WHE-E-E-W!!!
Anybody seen my puck?










A-A-A-H-H-H-H!!!

Nothing could be finah
Than to crush
North Carolina
As an Oi----ler !

Oilers pound Hurricanes 4-zip, force Game 7, there is no tomorrow, and this time I really mean it.

TWO SQUEAKERS










THERE IS A TOMORROW – IT’S CALLED SATURDAY --
IN EDMONTON

I’m delighted to have hung in there and been a witness to Fernando Pisani’s BRILLIANT, PERFECT overtime winner for the Oilers, taking the Stanley Cup series to a sixth game. Don’t know if the Oil-kings can pull it out, but getting there has been fun.

I'm having a hard time keeping up with my masquerade as a World Cup afficianado, though.

I was driving down the street minding my own business, England flag flapping out the window, when a car driving toward me began to honk, and one hysteric was waving a bed-sheet-sized old bunting Union Jack out the car window. I realized only as I passed them that this was a salute in my direction, and that we were all celebrating something.

Fortunately when I arrived at my destination, a more-informed person than myself (married to Tottenham Hotspur’s biggest fan this side of the pond) brought me up to speed on England’s last-minute header to save their imperial bacon against Trinidad/Tobago. This allowed me, later on, to be quick with the “thumbs-up” salute to a group of hollering young folk on a park bench sporting England’s spiffy white jersey and flags, looking like they’d had a rough afternoon of it. Go England! Justify that payroll!

ABIDE WITH US --
GOT MY ENGLAND FLAG

My car is now masquerading as the vehicle of someone who cares about the World Cup of Soccer [read: FOOTBALL]. I can't say that's exactly accurate. I watch some, but don't knock myself out to follow its progress. However, it's fun to cheer for England amid the plethora of Italian and Brazilian flags that dominate the local scene.

Mostly, though, it gives me a rare chance to sport the emblem of THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR, not to mention the whole CRUSADER thing. It's delicious. I encourage it. Americans especially, who pay precious little attention to soccer (that's FOOTBALL, folks), should embrace this opportunity. Indulge yourselves.

[Frightening factoid: Google "England soccer" images and you get an x-ray of David Beckham's right foot. This is not healthy.]

Rip Van Bush wakes up

Two pieces of exciting news from Camp David, Maryland:

(1) The President met with an interesting selection of folks (among them, as I understand it, Frederick Kagan and Robert Kaplan ) who are likely to convince him of the timeliness of an all-out military effort to “clear-hold-build” the city of Baghdad, as they have successfully accomplished with other, smaller Iraqi cities which were once terrorist strongholds. (Notably absent, as I understand it, the Secretary of Defense, whose strategery has been to confine what troops there are to bases, and then send them out to address flare-ups as needed. Screw that.) Yay, Hurray, and IT’S ABOUT EFFING TIME!!!

(2) The White House press corpse (and I mean that, for corpses are all that interest them) was hearded into a bus to head for Camp David, only to be informed that the President was no longer there—that he is, in fact, in Iraq meeting with new Prime Minister Maliki and giving the old back-slap to the newly minted government. Excellent news, and again, ABOUT EFFING TIME. Bush has been pretty much confined to base for past few years himself.

We know he likes to catch a refreshing nap now and again. A shame this last one’s been about two and a half years long. As the guys in uniform like to say, TURN US LOOSE, OR TAKE US HOME.

If that kind of sentiment unnerves people now worrying about what took place in Haditha, two things: (1) a more strategic “turning loose” to address the larger problem of the terror campaign might preclude the likelihood of these one-off reactionary encounters; and (2) the more one learns about Haditha from those who were actually in the neighbourhood at the time, the more the worst case scenario is falling apart. Can you spell "Jenin"? Time will tell.

To no one’s great surprise, Congressman John Murtha’s unconscionable grandstanding summary conviction of his fellow Marines has coincided with his announcement to Congressional Democrats that in the event of their re-capture of the House in November he is putting himself forward as a candidate for majority leader. This man is so stupid he can’t even be underhanded—could there be anything more obvious than his anti-war, anti-troops bloviating as a naked ploy for maximum publicity, and pressure on the Democrats to exploit his usefulness as an anti-war veteran? (Gee, that worked so well in the ‘04 presidential race!—hell, Democrats, GO FOR IT! It could be your most cynical, and suicidal move yet!)

There is a pattern here, though, folks-- Murtha has the House back in Democratic hands months before the election-- he's jumping to a by no means foregone conclusion again-- kind of like hanging Marines before they're tried. Or even named! Who exactly should be put in the noose Congressman? Names? Who is going to lose their seat in Congress? Names?

Act now! Support the gorgeous and level-headed Diana Irey for Congress and maybe Murtha himself will be out of a job.

Jonathan Kay has an interesting piece in today's National Post called Islam as Goth-- maybe radical Islamist terrorism is attracting bored and disaffected youth as a new form of rebellion, like looking sullen, dressing Goth, and flipping off society. That's one of the popular multi-culti takes on the Toronto Seventeen, and Kay doesn't disagree-- he likens these guys to the Columbine High School killers. Except he reminds us that people wound up DEAD, and that was just with the stuff that two lone gunmen could accumulate in their garage, under their oblivious parents' noses. When seventeen people have the connections to accumulate a three-ton bomb, the deadness gets very very big, and the "ordinariness" of the kids doesn't actually matter much.

GO OILERS?

We're full of insecurities about Canadian patriotism these days. So it was actually quite moving to watch the pre-game ceremonies of the Oilers-Hurricane match last night. One of those big old opera singers, Paul Lorieau, came out to do the national anthems, and had to wait considerable time for the totally hysterical crowd to begin to calm. Eventually he just started to sing over the noise, and did a dramatic rendering of the Star-Spangled Banner. The place quieted down, and there were many voices joining in. The usual thing happened at the end, where the crowd erupted into cheers before the song was done.

Then the not usual thing happened. As the singer prepared for Canada's anthem, the whole arena went dead quiet. The song began and about three or four lines into it, Lorieau simply raised his microphone to the air and let the crowd take it.

I have never heard the anthem sung with such power (though apparently this has been building for awhile while I was watching other teams in the play-offs-- I thought I had video of last night, but turns out it was an earlier game against the Ducks, looking more or less exactly the same as last night. Well, good for them-- I can think of worse habits to cultivate than socking it to the national anthem. And Canada's is such a good one-- much better, as music, than the Star Spangled Bananner, which I have always felt was grossly inferior to America the Beautiful. Anytime Congress wants to change it is fine with me.]

The moment transcended hockey, and in an odd way transcended patriotism too-- it seemed more than anything else to be familial rather than national. Yes, I know, the Canadian anthem was booed in San Jose. (Real class act, Californicators.) But that seems a long time ago now. I thought the singer might take back the mic for the final bars, but he didn't-- he let the crowd have it all.

Unfortunately it didn't win the game. Back to Carolina. There is no tomorrow.

Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Al-Wobegon…

Not really.

DING-DONG,
THE WRETCH IS DEAD—
WHICH OLD WRETCH?
SICK SON-OF-A-BETCH!

That’s right—the only thing he’ll be torturing these days is that rhyme I just tried to achieve.

Infamous IRA (Iraq-based Raving Abomination) terrorist Abu Musab O’Zarqawi (seen at right in his "Jean Lafitte" period) has hoisted his last Guinness (we understand from his family he wasn’t the world’s most ascetic Islamoid). He has also hoisted his last decapitated human head.

News travels fast in the age of Global Communications, so naturally it took very little time for Certain People to realize and proclaim that this guy was just a figurehead, bogeyman, Bush administration invention, a nobody, and his passing wouldn’t slow down or change or mean much of anything. I guess that’s why they were CHEERING and ULULATING at the press conference when Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki announced his unlamented demise. (Picture Helen Thomas ululating about anything… Wait— no. Bad idea.)

Most Frightening Thing Heard on Zarqawi D-day (death day—when a combination of CIA, American troops, Iraqi army, singing detainees, and fed-up insurgents invaded the Normandy Coastline of Zarqawi’s arse)—
Congressman John Kline (R-MN) speculating on the future of the new Iraqi government, which has just appointed its Minister of Defense: “They don’t have an Iraqi Pentagon yet…” Allah spare them one of those!

Most Depressing Thing Heard regarding the Recently Martyred—
American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Zarqawi’s recent career:
“He personified the dark sadistic and medieval vision of the future -- of beheadings, suicide bombings and indiscriminate killings.”

Oh Don—it would be so good if you didn’t talk about stuff you don’t know anything about— you and the 99.999% of the people who use the word “medieval” as a pejorative. Oh those wicked Middle Ages, which saw the birth of our most revered traditions of tort law and laws of evidence (the latter specifically the product of the Inquisition, which produced a surprising number of acquittals). Not to mention eyeglasses, Romanesque sculpture, and Thomas Aquinas. Give it up, Don. Please.

There’s an upside and a downside to a Presidential administration peopled by those who are “just folks”—in this case, just folks like the vast majority of their constituents who don’t know squat about the history of much of anything prior to the Beatles’ first gig on Ed Sullivan.

One can’t reasonably expect all the politicians to be keen students of history, but it’s painful to see them cornered by practitioners of ignorance, the worst of whom can be those whose credentials make them seem reliable.

Take, for instance, the annoying little co-ed who was permitted to lecture/question the President during a town-hall forum at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C.
Her speech went thus:

Morning, Mr. President. I have a more general question about the United States' work to democratize the rest of the world. Many have viewed the United States' effort to democratize the world -- especially nations in the Middle East -- as an imposition or invasion on their sovereign rights.

Considering that it was, in fact, the Prophet Mohammed who established the first known constitution in the world -- I'm referring to the constitution he wrote for the city of Medina --and that his life and the principles outlined in his constitution, such as the championing of the welfare of women, children and the poor, living as an equal among his people, dissolving disputes between the warring clans in Arabia, giving any man or woman in parliament the right to vote and guaranteeing respect for all religions, ironically parallel those principles that we hold most precious in our own constitution... I'm wondering how might your recently formed Iraq Study Group under the U.S. Institute for Peace explore these striking similarities to forge a new relationship with Iraqis and educate Americans about the democratic principles inherent in Islam? (emphasis added)

Bush’s answer was lengthy, somewhat disjointed, and painful to listen to. He did not, in fact, answer the question because he didn’t know enough to recognize the STUPIDITY of it.

Apparently neither the co-ed nor the President ever heard of, say, ARISTOTLE and the Athenian Constitution of the 4th century B.C.? Or if you want to go all Mesopotamian, you could call the Code of HAMMURABI a constitution dating from the 18th century B.C. Go crazy and call it “B.C.E.” if you want! But if Mohammed invented the constitution, Al Gore invented the internet.

God help us, the girl’s a graduate student, in international affairs! Bush never claims to have been anything but a sort-of student who managed to graduate (with consistently better grades than contemporaries Gore and Kerry). But anyone who doesn't know that constitutions and democracy pre-date Mohammed has a pretty loose grip on the world we live in (and probably shouldn’t have the right to vote).

The Constitution of Medina, by the way, is a list of 57 simplistic proscriptions which read like a peace pact about who fights, who kills, and who pays between Believers and un-Believers (primarily the local Jews)—a list of specific statutes on a small range of subjects, not the sort of treatment of the nature and principles of government worthy of the name “constitution.” (Even islamicworld.net calls it a "social contract.")

Especially fatuous is the young student’s claim that this document “champions the welfare of women”— the sole item respecting women states A woman will be given protection only with the consent of her family (Guardian). (a good precaution to avoid inter-tribal conflicts). Wow— Susan B. Anthony couldn’t have said it better. And I couldn’t find a thing about children in it.

What a shame our President took at face value the twaddle being spouted by this mal-educated student, probably based on the assumption that she had been well-served by her $28,000 a year Master’s program (that’s tuition— $45,000 including all the trimmings).

Just a little teeny “What about Aristotle?,” Mr. President?—is that too much to hope for? Yes. Read or watch the rest of the townhall, if you dare. Painful.

TOO LONG AWAY – REND al-RAHIM FRANCKE surfaced in the news this week, first ambassador to the United States from the new Iraq. An impressive and formidable woman, never foolishly optimistic but given to a contagious hope.



SHE THINKS SHE’S FORMIDABLE,
BUT SHE’S REALLY KIND OF A COW

Conservative Queen of Mean Ann Coulter has been making the rounds this week, selling her new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. (Would someone get this woman a sandwich? Now?)

As usual she’s pretty much on the nose about everything left-vs.-right, but just so NASTY. We had a two-word expression for chicks like her when I was in college: the first word was “barracuda.”

Coulter has been taking the most heat for her comments on the “Jersey girls” – four 9/11 widows who in their distress have become activists in search of someone to blame—anyone other than the perpetrators, though, because what the blame game is really about is fixing on a formula by which the tragedy could have been prevented. Since man is not Superman, but a fallen and blinded creature, this is usually a fool’s game—sometimes evil just triumphs, whether good men do everything, something, or nothing.

Coulter is completely right that these women’s widowhood has metamorphosed into a bulletproof, argument-proof cloak, which stacks the deck against intelligent assessment of what they have to say. The same thing goes for Cindy Sheehan (endowed by Maureen Dowd with “absolute moral authority”) and (for better or for worse or when it’s useful to the left) the Johns, Murtha and McCain.

But their (the girls) husbands are still dead, Ann. Dead. Not "killed"-- murdered. That’s the word used by Maureen Basnicki, one of two Canadian 9/11 widows I had the privilege of meeting on July 4, 2002. She made me feel ashamed because I teared up when I talked to her—I who had lost no one— and she was so graceful and composed. I’m not sure whether Ms. Dowd would endow Maureen Basnicki, or fellow-Canadian widow Cindy Barkway, with absolute moral authority, because both these women were adamant that the American government, and the American President personally, had taken more care with them than any Canadian counterpart. The Basnickis haven’t scapegoated the Bushies, but are seeking remedy from a more logical source, the Saudi Arabian government. More power to ‘em, I say.

But all their men are dead, Ann, as is Cindy’s boy. Go ahead and say their political opinions are crazy, but it’s a really bad idea to tell them they’re getting off on their grief.

I miss Barbara Olson at times like this—the original beautiful blonde conservative bombshell with a law degree, and fearless and brainy— but graceful and straightforward, and way more likely to win friends and influence people than Boadicea Coulter.

Al Qaeda got Barbara that day, incinerated in the wall of the Pentagon on Flight 77. (At least I think this actually happened, despite the fact that the internet is awash in conspiracy theories that she never called from the plane, and there was no plane, and she was subsequently arrested last year in Germany with a fake Vatican passport and a fortune in counterfeit Italian lira. Don’tcha love those cyber-space-cadets???!!!)

Barbara’s seat on the panel is remains empty.

THIS WEEK’S LUCKY NUMBER IS SEVENTEEN

>Number of domestically-cultivated terrorists arrested in Toronto

>Number of fruitful raids on festering insurgents carried out simultaneously with Zarqawi hit

>Number of severed heads (give or take a few) Zarqawi recently left in banana boxes as his last calling card on behalf of “the Word of Allah” (he said it, I didn’t)

It seems all very neat, so I suspect those numbers won’t turn out to be exact. Well, except for the Toronto terrorists—seventeen were definitely picked up, but their circle of friends on various continents is growing daily.

Canadians tend to enjoy hearing a Canadian angle on international news in Real Big Countries, but the last time the affairs of Canada got this much coverage was the SARS epidemic, so the thrill is pretty much gone. It’s been a useful occasion for re-thinking both the National Bird (right), and perhaps the feeling of self-satisfaction customarily engendered by the evidence (often fairly fanatical) of the great many foreign loyalties comfortably at home in Canada every time the World Cup rolls around. Flags of the world are everywhere-- for sale from vans in empty lots near major intersections, flying from bobbing mini-poles perched on car windows.

What's interesting (or ironic, as Canada's Alanis Morissette would sing, only this time the word is being used correctly) is that with millions of people across the country recently-enough immigrated to preserve intense loyalty to a far-away soccer team, and tens of thousands of schoolkids playing in the many available neighbourhood leagues-- many of them very skilled and very serious-- Canada doesn't generally field a world-class national soccer team that can find its way to the World Cup.

[By the way, there's a Saudi cleric who says that watching the World Cup could send people to hell. (British soccer hooligans may help.)]

It's not too surprising that this large and underpopulated country with a fairly hostile climate much of the year cannot maintain a professional soccer league-- (heck, it has never even maintained a whole major league for its own native sport, ice hockey-- in its earliest professional phase the National Hockey League was the "original six," four of which were Chicago, New York, Boston, and Detroit)-- but you would think all that soccer-generated energy and interest could be funnelled into an impressive national effort. I'm sure there are lots of reasons why this doesn't happen, but I'm convinced that one of the missing ingredients is the kind of national pride that could trump old ties to old countries.

But where would people learn that national pride in a country where the government hands out money to help your children take free instruction in the "heritage language" of the country you left behind, to perpetuate yours being a non-English-speaking household? (okay, okay-- or non-French-speaking).

How can a national identity compete with the attention kids are rewarded with when asked to bring in to school some artifact of their family's "cultural background" to discourse upon (often something rather moving, like embroidered hangings treasured and smuggled aboard by Vietnamese boat people)-- which can leave, as I have witnessed myself, some kid named Smith (with an all-Canadian family who have lived here so long that their cultural heritage artifacts, like great-grandpa's old radio and Scout badges, or even his Mason's apron!, have been declared "non-ethnic") to feel like he has nothing to contribute?

Not to mention the growing national ethos that lavishes protection and deference on a "cultural diversity" of every conceivable variation as long as it isn't Christian and heterosexual-- that being the formerly dominant, intolerant population which now deserves to be kicked in the shin (or maybe jailed) for the mere drawing of breath.

The pageant of self-deluded silliness ushered in by the arrest of the Seventeen is now the subject of much blogospheric comedy, especially the Toronto Star's $64,000 question about what common thread could tie together these men of such diverse ages, educations, professions, etc.-- LIKE MAYBE THE FACT THAT THEY ALL ATTENDED THE SAME STORE-FRONT MOSQUE IN THE SAME SUBURB BECAUSE THEY ALL FOLLOWED THE SAME FANATICAL VERSION OF ISLAM THAT WAS PREACHED THERE. GEE, D'YA THINK?

COME TO THINK OF IT, "DELUDED" IS VERY POPULAR SOUTH OF THE BORDER TOO

Check out the MSM and political left of all degrees, trying their best to downplay the importance of the Zarqawi hit and hoping no one will remember that last week the inability to stop the guy (or his buddy OBL) was the best evidence of American impotence, failure, quagmire, yada, yada, yada.

I love the "meme" that O'Zarqawi is an "invention" of the Bushies, a concocted and demonized bogeyman set up to rally the brawling Iraqis against a common enemy and distract them from the real enemy, the wicked U.S.of A.

So what you folks are saying is... the beheading videos were directed by Spielberg, with special decapitation effects by Industrial Light and Magic? (Very worrying-- could take the wind out of Michael Berg's sails if he discovers it was all a hoax, and Nick, head and all, is really hanging out with Barbara Olson, taking in the World Cup in Munich-- with all the sausage a zillion counterfeit lira can buy). It's truly pathetic.

American anti-Americanism is always disturbing, but nothing beats British anti-Americanism for sheer loathsomeness. (Not even the French-- like, who cares, eh?) I refer, of course, to THE FISK.

I keep my finger on the unfiltered pulse of the loopy left mostly through the news billboard at Perceval Press, which posts a wide variety of what passes for seriousness from that sector. Both the content and selection of articles are revealing. (On the glorious day of the first Iraqi election their lead story was about a water-diversion plan in North Dakota-- election not mentioned at all. Don't hurt yourself, people, bending over backward to avoid the truth hitting you in the noggin. What an insult it was to people who had risked their lives to vote.)

For awhile Perceval was a good way to check out what the New York Times axis of weasels was up to (Dowd, Herbert, Rich, Krugman, occasionally the less-weaselly Friedman, but never Brooks) without having to go through all that registration crap-- but now that the Times has decided to address its hemorrhaging circulation by charging fees (which make its major columnists even less accessible online--go figure), full articles are no longer available. But at least Perceval gives a glimpse of more opening paragraphs than the Times site does.

So at the Perceval billboard you can take the temperature of the Left (usually a little on the high side?!) without having to sift through the kind of invective and raging obscenities likely to be found among the Kos kids, Huffington puffers, and the Move-on/DemUnderground types. (For example, I don't know if anybody's ever taken a whack at Michelle Malkin on the Perceval site, but when they do I doubt it will involve calling her a "chink" or a "slant-eyed c**t" as she has been labelled by the aforementioned offenders.)

Perceval Press is the small artsy publishing house [read: will publish stuff no commercial place wants because it's too weird, politically extreme, not very good, and/or has a potential customer base of about two dozen] co-founded by chin-dimpled born-too-late-to-be-a-beatnik actor Viggo Mortensen (great 'spit-take' at right-- obviously not too obsessed with his own dignity) whose moonbat politics have turned up on this blog from time to time-- partly because I encounter them when he inserts occasional editorials on his own news board. He's a respectable prose stylist (that makes him at least more grammatically lucid than most of the Hollywood left), painfully sincere, presenting a moderate temperament which belies his totally way-whacked-out opinions and associates. He also provides periodic comic relief, like when he accused the Bush administration of "changing the subject" to the immigration question in order to distract the public from the Great Unjust War, a neat trick for a president who has been running away from the immigration issue like a madman for five solid years, until the public finally got fed up and rubbed his face in it.

It was at the Perceval site that I slammed into the latest from THE FISK, i.e., Robert Fisk of Britain's Independent, which refers to itself as a "broadsheet"-- that's antiquarian for "tabloid." Fisk is the man who famously sobbed, after being attacked by Afghan refugees in Pakistan,

If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila Abdullah, I would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

(He seemed to think the beating was an anti-Western political statement. His own description would indicate either an ordinary robbery, or perhaps just a digusted response to his insufferably condescending pretense that he was their dear friend, while possibly murdering their language. Andrew Sullivan dishes him here.)

Fisk is a man so diseased with the heartworm of anti-Americanism that he has created for himself an alternate universe more stratospherically distant and self-absorbing than any of those we might spot in the scribblings of any other leftist.

Fisk's standard reportage is "fabrication" in the most literal sense: a shroud woven so thick with distortons and untruths that threads of reality are almost impossible to extract. Eventually his most outrageous work gave birth to the new expression "fisking" (noun and verb forms now in common use)-- that is, laying out (usually against one's will, and with many sighs) a detailed deconstruction of a composition so thoroughly false that it cannot be refuted in anything less than a lengthy line-by-line analysis. The blogosphere has made such exercises possible, because it does not limit the number of words required to do the job (although many professionals have polished the art of the Fisking to where they can sometimes get these things published in dead-tree form).

One is almost grateful to Fisk for never disappointing, never giving scope for even a glimmer of doubt that one has judged him aright. And in his June 4th piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (hat-tip Perceval Press), Fisk fulfills our worst expectations with The Way the Americans Like Their War. It is classic Fisk at his most poisonous.

It's about the still undetermined events at Haditha, and it begins,

Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave? The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of the United States' army of the slums go further?

Gee, I don't know, Bob-- could Bono be a paedophile? Could Kofi Annan be a heroin dealer? We have no explicit evidence that they aren't-- so let's just go with it and raise the questions-- it might be all we need to do to initiate rumour and suspicion against them, or anybody. Wow-- that could be, like, so exciting. And it could prolong that visceral thrill you felt when you got away with the phrase "United States army of the slums," because, technically, that's a reflection on conditions in Iraq, not on the "Crips'n'Bloods" thuggishness of the troops-- but o-o-oh, how it rolled off the tongue there for a minute.

Speaking of mass graves, have you (Bob) EVER written about the ones created by Saddam Hussein, still being discovered in Iraq? The ones with HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of men, women, and children in them, most shot in the head? --just in the interest of balance, Bob, and perhaps out of respect for the English language, in which words like "mass" have always been assumed to have a reality-based meaning.

Fisk goes on:

It's no good saying "a few bad apples." All occupation armies are corrupted. [And all journalists are faced with the temptation to stack their work with categorical assertions so huge no one knows
where to start to disprove them.--ed.]

I suspect part of the problem is that we never really cared about Iraqis, which is why we refused to count their dead. Once the Iraqis turned upon the army of occupation with their roadside bombs and suicide cars, they became Arab "gooks," the evil sub-humans whom the
Americans once identified in Vietnam.

I think it's safe to assume that Fisk would have been somewhat disapproving of the MacNamara/Westmoreland taste for body counts as measures of success in Vietnam-- but he (carefully) misses the point that this is PRECISELY why we have not trumpeted counts of the dead in Iraq.

And check out how he slides over the words "the Iraqis turned upon the army," implying that they all put up resistance, down to the last man of them. But we know that didn't happen-- hey, all swarthy men don't look alike to us.

How would Fisk explain the fact that, immediately upon the June 29, 2004 from Bremmer to the interim government [read this account by Mohammed at Iraq the Model-- its' the best], the official U.S. military terminology for suicide bombers and other insurgent terrorists became, in all instances, the "anti-Iraqi forces." (Helps to read more widely than tabloid journalism to discover these things.) This term embodies respect for those Iraqis-- the majority-- who never turned against the coalition, and demonstrates our ability to distinguish between the butchers and citizens-- something Fisk keeps failing to do. His desire for all Iraqis to turn against America is so intense that he is blind to his own racist lumping of all of them together into a mob of raging street-fighters.

Fisk closes:

I can't help wondering today how many of the innocents slaughtered in Haditha took the opportunity to vote in the Iraqi elections -- before their "liberators" murdered them.

Well it's certainly a much more efficient use of time to write a newspaper column than to go through the complicated business of charges, and trials, and evidence and such, before convicting Marines (as yet unnamed!) of murder. Fisk plays the Queen of Hearts to the hilt (literally?): 'Sentence first-- verdict afterward!... Off with their heads!'

Fascinating that on the 10th of June, in the Independent, Fisk worries in print about fair trials for the Toronto seventeen in virulently "racist" Canada! Talk about comic relief!

And barely have I had time to cut and paste the Fiskaditha atrocity from Perceval's billboard, but it has been superceded there by Fisk's next entry on the demise of Zarqawi. Headline: "Zarqawi's end is not a famous victory, nor will it bring Iraq any nearer to peace." (Reminds me of the old atheist-in-hell joke: "It's not hot, and I'm not here. It's not hot, and I'm not here.") He goes on:

So, it's another "mission accomplished". The man immortalised by the Americans as the most dangerous terrorist since the last most dangerous terrorist, is killed - by the Americans. A Jordanian corner-boy who could not even lock and load a machine gun is blown up by the US Air Force.

What are the most-repeated details about the Zarqawi hit, from every official source in all countries involved? That the hit was enabled by the combined efforts of American, coalition, and Iraqi forces, but MOST OF ALL by information VOLUNTEERED BY IRAQIS, including SUNNIS FROM ZARQAWI'S INNER CIRCLE.

Nowhere, never, not once, in any instance has the United States unduly credited itself with the execution of this execution. As for the Jordanian corner-boy, it's worth remembering that Fisk observed of him last November (after he pulled off the Amman hotel bombing),

...56 dead, most of them Jordanians, is a devastating blow to the man [King Abdullah] who once ran the supposedly "elite" Jordanian special forces and who is King of that little sandpit Winston Churchill created and called "Jordan". And who was to blame? Why Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of course. The same tiresome, odd, ruthless, nebulous Zarqawi who the Americans seem as little able to capture or kill as they do Osama bin Laden, or Mullah Omar...

For a little nebish, he dealt a "devastating blow"-- and now he's been killed. One down, two to go, for the marquee terrorists.

As I read THE FISK (which shouldn't be done too often), wandering his way in his own little world, inventing new sights when those his eyes encounter do not suit his virtual reality, I can't help thinking of that pitiful little journalista played so well by Geraldine Chaplin in Robert Altman's Nashville-- a hundred weird stories happening all around her to which she is utterly oblivious, and she wanders alone in a junky parking lot full of school-buses(Ray Nagin, call your office) conjuring up poetic fanstasies to babble into her tape recorder about what the ghostly old vehicles are "saying."(It's summer--school's out--they're saying, "Shut up and let me sleep.")

One would like to think that as events unfold over time, people like Fisk who have so gleefully butchered the facts will be held to some kind of public reckoning, and perhaps even acknowledge without coercion that they got it wrong. But the public is reliably amnesiac, and da Nile ain't just a river in Egypt. One wants to believe that truth will out, but I'm not holding my breath on it happening, even when my breath is one day long gone. But reckoning-wise, there is always the "other side."

"I may not be sure about God or the Devil, but I still believe in the United Nations," wrote Fisk on April 23, 2005. That's faith indeed!!-- even by Dan Brown's definition: "acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”

It's summer in Turtle Bay.
It's not hot, and I'm not here.

WEEKEND IN CAROLINA:
THERE'S REAL LIFE, AND THEN THERE'S HOCKEY

It was family reunion time in North Carolina this past weekend, just south of Camp Lejune, with two sons and one daughter-in-law and one grandchild-in-waiting (ultrasound pictures for all to see). Close by was "the Sound of Freedom" (as they say near every military air base, when the big choppers come and go) though we didn't catch any noise from the suburbs. The expectant couple will leave for San Diego shortly, and deployment will be from Miramar. Rumors have begun to circulate as to when that will be and from which battalion, but nothing written in stone yet. The word "Haditha" was not uttered, but "Murtha" was murmured unsmilingly. Some of us are actually waiting for the facts!

There's celebrity, and then there's Royalty
We drove to the Raleigh-Durham airport for our return flight, and were uneasily trying to digest the execrable products of an A & W hamburger place (don't ever do this) while waiting to board, when the incoming Toronto flight disgorged its passengers. And there, without ceremony or entourage, was genuine Canadian royalty: toting his own overnighter-suitcase was CBC's Ron MacLean accompanied by the impeccably natty Don Cherry. A little crowd collected as the two posed for pictures and signed autographs, and we immediately approached them to join the fun. It was like a small, private celebration within the Canadian family, attracting no attention from most of the assembled travelers.

Despite having come in on a cramped commuter jet where there is no First Class even if you wanted it, it was clear that Don always feels he must travel "in costume"-- the specially-tailored high collar shirt and throat-pinching tie with the one-of-a-kind colourful sport coat (this one was somewhat subdued, in a royal-blue-on-white fine brocade). The kings of Hockey Night in Canada couldn't have been more friendly and accommodating-- Ron, as always, accepting his second-banana status with the greatest grace. Don chuckled grimly when I told him I wanted to pose with the Governor-General and, as always, expressed his support on learning that we had been visiting a son in the Marine Corps. Don knows what's what in the world, and he's been consistently ahead of the game as far as support for the troops is concerned.

Listen to me, you kids out there: a major, MAJOR thrill and privilege.

AMERICA'S BEST SOLUTION
TO THE
BORDER SECURITY PROBLEM
IS CANADIAN:


Carolina's Cam Ward
stonewalls
Buffalo Sabres.

New default position: Go Oilers.

JUST PEACHY, NEIL

I heard Neil Young’s new song “Let’s Impeach the President” on the radio yesterday. It was shockingly lame— apparently he could only spare about four notes in total for this effort, and some trite, junior-high lyrics pulled out of the hippie-dippie drawer. I voted twice for Bush and I could have served up much more biting, and more specific, lyrical bashes about him than this guy with the advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Various commentators have remarked on how slow and creaky this particular bandwagon has rolled in for Neil. Let’s recall that he was supportive of America as terrorist victim with his “Let’s Roll” in 2001, but obviously things have gone sour—not an uncommon sentiment these days. But it’s odd that it took this long for Young to package his outrage, and that having been so long in coming it is so shallow and weenie.

A couple of interesting notes on this:
(a) Neil is advocating impeaching the president of a country where he has lived for about 40 years without ever becoming a citizen—he’s a transplanted Canadian [remember those lyrice to "Helpless" about the town in north Ontario?], long-resident as a guest in California.

I know how that works. I am Young’s opposite number, and in more than just hygiene! (I once heard a DJ call him the Human Dust Bunny). So that’s okay—I understand his perspective entirely.

Over the years I’ve involved myself marginally in Canadian politics, to the extent that laws of both countries allow. (And for years election enumerators have tried to register me to vote, some even despite my admission that I’m not eligible—they go door-to-door, and get paid by the name apparently.) I’ve privately expressed strong opinions about certain political figures from time to time. But I can’t imagine having the nerve to grab the public megaphone and let loose with this kind of “Let’s Impeach” blast to influence the thinking of voters in a country where I can’t vote myself. By so doing, I think Young has seriously undermined his own position.

(b) The lyrics of the song’s verses are a yawn, but towards the end I started to wonder whether they weren’t just the intro to the real substance of the song, which comes when a crowd of folks shout out the refrain “Thank…God!...” over and over, having fixed on Bush’s religious self-expression as one of his most grave sins. Earlier on in the song a series of Bush sound-bytes had been punctuated by another refrain, “flip….flop…”—a motif exhausted two years ago (and much more cleverly) by many anti-Kerry forces. But the “Thank God” refrain stands alone, and evinces a certain disgust.

Some overly generous soul— at FoxNews, of all places—reviewed the song as "a melodic, rocking campfire ode…[and] the catchiest protest song since Country Joe and the Fish’s anti-Vietnam ditty, “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die.” Ex-squeeze-me? WTF? I always considered Country Joe’s song to be cruel and heavy-handed, but it was biting satire, with a classic tune that was as unforgettable as the song was infuriating. Neil Young’s new entry is so dull and light-weight it may prove to be the tailor-made anthem of the nascent Al Gore in ’08 campaign— just like Al, it’s a stiff, full of sound and fury signifying nada.
Big disappointment, Neil. You can, and have, done better—like when you pissed off Lynyrd Skynyrd in your trashing of Alabama, and then they smacked you back with their “Sweet Home” ode. That was a great culture clash. This is a snoozefest.

SPEAKING OF DULL

There’s a seismic shift—sort of—in the ’08 prognostications (and here and here -- warning: typical left-blog language that would make a sailor blush) of Democratic partisans: that Hillary Clinton’s moment has passed, and it’s time to bring on the guy whose moment passed so long ago he’s ready to pass another one: our buddy, AlBore Gore. I call it a "sort-of" seismic shift because those of us who have watched from the sidelines of the right could see this coming. Shrillary is just more than any of us can imagine as Nagger-in-Chief for even four years—forget eight. The closer she gets to the ’08 run-up, the higher and more shattering her vocal range is going to get, and she’ll have even mainstream Demos running for the exits. That’s my prediction, and I’m sticking to it—especially since it’s already underway. Oh Al !—BRING HIM ON! Let the Circular Firing Squad which is the Democratic primaries begin! (And let’s hope the Republi-cringe party can avoid the same-- you should pardon the expression,-- “quagmire.”)


SPORTS UPDATE: “To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant.”
(from A Chorus Line)

Oh poor old misprised Buffalo—will they catch a break?

BUFFALO SURVIVES TO FORCE GAME SEVEN in search of a Stanley Cup finals play-off berth. Buffalo is my default hockey team in the NHL play-offs when the Maple Leafs do their annual late-season crash, and the Habs slip through the cracks in post-season play.

Buffalo, New York, after all, is just down the road—we share their stinking climate and we feel their pain.

One more gasp. Go Sabres.


CAN YOU SAY “ALLEGED”? APPARENTLY NOT, WHEN IT COMES TO THE U.S. MILITARY

The current absolute favourite story of the American mainstream media, the left-wing blogosphere, and elected Democrats who really ought to know better, is the ALLEGED deliberate murder of about 25 Iraqi civilians ALLEGEDLY at the hands of United States Marines. It’s a deeply disturbing story, and if it’s true, the military’s strongest supporters—and the war’s strongest supporters—will be the first to want to see the perpetrators punished to the full extent of military law (which is likely to hand down stiffer sentences than any civilian court).

To nobody’s great surprise, the MSM newsdudes have been unconscionably sloppy in their application of the “innocent-until-proven-guilty” standard which American law, and basic decency, demand. Americans have learned to frown on lynchings, and just because the person inciting one is a decorated war veteran doesn’t make it acceptable. For that matter, just because someone’s a decorated war veteran doesn’t mean he can’t grow up to be a senile old man.

Murtha’s performance with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” wasn’t his most incoherent rant, but it was still an embarrassing diatribe. This is not a bright man (check out his website statements)—decorated veterans can be dumb too. Stephanopoulos phrased his questions pretty carefully to give Murtha every chance to modify his words or frame the reports as inconclusive so far-- but he was on a roll and his babbling couldn’t be curbed or called to order.

He even gratuitously implicated Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Peter Pace, and then backed off as if this casual mental excursion didn’t amount to much. It is not clear why anyone still considers Murtha reliable enough to receive military briefings when he has proved himself a loose cannon who cannot be trusted to distinguish between an ongoing investigation and a verdict. The mention of Pace by name is the closest Murtha has yet come to libel, but if someone doesn't tie him down to his lazy-boy recliner soon he is eventually going to veer off into language that is actionable, and his victim may decide to make him pay the consequences—a humiliating end to an (until recently) admirable career.

Murtha is a danger to himself and his own reputation, and one wonders why it is thought to be his province as a member of the Defense Appropriations Committee to be briefed on possible criminal behavior. He has stated, definitively, again and again, that Marines flat-out committed murder—yet NO ONE HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH ANYTHING.

Unfortunately Congressman Murtha is so self-absorbed and unintelligent that he forgets to mask his personal agenda while posing as a seeker after justice. In the past he has let slip that he might have kept his criticisms to himself had the President agreed to meet privately with him when he requested it. Now he deplores this [ALLEGED] criminal activity nakedly within the context that we have “lost direction in this war” and “can’t win it militarily” and calls our “political successes” in Iraq “rhetorical” (it’s hard to say what he mean by that—I suspect he is foggy on the definition of the word). He included in that phrase the establishment of the Iraqi government—what a condescending insult to people risking their lives to give birth to their new country.

I have no patience with people who decide to respond to Congressman Murtha’s muddle-headed slanders by questioning his military record—frankly, who cares whether it’s sterling or ordinary? Anyone who’s been paying attention to the whole history of the United States knows how much is owed to the sacrifices of very “ordinary” men. As long as he’s not a fake (like Jesse Macbeth or some of John Kerry’s posturing Winter Soldier colleagues proved to be) let the past be.

What’s important now is that Jack Murtha is disgracing himself with conduct unbecoming a lawmaker—grandstanding before the cameras, undermining the judicial process by disseminating half-digested evidence and convicting defendants who have yet to be named of the most heinous crimes, apparently in the service of his anti-war position. This is a travesty of justice, a betrayal of his comrades in arms, and a grievous breach of ethics.

When New York Senator Hillary Clinton characterized the not-yet adjudicated police shooting of Amadou Diallo as a “tragic murder” she was forced to back-pedal and characterize her statement as a "slip of the tongue." This was far short of the apology she owed, but at least her remark was an aside within a larger context, of which the shooting was not the principal subject. Congressman Murtha is deliberately meting out lynch-mob justice within the conduct of his professional duties. He is also making a fool of himself. HE SHOULD BE CENSURED—FOR HIS OWN GOOD.

Samir Sumaidaie, the brand new Iraqi ambassador to the United States and the first such representative of the new-born government, last year made the accusation that a Marine executed a member of his family. In a May 30 interview on CNN he also made it clear that he finds the accusations related to the Haditha killings to be plausible, and he wants the United States to get to the bottom of them. Nevertheless, he must have surprised Wolf Blitzer when he ended his interview with the following:

But let me say this, Wolf, events like this, Abu Ghraib, killing, intentional killing like this, ... as I said in my statement at the time in July of last year, ... are a betrayal to the American people. They're a betrayal to what the Marines are doing and what the American Army is doing.

On the whole, the United States and the military are doing an honorable job on an honorable project, which is of immense potential benefit for the United States and for us. Such crimes detract from that.

The focus in all the international media has been on these things, not on the good things. And I do believe that for every bad apple, bad Marine, there are thousands and thousands of good -- good ones doing [a] good job, doing the best they can under difficult circumstances.
However, it is absolutely imperative that we remove the bad apples and we expose them and we don't try to cover them up.

He is right, he and his countrymen deserve satisfaction, and he showed himself a man more temperate, more intelligent, and more honorable than the Pennsylvania Congressman who is smearing the Marines and denigrating the progress of the new Iraq.


THERE’S SO MUCH MORE TO WRITE ABOUT – BUT FIRST THINGS FIRST:
















Ah, corporal mortification! Such an archaic, barbaric idea! Cha-ching-- another few pence for Dan Brown's retirement fund.

DA VINCI DECODED: IT REEKS

Abysmal Book carefully translated into Abysmal Film

Schadenfreude. Big time. Oh Yeah.

The verdict is in and the patient is DOA. As Peggy Noonan puts it: "There is a God." She goes on:

Or, as a sophisticated Christian pointed out yesterday, there is an Evil One, and this may be proof he was an uncredited co-producer. The devil loves the common, the stale. He can't use beauty; it undermines him. "Banality is his calling card."

Watching Peggy Noonan speak in person can be sort of like fighting one's way out from deep within one of those incredibly doughy and sticky-sweet "Cinnabon" concoctions. But man, can she write.

She TOTALLY NAILS IT on two hot-poker issues today: immigration reform and the cinematic Da Vinci Code. My favourite line on Topic 1 is a summation of the current Bush Administration Syndrome-- something its enemies might have wrongly accused it of years ago, but which appears to be genuinely manifesting itself in the "lame duck" years.

Noonan believes the administration is "lost in some geopolitical-globalist abstract-athon" -- YESSSSS! ZOWIE! -- She goes on:

... that has left them puffed with the rightness of their superior knowledge, sure in their membership in a higher brotherhood, and looking down on the low concerns of normal Americans living in America.

Ooch, ouch. Yes.

On Topic 2, Peggy nails the bigger context too.

I do not understand the thinking of a studio that would make, for the amusement of a nation 85% to 90% of whose people identify themselves as Christian, a major movie aimed at attacking the central tenets of that faith, and insulting as poor fools its gulled adherents. Why would Tom Hanks lend his prestige to such a film? Why would Ron Howard? They're both already rich and relevant... They've been given so much by their country and era, such rich rewards and adulation throughout their long careers. This was no way to say thanks.

I don't really understand why we live in an age in which we feel compelled to spoof the beliefs of the followers of the great religions. Why are we doing that? [money quote-- ed.] Why does Hollywood consider this progressive as opposed to primitive, like a pre-Columbian tribe attacking the tribe next door for worshiping the wrong spirits?

As we shall see in the coming weeks, Hollywood will prefer that we worship at the altar of the prophet AlGore and his Sacred Book [Film] of Global Eco-Disaster Nostrums. It will be taken much more seriously than The DVC, though I expect they both bought their factoids at the same "Global-Conspiracies-Are-Us" franchise outlet.

Read it all. In a peculiar way, both Noonan's topics of the day are related to the eternal drawing power of Gnosticism. Hmmmm. There-- I've given some mediocre grad student a thesis-- free, gratis, and worth every penny it cost.

Nota Bene: this is no time to relax. Don't forget to join the "Other-cott" -- take all the kids, all your neighbour's kids, a few dozen of your closest friends, and all your sisters, cousins, and aunts this weekend to see Over the Hedge. Drive its well-deserved ticket-sale numbers up, and leave The DVC eating its dust.

DA VINCI CODE COUNTDOWN:
SECRET OPUS DEI DRAGON RITUALS OBSERVED!!!

At an exclusive private club in a fashionable Toronto neighbourhood, hundreds of adherents or supporters of the local membership of (ba-ba-ba-BA-AHM!) OPUS DEI gathered for an annual communal meal in honor of one of the successful works of "The Work." The colour red was everywhere in evidence, and between courses the assembly was "whipped" into excitement by these strange performing creatures.














Actually, this was the entertainment portion-- ably provided by the WuShu Kung Fu Club-- of the annual fund-raising gala dinner in support of the Hawthorn School for Girls.



Yes, it was Saturday night, named for that pagan deity Saturn (the god of Euro-looking Sedans with Respectable Gas Mileage), but it was nevertheless a pretty typical private school fund-raiser, this time on a "Far Eastern" theme, full of parents, teachers, administrators, board members, friends, and students working together to beef up the budget of an independent school-- one where, as it happens, I taught part-time and, later, volunteered over a period of four or five years in the late 1990's.

And no, I never did join-- didn't get recruited, pressured, intimidated, seduced, or, in the end, dismissed. I think Opus Dei does wonderful work in the world, and they have my blessing, but I feel no call to sign up for anything. Everybody's happy with that. We remain on friendly terms and they receive our family's support-- and I spent a bunch of money at the silent auction.


See all the weird people? See the zealous cruelty in their eyes? See all the fanatical monks inflicting masochistic suffering upon themselves? (Well, the dessert wasn't too good, but the Teriyaki chicken was superb.)

Hawthorn School (the name is a dead giveaway, by the way, if you know "how these things work") is one of the Works of our local Opus Dei community. Though not officially called a Catholic school (not because they want to hide it, but because the Archdiocese asserts a monopoly over the use of that designation, and Opus Dei people are notoriously OBEDIENT AND RESPECTFUL of the authority of the local Ordinary, as Catholic Bishops are called).

Hawthorn is Catholic in ethos and atmosphere in every respect. However, its operating principles are articulated through a vocabulary which is applicable and relevant to all persons of good will-- that is, its traditional Catholic vision is expressed in terms of The Virtues. This is an approach which fits comfortably within the Natural Law tradition embraced by the most revered Catholic philosophers (Augustine, Aquinas, and all their homies, right down to Pope John Paul the Great), while it allows the school staff to offer academic values, leadership, and moral guidance that appeal to many parents regardless of cultural background.

The students at Hawthorn are predominantly Catholic, but the school has also served Protestant, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, and Jehovah's Witness students. The non-Catholics are not compelled to take the religion classes (but many do, quite successfully), and their separate traditions are respected: Jehovah's Witnesses are not required to sing the National Anthem or observe popular holidays (like Mother's Day); Muslim girls are given the library for prayer at lunchtime during Ramadan, and all other students are instructed not to eat break-time snacks in front of them, since they must go hungry until evening.

Why would these non-Catholic parents want to put their daughters (or sons, at Northmount Boys School) into an unapologetically Catholic learning envorinment? Because they know that the school will demand that its staff and students learn and live universal standards of Virtue-- standards which are either absent from or actively undermined by most public educational institutions.

Somewhere in the information package given to parents and enquirers is the phrase "Hawthorn School is operated under the Opus Dei Prelature of the Catholic Church," or words to that effect. Until recently, that might be as much as any non-Opus Dei person would ever know about the Prelature's role in the school, unless they were curious enough to check it out elsewhere or specifically ask a staff member. And, absent another single detail about what the words "Opus Dei" mean, parents could happily see their child through twelve years of solid education at Hawthorn without it mattering one whit.

What they would see would be a well-run, utterly joyful, small and personal school, built from the ground up by a group of parents who began in a church basement, now overseeing a well-appointed suburban campus [don't think red-brick-and-ivy-- it's a brilliantly converted steel-sided warehouse]-- a school with well-prepared, highly-motivated students who go on to successful higher education and careers, and who take with them into the world a sense of confidence built the old-fashioned way-- out of decency, compassion, modesty, and self-respect-- rather than the newer model built on aggressive self-esteem and indignant entitlement.

I hadn't been to a Hawthorn Gala in several years, due to other May-time engagements. One thing was different this year though, and I expect it's a difference that is rippling through Opus Dei communities around the world (that's for the total worldwide membership of just over 85,000-- for comparison's sake, that's about half the total enrollment at the nine University of California campuses-- Oooooooh! Ver-r-ry Sca-a-a-ry!).

The difference was that I heard the words "Opus Dei" spoken more times in that dining room Saturday night than I had heard it spoken in all the years of my association with the school (which began in 1994) combined-- that includes teaching two days a week, spending hours directing or assisting with theatrical productions, plus a ten-day trip to Rome (during which I shared a room with a "Numerary"-- together all day, every day, and guess what? At no time was she ever visibly bleeding from her corporal mortifications, even in white slacks!!!!).

On the whole I am of the belief that nothing good whatsoever can come of the existence of The Da Vinci Code, in either book or film form. Everything about the book is a lie, including (as Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman) the words "and" and "the"-- but most especially the critical opinion that it is a good, or even readable book at all, when it is, in fact, a literary disaster. [For an abbreviated account of the book's many offenses, religious and literary, and one suggested "non-response", read and take The Da Vinci Code Pledge for Thin-skinned Christians.]

But if there is one bright spot on the horizon it is that Opus Dei has been forced out of the closet and into the light of day. (Maybe they'll stop giving their schools and other residences names that sound like boring suburban housing developments: Hawthorn, Northmount, Riverside, Mapleglen, Shady Oaks-- I made up those last three, but that's the usual model.) They have chosen to be as positive as they can about the unwanted attention being brought to them-- the "when you're handed a lemon, make lemonade" strategy. That is quite literal-- it is in exactly those terms that the Prelature expressed its planned response to the film's libels.

It is, of course, entirely too mild a response to what can only be called a "blood libel" against both Opus Dei and the Catholic Church as a whole, but it is, unfortunately, the only one which has a prayer of succeeding. The legitimate response-- lawsuits, mass demonstrations, book-burnings, Church sanctions for any Catholic promoting the story or downplaying its significance-- all would be perfectly justified, and utterly pointless, even counter-productive.
[There's been a pretty good educational counterpoint campaign going on for a couple of years now. Excellent de-bunking and fact-finding conducted here, here, here, here, and here, just for starters.]

There was one possible, Church-wide action that could have been taken, and wasn't, which is that the Pope could have written a brief and pointed denunciation of the book and the film, naming some of the widely available materials which thoroughly debunk its falsehoods, and decreed that this be read from every Catholic pulpit in the world the week before the film opened. He would probably have been ignored in some places, but he could have tried, and I'm sorry he didn't. Beyond that, though, the Opus Dei strategy is a superior one for reaching the people who will not be sitting in Catholic pews on any given Sunday. It has been an informative exercise for the wider world, and a healthy change of attitude for the Prelature itself. In that respect, it's a good thing-- but so good as to be worth the damage this film will do? No. Never.

In some respects Dan Brown is the least of the villains in this piece, poor schmuck, since he was just floating along with all the thousands of other paperback writers, flotsam on a greasy sea of mediocrity, moderately successful but too unimportant to rate even the investment of a good editor. I think both he and his publishers were unprepared for the success of his fourth little novel, a success grounded in nothing more than the public and critical appetite for anti-Catholicism. Brown had unwittingly concocted the winning recipe for a gumbo of the public's most deeply held prejudices (Arthur Scheslinger had it right on this subject), and publishing history was made. (The only thing "historical" about the whole mess....) Dan Brown is also a dolt-- that's always a mitigating factor in assigning responsibility.

Ron Howard, on the other hand, is a genuinely creative and talented artist, and, more importantly, there is nothing "unwitting" about what he has tapped into in hopes of making a success of his film-- he has been warned, by the outrage expressed at the book, which compounded with the announcement and progress of the film. Howard heard all there was to hear about how offensive this story is to all Christians and other believers, and at some point he decided that they and their woundedness did not matter. He looked at the project, eyes wide open, assessing with a better mind than that of the book's author the meaning of what he was doing, and went ahead with it anyway. (Apparently he's equally unfazed about insulting people's intelligence too-- the movie trailer reveals that he has repeated Brown's fundamental factual error by calling The Last Supper a "fresco" -- it's not. It remains to be seen whether Howard has repeated the rest of Brown's historical sloppiness.)

Screenwriter, former nun, and excellent Catholic apologist Barbara Nicolosi watched Howard doing publicity for the film on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and felt she was observing a man who has suddenly become acutely aware that he has sold out God for money. He was a giddily babbling nervous wreck. Nicolosi thinks Opie's basically still a good guy-- and he's done a very bad thing. She thinks he now knows it, but he has no excuse for having taken so long to realize it, now that it's too late to stop it.

If the spiritual awakening of Opie is a result of the filming of The Da Vinci Code, it's a helluva a price to pay for one guy's enlightenment (the price being the soul-threatening deception of tens of millions). A good thing, but too dearly bought.

I have in earlier posts, on different subjects, used the onslaught of the Orcs at Helm's Deep, so perfectly realized on the screen in Peter Jackson's film of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, as the consummate image of the power of lies. The Orcs are not the jihadists, or the KKK, or the Wiccans, or the Communists, or the French (!), or the Democrats (or even the Republicans)-- the Orcs are the lies.

They sweep onto the field and mow down all and everything in their path-- ugly, merciless, nearly omnipotent. Worse, they seduce or enslave all who are fool enough to consider entertaining them-- they are the impossible, imperious, immovable houseguest. Open your door to one and it will occupy your mind, and won't leave until it has rubbished it top to bottom. And it has an army of friends.

There are plenty of books, films, public spectacles of comedy, song, or spoken word where one little dig, or a couple of nasty shots, have cordially invited a lie or two about Christian belief in among an appreciative assembly. With the film version of The Da Vinci Code, Ron Howard has made a conscious decision to "loose the Orcs." It will have large consequences. They will be overwhelmingly bad. They will be answered for, in or out of time.

Barbara Nicolosi is one of the most prominent identifiable Catholics in Hollywood, and has therefore been inundated with requests to opine on the film as its release date approaches. She's sick of it, and doesn't want to say much of anything. She is urging all concerned people to do the one thing that will make an impression on the insulated, impervious, and impious community that has deliberately hyped the thing out of control: GO TO ANOTHER MOVIE-- DRIVE THE DVC INTO LOW OPENING NUMBERS by concentrating attendance on the kind of film audiences have shown that they prefer, given their choice. It's called an "OTHERCOTT" -- fill the seats in every theatre showing OVER THE HEDGE, another promising animated kids' film, a pleasure for the whole family, and the genre that ACTUALLY MAKES THE MOST MONEY FOR HOLLYWOOD PRODUCERS. Help these boneheads GET THE PICTURE. TURN BACK THE ORCS.

In the final days of publicity rounds in the U.S., both Ron Howard and Tom Hanks have been doing their best to dismiss the significance of The Da Vinci Code by saying it's "just a movie." Says Howard, "...it is a work of fiction. It's not meant to offend, it's not theology." Hanks went even further: "The story we tell is loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense... If you are going to take any sort of movie at face value, particularly a huge-budget motion picture like this, you'd be making a very big mistake... It's a damn good story and a lot of fun... all it is, is dialogue. That never hurts." ("Dialogue" never hurts-- remember where you heard that the next time somebody gets prosecuted, or murdered, for "hate speech.")

All of this is, obviously, a desperate attempt to reduce the heat suddenly (belatedly) being turned up on the coming Orc-fest. It is also a day late and an apology short, and is patently insincere-- after all, check out the movie posters. Are we supposed to believe that Ron Howard had no say in the graphic mantra above the title, "SEEK THE TRUTH"? Please.

So just remember, for anyone who decides to shell out their bucks and see The Da Vinci Code: the revered leading actor has told you what to do.

SEEK THE CRAP.
SEEK THE LIES.
SEEK THE NONSENSE.
SEEK THE HOOEY.

CUE THE ORCS.