Hugh and Larry Beware!

Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt watch out! A January 15, 2008 article in Wired.com's Threat Level pointed out that the NSA chief, Michael McConnell, is so worried about cyber terrorism that he thinks there should be absolutely no privacy online. The government, he says, should be allowed to tap your phones, tap your phone lines, tap your email and your Google searches... Personally, I think this is a secret attempt by the NSA to get free access to porn on the internet. It makes perfect sense.

Back in the early nineties he was the guy who backed the so-called Clipper Chip, which would enforce a back door in every encryption system developed. Now he's trying to get a patently illegal (in the US) law put through Congress. And why else? Not for terrorism, which would be considerably easier to stop through intense effort to develop better foreign relations. Definitely not for the safety of US citizens. (I mean, they still have trash cans in airports -- how serious can they be about safety?)

No, it's pretty obvious: they want a way to get their porn for free. Larry and Hugh have a major stake in seeing this law doesn't pass. Once the NSA has their hands on the porn, they're lost: everyone in the government will have it (and once it falls into CIA hands everyone will have it).

The Kook and the Clown

Big news today! The so-called "video proof" of 9-11 has been proven a hoax. After years of Americans fooling themselves into believing 9-11 was the responsibility of "terrorist masterminds," news reporters have finally vindicated Osama bin Laden and his peace-loving organization, al-Quaida. You can read the full story of the Faking of the Osama bin Laden video.

Oh, and speaking of which, you can also collect the entire Hitler playing card collection.

Why is it that people rely on comedy when dealing with The Bad Guy? (Speaking of which, I can't find a good mockery of Osama bin Laden, but apparently one of his nieces is a model, and another has just signed a six-figure deal to be a porn star...) The art of mockery -- satire -- was born a long time ago, back in the late Renaissance. It flourished in the written and verbal form during the 1700s and, later, took on the visual arts: cartoons, movies and eventually television. Charlie Chaplin was best known for his satire of Adolph Hitler (as shown above, a still from the October 1940 film, The Great Dictator), and he was possibly the first and greatest satirist of the big screen.

We've been trying since. We really have. It's not our fault we're miserable failures in the enemy-as-comic relief department. Ever since Chaplin we've been headed sorta down hill. Exaggeration seems to be the best we can manage -- "Dubbya" has big ears, Stalin is obscenely obese and looks like the Santa from hell, and don't even get me started on satire of Mao Tse-Tung (I couldn't find any particularly good cartoons). Today there's also a new form of satire -- satirical music (best exemplified, in my opinion, by Ray Stevens' Osama, Yo Mama).

But they all pale in comparison to Chas. Is it because Hitler, as opposed to Osama bin Ladin, truly was a terrifying spectre of things to come? I remember when I was about ten years old, sitting in "The Bagel Place" listening to two old men talking about Saddam Hussein and comparing him to Hitler. I also remember thinking, "Not a chance." Hitler had great generals, brilliant strategists, a war machine capable of producing vast amounts of material, and plenty of resources (oil notwithstanding). Hussein, by contrast, had oil. No great generals, no wealth to speak of, no strategists and tacticians, no excess with which to construct materiale. He just had oil.

Anyway, off topic rant there. Today the best we can really manage is satirical cartoons, primarily of our own leaders (who are, admittedly, very often the worst enemy we face). Still, I can't really say I miss the days of Charlie Chaplin, both because I dislike his movies and because the modern satirical cartoons are considerably more vitriolic than ever before.

Maybe one day we'll find an author truly worthy of the satirists from the early years of satire. But I doubt it. The fine art of political mockery has well and truly come into its own in the modern political cartoon -- probably because it's too hard for most readers to get through a book, whereas cartoons are quick and easy.

Well, I've gotten totally off topic. My original purpose was just to share the top two stories, and now I've been babbling about satire and Charlie Chaplin for far too long. Allahu Akbar!