From The New York Times: There might be no album that reminds me more of working at the Record Bar in Greensboro in the early 80s than Luther's first, "Never Too Much." A great, great singer, too soon gone.
Luther Vandross, Smooth Crooner of R&B, Is Dead at 54
By Jeff Leeds
Luther Vandross, the silky-voiced R&B crooner who spun romance into hits like "Here and Now" and "Any Love," winning eight Grammy Awards, died yesterday afternoon at John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, N.J. He was 54.
The medical center, which did not disclose the cause, released a statement saying that Mr. Vandross "had a peaceful passing under the watchful eye of friends, family and the medical support team." It added that he "never fully recovered" from a stroke he suffered at his Manhattan apartment on April 16, 2003.
Mr. Vandross, whose supple tenor and smooth delivery drew ecstatic swoons from his fans, had kept a low profile since the stroke, though he did appear on videotape at the annual Grammy telecast in 2004, when he was a sentimental favorite to win several awards. He won four that night, including best song for "Dance With My Father," a bittersweet reflection on his youth. He delivered his acceptance speech on the video. "Remember, when I say goodbye, it's never for long," he said, breaking into a signature hit, "because I believe in the power of love."
Mr. Vandross also appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show later that year, when she visited him as he underwent rehabilitation.
Mr. Vandross sold an estimated 30 million albums. His "Dance With My Father" album on J Records made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart while he remained hospitalized from the stroke.
He ranked as one of the most successful R&B singers of the 1980's and broke through to even wider commercial success in 1989 with "The Best of Luther Vandross, the Best of Love," which included the new song "Here and Now," his first Top 10 hit.
Born in New York City in 1951, Mr. Vandross was the youngest of four children. His father, an upholsterer, died when Mr. Vandross was still a boy, leaving his mother, a nurse, to support the family.
While in high school, Mr. Vandross developed an affinity for the legendary Motown label's all-female acts, and for the gospel-soul sounds of artists like Aretha Franklin and Cissy Houston. Dreaming of a career in music, he briefly attended Western Michigan University.
In 1972, a song Mr. Vandross wrote, "Everybody Rejoice," was included in the Broadway musical "The Wiz." But his biggest early break came when he landed a job as a backup singer for the British glam-rock artist David Bowie, who later hired him to work on vocal arrangements for the album "Young Americans."
Mr. Vandross soon became a sought-after backup singer and arranger, working for artists from Bette Midler to Barbra Streisand, and he helped pay the bills as an anonymous performer of commercial jingles. In the late 1970's, he recorded under different names and with a variety of groups, including Bionic Boogie and Change, and sang on the Chic hit "Dance, Dance, Dance."
He finally signed a contract with Epic Records, which released his 1981 debut, "Never Too Much," which reached the top of the R&B charts and sold more than one million copies, effectively sparking his career as a star. Through the 1980's, he released a string of hit albums, including "Forever, for Always, for Love," "Busy Body" and Any Love."
Mr. Vandross had become a superstar with black audiences, but he often appeared frustrated about the difficulty of crossing into wider pop stardom.
"I didn't buy blond wigs; I didn't walk differently," he told one reporter in 1995. "One of the things I admire most about, let's say, Aretha, is that she got crossover success based on her own terms, own talent, own approach."
He did broaden his audience further with the 1991 album "Power of Love," and through the 1990's he performed hit duets with the pop stars Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey.
Mr. Vandross won a Grammy for best R&B male vocal performance in 1990 for "Here and Now," two in 1991 for co-writing and performing the song "Power of Love" and another in 1996 for his performance of "Your Secret Love."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, in a telephone interview last night, described Mr. Vandross as "a voice of rare vintage."
"In the tradition of Nat Cole, he was a singular male voice," Mr. Jackson continued. "He was an artist who brought a great sense of dignity to his art."
Mr. Vandross had long struggled with obesity, hypertension and diabetes. His weight often fluctuated, and he told a television interviewer in 2001: "I've never been more healthy than I am now. I wish I was this healthy when I was 25."
Mr. Vandross is survived by his mother, Mary Ida Vandross.
Friday, July 01, 2005
From The Los Angeles Times:
Why Bush Won't Send More Troops
By Jonathan Chait
Virtually every independent analyst who does not want to withdraw from Iraq thinks we need more troops in order to win. Republicans at the Weekly Standard have said this. Democrats such as Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware have said this. The troops themselves say this, incessantly. A dearth of boots on the ground results in such predicaments as an inability to patrol the border where enemy fighters are swarming in, or the need to repeatedly fight for the same towns, which we lack the forces to occupy continuously.
But President Bush doesn't think we need more soldiers. Comically, he also insists that in not sending more troops he is merely obeying the wishes of the "commanders on the ground."
It may be literally true that the generals are telling Bush they don't need more troops. But if it is, that's only because they know they have no choice but to say so.
At the beginning of the war, Gen. Eric Shinseki privately challenged Defense Department troop estimates for occupying Iraq as too low. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was enraged and leaked the name of Shinseki's successor to the media a year before the end of his term as Army chief of staff, thereby making him a lame duck. Last May, the Baltimore Sun reported that, based on a flimsy pretext, Maj. Gen. John Riggs was stripped of one of his three stars just before retirement for more publicly insisting that the military needed more troops.
Shinseki and Riggs are exceptional only in that they spoke out publicly. Their view seems to be the consensus. A recent report in the New York Times was typical: "Commanders concerned for their careers have not thought it prudent to go further, and to say publicly what many say privately: that with recent American troop levels — 139,000 now — they have been forced to play an infernal board game, constantly shuttling combat units from one war zone to another, leaving insurgent buildups unmet in some places while they deal with more urgent problems elsewhere."
In 1941, Josef Stalin was certain that Adolf Hitler had no intention of invading the Soviet Union. He branded any suggestion to the contrary, however grounded in fact, as capitalist propaganda. I would guess that when he asked his generals if they needed more troops on the German front, their advice was less than candid.
Stalin, of course, was a murderous, insane dictator, and Bush is not. Given that the president obviously wants to win the war, what is his motivation for shortchanging the number of troops? It appears to be a combination of partisanship and genuine ideological fanaticism.
In the prelude to the Iraq war, both Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had reasons to low-ball the needed troops. Rumsfeld was fascinated with transforming the military into a smaller, high-tech force. Cheney believed Iraqis would "greet us as liberators" and therefore needed little armed supervision. Given the cult of personality around Bush, whom conservatives lionized as a fearless Churchillian slayer of terrorists, any deviation was seen as ideological heresy. After Shinseki ventured his opinions on troops, conservative pundit Jed Babbin blasted him as a weak-kneed, politically minded Clintonite who failed to understand that "the very premise of an extended 'occupation' is antithetical to President Bush's policy of liberation." Babbin intended that line as an indictment of Shinseki. In retrospect it's an indictment of Bush.
Bush's continued stubbornness probably derives from a refusal to admit a mistake. If we need more troops now, that implies we needed more troops all along, which means that if the war ends badly, Bush must have made a colossal mistake. It's characteristic of this administration that it would rather reduce the chances of being blamed for a national catastrophe than reduce the chances of the catastrophe happening in the first place.
Why Bush Won't Send More Troops
By Jonathan Chait
Virtually every independent analyst who does not want to withdraw from Iraq thinks we need more troops in order to win. Republicans at the Weekly Standard have said this. Democrats such as Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware have said this. The troops themselves say this, incessantly. A dearth of boots on the ground results in such predicaments as an inability to patrol the border where enemy fighters are swarming in, or the need to repeatedly fight for the same towns, which we lack the forces to occupy continuously.
But President Bush doesn't think we need more soldiers. Comically, he also insists that in not sending more troops he is merely obeying the wishes of the "commanders on the ground."
It may be literally true that the generals are telling Bush they don't need more troops. But if it is, that's only because they know they have no choice but to say so.
At the beginning of the war, Gen. Eric Shinseki privately challenged Defense Department troop estimates for occupying Iraq as too low. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was enraged and leaked the name of Shinseki's successor to the media a year before the end of his term as Army chief of staff, thereby making him a lame duck. Last May, the Baltimore Sun reported that, based on a flimsy pretext, Maj. Gen. John Riggs was stripped of one of his three stars just before retirement for more publicly insisting that the military needed more troops.
Shinseki and Riggs are exceptional only in that they spoke out publicly. Their view seems to be the consensus. A recent report in the New York Times was typical: "Commanders concerned for their careers have not thought it prudent to go further, and to say publicly what many say privately: that with recent American troop levels — 139,000 now — they have been forced to play an infernal board game, constantly shuttling combat units from one war zone to another, leaving insurgent buildups unmet in some places while they deal with more urgent problems elsewhere."
In 1941, Josef Stalin was certain that Adolf Hitler had no intention of invading the Soviet Union. He branded any suggestion to the contrary, however grounded in fact, as capitalist propaganda. I would guess that when he asked his generals if they needed more troops on the German front, their advice was less than candid.
Stalin, of course, was a murderous, insane dictator, and Bush is not. Given that the president obviously wants to win the war, what is his motivation for shortchanging the number of troops? It appears to be a combination of partisanship and genuine ideological fanaticism.
In the prelude to the Iraq war, both Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had reasons to low-ball the needed troops. Rumsfeld was fascinated with transforming the military into a smaller, high-tech force. Cheney believed Iraqis would "greet us as liberators" and therefore needed little armed supervision. Given the cult of personality around Bush, whom conservatives lionized as a fearless Churchillian slayer of terrorists, any deviation was seen as ideological heresy. After Shinseki ventured his opinions on troops, conservative pundit Jed Babbin blasted him as a weak-kneed, politically minded Clintonite who failed to understand that "the very premise of an extended 'occupation' is antithetical to President Bush's policy of liberation." Babbin intended that line as an indictment of Shinseki. In retrospect it's an indictment of Bush.
Bush's continued stubbornness probably derives from a refusal to admit a mistake. If we need more troops now, that implies we needed more troops all along, which means that if the war ends badly, Bush must have made a colossal mistake. It's characteristic of this administration that it would rather reduce the chances of being blamed for a national catastrophe than reduce the chances of the catastrophe happening in the first place.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
From The New York Times:
The Not-So-Long Gray Line
By Lucian K. Truscott IV
Los Angeles
JUNE is the month in which West Point celebrates the commissioning of its graduating class and prepares to accept a new group of candidates eager to embrace the arduous strictures of the world's most prestigious military academy. But it can also be a cruel month, because West Pointers five years removed from graduation have fulfilled their obligations and can resign.
My class, that of 1969, set a record with more than 50 percent resigning within a few years of completing the service commitment. (My father's class, 1945, the one that "missed" World War II, was considered to be the previous record-holder, with about 25 percent resigning before they reached the 20 years of service entitling them to full retirement benefits.)
And now, from what I've heard from friends still in the military and during the two years I spent reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems we may be on the verge of a similar exodus of officers. The annual resignation rate of Army lieutenants and captains rose to 9 percent last year, the highest since before the Sept. 11 attacks. And in May, The Los Angeles Times reported on "an undercurrent of discontent within the Army's young officer corps that the Pentagon's statistics do not yet capture."
I'm not surprised. In 1975, I received a foundation grant to write reports on why such a large percentage of my class had resigned. This money would have been better spent studying the emerging appeal of Scientology, because a single word answered the question: Vietnam.
Yet my classmates were disillusioned with more than being sent to fight an unpopular war. When we became cadets, we were taught that the academy's honor code was what separated West Point from a mere college. This was a little hard to believe at first, because the code seemed so simple; you pledged that you would not lie, cheat or steal, and that you would not tolerate those who did. We were taught that in combat, lies could kill.
But the honor code was not just a way to fight a better war. In the Army, soldiers are given few rights, grave responsibilities, and lots and lots of power. The honor code serves as the Bill of Rights of the Army, protecting soldiers from betraying one another and the rest of us from their terrifying power to destroy. It is all that stands between an army and tyranny.
However, the honor code broke down before our eyes as staff and faculty jobs at West Point began filling with officers returning from Vietnam. Some had covered their uniforms with bogus medals and made their careers with lies - inflating body counts, ignoring drug abuse, turning a blind eye to racial discrimination, and worst of all, telling everyone above them in the chain of command that we were winning a war they knew we were losing. The lies became embedded in the curriculum of the academy, and finally in its moral DNA.
By the time we were seniors, honor court verdicts could be fixed, and there was organized cheating in some units. A few years later, nearly an entire West Point class was implicated in cheating on an engineering exam; the breakdown was complete.
The mistake the Army made then is the same mistake it is making now: how can you educate a group of handpicked students at one of the best universities in the world and then treat them as if they are too stupid to know when they have been told a lie?
I've seen the results firsthand. I have met many lieutenants who have served in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, practically back to back. While everyone in a combat zone is risking his or her life, these junior officers are the ones leading foot patrols and convoys several times a day. Recruiting enough privates for the endless combat rotations is a problem the Army may gamble its way out of with enough money and a struggling economy. But nothing can compensate for losing the combat-hardened junior officers.
In the fall of 2003 I was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, and its West Point lieutenants were among the most gung-ho soldiers I have ever encountered, yet most were already talking about getting out of the Army. I talked late into one night with a muscular first lieutenant with a shaved head and a no-nonsense manner who had stacks of Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker and The Atlantic under his bunk. He had served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he was disgusted with what he had seen in Iraq by December 2003.
"I feel like politicians have created a difficult situation for us," he told me. "I know I'm going to be coming back here about a year from now. I want to get married. I want to have a life. But I feel like if I get out when my commitment is up, who's going to be coming here in my place? I feel this obligation to see it through, but everybody over here knows we're just targets. Sooner or later, your luck's going to run out."
At the time, he was commanding three vehicle convoys a day down a treacherous road to pick up hot food for his troops from the civilian contractors who never left their company's "dining facility" about five miles away. He walked daily patrols through the old city of Mosul, a hotbed of insurgent activity that erupted in violence after the 101st left it last year. The Army will need this lieutenant 20 years from now when he could be a colonel, or 30 years from now when he could have four stars on his collar. But I doubt he will be in uniform long enough to make captain.
One cold night a week later, I sat on a stack of sandbags 50 feet from the Syrian border with another West Point lieutenant; he, too, was planning to leave the Army. "I love going out on the border and chasing down the bad guys," he told me as he dragged on a cigarette. "We've got a guy making runs across the border from Syria in a white Toyota pickup who we've been trying to catch for two months; we call him the jackrabbit.
"He gets away from us every time, and I really admire the guy. But when we catch him, there'll be somebody else right behind him. What's the use? Guys are dying, for what?"
A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail message from another West Point lieutenant; he was writing from a laptop in a bunker somewhere in Iraq. "I'm getting out as soon as I can," he wrote. "Everyone I know plans on getting out, with a few exceptions. What have you got to look forward to? If you come back from a tour of getting the job done in war, it's to a battalion commander who cares more about the shine on your boots and how your trucks are parked in the motor pool than about the fitness of your unit for war."
There was a time when the Army did not have a problem retaining young leaders - men like Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, George Marshall, Omar Bradley and my grandfather, Lucian K. Truscott Jr. Having endured the horrors of World War I trenches, these men did not run headlong out of the Army in the 1920's and 30's when nobody wanted to think of the military, much less pay for it. They had made a pact with each other and with their country, and all sides were going to keep it.
When members of the West Point class of 1969 and other young officers resigned nearly en masse in the mid-1970's because of Vietnam, Washington had a fix. Way too late, and with no enthusiasm, the politicians pulled out of Vietnam, ended the draft and instituted the "all volunteer" military, offering large increases in pay and benefits. Now, however, the Pentagon has run out of fixes; the only choices appear to be going back to the draft or scaling back our military ambitions.
The problem the Army created in Vietnam has never really been solved. If you keep faith with soldiers and tell them the truth even when it threatens their beliefs, you run the risk of losing them. But if you peddle cleverly manipulated talking points to people who trust you not to lie, you won't merely lose them, you'll break their hearts.
Lucian K. Truscott IV is a novelist and screenwriter.
The Not-So-Long Gray Line
By Lucian K. Truscott IV
Los Angeles
JUNE is the month in which West Point celebrates the commissioning of its graduating class and prepares to accept a new group of candidates eager to embrace the arduous strictures of the world's most prestigious military academy. But it can also be a cruel month, because West Pointers five years removed from graduation have fulfilled their obligations and can resign.
My class, that of 1969, set a record with more than 50 percent resigning within a few years of completing the service commitment. (My father's class, 1945, the one that "missed" World War II, was considered to be the previous record-holder, with about 25 percent resigning before they reached the 20 years of service entitling them to full retirement benefits.)
And now, from what I've heard from friends still in the military and during the two years I spent reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems we may be on the verge of a similar exodus of officers. The annual resignation rate of Army lieutenants and captains rose to 9 percent last year, the highest since before the Sept. 11 attacks. And in May, The Los Angeles Times reported on "an undercurrent of discontent within the Army's young officer corps that the Pentagon's statistics do not yet capture."
I'm not surprised. In 1975, I received a foundation grant to write reports on why such a large percentage of my class had resigned. This money would have been better spent studying the emerging appeal of Scientology, because a single word answered the question: Vietnam.
Yet my classmates were disillusioned with more than being sent to fight an unpopular war. When we became cadets, we were taught that the academy's honor code was what separated West Point from a mere college. This was a little hard to believe at first, because the code seemed so simple; you pledged that you would not lie, cheat or steal, and that you would not tolerate those who did. We were taught that in combat, lies could kill.
But the honor code was not just a way to fight a better war. In the Army, soldiers are given few rights, grave responsibilities, and lots and lots of power. The honor code serves as the Bill of Rights of the Army, protecting soldiers from betraying one another and the rest of us from their terrifying power to destroy. It is all that stands between an army and tyranny.
However, the honor code broke down before our eyes as staff and faculty jobs at West Point began filling with officers returning from Vietnam. Some had covered their uniforms with bogus medals and made their careers with lies - inflating body counts, ignoring drug abuse, turning a blind eye to racial discrimination, and worst of all, telling everyone above them in the chain of command that we were winning a war they knew we were losing. The lies became embedded in the curriculum of the academy, and finally in its moral DNA.
By the time we were seniors, honor court verdicts could be fixed, and there was organized cheating in some units. A few years later, nearly an entire West Point class was implicated in cheating on an engineering exam; the breakdown was complete.
The mistake the Army made then is the same mistake it is making now: how can you educate a group of handpicked students at one of the best universities in the world and then treat them as if they are too stupid to know when they have been told a lie?
I've seen the results firsthand. I have met many lieutenants who have served in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, practically back to back. While everyone in a combat zone is risking his or her life, these junior officers are the ones leading foot patrols and convoys several times a day. Recruiting enough privates for the endless combat rotations is a problem the Army may gamble its way out of with enough money and a struggling economy. But nothing can compensate for losing the combat-hardened junior officers.
In the fall of 2003 I was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, and its West Point lieutenants were among the most gung-ho soldiers I have ever encountered, yet most were already talking about getting out of the Army. I talked late into one night with a muscular first lieutenant with a shaved head and a no-nonsense manner who had stacks of Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker and The Atlantic under his bunk. He had served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he was disgusted with what he had seen in Iraq by December 2003.
"I feel like politicians have created a difficult situation for us," he told me. "I know I'm going to be coming back here about a year from now. I want to get married. I want to have a life. But I feel like if I get out when my commitment is up, who's going to be coming here in my place? I feel this obligation to see it through, but everybody over here knows we're just targets. Sooner or later, your luck's going to run out."
At the time, he was commanding three vehicle convoys a day down a treacherous road to pick up hot food for his troops from the civilian contractors who never left their company's "dining facility" about five miles away. He walked daily patrols through the old city of Mosul, a hotbed of insurgent activity that erupted in violence after the 101st left it last year. The Army will need this lieutenant 20 years from now when he could be a colonel, or 30 years from now when he could have four stars on his collar. But I doubt he will be in uniform long enough to make captain.
One cold night a week later, I sat on a stack of sandbags 50 feet from the Syrian border with another West Point lieutenant; he, too, was planning to leave the Army. "I love going out on the border and chasing down the bad guys," he told me as he dragged on a cigarette. "We've got a guy making runs across the border from Syria in a white Toyota pickup who we've been trying to catch for two months; we call him the jackrabbit.
"He gets away from us every time, and I really admire the guy. But when we catch him, there'll be somebody else right behind him. What's the use? Guys are dying, for what?"
A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail message from another West Point lieutenant; he was writing from a laptop in a bunker somewhere in Iraq. "I'm getting out as soon as I can," he wrote. "Everyone I know plans on getting out, with a few exceptions. What have you got to look forward to? If you come back from a tour of getting the job done in war, it's to a battalion commander who cares more about the shine on your boots and how your trucks are parked in the motor pool than about the fitness of your unit for war."
There was a time when the Army did not have a problem retaining young leaders - men like Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, George Marshall, Omar Bradley and my grandfather, Lucian K. Truscott Jr. Having endured the horrors of World War I trenches, these men did not run headlong out of the Army in the 1920's and 30's when nobody wanted to think of the military, much less pay for it. They had made a pact with each other and with their country, and all sides were going to keep it.
When members of the West Point class of 1969 and other young officers resigned nearly en masse in the mid-1970's because of Vietnam, Washington had a fix. Way too late, and with no enthusiasm, the politicians pulled out of Vietnam, ended the draft and instituted the "all volunteer" military, offering large increases in pay and benefits. Now, however, the Pentagon has run out of fixes; the only choices appear to be going back to the draft or scaling back our military ambitions.
The problem the Army created in Vietnam has never really been solved. If you keep faith with soldiers and tell them the truth even when it threatens their beliefs, you run the risk of losing them. But if you peddle cleverly manipulated talking points to people who trust you not to lie, you won't merely lose them, you'll break their hearts.
Lucian K. Truscott IV is a novelist and screenwriter.
Monday, June 27, 2005
From Chronicles magazine website:
The Enemy Inside the Gates
By Srdja Trifkovic
The story is by now grimly familiar. Some members of a Muslim community somewhere in the United States are arrested. They are suspected of links with Islamic terrorists. The local Muslim community responds with a mix,of indignation and denial, with the assurances of the suspects’ impeccable character and accusations of anti-Muslim bias. Non-Muslim civic leaders then respond by reassuring the Muslim community that it is loved and appreciated in spite of this “isolated incident” and by calling on their fellow-citizens to be warm and supportive to their Muslim neighbors. The media report heart-rendering stories of the Muslim sense of sadness, rejection and alienation. The “experts” say that the domestic threat is exaggerated. CAIR screams “Islamophobia!” Nobody mentions immigration, or loyalty, or identity, or abuse of hospitality. The latest replay of this, by now boringly predictable scenario comes from Lodi, California, situated in the fertile San Joaquin Valley some 30 miles south of Sacramento. It is now home to about a thousand Muslims, predominantly from Pakistan. Most of them came over the past two decades as grape pickers and fruit packers. One of them is 22-year-old Hamid Hayat, who was arrested by the FBI on Tuesday of last week. According to a federal affidavit, young Hamid has admitted spending six months in 2003-2004 at a terrorist training camp near the Pakistani capital Islamabad, and attending classes that included instructions on “how to kill Americans.” The agents also arrested his father, Umer Hayat (47). Both are U.S. citizens. Three other men, including two clerics from the local mosque, were also taken into custody, for now only on suspicion of immigration violations. The FBI said the arrests were part of a long inquiry into possible Islamist activities in the area. Agents indicated that fresh arrests were possible as the bureau expands its investigation into the San Francisco Bay Area. “It’s a question that has pervaded this city of 62,000, including a sizable Muslim community,” the paper commented, betraying either its stupidity or its mendacity. The answer is simple: Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers did not need to “come to Lodi” because they are there already. In any group of 1,000-plus Muslim immigrants centered around a mosque, it can be predicted with near-certainty (1) that some percentage will sympathize with the objectives of Al-Qaeda and its ilk, if not quite with all of their methods; and (2) that some smaller percentage of that group, especially among the Western-born young, will support those methods as well, and prove willing to apply them in practice. This assertion is supported by substantial evidence. We shall mention but a few typical cases. 1. In Florida and New York, two U.S. citizens—Tarik Shah and Rafiq Abdus Sabir—were arrested in late May, just before Lodi hit the news. They stand accused of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. The pair belongs to the “second wave”: Sabir is an Ivy League-educated medical doctor who lived in an upscale gated community in Boca Raton—and yet he pledged his loyalty to al-Qaida by offering to treat terrorists. Shah, a jazz musician who often traveled with his base to divert suspicion, offered to use his skills in martial arts to train terrorists. A spokesman for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton called Sabir “a good Muslim,” the charges against him “absurd, absolutely unfounded,” and pledged the support of the Muslim community. 2. In Falls Church, VA, Maher Amin Jaradat was arrested on June 6 for fraudulently procuring U.S. citizenship, with federal agents alleging he failed to disclose ties to militant groups. The indictment said Mr. Jaradat failed to disclose he had been a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP); that he had studied bomb making and the use of small arms at a training camp in Syria; and that he had engaged in security duties in Lebanon. 3. American-born Yahiye Gadahn (25) a.k.a. Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams, was named last year as a suspected al-Qaida operative sought by the FBI. Yahiye Gadahn, son of a halal butcher born and raised in California, has written of his religious experiences. His article can be found on the “Islamic Server” of the University of Southern California, courtesy of the taxpayers of the Golden State. 4. In March 2004 Indian-born U.S. citizen Ilyas Ali and his co-conspirator Muhamed Abid Afridi pleaded guilty to plotting to sell shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles to al Qaeda. It is noteworthy that when a reporter visited Ali in a Hong Kong jail in January 2003, he claimed he was a victim of Attorney General John Ashcroft and his over-zealous Justice Department. American law enforcement “screwed up 9/11 and now they’re arresting innocent people for political purposes. I’m very, very sad that they got an innocent person and they don’t care . . . Ashcroft just used me.” 5. In December 2003 Mukhtar al-Bakri, a naturalized U.S. citizen, and five U.S.-born youths from upstate New York—Shafal Mosed, Faysal Galab, Yayha Goba, Yasein Taher, and Sahim Alwan—convicted of aiding Al-Qaeda and plotting attacks on Americans. The seven, known as the Lackawanna Cell, lived in a tight-knit Arab community, but to an outside observer, PBS claimed, “most were all-American teenagers who played soccer together and enjoyed going to parties.” All seven went to the Al Farooq training camp in Afghanistan in the summer of 2001; six returned to the U.S. When questioned after their return, four of them said they had attended religious seminars in Pakistan. Not one mentioned the trip to Afghanistan until Mukhtar al-Bakri was picked up by Bahraini police and questioned by FBI agents in Bahrain on September 11, 2002. They received sentences of between seven and 10 years in prison. 6. In 2003 “The Portland Seven,” including six Muslim U.S. citizens—Maher Hawash, Jeffrey Leon Battle, Patrice Lumumba Ford, Ahmed Ibrahim Bilal, Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, Habis Abdulla al Saoub and Martinique Lewis—were convicted of plotting attacks against Americans. The cell called itself “Katibat Al-Mawt,” loosely translates to “Squad of Death.” The list goes on and on. In 2003 U.S. Army Sergeant Asan Akbar went way beyond plotting when he threw a grenade into a tent with fellow soldiers in Kuwait, killing an officer and wounding 13. In 2001-2002, John Walker Lindh, Yaser Esam Hamdi and dozens of other U.S. citizens were captured in Afghanistan where they went to support the Taliban. That there is a correlation between the presence of a Muslim population in a country and the danger that its citizens will be subjected to a terrorist attack is a demonstrable fact. A significant minority of Muslim immigrants and their American-born offspring wishes to transform the host-society by converting it, or else to inflict some harm on it. They are unsurprisingly the immigrant group least likely to identify with America: in response to a survey of newly naturalized citizens, 90 percent of Muslim immigrants said that if there were a conflict between the United States and their country of origin, they would be inclined to support their country of origin. In Detroit 81 percent of Muslims “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” that Shari’a should be the law of the land. This internal threat to America is increasing. In the aftermath of 9-11 various estimates of the Muslim population of United States have been made, ranging from two to nine million. According to the Census Bureau, in 1987-1997 8 percent of all immigrants—two million—came from Muslim countries. There were 10.6 million naturalized citizens in 2000, of which over one million were Muslims. Growth of overall immigration (legal and illegal) since 1970 has been 300 percent, but growth of immigration from the Middle East over the same period has been 700 percent—from under 200,000 in 1970 to 1.5 million in 2000. In 2010 the expected number of immigrants from the Middle East will be 2,500,000. Well-financed by Saudi oil money, the jihadist infrastructure has come into being to cater to this large and growing community. The number of mosques and Islamic centers stands at around two thousand and keeps growing. The total number of mosques increased 42 percent between 1990 and 2000, compared with a 12 percent average increase for the evangelical Protestant denominations, and a two percent average increase among old-line Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox groups. The figures for immigration from the Middle East are matched and likely to be exceeded by the number of Muslim immigrants from the Indian Sub-Continent (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh). Currently Muslims account for close to one-tenth of all naturalizations, and their birth rates exceed those of any other significant immigrant group. Even a conservative estimate of their number of three million, or one-percent of the population, has alarming security implications and the potential for disproportionate growth. This is madness that needs to be stopped before it is too late. A coherent long-term counter-terrorist strategy therefore must entail denying Islam the foothold inside the United States. The application of ideological and political criteria in determining the eligibility of prospective visitors or immigrants has been and remains an essential ingredient of any anti-terrorist strategy, whereby Islamic activism would be treated as eminently political rather than “religious” activity. “We want people to know that Lodi is more than what the investigation is about” said Blair King, the city manager, following the arrests in California last week. “It doesn’t seem to me that we have a terrorist cell working out of Lodi. I don’t see any evidence of that,” opined the mayor, John Beckman. Appealing for calm, he warned against “inflamed passions.” Such inanities indicate that ultimately the outcome of the war against terrorists will depend on our ability to define ourselves and to understand the nature of the threat. The idiotic would-be dhimmis inside the gates are as dangerous as the jihadist enemy.
The media played on cue. “The two men had seemed to fit in well in the community, which to some observers raises anew the prospect of innocent Muslims arousing suspicion and fear among their neighbors,” agonized the CSM. The faithful at the mosque in Lodi—the place “where many in the Muslim community sought solace from the intrusion of agents and the swarm of news media,” according to the Boston Globe (June 12)—did not agonize. They reacted with indignation:It’s making everybody upset. People are pointing fingers at us. I just want people to stop using the word ‘Muslim.’ This ain’t anything to do with being Muslim,’ said Mashin Mohammad, 22, as he and friends gathered in a park across from the mosque. ‘I’m tired of people blaming Middle Eastern people for everything,’ said Mohammad, who was born in Afghanistan. ‘We don’t know what the truth is. But all we’ve been hearing is lies. People talk about terrorists and Al Qaeda being here. Why would they come to Lodi?’
From Chronicles magazine website:
Supreme Court Destroys Property Rights
By Thomas Fleming
It is sometimes difficult to make sense of the divisions on the US Supreme Court. Which of them is more important? It cannot be Republican v. Democrat, since liberal Republicans vote with the Democrats on most issues. Nor is it always Liberal v. Conservative (as if those terms meant anything today) or even strict v. loose constructionist: Justice Scalia’s theory of democratism is the very opposite of the “original intent” of the framers. But in today’s 5-4 ruling that local governments have the right to seize homes and property and give them to private developers, so long as there is some pretext of public good, makes it clear that there is, at least, a fundamental split between those who defend private private property—Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and (yes) O’Connor, and those who deny one of the fundamental civil rights on which the American system is based.
As Justice O’Connor, in a somewhat surprising dissent wrote: “Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, large corporations and development firms.” Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
Justice O’Connor’s dissent puts the issue square on the table. The once free citizens of the United States are now to be subject of every government jurisdiction that can be bribed by a developer. The power of money, which has de facto controlled—for over a hundred years—our government, will now de jure dictate the terms on which we own our own homes and small businesses.
I have always been a critic of the Lockean rationalist theories of individual or human rights that invaded old republican discourse. At the same time, I have defended certain hard-won civil rights that are part of the Anglo-American tradition. Locke summed up the three most fundamental as the rights to life, liberty, and property. The Supreme Court has malevolently and consciously struck down all three. For symbolic purposes, one can cite Roe v. Wade as the death knell of the “right to life,” Brown v. the Board of Education as one of many decisions that stripped us of our liberties, and now Kelo et al. v. City of New London eliminates our right to property.
But this decision is even worse, in some respects, than either Brown or Roe. No law forces a woman to kill her child, and any family, even of the cost limited means, can send their children to a private school or teach them at home; but no one is now secure in his home and property.
The Americans who rebelled against Britain and whose representatives ratified the Constitution would rise up in arms at this decision. After all, the principal cause of the Revolution was the illegal invasion of shops, warehouses, and homes to search for smuggled or untaxed goods. When the Constitution was drafted, many intelligent and principled Americans remembered the abuses of the British excise collectors. Mercy Otis Warren, sister of the James Otis who in protesting the Stamp Act, declared that “taxation without representation is tyranny,” demanded a bill of rights “to save us from such a detestable instrument of arbitrary power, to subject ourselves to the insolence of any petty revenue officer to enter our houses, search, insult, and seize at pleasure.” Both New York and Virginia demanded inclusion of what would become the 4th amendment guaranteeing “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
American governments have killed citizens unjustly and deprived them of their liberty, but those offenses were, in principle at least, aberrations. But, if ever there had been a fundamental American right, it would be the security of private property against government predations. That right is gone, and the last pretense that we live in the Old Republic has been stripped away by five unelected judges: three appointed by Republicans, two appointed by Democrats—though the worse of them, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, had the enthusiastic support of conservative Republican Orrin Hatch. That is why I am supporting Condi Rice against Hillary CLinton: she’s the cuter of two evils.
Supreme Court Destroys Property Rights
By Thomas Fleming
It is sometimes difficult to make sense of the divisions on the US Supreme Court. Which of them is more important? It cannot be Republican v. Democrat, since liberal Republicans vote with the Democrats on most issues. Nor is it always Liberal v. Conservative (as if those terms meant anything today) or even strict v. loose constructionist: Justice Scalia’s theory of democratism is the very opposite of the “original intent” of the framers. But in today’s 5-4 ruling that local governments have the right to seize homes and property and give them to private developers, so long as there is some pretext of public good, makes it clear that there is, at least, a fundamental split between those who defend private private property—Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and (yes) O’Connor, and those who deny one of the fundamental civil rights on which the American system is based.
As Justice O’Connor, in a somewhat surprising dissent wrote: “Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, large corporations and development firms.” Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
Justice O’Connor’s dissent puts the issue square on the table. The once free citizens of the United States are now to be subject of every government jurisdiction that can be bribed by a developer. The power of money, which has de facto controlled—for over a hundred years—our government, will now de jure dictate the terms on which we own our own homes and small businesses.
I have always been a critic of the Lockean rationalist theories of individual or human rights that invaded old republican discourse. At the same time, I have defended certain hard-won civil rights that are part of the Anglo-American tradition. Locke summed up the three most fundamental as the rights to life, liberty, and property. The Supreme Court has malevolently and consciously struck down all three. For symbolic purposes, one can cite Roe v. Wade as the death knell of the “right to life,” Brown v. the Board of Education as one of many decisions that stripped us of our liberties, and now Kelo et al. v. City of New London eliminates our right to property.
But this decision is even worse, in some respects, than either Brown or Roe. No law forces a woman to kill her child, and any family, even of the cost limited means, can send their children to a private school or teach them at home; but no one is now secure in his home and property.
The Americans who rebelled against Britain and whose representatives ratified the Constitution would rise up in arms at this decision. After all, the principal cause of the Revolution was the illegal invasion of shops, warehouses, and homes to search for smuggled or untaxed goods. When the Constitution was drafted, many intelligent and principled Americans remembered the abuses of the British excise collectors. Mercy Otis Warren, sister of the James Otis who in protesting the Stamp Act, declared that “taxation without representation is tyranny,” demanded a bill of rights “to save us from such a detestable instrument of arbitrary power, to subject ourselves to the insolence of any petty revenue officer to enter our houses, search, insult, and seize at pleasure.” Both New York and Virginia demanded inclusion of what would become the 4th amendment guaranteeing “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
American governments have killed citizens unjustly and deprived them of their liberty, but those offenses were, in principle at least, aberrations. But, if ever there had been a fundamental American right, it would be the security of private property against government predations. That right is gone, and the last pretense that we live in the Old Republic has been stripped away by five unelected judges: three appointed by Republicans, two appointed by Democrats—though the worse of them, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, had the enthusiastic support of conservative Republican Orrin Hatch. That is why I am supporting Condi Rice against Hillary CLinton: she’s the cuter of two evils.
The evidence mounts daily that George Bush is an idiot, and so are those of us who voted for him.
No, Not Gonzales!
By Robert Novak
WASHINGTON -- It was not merely a leak from the normally leak-proof Bush White House. For more than a week, a veritable torrent has tipped Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as President Bush's first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. It has sent the conservative movement into spasms of fear and loathing.
Gonzales long has been unacceptable to anti-abortion activists because of his record as a Texas Supreme Court justice. Beyond pro-lifers, he is opposed by organized conservative lawyers. Ironically, the same Bush supporters who have been raising money and devising tactics for the mother of all judicial confirmation fights are in a panic that Gonzales will be named. With the president's popularity falling among his conservative base as well as the general populace, a politically disastrous moment may be at hand.
The president will have to act quickly if the high court's current session ends today with a resignation. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor now is considered more likely to quit than ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist. White House leaks describe Gonzales as the leading prospect for either vacancy. That creates a situation filled with irony, contradictions and questions.
For example, why the torrent of Gonzales leaks from a White House extraordinarily adept at holding back the president's intended nominations? It looks like a trial balloon, but there are also suspicions that Gonzales's name has been floated by critics in order to shoot him down.
If opposition to abortion is Bush's pre-eminent social conservative position, Gonzales is a most improbable choice. He could not bring himself to support parental notification on the Texas Supreme Court. While he professes to be anti-abortion, he maintains Roe v. Wade is inviolable -- a judicial version of John Kerry's formulation.
Conservatives fear Gonzales will be another in a long line of Supreme Court justices who have proved more liberal than the president who appointed them expected -- John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter. That is a view widely held inside the White House, but not by the occupant who counts most. George W. Bush loves Al Gonzales and would like his former chief counsel to head a "Gonzales Court."
Since Gonzales was confirmed as attorney general after a nasty debate over treatment of terrorist detainees, the argument he would be confirmed more easily than other prospects might seem dubious. But Senate Democrats may have expunged anti-Gonzales bile from their system and be willing to support somebody who is markedly less conservative than any other nominee.
Indeed, all other possibilities are conservative. They face trouble from Democratic senators who have led the campaign to block Bush's judicial nominees. Three of them, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer, went on the Senate floor last Thursday morning to issue a virtual ultimatum. Underneath restrained rhetoric, they were telling the president: name justices acceptable to us or face a bitter battle. Gonzales might be the most acceptable name mentioned.
The White House has sent word that two favorites of the conservative movement -- Appellate Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson (4th Circuit, Richmond, Va.) and former Solicitor General Theodore Olson -- are ineligible because they are over 60. The two current favorites are Appellate Judges John Roberts (D.C. Circuit) and J. Michael Luttig (4th Circuit).
But sources report Rehnquist is not ready to resign and that O'Connor is readying the way for a return to Arizona with her invalid husband. While Bush would consider replacing one of the court's two women with its first Hispanic justice, neither Roberts nor Luttig for O'Connor would be politically correct.
Accordingly, White House judge-hunters are looking for a woman. They have interviewed Appellate Judge Edith Brown Clement (5th Circuit, New Orleans), a conservative who flies under the radar. She was confirmed as a Louisiana district judge in 1991, seven weeks after her nomination by the first President Bush, and was confirmed as an appellate judge in 2001, two and a half months after George W. Bush named her.
Clement would be subject to far more scrutiny as a Supreme Court nominee. So would any other conservative named by Bush, though Democrats may have exhausted scrutinizing Gonzales. The president must choose between a fierce confirmation fight or the alienation of his political base.
No, Not Gonzales!
By Robert Novak
WASHINGTON -- It was not merely a leak from the normally leak-proof Bush White House. For more than a week, a veritable torrent has tipped Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as President Bush's first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. It has sent the conservative movement into spasms of fear and loathing.
Gonzales long has been unacceptable to anti-abortion activists because of his record as a Texas Supreme Court justice. Beyond pro-lifers, he is opposed by organized conservative lawyers. Ironically, the same Bush supporters who have been raising money and devising tactics for the mother of all judicial confirmation fights are in a panic that Gonzales will be named. With the president's popularity falling among his conservative base as well as the general populace, a politically disastrous moment may be at hand.
The president will have to act quickly if the high court's current session ends today with a resignation. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor now is considered more likely to quit than ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist. White House leaks describe Gonzales as the leading prospect for either vacancy. That creates a situation filled with irony, contradictions and questions.
For example, why the torrent of Gonzales leaks from a White House extraordinarily adept at holding back the president's intended nominations? It looks like a trial balloon, but there are also suspicions that Gonzales's name has been floated by critics in order to shoot him down.
If opposition to abortion is Bush's pre-eminent social conservative position, Gonzales is a most improbable choice. He could not bring himself to support parental notification on the Texas Supreme Court. While he professes to be anti-abortion, he maintains Roe v. Wade is inviolable -- a judicial version of John Kerry's formulation.
Conservatives fear Gonzales will be another in a long line of Supreme Court justices who have proved more liberal than the president who appointed them expected -- John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter. That is a view widely held inside the White House, but not by the occupant who counts most. George W. Bush loves Al Gonzales and would like his former chief counsel to head a "Gonzales Court."
Since Gonzales was confirmed as attorney general after a nasty debate over treatment of terrorist detainees, the argument he would be confirmed more easily than other prospects might seem dubious. But Senate Democrats may have expunged anti-Gonzales bile from their system and be willing to support somebody who is markedly less conservative than any other nominee.
Indeed, all other possibilities are conservative. They face trouble from Democratic senators who have led the campaign to block Bush's judicial nominees. Three of them, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer, went on the Senate floor last Thursday morning to issue a virtual ultimatum. Underneath restrained rhetoric, they were telling the president: name justices acceptable to us or face a bitter battle. Gonzales might be the most acceptable name mentioned.
The White House has sent word that two favorites of the conservative movement -- Appellate Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson (4th Circuit, Richmond, Va.) and former Solicitor General Theodore Olson -- are ineligible because they are over 60. The two current favorites are Appellate Judges John Roberts (D.C. Circuit) and J. Michael Luttig (4th Circuit).
But sources report Rehnquist is not ready to resign and that O'Connor is readying the way for a return to Arizona with her invalid husband. While Bush would consider replacing one of the court's two women with its first Hispanic justice, neither Roberts nor Luttig for O'Connor would be politically correct.
Accordingly, White House judge-hunters are looking for a woman. They have interviewed Appellate Judge Edith Brown Clement (5th Circuit, New Orleans), a conservative who flies under the radar. She was confirmed as a Louisiana district judge in 1991, seven weeks after her nomination by the first President Bush, and was confirmed as an appellate judge in 2001, two and a half months after George W. Bush named her.
Clement would be subject to far more scrutiny as a Supreme Court nominee. So would any other conservative named by Bush, though Democrats may have exhausted scrutinizing Gonzales. The president must choose between a fierce confirmation fight or the alienation of his political base.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Don't worry, Old Glory can take the heat
By Mark Steyn
The House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment on flag burning last week, in the course of which Rep. Randy ''Duke'' Cunningham (Republican of California) made the following argument:
''Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: Pass this amendment."
Unlike Congressman Cunningham, I wouldn't presume to speak for those who died atop the World Trade Center. For one thing, citizens of more than 50 foreign countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, were killed on 9/11. Of the remainder, maybe some would be in favor of a flag-burning amendment; and maybe some would think that criminalizing disrespect for national symbols is unworthy of a free society. And maybe others would roll their eyes and say that, granted it's been clear since about October 2001 that the federal legislature has nothing useful to contribute to the war on terror, and its hacks and poseurs prefer to busy themselves with a lot of irrelevant grandstanding with a side order of fries, but they could at least quit dragging us into it.
And maybe a few would feel as many of my correspondents did last week about the ridiculous complaints of ''desecration'' of the Quran by U.S. guards at Guantanamo -- that, in the words of one reader, ''it's not possible to 'torture' an inanimate object.''
That alone is a perfectly good reason to object to a law forbidding the "desecration" of the flag. For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It's always useful to know what people really believe.
For example, two years ago, a young American lady, Rachel Corrie, was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. Her death immediately made her a martyr for the Palestinian cause, and her family and friends worked assiduously to promote the image of her as a youthful idealist passionately moved by despair and injustice. ''My Name Is Rachel Corrie,'' a play about her, was a huge hit in London. Well, OK, it wasn't so much a play as a piece of sentimental agitprop so in thrall to its subject's golden innocence that the picture of Rachel on the cover of the Playbill shows her playing in the backyard, age 7 or so, wind in her hair, in a cute, pink T-shirt.
There's another photograph of Rachel Corrie: at a Palestinian protest, headscarved, her face contorted with hate and rage, torching the Stars and Stripes. Which is the real Rachel Corrie? The "schoolgirl idealist" caught up in the cycle of violence? Or the grown woman burning the flag of her own country? Well, that's your call. But because that second photograph exists, we at least have a choice.
Have you seen that Rachel Corrie flag-burning photo? If you follow Charles Johnson's invaluable Little Green Footballs Web site and a few other Internet outposts, you will have. But you'll look for it in vain in the innumerable cooing profiles of the "passionate activist" that have appeared in the world's newspapers.
One of the big lessons of these last four years is that many, many beneficiaries of Western civilization loathe that civilization -- and the media are generally inclined to blur the extent of that loathing. At last year's Democratic Convention, when the Oscar-winning crockumentarian Michael Moore was given the seat of honor in the presidential box next to Jimmy Carter, I wonder how many TV viewers knew that the terrorist ''insurgents'' -- the guys who kidnap and murder aid workers, hack the heads off foreigners, load Down's syndrome youths up with explosives and send them off to detonate in shopping markets -- are regarded by Moore as Iraq's Minutemen. I wonder how many viewers knew that on Sept. 11 itself Moore's only gripe was that the terrorists had targeted New York and Washington instead of Texas or Mississippi: ''They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C. and the plane's destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"
In other words, if the objection to flag desecration is that it's distasteful, tough. Like those apocryphal Victorian matrons who discreetly covered the curved legs of their pianos, the culture already goes to astonishing lengths to veil the excesses of those who are admirably straightforward in their hostility.
If people feel that way, why protect them with a law that will make it harder for the rest of us to see them as they are? One thing I've learned in the last four years is that it's very difficult to talk honestly about the issues that confront us. A brave and outspoken journalist, Oriana Fallaci, is currently being prosecuted for ''vilification of religion,'' which is a crime in Italy; a Christian pastor has been ordered by an Australian court to apologize for his comments on Islam. In the European Union, ''xenophobia'' is against the law. A flag-burning amendment is the American equivalent of the rest of the West's ever more coercive constraints on free expression. The problem is not that some people burn flags; the problem is that the world view of which flag-burning is a mere ritual is so entrenched at the highest levels of Western culture.
Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.
That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.
By Mark Steyn
The House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment on flag burning last week, in the course of which Rep. Randy ''Duke'' Cunningham (Republican of California) made the following argument:
''Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: Pass this amendment."
Unlike Congressman Cunningham, I wouldn't presume to speak for those who died atop the World Trade Center. For one thing, citizens of more than 50 foreign countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, were killed on 9/11. Of the remainder, maybe some would be in favor of a flag-burning amendment; and maybe some would think that criminalizing disrespect for national symbols is unworthy of a free society. And maybe others would roll their eyes and say that, granted it's been clear since about October 2001 that the federal legislature has nothing useful to contribute to the war on terror, and its hacks and poseurs prefer to busy themselves with a lot of irrelevant grandstanding with a side order of fries, but they could at least quit dragging us into it.
And maybe a few would feel as many of my correspondents did last week about the ridiculous complaints of ''desecration'' of the Quran by U.S. guards at Guantanamo -- that, in the words of one reader, ''it's not possible to 'torture' an inanimate object.''
That alone is a perfectly good reason to object to a law forbidding the "desecration" of the flag. For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It's always useful to know what people really believe.
For example, two years ago, a young American lady, Rachel Corrie, was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. Her death immediately made her a martyr for the Palestinian cause, and her family and friends worked assiduously to promote the image of her as a youthful idealist passionately moved by despair and injustice. ''My Name Is Rachel Corrie,'' a play about her, was a huge hit in London. Well, OK, it wasn't so much a play as a piece of sentimental agitprop so in thrall to its subject's golden innocence that the picture of Rachel on the cover of the Playbill shows her playing in the backyard, age 7 or so, wind in her hair, in a cute, pink T-shirt.
There's another photograph of Rachel Corrie: at a Palestinian protest, headscarved, her face contorted with hate and rage, torching the Stars and Stripes. Which is the real Rachel Corrie? The "schoolgirl idealist" caught up in the cycle of violence? Or the grown woman burning the flag of her own country? Well, that's your call. But because that second photograph exists, we at least have a choice.
Have you seen that Rachel Corrie flag-burning photo? If you follow Charles Johnson's invaluable Little Green Footballs Web site and a few other Internet outposts, you will have. But you'll look for it in vain in the innumerable cooing profiles of the "passionate activist" that have appeared in the world's newspapers.
One of the big lessons of these last four years is that many, many beneficiaries of Western civilization loathe that civilization -- and the media are generally inclined to blur the extent of that loathing. At last year's Democratic Convention, when the Oscar-winning crockumentarian Michael Moore was given the seat of honor in the presidential box next to Jimmy Carter, I wonder how many TV viewers knew that the terrorist ''insurgents'' -- the guys who kidnap and murder aid workers, hack the heads off foreigners, load Down's syndrome youths up with explosives and send them off to detonate in shopping markets -- are regarded by Moore as Iraq's Minutemen. I wonder how many viewers knew that on Sept. 11 itself Moore's only gripe was that the terrorists had targeted New York and Washington instead of Texas or Mississippi: ''They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C. and the plane's destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"
In other words, if the objection to flag desecration is that it's distasteful, tough. Like those apocryphal Victorian matrons who discreetly covered the curved legs of their pianos, the culture already goes to astonishing lengths to veil the excesses of those who are admirably straightforward in their hostility.
If people feel that way, why protect them with a law that will make it harder for the rest of us to see them as they are? One thing I've learned in the last four years is that it's very difficult to talk honestly about the issues that confront us. A brave and outspoken journalist, Oriana Fallaci, is currently being prosecuted for ''vilification of religion,'' which is a crime in Italy; a Christian pastor has been ordered by an Australian court to apologize for his comments on Islam. In the European Union, ''xenophobia'' is against the law. A flag-burning amendment is the American equivalent of the rest of the West's ever more coercive constraints on free expression. The problem is not that some people burn flags; the problem is that the world view of which flag-burning is a mere ritual is so entrenched at the highest levels of Western culture.
Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.
That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.
More great news from Bush's brilliant excursion in force-feeding "democracy" to Muslims.
FEMALE CASUALTIES [Kate O'Beirne]
This morning's New York Times reports: "At least four women serving in the American military, including three marines, are among the six known dead in a suicide car bombing in Falluja on Thursday. . . . Eleven women were also among the 13 marines wounded in the strike. . . . [that] military officials suspect was carefully planned and might have been aimed at the women." The Washington Post reports: "According to a Marine statement, female Marines 'play a vital role providing security at the entry control points' of Fallujah. 'They search female Iraqi moving through checkpoints. Female Marines are employed in this role in order to be respectful of Iraqi cultural sensitivities.'"
Why must American cultural sensitivities be demolished in order not to offend Iraqi ones? We obviously aren't buying a reciprocal respect.
The Pentagon dismisses the unprecedented number of female casualties in Iraq as a consequence of a lethal environment without clear battlelines where our women in uniform are necessarily vulnerable. We're told that women might as well be deployed on dangerous missions because they're not entirely safe anywhere near the violent provinces. Yet over 250 contractors have been killed in Iraq and women and children have been indiscriminately targeted, and we're not resigned to civilians' being fair game. During the Vietnam War, 11 women in the U.S. military serving in non-combatant positions were killed. We didn't conclude that women in uniform should therefore serve in forward positions.
About a dozen years ago, although it seems like far longer, when asked whether women should serve in combat, one of the service chiefs said, "I don't think old men should send young women to war." A different crop of old men is running things now.
FEMALE CASUALTIES, CTD. [Kate O'Beirne]
Would we be less concerned with the fate of Natalee Holloway if she had been manning a checkpoint outside Fallujah along with other 18-year-old American girls rather than gone missing from a high school graduation celebration in Aruba?
Posted at 09:53 PM
FEMALE CASUALTIES [Kate O'Beirne]
This morning's New York Times reports: "At least four women serving in the American military, including three marines, are among the six known dead in a suicide car bombing in Falluja on Thursday. . . . Eleven women were also among the 13 marines wounded in the strike. . . . [that] military officials suspect was carefully planned and might have been aimed at the women." The Washington Post reports: "According to a Marine statement, female Marines 'play a vital role providing security at the entry control points' of Fallujah. 'They search female Iraqi moving through checkpoints. Female Marines are employed in this role in order to be respectful of Iraqi cultural sensitivities.'"
Why must American cultural sensitivities be demolished in order not to offend Iraqi ones? We obviously aren't buying a reciprocal respect.
The Pentagon dismisses the unprecedented number of female casualties in Iraq as a consequence of a lethal environment without clear battlelines where our women in uniform are necessarily vulnerable. We're told that women might as well be deployed on dangerous missions because they're not entirely safe anywhere near the violent provinces. Yet over 250 contractors have been killed in Iraq and women and children have been indiscriminately targeted, and we're not resigned to civilians' being fair game. During the Vietnam War, 11 women in the U.S. military serving in non-combatant positions were killed. We didn't conclude that women in uniform should therefore serve in forward positions.
About a dozen years ago, although it seems like far longer, when asked whether women should serve in combat, one of the service chiefs said, "I don't think old men should send young women to war." A different crop of old men is running things now.
FEMALE CASUALTIES, CTD. [Kate O'Beirne]
Would we be less concerned with the fate of Natalee Holloway if she had been manning a checkpoint outside Fallujah along with other 18-year-old American girls rather than gone missing from a high school graduation celebration in Aruba?
Posted at 09:53 PM
Soundtrack for another '60s
By David Menconi
A classic 1960s-vintage Magnavox home-entertainment system dominated our family room when I was growing up. Television screen on the front, hi-fi record changer on the top -- it seemed the size of an aircraft carrier.
Leaning against the stern was a row of vinyl records, all from the center stripe of the middle of the road. My parents had the popular soundtracks of the day and multiple titles by Glen Campbell, Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini. They also had at least half a dozen albums by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
The one I remember best was 1965's "Whipped Cream & Other Delights," recently reissued on compact disc by Shout Factory Records after being out of print for five years. But the cover is still best appreciated in the full-size vinyl splendor of the original: a young woman who looked like the late Anne Bancroft, covered in cream, holding a rose and licking a finger with an eyebrow arched ever so suggestively. Both naughty and more than a little goofy, it is the "Mona Lisa" of album covers. And for people of a certain age, this album's music has been almost as omnipresent as the cover.
Phyllis Gordon of Raleigh remembers doing seventh-grade choreography routines to Alpert's "A Taste of Honey" 40 years ago. Jeff Hart of Durham used to turn knitting needles and pillows into a makeshift drum kit to play along with "Whipped Cream." And Alex Howard of Mebane has come to regard the "Whipped Cream" album as a talisman during his many shopping trips for used records.
"That was one of the first albums I bought after I discovered my dad's old records and started paying regular visits to the Burlington Goodwill in high school," Howard says. "Wherever old vinyl can be found, I've always found a Herb Alpert album -- and it's usually 'Whipped Cream.' It might be beat all to pieces. But every time I've gone rifling through vinyl records at Goodwill, Salvation Army, the antique mall, flea market or a yard sale, there's always a Herb Alpert album. They'd be at most a dollar, so I started picking them up."
Howard has an old copy of "Whipped Cream," purchased for a dollar, framed on the wall behind his desk. He listens to the music on MP3 files on his computer.
Herb Alpert's legacy
In 1994, Evolution Control Committee deejay Mark Gunderson combined the "Whipped Cream" instrumental "Bittersweet Samba" with the rap from Public Enemy's "Rebel Without a Pause" to create one of the earliest bootleg mash-ups. It's a freakish piece of studio wizardry, contrasting Chuck D and Flavor Flav's angry declaiming with Alpert's relentlessly perky music. But it makes perfect sense, given the stark contrast between Alpert's sunny music and the times that produced it.
Forty years past his commercial peak, it's easy to forget how omnipresent Alpert was for a few years in the 1960s. I've always thought of Alpert's Tijuana Brass recordings as the secret history of that decade's mainstream culture, hidden in plain sight -- the soundtrack to America, the elevator. He is rarely cited as an influence, but only Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra outsold Alpert in the '60s.
A consummate journeyman entertainer, Alpert produced the surf-rock duo Jan & Dean and co-wrote Sam Cooke's "Only Sixteen" and "Wonderful World." He also had a bit part in 1956's "The Ten Commandments," playing drums as Charlton Heston's Moses came down from Mount Sinai. Alpert's own recording career began in 1962, when he recast Sol Lake's "Twinkle Star" as a bullfight fanfare to make "The Lonely Bull." Alpert and Jerry Moss put "The Lonely Bull" out on their own label, A&M Records, and it cracked the top 10.
By mid-decade, Alpert was cranking out three albums a year, surpassing Motown's "The Sound of Young America" to claim the title of "The Sound of All America." Even as racial strife and unrest over the Vietnam War convulsed the country, Alpert's breezy "Ameriachi" was everywhere. In the spring of 1966, the cutting edge was the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" and Bob Dylan getting called "Judas" onstage in England. Alpert, meanwhile, had five albums in Billboard's top 20 simultaneously -- a feat unmatched before or since.
Alpert was all over television, too, thanks to commercial spots for Teaberry gum, Phillips 66, Sego and, of course, Taco Bell: "Taco Bell's five delicious food items are as authentic as the pinata and the mariachi band, yes, as authentic and exciting as Mexico itself." He did movie themes for "Zorba the Greek" and "Casino Royale." And as the theme to "The Dating Game," the "Whipped Cream" title track, originally written by New Orleans piano legend Allen Toussaint under a pseudonym, remains a game-show staple.
Forty years on, "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" still stands as the best example of Alpert's perfect summertime music. It sounds like music for some strange ethnic wedding ceremony, or a remake of "Casablanca" as a light-hearted romantic comedy set in a Mexican border town -- an easy-listening hybrid of mariachi-style horn arrangements, show tunes and then-current popular hits. Light-hearted and sly, it's as easy to like as a frozen banana daiquiri.
Still, "Whipped Cream" probably wouldn't be nearly as iconic if it didn't have That Cover.
'Who knew?'
Dolores Erickson, the model pictured on "Whipped Cream," was a logical choice to be the album's cover girl. She was a professional model and part of a circle of entertainment industry friends that included Alpert. Erickson was in Alpert's garage studio during the recording of "The Lonely Bull," and she introduced Alpert's record label partner to his wife.
By 1965, Erickson was enough of a pro that it didn't faze her when she walked into the photo studio and heard the "Whipped Cream" cover concept explained -- even though she was three months pregnant at the time. The art director covered her in a blanket, slathered shaving cream on her torso, put a dab of whipped cream on her head, gave her a rose to hold and snapped away. Near as she can remember, she was paid a few thousand dollars for her work.
"I've had sillier jobs, really," says Erickson, who now lives in Longview, Wash. "Like a cigarette commercial on a catamaran where a storm blew up and everything kept disintegrating in the weather. But this one was fun, just another job. Who knew? No one thought it would take off like it did."
But take off it did. Released in May 1965, "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" stayed on the Billboard charts for more than 3 1/2 years, won multiple Grammy Awards and sold millions. The music still turns up in high-profile places, such as the 2001 movie "Shrek." And the cover has been endlessly parodied, most infamously by the Minneapolis rock band Soul Asylum on 1988's "Claim Dip & Other Delights," with bassist Karl Mueller (who died of cancer June 17) mimicking Erickson's original pose.
Erickson appeared on 17 other album covers, but "Whipped Cream" remains her signature image. That used to embarrass her, though it was less about the image than the fact that the cover seemed to be getting more attention than the music.
By now, Erickson, who spends most of her time painting, has enough of a sense of humor about the cover to call her Web site www.whippedcreamlady.com. She sells her paintings from the site, as well as autographed copies of the "Whipped Cream" album and even outtakes from the photo session. She finally decided to embrace it after starring at a 2002 event about classic album-cover art called "The LP Show" at Seattle's Experience Music Project Museum.
"I had to make a speech, and they said it was the biggest turnout they've ever had at the Experience Music Project," Erickson says. "And I came around to thinking, 'Gosh, this is neat.' And then I looked at it again and thought, 'Gosh, that is a good cover.' There are so many stories about how people had that record, or their parents had it. Everybody knew it. When I was at the ceremony, these two girls came up, and they were just darling. 'Oh, Dolores,' they said, 'we hope we can be just like you!' I was so confused, and I asked them, 'What are you talking about?'
"But obviously," she concludes, "they wanted to be covered in whipped cream."
Staff writer David Menconi can be reached at 829-4759 or dmenconi@newsobserver.com.
By David Menconi
A classic 1960s-vintage Magnavox home-entertainment system dominated our family room when I was growing up. Television screen on the front, hi-fi record changer on the top -- it seemed the size of an aircraft carrier.
Leaning against the stern was a row of vinyl records, all from the center stripe of the middle of the road. My parents had the popular soundtracks of the day and multiple titles by Glen Campbell, Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini. They also had at least half a dozen albums by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
The one I remember best was 1965's "Whipped Cream & Other Delights," recently reissued on compact disc by Shout Factory Records after being out of print for five years. But the cover is still best appreciated in the full-size vinyl splendor of the original: a young woman who looked like the late Anne Bancroft, covered in cream, holding a rose and licking a finger with an eyebrow arched ever so suggestively. Both naughty and more than a little goofy, it is the "Mona Lisa" of album covers. And for people of a certain age, this album's music has been almost as omnipresent as the cover.
Phyllis Gordon of Raleigh remembers doing seventh-grade choreography routines to Alpert's "A Taste of Honey" 40 years ago. Jeff Hart of Durham used to turn knitting needles and pillows into a makeshift drum kit to play along with "Whipped Cream." And Alex Howard of Mebane has come to regard the "Whipped Cream" album as a talisman during his many shopping trips for used records.
"That was one of the first albums I bought after I discovered my dad's old records and started paying regular visits to the Burlington Goodwill in high school," Howard says. "Wherever old vinyl can be found, I've always found a Herb Alpert album -- and it's usually 'Whipped Cream.' It might be beat all to pieces. But every time I've gone rifling through vinyl records at Goodwill, Salvation Army, the antique mall, flea market or a yard sale, there's always a Herb Alpert album. They'd be at most a dollar, so I started picking them up."
Howard has an old copy of "Whipped Cream," purchased for a dollar, framed on the wall behind his desk. He listens to the music on MP3 files on his computer.
Herb Alpert's legacy
In 1994, Evolution Control Committee deejay Mark Gunderson combined the "Whipped Cream" instrumental "Bittersweet Samba" with the rap from Public Enemy's "Rebel Without a Pause" to create one of the earliest bootleg mash-ups. It's a freakish piece of studio wizardry, contrasting Chuck D and Flavor Flav's angry declaiming with Alpert's relentlessly perky music. But it makes perfect sense, given the stark contrast between Alpert's sunny music and the times that produced it.
Forty years past his commercial peak, it's easy to forget how omnipresent Alpert was for a few years in the 1960s. I've always thought of Alpert's Tijuana Brass recordings as the secret history of that decade's mainstream culture, hidden in plain sight -- the soundtrack to America, the elevator. He is rarely cited as an influence, but only Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra outsold Alpert in the '60s.
A consummate journeyman entertainer, Alpert produced the surf-rock duo Jan & Dean and co-wrote Sam Cooke's "Only Sixteen" and "Wonderful World." He also had a bit part in 1956's "The Ten Commandments," playing drums as Charlton Heston's Moses came down from Mount Sinai. Alpert's own recording career began in 1962, when he recast Sol Lake's "Twinkle Star" as a bullfight fanfare to make "The Lonely Bull." Alpert and Jerry Moss put "The Lonely Bull" out on their own label, A&M Records, and it cracked the top 10.
By mid-decade, Alpert was cranking out three albums a year, surpassing Motown's "The Sound of Young America" to claim the title of "The Sound of All America." Even as racial strife and unrest over the Vietnam War convulsed the country, Alpert's breezy "Ameriachi" was everywhere. In the spring of 1966, the cutting edge was the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" and Bob Dylan getting called "Judas" onstage in England. Alpert, meanwhile, had five albums in Billboard's top 20 simultaneously -- a feat unmatched before or since.
Alpert was all over television, too, thanks to commercial spots for Teaberry gum, Phillips 66, Sego and, of course, Taco Bell: "Taco Bell's five delicious food items are as authentic as the pinata and the mariachi band, yes, as authentic and exciting as Mexico itself." He did movie themes for "Zorba the Greek" and "Casino Royale." And as the theme to "The Dating Game," the "Whipped Cream" title track, originally written by New Orleans piano legend Allen Toussaint under a pseudonym, remains a game-show staple.
Forty years on, "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" still stands as the best example of Alpert's perfect summertime music. It sounds like music for some strange ethnic wedding ceremony, or a remake of "Casablanca" as a light-hearted romantic comedy set in a Mexican border town -- an easy-listening hybrid of mariachi-style horn arrangements, show tunes and then-current popular hits. Light-hearted and sly, it's as easy to like as a frozen banana daiquiri.
Still, "Whipped Cream" probably wouldn't be nearly as iconic if it didn't have That Cover.
'Who knew?'
Dolores Erickson, the model pictured on "Whipped Cream," was a logical choice to be the album's cover girl. She was a professional model and part of a circle of entertainment industry friends that included Alpert. Erickson was in Alpert's garage studio during the recording of "The Lonely Bull," and she introduced Alpert's record label partner to his wife.
By 1965, Erickson was enough of a pro that it didn't faze her when she walked into the photo studio and heard the "Whipped Cream" cover concept explained -- even though she was three months pregnant at the time. The art director covered her in a blanket, slathered shaving cream on her torso, put a dab of whipped cream on her head, gave her a rose to hold and snapped away. Near as she can remember, she was paid a few thousand dollars for her work.
"I've had sillier jobs, really," says Erickson, who now lives in Longview, Wash. "Like a cigarette commercial on a catamaran where a storm blew up and everything kept disintegrating in the weather. But this one was fun, just another job. Who knew? No one thought it would take off like it did."
But take off it did. Released in May 1965, "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" stayed on the Billboard charts for more than 3 1/2 years, won multiple Grammy Awards and sold millions. The music still turns up in high-profile places, such as the 2001 movie "Shrek." And the cover has been endlessly parodied, most infamously by the Minneapolis rock band Soul Asylum on 1988's "Claim Dip & Other Delights," with bassist Karl Mueller (who died of cancer June 17) mimicking Erickson's original pose.
Erickson appeared on 17 other album covers, but "Whipped Cream" remains her signature image. That used to embarrass her, though it was less about the image than the fact that the cover seemed to be getting more attention than the music.
By now, Erickson, who spends most of her time painting, has enough of a sense of humor about the cover to call her Web site www.whippedcreamlady.com. She sells her paintings from the site, as well as autographed copies of the "Whipped Cream" album and even outtakes from the photo session. She finally decided to embrace it after starring at a 2002 event about classic album-cover art called "The LP Show" at Seattle's Experience Music Project Museum.
"I had to make a speech, and they said it was the biggest turnout they've ever had at the Experience Music Project," Erickson says. "And I came around to thinking, 'Gosh, this is neat.' And then I looked at it again and thought, 'Gosh, that is a good cover.' There are so many stories about how people had that record, or their parents had it. Everybody knew it. When I was at the ceremony, these two girls came up, and they were just darling. 'Oh, Dolores,' they said, 'we hope we can be just like you!' I was so confused, and I asked them, 'What are you talking about?'
"But obviously," she concludes, "they wanted to be covered in whipped cream."
Staff writer David Menconi can be reached at 829-4759 or dmenconi@newsobserver.com.
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