If you NEED to keep a secret....

[via Cincinnati Historian]
In a charming discussion of the personal and political aspects of secret-keeping, including Deep Throat, Ben Bradlee's wife -- and Post staff writer -- Sally Quinn writes:

Republicans are much better than Democrats at keeping secrets. They are more disciplined and they punish people who leak. Democrats talk too much and are too disorganized to make people pay.

There's a slogan for you: "Democrats: the party that has better things to do than keep secrets" or perhaps "Democrats: Responsible government through selective irresponsibility." Hmmm. Maybe not.

Story Slippage

It's like a really bad game of telephone. It's decent people, drawing what they think are reasonable inferences to paraphrase a story, but the result is a significant distortion of the truth in just two transfers. I'll let Mr. Bray tell it himself:

So a couple of weeks ago, I talked to a reporter at the Soldiers for the Truth/DefenseWatch website about active duty call-ups for infantrymen in the Individual Ready Reserve. In passing, we discussed my last stretch of (peacetime) active duty, and I described it as having been uniquely uneventful. So little happened during those two years, I said, that the high point was the formal commendation I received for a two-week driving detail in which I carted a load of visiting colonels around Fort Benning in a van; one night I drove them to the officers club so they could have a beer or two without worrying about getting back to guest quarters on their own. In the Defense Watch story, the colonels became "inebriated"; the story was still largely the one I told, but the shading had changed a bit.

And so now the World Socialist Web Site reports that the U.S. army is so corrupt an organization that its enlisted soldiers mostly just function as servants to a decadent officer class:

Soldiers for The Truth (www.sftt.org) reported on May 17 that now, as well as specialists, hundreds of IRR infantry are being called up.

SFTT spoke with one of them, 37-year-old Chris Bray, who had joined the Army in 1999 to get money for college*. He left in late 2001, describing his most important responsibility as being the designated driver to transport drunken officers back to their quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia.

It took a grand total of two steps. This minor event, mentioned in passing as part of a sideline story, is now my most important responsibility as a soldier. I spent two years driving drunken officers back to their quarters.

Speaking for the record is a little like building your own Frankenstein -- you just can't believe that your little creation is out there in the world, doing things that you didn't imagine it could do.

Wow.

(*Also not true, by the way.)

There's all kinds of things that we can say about this slippage.

• check your sources' sources, when possible
• be careful that you don't let your bias distort a story through exaggeration and misemphasis
• Don't lie on the web: people read this stuff! [Don't lie anywhere, if you can avoid it, but I'm limiting myself to specific lessons of this incident]
• "They also serve who only stand and wait" is easier to say than to understand

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of this morning.

Quotations #061: Histories

"History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." -- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

"History [is] a distillation of rumour" -- Thomas Carlyle, History of the French Revolution

"History is the essence of innumerable biographies." -- Thomas Carlyle, "On History"

"Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in world history reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." -- Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

"Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago." -- Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

What We Already Knew: WSJ and NYT catch up

The United States is regarded, across large swaths of the Muslim world with a mixture of suspicion and hatred that military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has fanned to a white-hot intensity. Moderate Muslim voices are being drowned out by the screaming of fanatics.
...
"Often those with the most bloodthirsty ideas were the well-to-do and the privileged who have had some experience with the West - and not the downtrodden and ignorant 'masses' that are usually depicted as the font of anti-Western fury," Mr. Trofimov writes. "Sometimes those who know us best hate us most."

American support for oppressive regimes ranks high on the list of Muslim grievances. Mr. Trofimov finds a fascinating case study in Tunisia, a secular society in which women are guaranteed equal rights, abortion is legal and ultra-Orthodox Jews enjoy religious freedoms denied to fundamentalist Muslims. "We are much closer to the Italians and the French," a government official tells him.

Well, not quite. Zine el-Abadine Ben Ali, Tunisia's prime minister, has imposed secularism with an iron fist, exiling or imprisoning dissidents, while courting American support by taking a soft line on Israel and protecting Tunisia's tiny Jewish community. As in Iran under the shah, liberal opponents of the regime find themselves allied with Islamists, and the veil, paradoxically, has become a symbol of liberation.

Actually, I spoke to soon: when you get to the bottom of the review, the reviewer makes it clear that coming to a conclusion based on evidence is itself evidence of bias. Thus dies the value of journalism....

Walt Whitman's Birthday

It is the anniversary of Walt Whitman's birth, in honor of which libertarian Ken Gregg has posted the text of a political pamphlet he wrote in 1856, in honor of the 80th year of the United States of America. Things haven't changed much:

At present, the personnel of the government of these thirty millions, in executives and elsewhere, is drawn from limber-tongued lawyers, very fluent but empty, feeble old men, professional politicians, dandies, dyspeptics, and so forth, and rarely drawn from the solid body of the people; the effects now seen, and more to come. ... To-day, of all the persons in public office in These States, not one in a thousand has been chosen by any spontaneous movement of the people, nor is attending to the interests of the people; all have been nominated and put through by great or small caucuses of the politicians, or appointed as rewards for electioneering; and all consign themselves to personal and party interests. Neither in the Presidency, nor in Congress, nor in the foreign ambassadorships, nor in the governorships of The States, nor in legislatures, nor in the mayoralities of cities, nor the aldermanships, nor among the police, nor on the benches of judges, do I observe a single bold, muscular, young, well-informed, well-beloved, resolute American man, bound to do a man's duty, aloof from all parties, and with a manly scorn of all parties. Instead of that, every trustee of the people is a traitor, looking only to his own gain, and to boost up his party. The berths, the Presidency included, are bought, sold, electioneered for, prostituted, and filled with prostitutes.

Whitman had a pretty good eye for regional differences and tension:

In the North and East, swarms of dough-faces, office-vermin, kept-editors, clerks, attaches of the ten thousand officers and their parties, aware of nothing further than the drip and spoil of politics -- ignorant of principles, the true glory of a man. In the South, no end of blusterers, braggarts, windy, melodramatic, continually screaming in falsetto, a nuisance to These States, their own just as much as any; altogether the most impudent persons that have yet appeared in the history of lands, and with the most incredible successes, having pistol'd, bludgeoned, yelled and threatened America, the past twenty years into one long train of cowardly concessions, and still not through, but rather at the commencement. Their cherished secret scheme is to dissolve the union of These States. [emphasis added]

The rot went all the way to the top, as it does today

History is to record these two Presidencies [A. - he seems to mean here the two terms of Pres. Pierce; I'd extend it to Bush and Clinton without much difficulty] as so far our topmost warning and shame. Never were publicly displayed more deformed, mediocre, snivelling, unreliable, false-hearted men! Never were These States so insulted, and attempted to be betrayed!

He doesn't have much use for political parties, and anyone who -- like me -- thinks that our Republicrat duopoly has lived out its useful life will find that 'twas ever thus:

ARE NOT POLITICAL PARTIES ABOUT PLAYED OUT? I say they are, all round. America has outgrown parties; henceforth it is too large, and they too small. They habitually make common cause just as soon in advocacy of the worst deeds and men as the best, or probably a little sooner for the worst. I place no reliance upon any old party, nor upon any new party. Suppose one to be formed under the noblest auspices, and getting into power with the noblest intentions, how long would it remain so? How many years? Would it remain so one year? As soon as it becomes successful, and there are offices to be bestowed, the politicians leave the unsuccessful parties, and rush toward it, and it ripens and rots with the rest.

And he has a few choice words which apply quite nicely to the present Republican strategy:

WHAT RIGHT HAS ANY ONE POLITICAL PARTY, NO MATTER WHICH, TO WIELD THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT? No right at all. Not the so-called democratic, not abolition, opposition to foreigners, nor any other party, should be permitted the exclusive use of the Presidency; and every American young man must have sense enough to comprehend this. I have said the old parties are defunct; but there remains of them empty flesh, putrid mouths, mumbling and squeaking the tones of these conventions, the politicians standing back in shadow, telling lies, trying to delude and frighten the people; and nominating such candidates as Fillmore and Buchanan.

Tom Paxton once said that the worst fate for a satirist or activist is to have his work remain relevant, year after year....

Thursday Lyric: The Kind of Love You Never Recover From

The Kind of Love You Never Recover From
© 1990 Christine Lavin

I know a couple
She sits in a rocking chair working puzzles
He watches TV upstairs
She has a secret she has never let out
A man she thinks he never knew about.
She hasn't seen him in 30 years
The mention of his name doesn't brings on tears
If you ask her "Are there any regrets?"
She'll tell you "No"
But she never forgets.

It was The Kind of Love You Never Recover From
Even though she found another one to take his place
She never will escape the truth
At times like this
When the moon is bright
When the air is foggy like it is tonight
She'll think about what might have been
If she had just held on to him.

I know a man who has done it all
He sailed the oceans
Climbed the mountains of Nepal
He lives high up on the Avenue
With a beautiful wife
Lovely children too.
But there's a woman he still dreams about
Certian thing's he's learned to live without
If you ask him "Are there any regrets?"
He'll tell you "No"
But he never forgets.

It was The Kind of Love You Never Recover From
Even though he found another one to take her place
He never will escape the truth
At times like this
When the moon is bright
When the air is foggy like it is tonight
He'll think about what might have been
If had not let her
Slip away from him.

I read about a woman who said
She never regretted
Anything she's ever done
Such arrogant words always seem to be spoken by those
Who then die young.

So here am I
Looking at you
Oh tell me
What are we gonna do?
Am I destined to be your regret
Are you that one I will never forget?
Years from now will we curse the day
You let me let you walk away
Isn't this too dear a price to pay
For the freedom
Of going seperate ways?

This is The Kind of Love You Never Recover From
Don't tell me that I'm gonna find another one to take your place
I never will escape the truth
At times like this
When the moon is bright
When the air is foggy like it is tonight
I'll think how sweet life could be
If you would stay with me
Oh stay with me
This is The Kind of Love You Never Recover From
Don't tell me that I'm gonna find another one to take your place
And try to face the truth
Let me hold you close tonight
The fog has lifted
And the moon is so bright
Think how sweet life could be
If you would stay with me
Oh stay with me
This is The Kind of Love You Never Recover From.
This is The Kind of Love You Never Recover From.

(the index of other lyrics and poetry I've posted is here)

My Viking Self

[via Ralph Luker]
Alun's Viking Name Generator at Archaeoastronomy: Þorleif the Mad [That's pronounced "Thorleif"]
GORM Viking Name Converter: Ahistoricality the Peevish [That's an honor, if Anne Zook will forgive me]

The Quarter's Viking Name Generator not only gives you a name, but explains how you fit in Viking Society:

Your Viking Name is... Ásgautr Stronghorse

Your Viking Personality: You're a fearsome Viking, but you aren't completely uncivilized. The other Vikings make fun of you for that. You have a thirst for battle -- unfortunately, you're not terribly good at it. You probably know which end of a sword to hold, but you're not a fearsome fighter by any stretch of the imagination.

You might grumble a bit at the lack of amenities on board a Viking longboat, but you can handle it. Other Vikings consider you "one of the guys".

People who've known you for a while don't always trust your word. You sometimes come off as a bit of a snob. Vikings are not snobbish people -- they either like you, or they kill you. Try to be more like a Viking.

My Song? Let this meme die here....

[via CES which I found because of Avedon]
#1 pop song on the day I was born:

• US Charts: Daydream Believer - The Monkees [well, ok]
• UK Charts: Hello Goodbye - The Beatles [better group, anyway]

"Theme Song" aka #1 pop song on my 18th birthday:

• US Charts: Say You Say Me - Lionel Richie [say it ain't so! -- Ahistoricality]
• UK Charts: Saving All My Love For You - Whitney Houston [is that worse, or better?]

There isn't a "folk chart" but I imagine that my birth album is probably a Tom Paxton or Joan Baez, and my theme song comes from Stan Rogers. I'd like to think so, anyway....

Fox News Admits Bias

So, do we call the FCC? Do we call the FEC? Or shall we just Impeach the bastards they're working for?

Oh, it is...

"In wedding-related matters, 'helpful suggestions' approaches being an oxymoron."