Eye(brows) on the prize

Well, it just goes to show you, via John Kerry’s choice of John Edwards over Dick Gephardt for his running mate, that it always pays to have eyebrows.

Gephardt is essentially a burnt-out, busted-up old circus dog who looks like a Botox job gone awry, and he would have brought nothing to the Dems’ presidential ticket. We can’t fathom why he was even being considered. Perhaps he has photos of his old pal, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, along with Kerry, in flagrante delicto with Arlene "Gutter Helmet" Violet and Eileen "Jurassic Spice" Slocum after they all spent a long night getting legless on the tiles at a Newport yacht club. (Although what Eileen Slocum would be doing slumming with Gutter Helmet is an entirely different story.)

This said, Phillipe & Jorge welcome the vibrant young Mr. Edwards to the ticket. The war enthusiast and profiteer, Dick "Big Time" Cheney, President Flight Suit’s puppeteer, is enough to make you shy away from voting for Dubya the Dumb and hope that Kerry gets hit by a bus a month into office. Instead, we get a Clinton clone who can charm a wolf off a meat wagon, and actually has the bona fides in the South, where this election will be won, provided it isn’t rigged, thank you very much, Ms. Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush. (If there is a single black person in the country who votes for Dubya, it should set civil rights back 50 years.)

So let’s have Johnny Kerry-Heinz stay at home this summer with his wife, counting their money, and send John Edwards out there to flirt with the public until it has wet dreams about him, hopefully not forgetting to pull the trigger in November. A tip of the hat and sombrero to the New York Post for its front-pager announcing that Kerry chose Gephardt over Edwards. It’s enough to make you raise an eyebrow, n’est-ce pas?

ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS

Phillipe & Jorge have rarely heard more astonishment about a newspaper’s front page than was the case with the July 1 edition of the Urinal. Why? Let’s see. When you have a chance to put Mark Patinkin’s Ward Cleaver-esque deep research into the name of Aquidneck Island, or the "worst humanitarian crisis" in the world (the ravaging and nightmare existence of the Sudan) on the front, above the fold, what do you do? Yeah. Run Pinky’s idiotic piece in the showcase spot. More "Why leave home if I get paid for writing here?" activity that has brought the former award-winning columnist the ridicule of his peers.

Who’s minding the store over on Fountain Street? And how do P&J get a job like Pinky’s? Please, please tell us. We’ll be able to get in 18 holes every day by noon and amass enough beach time to make George Hamilton look like an albino. Another Bombay and tonic, young lady, thank you very much.

Hey Pinky, keep wrestling with that federal board on geographic names.

Moon over the Queen Mary II

Thanks to the largesse of the Pogie Princess, your superior correspondents were able to go to the famed Clingstone, a.k.a. House on the Rock, off Jamestown for the July 4 Newport fireworks. (The isolated Clingstone is named for how the house hung onto its rocky perch during two major hurricanes.)

The highlight of the day was the magnificent Queen Mary II coming around the point off Breton Reef and right up the Bay to anchor off Goat Island. Given the Clingstone gang’s traditional warmth, hospitality, and tradition, everyone ceremoniously mooned the world’s largest ocean liner, from 20-year-old women to the 75-year-old owner of the house. This came after we attracted the attention of the passengers on the QM2 by waving to them as they watched from the various decks. (The Clingstoners also had a huge anti-Dubya Bush banner in the upstairs window, left from a John Kerry fundraiser two nights before, which made your superior correspondents feel even more at home.)

The Queen Mary II is an unbelievable sight, 16 "floors" above the waterline, and about the size of two Trump Towers. Although the boat’s owners paid Newport $10,000 to add to the scheduled fireworks that night, the finale sucked, far inferior to Jamestown’s own pyrotechnics on July 1, we are sad to say. Afterwards, when P&J went back to Conanicut Island via a launch, the traffic was so hideous that we walked the three miles home (passing about 300 cars snarled in gridlock), stopping at a number of local watering holes, strictly for required potable nourishment, as the SUV brigade sat in its cars fuming and honking.

God bless America.

PUMP IT UP (APOLOGIES TO ELVIS COSTELLO)

Here’s why Phillipe & Jorge absolutely love the Smoking Gun Web site. Inquiring minds want know this stuff:

Here Comes The Judge

State: Bounce Oklahoma jurist for "pumping it up" on bench

JUNE 24 — While seated on the bench, an Oklahoma judge used a male enhancement pump, shaved and oiled his nether region, and pleasured himself, state officials charged yesterday in a petition to remove the jurist. According to the . . . complaint filed by the Oklahoma Attorney General, Donald D. Thompson, 57, was caught in the act by a clerk, trial witnesses, and his longtime court reporter (these unsettling first-hand accounts will make you wonder what’s going on under other black robes). Visitors to Thompson’s Creek County courtroom reported hearing a "swooshing" sound coming from the bench, a noise the court reporter said,"sounded like a blood pressure cuff being pumped up." Thompson, the complaint charges, even pumped himself up during an August 2003 murder trial. The AG’s petition quotes Thompson as admitting that the pump was "under the bench" during the murder case (and at other times), but he denied using the item, which was supposedly a "gag gift from a friend."

WHISTLE-BLOWING IN THE AGE OF BUSH

Does the name Sibel Edmonds ring a bell? Probably not, although she was featured in a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes in October 2002, just one in a number of ongoing stories detailing the behavior of our national "security" apparatus. If the press does its due-diligence in the matter for which she is famous, Edmonds may soon be back in the limelight.

On Monday, the Boston Globe featured a front-page story about Edmonds, and it should tell you a bit more about the suffocating secrecy of the Bush administration and, in particular, Attorney General John Ashcroft. Edmonds was an FBI translator hired by the Justice Department soon after 9/11. This was a time when it became abundantly obvious that the US intelligence community did not have as many experts in Middle Eastern languages as necessary to successfully prosecute the war on terrorism.

Edmonds, 34, a naturalized US citizen who grew up in Turkey and Iran, is fluent in Turkish and Farsi, and was privy to classified materials received prior to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. When asked to expedite translations from field operatives, including some from an agent based in Arizona who submitted his pre-9/11 communications for reexamination, she found some serious inconsistencies.

After her re-translation of these documents, she contacted her field supervisor to inform him about major mistakes in the original translations, and that some of the information she uncovered shed light on the 9/11 attacks. In particular, her translations had to do with discussions of "skyscrapers" and "pilot training."

The FBI handled this by quashing her report. Now, according to the Globe, she has been fired by the agency and the information she tried to pass along to superiors (she went so far as to contact FBI director Robert S. Mueller III) has been classified by Ashcroft under the rarely invoked "state secrets" privilege, to block any access to her findings. Even Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), a conservative and strong Bush supporter, has described the silencing of Edmonds as "alarming."

We are certainly not fluent in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, or any of the other languages that would seem to be of vital concern to the security of the nation. But we can see that the silencing and firing of Edmonds (who, from all reports, has performed her job with the upmost of integrity) is a disgrace. It also has all the earmarks of yet another cover-up.

From our perspective, Ashcroft, with his phony piousness, Patriot Act, and similar actions, is part of an Axis of Evil that Bush has purposely decided to ignore. In the eyes of many Americans, John Kerry is not exactly a warm and charismatic leader. If you want warmth and charisma, go to a Yanni concert. In the meantime, running the USA in a time of peril is not about warmth and charisma. It’s about competence and honesty, something the current crowd in the White House appear to know nothing about.

ARTISTS' REMINDER

Our good friend Pat Zacks at the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative wants to remind artists in "the Bucket" (an impressive and growing contingent) that the deadline for providing information for the City of Pawtucket’s Artist Directory is fast approaching. Information should be sent to Diane Agostini at agostinid@psdri.net, or call her at (401) 724-5200. If you are an artist living or working in Pawtucket — you should get in touch. This directory will be a free publication, and hardcopies will be available (hopefully) during the Pawtucket Arts Festival in September 2004. Artists will be listed by their medium, along with contact information. This resource guide is a result of requests made by local artists, and the efforts of the Advocacy Committee of the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative. The goal of the directory is to help market the Pawtucket artist community and it can be valuable too. The best part is there is NO COST to participate. Deadline is July 15. Any questions — call Diane or Pat (401-273-5367) Good luck!

JUST A SUGGESTION

Although the state legislature seems bound and determined to support the Vinny Mesolella hotel project (and we keep wondering what kind of photographs, and of whom, the Family Man has in his possession), we keep our fingers crossed that this deal does not go down as planned. If it’s such a great deal, let Vinny get his own financing — no state money. But if Vinny must be funded, we suggest making it more convenient. Just add something to state tax forms where taxpayers can check off a contribution to the Mesolella fund.

Send beach passes and Pulitzer-grade tips to p&j[a]phx.com.