Christopher Hitchens wanted me to hold his willy! And other true stories!

Totally true. Now that the story is in print, I can tell it to the heavens. Excerpted:

“I must have a piss.” He surveyed the exiting crowd at the theater’s rear. Then he joined them, sending a shout in my direction. “Come on, then. You can hold it for me.”

“Okay,” I replied after a moment. “But my hands are on the cold side.”

“Ah! Well then, you can help me shake it.”

I was an innocent, bright-eyed journalism student out on assignment with Mr. Johnnie Walker Black-and-Iraq himself. He peed; we drank; I got kicked out of the Waverly Inn and crashed at his pad in Washington.

Get the why and how after the jump!

It was all for The New York Review of Magazines, the brainchild of a bunch of Columbia j-schoolers supervised by former Nation publisher/editor and nice old guy Victor Navasky. Other stories:

• Hillary Clinton abandons a Vogue cover photo shoot (and we photoshop her for our cover anyway);
  


• Al Goldstein and Larry Flynt defend sexy photo spreads as patriotic while they bag on Hef;
  


• A former intern recalls how Weekly Standard drank TNR's milkshake over a lying Iraq blogger;
  


• The Washington Monthly cuts corners and exploits child labor, but still can't stay afloat;
  


• And the rundown on which presidential campaigns Anna Wintour, Kate White, Martha Stewart, Laurel Touby, Larry Flynt and (the late) Bill Buckley doubled down on with cold cash money!

To close, here's an official message from my colleagues at the mag: "Link to us! Please! And give us jobs!"

Bush insider: We knew Iraq was screwed in 2005. Sorry.

I like Peter Feaver. He's a Navy man and political scientist who, along with Duke University colleague Christopher Gelpi, has undertaken the ivory tower's only serious study of civil-military affairs since the early '60s. (Full disclosure: I had collegial discussions with both men in 2005 and considered attending Duke to study with them. I went to journalism school instead.)

Dr. Feaver has another claim to fame: while serving on George W. Bush's National Security Council from 2005-2007, Feaver was outed as the Man Behind the Curtain, the architect of an Iraq "Plan for Victory" that Bush unveiled in a November '05 speech to the midshipmen of Annapolis (shown above; a captive audience, if there ever was one). Feaver's job was, as we former members of the Naval Academy's brigade sometimes say, to "polish the turd" that was Iraq, to put a happy face on a debacle that was quickly losing support.

So what's the problem? According to a new mea culpa by Feaver in Commentary, there never was a plan for victory - just a plan to forestall disaster until the next poor presidential mensch took over. Here's what he says now:

By the middle of 2005, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved that the only decisive outcome that could be achieved during President Bush’s tenure was the triumph of our enemies, America’s withdrawal, and Iraq’s descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of. The challenge, therefore, was to develop and implement a workable strategy that could be handed over to Bush’s successor. Although important progress could be made on that strategy during Bush’s watch, ultimately it would be carried through by the next President.

Call me naive, but isn't this just a little devastating to hear from an administration official? To be fair, Feaver and his colleagues still saw "victory" as a possibility... but only in abstraction, on someone else's watch. Doesn't seem to square with some of the words he put in the president's mouth that evening by the Bay in Annapolis. He didn't tell the sea of future military officers they'd be marking time in the sand for the next three years. He didn't say victory was the next guy's concern. Instead, he said:

Against this adversary, there is only one effective response: We will never back down. We will never give in. And we will never accept anything less than complete victory. ...

... in the past year, Iraqi forces have made real progress. At this time last year, there were only a handful of Iraqi battalions ready for combat. Now, there are over 120 Iraqi Army and Police combat battalions in the fight against the terrorists... and they're helping to turn the tide of this struggle in freedom's favor. ...

As Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead in the fight against the terrorists, they're also taking control of more and more Iraqi territory. ...

We're also transferring forward operating bases to Iraqi control... From many of these bases, the Iraqi security forces are planning and executing operations against the terrorists -- and bringing security and pride to the Iraqi people. ...

The facts are that Iraqi units are growing more independent and more capable; they are defending their new democracy with courage and determination. They're in the fight today, and they will be in the fight for freedom tomorrow. (Applause.) ...

As the Iraqi security forces stand up, their confidence is growing and they are taking on tougher and more important missions on their own. As the Iraqi security forces stand up, the confidence of the Iraqi people is growing -- and Iraqis are providing the vital intelligence needed to track down the terrorists. And as the Iraqi security forces stand up, coalition forces can stand down -- and when our mission of defeating the terrorists in Iraq is complete, our troops will return home to a proud nation. (Applause.) ...

Some critics continue to assert that we have no plan in Iraq except to, "stay the course." If by "stay the course," they mean we will not allow the terrorists to break our will, they are right... Our strategy in Iraq is clear, our tactics are flexible and dynamic; we have changed them as conditions required and they are bringing us victory against a brutal enemy. (Applause.)

Sounds to me like LBJ, McNamara, Nixon and Kissinger redux: Pee on America's collective leg and tell the citizenry it's raining. Feaver and Gelpi's great contribution in civil-military affairs was the idea that the U.S. public isn't casualty-averse: Americans are willing to tolerate bloody wars as long as they see a worthy goal within sight. But in Feaver's experience, this notion compelled him to help manufacture hope in Middle America - "Have the president tell them we're turning a corner; it'll buy us some time."

We're still stuck in Iraq, and failure is still an option. Middle America rightly smelled trouble in 2005; some foreign-policy realists and counterinsurgency theorists smelled it much earlier. What Feaver should have learned is that you can't manufacture hope in the absence of evidence. If any chance for success and stability is to be had in Iraq - and I cling to the hope that it is - we should at least have a commander in chief who is sufficiently sanguine - and honest - about our prospects.

Jonesing for more Jones news: Holy crap! The song has words!

Gawker says the buzz on the upcoming non-indie Indy flick isn't all that hot, but it might all be part of a studio flack's conspiracy to bag on the movie for fun and profit.

More importantly, in a magnanimous nod to credulous, regressive children of the 80's like me, a Gawker commenter reveals that there are actually words to John Williams' famous Indiana Jones musical score. To wit:

Latest by Hez: Sing it with me now: In-di-ana fuck-ing Jones In-di-ana moth-er-fuck-ing Jones In-di-ana fuck-ing Jones Bite my ball-sack you Na-zis I'm In-di-ana fuck-ing Jones

It works! It really works! Not only that, but it works for Superman, too. My life is now complete, and yours should be, too.

Our new sweet, sweet place.

This is the Philly apartment building the missus and I will be moving to in June. It's in a neighborhood called Northern Liberties, a totally contrived moniker for what used to be the southern end of working-class Kensington. New-construction condos, yoga studios, tapas bars and art galleries abound. Along with robbers, vandals and rapists. It's like East Village, circa 1990, only with Obama posters everywhere! See more pictures here.

I forget: Which photo was the exploitive one again?

Well...

Gee...

If, by "exploitive," you mean dolling up a young, vulnerable girl to deliver viewers an idealized fantasy object, then... Hmm.

Hmm.

HMM.

No time for love, Dr. Jones!

Proof positive that God loves me and wants me to be happy.

Um. This is racist, right?

I was, uh, just checking.

Drop dead, Ira Glass, you smarmy bastard.

Have you seen these everywhere? On the streets, on the Web, in your nightmares, and everywhere else not yet plastered over by an Obama poster? You have, if you live in Manhattan... where apparently every subway- and bus-urchin is a latte-sipping, smarmy but guilty Ivy grad. (I, myself, eschew coffee and guilt.) We too-hip liberals sure love to commodify our quirky countercultural fetishes.

But hey, can I at least get on a g--damned bus without having some fawning iconography of my generation's Andy Rooney shoved down my gullet? Maybe I can write a radio spot about that. And draw it out over an hour. And shove David Sedaris in there with a bunch of Prius-driving Yalies to talk about how amazing "ordinary people" are.

You heard it here first: President John Edwards.

Oh, yeah. It can totally happen. I'm not even joking. Let all the bean-counting madmen at MSNBC wet themselves over the death struggle for Guam's 4 pledged delegates, while Huffington Post's grammar-stunted lovers of "hope" spill caramel macchiato on their keyboards and shake angry Obamite fists at Ms. Clinton. In the meantime, I'll lay some truth on you: also-ran John Edwards has just as good a chance as Bam or Hill of being the Dems' man in November, and judging by current events, that's probably what he's gunning for. How can I say such a thing? Find out after the jump.

Tuesday, the media stereoopticon tells us, is truth time for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. A convincing victory for either one in North Carolina would make a compelling case to the Dems' wishy-washy superdelegates that they have a consensus candidate.

The polls show Obama losing ground in a state where he once led comfortably by twenty points. He could seal this thing up with a double-digit win, but Clinton and the great majority of working-class whites living outside the Triangle have made that increasingly unlikely. For her part, Clinton could spin any victory as a Comeback Royale, an upset to rival Kansas' OT, come-from-behind win over Memphis in the Final Four, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Both candidates need a shove over the North Carolina finish line. A shove that the state's golden-boy ex-senator, presumably, could provide. Except he hasn't. And he probably won't, not now.

Does John Edwards want influence? He's got it. The media are so sufficiently enraptured - and his constitutents are so sufficiently conflicted - that he could have easily played kingmaker with an endorsement of one or the other candidate... but it's too late now, too close to election day, for an Edwards announcement to make a full impact. Why would he miss such a glowing opportunity to maximize his party clout?

Because there's a better opportunity lying ahead. Absent another implosion by one of the candidates before Tuesday, we will have exactly what we had after Super Tuesday, and Ohio and Texas, and Pennsylvania: a hog-tie. Obama will win a meek victory in North Carolina - enough for him to claim he's the nominee, but not enough to shake off concerns that he's weak in the middle, where it could hurt him worse than Clinton in November.

Then Hill will clear the clutter off of the table - the West Virginias, the Puerto Ricos - and, come June, we'll be right where we are now. Both camps will claim they're more electable; both will lay claim to the delegate and popular-vote totals, even though those figures are so suspect they might as well be Olympic figure-skating scores.

At that point, the remaining superdelegates will do what Democratic Party insiders always do in these cases: poop themselves, cower in a corner, and wait for events to take care of themselves.

That will happen at the August party convention in Denver, where Obama and Clinton will go in as weak as ever. Neither will have the requisite 2,025 delegates, but they'll share one thing: approval ratings so low, they'd look like ants on the ground to Dennis Kucinich.

So there will be a convention ballot. And a deadlock. And then, something magical - and a little bit stupid - will happen: all bets will be off. Under arcane party rules, the delegates will be under no obligation to honor the wishes of party voters. Any candidate is up for consideration, and any vote is permissible. Hill and Bam will likely go to the bottom of the list.

Impossible, you say? The voters won't stand for it? Bullfeathers. The dueling duo's negatives are off the charts. Poll after poll has shown that, whether Obama or Clinton gets the nod, a huge swath of Democratic America will feel cheated - so cheated that we might spend the next 20 years marveling at a phenomenon called "McCain Democrats." If you're a superdelegate, and you know somebody in your party's gonna get screwed, you might as well throw out all pretenses to honoring "the will of the people" and look for the most electable guy in the room come November.

That guy, without question, will be Edwards. He acquitted himself admirably in the primaries. He has more slick oratorical lacquer then Obama (circa May 2008) and more middle-America cred than Clinton (circa whenever). Most importantly, he'll have stayed above the fray: a known quantity who kept it classy and didn't pick a bickering side while his counterparts tussled in the gutter, bruised each other, fatigued the public, and bankrupted their donors. Edwards is fresh but familiar, attractive to white and black, male and female, college-educated and non, latte and black coffee alike.

You think this scenario hasn't crossed his mind? Then explain Elizabeth Edwards' finger-wag job on the media - and by extension, the people - for their electoral fickleness last week. And the pair's subtle knack for peppering Obama and Clinton with underhanded compliments ever since the real primary blooding started. The Edwardses have done just enough to stay engaged and credible without stepping in it.

And come August, their aloofness may be just the accent Howard Dean needs to throw over the deck chairs on this sinking ship disguised as a major political party.

Then, there will only be one more tough question: Who does Edwards pick for a veep?

(Suggestions are welcome!)

Hipster 2.0 is here.

So, I've decided to convert this blog into a weird-news blog because - well, frankly, there is no because. I've got the space. You, apparently have the time on your hands. So let's make fun of some sick, sad, stupid people together.

Where to start? Oh, so many choices. How about...

Here?
Gift horse surprises girl after pony mutilation
(This, by the way? Not at all funny, and weird only in a disturbing way. But you know what? I'm still gonna laugh at that headline for days to come. Sue me.)

Or here?
Ham-flavored soda!?
(Well. At least it isn't horse-flavored. Or pony...)

No, no. Definitely here.
Priest accused of stalking Conan O'Brian fit for trial
(Priest to judge: "He's how old? With that hair? My God, your honor, I'm sorry - he didn't look a day over 15!")

More to follow when I'm feeling weird. So, in other words, soon.

FSU student diagnosed with meningitis.

Tallahassee Democrat, page 1B
Dec. 17, 2006

by Adam Weinstein
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

As thousands of friends and family members converged on Tallahassee Saturday for FSU’s commencement exercises, university officials announced that a student living on campus was diagnosed with contagious bacterial meningitis earlier in the week.

“Individuals who were in closest contact with this student have already been identified, contacted by the Leon County Health Department and treated” with antibiotics, according to an email statement by Mary Coburn, FSU’s vice president for student affairs.

People who may have been exposed to the ailment commonly undergo treatment before a diagnosis is complete. That’s because meningitis, an infected swelling of the brain’s lining, or meninges, “is a serious illness which is fast-acting,” said Coburn.

According to the Web site for FSU’s Thagard Student Health Center, the potentially fatal illness can also result in “permanent brain damage, hearing loss, learning disability” or kidney failure. It’s especially prevalent among college-age students who live in close proximity, affecting 100-125 students per year nationwide.

Nearly 40,000 students are enrolled at FSU, interacting daily in classrooms, student unions and athletic facilities. FSU offers students a low-cost meningitis immunization, but it does not require them to be immunized to register and attend courses, according to the Health Center.

Casual contact with an infected person is considered “low risk” contact, Coburn stated.

Regardless, she implored students and staff members to seek medical attention immediately for symptoms “similar to a severe case of the flu,” especially a sore neck with a high fever.

Concerned individuals can contact FSU’s Thagard Student Health Center at 644-4567 of the Leon County Public Health Department at 487-3155.

What a news day.

Huh. Interesting weekend so far. I did more journalism today than in my first two days of J-school. And I did it all from my porch.


First, there was the dog on 149th Street. Walking down Broadway to the subway, I notice an NYPD auxiliary standing in the street over this curly-haired, limping dog. Turns out the dog had darted across the street and been clipped in his rear legs by a passing car. Miraculously, he hadn't been run over or completely eviscerated. He just sat in the gutter, lapping up the attention paid him by the police officer and the crowd of about 20 that had formed to watch on the corner.


At one point, the dog stood to walk, letting out a small yelp of pain and rather deftly shifting his weight to his front paws, walking for a time on just those two, his limp posterior hanging like the legs of a sideshow performer in a walking handstand. I had time only to snap a few shots before the police van whisked the anonymous pup away, to a destination I can only assume was not a dog circus.

As I scrolled back through the photos later, I wondered. Was this news? It involved a well-meaning cop, a dog, and a careless driver. Certainly, it was news to that crowd of 20. Evidently, it was not news to the dog's owners, if he had any. There was no evidence of one.








Then there was the car crash. That came as I was heading back to my building from downtown, on the same intersection as the dog's unfortunate jaunt. A Civic had been turning into southbound traffic from 149th and pulled out right in front of a speeding Maxima. The damage to both cars was extensive. At home, in South Florida, I would never have given the mishap a second glance, except to settle in my mind that it didn't warrant rubbernecking. Yet on Broadway, even the mundane - a fried chicken shack, a homeless guy, a crippled dog - take on a novel siginifcance. And in a neighborhood where residents already seem to live on the streets rather than in the buildings, the crowd of onlookers quickly swelled to hundreds.

This, I thought, could be real news. I snapped my shots, pulled out my steno pad, and prepared to write a copy block that I dreamed might make a photo page of the Post or the Daily News. I took a moment to ponder the likelihood that I was the only writer in my Columbia class that might dream of the Post or the Daily News. Then I approached two police officers on the scene. One had heard a bang; the other was late on the scene. Neither cared to be quoted or volunteer their names.

Searching for real eyewitnesses, I spoke to a polite middle-aged Hispanic man about what he saw. He would identify himself only as Louis. I pressed for his last name for several minutes, explained it would only go into my notes, said there would be no trouble, but he and his daughter refused in the most pleasant of terms. After talking to a nearby friend of his, an Australian-born Kosovar who is a Broadway building superintendent, it occurred to me in my Ivy League wisdom: my witness didn't want his name used because he wasn't legally in the United States. He was a nice guy who had a family that depended on him. He couldn't risk the scrutiny.

After a few more photos, I approached the two police officers I took to be in charge. "I can't talk to you," the driver of the cruiser said. Should I call the precinct later? I asked. "No," replied his partner. "Take it up with DCPI." The Deputy Commissioner for Public Information acts as the entire police department's clearinghouse for information, and it is notoriously cagey about its job.

After things settle, I return home and call DCPI. Unsurprisingly, no one has called in from the 30 th Precinct regarding an auto collision. The sergeant at the end of the phone, trying to justify the lack of data, asks me: "Was it a fatal collision?" When I reply in the negative, he answers: "Then we won't get anything on it."

So now, as I write just a few moments later, I wonder: Why is a car crash, especially one in which all souls survived, news? Is it?

I pause. Then I tell myself the same thing, over and over in reply: It is news, if I write it.

Our town: SoHo of the South

Tallahassee Democrat, Aug. 11, 2006

By Adam Weinstein

I had a revelation at lunch the other day.

I was sitting in a little bagel joint near Lake Ella, mentally mapping out the responsibilities of a new job here at the Democrat, when I noticed three older working men enjoying their morning coffee at the next table. These guys wore jeans, faded T-shirts, ripped ballcaps and an impressive volume of free-range facial hair. If not for their age, I would have guessed that they'd just come from a construction site or a gun show.

But what really interested me was their table conversation. One man discussed his loving restoration of a century-old house in town, and all three piped up when the talk turned to furniture and art. It turned out that they'd all gone to First Friday, the monthly event that opens most of the city's art galleries to the public free of charge. A few of these burly bagel-munchers were artists themselves, and they began to rave about our town's rich cultural offerings as they pulled at their whiskers.

Discussing his friend's recent opening at a nearby studio, one group member exclaimed, "Tallahassee's just fun!"

This was profound to me. I'm new to Tallahassee, having spent most of my life in South Florida and my college years in Manhattan. When I first considered advanced study in international affairs, two schools accepted me: Boston University and Florida State University.

I chose FSU, and now, every time I tell friends or relatives that I moved to the Florida Panhandle for grad school, my reward is a baffled look and a silently-mouthed syllable: "Why?"

I understood the concerns at first. What's to learn in a sleepy capital where cattle, crackers and keggers outnumber newspaper subscribers?

If folks want a real high-brow experience, mocha lattes, literary discussions and art openings, they have to attend high-powered universities and reside in the hippest neighborhoods of New York, Boston or L.A.

Don't they?

Generations of stodgy intellectuals have passed down this received wisdom.

But sometimes even intellectuals can be dead wrong.

Tallahassee proves this. Like Madison, Wis., and Burlington, Vt., our big little city hosts an army of young, vibrant professionals and an inclusive cultural atmosphere that can't be beat. As one of the newest Tallahasseeans, I'd think we should bolster these trends and put our town on the map as a progressive mecca, a national model.

Ours is an amazingly diverse and tolerant town. Before moving here, I feared Tallahassee might confirm all those nasty rumors that city life instilled in me about the South and the Bible Belt. But I found a city where I could attend Episcopalian services, meditate with Buddhists and take Taste of Judaism classes - sometimes all in one day. Tallahassee is a place where my gay and lesbian friends, as well as my friends of color, are safe and welcome community members.

Entrepreneurship thrives among Tallahassee progressives, too. Stroll down to Lake Ella, Gaines Street or Railroad Square and you'll stumble upon Internet cafes, mom-and-pop eateries, second-hand bookshops, independent music stores and vintage clothing and furniture outlets run by capitalists with consciences. Sure, you'll find big corporate chains and box stores here, but in Tallahassee they compete with little guys that you won't see in larger cities like Miami or Tampa.

Then, of course, there is the art, the music and the plethora of parks.

Manhattan can eat its heart out.

Tallahassee's cultural richness is a well-kept secret, and that suits many townspeople just fine. We don't need a gentrified carbon copy of New York's pretentious Williamsburg or Philadelphia's pricey Manayunk neighborhoods. Besides, it's criminal to plow over any more of Tallahassee's beautiful open spaces and storied past for token improvements.

But until we beef up our progressive culture and wrap Tallahassee's image around it, out-of-towners will continue to scoff at the notion of our Panhandle paradise as an intellectual and artistic haven.

The hardest sell may be to Tallahassee residents who aren't aware of the benefits that young, intelligent progressives bring to town. Skeptics should check out the Cultural Resources Commission's online events calendar, so they can acquaint themselves with Tallahassee's best and brightest.

Its address, appropriately, is www.morethanyouthought.com

9/11: In the terror, we find connections

Tallahassee Democrat, Monday, Sep. 11, 2006

In the terror, we find connections
By Adam Weinstein

Everyone has a 9/11 story. Mine has a difference or two.

You see, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 saved my grandmother's life. I haven't told that story much in the past five years. But I want to tell it now.

Sept. 11 was a Tuesday, the second day of my senior year at Columbia University. It was warm and bright when I woke up. To the north, I could see sunlight glint off Yankee Stadium's steel crown. To the south, though, there was a cloud touching the Lower Manhattan pavement, crawling slowly toward Brooklyn.

I spent the morning walking toward that cloud, hoping to check up on a family friend who worked downtown. At the Flatiron Building, I permitted myself a glimpse skyward. To the building's right, the sky was a shocking late-summer blue that every New Yorker knows. To the left, black matter obscured all daylight at ground level. Above that, lighter wisps of gray curled off and rose upward, like the souls of those killed transiting to a more peaceful scene.

I silently cursed myself for such a sappy thought in the midst of all this murder and terror. But then I noticed that everyone around me - joggers, businessmen, students, cops, cabbies - stared at that cloud the same way. We were all joined intimately in our pain and fear, as close as humans probably ever get, and we all wished it hadn't taken this blow to make us so respectful of each other.

That cloud lingered as we tried to donate blood in mile-long hospital lines.

That cloud lingered as my college tried to resume classes, two days later. Few of us showed up.

That cloud lingered as I retreated north, away from the city, on a train bound for my family's hometown in the Hudson Valley.

As I hid upstate, a friend could tell I was still wrestling with that cloud when she told me, "You should look up your grandmother. Try to take your mind off things."

That grandmother was the last living relative of mine in this Catskill Mountain town, a shut-in, a stereotypical "crazy cat lady" about whom I knew very little. That distressing September week seemed a fitting time to reconnect with her.

Only she didn't answer my phone calls. Nor did she open the door to her apartment when I came knocking. But I could hear her calling, faintly, through a window. I broke in.

So it was that I reunited with my grandmother on a linoleum kitchen floor, where she had fallen two days earlier, unable to rise or yell for help. Cancer had spread to her brain and thrown off her balance.

Two years later, the cancer took her away, but not before I helped her into a hospice, visited her, and swapped stories and familial sentiments.

Somewhere in all this, around the anniversary of the day that cloud changed all of us, it sunk all the way in: If not for the horrors of 9/11, if terror hadn't chased me upstate, I never would have called on my grandmother.

And neither would anyone else.

In some respects, it's a story like anyone else's. We connect with each other by sharing how we suffered - and coped.

And yet, my recollections are so contrary to the story lines we've come to expect out of 9/11. One of the less-fortunate expectations we've developed is that the tellers of these stories usually have agendas. 9/11 has been invoked so often to sell copy and make political arguments that it falls on our ears nowadays with a dull, familiar thud. We survivors are all ready to get on with our lives. But we cannot completely forget.

Maybe the answer is to trademark the name "9/11" itself. We could levy a tax on everyone who invokes it. Everyday folks sharing their points of view could pay only a few cents. TV pundits and politicians would have to fork over huge sums.

Instead of giving this money to any charity, individual or government, we could just convert it into pennies and save it until the next anniversary rolls around. On that day, in a simple ceremony at Ground Zero (that name, too, will have to be trademarked), we could pour all the pennies into a monumental container for the world to see, so that our remembrance of 9/11 - how we did it and how often - would itself become a part of the public record.

Until then, though, consider this my two cents' worth of remembrance.

Here's one gang that's out to take your money

Tallahassee Democrat, June 23, 2007

Here's one gang that's out to take your money

By Adam Weinstein

I grew up in South Florida, where there are gang shootings in shopping malls and you make a point of avoiding certain neighborhoods. At my inner-city high school, dice games in the hall sometimes ended in stabbings, and you could always buy an assortment of drugs in the bus lot at lunch time. Compared with childhood, my college years in New York City, where I lived and worked on the edge of Spanish Harlem, seemed like a cake walk.

So forgive me for sounding cynical when I ask: What Tallahassee gang problem?

Seriously. This city is the nicest place I've ever lived. Yet for the past year, city and county officials have gone to Herculean lengths to portray the Big Bend as New Jack City.

In a succession of news conferences and town-hall meetings, these politicians and law-enforcement professionals have scared the citizenry silly, telling them how to take action if little Johnny and Jane start hanging out with a new clique, wearing one color of clothing and scrawling “nonartistic” doodles in notebooks or on walls.

Wow. Imagine. Adolescents acting cagey, defiant and creative.

Call the vice squad and tell them to shut down that Hot Topic store in the mall!

Don't misunderstand me. Is one gang member in Tallahassee too many? Absolutely. And is doing nothing ever a prudent law-enforcement strategy? Absolutely not. But “gang activity” is one of those catch-alls, like “homeland security” or “weapons of mass destruction,” that can mean nothing and be used to justify everything.

Just ask the experts. In the middle of last spring's public-relations onslaught, a Leon County detective and gang specialist told WFSU-FM that, compared with gangs of yore, local groups “now are just not as organized. . . . We can't look at our groups and say, 'OK, we can compare them to the gangs in Chicago and Miami and L.A. and New York.' ”

When one resident asked if gangs were to blame for a specific graffiti design that was popping up around town, the detective answered that the scribbles were not gang “tags”; they were merely the work of some random kids starved for attention.

So where are all the alleged hoodlums? The officials who devised spring's meet-and-greets are long on rhetoric but short on details. When pinned down, they claim there are a whopping 100 to 200 gang members among Leon County's quarter of a million residents. But, as that county detective reminded WFSU listeners, “Gang membership in and of itself is not necessarily a crime.”

In other words, you and I don't have much to worry about.

But local politicians sure do. The Legislature just passed deep statewide cuts in property taxes, an idea that's popular with voters but not with local officials whose budgets rely on tax revenues. What's that got to do with "The Gangs of Leon County”? Plenty.

Since Gov. Charlie Crist and the Legislature floated the tax-reform idea, nobody has fought it harder than the Big Bend's elected leaders. Leon County Sheriff Larry Campbell, who also heads the Florida Sheriffs Association, told legislators he'd have to cut “school resource officers, helicopters, school crossing guards” if taxes went down - resources he'll desperately need to fight the not-yet-declared War on Gangs.

County Commissioner Cliff Thaell echoed those sentiments. If local Caesars didn't get their usual tributes, he opined, “We would be very challenged to even fund mandatory services like law enforcement, the jail and the constitutional offices.” Count Tallahassee Mayor John Marks and Assistant Leon County Administrator Alan Rosenzweig among the other politicians who have voiced similar warnings.

Give them credit. No politician ever lost his or her fortunes by playing on the public's fears. And the “gang activity” phantom menace is the mother of all fear-mongering stunts, one that makes you reflexively question that tax cut, your liberties, and all the other vagaries of human existence. It plays on your most pre-rational, knee-jerk fears: fear for your child's safety, fear of crime, fear of poverty, fear of out-of-towners, immigrants, minorities and inexplicable hand gestures.

Don't give in to your fears, Tallahassee. The cut in property taxes will force some local belt-tightening, but it's reckless and irresponsible for leaders to intimidate you into thinking crime will soar as a result. That's all they're trying to do by putting "gangs" on the tip of everyone's tongue. It's a shameless ploy to manipulate your emotions and your votes.

Besides, to the extent that gangs actually do exist in Leon County, our outstanding law-enforcement professionals have proven they can handle it.

Now, if only they'd protect us from that local gang of politicians.

Adam Weinstein, a recent copy editor at the Tallahassee Democrat, returns to Columbia University this summer to work on a graduate degree. Contact him at aw333@columbia.edu.

Gun control: The juvenile and pointless debate continues

Tallahassee Democrat, May 21, 2007

Gun control: The juvenile and pointless debate continues

By Adam Weinstein

My father is a gun nut. He collects them, new ones and old ones, and he derives unfathomable glee from shooting, cleaning and studying them. Thanks to him, I can field-strip an M-16, shoot a Winchester '86 and tell the difference between a matchlock and a flintlock.

But when I turned 21 and applied for a Florida carry permit like Dad's, he didn't do cartwheels or take me window shopping for a double-action hand cannon. His only acknowledgment was to take me out to the side of a road and pull me down beside the remnants of a recently flattened possum.

"Dead," Dad intoned, "is dead. No replays, no extra lives, no do-overs. Just like this road kill."

This was not mere eccentricity on my pop's part. He wanted me to acknowledge a simple truth: Guns are lethal instruments, and they are not for everybody. Not long after, I decided that, except for an occasional weekend trip to the range, guns were not for me.

All of which makes it hard for me to understand why, even after a heartbreak like the one at Virginia Tech last month, the debate over gun control remains as juvenile and pointless as ever.

On one hand, you have the National Rifle Association claiming to speak for all gun owners. Apparently, though, its constituency doesn't include my family of gun owners, since we believe in more rigorous background checks, gun traces, and limits on the ownership of watermelon-exploding .50-caliber Barrett sniper's rifles.

On the other hand, you have one-note liberal groups like the Brady Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union, who consider gun ownership too insidious to deserve the same protections afforded free speech or due process.

Lost in the middle, I fear, are gun owners like my father - and other middle-of-the-road citizens - who appreciate the right of self-defense, but want it to come with greater responsibilities. In the marketplace of ideas, gun-policy moderates don't even rate a kiosk.

Why is it so hard to reach reasonable compromises on gun ownership?

One scholar has an answer. Gary Kleck, a criminology professor at FSU, spent the last three decades researching the relationship between guns and violence in America. But his latest research focuses on the gun debate itself.

Its conclusion: The dialogue on gun rights has been hijacked and slickly packaged by self-styled culture warriors. Rather than weighing evidence, these factions encourage citizens like you to take cues from your membership in an in-group.

"People support gun control," Kleck says, "because they're in the cultural groups that are hostile to gun owners." The data suggest that those groups include Northerners, Jews and Catholics, women and the upper middle classes. Among their members, the gun debate isn't about assault weapons, mental-health checks or Teflon bullets: It's about the senselessness of gun ownership in their worldview, period.

Women, in particular, are likely to see "alleged defensive gun use as fraudulent," Kleck says, where men are more likely to approach guns as "useful tools." Likewise, the data show Southerners, Protestants and the economically depressed are probably pro-guns - more due to tradition than reason.

Kleck maintains that the culture clash in gun policy is especially obvious in his workplace, the ivory tower. Academic researchers fit the cultural mold of anti-gun Americans. Consequently, he says, "Many will say, 'We don't care how many surveys have been done (that are) inherently in favor of self-defense as a justification.' Facts don't affect your cultural animosities."

That's a shame, because the facts in his earlier studies provide food for thought. Guns, he concluded, are "instruments that have the same impact on aggression and defense. In both cases," he says, "they empower the possessor." In other words, guns make crime easier - but they also make self-defense easier.

Could it be possible that pro-gunners and anti-gunners are both right? Absolutely. There's plenty of fertile ground for compromise.

"Most gun owners favor moderate controls," Kleck believes. Likewise, "There's a certain amount of sympathy for gun owners among rank-and-file ACLU members," he argues. And he should know: He's a member of the ACLU and Amnesty International, both historically anti-gun groups.

The problem is, there are big incentives to the game of culturally divisive politics. In this atmosphere, most Americans won't take time to sift through the complex statistics collected on crime and guns. They'll just take marching orders from interest groups led by folks "like them" - groups that will steer them away from thoughtful reflection and toward the slopes of righteousness.

So how do we rise above the rhetoric for a progressive but constitutionally fair gun-policy compromise? It all depends on our efforts to promote "an educational system that produces a truly engaged citizenry," Kleck suggests. But it won't be easy. As he puts it: "I'm not optimistic about people putting aside likes and dislikes that they've held for decades."

Adam Weinstein, a recent copy editor at the Tallahassee Democrat, returns to Columbia University this summer to work on a graduate degree. Contact him at damnthetorpedoes@hotmail.com.

Freedom doesn't march

Tallahassee Democrat, Nov.19, 2006, page E5

By Adam Weinstein

More than a week has passed since the big shake-up on Capitol Hill and the news that Donald Rumsfeld is out as secretary of defense. The departure of "the Don" is getting rave reviews all around, especially here in the mostly blue city of Tallahassee.

But we still have a problem, folks. A big one.

Sure, it's a relief to most of us that Rumsfeld will be writing memoirs now instead of operations orders. But we should still be concerned that the ex-secretary's neoconservative vision - the one that stuck us with Iraq and fouled up our mission there - still lingers in the White House air.

The heart of that vision is a deep-seated belief that our home, the good ol' U.S. of A., has the gumption and the high duty to create democratic states in our image anyplace and anytime we feel like it.

It sounds like a great idea. And our president, the Great Decider, uses a snazzy catch-phrase to sum up our responsibility to export democracy at the tip of a spear.

"Freedom," he likes to say, "is on the march."

I spent a couple of years in the Navy. I marched a lot.

And do you know what I learned?

Freedom doesn't march. It breaks step. And if it ever keeps cadence at all, it does so to a decidedly different beat.

That's a fact that conservatives, of all people, should understand. Back in the days before they ran Capitol Hill and the White House, conservatives used to argue that an overreaching, oversized government was far more dangerous than the evils it sought to cure. Conservatives used to trash communists for precisely that: using government power, and force, to engineer a new society, to change human nature into something it wasn't.

Soviet communists used to talk all the time about "exporting the revolution abroad." But their revolution never sat pretty with other countries. Not in Eastern Europe, not in the Baltic, not in Central and South Asia. Nope, the Russians learned the hard way: You don't get too far in this world by trying to impose your version of law and order on others. And you surely don't get much mileage out of calling that freedom or democracy.

Conservatives still understand that, domestically. Red-state residents are always wary of government efforts to take their guns or money, to impose limits on their freedom of speech or movement. The image of "jack-booted FBI thugs" is still enough to make most rural Americans rightly shudder.

So, if Middle America isn't ready to greet an occupying army with roses and cheers, how silly is it for us to expect such a reaction from citizens of a foreign country we just bombed into the Middle Ages?

Oh, sure, sometimes an occupation works, as in Germany and Japan after World War II. Sometimes it just has to work, as it does in Afghanistan, the terrorists' former playground. But we have a lot to offer the average Afghan. Like indoor plumbing. Paved roads. Formal education. The promise that people won't get stoned for listening to music or flying kites. Besides that, we had the support of 5 billion souls around the world who were united in horror after 9/11 and agreed that its perpetrators had to be rooted out.

Contrast this with Iraq, where a majority of the world's - and now U.S. - citizens don't see a big threat. Where there already was an infrastructure, and where we struggle to restore services that our bombs destroyed and that insurgents now manage to keep broken. Where we impose curfews, mass arrests and house-to-house searches. Where our troops accomplish Herculean tasks from day to day, yet see their accomplishments eroded from week to week.

That's what happens when you try to make freedom march.

So you'll forgive me for being guarded in my optimism. My hope is that we just dumped the Toby Keith approach to government ("It's going to be hell/ When you hear Mother Freedom/ Start ringing her bell") for the Kenny Rogers approach ("Know when to hold 'em/ Know when to fold 'em"). Maybe the days of imposing Texas justice on the Mideast really are waning, and we'll be a little more selective about where our nation draws its lines in the sand.

Maybe. But only time will tell.

Adam Weinstein, a copy editor at the Tallahassee Democrat, is a graduate student in international affairs at Florida State University.

NY Times: Pace is out at JCS.

So the word is out: Marine Gen. Peter Pace is done as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Which renders obsolete, before it got picked up for publication, this news story that I wrote on Wednesday:

"Missteps by general raise concerns that, in the military, free speech is a right for the few, the proud, the high-ranking"

Few convicted felons could count on the admiration of as many luminaries as Scooter Libby could. Nearly 200 politicians, administration officials and personal friends wrote letters supporting Libby before his Tuesday sentencing for obstruction of justice. But one supporter didn't seem to jive with the others: his name is Peter Pace, and he just happens to be a Marine general, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation's highest-ranking military officer.

According to the letter, Gen. Pace wrote it "at the request of Mr. Scooter Libby." Pace and Libby sometimes crossed paths in their jobs, and Pace's letter was not a glowing political endorsement, especially when compared with the favorable missives Libby received from former colleagues like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Henry Kissinger. "He served the United States Government extremely well," Pace concluded simply.

But Nancy Sherman, a Georgetown philosophy professor and military ethicist, said that even if it isn't a breach of professional ethics, it seems imprudent for a country's senior service member to write a character reference for a presidential partisan convicted of engaging in a political cover-up. "He's not just your ordinary officer," said Sherman, who used to chair the ethics department at Pace's alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy."You're talking about someone who is talking in his professional role, and the role is one where he's supposed to be nonpartisan."

A public affairs officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff declined to comment on Pace's memo Wednesday, saying only that the letter spoke for itself.

This isn't the first time this spring that the chairman's words have come under public scrutiny. In March, Gen. Pace told the Chicago Tribune that homosexuality was immoral, and he didn't believe "the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way." His remarks were criticized in the mainstream media; President Bush publicly distanced himself from them. But the Pentagon and the White House gave no indication that Pace's comments - or his recent letter supporting Libby - warranted disciplining.

Some experts say the latitude given to Pace highlights a hypocritical attitude in the military: the higher your rank or the more conservative your speech, the freer you are to express yourself. "It's very arbitrary," said Washington-based attorney and Army reservist Mike Lebowitz. "Absolutely, there's a double standard when it comes to free speech in the military." Lebowitz represents Adam Kokesh, the former Marine and Iraq veteran who had his discharge downgraded from "honorable" to "general" for wearing a uniform at an anti-war rally.

"The military has been very progressive on some aspects," Lebowitz said, "but it also has a very conservative mentality." In this culture, the expression of political viewpoints is fine, as long as they don't challenge existing policies. War critics like Kokesh can be liable for their activities even after they leave active duty. But vocal conservatives, such as evangelical service members who proselytize for the faith, rarely face such punishments. "They get a slap on the wrist," Lebowitz said.

That proved true for Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, a Special Forces veteran and outspoken Christian selected by Donald Rumsfeld to be deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. In 2003, according to the Los Angeles Times, Boykin went on a cross-country church speaking tour. In Oregon, while in uniform, he told churchgoers that the U.S. was hated "because we're a Christian nation," and America's enemies would "only be defeated if we comea gainst them in the name of Jesus." Boykin's statements caused a firestorm on Capitol Hill, and a Pentagon investigative report leaked to the Washington Post in 2004 found that his speeches had violated three internal guidelines.

Today, Boykin still holds the same post and his three general's stars.

Whether or not there's a political bias on free speech in the service, critical attitudes are getting easier to find. The"long war" in Iraq and Afghanistan is conditioning junior grunts to exercise greater independence in making decisions. It's also a struggle whose reality often falls short of the ideals that attracted many young men and women to the service. As a result, said Sherman, it's fair to wonder if returning veterans "won't be able to compartmentalize their experiences abroad, if they'll feel restricted from thinking outside the box" back home. "The more independence we extend to service persons in the field," she said,"the less reasonable it might be to bring them home and expect them to be silent." Sherman saw this as a positive development. "You want the soldier to ultimately be able to express his conscience,"Sherman said. "Otherwise, you have mindless soldiers."

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, agreed. "It's quite important that active duty military personnel feel free to express themselves when someone is under the gun," he said. Fidell saw Pace's Libby letter as "a real dividend in terms of justice for GIs. It was a reflection of a greater willingness among service members to come forward and speak freely." At the same time, Fidell conceded that all speech is not treated equally in the ranks. "It only becomes a matter of concern or interest if it is hostile to the government," he said.

Lebowitz sees this as an unfair catch-22: It's up to the government and the military culture to decide what's hostile to the government, and by and large, that's anything critical of the status quo. He's gotten calls and letters from a variety of military personnel sympathetic to Kokesh, but he can't get many to support an anti-war comrade on the record. "The military is a very small world," said Lebowitz, "and word gets around, even between the branches. There's definitely a chilling effect."

He's not expecting a letter from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on Kokesh's behalf anytime soon.

Comfort the comfortable.

An old adage in journalism says that your job should be "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Yet here's one Sun-Sentinel journalist's account of how the paper's new leadership set its repertorial priorities:

"snippets of reader interviews were shown ... informing us that predominantly white, overweight people want more stories about local restaurants, water restrictions, gas prices, anti-depressants, pets, vibrator sales and immigration. (Not the actual immigration issue, mind you, just clues to where they can shop and work to avoid immigrants themselves.) ... They want stuff that appeals to that selfishness, we’re told. ... Readers just don’t have time to get up off their lazy asses and research things themselves. At least not the readers we’re aiming for.

To put it bluntly, our job now is to comfort the comfortable and ignore the afflicted. Unless they’re bothering the comfortable. In that case, we need to tell the comfortable what they can do to avoid the afflicted."

Not unlike my experience in Tallahassee. Thank God muckrakers and industry watchdogs like Bob Norman are still around.

A letter to my friend at the crappy local newspaper.

Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:08:14 -0400
From: aw333@columbia.edu
To: ******@sun-sentinel.com
Subject: Good Lord. Maybe it's good that print news is dying.

Well, I suppose it was time for the obligatory annual "Hi ******, remember me?" email anyway. I was just talking with ^^^^^ and +++++, both of whom you may not remember... I'd caught up with them at last summer's Ely HS 10-year reunion. I went so you wouldn't have to, and believe me when I say it was a truly Christlike sacrifice to be there.

Anyway, we were all sitting around the other day, sopping up brews and inveighing against the dumbification of the Scum Sentinel. It's no big surprise to me, since I worked at the Tallahassee Democrat for the last two years and got to see Knight Ridder and then Gannett gut a newspaper-of-record just to try the whole "blogs and neighborhood drivel" angle. (We should compare notes sometime. Ask me about my time as the "Hungry Hungry Hipster," the paper's pop-culture blogger. Irony: Anyone who looks at me can immediately discern that I am never hungry and rarely hip.)

But after bashing Earl Maucker and a fair number of other Tribune peons for an hour or so, I said, "That's all well and good, but as long as they save a place for ******'s pithy movie reviews and stories, I'll keep my subscription."

So. Then. What's with all this AP wire stealing your space in "Showtime"? What's with the online video review of Shrek III? (We tried that at the Dem, too... there's nothing sadder than a bunch of talented writers looking uncomfortable and untalented as TV anchors. No offense to colleagues of yours, but I'd buy your newspaper, if it guaranteed *never* seeing video of Mike Mayo and Tom Jicha.) Tell me, my gifted 10th-grade crush, that you have a resume all set up and ready to fax, because this "community news" screed clearly doesn't know what to do with the few good folks they have.

But enough shop talk. Real reason for writing: I've got just a few months in town before returning to grad school in Manhattan and think it's high time for a reunion. How about it? Would anybody in the Sentinel building miss you if you slipped out for lunch? (More likely they'd just replace you with a panel of old ladies from Sunrise who'd rail on about the unnecessary growth of adult situations in big-studio comedies.) Go ahead, take a chance. I'll even introduce you to the missus.

Seriously, though. Hope all is well with you, and hope to hear from you soon.

- Adam

P.S. remember Tatiana? She says hello. She also says you should read Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist", but I'm going to overrule her on that one.