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Friday, September 23, 2005
With all the earth-shattering news out there, it's not easy to decide just what is most important to address. Still, the TurkeyBlog can't help but feel there's something especially important about The Kate Moss Story.
Admittedly, this one's a little hard to blame on George W. Bush. But other than that, it has it all: sex (implied), drugs, rock 'n' roll, models... And, at the center of it all, a still young woman very screwed up by the very people who are now disavowing her.
It's not surprising that Moss is on drugs. You can't look 14 for 20 years without having a few things in your system that don't belong. It's more surprising that she got caught. But what's really disturbing is the way teenage girls and young women keep buying magazines with her like and swooning over the waif look. And the way the rest of us act like Kate should change her behavior when we keep opening up our pocketbooks to encourage it.
Had Moss become a supermodel at the age of 22 after finishing her bachelors in child psychology, say, we might have it in us to criticize a little. But she was in her mid-teens when she got whipped up in the fashion whirlwind. Even those who made a later entry into the modeling scene deserve a little sympathy. They're only selling what they themselves were sold on. And what we keep buying. As for the drug side, the phrase "heroin chic" gave the drug warriors something to get into a lather over. But all the moms and dads who are so distraught that little Sally or Susie wants to be like Kate seem to be more than willing to buy their little darlings YM, CosmoGirl and more and, worse, the grown-up editions of these mags. Unless 13 year-olds suddenly got the earning power to sustain a multi-million dollar segment of the magazine industry when I wasn't looking.
Kate Moss represents, more than anything, an abdication on the part of the so-called grown-ups of the world. If the grown-ups were watching their tweeners and providing a good model to imitate, there'd be a lot less to worry about here. But when mom gets a boob job, pop takes up with a younger woman and the Baby Boomer cult of youth is too busy celebrating its hipness to live out what it tells its children about self-esteem and everybody being good enough and special in their own way, things get mucked up. Including a gorgeous, glamorous young woman who is taking the rap for being what they and their children were buying.
About drugs and addiction: A dozen years ago or so, I had my first episode of ulcerative colitis. One of the fun parts of this disease is they load you up with corticosteroids to keep your body growing and going faster than the disease breaks it down. When my system stabilized and it was time to get the drug out of my system... hoo boy. It saved my colon, possibly my life. It made me feel human when I otherwise wouldn't have. And it was murder adjusting to the idea that from a certain point on, getting the metabolism going, keeping the body healing and all the other good stuff that goes with a happy, healthy life was going to be up to my body and my body alone. Whether it's Rush on oxycontin, Kate on coke or a nobody in Harlem on heroin, I can't really begrudge anyone whose lives got messed up on these things. Certain drugs are addictive. That doesn't mean that Satanists who don't love Jesus think they're cool. That doesn't mean bad people do them just for fun. It means that the drug does things for the psychology and/or physiology of the person taking them that make it hard to do without.
You read alot in the papers about Kate Moss. One thing we haven't read is about how her manager Lenny that she met at Denny's took her money to Bermuda. She's a smart girl, at least in some regards. To do something so stupid as to keep at the drugs when there's been so much chatter about it implies one of two things: Either the drugs are too powerful for the poor lass to resist, given other possibly related circumstances; or the message was never really sent that the worried whispers about drugs were serious, not just to shut up the rubes so they wouldn't pull Glamour - Tots! from the local library.
There is much in The Kate Moss Story that is harmful to our culture, starting with the idea that a woman close to my age (I'm in my early thirties) should look like a teenager, and that even budding teenagers should like dandelion stems with breasts. But I can't really buy into the coke thing. Nobody's shocked that Kate was on coke. They're just tittering because she got caught. And drug use in the modeling community is something to be winked at, not actually acknowledged. Just as calls for healthier images and role models for our youth are something to be blathered about. Not something we would take so seriously as to alter our own magazine buying habits over or the messages we ourselves send about youth and thinness to our kids.
Were the Baby Boomer youth culture (whose finest exemplar bagged a twenty-something in the Oval Office) to act as though maturity, as well as youth, had its place. Were it to eschew the latest, thinnest, raciest for something solid, realistic and affirming. Were it to grow up and again let kids be kids, instead of vessels through which to live out its dreams of neverending youth. Were it to do this, the Kate Moss lookalikes would disappear from the magazine racks, the world would wonder, "Britney who? Mischa who?" and the whole Kate on coke, what message do models send nonsense would disappear. Because there'd be no there there.
Given the Baby Boomer knack for growing up, I have confidence in one thing only: This season: Mary Kate anorexia horror. Next season: anorexia chic.
If you really care about Kate on coke, heroin chic, etc, turn off the television and leave Cosmo on the counter. Until you're ready to do that and risk the embarrassment of advising your hipper friends to do the same, leave Kate alone.
posted by gbarto at 10:24 PM
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
From what I understand, this actually turned up on FlowGo's funpages (there's a usenet link at google indicating a no-longer functioning address). Don't know how long it stayed, but it's worth passing along and here in its entirety at FreeRepublic:Hello My name is Mary Jo Kopechne.
I would have been 65 years of age this year.
Read about me and my killer below.
When Sen. Ted Kennedy was merely just another Democrat bloating on Capitol Hill on behalf of liberal causes, it was perhaps excusable to ignore his deplorable past.
But now that he's become Sen. John Kerry's leading campaign attack dog, positioning himself as Washington's leading arbiter of truth and integrity, the days for such indulgence are now over.
It's time for the GOP to stand up and remind America why Sen. Kerry's chief spokesman had to abandon his own presidential bid in 1980 - time to say the words Mary Jo Kopechne out loud.
As is often the case, Republicans have deluded themselves into thinking that most Americans already know the story of how this "Conscience of the Democratic Party" left Miss Kopechne behind to die in the waters underneath the Edgartown Bridge in July 1969, after a night of drinking and partying with the young blonde campaign worker. But most Americans under 40 have never heard that story, or details of how Kennedy swam to safety, then tried to get his cousin Joe Garghan to say he was behind the wheel.
Those young voters don't know how Miss Kopechne, trapped inside Kennedy's Oldsmobile, gasped for air until she finally died, while the Democrats' leading Iraq war critic rushed back to his compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of. Click the link and keep reading if you've ever bought into the Saint Teddy formulation, just as dastardly with Senate Democrats chastising Bush as uncaring as it was when Kennedy was speaking for Kerry.
Update: Here's the scoop, complete with picture, at the funnyfunpages. It's true, but I didn't think it was funny.
posted by gbarto at 6:50 PM
Sunday, September 18, 2005
If you can read this...
you're overly sensitive.
Apparently, a Muslim in the UK looked at his ice cream from Burger King and said, Oh my God, Allah's name looks like an ice cream swirly on its side!
He then discovered that eating ice cream was an even better way of appreciating the wonderful world God gave us than slaughtering Jews.
Heh, heh. Just kidding, of course.
Actually, he filed a complaint with Burger King, which has withdrawn the offending cups, thus saving us all from the prospect that Muslims eating ice cream might think of God and reflect upon His wonders.
If your Whopper costs a little extra, blame it on corporate insensitivity to Mohammedans.
Via ProteinWisdom, via Instapundit.
Image of cone found at JihadWatch, altered by us. I'm not sure whether it says "Ice cream is great?" or "God is great?" Your response says more about you, I believe.
At any rate, the TurkeyBlog first cites its bona fides as well intentioned, reminding that he has read from the Koran in the Arab and has even referenced it here and there. That said, we declare this idiocy and oversensitivity.
posted by gbarto at 4:56 PM
 Pork Busters!
While the media is suggesting tax increases are needed to pay for Katrina relief, Bush is insisting we can do it with cuts elsewhere. The Cato Institute has made its suggestions for cuts. And now the blogosphere is chipping in.
The TurkeyBlogger doesn't have any specifics for the Congressional District where he currently lives, but is keeping an eye out. Having only been here a few years, I don't know about the worst boondoggles in our area.
Still, we should get the word out. So, if you have a suggestion, put it on your own blog or e-mail us here (info on the left bar) and be sure to get the word to NZ Bear, who's keeping a tab of blogosphere recommended cuts.
The logo, by the way, is by Stacy Tabb. According to Instapundit, you're free to use the image on your own pages. (Just be sure to host it on your own server; no "borrowing" or abusing other people's bandwidth, please.)
posted by gbarto at 4:25 PM
Reading this post from Powerline, I got to thinking about the position of the Baathists in Iraq, and for that matter the fundamentalist Muslims throughout the Middle East.
You've got to feel for the Baathists. After all, they kept a lid on things, kept the minorities from getting out of check and therefore maintained a stability, however artificial. True, this required turning a large part of the populace into second class human beings, or less. True, it required the use of murder and the threat of harm to sustain itself. But it kept the rest of the world from having to deal with them. Who are we, really, to begrudge them a system that was working for them, and how can we not understand the powerlessness they feel now that a bunch of interlopers from another culture have shown up, told them they're all wrong and worked to systematically destroy the institutions they relied upon to maintain the lives they were living?
It's worth noting that this is not an "American" phenomenon: It's really what comes when those damn know-it-alls with Harvard and Yale educations or other privileged backgrounds in this country decide the rest of the world should live and think the way they do. And it goes way back.
Forty or fifty years ago, lest we forget, these "we-know-best" types went on another one of their crusades, invading a region with a storied history and culture whose occupants took much pride in the legends of their forebearers. The region had its problems, true. A large part of the populace was relegated to second or third class status. Upsetting the dominant social group could bring the pain of death, severe beating or awful reprisals against your family. Still, the region had a stability, however artificial. The horrors of the region, though terrible, kept a lid on things so that the rest of the world, had it wanted to, could have turned a blind eye. But, as we know, know-it-alls in the Northeast, with their share of Middle American sympathizers and some local reformers, just couldn't abide by that. Instead, they used every means they could, including the U.S. military, to achieve their vision of that society, undermining institutions that had been in place for centuries and turning loose a formerly controlled society that even today is in chaos in parts. And is subject to total civil unrest when the delicate balance there established is threatened.
The invaders, in case you're wondering, were the Freedom Riders, the place was the American South, and it was that quaint old Southern culture, with "colored restrooms" and the like that we destroyed, or at least suppressed. Curiously, though, no one has complained in the last few weeks that such disorder as we saw in New Orleans was kept in check better when people like Orval Faubus (from Arkansas) ran the show down South. Even Trent Lott knew better than to make a "Strom Thurmond wouldn't have let this happen" comment.
I'm not saying that Bush in Martin Luther King, Jr., or even JFK. Texan though he is, he thankfully isn't LBJ. But this doesn't change the fact that what we're doing in Baghdad has its analog in things we've done at home. The damn Yanks and their converts, reluctant and enthusiastic, have a way of sticking their nose into things where others think we shouldn't meddle and remaking the world to look as close to our image of justice as we can force it to. In time, the Yanks at least take it for granted that the changes they brought were inevitable, had to come, and that of course the world is better for what they've done.
We'll see if Iraq turns out the same way, of course. But I'm wondering, especially given the coverage South Africa got in the '80s: Would the American media be more supportive of what we're doing in Iraq if Saddam had taken the blatantly vulgar step of making Kurds and Shiites use separate bathrooms, rather than contenting himself with burying them in mass graves.
posted by gbarto at 9:45 AM
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