Suburban thriller worth more than 'Just One Look'

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer 

Just One Look
By Harlen Coben
Dutton, 384 pp, 25.95 dollars


It is said that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, but what about amnesiacs?
The protagonist of Harlan Coben's Just One Look, suburban soccer mom and painter Grace Lawson, has been missing a small chunk of her memory since she was trampled nearly to death in a rock concert stampede 15 years ago. In addition to the small hole in her past, the horrifying experience has left her with a permanent limp and the friendship of a mob boss whose son was killed in the concert crush.
When a strange photo of a group of people turns up in a packet of newly developed pictures, Grace doesn't give it much thought, but her husband Jack disappears with it after just one look. Grace's search for him takes her down a spiraling path crossed by an former football player, a sociopathic bleach-blond North Korean assassin, a fading Indian femme fatale, an exhibitionist neighbor, her husband's estranged family, a former rock star and the man who started the deadly stampede at his concert.
Thrillers and mystery novels tend to fall into obvious categories: Agatha Christie-style locked room murders; hard-boiled detective stories; police procedurals; suspenseful espionage capers; hunts for psychopathic serial killers; thinly disguised action movie scripts and many others. The worst are formulaic cliche-ridden trash, the best, like the work of Raymond Chandler, rise above genre to become great literature.
Trying to pigeonhole Harlan Coben within the thriller genre is like trying to pick up a blob of mercury. In terms of subgenre, file Just One Look under "other." In terms of quality, Coben may not have reached the literary peaks, but he is certainly blazing a trail up from the foothills.
Despite a plot that seems to stagger in six different directions at once and surprise the reader at every turn, Coben never once resorts to stereotypes or shallow characters. He spends a considerable number of words, often pages, breathing life into the most minor characters. His suburban New Jersey setting is realistic and populated with bored, uncooperative cops, frustrated housewives and nosy neighbors.
One of the keys to Coben's appeal is that his characters are believable, often unremarkable, people who act in believable ways when confronted with remarkable situations. One character outwits a professional killer by respecting her own limitations and purposely doing the exact opposite of what the standard brainless movie heroine would. These are not the usual hard-boiled heroes with nothing to lose, these are people with kids, mortgages and minivans who get scared, hurt and lonesome.
The downside of all this character development is that Coben provides much of it by telling us directly about characters rather than letting their actions and thoughts show their motivations and personality quirks. Whenever a character is introduced the reader knows a detailed biography is soon to follow.
Throughout the novel's many twists, turns and numerous false endings, Coben does an excellent job of pacing and captures Grace Lawson's growing, barely contained sense of panic in a variety of subtle ways. He has the ability to surprise with the familiar and add unexpected, but perfectly reasonable boomerang curves to the storyline.
Coben's novel is worth more attention than its title suggests.
Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun

Put 'The Genius' on the U.S. ten dollar bill

sign the petition started by the Derek Truck Band here to put Ray Charles on the ten dollar bill and check the Bluesblog to see what that bill might look like.

'The Meaning of Ichiro' and the meanness of yakyu

Kevin Wood Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer


The Meaning of Ichiro
By Robert Whiting
Warner Books, 318 pp, 25.95 dollars
A new star rose in the east in 2000. New at least to North American fans of major league baseball.
In his first year in the majors, this virtual unknown won the American League batting title by hitting .350, with a league-leading 242 hits, 59 of them infield trips to first. He led the league in runs scored with 127 and bases stolen with 56 and pushed his team to a league record for victories, earning Gold Glove, rookie of the year and most valuable player honors along the way.
Most Japanese had certainly heard of Ichiro Suzuki, even if the Giants-centric television coverage of Japanese pro baseball meant most fans rarely got to see him play. While he had won seven batting titles in a row in Japan, the appearance of such a phenomenon took most MLB fans by complete surprise.
Fans of America's national pastime wondering how to make sense of this sudden domination of their game by a player who is the product of what was long supposed to be an inferior game would do well to pick up Robert Whiting's The Meaning of Ichiro.
Whiting is the premier English-language writer on Japanese baseball. His first two books, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat (1977) and You Gotta Have Wa (1989), are considered the standard texts on the subject and the latter is often found on reading lists for courses on Japanese culture.
While these books, along with a third, Slugging It Out in Japan (1991), cowritten with Major League Baseball and Yomiuri Giants slugger Warren Cromartie, focus on the experiences of foreign players in Japan, The Meaning of Ichiro chronicles the impact and adventures of Japanese players in MLB.
Written with a North American audience in mind, The Meaning of Ichiro, in part, recaps the history of besuboru from the 1880s advent of seishin yakyu or spiritual baseball at The First Higher School of Tokyo, known in Japanese as Ichiko, up to the present day. In particular, Whiting traces the Japanese approach to baseball as an extension of martial arts that stresses endless repetition to achieve perfection of form and emphasis on building fighting spirit and mental toughness. "A team motto urged participants to practice so hard that they urinated blood, while another team rule forbade complaining of injury or pain," writes Whiting of Ichiko.
From such roots comes the more modern 1,000-fungo drill, 200-pitch practice sessions and year-round training techniques employed by Japanese professional baseball.
Whiting's examination of the institutionalized harshness of yakyu may help to explain players' willingness to put up with the conditions of indentured servitude that go hand in hand with a pro career. A major part of the book deals with the efforts of team owners and management to discourage players from jumping leagues.
Much credit is given here to pitcher Hideo Nomo, the second Japanese major leaguer, and the first in more than 30 years, for his courage in standing up to an unfair system. Credit also goes to "the most hated man in Japanese baseball," Don Nomura, who found the contract loophole that allowed Nomo to begin the exodus of stars to MLB. Whiting shines a light into the dark corners of the Japanese game with his descriptions of the selfish and often sinister machinations of team owners.
Biographical sketches of Ichiro, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Kazuhiro Sasaki and others illustrate Whiting's case that while Japanese players are more disciplined and more highly trained than MLB players, it takes a sort of personality rarely found in the pro yakyu ranks to make the leap to the majors.
The discipline and devotion to the game evidenced in the early years of Ichiro's life are unparalleled in MLB. From the age of 3, he trained six or more hours a day with the focus of a Zen acolyte. Whiting quotes a passage from a school essay the future star wrote when he was 12 years old:
"My dream when I grow up is to be a first-class professional baseball player...I have the confidence necessary to reach that goal. I started practicing from age 3. From the age of 9 I have practiced 360 out of 365 days a year and I practice hard. I only had five or six hours (in a year) to play with my friends. That's how much I practiced. So I think I can surely become a pro."
The constant thread in The Meaning of Ichiro, aside from Whiting's clean, straightforward, anecdotal style, is that Japanese pro baseball and Japanese players, while different in many important respects from their North American MLB counterparts, are by no means inferior. Whiting presents a persuasive case for the need for both baseball cultures to learn from each other.
Whiting's contention seems to be the Japanese game needs to respect individual players more and leave the "practice until you collapse and then practice more" approach in the 19th century where it belongs and loosen up a little. MLB, on the other hand, had better learn to expect a little competition, shape up, and remember the hit-and-run days before steroid-enhanced power hitters and pampered superstars.

A Free press is vital to democracy

Welcome to Amerika
When writer Elena Lappin flew to LA, she dreamed of a sunkissed, laid-back city. But that was before airport officials decided to detain her as a threat to security ...

The Wood campaign roll on like the political juggernaut it was destined to become as The Candidate trounces local Tory frontman in an all candidates meeting

Bell tolls for Bonzo's buddy - Mourning in Amerika

As the tributes from people like Margaret Thatcher, the Bushes (jr and sr) and Brian Mulroney come in, and conservative mouth-breathers prate about their golden era, let us really consider what Reagan did.
Where are the tributes from Nicaragua's late dictator Anastacio Somoza or the Contras or any of the other right-wing death squads Reagan propped up in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras? How about a few kind words from his old buddies Saddam Hussien, Ferdinand Marcos or the Ayatollah Khomeni? How about Osama Bin Laden? After all Reagan did for them in supplying arms and money, you'd think they would at least send flowers.
For all his preaching about shrinking government, the machinery of state grew by a third on his watch. Public debt doubled while taxes for the rich plummeted. By cutting funds to public mental health facilities and presiding over the export of manufacturing and heavy industrial jobs from the rust belt to Mexico and Asia, Reagan almost invented homelessness. He handed the Republican party over to the religious right and the conservative extremists that have managed to divide the United States to its current extent.
Before becoming president Ronnie Ray-gun had a nefarious record as Governor of California of having police break up protests, notably at UC Berkley, using clubs, rubber bullets and tear gas. As president of the screen actors guild he scurried to the front of the line to volunteer to name names in front of Joseph McCarthy's UnAmerican Activities Committee.


Amid the right-wing hagiographies appearing throughout the mass media it nice to see a few people willing to tell the ugly truth about Ronald Reagan.


KILLER, COWARD, CON-MAN
GOOD RIDDANCE, GIPPER ...
MORE PROOF ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNGSunday, June 6, 2004
by Greg Palast
You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.
Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.


Not Even a Hedgehog
The stupidity of Ronald Reagan.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 7, 2004, at 10:03 AM PT

Not long ago, I was invited to be the specter at the feast during "Ronald Reagan Appreciation Week" at Wabash College in Indiana. One of my opponents was Dinesh D'Souza: He wasn't the only one who maintained that Reagan had been historically vindicated by the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Some of us on the left had also been very glad indeed to see the end of the Russian empire and the Cold War. But nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.


Ronald Reagan, Party Animal
The man who taught Republicans to be irresponsible.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Saturday, June 5, 2004, at 4:33 PM PT


I've registered as a Republican exactly once in my life. The year was 1980, and Ronald Reagan, who died today at the age of 93, was seeking the GOP nomination for president. Teddy Kennedy was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination, and in Massachusetts, where I then lived, Kennedy was certain to win the primary. Better to cast my vote where it could do some good—in favor of John Anderson, who at that point was running as a Republican, and who seemed the only candidate capable of denying Reagan the nomination. Reagan was dangerous.

This sign should be on the door of a recording studio, not an airport bus toilet

shut door and rock on
Show room light

In your ear - Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, Doc and Merle Watson,

In Your Ear

By Kevin Wood/Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Jerry Garcia and David Grisman
Been All Around This World
Vivid, 2,625 yen

When people talk about Jerry Garcia it is usually in the context of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene and his long strange trip with the Grateful Dead. He's probably more famous as a countercultural icon than as a musician. But forget everything you think you know about Garcia and lend an ear to Been All Around This World and you will hear a master folk singer and acoustic guitar picker par excellence.

The king of the 20-minute psychedelic electric guitar solo got his start playing the squarest of traditional folk and bluegrass songs on banjo and guitar in the very early 1960s and never really left it behind, working on and off over the years with his longtime partner in acoustic wizardry, mandolin virtuoso David Grisman.

In the end it's Grisman we have to thank for Been All Around This World. The creator of the bluegrass-jazz fusion dubbed "dawg music" had the presence of mind to insist on recording hours of his informal jams with Garcia in the early '90s, resulting in a number of brilliant collaborative albums that include So What, Shady Grove and The Pizza Tapes (with guitarist Tony Rice). Grisman hints in the liner notes that Been All Around This World is likely to be the last in the series, but it is hardly the bottom of the barrel.

The disc leans heavily on country and bluegrass repertoire with songs by Merle Travis, Mel Tillis, George Jones, and Jimmie Rogers, with a few odd digressions--notably Jimmie Cliff's "Sitting Here in Limbo" and James Brown's "I'll Go Crazy." The performances are built around Garcia's heartfelt, rough-hewn tenor and Grisman's expressive mandolin breaks and fills. The tempos are mostly relaxed, and the two talented players stretch out for long, melodic solos that lack the demonic intensity of some of their other duets, but are no less tasty for the laid-back, sunny, Sunday afternoon feel. The sessions were some of Garcia's last, and while he strains to pull off the vocals on the aforementioned James Brown number, he's at his plaintive best on "Limbo" and Travis's "Dark as a Dungeon."

All in all an excellent introduction for those new to bluegrass and the acoustic phenomenon of Garcia and Grisman.


Doc and Merle Watson
Sittin' Here Pickin' the Blues
Rounder, 2,519 yen

A remastered reissue of Doc and Merle's 1985 album Pickin' the Blues with an additional eight tracks from their early '80s recordings for Flying Fish Records. Arthel "Doc" Watson and Merle Watson were undeniably the finest father-son team in music--bluegrass or otherwise. Doc's high-speed flatpicking and unadorned, warm baritone paired with son Merle's fluid slide and finger-style guitar were a potent combination unmatched since Merle's 1985 death in a tractor accident.

Even for folk and bluegrass, this music is so down-from-the-mountains square it has corners. However, even as cornpone as some of the songs may be, these performances by two monster guitarists render them indisputably hip. Merle's slide playing on "Taking to Casey" will make any rock fan forget Duane Allman's name.

In addition to the guitar pyrotechnics, the other real joy on this album is Doc Watson's simple, straightahead singing. His cover of "Stormy Weather" is the perfect antidote for the stale vocal gymnastics of the so-called pop divas, and his "How Long Blues" and "Honey Babe Blues" prove that a white man can sing the blues without trying to sound black and still have plenty of soul. Guest appearances by the likes of star blues harp player Charlie Musselwhite and bluegrass stringman Sam Bush provide the last unneeded push into the stratosphere of must-have recordings.

Bad boy novel rings true

The Very Man
By Chris Binchy
Pan MacMillan
361 Pages

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Chris Binchy's sharply written story of a young man on a downward spiral in Dublin on some level has the same appeal as those trash television programs with titles like "America's Most Horrific Power Tool Accidents" and "Grizzly Bear Attacks Caught On Video." You know something bloody and awful is going to happen to someone, but you just can't look away.

In Binchy's perceptive first novel, we see everything through the eyes of Rory, a 30-year-old who has clawed his way up the advertising ladder in New York over the last half-dozen years and has now returned to his native Dublin to attend his mother's funeral. Reacquainting himself with friends and family underscores the emptiness of his New York life, and he decides to stay.

The flash New York job has left him with the money for a fancy apartment in the city's Temple Bar neighborhood and the credentials to land a good job in his field at the height of the Celtic Tiger economic boom. His new girlfriend moves in with him a few months later and it looks like Rory has the world by the tail.

But looks can be deceiving. Rory's center cannot hold and things fall apart. Rory can't seem to decide if he loves or hates Dublin for not being like New York. Sure the pace is slower, the people more genuine and the city has become more modern, but after working in Manhattan, the Dublin advertising scene seems like the bush leagues to him and the restaurants and clubs are painfully out of style. Alternately cocky and insecure, Rory leads himself astray through an inability to be satisfied with his life. He drinks too much, lies too much, starts to cheat on his girlfriend and deceive his boss. It bring to mind the scene in every cheesy, gory slasher movie where one of the minor characters hears a noise and tells his friends to wait while goes to investigate.

The reader watches while Rory loads the gun, cocks it, aims it at his foot, pulls the trigger and then blames everyone around him for the results. We want to tell Rory to get out of the way of the train of consequences that is rushing down the track of his selfish irresponsibility. His lack of empathy, his self-centeredness and his utter inability to take responsibility for his actions should make Rory an unsympathetic character, but aside from wanting to give him swift kick, ultimately we feel sorry him as he loses his job, his girlfriend, his apartment, and finally his dignity.

Binchy has been likened by more than one critic to Nick Hornby, but a more apt comparison might be Tony Parsons. Like Parsons' Man and Boy, and its sequel Man and Wife, The Very Man has the confessional, moralistic ring of a cautionary tale. This mini-genre seems to be intended to warn men that it's time to grow up and learn to appreciate what you have, and that living out your fantasy of picking up that hot young thing in the bar will only screw up your life and turn your happy home into a smoking crater.

Though the ending seems a bit abrupt, The Very Man is a promising piece of writing from a new author with a flair for realistic dialogue and a clear, flowing style.

Vote early and vote often

"A mongoose, not a wombat"

Dryden (the goalie, not the papermill town) to run for Parliament

Gotta love this. If he can do for the country what he's done for the leafs in the last ten years, it should be a good thing.

"Don't be a piano player in a whorehouse"
Too right Mr. Carroll! This is what I'm always on about when I complain about work


Esteemed journalist lectures on ethics
L.A. Times Editor John Carroll spoke about journalism ethics and pseudo-journalism at the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday.

May 07, 2004


The media industry has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's long tradition to serve the public with accurate information, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll told a packed room in the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday.
Carroll delivered the annual Ruhl Lecture, titled "The Wolf in Reporter's Clothing: The Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America." The lecture was sponsored by the School of Journalism and Communication.

"All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are not practicing journalism," he said. "They regard the audience with a cold cynicism. They are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated."

In a scathing critique of Fox News and some talk show hosts, such as Bill O'Reilly, Carroll said they were a "different breed of journalists" who misled their audience while claiming to inform them. He said they did not fit into the long legacy of journalists who got their facts right and respected and cared for their audiences.

Carroll cited a study released last year that showed Americans had three main
misconceptions about Iraq: That weapons of mass destruction had been found, a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been demonstrated and that the world approved of U.S intervention in Iraq. He said 80 percent of people who primarily got their news from Fox believed at least one of the misconceptions. He said the figure was more than 57 percentage points higher than people who get their news from public news broadcasting.

"How in the world could Fox have left its listeners so deeply in the dark?" Carroll asked.

He added that a difference exists between journalism and propaganda.

As he addressed some of the hard hits journalism has taken in the field of ethics, Carroll noted that anyone could be a journalist because, unlike other fields, journalism had no qualification tests, boards to censure misconduct or a universally accepted set of standards.

However, Carroll said a great depth of feeling remains on the importance of ethics that is centered around newspapers' sense of responsibilities to their readers.

"I've learned that these ethics are deeply believed in even though in some places they are not even written down," he said. When ethical guidelines are ignored, their proponents respond with 'tribal ferocity,'" he added.

"If you stray badly from these rules, you will pay dearly," he said.

He said while much media has ended up "in the gutter," the L.A. Times has a different philosophy and was dedicated to taking the "high road."

"I do think that a lot of newspaper people have made a lot of strategic mistakes," he said. "They cut back space on things people really need to know."

Carroll, whose career as a journalist spans 40 years, joined the L.A. Times in 2000, according to the paper's Web site. Under his leadership, the paper earned five Pulitzer Prizes this year.

Tim Gleason, dean of the SOJC, said Carroll is a "journalist's journalist."

"As an editor he cares deeply about the integrity of the profession and he believes that news, real news is the heart and soul of the business of journalism," Gleason said as he introduced Carroll.

University graduate student Mose Mosely had similar sentiments. He said he admired Carroll not only for his vast experience around the country, but also for his consistent commitment to his ideals.

"The depth of his integrity is very impressive," Mosely said.

Bobbie Willis, a staff writer for the Eugene Weekly, said she felt Carroll brought up some relevant issues in today's media environment.

"It really made me take a look at my career as a journalist," she said.

Willis said she understood Carroll's concerns about the state of journalism nationally, but added that many of the journalists she has encountered were very committed to accurate and ethical reporting.

Carroll had a few words of advise for student journalists; he told them to pick their boss carefully.

"Don't be lured by the money or the big name of the employer," he said, adding that journalists should not allow their integrity to be compromised by unscrupulous employers.

"Don't be a piano player in a whorehouse," he said.

Bush makes bad guys disappear

Above the law
The Bush administration is arguing that it has the right to lock up U.S. citizens forever -- without evidence, witnesses, lawyers or trials. If the Supreme Court agrees, will this still be America?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Tim Grieve



April 28, 2004 | U.S. Supreme Court justices listened skeptically last week as Solicitor General Ted Olson argued that foreign detainees being held in U.S. military facilities in Guantánamo Bay have no right to seek relief from U.S. courts. Wednesday, Olson will be back before the court, this time arguing in two historic cases that the government has the authority to lock up U.S. citizens, too -- without charges, without a lawyer, without a trial, without any rights at all -- simply by declaring them "enemy combatants" in the administration's war on terror.

Having government agents sweep U.S. citizens off the streets and into prison cells, holding them incommunicado for as long as the government likes -- it sounds like a dark fantasy of life in a totalitarian state, the kind of thing we're supposed to be fighting against in Iraq. But this is no fantasy. In the cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, the Bush administration is advancing a vision of governmental power that is both far-reaching and unprecedented, at least in the United States of America. And it is a vision -- like the one the administration articulated Tuesday during Supreme Court arguments on the secrecy of Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- that leaves sole discretion, sole authority, and almost unfettered power in the hands of the executive branch.

It's easy to become blasé about liberties lost in the Ashcroft era. The lines between foreign intelligence efforts and criminal investigations have been blurred; the government has more power to snoop, to search, to study your financial transactions and examine your reading habits; foreigners have been detained, immigrants deported. "There are so many things," says Elliot Mincberg, legal director for the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way.

But the administration's arguments in the Padilla and Hamdi cases have activists and analysts on both the left and the right alarmed all over again. Timothy Lynch, director of the conservative Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, says the Bush administration is advancing a "sweeping theory of executive power" that could lead to "dangerous" legal precedents. "If the administration were to prevail in Hamdi and Padilla, there would be no limit to the number of people who could be arrested here totally outside the normal criminal process, people arrested without arrest warrants, people not going before judges, people being held in solitary confinement in prison facilities right here in the United States," he said.

see the rest at salon

How do you spell 'Paranoid' H-O-M-E-L-A-N-D-S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y

came across this at work through a link a homepage for a university in Texas. Apparently all Texans must be on the lookout for 'suspicious' stuff like:
-Someone showing unusual interest in utilities, government buildings, historic buildings or similar infrastructure. Pay particular attention to someone photographing, videotaping, inquiring about security, drawing diagrams or making notes about such facilities. If they say they are architecture students don't believe them
-Suspicious or abandoned packages, luggage or mail in a crowded place, such as an airport, office building or shopping center. If you find an unclaimed bag in the middle of Lubbock or some other little cowtown, its probably a bomb left by the A-rabs, not just a bag of dirty laudry someone forgot while loading their car
-A stranger loitering in your neighborhood or a vehicle cruising the streets repeatedly. Are you sure those guys in the black and white car are really cops? Maybe the IDs are fake. They could be terrorists! or worse, students from out of town!
-Someone peering into cars or the windows of a home. Only terrorists, criminals and salesmen are curious to know if anyone is home
-A high volume of traffic going to and coming from a home on a daily basis. Obvious the sign of a drug dealer, terrorist, amway distributer, large family or popular teenager
-Someone loitering around schools, parks or secluded areas. Only terrorists spend time hanging out in the park
-Strange odors coming from a house or building. Tell the Special Agent in Charge of the armed seige that your goulash always smell like that, I'm sure he'll understand
-Open or broken doors and windows at a closed business or an unoccupied residence. How do I know its an unoccupied residence if I don't look in the windows?
-Someone tampering with electrical, gas or sewer systems without an identifiable company vehicle and uniform. Like the FBI agent that is installing your phone tap

Mean people suck, mean cops really suck

For some cops any challenge to their authority, any arguement or attitude, seems to be considered a threat to their safety and therefore an excuse to use force. Admittedly there are bad apples in every profession, but I think the jobs seems to attract a certain type of bully that all too often is given carte blanche to boss people around and hurt them if they don't obey. The cops that did this should not be scolded or reprimanded or disciplined. They should be kicked off the force and arrested for assault and battery.



From the The Oregonian (Portland Ore.)

by Steve Duin

Even blind old ladies terrify the cops
Sunday, April 25, 2004
S he was 71 years old.
She was blind.
She needed her 94-year-old mother to come to her rescue.

And in the middle of the dogfight -- in which Eunice Crowder was pepper-sprayed, Tasered and knocked to the ground by Portland's courageous men in blue -- the poor woman's fake right eye popped out of its socket and was bouncing around in the dirt.

How vicious and ugly can the Portland police get? Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner. This 2003 case is so blatant, the use of force so excessive, the threat of liability so intimidating that the city just approved a $145,000 settlement.

But all those gung-ho fans of the cops can relax. Nothing has changed. Nothing will upset the status quo.

The cops aren't apologizing.

The cops aren't embarrassed.

The cops haven't been disciplined.

And the cops are still insisting, to the bitter end, that they "reasonably believed" this blind ol' bat was a threat to their safety and macho culture.

Eunice Crowder, you see, didn't follow orders. Eunice was uncooperative. Worried a city employee was hauling away a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon, she had the nerve to feel her way toward the trailer in which her yard debris was being tossed.

Enter the police. Eunice, who is hard of hearing, ignored the calls of Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac to leave the trailer. When she tried, unsuccessfully, to bite the hands that were laid on her, she was knocked to the ground.

When she kicked out at the cops, she was pepper-sprayed in the face with such force that her prosthetic marble eye was dislodged. As she lay on her stomach, she was Tased four times with Zajac's electric stun gun.

And when Nellie Scott, Eunice's 94-year-old mother, tried to rinse out her daughter's eye with water from a two-quart Tupperware bowl, what does Miller do? According to Ernie Warren Jr., Eunice's lawyer, the cop pushed Nellie up against a fence and accused her of planning to use the water as a weapon.

Paranoia runs deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid . . .

Afraid and belligerent. "Cops have changed," Warren said. "When I grew up, they weren't people who huddled together and their only friends were the cops. You had access to them all the time. You weren't afraid of them."

What did Police Chief Derrick Foxworth have to say about the case? "This did not turn out the way we wanted it to turn out," Foxworth said Friday. "Looking back, and I know the officers feel this as well, they may have done something differently. We would have wanted the minimal amount of force to have been used. But I feel we need to recognize Ms. Crowder has some responsibility. She contributed to the situation."

Granted. But Eunice was 71. She was blind. That probably explains why a judge threw out all charges against her and why the city, in a stone-cold panic, settled ASAP.

"This was like fighting Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder," Warren said. "It wasn't a fair fight."

No, but it was another excuse to haul out the usual code words about the cops' "reasonable" belief that they were justified to use a "reasonable amount of force to defend themselves."

If you have a different definition of "reasonable," you just don't understand the Portland police. You need to remember the words of Robert King, head of the police union, defending Officer Jason Sery in the March shooting of James Jahar Perez:

"What sets us apart from people like most of you is that you'll never face a situation in your job where -- in less than 10 seconds -- the routine can turn to truly life-threatening," King wrote. "When that happens to us, when we have to make that ultimate split-second decision, we don't just ask for your understanding, we ask for your support."

She was 71 years old. She was blind. She was lucky, I guess, that these cops -- set apart from people like most of us -- didn't make the usual split-second decision and draw their guns.

A very good point raised

AN open letter to my colleagues in the news business.
By Leonard Pitts
Miami Herald

The silence is getting loud.

It's been nearly four months since the scandal broke. Four months since Jack Kelley, star foreign correspondent for USA Today, was found to have lied his way through his professional life for the last 13 years. He lied about where he had been, what he had seen, whom he had talked to, what they had said. He lied so much I'm only half convinced "Jack Kelley' is his real name.

Yet you, my colleagues, have not asked the most important question:

What does this mean for the future of white journalism?

Granted, you've pontificated about our damaged credibility. You've felled forests with your weighty ruminations about what this portends for the future of our profession. But, evidently cowed by political correctness, you've ignored the most vital issues.

Did USA Today advance a moderately capable journalist because he was white? Did some white editor mentor him out of racial solidarity even though Kelley was unqualified? In light of this fiasco, should we re- examine the de facto affirmative action that gives white men preferential treatment in our newsrooms?

Certainly, no one had to beg for these questions to be asked a year ago, when Jayson Blair got his sorry backside in hot water. Blair, as you hardly need to be reminded, was a black reporter who initially came to the New York Times via a slot in an internship program the paper was using to increase newsroom diversity. It turned out that the only diversity Blair represented was that which is to be found between lies and damned lies.

Still, some observers felt the circumstances of his hiring were almost as important as the reason for his firing. Columnist Andrew Sullivan claimed Blair got away with snookering the Times because his editors feared offending a black journalist.

Columnist Richard Cohen told us Blair enjoyed "favoritism based on race.'

Jennifer Harper, a reporter for the conservative Washington Times, wrote that the Blair episode made the New York paper a "case study on the effects of affirmative action in the newsroom.'

A computer search Friday indicates that Sullivan, Cohen and Harper have thus far been silent on the racial dimensions of the Kelley incident. In fairness to those worthies, I'm sure they're warming up their laptops even as we speak.

While we await the results, let me, in the interest of full disclosure, admit that I didn't think up today's column on my own. Rather, it was inspired by remarks Gwen Ifill of PBS made last week at an awards dinner. Truth to tell, though, she only crystallized what I and, I daresay, many other journalists of color have been thinking ever since Kelley's deceptions were uncovered.

Namely, that this is (with apologies to the Four Tops) the same old song. When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw up. When a black person screws up, it ignites a debate on race.

So, loathe though I am to position myself as a spokesman, I feel confident in saying one thing on behalf of black journalists everywhere: When and if our industry decides to deal with the issues raised by Kelley's transgressions, we stand ready to help. Need someone to handle outreach to journalism programs at HWCUs (historically white colleges and universities)? Want to discuss whether hiring whites requires us to lower our standards? Looking for ideas of how to make whites feel more welcome?

We're standing by. All you have to do is call.

Because doggone it, white journalism has a long, proud history Edward R. Murrow, Mike Royko ... Matt Drudge. We cannot allow one bad apple to sully that.

So I'll be over here waiting for the discussion of these issues to begin. I'm thinking I should pack a lunch.

-- Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@herald.com

Bush: Privacy of Families Outweighs Photos

Apr 23, 7:59 PM (ET)

By RANDALL CHASE

DOVER, Del. (AP) - President Bush considers the release of photographs of flag-draped military coffins a reminder of the fallen troops' sacrifice, but believes family privacy should be respected, the White House said Friday.

Pentagon officials said the photos, issued last week and posted on an Internet site, should not have been made public under a policy prohibiting media coverage of human remains. Some activists argue that the photos, released last week, underscore the war's human cost.

photo

"America knows full well that our men and women are serving and serving brilliantly both in Iraq and around the world. ... America is aware this is a war against terrorism," Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said. But, he said, "The message is, the sensitivity and privacy of families of the fallen must be the first priority."

The photographs were released to First Amendment activist Russ Kick, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
photo

Kick posted dozens of photographs of American war dead arriving at the nation's largest military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, prompting the Pentagon on Thursday to bar further release of the photographs to media outlets.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Keck said release of the 361 photos appeared to be in conflict with policy.

"They're not happy with the release of the photos," said Col. Jon Anderson, a spokesman for the Dover base.

Duffy said he did not know whether Bush had personally weighed in on the Pentagon's move to overturn the base's decision, or whether Bush considered the released photos an affront to the families.

The photos were taken at the Dover base, and most were of flag-draped cases used by the military to transport remains. But Anderson said Friday that the photos also included images of the remains of the shuttle Columbia astronauts arriving at Dover, as well as casualties from Afghanistan. A NASA spokesman said that at least 18 rows of photos on the site were of the Columbia astronauts.
photo
According to his Web site, Kick, who has not returned phone calls or e-mails from The Associated Press, requested all Dover photos from Feb. 1, 2003, to the present. "He wasn't distinguishing between what he wanted," Anderson said. "He just wanted everything."

At least one of the Columbia photos, a Feb. 5 shot of a flag-draped coffin, was included in a picture of the Web site distributed by the AP.

At a rally in Dover last month, war protesters criticized Bush for continuing the practice of previous administrations of not allowing the public or media to witness the arrival of remains at the base.

"We need to stop hiding the deaths of our young; we need to be open about their deaths," said Jane Bright of West Hills, Calif., whose 24-year-old son, Evan Ashcraft, was killed in combat in July.

On NBC's "Today" on Friday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina agreed with the policy banning photos from Dover because "there's no ceremony held; it's a caretaking event."

But Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, said photos of caskets coming home from Vietnam had a tremendous impact on the way Americans came to view that war.

"As people began to see the reality of it and see the 55,000 people who were killed coming back in body bags, they became more and more upset by the war," he said. "This is not about privacy. This is about trying to keep the country from facing the reality of war."

The Pentagon move came a day after a military contractor fired a cargo worker because her photograph of flag-draped remains was published on the front page of Sunday editions of The Seattle Times.

---

On the Net:

Kick's Web site: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin(underscore)photos/dover

Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home

there must be something in the water over there


3 U.N. police die in Kosovo jail shootout


- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Nebojsa Markovic



April 17, 2004 | KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- A Jordanian policeman opened fire on a group of international U.N. police in Kosovo on Saturday, killing two Americans before he was killed when officers returned fire. Ten American officers and an Austrian were wounded.

The shootout erupted when a group correctional officers -- 21 Americans, two Turks and an Austrian -- were leaving the detention center after a day of training. They came under fire from at least one of a group of Jordanians on guard at the prison, said Neeraj Singh, a U.N. spokesman.

The officers shot back in a gunbattle that lasted about 10 minutes. It was not immediately clear what prompted the Jordanian to shoot.

"As far as we know, there was no communication between the officer who fired and the group of victims," Singh said, adding that investigators looking into the incident were questioning four Jordanian officers.

The Jordanian government expressed regret for the incident in a statement and said it also was investigating the shooting, Jordan's official Petra agency reported. The statement identified the Jordanian officer as Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali.

U.N. and local police officers sealed off the yard of the detention center, took pictures and marked the bullet cartridges with numbers. The body of a police officer, covered with what looked like a dark blue jacket, lay for hours in the yard of the prison compound.

One witness, a 50-year-old woman who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she heard the shooting, ran to her balcony overlooking the prison yard and saw one officer shooting and another hiding.

Another witness who also gave only his age, 31, said he was at a nearby park when he heard the shooting and later heard American officers yelling, "Drop the gun! Drop the gun!"

"It is absolutely too early to draw any conclusions with regard to what happened there," the head of the U.N. police, Stefan Feller, told Associated Press Television News after visiting the site. He called the shootout a "terrible incident."

Milan Ivanovic, a doctor at the hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica, told AP that five American officers and one Austrian officer were being treated. It was not immediately clear where the other wounded were being treated, or what their nationalities were.

"Their wounds are predominantly in the chest and abdomen," Ivanovic said. "They were caused by firearms and possibly explosive devices."

Kosovska Mitrovica has long been the scene of violence between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, including riots that broke out a month ago, killing 19 and injuring 900.

Ethnic Albanians live on the southern side of the Ibar River in the divided city, and Serbs live in the north. Kosovska Mitrovica is located 25 miles from the provincial capital, Pristina.

Kosovo became a U.N. protectorate in 1999, after NATO launched a 78-day air war to stop Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic from cracking down on ethnic Albanians seeking independence.

There are some 3,500 U.N. police officers serving in Kosovo alongside a 6,000-strong local force.

The top U.N. official in Kosovo, Harri Holkeri, seemed stunned at the shooting incident, which came as the mission is still grappling with last month's violence.

"I am deeply shocked and dismayed at the unfortunate death of dedicated professionals who have come such a great distance to help Kosovo on its road to future," he said.

An unsanitized report from the front lines of Fallujah

can be found here

"Cause something is happening and you don't know what it is....."
Is this a new way for Bob to meet chicks? Was the endless tour not attracting enough nubile groupies? Not that he isn't looking great, but what the sweet and fancy Jesus is Bob doing in an underwear ad? It can't be the money, he hardly needs the exposure-to paraphrase Spike Lee, "Its gotta be the panties"
Picture it: You are Bob Dylan. You've been there, done that, there aren't many peaks left to scale. You're 60 years old and the phone rings and someone says, "Say Bob, if you aren't busy next week, how would you like to hang out in Venice with a bunch of underwear models? We'll spring for the Dom Perignon and cocaine, just bring your cowboy hat and trim your mustache before you come. Oh, and we'll pay you a minimum of six figures and sell some records for you." Who would say no?



Tangled Up in Boobs
What's Bob Dylan doing in a Victoria's Secret ad?
By Seth Stevenson/Slate
Posted Monday, April 12, 2004, at 9:39 AM PT

The spot: A well-formed young woman cavorts through a palazzo, wearing nothing but heels, lingerie, and a pair of outsized, feathery wings. At intervals, we cut to a shot of some sort of death's-head demon, who looks poised to bite into the pretty youth's skull, perhaps to suck on the marrow of her soul and prolong his undead half-life. Wait … stand by … I'm now being told that this creature is in fact Bob Dylan. (Click here to see the ad.)When Bob Dylan shows up in a Victoria's Secret commercial, it immediately triggers three questions. The first is: Am I hallucinating? Seriously, I think I'm hallucinating—can you see Bob Dylan, and did you eat the same shrimp I ate? The second is: Why on earth would Bob Dylan do this? And the third, and perhaps most puzzling, is: Why on earth would Victoria's Secret do this?

Moving past the first line of inquiry, which likely won't get us very far, let's ask ourselves why Bob Dylan, respected countercultural artist, would choose to sell panties. I think there are a few possible motives. The first is, of course, money. This seemed to be the sole motive when, several years ago, Dylan sold the Bank of Montreal the right to use "The Times They Are a-Changin'" in an ad. But the Vicky's Secret sellout feels different, in part because Dylan actually appears in the commercial.

Which brings me to the second possible motive: pure whimsy. He may just think it's funny to be in an underwear ad and that flying to Venice to leer at models could make for a diverting weekend. (I also wouldn't totally discount the idea that he's playing a sly, decades-in-the-making practical joke. Newspaper reports have noted that in 1965, when asked what might tempt him to sell out, Dylan said, "Ladies undergarments.")

But I think the most likely motive for Dylan is exposure. It's a real struggle for older rockers to remind the world that they still exist. Their music's not played on the radio, and their videos (if they even make them) aren't in heavy rotation on VH1. Thus you see the Jaguar ads with Sting, or the MCI ads with James Taylor and Michael McDonald—all of them prominently featuring the artist's song. It's essentially a way to put a video on the major networks, where an older audience might see it. Yes, in exchange for publicizing their art they sacrifice some integrity, but this is basically an understandable tradeoff. And Dylan even gets, in the terms of his deal, a mix CD of his songs sold at Victoria's Secret stores.

So, it makes some sense for Bob. But what about Vicky? Why would a brand that's about sexiness, youth, and glamour want any connection at all with a decrepit, sixtysomething folksinger? The answer, my friend, is totally unclear. The answer is totally unclear.

Even if Victoria's Secret hopes to bring in more boomer women, do those women want their underwear to exude the spirit and essence of Bob Dylan? Or, conversely, is Bob Dylan the sort of man they're hoping to attract? Even if you're of the belief that men frequently shop at VS for their ladies, I still don't see the appeal of this ad. I, for instance, am a man, and I can assure you that Bob Dylan is not what I'm looking for in a woman's undergarment. (And if I found him there—man, would that be disturbing.)

Victoria's Secret wouldn't return my calls, but media reports say the idea of putting Dylan's face in the ad (they'd been using his song—"Love Sick"—in ads for the past year or so) came straight from corporate chief Les Wexner. To the company's surprise, Dylan accepted their offer. It's at this point that someone at Victoria's Secret should have stopped the madness. Just because you can hire Bob Dylan as the figurehead for your lingerie line, doesn't mean you should. Perhaps no one was willing to say no to the big boss, or perhaps they fully expected Dylan to say no. Joke's on them.