The disco-ball mirrored facets are an especially nice touch. Classy, as we've come to expect from the artistic force behind Shanghai Surprise and Body of Evidence.

Religious groups have reacted furiously after Madonna appeared hanging from a cross and wearing a crown of thorns during her latest world tour.

During her performance at the Los Angeles forum, Madonna appeared strapped to a 20 foot high crucifix, prompting outrage from Christian leaders.

...

"The Christian reaction to this sort of thing tends to be tempered but if the same thing was done with the imagery and iconography of other faiths the reaction woulld be very different."

Well, yeah. Again, we have a Brave Artiste attacking those they know pose them no threat whatsoever, while avoiding all offense to those who may, you know, saw their heads off.

During last night's performance, the Material Girl also mocked Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush in a video montage by juxtaposing their images against those of dictators Osama bin Laden, Hitler and Robert Mugabe.

She also directed an insult at President Bush with a joke about oral sex.

Usually you don't see that sort of insightful, nuanced political commentary outside of a Mark Russel song.

So talented and so knowledgable in religion, politics, and sociology.

The Material Girl? Pshaw.

The Renaissance Girl.

Update: I just realized. In Kabballah atbash letter-substition coding, the name "Madonna" (in Hebraic letters, of course) translates to "Ignored by everyone except 14 year old girls and 45 year old gay men."

Breaking News: Madonna has agreed to be spokeswoman for a new cosmetic product endorsed by none other than Dan Brown, tentatively called "The Sacred Feminine Deodorant Spray."

The Sacred Feminine Deodorant Spray

Have the confidence of a Goddess, even on your not-so-fresh days.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (67)
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Of course the Russians are bitching:

Gen. Yuri N. Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian military's general staff, has sought to stir up Polish opposition to the plan.

"What can we do?" General Baluyevsky told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in December. "Go ahead and build that shield. You have to think, though, what will fall on your heads afterward. I do not foresee a nuclear conflict between Russia and the West. We do not have such plans. However, it is understandable that countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk."

Sounds like a threat.

With one hand, Russia feeds Iran reactor technology and blocks any action to thwart their nuclear ambitions. With the other hand, Russia threatens anyone who hosts a defense to Iranian missiles.

I'm beginning to wish we'd just, uhhh, taken care of business with these pricks back in 1945.

Thanks to Dogstar.

Posted by: Ace at 12:30 PM | Comments (42)
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At Rightalk at 4:05 Eastern Time.

Guests today will include Greyhawk from The Mudville Gazette, who just might have a few things to say about the left's latest Special Ops Super-Soldier Jesse MacBeth.

And then we'll have on My Pet Jawa, who's interrupting his vacation in England to discuss Ward Churchill and the leftist takeover of our universities.

Call in at 866-884-TALK if you've got something to say.

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (20)
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Bush just can't ever seem to catch a break with liberals such as David Gergen (don't even start with me).

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (12)
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Sad news for LauraW & the gaggle of girls here. Your favorite hobby-- menstruating and bitching about it -- is going out of style.

Apparently, if you take birth-control pills constantly (or wear the birth control ring constantly), without taking the recommended week off, you simply don't have a period at all. Ever.

Strange, but no woman I've ever known has informed me of this possibility.

Because they just looove those damn menses.

Another pill being tested will limit periods to four per year.

On the down side, they'll each last two full months.

Which would still be an improvement.

Thanks to Craig. Allah tipped me too, yesterday.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (77)
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Someone has to say it:

The United States needs to overcome its fear of nuclear power and embrace the technology as a way to wean itself from fossil fuels, Sen. John McCain told an audience in Manchester yesterday.

Nuclear power "is safe. The technology is here," McCain said, speaking to a crowd of about 200 at a breakfast hosted by The New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women. "It's a NIMBY (not in my backyard) problem, and a waste-disposal problem. It is not a technological problem."

McCain pointed to France, which draws more than three-quarters of its power from nuclear plants, and Russia, which has plans to build 40 new plants, as examples. "We've got to get over it, get over Three Mile Island," he said, referring to the 1979 accident at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant.

Meanwhile, Al Gore has proposed a $20 billion research project to design a car that runs on love.

More on Nuclear Energy: It's time we woke up and smelled the uranium.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (26)
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Heh:

AsmaÂ’ Hadi Ismail, 51, may be Mohamad Zin HassanÂ’s 30th wife, but she says she has been treated like his first love from the day they were married seven years ago.

She admits she was annoyed Mohamad Zin hid his 29 previous marriages from her.

"But his charm got the better of me and I have had seven happy years. Even after a quarrel he quickly brings a smile back to my face. I guess his many marriages have made him a better person."

Pok Jeng, as he is affectionately known, has been married 30 times, divorced 27 times and widowed twice. From his marriages, the 78- year-old has 16 children, 70 grandchildren and 16 great- grandchildren.

AsmaÂ’ says Pok Jeng is a serious man.

...

Rosli, 49, Pok JengÂ’s third son (from his second wife) agreed that his father was strict but generous.

However, he said, his father canÂ’t recall past relationships or his children.

Ah, bliss.

Thanks to OgreGunner.

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 AM | Comments (4)
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So, I was wrong. I expected some amount of service, just greatly exaggerated.

Nope.

None at all.

I never linked or mentioned the background on this. If you don't know, Jessie MacBeth is featured in an Internet "documentary" that's gotten a lot of play. My video-viewing capabilities are still fragged, but, from what I gathered, he alleges he executed loads of Iraqi civilians under direct orders.

In reality, the closest he came to "the shit" was when the fry cooker at Wendy's splattered some oil on his hand. He handled himself with such uncommon valor during that episode that Wendy's offered to put him into its Management-slash-Pheonix-Project program.

Bonus: On this DU thread, they report he has resigned from the Iraq Veterans Against the War.

And scan down for a little DU detective work. Jesse Adam MacBeth had his name changed at age 2. His original name was Jesse Adam Al-Zaid.

A little more incentive to lie, perhaps.

Thanks to Allah for the tip.

More Pulp Writing: Goldstein has lots of links, via Shakespearean quotes.

Posted by: Ace at 07:33 AM | Comments (34)
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...after "Internet political partisans" noted they were unlikely or impossible.

As everyone's chimed in on what proper decorations might consist of, expect him to add a more plausible list shortly.

Allah has screencaps of the old awards for Jessie MacBeth, and predicted he might be removing them from view shortly. He seems to have called it.

I haven't been following this closely at all, but Allah thinks his claim to have been a Ranger is now thorougly discredited -- perhaps by silent admission, given his removal of Ranger badges from his profile. Now the question is whether he was in the Army at all.

Some have doubts, but I figure this will be a little like the Micah Wright scenario -- yes, there will be some brief term in the Army, but no combat, etc.

Why people think they can get away with this is beyond me. They are, I'm pretty sure, fundamentally insane. Not floridly insane like a full-blown schizophrenic, but badly damaged, just (barely) able to get through life outside of a group home. No truly sane person can expect to get away with confabulating this sort of crap.

Apparently even the DUmmies -- fellow borderline schizophrenics as well -- are beginning to grasp that they've been had again.

Jessie MacBeth felt as though his world were closing in around him. My world is closing in around me, he thought to hiimself.

He looked in the mirror, and beheld a man once described by Boston Magazine as one of "The Most Intriguing Fake Military Heroes In New England." His chocloate-brown hair was going slightly gray at the temples -- all of his anti-warwhore admirers told him it made him look "distinguished," but he thought it just make him look like Brad Pitt, but with slightly graying hair.

When they make a movie about me, Brad Pitt should play me, he grinned to himself, just in case a studio reader doing "coverage" on the story had missed it the first time around.

Suddenly the telephone rang. The female voice was sweetly whining and quavering, like a cat being slowly torn apart by two semi-trailers, like in The Hitcher, only with cats. "You are in great danger, Mr. MacBeth. They are on to you. They mean to expose you."

"Who is this?!?!" MacBeth grinned. Actually, grinning really isn't the appropriate facial expression for that statement, but he tended to grin 90% of his lines, and he didn't want to go rusty from lack of practice.

"I do not want to say my name," the woman said. "I will simply give you a diabolically clever anagram. My name," the mystery woman breathed, "is Sindy Cheehan."

"Cindy Sheehan?!?" Jessie grinned in shock.

"God- DAMN - it!!!" the woman calling herself "Sindy Cheeehan" exclaimed with a grin. "Why does everyone guess that right away? Anyway-- you must remove your website immediately. You must become invisible. They are on your trail."

There was a click as Cindy Sheehan, great-great-great-great-etc.-grandaughter of Jesus Christ Himself, hung up the phone. But Jessie MacBeth spoke into the phone anyway, saying "Hello? Miss Cheehan? Hello? Hello?" He did this, because that's what people always do in bad movies and books, even when they're obviously just talking to a dialtone.

Who can help me? Who was kinda-sorta in the military and knows what Dark Forces I face?, Jessie grinned.

He immediately dialed information. "Operator? Yes, Texas state information, please. No, I'm not sure of the town. I need the number for... Bill Burkett. Yes, that's right. The guy who gave Dan Rather the 'Bush TANG' documents."

One moment sir, the operator grinned to herself. And then she said, "One moment sir," with a grin.

Jessie was only slightly surprised the local exchange was 555.

He dialed the number. But he was worried. They 'got' Burkett, he grinned to himself. They prevented those explosive documents from every really exploding. How can I be sure they won't do the same to me?

Meanwhile, in Caracas, Venezuela, a Catholic priest gave a blessing at a wedding and actually managed to restrain himself from murdering anybody at all. Gotta pace myself, he grinned, as he played with his Rosary beads, hidden inside which was a razor-sharp steel-wire garotte. The lethal ligature was designed by Leondaro Da Vinci's less-talented, more violently-tempered brother, Migelo "Mad Dog" Da Vinci.

Posted by: Ace at 05:42 PM | Comments (55)
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It's the first meager semi-boner the poor sot's managed in fifteen years.

And I think that's for the best.

The left jibed the "Christianists" for getting all goofy over Mel Gibson's The Passion. But... isn't a tad more absurd to go all ga-ga over this moronic pseudo-thriller?

Cole does just that, however. He ponders the political implications of the film, as well as it's powerful metaphysical message:

The novel has a binary structure. On the one hand you have the Church hierarchy, which is patriarchal, doctrinal, monotheistic, ascetic, and authoritarian. Those attributes are its normal pole, but it is open to corruption when they are over-emphasized. The first step toward over-emphasis is Opus Dei, which stands for a cult-like kind of monotheism in which individualism is much more surpressed than in the Church generally. But even Opus Dei is not so far from churchly normality. The villain of the movie is the man who corrupts the principles of Opus Dei itself, Bishop Manuel Aringarosa and his acolyte, Silas. They take self-denial in the direction of manic masochism, so that Silas routinely inflicts excruciating pain on himself in emulation of the crucifixion. And he has moved so far in the direction of giving up his individualism that he will do anything he is told by his master, including committing murder and torture. Inspector Bezu Fache, a representative of bourgeois order as a policeman, is likewise willing to put aside due process to obey his cultic master, violating individual rights and attempting to railroad a suspect, though he later has an ethical awakening.

Silas is, of course, a religious terrorist. With his monk robes, he inevitably nowadays evokes Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Corruption of an authoritarian and partiarchal tradition leads in the direction of murder for the faith.

This pole of the film reflects the authoritarian side of modern institutions and culture. It isn't about Catholicism at all, or about Opus Dei. It is about the unchallengeable doctrines (norms) of society, and about the constant danger that ordinary obedience to the law can turn into a cultic exaltation of the law above principle and spirit. The Silas's of the US are the Ollie Norths and the Irv Lewis Libbys, apparatchiks who are willing to break any law and throw over any constitutional principle in order to serve their masters. (I.e. Cheney gets to play Aringosa in the Plame scandal). As for patriarchy, it is still dominant in much of American life, from the presidency to the CEOs in the boardroom to the US officer corps, and it is linked to the bands of brothers who form gangs and go overboard in imposing conformity. Joe Wilson had to be punished for challenging the orthodoxy that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The other pole in the Brown narrative is the priory around the female descendants of Jesus through Mary Magdalene. This pole is about paganism, feminism, individualism, scientific rationality and sexual freedom. This pole, likewise, can become corrupt and antinomian. Thus, the pagan orgy or hieros gamos repulses Sophie Neveu and causes an almost fatal break between the Grail (herself) and the priory. Likewise, scientistic society has led her to become an unbeliever, so that the Grail itself is corrupted by doubt. Sir Leah Teabing is the symbol of this pole gone to unethical extremes. In his quest for the Grail, he is willing to deceive and to kill. He is Silas's structural analogue.

The "pagan" (in Brown's sense) temptation is a significant feature of contemporary American life-- which can be lived without much immediate penalty as libertine, selfish, and undisciplined. Untempered by spirituality and ethics, science can be soulles and led to e.g. eugenics experiments.

Neveu, like Fache, is in the police and a symbol of middle class order. But she is willing to put her ethics above her professional discipline. When she sees that Fache has become a cultist and lost his perspective, she defies him and helps the fugitive Professor Langdon. She stands for genuine justice rather than only procedural justice.

...

The Brown narrative does not advocate replacing the patriarchal,authoritarian, self-denying Church with the feminist, individualistic, pagan, libertine priory.

It is, in fact, only the melding of the two poles that would create the happy medium. That would lie in gender equality, and in moderation in each of the values of authority and individualism, self-denial and self-indulgence, law and ethical principle.

That is the centrist position the public is looking for. It is religious, but for the most part values individualistic spirituality above dry Church discipline. It is willing to sacrifice, but not at the price of giving up self-actualization and individual ethical integrity. It is increasingly challenging patriarchy, though that struggle is lively. It recognizes the need for authority but is suspicious, in the Madisonian tradition, that too much authority will corrupt its holders.

The film is popular because it isn't about Catholicism or France or some odd conspiracy theory centered on Mary Magdalene. It is popular because it is about the dilemmas of secular modernity.

...

Still, it did big box office, and is hitting a nerve. Critics should be interested in what that nerve is.

How about "No"?

First off, Brown isn't quite suggesting that the aggressive, evil, dominating, authoritarian, pleasure-denying pain-loving murder-worshipping power structure of Christianity needs to be mixed just a tad with the peaceful, good, cooperating, individualistic, pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding, murder-abhorring structure of neo-pagan feminism. He's pretty damn sure the latter needs to completely replace the former-- and who could argue, when it's put like that?

True, Cole saw the movie, and didn't read the book, and the movie was more watered down. (In fact, the book waters itself down in the last few chapters, suggesting -- almost surely at an editor's insistence -- that all the evil people in the book be recast as simply misguided, and the Catholic Church be entirely absolved of any bad behavior the previous 430 pages suggested it was guilty of.)

Still, he gets the main message wrong.

Beyond that-- is this really a very interesting or novel message? It's a Goldilocks solution-- not too hard, not too soft, ooooh, this Christian/neopagan fusion religion is just right. That's the sort of split-the-difference "let's just bury our differences and agree that we should get high and mellow" "answer" that leftist soft-heads like Cole propose when they wish to seem reasonable. (When they're being more honest, they're fire-breathing preachers of hate, just on the other side.)

Hey, if the Da Vinci Code is an important message about moderation in the Forever Wars between authoritarianism and individuality, chastity and promiscuity, pleasure and self-denial, rules and "understanding," etc., then surely he must sing the high praises of the Sylvester Stallone film Demolition Man, too, right?

In that underrated movie (and by "underrated," I don't mean "good," I mean "not as godawful as most seem to think it is"), there is a similar binary tension between an above-ground society of perfect discipline and soulless conformity, and a below-ground rabble of anarchists, vandals, and actual terrorists (though funny and charming terrorists, as their leader is Denis Leary). At the end of the film, Sly Stallone tells the above-ground sheep to "get dirtier," and the below-ground rats to "clean up a little," and says that somewhere between the two extremes, they'll "figure it all out" and will "be fine." (Or words to that effect.)

Is this, too, an important and altogether novel expression of the need for a balance and harmony between the various poles of the human condition?

Of course not. It's bubble-gum moron-babble. It's like one of those questions on the written part of a driving exam:

You're faced with a slick road and a sudden stoppage up ahead. Do you:

a) Smash the accelerator like you were face-stomping a misbehaving whore, hoping you can "power right on through" the obstacles ahead

b) Jump down on the brakes hard as a MOTHERFUCKIN' MONKEY ON METH, in order to screech to a dangerous stop and thereby prevent traffic behind you from encountering the obstacle, by causing them to collide with the rear of your vehicle

or

c) Tap lightly on your breaks, to ensure good traction on the rainy road, and slowly decelerate to a safe speed, while not causing unexpected stoppages on the highway

Gee whiz... I'm thinking, A? If I go really super-fucking-fast I might just race around the obstacle ahead and shave five minutes off my Fuddruckers' driving time.

So, this is what Juan Cole considers a thought-provoking religio-political message: "Tap lightly on your breaks, don't go too fast, but also don't go too slow, either."

Thanks to Clint W. Taylor of the Nail Yale blog, and who also notes that this jerkoff is being considered for a Yale professorship, partly on the strength of his serving as a "public intellectual" on his blog.

Juan Cole grinned to himself as he watched the movie play. I've got no problem with religion, he thought to himself. This movie demonstrates my real problem is with sex-denying Christianity. I'm all in favor of this sex-cult stuff. It must be Christianity that's been keeping me from scoring any undergraduate tail!

He grinned more to himself as he left the theater. Then he saw his reflection in a theater window, saw his Cecil-the-Turtle face and slooped shoulders, and realized that he was fighting a more implacable opponent than mere Christianity. The entire hegemony of "lookism" will have to be overthrown, he grinned to himself. When's that movie coming out, I'd like to know.

Then he, too, went home to smash his testicles with a frozen scrod. Not for any religious reason; just because he'd by then found all other forms of masturbation to be a bit tired and passe.

"Krans" Is An Anagram For "Snark:" Not a good one, really, but it is.

Sandy Berger:

I like when Cole says:

It is popular because it is about the dilemmas of secular modernity.

He's got a point. I mean, I think we can all relate to running around European monuments being chased by a murderous albino while decyphering anagrams and flirting with Jesus Christ's hot daughter. This story is really about all of us.

And flying in billionaire's private jets, and being written about in Boston Magazine, and having his female students swoon (kinda like Indiana Jones' did, as a matter of fact), etc.

It's like he took the basic template of The Firm -- a too-perfect life of a rich and famous man enjoying the sumptitudes and power-villas of the fantastically wealthy -- and decided Grisham had just been a little too snobbishly distancing and arty in his literary pretensions.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (39)
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