Civic heroes in Iraq

Phillipe & Jorge still view Dubya Bush, "Big Time" Cheney, Rummy Rumsfeld and Condi "Queen Lotsateetha" Rice as lying war enthusiasts for their falsified conflict in Iraq. They are the lowest of the low. (We believe our best bet to get the troops home is if the legislation passes to give the families of soldiers killed in this travesty a $100,000 death benefit, rather than the obscene $12,000-plus they now get when their boy or girl comes home in a bag. Chicken hawk Dubya doesn’t care much about the lives of our troops, but he does have a keen interest in money, so he’ll want to stop spending it on frivolous things like widows when it could be going to Big Bidness friends like Ken Lay.)

Back to Iraq. Every single person who voted in that country’s first election is a hero or heroine. The approximated voter turnout of 60 percent, under the threat of being blown up or shot, is staggering. It is greater than the percentage of people who voted in our last major elections in the United States — and this should be horrifying to anyone who claims to be a true American. The Iraqis don’t need to be tutored by Americans about freedom and democracy. Perhaps it should be the other way around.

Sleep tight, Founding Fathers.

TOFF OFF

Rumors along the grapevine alert your superior correspondents to how the celebrated toff wannabe, Urinal editorial columnist "Faux Phil" Terzian, may be leaving his overpaid position in the near future.

Terzian is famous around the Other Paper for his pompous posing and incredibly boring right-wing screeds. Although he has been working from Washington for the past many years — no doubt so he can pick up his children from the prestigious Sidwell School every day and then name drop about his privileged fellow parents — he remains legend at the BeloJo for his preening in public. Although a graduate of Villanova, he affected a British accent after spending a while at school in England, as of the manor born. Likewise, he impressed his co-workers mightily —not! — when he sported a monocle, thus becoming the sort of Monty Pythonesque upper class twit of the year that would make P.J. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster blush in embarrassment.

This is a blow to P&J, if the rumor is true, since we won’t have our stuck-up, primped-up friend to kick around anymore. Looks like we’ll have to go after Achorn now. Hey Ed, mind wearing a monocle for a while?

DOA ON FOUNTAIN ST.

Like the Coca-Cola geniuses with too much time on their hands — who came up with the idea of "new" Coke before being pantsed in public and humiliated — so too the BeloJo intelligentsia, which decided not just to charge for their obituary notices, but to no longer list them by town, either. Talk about an idea that was dead on arrival

Aficionados of what are commonly known as the "Irish sports pages" were outraged by the switch to alphabetical listings, according to P&J’s sources inside Fountain Street. So this past week, no doubt hearing the bleating of the great unwashed, the obit page turned back to local listings by municipality. This was another wonderful decision spurred by the Urinal’s absentee ownership, knowing nothing of the culture of Our Little Towne and the Biggest Little. (And now that families of the deceased are being billed for funeral notices, don’t you love how some funeral homes — obviously charging their obit costs back to their customers — feel obliged to advertise by putting their names in capital letters within the obits? Really classy, you ghouls.)

Roll over, Beethoven. Or at least Raymond L.S. Patriarca.

PINK FLAMINGO WATCH

We have to give TV’s Kirstie Alley credit for using her extreme weight gain since her halcyon Cheers days to her own benefit. In March, she will begin her new sit-com on the Showtime network, boldly named Fat Actress.

P&J suggest that she also hook up as soon as possible with movie director John Waters, and offer to take any roles he had targeted for Divine, his favorite larger-than-life transvestite, for whom Kirstie has become a dead ringer. (Divine did her makeup a little better. Mee-oww!) Is that chocolate pudding?

FAREWELL, PUBLIC SERVANT

P&J were disappointed to read about the resignation of Fred Vincent, who has been acting director of the state Department of Environmental Management for the past 15 months.

Phillipe had the pleasure and privilege of working with Fred for many years. He exemplifies the concept of public service, dating back to his tenure in the DiPrete administration, on to the Department of Transportation, and most recently at DEM. His was not a wonderful position to be in, for DEM takes more flak than a Blackhawk helicopter in Baghdad. But Fred’s unseen work has had an enormous impact — in only a positive sense — on the state’s natural resources.

ESTEEM THIS

If P&J again hear the words "building self-esteem" in regard to children’s education or sports, we are going to: 1) puke; and 2) hit the person who said it in the head with a snow shovel.

We remember the following expression: "Rights are not something you are given. Rights are something that cannot be taken away." The same applies to self-esteem.

The latest farce involving adults wanting to promote this intractable trait in their precious charges came in Lincoln, where school officials pulled out of the state spelling bee because it might hurt their students’ self-esteem if they didn’t win. It was like the morons who promote playing kids’ sports without keeping score because then someone would have to lose. Yeah. So what? Suck it up, you underperforming, spoiled little snots.

Fortunately, someone in Lincoln’s educational hierarchy who possesses a positive IQ got the folks to come to their senses, and they reversed the decision. Please, people, let’s start living in the real world. Not every one is a winner all the time, so just get used to getting the nasty end of the stick now and then.

THE ARMY YOU’VE GOT, PART II

After hearing about the lack of armored equipment for American GI’s in Iraq, and reading Senator Jack Reed’s comments on the dangers of inadequate troop strength, you still don’t believe that Rummy’s Defense Department is trying to conduct a war on the cheap? Well, check this out. Mark Benjamin in Salon.com reports that some wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq have had to pay for their own meals at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The Army explains that only "some outpatients" are being charged for meals, not inpatients confined to hospital beds. "I have been absolutely assured . . . that no inpatient has been charged for meals," Walter Reed spokesman Don Vandrey told Salon.

Up until January 3, outpatient soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan ate for free in the chow hall. Now outpatient soldiers there longer than 90 days pay for meals in cash. Walter Reed did not tell Salon how many soldiers this impacted, but the online magazine estimates that "at least 600" soldiers are now paying for their meals.

Your superior correspondents understand. We know that tax cuts for the rich must take priority over such minor details as feeding soldiers who have been wounded at the behest of our government. Thanks for being part of the ownership society.

GOING GRANITE

This Thursday and Friday, February 3 and 4, one of the most questionable people in American electoral office will travel to New Hampshire to check out what the anti-immigrant vote looks like. Testing the waters for a potential presidential run in 2008 will be Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado).

Purportedly, Tancredo is going to the "Live Free or Die" state to present an award to New Ipswich chief of police, W. Garrett Chamberlain on Thursday. On Friday he’ll be holding public meetings in Manchester, Nashua, and New Bedford. and meeting with key Republicans.

Last July, Chamberlain became a hero to a certain segment of the radical right when he stopped and detained nine Ecuadorian immigrants, and then threw a very public fit when federal officials took no interest in his "find" and told him to let them go. Since then, Chamberlain has become the darling of anti-immigration groups (e.g., American Patrol). He has also boasted that he managed to deport 11 Mexicans from New Ipswich in October. The Mexicans had been working full-time for a cement company.

And where did Chamberlain make that boast? Why, on Congressman Tancredo’s "Team America" Web site. Tancredo is among the leading anti-immigration voices in American politics today. We’re not talking about reforming or refining immigration policy, but full-blown ranting and ethnic stereotyping. Tancredo is so intense that the eminently right-wing editorial page of the Wall Street Journal took him, among others, to task in 2002 for "exploiting the terror attacks [9/11] to advance [their] anti-immigration agenda."

Tancredo is the real thing. He’s accused Bush of not being a real conservative, because the president does not embrace his reactionary immigration positions. So, check out the new face of homegrown fear mongering during his visit to our neck of the woods.

TSUNAMI RELIEF

Here are a couple of local fundraising events you might want to know about, coming up in the next few weeks to aid tsunami victims:

A benefit concert will be held at Channing Memorial Church on Friday, February 11 at 7 p.m. "A Wave of Hope" will feature prominent area musicians, including Ed McGuirl, Lori Amey, Bill Carleton, Ryan Fitzsimmons, John Fuzek, Chris Deacutis, Michael Larkin, and the MetroGnomes. Suggested donation is $10 per person. All proceeds will go to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Tsunami Relief Fund. Channing Memorial Church is located at 135 Pelham Street in Newport, off Touro Park. For further info, contact Michael Larkin at (401) 423-3898

The band the Special Guests is putting together a fundraising concert for tsunami relief at the Living Room on Sunday evening, February 13 with a lineup including Monty’s Fan Club, Can’t Face the Falling, Slik Willy, Senior Discount, and a few others. For more info, give a call to the Living Room.

R.I.P.

. . . Carroll "Pappy" Philbrook, a pioneer in local radio and longtime station engineer at radio stations WHIM, WHJJ, and WHJY. In fact, Pappy literally built the stations, put together the equipment, wired the boards, etc. He was known and loved by generations of radio people, from sales staffers to on-air personalities.

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