Bernard McGuirk is a Big Man

I often get riled, but rarely angry. But ... all via our delightfully improbably friend Majikthise. First, read this:

The night before journalist Jill Carroll's release, her captors said they had one final demand as the price of her freedom: She would have to make a video praising her captors and attacking the United States, according to Jim Carroll.

In a long phone conversation with his daughter on Friday, Mr. Carroll says that Jill was "under her captor's control."

Ms. Carroll had been their captive for three months and even the smallest details of her life - what she ate and when, what she wore, when she could speak - were at her captors' whim. They had murdered her friend and colleague Allan Enwiya, "she had been taught to fear them," he says. And before making one last video the day before her release, she was told that they had already killed another American hostage ...

...

In fact, Carroll did what many hostage experts and past captives would have urged her to do: Give the men who held the power of life and death over her what they wanted.

"You'll pretty much say anything to stay alive because you expect people will understand these aren't your words," says Micah Garen, a journalist and author who was held captive by a Shiite militia in southern Iraq for 10 days in August 2004. "Words that are coerced are not worth dying over." ...

... Those who encountered Carroll in a professional context repeatedly praised her fairness and compassion, as demonstrated by some of the thousands of letters the Monitor has received in her support.

"Her professionalism and objectivity were unparalleled within the media community," Capt. Patrick Kerr, a Marine public affairs officer who got to know Carroll last December, when she spent a month with a Marine unit in Western Iraq, said in an e-mail. "I saw her in Husaybah, on the Syrian border, in early December shortly before I returned to the States. Aside from being very personable and down-to-earth, what really struck me was Jill's bravery. She seemed to fit right in with the marines and Iraqi security forces," he wrote in January.

That's how Marines serving their country in a combat zone talk about Jill Carroll.

In contrast, Executive Producer of Imus' Morning show, McGuirk, and their Cabin Boy McCord:

MCGUIRK: She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the, try and sneak into the Green Zone.

IMUS: Oh, no. No, no, no, no.

MCCORD: Just because she always appears in traditional Arab garb and wearing a burka.

MCGUIRK: Yeah, what’s with the head gear? Take it off. Let’s see.

IMUS: No, no. This is not –

MCCORD: That’s why the Arab world called for her to be released, because, you know, she defended Iraqis. She was against the war in Iraq and, I wouldn’t be surprised if —

IMUS: Well, so are we. So am I!

MCCORD: Exactly. She cooked with them, lived with them.

IMUS: This is not helping.

MCGUIRK: She may be carrying Habib’s baby at this point.

[laughter]

IMUS: Shut up! I’m begging you to shut up. Both of you. I’m going to murder both of you.

MCCORD: Just because she slept with them doesn’t mean she slept in the manner he’s talking about.

MCGUIRK: Something stinks.

IMUS: You are an SOB Steve McCord. Stop it! I am begging you both. Stop it! Stop it now! Stop it! This is outrageous.

That's how REMFs sitting in pleated chinos a half a world away from danger talk about Jill Carroll.

How, exactly, did that pre-show conversation go? "Hey, guys, I've got this great idea! This woman, who has so much more nutsack than any of us in this room that she's actually put herself in the line of fire, who's been praised for her bravery by fucking MARINES, who got her friend's brains splattered over her face when they kidnapped her, who's sitting there, terrified, and told to just read some words so just maybe they WON'T SAW HER FUCKING HEAD OFF WITH A KNIFE at least for today, let's mock her."

"I like it. Hey, who took the last jelly donut!"

"Sonuvabitch. The sacrifices we make."

From what I understand, Bernard McGuirk has two kids. That must make for some interesting dinner conversation.

"What do you do for a living, Daddy?"

"Daddy makes fun of heroes, sweetheart."

Daddy makes fun of heroes.

You sad, sad little shell of a man.

Zombies at Your Door

Often asked for, the link to buy online:

The third Zombie Tales Anthology -- The Dead -- has dropped.

Silver Bullet Comics: ""Four Out of Five": This is my favorite story from the book. A squadron of the O.S.S. (which I am going to assume does not stand for the Office of Strategic Services) gives their assistance to the Illinois National Guard (insert your own Rubberduck/Pigpen/Convoy joke here) who are busy fighting off a zombie invasion. John Rogers writes a really funny zombie story. There's a bit of action, but Rogers takes the way zombies turn humans into zombies and runs with it in a humorous way. This one literally has it all: action, comedy, even a bit of romance at the end. Ed Tadem's art was not as clean as I normally like, but it serves the story well and that overrides my own personal set of aesthetics. If you need any one reason to buy this book "Four Out of Five" is it."

AICN: "Another great issue filled with interesting takes on the zombie genre. From a view of the zombie menace from behind the Vatican walls to a tale of animals banding together against the “savage” human zombies, this compilation series never fails to entertain. If you don’t like one take, there’s always another just a few pages away. This issue’s standout stories: Keith Giffen and Ron Lim’s “Deadest Meat” where a lone zombie struggles to maintain his humanity and the aforementioned tale by Johanna Stokes and Cynthia Martin where the animals of a zoo are forced to work together against the zombie menace. The zombie genre is one with limitless possibilities and ZOMBIE TALES tests those limits with every single issue. Highly recommended for those with good taste in stories and human flesh. -"

Newsarama: "My favorite horror anthology is back with a number of strong new entries. While some dabble in varying degrees of military action, religious implications, and what horror means to a child, my favorite in this particular volume is easily the crazy-ass “Zoombies”, written by Johanna Stokes, with art by Cynthia Martin. A simple, engaging tale that could have been much longer, “Zoombies” shows us how the most unlikely of forces can unite and take on the encroaching zombie hoards. Lesson? Always listen to the chimp with the keys."

The Stop Button: "Since Boom! Studios’ first Zombie Tales title, I have been eagerly awaiting this comic books. The format (except for the 2 issue Death Valley High series) is the same--a 48-page comic with approximately 6 stories by various writers and artists. The anthologies have introduced readers to a number of new, good writers and artists--people I never would have known or been excited about if it hadn’t been for Zombie Tales. This issue, The Dead, is no different. It might actually be the best one so far, actually."

Etc. etc. Much love, much variety. Of course, we don't want to get in a rut, so next up, Ross brings us -- Cthulhu Tales.

Monkey Fluids

I have no words.

Science? Leave it to the Brazilians

MyDD has a nice thing up about the CAFE standards finally being nudged up in the US (no one is more surprised than I) but the leavens it with the news that Brazil, the entire frikkin' nation, is about to go all-ethanol.

Ahh, the US marches bravely into the mid-1970's as Brazil gets its jetpacks on.

Jill Carroll Freed

The insanely brave Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll is freed, via our angry but huggable friend Americablog. I am unreasonably pleased by this news, probably showing that the maudlin gene in my Irish heritage is starting to become dominantas I age.

Situations like Jill's are one of the reasons I feel the way I do about people like Kaloonybin, i.e. not crossing street to piss on him, see under if on fire. (Oh, and do check out the "Baghdad photo" he's replaced the the fake one with to bolster his claims that all is well in Baghdad. It's shot from, apprently, my backyard.)

These craven bastards so need to protect their precious worldview, they'll not ony slag people who are out there trying to find the truth, they'll then set themselves up as being the ones who are doing something courageous, as being morally superior to somebody out there risking their lives. Because the truth that these reporters find is inconvenient.

I am obligated to link to Lara Logan, on the ground in Baghdad, smacking the shit out of this nonsense. I hope my wife will forgive my tiny new crush on Ms. Logan, in the same way she forgives my gay crush on the con-man dude from Lost.

BB #1

Wow, the reviews are coming in for BB #1 and they kind of ... don't suck. They're actually all pretty good. Considering the fire-hose of hate I was expecting, I am pleasantly surprised.

Anyone with questions about issue one or the series, toss them in comments here. I'll do a no-spoiler answer post a little later.

But in the meantime:

-- Jaime, despite his love of Project Runway, is not gay.
-- The book may well be One Year Later. Or not. Keep reading and see.
-- To answer some e-mails: yeah, Guy was driven nuts by the reaction the Ring was having to the Scarab. Why does the Scarab do that? Again, stay tuned.
-- The Swedes ARE filthy spawn campers.

EDIT: Oh, and the last Zombie Tales drops today, too. Mmm, mmm fleshy goodness.

Global Photoshop #2

Yep, we've got confirmation HERE. Scroll down, 6th picture of the poster named Faruk, pinned down by this person. It's a suburb of Istanbul.

So, first -- wow. I need to get those damn phones made up.

Second, the Republican candidate for CA-50, Howard Kaloogian, who is looking to replace a corrupt Republican official, who is screaming and moaning about the media lying about Iraq --

-- has posted a picture of Istanbul and telling you it's Baghdad in order to lie to you about Iraq. He lied to you and assumed you'd never find out.

He lied to you about pictures he took on a truth tour.

If he'd just posted the picture, or just posted the snarky comment, it would be unremarkable. But this, the combination of self-righteousness and then lying in order to justify the self-righteousness -- this is a sign of amorality so impressive it borders on sociopathy. I don't live in that district, but I gotta ask the Republicans who do: you really think we need more guys who are lying to the public and fooling themselves about the situation on the ground in Iraq in Congress? In power?

Party identification that important to you? Only by not voting for guys like this will you ever get your real Republicans back. You know that.

(NOTE: Apparently, Kaloonybin is blaming his webmaster for putting up the wrong photo. Ah, the rogue intern excuse, always good. But it I may, this can all be cleared up easily enough -- just post the photos of happy, bustling Baghdad you DID take. That's all.

Not. Going. To Happen.)

"You are on the Global Photoshop ..."

I don't tend to get involved in local hoo-has but for my charity stuff, but this is interesting for its example of the hive-mind power.

Apparently down 'round San Diego, they're having a special election to replace Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- you know, the fellow with the bribe menu. So a return to integrity and honesty is kind of an issue down there right now.

One of the candidates is this Howard Kaloogian fellow. His "Moving America Forward" gang is one of thise lovely scrums where they take a couple reporters, get driven around the Green Zone in a Hummer, and then scream how it's all peaceful in Iraq. I am sure those 14 beheaded guys they found today are finding it very peaceful.

Even more reprehensibly, this is the sort of rhetoric he spews, as the caption to a photo of beautiful, peaceful downtown Iraq just a few months ago:

"We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism."

As I always say -- name one. Name one journalist who says America shouldn't fight terrorism. But, at this point, just typical kind of boring, lazy crap ...

... until somebody noticed that there was no Arabic script on any of the signs. And the wardrobe was off. The taxi seems weird ... hey, wait, is that Lenny Kravitz?

Within three measly hours, the hive mind had figured out the pic is probably of somewhere in Turkey. How it happened is what fascinates me. People found addresses for the "2.Noter" sign (a quite specifically Turkish notary office). They found the Turkish ice cream company, Edo, and found Turkish speakers -- at 4:00 am in their time zone -- who could confirm what those fragment words meant. And pictures of Turkish taxis with their oddly placed gas-caps. One person went on Skype and hustled up some complete strangers in Turkey who spoke English, sent them the photo and dug up some opinions. When somebody pointed out that the location might be Kurdish, and simply mislabeled, a person who spoke both Kurmanci and Turkish pointed out the exclusionary differences making it unlikely.

Hell, one person even hunted up the local cement plant that made the street planters for municipalities in Turkey, and posted pics showing those distinctive planters and benches. Right now, the little bastards are tracking down all the local Turkish newspapers to see if they can ail down the actual intersection.

This reminds me of a time on this blog I posted a question based solely on an anecdote of an incident that occured in a recent foreign election. The answer was posted before I could even check to see if my post had gone through.

I preface this with a caveat -- I may be foolishly assuming that Mr. Kaloogian did not find the absolutely most Turkish section of Baghdad, Little Istanbul, so Turkish indeed that not only do they use mostly Roman letters but absolutely no Arabic -- well, if that's the case, then , all apologies, sir. As a matter of fact, I will donate $100 to your campaign if this is indeed Baghdad, for I will have wronged you.

But if not, then, well, your vicious mendacious criticism of people who disagree with you is somewhat lessened in righteousness if you have, indeed, prevaricated, in a particularly heinous manner.

This is why I can never run for public office. I was a stand-up. My shit will come out.

Punching the White Dude Media in the Neck

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez does the honors in an open letter to CNN and the American Media in general:

1. The vast majority of Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. (75 percent of us) were born and raised here, including many of us who have roots here that predate the arrival of the pilgrims.

2. "Immigrant" is not synonymous with "Latino" and the media should stop pretending they mean the same thing.

3. The CNN analyst who said today "Keep in mind, Latino voters are LEGAL immigrants, not illegal immigrants" should be FIRED for sloppy thinking. MOST LATINOS ARE NOT IMMIGRANTS AT ALL, PINCHE CABRON.

4. Immigrants to contemporary USA come from EVERYWHERE. There are, for instance, 100,000 Nigerians in Houston, and tens of thousands of ILLEGAL Irish in Boston. If this debate is truly about immigration, as opposed to racist portrayals of Latinos, please curb your coverage to be more responsible ...

The rest is over at her site.

Thanks, Stross

I'm supposed to working on a movie outline, and what do you do? Post links to a bunch of police blogs. Goodbye, morning.

Global Guerillas

I don't mention that site enough. Really fascinating work and great analysis of emerging worldwide nastiness. I plan on mining it ceaselessly when The revolution begins.

How to Save the Theater Industry

I'm sure you've seen, the movie theater industry is now about to show live sports in order to staunch the bleeding. Theater attendance down 9% ... what to do, what to do ... how, they wail, how do we get people to go back to the movie theaters? Digital tech, bigger seats -- what?

This sort of clueless shit just reinforces the obvious truth that the people who run movie theater chains don't actually see movies in movie theaters. Because I will tell you right now, right here, how to get people to go back to seeing movies in theaters. Without disruptive technology. Without theater upgrades. All for, oh, $4.65 an hour per screen.

I will now save your industry:

Hire. Fucking. USHERS.

The number one reason that every single person I know gives for not going to the movies anymore is the annoyance of dealing with people who just don't behave in the theater. Yes, yes, theater owners, your cell phone adds are cute. But how many of us have dealt with the idiots around us who dutifully turn off their cellphones, and then turn and chat -- not whisper, fucking coffee-klatch -- with the person beside them?

At Thank You for Smoking today, just as the credits on the movie started to run, a shaft of full sunlight light hit the room. A woman had stepped to the emergency exit, stepped just outside, and was propping it open so she could finish her cell phone conversation and sneak back in.

If you were at the Century 15 today at Santa Monica and heard a guy shout, full-on-bellow "SHUT THAT DAMN DOOR!", that was me. Fuck it. I'm not going to sit there and share rueful, annoyed looks with my friends rather than be uncivil. I've had to shut up people, people having full-on conversations, at literally every movie I've gone to in the last six months.

And why, why the hell is that my job? A couple times I've gone out to get a theater staff member because I didn't want to deal, nobody ever wandered in after I asked. Not complained. Not ranted. Politely asked. At the oh so spiffy Landmark Cinemas, might I add.

Again, I know this isn't just me. Literally everyone I know, when you discuss going to a movie, winces and says"Yeah, but what's the talking like at that theater?" Or even more fun -- last night, Lovely Wife and I watched as a couple took their baby stroller in to see Inside Man. What do you think ensued?

Sweet Jesus. I've heard the excuse -- "Hey, they can't afford a sitter", or "can't get a sitter," but as my Lovely Wife said "So, wait, they can't afford a sitter, so I have to use Netflix? How is that fair?"

Look, I worked in live, drunken shows all around the world for twelve years. Comedy rooms came and went, but the one rule was that despite the local economics, the club that folded wasn't the one with a high cover charge or high operating costs. It was always the one that didn't bounce the hecklers. People associate value of experience with the value you present to them (also why you always charge a minimum cover, never do a free show). And the value of my movie-going experience is not the snack selection, it's whether or not I can just sit and enjoy the movie I just spent more than ten bucks on.

Who are you going to lose? Those chatty cathy's? Hell no. 95% of the time they will, after being asked by even a faux authority figure, shut up. And even if you start to lose them, those people are like errant bombing runs -- each one, every time they ruin a movie, creates a dozen more home-theater insurgents. You're better off without them.

When we drive to a theater, we're not going to get more comfortable seats we can't get at home, we're not going because the snack bar has food we don't have at home ...

All we want to do is watch the movie. That's it. Hit that bar first, Einsteins. Worry about the Perrier service later.

Thank You for Smoking

Call in sick. Go see the matinee. I know absolutely no one involved with the film (other than a casual "hey, how's it going?" head-nod recognition with Aaron Eckhardt when we cross in the CAA lobby) so there's nothing in this pimpage but good old-fashioned admiration.

Top 5 for the year, I'd put money on it now.