The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Rob Tomshany:

America needs to get serious about the Abu Ghraib situation, not simply in condemning it--that's too easy, since almost no one's going to come out publicly in FAVOR of torture or abuse as an instrument of policy--but in backing up words with action. Unfortunately, few Americans are actually in a position to do much more than voice an opinion on the matter. What the rest of us can do, though, is make our opposition to the Abu Ghraib atrocities known to those people who have some power to exert. I'm talking about one of the simplest of American civic acts after voting--getting in touch with one's elected representatives, either by e-mail, phone call, or faxing. (Snail mail won't work as well for this purpose as it used to, given the anthrax scare a while back.)

If you call your senator's local office, for instance, I would advise against laying blame for the situation on any political faction. (That goes double if the senator actually DOES lean toward the saber-rattling persuasion.) Instead, you might simply bring up the Abu Ghraib atrocities (the recent ones, the ones commited BY Americans) and ask what the senator is doing about the situation beyond condemning it. For instance, is he or she calling for an investigation to make sure nothing like this is going on elsewhere in Iraq, or for reforms in the armed forces or intelligence services to ensure that nothing like this happens again?

I phoned my senators' and congressman's offices this morning with just those questions. Spoke with underlings (one poor girl in my congressman's local office hadn't even about the torture/abuse--"Torture BY Americans?") and left voice-mail messages with a couple of the senators' staff. While I didn't get an answer to speak of, and didn't expect to, it was at least a start at letting these people know that at least one of their constituents was concerned about the situation, and that they themselves have the power to affect the situation.

For me, the next steps are to call those offices AGAIN, and to recruit as many people on the local level to do the same. I also plan to call the White House, as well as others in Congress who ought to share this concern. (I'm starting with Senators Kerry, McCain and H. R. Clinton.) I don't know how much good this can do, but at least it can't hurt, and as long as I keep doing it (and trying to get others to do so) it serves as a test of my own resolve to see that there are no more Abu Ghraibs. (That sounds like I'm doing this so as to feel noble. Rather, I'm doing it so I don't feel ignoble.)

If you're an American, you're heartsick/angry/upset about the atrocities, and you haven't yet contacted your representatives about this, why not?

This little discussion on technical nomenclature reminds me of an old "Beetle Bailey" strip in which General Halftrack asks one of his officers, "Have you seen my, uh,...[lowers voice]...thingamajig?" The officer (I don't remember his name) stares at the general for a moment before offering the only possible reply: "I think so...wasn't it over behind the whatchamacallit?" The last panel finds the general grumbling to himself about wise-ass subordinates...or words to that effect.

When I read the link title "Britain's past threatened by badgers," my first thought was that cartoon badgers had somehow infiltrated the classic treasures of British cinema--a natural assumption, given the nature of the previous badger-related link--and that we could now see images of badgers in the movies of Hitchcock, Powell & Pressberger, Olivier's (and Branagh's) Shakespeare adaptations, and the Ealing comedies and James Bond movies, not to mention "Brief Encounter", "The Third Man", and "A Hard Day's Night". Boy, was I disappointed!

In connection with pronouncing things, here's one quatrain I like:

To hear people call a
City La Jolla
Is bound to annoy ya
If you live in La Jolla.

Just remembered another couplet, from The Annotated Alice, on the parents of the original book's inspiration (Alice Liddell):

I am the Dean, and this is Mrs. Liddell.
She plays the first, and I the second fiddle.

To get back on the Franken book for a little bit--I just finished reading it the other day, and really, really, really liked it a lot. (I seem to be on a reading streak of liberal political books lately; not long ago I finished the new ones by Joe Conason and Paul Krugman--and I loved both of those too--have a copy of Danny Goldberg's Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen spirit waiting for me at the local library, in addition to having reserved the new books from Ivins, Greider, Hightower, Stephenson, Bujold, Pratchett, and Lethem....) (Note: the last four books deal only marginally with the current political situation.)

There is danger in reading so many of these books all at once, especially if they tend to reinforce one's beliefs and suspicions as much as they do mine. Simply, they can lose their function as critiques and prescriptions and become mere anodynes, or worse, the left-wing version of "political pornography" (Franken's characterization of Coulter-style lib-baiting literature). There's nothing wrong with feeling good about one's beliefs--it beats the alternative, anyway--but you don't want to let it distract you from trying to find out for youself what's really going on, or to stop you from hearing what people less devoted to the True Faith of Liberalism might have to say about it. Enjoy Lies and the Lying Liars etc., by all means, but take it with a grain of salt or two.

Oh, and I hope everyone made sure to follow the link on beliefnet to "The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus", one of the two best parts of Lies. (The other is Franken's account of the Wellstone memorial and its aftermath.)

Charlie Young. I don't watch "The West Wing" (or much other TV, except for random snatches of Classic Arts Showcase and The Cartoon Network), and therefore had no idea why I came out as this character. I switched answers a few times--from "quiet" to "idealistic" on the first question, "talking. lots of talking" to "torturing people with inane trivia" for ideal job, and "Frank Sinatra" to "Bruce Springsteen" for choice of music, and still came up Charlie every time. Is it possible that the relationship question had something to do with it? My answer on that one was "in a steady relationship, uh, I think. Has anyone seen my girlfriend?"

i, the second sign is intended as a dark joke. Even though various creatures of the administration have claimed (often repeatedly) that "it's not about the oil," many of us view that claim with some, shall we say, skepticism. With that in mind, the sign makes a bit more sense as a mock-complaint.

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