Hair of the dog?

Well, folks, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Phillipe & Jorge refer to the police blotter in one of Jamestown’s weekly newspapers, 02835 (the back stories of these weeklies make up a soap opera on their own) of April 27.

The final listing for April 22 reads: "Drunken man and sober dog seen wandering around Shoreby Hill."

How it was determined the dog was sober has yet to be revealed, unless it was a case of the pooch being able to put both its paws to its nose, or reciting the alphabet backwards.

Honorable mention on the same date: "Suspicious person observed at Lawn Avenue School," followed by: "Same suspicious person arrested at station on outstanding warrant."

What did the person do? Follow the police back to the station? He probably should have stayed with a dog.

GETTING BONED

OK, maybe it actually can get better than drunk humans and sober dogs. Your superior correspondents refer to the headline in the Urinal of April 30 that read, "Prostitution stakeout snares T-bone seller."

It seems a randy young gent in Woonsocket found himself cash-short and meat-long while soliciting — obviously not to his knowledge — an undercover policewoman. But don’t let us try to describe things. Let’s just take BeloJo reporter Cynthia Needham’s account of the incident, which we would suggest was a bit tongue-in-cheek, were it not to be possibly misconstrued:

"[The suspect] didn’t have any cash on him. Instead, he offered up the high-end meat, promising to pay the next day, the police said . . . Sex on Arnold Street is no laughing matter, they said."

Well, P&J beg to differ on the matter of comedic impact. And we know high-end meat when we see it.

After we picked ourselves up off the floor after reading this account, your superior correspondents were reminded of a wonderful tale told by Tony Lioce, the legendary former Urinal music critic and columnist, with whom we would frequently get into trouble while out on the town. Tony once went to a Jerry Lee Lewis concert at the Warwick Music Theatre, when he was seated next to a row of blue-haired ladies of a certain age. They obviously had season tickets, so they could be entertained by singers a bit less exuberant (and more sober) than Jerry Lee. As we all know, Lewis was famous for many outrageous acts, such as playing his piano through lighter fluid burning on the keys, and marrying his 14-year old cousin. So as he wrapped up his signature song, "Great Balls of Fire," Jerry Lee stood up on his stool while pounding at the keyboard screaming, "I am the meat man! I am the meat man!" At this point, Lioce thought the women next to him were going to faint. It is one of our favorite mind’s-eye images, and certainly worthy of repeating.

Meanwhile, your superior correspondents feel the urge now to cruise downtown to see what kind of T-bones we might pick up ourselves.

Sleep tight, John Holmes.

CELEBRITY COUPLE

Top hats and bridal trains off to Vo Dilun’s Little Big Man, Senator Jack Reed, and his lovely new wife, Julia Hart, for being featured in a New York Times’ high-profile wedding feature on Sunday, May 1. The couple was married at West Point, since wee Jackie is an alum, and you won’t find a better vista in the country. (P&J know this because we were at a similar wedding just across the Hudson a few years back, with the US Military Academy in the background, when Mr. Etchells married his beautiful wife, Katherine.)

All the best to the happy couple, and as the saying goes, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy (and gal).

TAKING THE RAP

Let’s make sure we have this straight. US servicewoman Pfc. Lynndie England is facing jail time for her role in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, while Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, and every military man with any rank or authority who was involved in this international disgrace to humanity walks away scot-free? P&J can only presume that the Dubya Doctrine of absolutely no accountability continues for white boys with clout. God forbid that any of our major news media outlets would dare point out this hypocrisy, especially when the likes of Brian "Boots" Williams have crawled so far up the fundament of Boy George that all you can see is the soles of their shoes.

This is a travesty of justice, visited on a young woman who had the bad sense to let her picture be taken by her erstwhile boyfriend while holding a prisoner on a leash. If anyone deserves to be at the end of a leash, the selection process should start at the Pentagon.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

In light of this week’s news that Joseph A. Bevilacqua Jr. has agreed to plead guilty to charges that he leaked an FBI tape to a reporter: Hey, Joe Bev. You owe Jim Taricani four months of your life.

THE SAGA OF ‘LAUGH AT ME’

We love the idea that Cranston Mayor Steve "Laugh at me" Laffey, a world champion headline-whore, is now in cahoots with the ACLU (a group he has demonized in the past) in his battle with the state Elections Board. The question is whether his former WPRO-AM radio show constitutes an illegal, in-kind contribution from a corporation.

Your superior correspondents suspect that Laffey will (and should) prevail in court if this issue goes to court. If he were to prevail in court, this doesn’t mean, however, that all is right with the world — as the mayor would undoubtedly see it — and he is the conquering hero once again. There is something inherently odious about the egomaniacal mayor "hosting" (and that’s an important distinction here, as opposed to being an occasional guest) his own weekly radio show.

Of course, the only question that Laffey really needs to deal with is whether his basic jerkiness overpowers his alleged competence. At least to some of his opponents, he is one of the most incredible narcissists in Rhode Island’s recent political history. His martyr act has gotten really old. His opponents are always "political bosses," "special interests," and members of the "Politiburo" (hey, Stevie boy, the cold war is over . . . pass it on to your Republican buddies), and his religious piety smacks of self-delusion.

His former radio show was a bad idea in every way, except in terms of political opportunism, and that seems to be the prevailing theme of Steve Laffey’s life. So go for it, big boy, and we will continue to laugh at you.

LOSING MORE THAN THE WAR

The more one follows the news of about the aftermath of the Bush Administration’s ill-fated decision to invade Iraq, the more one (or in the case of Phillipe & Jorge, two) gets the feeling that the United States will ultimately pay a price greater than just that in death, destruction, and trillions of dollars of debt. We fear that we as a nation are losing our souls as well.

The astonishing accounts from Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, detailing how we are responsible for torturing people (including the use of our "rendition" program, in which we transport suspected terrorists to other countries and have them torture the captives for us) raise a number of questions.

Do we think we will build a better and safer world on the basis of fear of (US) power? Do we actually think that useful information is being collected through torture? If so, where is the evidence that indicates this? Of course, there is none.

Then there was Bob Herbert’s column in the op-ed pages of the New York Times from Monday, May 2. Herbert writes of spending time with Aidan Delgado, "a 23-year-old religion major at New College of Florida, a small, highly selective school in Sarasota."

Delgado tells Herbert of his recent time in the military, noting that "even before [my] unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans." Delgado continues, "He laughed and everybody in the unit laughed with him."

Delgado was appalled. While growing up, his father was in the US diplomatic corps, and he lived in Egypt for eight years. He knows Arabic and is familiar with the cultures of the region.

Delgado tells Herbert of how young soldiers in his unit would drive by in their Humvees and "shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by." He said that they usually kept a bunch of empty Coke bottles in Humvees just for this purpose. Ultimately, Mr. Delgado applied for and received conscientious objector status.

So, we have taken a bunch of young Americans, not punks or thoughtless brutes, and taught them to act like punks and thoughtless brutes. That’ll certainly win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Will it make any difference if we "win" the war, or win anything else, if we lose our souls? We think not.

REMEM-MEM-MEM-MAH-MEMBER!

Do you recall when political conservatives were identified with "small government," an emphasis on local government and "states’ rights," and antipathy toward what was perceived as overbearing federal mandates? Consider the Patriot Act, threats by a number of Republicans to change laws in response to the Terry Schiavo case (activist judges are only good when they do what the extreme right wants them to), the looming federal imposition of new or expanded LNG facilities in Providence and Fall River, the structure of No Child Left Behind, the current movement in Congress to impose rules on states’ issuance of drivers licenses, and many other acts of the Bush Administration. Taking all this into account, can you believe that they still have the nerve to call themselves "conservatives"?

These are extremists, not conservatives. Fiscal restraint is not part of the Bush mix. Look at the deficit, and Dubya’s stubborn insistence that tax cuts for the rich must continue. Look at the continued (even expanded) pork barrel spending in Congress, now under full control of Republicans. Don’t call yourselves "conservatives." Be honest and call yourselves "Tax (but not the rich), and spend and spend and spend." Or even more bluntly, "Extremists for a Theocratic Oligarchy."

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