Boy George and George Tenet made the Drudge Report Sunday, both in manners I’m sure they hadn’t planned on. It’s hard to say which story is more appalling, but it’s easy to say which is more serious - Tenet’s. This is the former DCI we’re talking about here. Is he a moron or a liar or both? Any of those three answers is disconcerting but they are the only conclusions you can draw from this:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has now learned of a second, more stunning error in Tenet’s book (which is due to appear in bookstores tomorrow). According to Michiko Kakutani’s review in Saturday’s Times,

Here’s the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday.” And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.

This is something much disturbing than mere forgetfulness on Tenet’s part. It is also almost ludicrously poor editing by his publishers HarperCollins. (And they say blogs don’t have fact-checkers!) And how embarrassing is a gaffe like this to the CIA themselves, who are supposed to vet all works of former employees.

The best of the three awful choices above, alas, is that Tenet is a liar. Intelligence agents, as even those of us whose knowledge only comes from LeCarré novels know, are sometimes called up to prevaricate. But they are supposed to do it well. Tenet lies like a nitwit, if that’s what he was doing.

My conclusion: an inept organization was led by a stupefyingly inept man.

Glenn Reynolds has two posts on the top of Instapundit this morning that remind me of why I could never be a politician - one about Iraq and one about the environment. I could say that was because “I cannot tell a lie,” but that would be … a lie. It’s because I’m not good enough an actor. My real thoughts and feelings pop out too easily.

I don’t regret this for a second. I wouldn’t want to be a politician. I want to stick with my own opinions, thank you. And my own self. The need for political victory not only distorts what you think and feel, it distorts it to such a degree that you probably no longer remember what you thought and felt in the first place. You have become a creature of your own prevarications. You are … someone new.

That politicians are often inauthentic human beings is not exactly news, but it has been exacerbated in our times by their high visibility . They are forced to give their opinions on virtually all matters in a non-stop all-news cycle. These opinions are in turn crafted to appeal to constituencies (often the “base” in primaries, then the “center” in the general election) much in the manner products are crafted for consumers. They are, in essence, phony - and we the consumers (the voters) know it. How could we not? Yet we - with the media as the all-too-willing promoter - participate in this charade.

Frequently I too play this game on here, but recently I have found it more nauseating than usual. An example is just below - a disconnect in the man I am supporting at this moment - Rudy Giuliani - between what he says and what I suspect he really thinks.

Of course the Democrats are far worse in that regard these days. Thus those initial links to Instapundit above. On the issue of Iraq, I cannot imagine a more inauthentic human being than Harry Reid (second place: Nancy Pelosi). I wonder what he would say were he to read the linked post by Omar Fadhil, an actual Iraqi - and then have to confront Omar directly, person-to-person. I can’t imagine Reid’s reaction because I don’t think, after all this, he really has one - other than I want to get elected. In fact the entire Modern Liberal position (whatever that is) on the War on Terror is mired in contradiction, governed solely by an interest in political victory at a time when our children’s futures weigh in the balance. Indeed, Silvestre Reyes, dopey as he is, may be the poster boy for Modern Liberalism - all attitude and no knowledge.

Similarly, on the environmental issue, we have Democrats embracing Al Gore as their scientific guru (how silly is that) while their richer constituents rush to buy carbon offsets, which at first seemed to be a harmless Ponzi scheme, but now appear to be worse.

Is this a fallacy of democracy (as in “Two Cheers for…”)? Perhaps. But democracy is all we’ve got. And I also suspect it’s our only hope. But it puts a helluva responsibility on us citizens, cutting through the non-stop haze to find to find the real person behind the inauthenticity. That is the challenge of the long election of 2008.

I don’t for a second think Rudy Giuiliani is the slightest bit homophobic - as much of the world now knows, he stayed at the apartment of gay friends after his second marriage went South - but he is a politician running for office (the highest one!) and I was disappointed to read his recent parsing of the new civil unions legislation in New Hampshire (which I support):

“Mayor Giuliani believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Domestic partnerships are the appropriate way to ensure that people are treated fairly,” the Giuliani campaign said in a written response to a question from the Sun. “In this specific case the law states same sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it.”

It has always struck me that states’ rights is a game that people play when they want to. I admit to finding the concept attractive in a nostalgic way, but in the modern world of virtual communication it does seem strange that the same laws don’t apply in Los Angeles and Dallas. When job migration is a constant of our lives, it makes no sense that domestic partnership laws are not national. In fact, it asks for trouble.

Sorry for the inaccessibility. This site was down today due to technical difficulties beyond my control Thanks to the good folks at livingdot for getting me up and running again - and for the updated MoveableType.

Everybody’s going green these days. Some of it makes sense (changing a few light bulbs) and some of it is pretty loony (not changing your toilet paper), but from the fashion runways to the airplane runways, Green is Everywhere.

And wherever it is, Hollywood seems to have a hand in it. What’s up with that, you might ask? And many of the answers (narcissism, arrogance, etc.) are obvious. But - I suppose because I have labored in the screen trade - I received an email from a reader (who wants to remain anonymous) concerning something I have overlooked: the movie industry, specifically film production, is one of the most ecologically-wasteful businesses around. The reader wrote:

However, what we never hear about is how completely and systematically inefficient the movie industry is. If so many participants in this industry are concerned about global warming and are in favor of legislation controlling contributions by other industries, one would think that it would be interesting to reveal how energy wasteful the entertainment industry is as a matter of ordinary course business.

It should be self-evident that the movie industry is so profligate. This notion occurred to me because of a story related by friends who live on a sailboat and traverse the Bahamas regularly. They stumbled across a movie being filmed (Donald Sutherland, if I recall correctly). According to the story, the movie had been entirely filmed in Australia and the entire mess had been shipped to the Bahamas for a short segment because it had the perfect beach. It boggles the mind how much it cost to shift filming half way round the world and that a perfectly adequate beach could not be found in Australia. Now, this story may not be true, but I am certain that there are many similar stories of outrageous Hollywood spending and the consequent energy consumption.

I have no idea whether that particular story is true, but I will say this: The reader is bloody correct. I can think of dozens of instances, many of which I was involved in, in which no one ever gave the slightest thought to the ecological consequences of what we were doing. There were only two questions ever asked: Was it right creatively and how much did it cost, not necessarily in that order.

Never once, I hasten to add, did I hear the word “cost” attached to the environment, only to the studio’s pocketbook. I doubt that is changing in any real way. Maybe the studios are leading the charge on light bulbs and toilet paper these days, but you can bet you won’t hear Jeff Katzenberg advising Steven Spielberg to cut his shooting schedule to save on energy or cut down on greenhouse gases. This same duo was involved some years back in the brouhaha surrounding their efforts to build Dreamworks on the Ballona wetlands in Venice. They seemed anything but green at that time - 1995 - when it came to their work.

Of course, I could be wrong. Some people actually do walk the walk. Just not a lot of them.

Last week I had a lot of bad things to say about Paul Wolfowitz. Now I am not so sure. Evidently World Bank officials are cool to requests by W’s new attorney Robert Bennett to lay out the case for the embattled bank president. I don’t have any inside information on this, but I am becoming increasingly suspicious that the real issue here is not Wolfowitz’s behavior toward his girl friend, but far bigger fish - the Iraq War and, yet more importantly, Wolfowitz’s professed struggle against corruption among recipients of World Bank aid. This seems to me a genuinely good (and necessary) fight against a group of highly-entrenched (and often self-deceiving) adversaries. Was Wolfowitz fighting it well? I have no idea. But I would imagine it’s not easy. Indeed, this latest refusal even to hear his defense is an indication of just how hard it is.

UPDATE: Michael Totten pointed me to Christopher Hitchens’ eloquent defense of Wolfowitz and Riza, which appeared on Slate a few days ago.

My interview with Power Line’s John Hinderaker is up on Pajamas.

When I read that Katie Couric is in trouble as anchorwoman of the CBS Evening News (yawn), I am actually stunned that anybody still watches the evening network news at all. Why? Can anyone enlighten me? Is it just habit? Lethargy? There are so many more timely (and better) outlets giving you news when and where you want it. Who could possibly be interested in this predigested pap? Listening to these pontificators, male or female, puts me to sleep.

I would bet that if CBS just gave up the evening news altogether their revenues would skyrocket. Of course, there is the image/prestige factor for them to consider. But why? Can anyone seriously imagine … close your eyes here … that there will be an evening network news of the same nature ten or fifteen years from now? Why don’t they just put the animal out of its misery now and put it to sleep?

This French presidential election is obviously not over, but reading through Nidra Poller’s coverage for PJM, it’s clear things look pretty good at this moment for Nicolas Sarkozy.

What’s interesting to me is the potential influence Sarko’s victory might have on the US election. The French press was and is uniformly lined up against the conservative, according to Nidra. (This tracks with my far more cursory review of Le Monde, Libe, France 2, etc. and also what I glean from Fausta’s blog.) And yet Sarkozy seems headed for success at a level at least as comfortable as predicted in the polls.

What does that mean to us? Our press is not as uniform (or as propagandistic) as the French, but it’s pretty consistent nevertheless in its views - especially the major networks NBC, CBS and ABC, still more viewed than Fox at their news hours. But this uniformity may mean less than we think. The French people were apparently less subservient to their media than expected. What about ours? I suspect it’s similar. [But they will be subservient to blogs!-ed. Now you're talking.]

In the wake of the tragedy in Virginia (and the one in Colorado) we are hearing a lot of hand-wringing in the media (including Pajamas Media!) about how violent the US is…. what should we do…. etc., etc.

Frankly, I’m skeptical.

This is a country of three hundred million people. Compared to the rest of the world, I have not noticed it to be particularly violent. Europe, during my lifetime, has had fifty million or so die by each others’ hands. Asia, under Mao and Pol Pot and others, has seen carnage that may even surpass that hideous figure. The thirty-three who were murdered by a solitary lunatic in Virginia would not have created a blink in those environments. And we are not even alone in this form of solitary rage killing (assuming that you don’t think Pol Pot is “extended” rage killing). Even tiny Scotland has seen it occur, a country with a population of but five million. On a per capita basis, they could be argued to be far more violent than we are. (Sixteen were killed by the mass murderer in Scotland in 1996.) But that would be a specious argument just as arguing that the carnage in Virginia means that the USA is more violent than, say, France, where riots have raged off and on for the last couple of years.

My writing this is, of course, to demonstrate that the debates over the Second Amendment (about which I am agnostic) that are emerging from this tragedy are essentially pointless. Like all tragedies, the message is deeper and more complex than the quotidian arguments over gun control.