For Our Delectation

Youngstown, Motherfuckers

And we're not talking about Boom-Boom Mancini, we're talking about Justice Hugo Black's opinion that is cited repeatedly and trenchantly in This Right Here. It's a pretty good read, actually, so take a few moments, absorb a few good lines, and be the single most impressive motherfucker around the watercooler tomorrow.

By the way, if you see the woman to your right on the street - the author of the above document - shake her hand and thank her for being down with that whole democracy thing.

ADDENDUM: Okay, so perhaps we're not celebrating yet, which I would not have known without Correntewire. Nuts.

A Real Red Alert

Take two minutes, head over to Crooks and Liars and watch this, then email it to your idiot uncle who insists on spewing dumbasseries like "cut and run." It's a very brief monologue, surprising to none of you (we hope and trust it's unsurprising, sweet informed reader) about the implications of the very first Homeland Security Red Alert.

You're young and full of life, friends, but we were born and barely bred in the Cold War. Though this places us one grandpapa step closer to our eventual doom, we nonetheless easily distinguish between fake-ass, fear mongering red alerts like those dropped this weekend by Michael Chertoff, and the quite authentic Red Alerts such as you'll find below.

Enjoy. And next time you head to the public sphere, ask yourself which Red Alert you prefer: the one presided over by Richard Perle, or the one featuring Slick Rick.

In Need of a Name

Your most recent experience of metacognition -- that is, a moment when you sense or feel that you know something without being able to recall precisely what it is that you know -- was probably an instance of what psycholinguists refer to as the "tip-of-tongue" phenomenon. Right now, for example, we're pretty sure that we know a more elegant, single word denoting the "tip-of-tongue phenomenon," but it's right on the tip of our fucking tongue and we can't recall it. Nonetheless, somewhere and somehow deep in our brain, we know that we know this.

What we're pretty sure we don't know is a word to describe a similar state of metacognition, wherein we are unable to produce not a single word, but rather an idea. "Tip-of-the-hypothalamus" doesn't really roll off the tongue, "conceptual retardation" is inelegant and and "stupidity" seems imprecise.

Whatever the phrase, there are several bits of informational flotsam that have been bouncing around our head for the past several days, which we know are connected. Sadly, the precise form and significance of the connection eludes us, so for a moment we'll get all Walter Benjaminian on your asses and let you figure it out for your own damn selves.

I

Novelist Günter Grass admits he served in the Nazi SS during WWII. Some folks suggest that he return his Nobel Prize, or at least his honorary citizenship in the Polish city of Gdansk (see Here and Hier).

Factors to consider: Grass was a teenager, and it's not as if he carpet-bombed Cambodia or became Pope. Still, you know, he might have mentioned it.

II

The New York Times admits that it publicly mischaracterized (euphemism alert) the length of time that the paper sat on the NSA Wiretap story. Said mischaracterization prevented readers from knowing that the story was purposely withheld so as not to affect the 2004 presidential election (see Here).

Factors to consider: Just when you have reason to consider lifting your boycott of the Grimalkin, you're unsurprised to learn that yet another Times semi-culpa comes -- in the words of Günter Grass' biographer -- "a little bit late."

III

A poll conducted by "the world's most visited Christian Website" concludes that 50% of Christian men and 20% of Christian women are addicted to pornography. 60% of Christian women reported "problems with lust" (by which we infer that the other 40% found that being married to a Christian took the desire right out of them).

Factors to consider: They're the kind of Christians who define "addiction" as "regular use," so you can imagine the rigor of their statistical analysis. Respondents might well believe that the Academy-Award winning film adaptation of The Tin Drum actually is pornography.

IV

A report in the American Journal of Public Health concludes that "Adolescents who initiate sexual activity are likely to recant virginity pledges, whereas those who take pledges are likely to recant their sexual histories. Thus, evaluations of sexual abstinence programs are vulnerable to unreliable data. In addition, virginity pledgers may incorrectly assess the sexually transmitted disease risks associated with their prepledge sexual behavior."

Factors to consider: The White House's budget for the 2007 fiscal year includes $204 million dollars for abstinence-only education. The Society for Adolescent Medicine has shown that abstinence-only education is not only ineffective, but counterproductive to its own stated goals. We once had sex in the small chapel of a small college, and it was really awesome (we're not sure how this affects the conceptual work, we don't believe in suppressing events from our past, and also we just like telling people about it).

*****

That's all we have right now, friends. Consider these tidbits not merely as a group, but as a constellation -- a cluster, if you will -- and report any of your speculations directly. We need to know what to call these developments, even if the name we give won't be used by anybody else.

International Relations

NOTE: If you believe that our new habit of embedding video in our posts is 1) the giddy overindulgence of schoolkids who just learned a new game and 2) a blatant rip-off of Crooks and Liars, you're right on both counts. Good for you.

Friends, we have been simply overwhelmed by the response to our demi-triumphant-semi-return. The mail has been pouring in, and a few people have actually refrained from death threats. Nonetheless, many recent correspondents have echoed an historically common complaint about The Swill: that we're too serious, that we need to "lighten up," that we of bring "everybody down" with our constant harping about depleted uranium, dropping bombs upon babies, et cetera.

Well, we hear your cries and, like Hillary Clinton noting the election results in Connecticut and starting to sound just a little bit like a Democrat, we respond with something positive.

How about saying something positive about treaties? The Bush Administration is positively trying to rewrite the Geneva Conventions and insulate themselves from being rightly prosecuted for War Crimes!

We're not exactly sure how we feel about domestic or international agreements -- we're just average Americans, after all -- but we do know that seminal 1980's hip-hop MC Special Ed once remarked that he had a "treaty with Tahiti," based upon the fact that he "owned a percent."

Loving America First, we don't get out much, so we don't actually know how to assess Tahiti's obligations to the Geneva Conventions. For the moment, we'll assume that as a pays-d'outre-mer of France (signatory of the GC), all of French Polynesia is therefore obligated to honor international prohibitions against torture, degrading and humiliating treatment, etc. We also strongly believe that Special Ed himself is a strong defender of these values.

Therefore, on the positive tip, Watch and Learn.

World Class Scottish Swill

Swillians Quake More Earth

Yes, friends, it wasn't so very long ago that the Swill called forth to its legions with a request to send money to Ned Lamont. You caused, and he effected.

Nota Bene: Ned doesn't really need your money in a large sense, as he's a fourth-generation Harvard grad and all that, but he needed it in a tactical sense, in the sense that money is imagined to "talk." When Lamont takes his seat in the Senate, we will return to our regularly scheduled denunciation of inherited wealth, the class system, and the broader imperative to storm his estate wielding torches and force his attractive children to work for a living, gain seats at universities through something resembling a meritocracy, etc.

Yes, we denounced Lieberman, we endorsed Ned, and once again our Word was made Flesh. Kind of.

Recall last February, when our Food and Style editor opined:

Senator Joseph Lieberman is a cheap shill for the corporate elite, a low-rent bullyboy who plays upon the worst instincts of fear and jingoism, and should be called a "public representative" only in the broadest, loosest, most degraded sense of the words "public" and "representative."

And what ho! The demos -- note the "o" in there -- kicked Holy Joe in the nutmegs and Lamont served his ass to him on a plate. As a diarist over at that other really popular blog trenchantly remarks:

In one corner, you had a bunch of unpaid volunteers, Internet rabble-rousers, and an inexperienced politician whose highest post had been County Selectman.

In the other, you had the three-time Senator, former vice-presidential candidate, visible party statesman, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, the other popular CT senator Dodd, most of Organized Labor, the women's groups and the environmental groups, most of traditional Democratic party support, paid lobbyist support, paid armies of GOTV staff, the slick ad money, the top DLC consultants, and a 3 to 1 budget gap.

I'm sorry. That's not David vs. Goliath. This isn't even the NBA champions versus a rec league team. That's more like an ant vs. my shoe.

Thanks for the memories. We were so exhilerated as we followed the returns coming in that we momentarily switched over to full-flavor Miller High Life (on doctor's orders, we've been drinking the Light stuff, but more about this later).

Yes, Joe, we will have to suffer your smarmy rictus and indulge your nauseous pablumous claptrap for about fifteen more days, at which point Hillary and Chuck and Russ -- and perhaps your own incompetent campaign staff? -- will convince you to honor the primary process, and you'll tearfully bid farewell.

Now, on the downside, you'll no longer be able to enjoy the delicious navy bean soup in the Senate cafeteria on a daily basis. On the upside, however, you'll be free to continue your eighteen years of lobbying for the insurance, financial services, and pharmaceutical industries, but without having to write tiresome letters of recommendation for applicants to the military service academies.

Fare thee well, Joe, and Fuck You Very Much.