If it weren’t for the slight
whiff of anti-semitism which surrounded his election campaign, I would be nothing short of delighted by George Galloway’s performance today in front of a US Senate sub-committee investigating Iraqi oil-for-food kickbacks.
What is, perhaps, most striking is the degree to which his presence highlights a clash of political cultures. Galloway showed no deference or respect for the US Senate, but nor would he or many other MPs do so in Parliament. The degree to which his behaviour seems slightly shocking - not just the content of his testimony, but his overall demeanour - indicates how often American politicians evade the hard questions. This is at least partially caused by an almost intertial respect for power, not just on the part of those in political life but also the national US media. Closer to the corridors of power than their British counterparts, American reporters are more easily coopted.
Some choice excerpts from Galloway’s testimony:
On the accusations against him: “I am here today - but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever - and you call that justice.”
“What counts is not the names on the paper. What counts is where’s the money, senator? Who paid me money, senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars? … The answer to that is nobody - and if you had anybody who paid me a penny, you would have produced them here today.”
“You have nothing on me, senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad.”
To sub-committee chair Senator Norm Coleman: “I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice.”
On his two meetings with Saddam Hussein: “The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and maps - the better to target those guns. I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war.”
And on the most recent war: “Senator, in everything I said about Iraq I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong - and 100,000 have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies.”
“I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when the British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas … I have a better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do.”
[Sources here and here.]
Self-promoting grandstanding? Maybe. But it makes a change from the usual grovelling and deference.
I still haven’t made up my own mind about how dodgy I think Galloway is, but I have decided that I really like Oona King (who he just defeated as MP for Bethnal Green & Bow), even if she did vote for the Iraq war. Her father was expelled from the US for draft-dodging, while her grandad founded the NAACP. Her mother, meanwhile is Jewish (hence her presence as a target for anti-semitism during this and the previous election). This interview with her, at least, shows her to be absurdly likeable and kind of kick-ass.
I mean, does your elected representative describe herself as “a socially maladjusted fucking maniac”?
Posted by B. W. Ventril as Politification at 8:19 PM EDT
9 Comments »
I’ve just added a link in my sidebar to Kinky Friedman’s Texas gubanatorial campaign. For those not in the know, Kinky is the one-time front man of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. I highly recommend his song “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Any More”, which is about kicking a racist’s ass (”we don’t turn the other cheek the way we did before”). Now he writes mystery novels (starring himself, though he recently killed himself off), and has an excellent column in Texas Monthly (a magazine I highly recommend and to which we have a subscription).
Policy wise he’s for a moratorium on the death penalty (which is as radical in Texas as it would be in Saudi Arabia), in favour of a massive increase in Texas’s 48th ranked educational budget, has campaigned - with Willy Nelson - for widespread use of biodiesel, and, finally, proposes a general campaign of “De-Wussification”:
Our icons are being demeaned. Cowboys are no longer heroes for our children, but subject to derision. We are being laughed at instead of respected in the rest of the country. What has happened to our glorious heritage? This is the great state of Texas! We are not wusses, we are Texans. “We will beat back the wussification of Texas if we have to do it one wuss at a time.” - Kinky Friedman.
Consider this the official Crankyrants.com endorsement of his campaign. Click here for the official campaign blog.
Posted by B. W. Ventril in Politification, Heebraica
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 12th, 2005 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Politification, Heebraica. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The
LA Weekly really, really,
really thinks
Arianna Huffington’s blog is stupid. Some choice quotations:
She has now made an online ass of herself. What her bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree right-to-left conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn’t accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly. This website venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable.Perhaps Huffington is no longer a card-carrying progressive but now a conservative mole. Because she has served up liberal celebs like red meat on a silver platter for the salivating and Hollywood-hating right wing to chew up and spit out.And so on. And it turns out that Arianna didn’t tell her celebrity content providers that the person responsible for putting the blog together was a guy who wrote a book called Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon - The Case Against Celebrity. Some of them, apparently, are a little irked.
And so on. And it turns out that Arianna didn’t tell her celebrity content providers that the person responsible for putting the blog together was a guy who wrote a book called . Some of them, apparently, are a little irked.The editorial blurb on Amazon describes the book thusly:
Not since Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons have two journalists (Breitbart feeds stories to Internet scandalmonger Matt Drudge and Ebner wrote for Spy) gathered more mean-spirited gossip about celebrities they condemn as sick and depraved. This diatribe is so unrelentingly negative that it loses all power to persuade. Breitbart and Ebner cover a variety of subjects they stand against, among them celebrities voicing their political views, a woman’s right to choose, single motherhood and celebrities adopting children. In a chapter devoted to anonymous nannies discussing disrespectful kids of anonymous movie stars, the authors suggest mandatory Norplant and vasectomies for Hollywood parents.
Wow, it looks like I’m going to have to question Ariana Huffington’s otherwise spotless leftist credentials. Who will save us now?
Posted by B. W. Ventril in Reviews
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 12th, 2005 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
For those of you unfamiliar with Southern Private University, it is composed of two campuses, East Privilege and West Privilege. During the regular school year, shuttle buses run directly between the two every five minutes. However, during the summer these buses are replaced by one that travels a circuitous route through Central Privilege every half hour or so. It even doubles back on itself on several occasions. Even with an i-Pod to calm my rage, I find this to be a deeply frustrating experience. What was once a twenty minute journey from my house to West Privilege can take as much as an hour if I miss the bus.
As I’m currently doing some Lifestyle Coaching on West Privilege, and as this new asswich bus schedule has just started, I decided to dust off my bike. Shockingly, after a couple of years in a dusty closet, it still works perfectly. The tires even hold air and everything. I hadn’t used it since I was last carless. In fact, traditionally my car dies at the beginning of every summer, coinciding with the asswich bus schedule, 95 degree heat and 100% humidity. Thankfully, though, my car is currently still running (up to 50 mph, anyway). And fingers crossed it will continue to do so.
It turns out that commuting by bike when you have a car is much more fun than commuting when you’re carless. Although I enjoy biking very much, last time round I did so with an air of grudgefulness, muttering to myself about my dead car and all those motherfuckers who could afford cars when I could not. Yesterday, though, I had a great time biking in to work, knowing that I could have driven but simply didn’t want to. Or that I could have taken the asswich bus. Except that this was much faster: 15 minutes, door to door. And I arrived with a sweaty exercise high. Very cool.
Posted by B. W. Ventril in Miscellanea
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 at 9:06 am and is filed under Miscellanea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
14 Responses to “Transportation Virtue”
dickumbrage says:
fifteen minutes?!? did you take Small Southern College Town Street or did you just go straight down Southern Private University’s Architectural Attraction Drive?
i don’t think that you made it clear how fucking impossible it is to park at SPU, at least if you need to be on West Privilege.
May 11th, 2005 at 10:23 am
holagatita says:
Did they get rid of the moderately priced summer parking passes because of the Ginormous Library Construction Project?
May 11th, 2005 at 10:34 am
B. W. Ventril says:
I take Southern Private University’s Architectural Attraction Drive. It was exactly 5 mins. from my house to East Privilege, and another ten to the bike rack in front of Entitlement Library.
And yes, let me just state for the record that it is absolutely impossible to park on or near West Privilege, even in the summer. When I take the bus over during the year, it’s a 5 min. drive to Korean Methodist Church, where I illicitly park, a 5 min. walk to the bus stop, 5 mins of waiting (usually) and another 5-10 mins for the bus ride.
If I try the same in the summer it’s 5 mins to park, 5 mins to the bus stop, 5-30 mins of waiting, and 15-20 mins for the actual bus ride.
Biking: exactly 15 minutes.
May 11th, 2005 at 10:35 am
dickumbrage says:
Actually, it is not at all illicit to park at Korean Methodist Church, provided you don’t use one of the reserved spaces. They tried to keep SPU types out at one point, but eventually recanted, being good Korean Methodists and all.
The current SPU parking situation has even caused some commentators to take to flights of furious fancy.
May 11th, 2005 at 11:07 am
B. W. Ventril says:
Looks like they do have the cheapo summer parking permits, but that you can’t park everywhere with them:
https://aux03.auxserv.duke.edu/Parking/faq/faqsummerinfo.htm
I think I’ll stick to biking.
May 11th, 2005 at 11:29 am
holagatita says:
Environmentalist self-righteousness should always trump thrift anyway.
May 11th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
B. W. Ventril says:
Can’t I be both self-righteous *and* thrifty?
May 11th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
very anonymous says:
hooray for biking to work! though i too work for SPU, my place of work is at Gentrified Tobacco Warehouse Annex. it takes me around 20 min. to get from home to GTWA, even though the distance is likely shorter than for Mr. BWV, due to an annoying number of traffic lights on the less scenic route through the downtown of Small Southern City.
but biking is indeed a delightful thing to do, serving both the thrifty and self-righteousl parts of me, though not so much the vain parts of me that dislike walking into GTWA all sweaty and crazy hair-dooed.
May 11th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
B. W. Ventril says:
May i suggest shaving your head? Works for me!
May 11th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
very anonymous says:
i totally knew you were going to say that.
i have pondered the idea, but please recall reference in previous post to vanity. however, there is a predictble formula for my vanity:
(a)(x/b)=y
where a= the activity, x=number of people who tell me ‘a’ would make me really hot, b=absurd or extreme factor, and y=liklihood that i will do ‘a’.
May 11th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
bean3 says:
Yes! Most people who get on the circuitous bus on East Privilege, stay on until West Privilege. Couldn’t they run just one little direct bus from EP to WP?
There’s also some illicit parking just off Architectural Attraction Drive, on Alexander, but you still must endure no less than 13 stops to get to West Privilege. I’m currently trying to figure out if there’s a way to cut through Lush Display of Extravagant Wealth Gardens to get off the bus before it doubles back…
May 12th, 2005 at 8:54 am
B. W. Ventril says:
You can also get off quite close to World’s Best Unless You Have No Health Insurance Medical Complex and, I think, cut through fairly close to Entitlement Library. Though I admit I haven’t tried this.
May 12th, 2005 at 9:13 am
Bear Left says:
For us alum of Southern Private University & former longtime resisdents of Small Southern City (now employed at the University of Football), this thread has made my week. Until last year, one could safely park on West Privilege without a permit, but now that everything’s gated, that’s no longer an option.
I went six years at SPU without a permit. I drove around Formerly Cool Southern College Town once & realized that there was absolutely no way off the grid, & poneyed up for a permit. Definitely miss the Korean Church on West Confederate Politician Avenue.
May 12th, 2005 at 11:26 am
B. W. Ventril says:
Oh, I didn’t realize the street was named after a confederate politician…
May 12th, 2005 at 11:35 am
Thank you, Dick Umbrage, for letting us come over and watch your cable. The great thing about watching BBC election coverage here in the US (via C-SPAN) is the fact that you don’t have to stay up into the wee small hours. Especially when C-SPAN cuts the Beeb off at 10pm (in favour of a very special Laura Bush Yom HaShoah; is there no escaping Laura Bush?).
A much-reduced Labour majority leaves me feeling conflicted. On the one hand, thanks to the fact that my British political brain lives in a permanent 1990, I’m honestly wowed by a third Labour term. This puts the party on an equal footing with the Tories’ record, and Blair on an equal footing with Thatcher (in oh so many ways, but let’s not go there for now). And like Thatcher, he’ll probably get booted out in the middle of his third term. Except there’s already an annointed successor, Gordon Brown. On the other hand, Blair blew it with the war and I wish he’d lost.
BBC election coverage is a wonderful thing. There is, of course, the Swingometer. No, this isn’t a device measuring 1970s sexual funkiness. It’s a large - and increasingly computerized - needle that the BBC has been using for decades to display the swing for or against a given party. It’s a glorious two-party relic, but it’s always nice to see how they’ve zazzed it up with nifty graphics. However, the real highlight of the evening in terms of animation was the illustration of how far the three major party leaders would need to go in order to become Prime Minister. This was accomplished with a virtual Downing Street, and computer animated versions of each leader that looked exactly like characters from Grand Theft Auto. I kept expecting Michael Howard to run over a hooker.
For the uninitiated (i.e. Americans), in Britain each seat’s results are announced by the local returning officer, with all of the candidates standing behind him or her on stage, thusly:
The people in stupid hats are representatives of tiny, fringe joke parties like the Monster Raving Loony Party and the Conservative Party (whoever they are). Tony Blair, therefore, had to share the stage with everyone who had the five hundred pound deposit needed to run (which you lose if you get less than 5% of the vote; there’s no fucking around with petitions in order to get on the ballot like here in the US). In this case, that meant Blair sharing the stage with a man called Reg Keys, whose son was killed in Iraq.
Reg Keys ran against Blair in protest of the war. He received 4,000 votes to Blair’s 24,000. Blair was directly in the background as Keys delivered these words:
If this war had been justified by international law I would have grieved and not campaigned. If weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq — again I would have grieved, not campaigned. Tonight there are lessons to be learned. I hope in my heart that one day the prime minister may be able to say sorry. That one day he will say sorry to the families of the bereaved. And one day the prime minister may be able to visit wounded soldiers in hospital.
The camera, of course, zoomed mercilessly in to a close-up shot of Blair’s face as Keys said this. Blair looked like he was trying so hard to remain stony faced, he would give himself an aneurism.
The anti-war, former Labour MP George Galloway also beat out Blairite Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow, in the East End of London. Galloway had formed his own party, called Respect (pronounced Respec’). I’m not well-informed enough to know how dodgy Galloway really is. He was accused of taking money from Saddam Hussein by the Daily Telegraph, but I think he won his libel case against them. Then again, thanks to British libel law, winning a libel case doesn’t really mean you didn’t do the thing they said you did. Galloway did visit Saddam at one point.
The race between him and King, however, was rancorous to say the least: she is black and Jewish, the constituency has a very large Muslim population, and accusations of anti-Semitism were slung about. At one point Jewish graves were desecrated. Galloway, while saying that the British government was part of a “war on Muslims”, denied that race was a factor by saying that he was concerned with women in Iraq who had “blacker faces than hers.” King, in turn, stated: “What makes me sick is that when I come across someone who is guilty of genocide I do not get on a plane and go to Baghdad and grovel at his feet.”
I’m not entirely sure what to make of all this. There’s massive racism against Muslims in the East End (think being beaten up after school every single day), and Galloway’s victory on a protest vote doesn’t surprise me. But there’s also a definite undercurrent of anti-Semitism to some British anti-war sentiment, and I’m not sure the degree to which that was really a factor here. Anyone in the know care to fill me in? In either case, be sure to click here and then, in the top-right hand corner, on the link to BBC anchor Jeremy Paxman’s clash with Galloway during the election coverage last night. A punchy Paxman, in the small hours of the morning, attacked Galloway in a way that you would never see on US television. Seriously. Watch this. It’s kind of amazing.
Finally, I’m as usual struck by the contrast between all this and American politics. British politics is adversarial to the core. Conflict, confrontation and head-on debate are built into the system. When there isn’t an election, that means things like Prime Minister’s question time where, each week, the PM goes head to head with the leader of the opposition on the floor of the House of Commons. Thanks to the separation of powers and the lack of an opposition “shadow president”, this never happens in the US. And can you imagine George W. Bush sharing a stage on election night with the father of a soldier killed in Iraq, and having to listen to that man’s speech against the war? As LMV pointed out while we watched Reg Keys, he would have been bundled out of the room and roughed up by the Secret Service.
The US system is set up to avoid rigorous debate. Despite all the current protestations about polarization, at best in this country the two parties - such as they even differ - get to talk at cross purposes, over the heads of each other. With the possible exception of stage managed presidential debates, the American people never get to see their leaders dealing directly with each other. Whatever else is wrong with the British political system (a largely unelected upper house and a hereditary head of state come to mind), it’s a much healthier democracy.
