The May 24, 2004 issue of Newsweek stated that a memo written by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales after the September 11th attacks may have established the legal foundation that allowed for the abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Newsweek reported that in January 2002, Gonzales wrote to President Bush that, in his judgment, the post 9/11 security environment “renders obsolete [the Geneva Convention’s] strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”
According to Newsweek, Secretary of State Colin Powell “hit the roof ” when he read the memo, and he fired off his own note to Bush, warning that the new rules “will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice” and have “a high cost in terms of negative international reaction.” But then, on Meet the Press, he claimed that he did not recall the Gonzales memo. Huh?
There is an explanation, though. In November 2003, Powell was interviewed by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, an American correspondent for a London-based Saudi newspaper. Referring to Powell’s description of his international killer schedule, Al-Rashad asked, “So do you use sleeping tablets to organize yourself?”
“Yes,” Powell replied. “Well, I wouldn’t call them that. They’re a wonderful medication. How would you call it? They’re called Ambien, which is very good. You don’t use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien.”
So I decided to check out the side effects of Ambien: “Sleep medicines may cause the special type of memory loss known as amnesia. When this occurs, a person may not remember what has happened for several hours after taking the medicine. This is usually not a problem, since most people fall asleep after taking the medicine. Memory loss can be a problem, however, when sleep medicines are taken while traveling, such as during an airplane flight, and the person wakes up before the effect of the medicine is gone. This has been called ‘traveler’s amnesia. ’ Memory problems are not common while taking Ambien. In most instances memory problems can be avoided if you take Ambien only when you are able to get a full night’s sleep (7 to 8 hours) before you need to be active again. Be sure to talk to your doctor if you think you are having memory problems.”
If you remember to talk to your doctor, that is.
A study in the May 27, 2004 issue of Neuron confirms previous models of memory recall that found sensory-specific components of a memory are preserved in sensory-related areas of the brain. The hippocampus can draw on this stored sensory information to create vivid recall. Which is why, even after you’ve returned from a vacation, you may still fully recall the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of some of its particularly memorable moments. For their study, the researchers mapped brain activity in human volunteers who sampled different odors and viewed pictures of various objects. As for short-term memory loss, Wes Nisker writes in The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom: The Spiritual Experiments of My Generation:
“Recent research in molecular biology has given us a clue to the connection between THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and the actual experience of getting high. It turns out that our body produces its own version of THC and that the human brain and nervous system have a whole network of receptors for this cannabinoid-like substance. That means you’ve got a stash inside of you right now, and nobody can even bust you for it. Our body’s natural THC was discovered by Israeli neuro-scientists, who named it anandamide, from the Sanskrit word for ‘inner bliss.’ The scientists believe that our system produces this THC equivalent to aid in pain relief, for mild sedation, and also to help us forget. It is very important that we forget, because if we remembered everything that registers in our senses from moment to moment, we would be flooded with memory and could not function. So anandamide helps us edit the input of the world by blocking or weakening our synaptic pathways, our memory lanes.”
So, the next time somebody reminds you, “Don’t bogart that joint,” at least you’ll have a scientific explanation, if you can only remember what it is.
THE WAR ON INDECENCY
ARNOLD, MADONNA, DOONESBURY AND AN INTERNET PORN SCAM
I think maybe I should start selling “I Told You So” T-shirts.
In the ’90s, I published this item in The Realist: “Here’s a story about the arrogance of power even the tabloids won’t publish. At a dinner party, Arnold Schwarzenegger told a young woman he would give her $1,000 if she would stick her finger up her ass and then let him smell it. She refused. Later, he followed her into the bathroom and forcibly stuck his own finger up her ass. He did not pay her. She is an actress and has not brought a lawsuit because she fears it would hurt her career in Hollywood.”
But now Arnold has replaced Bill Clinton as America’s generic sex-joke reference. The morning after California’s recall election, on The View, Meredith Viera demonstrated to Joy Behar the governor-elect’s special handshake. Viera simply placed her right hand on Behar’s left breast. Amidst laughter and applause, Behar asked, “Can I please have my nipple back now?” It was a perfect example of television’s ever-expanding sense of permissiveness.
Even if you didn’t happen to catch the open mouth kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears during the MTV Music Video Awards—“It wasn’t a publicity stunt,” explained Britney, “we just did what felt right”—you certainly must have seen a photo of that smooch, which appeared on the front page of newspapers around the country.
This incident evoked the most public discussion since Michael Jackson kissed Lisa Marie Presley on the MTV Awards to prove that their marriage wasn’t a public relations gesture, and Al Gore kissed Tipper at the Democratic convention to prove that he wasn’t like that wife-cheating Bill Clinton. Indeed, the Atlanta Journal Constitution was deluged with complaints from readers about the Madonna-Brittany photo, and their managing editor apologized, saying that it should not have been published on the front page, but rather on the inside.
On a weekly media discussion program, News Watch, on the Fox network, moderator Eric Burns criticized the TV news and entertainment programs for showing clips of the kiss “over and over again,” though I counted a total of ten lingering displays of the kiss on News Watch itself.
“What’s next,” wondered conservative columnist Cal Thomas, “full frontal nudity?” Or, worse yet, presidential candidates “Joe Lieberman kissing Howard Dean?” Thomas was particularly concerned about newspapers arriving on the front doorstep and children bringing them into their homes.
The controversy was brought into focus by former Saturday Night Live cast member Jon Lovitz when he was a guest on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He complained that the televised kiss wasn’t long enough, because by the time he pulled his pants down to his ankles, it was already over.
But Lovitz could easily have gone on to pleasure himself simply for the sake of his own future health. The British magazine New Scientist had reported on a study in Australia which concluded that the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop prostate cancer. Apparently, ejaculation prevents carcinogens from building up in the gland. As if men need such encouragement to jerk off.
The New Scientist article was reported on in England, India, South Africa and New Zealand, as well as wire service coverage in the United States, not to mention providing fodder for morning radio shock jocks and late night talk show monologues.
On a recent Sunday, Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury depicted Reverend Scot Sloan reading a newspaper at breakfast: “Incredible. . . . There’s a new study that suggests that regular masturbation prevents prostate cancer.”
Boopsie responds, “Hey! . . . Enough of that!”
“Enough of what? It’s in the paper.”
“I don’t care! Talk like that makes me uncomfortable! People shouldn’t sit around talking about sex like it’s the weather! It’s just not appropriate!”
“You’re dating yourself, Boopsie.”
Zonker enters: “Hey, did you guys hear self-dating prevents cancer?”
Doonesbury has previously caused controversy. Tr
udeau pulled a 1985 series about abortion, and a 2001 strip poking fun at President Bush a few days after 9/11 (drawn before the terrorist attacks). In 1998, some papers refused to run a strip about accusations that President Clinton had sex with a White House intern and, just before the 2000 election, a strip that accused Bush of cocaine abuse. But this was the first time Trudeau allowed his syndicate to offer a substitute strip—one that was a year old, but with the current date.
Trudeau said the strip, which was censored by 400 out of 1400 papers, “isn’t really about masturbation or cancer, but about the shifting nature of taboos and the inabiity of two adults to have a certain kind of serious conversation. It’s a South Park world now, and younger readers are unlikely to be shocked or confused by anything they find in Doonesbury. Besides, our general experience is that most children don’t understand Doonesbury in any event, and thus sensibly avoid it.”
However, any children who were innocently trying to log on to a Web site—such as Disneyland, Bob the Builder, Teletubbies, Anna Kurnikova or Backstreet Boys, among many others—but who misspelled a name, would have been automatically misdirected to hard-core porn sites that they could not avoid, courtesy of “typo squatter” John Zuccarini. He was arrested for registering several thousands of Internet addresses and earning $1 million a year from porn Web site operators who paid him between 10 and 25 cents for each hit he sent their way.
This is the first prosecution under a new clause in the Amber Alert law, making it a crime to use “misleading” domain names to lure children to porn. But the Amber Alert legislation was originally intended only to combat physical abduction by sending out immediate information to aid in the safe recovery of a child. It was intended only for time-critical child abduction cases, where the victim is in imminent danger of bodily harm or death.
In December 2003, Zuccarini pleaded guilty and agreed to a prison term of 30 to 37 months. In a culture permeated by corporations misleading potential customers, he is among the sleaziest. He registered 15 variations of the popular children’s cartoon site, cartoonnetwork.com, and 41 variations on the name of teen pop star and Madonna-kisser Britney Spears. A child who typed cartoonjoe.com instead of joecartoon.com would wind up at an explicit sex site. Zuccarini was charged with “enticing children to pornography.”
“Although this man’s method of making a bunch of money is abhorrent,” said porn star Jenna Jameson, “I fail to see how he is responsible for enticing children into pornography. Why not charge the teachers and parents for not properly beating their children into correctly spelling ‘Barney’? Hell, why not charge the child too? The man is scum . . . that’s for sure, but should he be charged as enticing children into porn? No. False advertising, yes. I’m tired of people using the umbrella of ‘It’s for the children’ to cover everything they find morally reprehensible.”
There’s an irony here that must be acknowledged. Somewhere a child has a homework assignment to write a composition about President Bush (our misleader-in-chief) but, instead of typing whitehouse.gov, this child types white-house. com—the very same porn site where Jenna’s statement appeared.
BLOW JOB BETTY
As a friend of Lenny Bruce as well as the editor of his autobiogaphy, How to Talk Dirty Dirty and Influence People, I would’ve preferred this little story to have been included in the book from Lenny’s point of view rather than mine, but anyway. . . .
I remember sitting in an office with a few Playboy attorneys. They were anxious to avoid libel, so they kept changing the name of any person in the original manuscript who might bring suit. For example, Lenny had mentioned an individual called Blow Job Betty, and the lawyers were afraid she would sue.
“You must be kidding,” I said. “Do you really believe anybody would come out and admit that she was known as Blow Job Betty?”
The book ended with a montage of Lenny’s life experiences, cultural icons, folklore and urban myths:
“My friend Paul Krassner once asked me what I’ve been influenced by in my work.
“I have been influenced by my father telling me that my back would become crooked because of my maniacal desire to masturbate; by reading ‘Gloriosky, Zero’ in Annie Rooney; by listening to Uncle Don and Clifford Brown; by smelling the burnt shell powder at Anzio and Salerno; torching for my ex-wife; giving money to Moondog as he played the upturned pails around the corner from Hanson’s at 51st and Broadway; getting hot looking at Popeye and Toots and Caspar and Chris Crustie years ago; hearing stories about a pill they can put in the gas tank with water but ‘the big companies’ won’t let it out—the same big companies that have the tire that lasts forever—and the Viper’s favorite fantasy: ‘Marijuana could be legal, but the big liquor companies won’t let it happen’; Harry James has cancer on his lip; Dinah Shore has a colored baby; Irving Berlin didn’t write all those songs, he’s got a guy locked in the closet; colored people have a special odor.
“It was an absurd question. I am influenced by every second of my waking hour.”
The lawyers edited Harry James and Dinah Shore out of that paragraph, but for some unfathomable reason, Irving Berlin remained. There was one incident which they decided to omit entirely from the book. Lenny had been working at Le Bistro, a night club in Atlantic City. During his performance, he asked for a cigarette from anyone in the audience. Basketball star Wilt Chamberlain happened to be there. He lit a cigarette and handed it up.
“Did you see that?” Lenny whispered into the microphone. “He nigger-lipped it. . . .”
Lenny and I had an unspoken agreement that there would be nothing in the book about his use of drugs. When I first met him, he would shoot up in the hotel bathroom with the door closed, but now he just sat on his bed and casually fixed up while we were talking. That’s what we had been doing one time when Lenny nodded out, the needle still stuck in his arm.
Suddenly the phone rang and startled him. His arm flailed, and the hypodermic came flying across the room, hitting the wall like a dart just a few feet from the easy chair in which I sat uneasily. Lenny picked up the phone. It was Blow Job Betty, calling from the lobby. She came up on the elevator and went down on Lenny. In front of me.
Lenny had introduced us. “This is Paul, he’s interviewing me.” At one point, while she was giving him head, Lenny and I made eye contact. He looked at me quizzically, and his eyes said, “I’m not usually an exhibitionist.”
My eyes replied, “And I’m not usually a voyeur.”
A little later, Lenny said to her, “I really wanna fuck you now.”
Blow Job Betty gestured toward me and said, “In front of him?”
“Okay, Paul,” said Lenny, “I guess the interview is over now.”
In retrospect, I understand the mindset of Bill Clinton when he testified under oath that he “never had sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” The president had simply made the same distinction between intercourse and oral sex that Blow Job Betty had made.
Incidentally, those Playboy lawyers insisted on changing Blow Job Betty’s name to Go Down Gussie.
“I hope there actually is somebody out there named Go Down Gussie,” I told them, “and I hope that she sues Playboy for invasion of privacy.”
WHEN JUSTIN MET JANET
About 20 years ago, People magazine published a special feature on ’60s activists. A full page photo showed Ken Kesey, Wavy Gravy and me, all sitting on top of “Furthur,” the psychedelic relic of a bus that Tom Wolfe had chronicled in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. We were told that People planned to put this photo on the cover, so I carefully held onto my crotch, a sort of private joke to keep myself pure.
However, the cover went to Michael Jackson. And he was holding onto his crotch. Our gesture was exactly the same, except that there was a glove on his hand. The magazine’s motivation differed from mine—this shot of Jackson in the midst of performing was pragmatically selected out of hundreds in order to sell copies—but still, I had been beaten at my own game with a splash of irony.
/>
I had a flashback of that incident when Roseanne Barr—just like baseball players do all the time—grabbed her crotch and spat on the ground after screeching The Star Spangled Banner before the game. If I had ingested LSD for the occasion, I would’ve been positive this was merely a hallucination. More recently, I had that same kind of flashback when rapper Nelly clutched his crotch while performing at the Super Bowl half-time festivites.
That gesture served as the warm-up act for the instantly infamous revelation of Janet Jackson’s right breast by Justin Timberlake as the culmination of their sexed-up duet. Never before in media history had the mainstream audience been fed and re-fed an image so many times.
Reuters reported that a woman in Tennessee has filed a class action suit against Jackson, Timberlake, CBS, MTV and Viacom, claiming that millions of people are owed monetary damages for being involuntarily exposed to lewd conduct.
Nevertheless, according to the search engine Lycos, Jackson’s internationally seen flash of flesh has become the most searched for event in the history of the Internet. Previously, the attacks on September 11th were the most sought after topic in a one day period.
The biggest spike in TiVo activity during the Super Bowl game occurred at the end of the half-time show. Someone in almost every single one of the 20,000 TiVo households that were tracked during the game rewound and replayed that segment at least once.
The Daily Show presented the titillating image over and over and over again, each one from a different news or entertainment program, as Jon Stewart described the varieties of pixilation that had been used to cover up Jackson’s apocalyptic nipple.
Comedian Tom Dreesen, speaking at a Southern California Sports Broadcasters luncheon, commented that “Timberlake should have gone for two.” And on the Tonight show, Jay Leno said that Timberlake “is now qualified to run for political office.”
One Hand Jerking Page 16
