Amores Perros

A part of me, upon initially reacting to the Michael Vick dogfighting scandal, wondered quietly, "So what?"

Society loves an entertainer, and entertainers with a propensity to run afoul of the law are no exception.

Crucifixion had its place in ancient Rome and Persia.

The pillory was the rage across Europe for centuries.

The French with their je ne sais quoi were fond of the guillotine.

All of these methods and devices were not merely for punishing criminals and serving as a visual aid aimed at deterrence, but they all were quite fun to watch for parts of the populace.

Whatever happens to Michael Vick will fall in line with these others, I thought to myself.



There are few things you can do with an animal that are more inhumane that training them to fight one another for sport. One of those things is dispatching the dogs in the ways prosecutors allege Michael Vick & Co. did.

That said, Tim Donaghy could end up spending decades in prison for betting on basketball while serving as an NBA referee. While conspiracy to engage in wire fraud is a serious issue, let's compare these two cases.

The respective careers of Michael Vick and Tim Donaghy are, for all intents and purposes, finished.

Both Vick and Donaghy made their living in sports.



And that's where the similiarities end. Vick plans to plead guilty to charges stemming from tales of almost unimaginable cruelty toward another living being. Donaghy made a few lame calls during NBA games to boost his bank account.

But when it's all over, Donaghy likely will spend more time in prison for his misdeeds.

That said, I venture to guess Vick will suffer far more should this really mean the end of his career in professional sports.

The Vick saga is a grand drama, and deep in the hearts of many, I know they're loving every minute of it.

Read more...

Bill Clinton just can't catch a break

After years of unwarranted criticism from the "vast, right-wing conspiracy," I must balance out the lashing Bill Clinton has taken with -- what else? -- constructive criticism.

The CIA grudgingly released a report Aug. 21, described as a "19-page executive summary," detailing CIA failures to recognize, assess and counter the threats posed by al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

I concede that, as Inspector General John Helgerson said, there was no "single point of failure" that could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.

Nevertheless, parts of the report are quite troubling, not the least of which is the lack of a "comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden" between 1994 and 2001. Also missing from the CIA intelligence was a "comprehensive report laying out the threats of 2001."

Former CIA chief George Tenet obviously took great exception to what has come out about his agency's perceived faults.

But Tenet, who stepped down as Director of Central Intelligence in 2004, served at the pleasure of former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton is the one big name not in the story, but I cannot help but think the commander-in-chief and head of state and government had every capability to push the CIA into following up on al-Qaida and bin Laden.



And Slick Willie obviously cannot claim ignorance as his defense. He, more than anyone, has touted his administration's determined work on the matter, to the extent that some have said he was obsessed with bin Laden.

Operation Infinite Reach is proof that Clinton understood the threat. Following the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks on Afghan sites believed to be connected to al-Qaida, as well as a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.



Forgive me for being somewhat tough. What I find here is an inability on Clinton's part to instill the leadership and motivation at the CIA to improve upon the conditions outlined in this report.

I cannot take the former president to task on a broader scale, however; in his much ballyhooed interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Clinton readily admits -- when asked if he did enough in regards to Osama bin Laden -- "No, because I didn't get him."

But try, he did indeed. And fail, he did that, too.



But the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden is a far different matter than the failure to have his top intelligence agency follow through on these threats that he claims were taken as seriously as possible.

Again, forgive me for thinking Bill Clinton was expertly capable of getting what he wanted from his underlings.

But maybe the worst part about all of this is the fact it's even a point of discussion.

I write this with an eye toward how the historians will treat the likes of Tenet, Clinton, etc. How any of this is vital to the ongoing hunt for bin Laden and al-Qaida escapes me, as well as current CIA Director Michael Hayden, who was forced to release the report by a law signed by President George W. Bush.

Furthermore, I won't hold my breath thinking better intelligence would have helped the Bush administration commission the U.S. military in a way that would have led to the capture or killing of bin Laden and avoided the monstrous disaster known as the war in Iraq. A number of high-ranking Bush administration members (including Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz), as it has been well-documented, were involved with the Project for the New American Century, a group whose idea of America's "vital role in maintaining peace and security" in the Middle East apparently meant forcing democracy (and U.S.-friendly oil revenue laws) down the throats of a people who for centuries managed their own affairs in a way that worked for them but not for corporate interests in the pocket of neo-conservative politicians and ideologues.

No, the Sept. 11 terror attacks likely were unstoppable. I venture to say anyone who says differently says so to the detriment of a political foe. But I think it's far more hopeful to think the truth of this matter, in agonizing detail, will someday come out.

Read more...

Joey Ramone, redneck humor and Liberty Valance

There tend to be two ways of thinking about history: Either it was your favorite subject in school, or you couldn't stand it and the memorization of names, dates and places.

In either case, I hypothesize that history � regardless of which end of the spectrum it falls on for you � is America's worst subject.

I recently was told a story about a workplace quiz competition centered on U.S. history. The person telling this story wholly admits to not knowing enough about history in general, U.S. history in specific.

And guess who ran away with the competition? Apparently, the other contestants were taken aback by anyone who might have a snowball's chance against the youngsters on the Jeff Foxworthy-hosted "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?"

Show me one fifth-grader that, when asked about the cause of the American Civil War, can say anything beyond "slavery" and "states' rights," and I will show you a set of parents and teachers who are getting it right.

But I digress.

As someone who divided his time equally between history classes in college and the campus paper's newsroom, I like to think I've got a decent grasp on where this country has been and what it's seen for a person of my age.

But I must acknowledge that my education in history was flawed long before I first stepped on university ground.

There was the teacher who thought "blitzkrieg" was a German tactic � and an American word. This qualifies as a half-truth.

She might have been more familiar with another usage of the word:



By no coincidence, this was the same teacher who relied heavily on an ABC News-produced video series to make sure we had our historical bases covered without us thinking bad of her for forcing us to (*GASP*) listen to lectures, read books and take copious notes.

But in defense of Mrs. Duck (names have been changed to protect the innocent, just like Jack Webb), she introduced me to the work of John Ford, easily the greatest director in the history of cinema.

If anything should be required viewing to middle- and high-school students, it's "The Grapes of Wrath" and its mournful refrain of "Red River Valley."

But as much as Joey Ramone, John Ford and the rest of the canon of entertainers dabbled with thoughts and phrases regarding the American experience, it only does so much.

"The Grapes of Wrath" is a great movie, but it's not a documentary. It's based on a novel. Actor and comedian Robert Wuhl recently proclaimed his own hypothesis of history being "based on a true story." This may be the case here.

For that matter, Mel Gibson's biggest box-office hit was not, in fact, an honest-to-God presentation of the Greatest Story Ever Told. But that won't stop legions of the faithful from thinking "The Passion" to be pretty close to how it all happened, if it did at all.

But it was a good movie, right?

Thank goodness "Pearl Harbor" was roundly dismissed as a bad movie, lest we be lead to believe good ole Jimmy Doolittle looked or sounded the least bit like Alec Baldwin.

But accepting the history in movies when we shouldn't (or at least buying into its authenticity more than we should) is mostly our own individual faults.

How any student gets out of high school only knowing Julius Caesar from a week of Shakespeare in theater class is quite troubling to me, if only for the fact that this actually happens today in the U.S. public school system.

But don't get me wrong. I have nothing against public schools or the hard-working people who keep them up and running. My mother, a public school teacher for the vast majority of her adult life, is one of those people who endures the administrative headaches and daily crises to make sure that her students are not just being shuffled along, grade to grade, year to year, to make sure enough kids graduate each year that they can stay in a community's good graces despite struggling with the mandates of No Child Left Behind and AYP.

I merely think it's important for everyone to play a strong role in developing a young person's desire to learn, and history is the best place to start. Even if little Billy ends up thinking a young Tom Hanks went up to the Zoltar machine, grew into a man overnight, worked on Death Row during the Great Depression before going off to find Matt Damon in France during the Second World War, there's a decent chance of Billy heading to the library for a copy of Tom H. Watkins' "The Hungry Years" or a biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." � Maxwell Scott in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"

Read more...