Dann Todd's 'Dain Bramage'^**

From James Lileks comes the following gem:

If there was any justice the world would have best-selling authors who took time off as a middle manager to write brilliant scathing novels about bitter stick-thin tyros who parlayed three chords and fashionable scorn into a license to get his groinal area pogo’d by interchangeable doxies while he suckled on a magnum of good champagne. Nightly.

And he was writing about music before this little wonder rolled out of his keyboard.

by Dann 

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The Media; Before and After

Robert Mandel has the story on how the media projected much doom and gloom about Iraqi WMD intentions before Mr. Bush was ever elected. Yet now they repeat the false charge of "lies" told to get us into a war.

Worth your time.

by Dann 

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On the Subjects of Valor, Commitment, and Engagement With the World.

Greyhawk cites President Theodore Roosevelt.

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."

Men and women of mettle and determination fight abroad while those ranging from educated cynics to propagandists for our enemies seek to undermine support for their valiant efforts here at home. A more disgusting display, I cannot imagine.

by Dann 

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Selective Editing at the New York Times

But, they aren't biased at all.

A Marine corporal dies in Iraq from wounds received. His computer is returned to his family. On start up, there is a file in the middle of the screen that is an obvious "I've died and here are my last words" letter.

The New York Times selectively quotes from that letter.

The full story is here.

by Dann 

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George Orwell on Pacifists.

h/t to Say Anything

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States.

– George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism (1945)

Sadly, the "minority of intellectual pacifists" has grown as has their influence.

by Dann 

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Condi Cracks Down on Iran

The story is good. The photo is better.

by Dann 

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