Qaeda has been known to receive substantial support from the ISI, it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that bin Laden could be “turned over” by an informant or insider especially in light of the recent multiple assassination attempts on Pakistan’s president Musharraf by Islamic Fundamentalist. Albright’s statement, whether joke or otherwise, is also compounded by the recent proclamation made by FBI director Robert Mueller and reported in the January 14th, 2004 Financial Times where Mueller predicted confidently that Osama bin Laden would be captured, even as he warned that "al-Qaeda would very much relish another high-profile attack inside the United States". Mueller continued, "we probably will have another attack”, but he believed intelligence and defense communities "have disrupted their [al-Qaeda's] capacity". Mueller did not give reasons for his newfound confidence but the article went on to site “media reports from south Asia suggesting that recent assassination attempts on General Pervez Musharraf have stiffened the resolve of the Pakistani president to ensure his country's assistance in the manhunt”.   12:47:30 PM    comment []

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