Sympathy for the Devil The leaking White House is sprouting a deluge

Your superior correspondents are almost starting to feel sorry for the Bush Administration as it tries to explain away to the American people why outing a CIA operative should be no big deal. Well, almost. Our sympathy has a limit, in part since it’s becoming abundantly clear how this was a full team effort. It’s starting to look like the devil’s spawn himself, Vice President Dick "Big Time" Cheney, was the first guy to pig pile on Joe Wilson and wife Valerie "Collateral Damage" Plame.

One of the 24/7 cable news networks can do a real public service by showing endless tape for a few weeks of the administration’s initial declaration about what it would do when the leaker was identified. Juxtapose that against what they’re saying now. This would be a whole lot of fun.

A DEAD WRONG POLICY

An old acquaintance of P&J’s from our days meeting with the Cornish Horrors, the local Sherlock Holmes’s society, recently passed away after a tough battle with cancer. We received a missive from his son, who handled our friend’s final affairs, including the obituary in the Urinal. He was appalled at what transpired while dealing with the money-hungry BeloJo, which changed its policy of running free obits (doubtless to prop up advertising revenue) many months ago. As the son points out, there are obviously fewer and fewer people mentioned in the "Irish sports pages," and it ain’t because our health-care system is working a lot better.

When our correspondent submitted his obituary (which had some news value, since his father had been a well-known professor at URI for 35 years), he was told the cost would be $1100. This came to $110 per column inch, and as our friend’s son noted, "More insultingly, at 399 words, the Providence Journal wanted just over $2.75 per word."

The most obscene aspect was still to come. When the son questioned the rate, he didn’t get very sympathetic treatment: "At one point, some functionary at the ProJo actually suggested to me that those who balk at paying might not really have loved whomever it was that died. Talk about a specious, self-serving argument from opportunistic vultures picking at the bones of the mourning."

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves. While we know this type of behavior is out of sight, out of mind for the empty suits that issue the corporate dictates from Dallas, perhaps Howard Sutton, the mighty Urinal publisher, might re-think the paper’s approach toward the grieving. The experience suffered by our friend could drain goodwill toward an organ, in a heartbeat, in a place like Little Rhody, with its two degrees of separation. You can bet similar stories are making the rounds, and they cast a horrible reflection on the paper’s terrific reporters and editors. Well, so much for the "new" obit page.

OSAMA BIN DOVER

P&J knew you were all waiting for it. Yes, Barra, the first gay quarterly in the Arab world has been launched in Lebanon. It’s published by the Lebanese gay group Helem, which, according to the estimable Doug Ireland’s Direland Web site (www.direland.typepad.com), "leads a peaceful struggle for the Helem logo liberation of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in Lebanon from all sorts of legal, social and cultural discrimination." You can download an English-language first issue from the Direland.

Now just how do you say, "Hello, sailor" in Arabic?

VALUES IN FLAMES

How uplifting and heartening to read that US troops are burning the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan for propaganda purposes, showing shots of the torched enemy to try to instill fear in the Afghans.

(Note: Osama bin Laden still at large. No wonder President "Dead or Alive" Bush never speaks his name in public anymore.) Embassies worldwide were instructed by their superiors to tell people that this "does not reflect American values." Well, it sure reflects the values of the Bush administration, which condones the torture and even murder of prisoners. Look for a lot of sympathy for our captured soldiers from the Muslim world after this. "Bring ’em on!" Right, Dubya. Stay under your bed in Crawford sucking your thumb, you chickenshit chicken hawk.

Hey, 2000 American troops have died because of lies and deceit concerning Iraq. Mission accomplished!

ANOTHER FINE VICTORY

Speaking of Iraq, did anyone notice Monday’s story in the New York Times, about the Afghan magazine editor sentenced to two years in prison by the primary court in Kabul? He was found guilty of apostasy (the abandonment of faith). The prosecutor had called for the death penalty.

President Karzai has a seriously uphill battle. The Taliban is still lurking, building strength, the Islamic legal code of Shariah remains the law of the land, and freedom of speech appears to be an exotic import that the Afghans are not buying. We suppose there are "democracies" and "Bush democracies."

EMPTY BULLHORN

As he proved in his column on Tuesday, Charlie Bakst is at least one person at the Other Paper who has Steve Laffey’s number, unlike, say, Ed Achorn, the deputy editorial pages editor. Achorn’s great admiration for the Cranston mayor must be based on deep-seated loathing for school crossing guards, since the rest of Laffey’s anti-union rhetoric has amounted to little. Has he actually completed any other so-called "get tough" deals with the city’s unions?

Laffey’s bloviating about how he’s going to take on the Republicans and Democrats, and put an end to pork barrel politics, is empty rhetoric. What can Laffey do that Senator John McCain can’t? For years, McCain has made some of the same points about how Congress does business. The difference is that McCain has intelligence, gravitas, experience, and serious cojones. He also has a sense of what is possible and what is not. By contrast, Laffey is just an empty bullhorn, a loud-mouthed Don Quixote character with a penchant for self-dramatization and romantic illusions.

The morass in Iraq is partially a result of the same sort of illusory thinking. Bush believes that "democracy" can be foisted on a country with no such tradition. Here in the US, though, people seem to be waking up a bit to the lying and incompetence of the White House.

BIRD BRAIN

P&J were (parquet) floored by the news concerning a man in Oklahoma City who, convicted of robbery and intent to kill, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In contesting his sentence, he asked the judge for 33 years, because he wanted to honor the number 33 worn by Larry Bird on his Celtics jersey.

As Tommy from Queens asked, why not pick Robert Parish — who wore the number 0 for the Celts?

KUDOS + CONGRATS . . .

. . . to Secretary of State Matt Brown and his wife, Marisa, new parents of Eleanor Mable Brown. From the official announcement: "Ella was born at 3:47 am . . . weighing in at 7 lb, 12 oz. Ella and her mother are healthy and we are all very, very, very happy!" Good for you, Matt and Marisa.

RIP

Rosa Parks, icon of civil rights movement. Her refusal to give her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, and the subsequent bus boycott, was the fuse that ignited the greatest mass movement of the last century. A truly great American, Ms. Parks was 92.

From the sublime to the absurd, say "Hi, ho Steverino!" to Gordon Hathaway, aka comedian Louis Nye, who recently passed away. One of the original "Man In the Street" characters on The Steve Allen Show (we’re really dating ourselves here), along with Don Knotts, Tom Poston, and Bill "Jose Jiminez" Dana, his more-than-a-hint-of-mint effete Hathaway character was a classic in TV comedy.

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