On Torture and Global Warming, Bush Is More Than Just Out of Touch

It's one thing for a president to be out of touch with the realities of his country and the world. It's another thing entirely when that president, through his ostrich-like placement of his head in the sand (I was thinking of another destination for his head, but I decided to take the higher road ...), has destroyed the country's standing in the world.

Two issues have come up in the last week that have demonstrated how far the United States has fallen thanks to the policies of George W. Bush.

Yesterday, in Oslo, Al Gore was given the Nobel Peace Prize for his work educating the world on the dangers of global warming. In his speech, which was greeted warmly by those in attendance, Gore soberly and powerfully laid out the case of the damages caused by CO2 emissions to the ecosystem and the action that needs to be taken to combat these problems, something he has done thousands of times before. Just before the end of his remarks, he said:

"Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: 'What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?' Or they will ask instead: 'How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?'"

I doubt he meant it his way, but I can't help thinking that these are questions that need to be posed to Bush.

A week earlier, a climate conference was held in Bali (say what you want about the global warming crowd, but they certainly know where to hold an event), at which the new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, reversed his country's course and agreed to sign the Kyoto pact, leaving the United States as the last major industrialized nation not to agree to the treaty. Meanwhile, attendees rejected the Bush plan (technology, private investment and economic growth instead of mandatory emissions cuts) and called on the U.S. to wake up and become a leader in the fight to combat global warming before it's too late.

Essentially, the world has come together and agreed that we are facing a climate crisis, awarded one of the highest prizes possible to the man urging for immediate action on global warming, and yet the President of the United States thinks he knows better. He threatened to veto an energy bill passed by the house that called for mandatory cuts in emissions by 2050 (not exactly rushing things, after all), but was saved when his GOP-mates in the Senate blocked consideration of the bill, keeping the Democrats from getting the 60 votes needed to proceed.

So, on the global warming issue, Bush has turned the country into an ignorant, backwater, third-world country, marching on with our ruinous ways in the face of overwhelming evidence of impending disaster. As I've said before, Bush is a modern-day Nero, fiddling while his empire burns (or in this case, chokes on CO2 gas).

Unfortunately, this was the kind of week where, thanks to Bush, the U.S. didn't even take its worst hits over the climate change issue. Instead, the world got to see how far we've fallen as torture again took a front-and-center position in our government. Last week it was revealed that the CIA had destroyed two videotapes of interrogations of suspected Al-Qaeda operatives. On Sunday, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), appearing on ABC's "This Week," called for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate. Even Republicans, such as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who oppose the idea of a special counsel being appointed, still support investigations by the Justice Department and the CIA. And what does President Bush have to say about all of this? First, the administration said Bush was never told about the tapes, and now they have stopped discussing the issue in public.

To me, the debate over how to investigate the destruction of the tapes completely misses the point. What this incident shows is how much the Bush administration has destroyed America's place in the world. Thanks to the White House, to the world, the United States is a country that tortures. To be clear, I'm not naive enough to think that the U.S. has never been involved in nefarious activities abroad in the past, whether it was Nicaragua, Chile, or anywhere else. But making the leap from being a country in which bad stuff sometimes happens to a country who as a national policy supports torture (yes, I believe waterboarding is torture, and more importantly, so does the rest of the world, not to mention that subjects of interrogation in "friendly" countries like Egypt that faced far worse during questioning).

For Bush to put the imprimatur of law on interrogations that most of the world would call torture is disgraceful. In one simple decision, the president has reduced the moral standing of the United States in the world. How can we honestly criticize the limitations of rights in places like Russia and China when whoever we criticize can point their fingers back at us and say, "Look who's talking." And, certainly, by condoning torture, Bush has put the troops in the field at risk. Again, if an American soldier is tortured in Iraq or Afghanistan, how can the administration protest? Then again, Bush has shown so little regard for Americans serving in the military, I'm not sure why this issue should be any different.

And it's not like it's just liberals like me who are complaining. Many Republicans, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have spoke out on the need for the U.S. to reject torture. In the wake of the revelation about the destruction of the CIA tapes, McCain was quoted as saying, "What this does in a larger sense is it harms the credibility and the moral standing of America in the world again."

What makes this all so sad to me is the long-lasting effects of the White House's actions. Throughout American history, there have been ups and downs as different administrations come to power with different agendas and outlooks on the world. This ebb and flow of power is something that we all have come to accept and recognize as part of the American political system.

But what Bush has done has broken away from this traditional teeter-totter. He has stepped over lines and broken taboos that go to the heart of who we are as a nation. He loves to talk about "freedom," but by allowing sanctioned torture on his watch, he has deviated from hundreds of years of American policy and abdicated any moral leadership claim for the country. It's not like George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, or Richard Nixon sanctioned torture in this way, and they were all Republicans.

When the questioner in Gore's speech asks, "Why didn't you act?", the main response, for the period of 2001 to 2008, will be, "Because we had a president that was stubborn and just got it all wrong." The same answer holds for both sanctioned torture and global warming. And for Iraq and a dozen other important issues that arose during the Bush presidency. The clean-up of the damages caused by Bush's eight years in office will take unbelievable effort, and some of the damage is probably beyond repair. The only positive is that Bush won't be in charge to oversee the work. He would probably send "Brownie" down to run things and tell him what "good work" he's done. Then we would really be in trouble.

“Underbelly” Makes Itself Too Comfortable in the Mainstream

[NOTE: The following article will also appear as my regular television column for WILDsound.]

ABC has returned another sitcom to the air, and it’s not “According to Jim” (yet). So that’s two things to celebrate. “Notes From the Underbelly” (ABC Mondays, 9:30 p.m. Eastern), which had an eight-week run in April and May last season, made its way back to the network’s schedule last Monday at 9:30 p.m. in the comfy spot after “Samantha Who?” (which moves to 9:00 p.m. from 9:30 p.m., where it had followed the “Dancing With the Stars” juggernaut).

At first blush, “Samantha” and “Underbelly” appear to be a good match. Both are single-camera half-hour comedies aimed at more “adult” (as in identity, not porn) issues. But where “Samantha” is a truly original, sharply written breath of fresh air (you can read my October 18 review here), “Underbelly,” despite certain surface appearances to the contrary, rehashes ground that has been heavily trod many times before. More importantly, “Underbelly” just isn’t as funny and clever as it could and should be. Which is a shame, since there are some really positive elements in place.

The sitcom follows a group of six friends, two couples and two singles. Lauren and Peter (Jennifer Westfeldt of “Kissing Jessica Stein” and virtual TV newcomer Peter Cambor) are expecting their first baby. Julie and Eric (Melanie Deanne Moore, who you’ll recognize from numerous commercials, and Sunkrish Bala, in his first series lead) are the overprotective parents of newborn baby Perry (who they constantly call “Baby Perry”). Cooper (Rachael Harris, who has guested on a ton of other shows) is a baby-averse, hard-as-nails divorce attorney, and Danny (Michael Weaver, a survivor of the legendarily bad “The Mullets”) is a juvenile goofball.

If that set up of characters feels like you’ve seen it all before, that’s because you have. Cooper and Danny are stock characters that have been present in numerous sitcoms, and they lack the slightest bit of three-dimensionality or originality. Harris looks as though her face would break if she smiled, and Weaver seems to have his emotion meter constantly set to maximum silly. To show Danny’s immaturity, the writers actually resurrected the long-trite bit of the clueless guy eating face cream thinking it’s dip. New mom Julie is the most insufferable character of all, especially as embodied by the helium-voiced, mega-caffeinated Moore. These three seem like they have relocated to “Underbelly” from one of the mindless sitcoms out there, like “According to Jim” or “Two and a Half Men.”

The plots are as clichéd as the supporting characters. This season’s debut last week revolved around Julie contending with an overly protective nanny (yeah, there’s one we’ve only seen a thousand times before), while Danny and Cooper stumble into a credibility-straining opposites-attract series of dinners that were not only tired but wholly predictable. (Wow, he can cook and she reads romance novels she keeps in the oven. Startling ... not so much.) Meanwhile, Lauren and Peter argue over whether or not they should find out the gender of their fetus, which, by my calculation, is the 1,876,474th time a show has adopted that story line this decade (hey, if the show can be so lazy with its plots, I don’t have to actually do research to find out the real number of times the device has been used, right?). The conflict sets up Lauren’s complaint that Peter isn’t assertive enough, only to find in the end, of course, that he does stand up for things he really cares about, and their dynamic works fine for who they are.

It reminded me of how CBS’s “Rules of Engagement,” a comedy that aims far lower than “Underbelly”(David Spade is a cast member, so that’s a given), handled a similar plot line so much better. (You can read my September 27 review of “Rules” here.) In “Rules,” Patrick Warburton’s Jeff is banished to the guest room when his snoring keeps Megyn Price’s Audrey awake. Jeff and Audrey go through their clever paces (including a very funny running joke involving Steven Seagal) before discovering at the end that they prefer being together. In “Underbelly,” we roll our eyes waiting for Lauren and Peter to reach their inevitable conclusion that their personalities are well-suited to each other, as we’re forced to endure epicly overused jokes, like Lauren reacting to Peter’s newfound assertiveness with a non-ironic rendering of the should-be-retired-forever line, “I’ve never been more turned on by you than I am right now.”

Monday’s episode wasn’t much better, built around Lauren and Peter’s neurotic stalking of their OB-GYN and Peter’s fear of not being able to take care of the baby once it arrives. The subplot involving Cooper’s use of Julie’s video blog about Baby Perry to ingratiate herself with her underlings at the office was certainly more inspired, but, again, the over-the-top silliness of the characters rendered the activity so unbelievable that the story line went down in flames. Actual personal blogs and Web sites can be exceptionally off-the-wall, and yet Julie’s blog, from the way it appeared on the computer to the manner in which she related personal details about her married life, felt false, almost like what someone who has never been online would imagine these kinds of videos to be like.

As I watched “Underbelly,” the one feeling that overwhelmed the others was the frustration that the show didn’t have to be this way. The single-camera format, which raises expectations that the program will not follow the conventional clichés of the sitcom format, only serves to highlight how mundane everything is. But even as the characters and stories felt like the work of a supremely mindless show, there were hints at what “Underbelly” could be. For starters, despite the recycled plots, the show avoids the kind of idiotic broad jokes that have threatened the genre (like, for example, Charlie Sheen rubbing his crotch on everything to combat a rash in this season’s premiere of “Two and a Half Men”). In the middle of the uninspired goings on, clever lines occasionally pop up like lifelines from a drowning show. I liked Lauren and Peter playfully sparring over the contents of their earthquake kit, with Lauren admitting she breaks into it when she’s hungry, and Peter admitting he has a second, back-up basket for that very reason. When she demands he reveal its location, arguing that he might not be home when the earthquake hits, Peter calmly replies that in that case, she will have learned her lesson. In the season premiere, they are equally charming while engaging in dueling bribes of a mariachi band (she wants them to leave, he wants them to stay).

Actually, Peter and Lauren, as portrayed by Westfeldt and Cambor, are likable and funny characters that deserve to be surrounded with a better show. Westfeldt’s indie film pedigree (she broke through writing and starring in “Kissing Jessica Stein”) is apparent in her performance. There aren’t many female comedy leads on network television as unaffected and low-key as she is in “Underbelly.” And I like the kind of goofy naturalness Cambor brings to Peter. In lesser hands, especially surrounded by far broader characters and performers, there would be great temptation to amp up Peter’s dorkiness. But Cambor matches Westfeldt’s easy-going demeanor, creating a couple that you would like to spend a half hour with, especially if they were given funnier dialogue and less clichéd plot lines to work with.

I also like that the show is not afraid to portray Lauren as being ambivalent about her impending motherhood. That angle is not one we’ve seen often on network television, especially on a half-hour comedy. I suspect that Moore’s over-the-top mom Julie was placed next to Lauren to highlight her lack of blind joy about having a baby, but I wish the producers would have trusted Westfeldt to make us feel Lauren’s doubt on her own. She’s certainly up to the task. Julie’s cartoon-like enthusiasm hammers the point home, and it’s painful to watch.

At a time when sitcoms are having trouble finding a place on network schedules, I greet the introduction of any half-hour comedy with a mixture of happiness and worry. At this point, the mere existence of a new or returning sitcom is cause for celebration. But at the same time, I am concerned that if the program doesn’t cut it, with critics and/or audiences, the failure will be used to bolster the idea that comedy no longer works on television. Personally, I think that good comedy will always find an audience, but it might take a bit more time than, say, a police procedural.

As a result, I went into the second season of “Underbelly” hoping for it to be good, so it could join “Samantha Who?” to create a solid hour of comedy on ABC. That didn’t happen. But I’m happy to say that there is enough to “Underbelly,” especially with its lead couple, that maybe the show will find its voice and get better. To do so, ABC will have to be patient and allow the producers to take some chances and provide the lead characters with some original and offbeat material to work with.

In the end, the problem with “Notes from the Underbelly” is that there isn’t enough “Underbelly” being explored. And let’s face it: “Notes from the Been-There-Done-That Mainstream” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

With Bush's Continued Outrageousness, Why Is the Result of the Presidential Election in Doubt?

Diane Sawyer (Jan Hooks): You still have a minute-twenty, Mr. Vice-President.

George Bush (Dana Carvey): Well, more has to be done, sure. But the programs we have in place are doing the job, so let's keep on track and stay the course.

Diane Sawyer: You have fifty seconds left, Mr. Vice-President.

George Bush: Let me sum up. On track, stay the course. Thousand points of light.

Diane Sawyer: Governor Dukakis. Rebuttal?

Michael Dukakis (Jon Lovitz): I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!

- An excerpt from a 1988 "Saturday Night Live" sketch of a Bush-Dukakis debate before that year's presidential election.

I read a Yahoo/AP article today on the administration's reaction to the release of a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iran has not pursued a nuclear weapon since 2003, and I immediately thought of the "Saturday Night Live" moment outlined above. It seems to me that we're again living in a time where the actions of the government and the electorate seem out of step with common sense.

Last week I wrote a piece on why I thought Hillary Clinton wasn't electable. I have since had discussions with several people about which Democratic presidential hopeful has the best chance of winning, and which Republican candidate would be the most dangerous opponent. The result, for me, has been a kind of pessimism and exhaustion on the topic, not to mention a building feeling of anger.

I can't help thinking to myself, "After all that the Bush administration has done in the last seven years to tear this country apart, why is the election so close? Why isn't there more outrage?" When Jon Lovitz, as Michael Dukakis, looked into the camera in the SNL sketch and pleadingly expressed, with complete disbelief, what so many of me and my friends were thinking, it summed up the moment perfectly. And it sums up how I'm feeling now.

The history major in me realizes that, in 1988, a short, ethnic, soft-spoken, stoic, intellectual governor of Massachusetts had no shot against a tall, gregarious Texan who was a sitting vice president in a popular administration, regardless of the fact that the Texan was really from Connecticut and obviously lacked the substance of his opponent. But it didn't make Bush Sr.'s victory go down any easier. And I'd like to hope that we'll be smarter in 2008 than we were in 1988, but more and more, I'm thinking that we haven't learned a thing.

Of course, the 1988 sense of outrage was nothing compared to what I felt at the elections of George W. Bush, who not only came off as less intelligent than his father, but is a far more dangerous ideologue, putting his partisan, right-wing, often religion-derived beliefs ahead of minor details like facts, competency and the law.

So, after the disaster that Iraq turned into, complete with cherry-picked intelligence, a total lack of planning and a lack of respect for the soldiers being asked to make tremendous sacrifices in the name of Bush's discredited beliefs (including enduring appalling conditions at Walter Reed Hospital), along with incidents of failure and disgrace, from Hurricane Katrina to the outing of an undercover CIA agent as part of partisan gamesmanship, and, most of all, a strategy of striking fear and uncertainty in Americans as a way of rolling back basic rights and freedoms and consolidating executive power, I am left with the same feeling I had on that Saturday night in 1988, feeling like, "I can't believe I'm losing to this party." Only this time, the emotion is exponentially worse, like it's trained with Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa for a few months and partook in some of that magic flaxseed oil.

While I might have complained in the Hillary Clinton piece about how bad the Democrats are at picking presidential candidates, as I watch the continued disgraceful behavior of the White House, I get even more upset that the electorate isn't massively rallying around changing the party in charge of the executive branch. Or, from another point of view, why, finally, after seven years of incompetence and utter mismanagement, the country is not looking for substance over flash and competence and intelligence over pretty faces and fear mongers (and, sometimes, candidates who are both, yes I'm talking to you, Mitt).

The Yahoo/AP article on Iran really set me off. It contains this paragraph:

"The administration is worried that the new National Intelligence Estimate — representing a consensus of all U.S. spy agencies — weakens its leverage over Iran and its ability to build global pressure on Tehran to stop its uranium enrichment program."

Read the sentence carefully. It says, in a very matter-of-fact, dispassionate way, that the administration is upset that the facts have interfered with Bush's agenda on Iran. Remember, it's not the New York Times or Washington Post that has printed an article on Iranian behavior, but rather, the report is the product of the U.S. intelligence agencies of the federal government. The attitude from the administration seems to be, "We know Iran is bad, we know we have to go after them, so why would you possibly release any information that gets in the way of that?"

This lack of respect for the facts has been a hallmark of this administration. And instead of being outraged by Bush's continuous lack of respect for freedom and democracy, it seems as if people have just gotten used to it, like it's something that has to be accepted and tolerated. It doesn't.

You don't have to be a political science major to know that Iran is not a friend of America and has to be monitored closely. Reasonable people can differ as to how much of a threat Iran poses and what actions should be taken to keep Iran in check. But shouldn't that discussion be based on all of the facts available? And shouldn't the discussion be led by the facts, not have facts cherry-picked to make the case for an already-determined conclusion?

More to the point, didn't we learn anything from Iraq? As much as the administration would love you to believe that the military successes of the recent surge have made the previous four-and-a-half years of failure go away, the bottom line is that the drop in violence has not led to significant political reconciliation. The goal wasn't making things calmer for a few months, but to make things calmer so that the Iraqi political process could move forward. That hasn't happened. In the bigger picture, the death, destruction, financial cost, moral cost, security cost, loss of respect in the world, and damage to the U.S. military and its ability to engage in other parts of the world (including Afghanistan, where earlier victories are being reversed by a resurgent Taliban) can lead to only one logical conclusion: The decision to invade Iraq was hasty, misguided, and damaging, and if America could get a do-over, it would undoubtedly be the right decision to go back to 2003 and try a different policy.

But despite this, it seems like the administration is at it again, running the same game plan, but this time substituting "Iran" for "Iraq." Only this time, not only is the U.S. weakened by its Iraqi misadventure, but it is up against a more powerful opponent. What was the purpose of a Senate resolution designating the Iranian Republican Guard as a terrorist organization, even though the U.S. list of terrorist entities doesn't contain any other governmental entities? The only conclusion to be drawn is that it is a justification for future action. Do Americans want to go to war with Iran? I highly doubt it. So why isn't there more of an outcry?

The Yahoo/AP article contains the following quote from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

"I am not going to comment on that comment except to say that what the National Intelligence Estimate shows, and the transparency with which the administration released it, is what it means to live in a democracy and I hope one day that the people of Iran will live in a democracy too."

I almost choked on my breakfast reading that one. Didn't the article say, a few paragraphs earlier, that the White House was angry about the release of the report? In a few hundred words, the administration went from censors to proponents of free speech quickly enough to induce whiplash. More importantly, the Bush administration has a long and thorough record of stamping out speech. This DNC summary from June 2005, complete with citations to major newspapers for its facts, does a good job of hitting some of the high points, including the administration redacting parts of an EPA report that supported the existence of global warming, moving to censor scientific reports that conflicted with its policies, and requiring a second report on drilling in the Arctic when the first report went against certain White House claims. And, of course, that summary does not even go into the administration's handling of Iraq intelligence (and the lack of weapons of mass destruction), the stonewalling of requests for the identities of the people advising the vice president on energy policy, and the complete shut-down of cooperation on the probes into the firing of the U.S. Attorneys and the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the media, just to name a few glaring instances.

When Rice can stand up and brag about the transparency of the Bush presidency and the full weight of the press and the American citizenry doesn't come crashing down on her duplicity, all I can do is summon the Lovitz SNL line and wonder what has to happen before people pay attention.

We are at a dangerous time in our history. From Islamic extremism to global warming, and from the rising power of China to the lurking problems with the U.S. economy, and with a U.S. culture that values bargains over sacrifice and ignorant bliss over an effort to become informed, the nation faces an uncertain time. We have some big choices to make, and if we choose wrong, the results can be calamitous.

I hope it doesn't take one of these calamities to finally get people's attention. The last thing we need is current SNL cast member Darrell Hammond, doing his drone-heavy Al Gore characterization, looking into the camera and saying, "I can't believe they didn't listen to me." If it gets that far, it could be too late.