Selves and Others

[Also listen to an audio file of Mr. Vidal reading the entire piece.]

While contemplating the ill-starred presidency of G.W. Bush, I looked about for some sort of divine analogy. As usual, when in need of enlightenment, I fell upon the Holy Bible, authorized King James version of 1611; turning by chance to the Book of Jonah, I read that Jonah, who, like Bush, chats with God, had suffered a falling out with the Almighty and thus became a jinx dogged by luck so bad that a cruise liner, thanks to his presence aboard, was about to sink in a storm at sea.

Once the crew had determined that Jonah, a passenger, was the jinx, they threw him overboard and—Lo!—the storm abated. The three days and nights he subsequently spent in the belly of a nauseous whale must have seemed like a serious jinx to the digestion-challenged whale who extruded him much as the decent opinion of mankind has done to Bush. (...)

Next Tuesday, President Bush will deliver to Congress and the American people his sixth State of the Union address. Viewer discretion is advised — viewers not seated while watching may find themselves experiencing acute vertigo as a result of the hurricane of spin swirling out from their television sets. The White House has taken its usual precaution of avoiding any and all responsibility by announcing that it will not be held responsible for any concussions or broken limbs. And don’t count on FEMA — it’ll be doing a heckuva’ job just to come to your aid days later. (...)

Four Muslim men who were detained without charge for months in the weeks after September 11, 2001, eventually cleared of any connection to terrorism, but then deported to Egypt, have been allowed to return to the U.S. to pursue their class action civil lawsuit against the U.S. government for unlawful imprisonment and abuse on behalf of 1,200 other Muslim and South Asian men rounded up and jailed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (...)

mark time = “to keep the time of a marching step by moving the feet alternately without advancing.” - from a 60s edition of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

Perhaps The Left didn’t make too much of a fuss over Osama’s endorsement of the worthy William Blum (pronounced “Bloom”) book because of the poor translation offered up by The New York Times. What The Laden really laid out was “You’ve just got to read Bill Blum’s Hot Tomato! I’ve read it eleven times!”

Once upon a time...in the land of the free (sic)

Barely a week goes by when I don’t think about the nuns who were so much a part of my childhood.

I grew up in a working class neighborhood on the Southwest side of Chicago where most families identified closely with the nearest Catholic parish. Ours, St. Daniel the Prophet, was centered in the standard church, school, convent, and rectory buildings. The convent was home for several dozen religious women sent to us by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. Father Mulligan, the pastor, said Mass, heard confessions and paid attention to the Sunday envelope collection, but essentially the nuns ran the parish. They taught our classes, directed the choirs, organized church events, and supervised parish functions. We’d never heard of feminism, but we certainly knew that the nuns were in charge. (...)

From the latest UNICEF report (2006) it can be estimated that 0.5 million under-5 year old infants are dying EACH YEAR in US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan due to non-provision of life-preserving requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions. A formal complaint has been lodged with the International Criminal Court over Coalition war crimes.