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Civil Warland in Bad Decline

Official VM buddy Mitch Prothero recently filed a story on the underreported civil war in Gaza, explaining some aspects of journalism in the process:

Palestinians are the easiest people in the world to cover as a journalist. They respect the work, know journalists take risks to tell their story, and, frankly, know that stories of their suffering under Israeli oppression are good P.R. But it’s not just cynical and calculating; they’re Arabs and that stuff about Arabs’ respect for guests is very real and sincere.

Having said that, a lot of the goodwill toward the foreign journo dries up when it’s Arabs fighting each other. Suddenly, you’re not documenting a noble struggle against occupation, you’re just some foreigner. And if you’re in a hospital full of pissed-off Military Intelligence officials tending to their wounded, it’s a disaster. As I tried to take pictures, I was suddenly surrounded by a mob of armed men grabbing at my cameras. Luckily, the son of a wounded official jumped into the fray and dragged me to a side room. Once he checked my digital images, he informed the angry crowd I had done nothing wrong and I was free to take pictures outside the hospital.

I like the mention that Hamas would be all for peace if Israel would just return to its 1967 borders. It’s always funny how no one asks Jordan how they feel about going back to those borders. . .

And Mitch also had an article about how the Hariri assassination in Beirut may’ve also been tied to a bank scandal (still implicating the Syrian government).

In the name of all this investigative and life-risking journalism, I’ll cut him some slack for not being able to make it to our wedding. . .

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Update

Sorry I’ve been outta the loop, dear reader. I was just in one of those not-writing-so-much phases. I can’t afford to get caught in that for long, since I’ve gotta write profiles on the top 20 pharma & top 10 biopharma companies this month.

I’ve also been reading that Robert Moses biography pretty devotedly. Since it’s insanely long, I’ve been a little afraid of putting it down for a few days and losing my steam. It’s a phenomenal story, and the author’s just reached the point where all of Moses’ bridges and parkways are managing to create more traffic. The crux of the problem — Moses’ power-thirstiness — appears to be explained as a function of RM’s domineering mother and grandmother, which just sounds kinda boring. I’m hoping that Caro’s interpretation of RM’s personality gets a little more intricate, otherwise I’m afraid that NYC really is just a twisted child’s vision.

In other news, we went to a surprise 40th birthday party for my “big sister” (next-door neighbors who are more family to me than just about anyone beyond my immediate relations) on Saturday night. It was good to catch up with some of them, since we never get together, even though I still live next door to their house (where their mom lives). Just about all my “brothers and sisters” have kids now, so the evening was spent making sure they stayed out of trouble, got enough attention, and didn’t hear my gin-lubricated sailor-speaking mouth. It was good times.

We also discovered a good restaurant earlier in the day, while looking for a birthday present. It’s right across the street from one of the finest pizzerias in NJ, which I had to stare at while eating my rogan josh. It’s a tough life.

On the plus side, official VM buddy (and nearly VM wedding-officiant) Tom Spurgeon is coming to visit this week. We’ll watch the first game of the NBA finals Thursday night, maybe get to the Belmont (if he’s got an extra ticket for me) on Saturday, hit the MoCCA Art Festival on Sunday, and generally shoot the breeze, which I find to be a delightful and worthwhile pursuit.

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Scan and Pan

Continuing that series of posts and links about contemporary fiction, here’s a piece in Slate about how book sales are measured and ignored:

[Using Bookscan to garner sales numbers] has become popular for a few reasons having to do with the culture of journalism and publishing. In general, the publishing world treats money the way old-line WASPs once did—as a subject that genteel people simply don’t discuss. The only question considered to be more indelicate than how much one was paid to write a book is how many copies it has sold.

Enjoy.

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XLR8

The Instapundit rhapsodizes the Xcelerator hand-dryer in his new column. The official VM wife and I have used Xcelerators at the Palisades Mall restrooms for a while now, and they’re a hoot. You really do get the “rippling skin”/skydiving visual from them. And if you leave your hands stationary under the vent, they’ll be sore for the rest of the day.

We’ve been waiting to hear stories about, um, other parts put under the vent from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but no dice so far. They’ve been too busy taking chemistry sets out of the hands of potential meth-making bombers or something.

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Hot ticket

Here’s an article from Forbes about the roots of corrupt behavior. It explores the matter via the parking tickets unpaid by UN diplomats in NYC:

Scandinavian countries, which perennially rank among the least corrupt in the corruption index, had the fewest unpaid tickets [between 1998 and 2005]. There were just 12 from the 66 diplomats from Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Almost all of these tickets went to one bad Finn.

Chad and Bangladesh, at the bottom of the corruption index, were among the worst scofflaws. They shirked 1,243 and 1,319 tickets, respectively, in spite of the fact that their UN missions were many times smaller than those of the Scandinavians.

The last time I heard about Chad and cars was when they fought with Libya and used Toyota pickups instead of tanks or APCs.

Find out what Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer decided to do about the problem.