Been busy and my only writing time has been wrestling with Mike on the Latoyia Figueroa thread. Getting bored of that, so enough of that. I have some things to talk about, but that’ll have to come later.

Has anyone else been to the War Crimes museum in Ho Chi Minh City? (currently named War Remnants Museum) The museum addresses American behavior in Vietnam from a pro-Vietnam point of view. Some of the wall text and posters were clearly unattributed government propaganda, but there were many photos from Western journalists which clearly documented the horrors of the war.

The museum struck me as terribly relevant today, with the parallels between Saigon-based internment/torture/tiger cages and Guantanamo Bay, and the obvious parallel between Iraq and Vietnam.

It’ll take me some time to get my thoughts together on the matter, but I needed to bring up the topic before writing my funny email for the day.

I was hesitant to do this, but frankly, I want the coolness factor of being picked up by Google. So I am joining the ranks of bloggers with my very own: The Connecticutian (rhymes with execution). I’m not sure what I am going to do with it just yet, but I wanted my own space. Just ask Sujal, I’m very space hungry.

Lesa, I basically just wanted to give you two blogs to read. XOXO

Wow, never thought I’d see the day when Filene’s would close down their Downtown Crossing location. I also was surprised that Filene’s Basement is owned by a different company (and will stay open).

Check out this (very real) video of Bush flipping off the media. Very mature, Mr. President. Idiot.

Update: After watching it again, it’s pretty clear to Heidi and I that he’s just giving a thumbs up sign. If you look at how his hand comes down, it turns in a way that wouldn’t look right if it was his middle finger that was extended.

Larry Brown to be introduced as the knicks head coach. UGH!

• CNN.com - Pregnant Philadelphia mother of one missing - Jul 27, 2005
  Hey, CNN finally covers it! Good job by Richard Cranium and others to raise the awareness of this issue. I’ll have more on this later.
  (tags: missing woman media know)

I’m writing this post because Sujal tore me away from my reading induced nap and asked me to read this post about Latoyia Figueroa and then respond to it. I’ve been a bit touchy about posting to Fatmixx, partly because I think blogging is really immediate and not necessarily the medium for well-thought out communication. Perhaps I am just too lazy to write and then rewrite posts. I guess I think of blogs more as journaling rather than serious writing. So with that said, please do not flay me.

When Sujal called me to ask me to write this post, I asked him to tell me about it first. I will admit, my first reaction internally was something along the lines of: Okay, so what do you want me to do about it? There’s nothing I can do about it. I think that was coming directly from my deeply rooted white guilt. And as quick as lightning, a flurry of thoughts ran through my head. I have never been a big fan of the hyping of missing women, white or otherwise. Frankly, I think that it paints missing women as entertainment. Just ask Sujal, I despise TV shows that revolve around a woman being victimized: raped, murdered, abducted, you name it. Years ago, I began thinking about how there are very few movies or books about men being victimized by women. (I think I may have even posted about this in the past.) I even opened it up to men being abducted and tortured by other men, and still my list was quite short. I asked a lot of people at the time for their knowledge, and collectively, we came up with a short list. the two that come to mind are “Misery” and “Man in the Iron Mask” (men without any heroic status in the text or film — and yet “Iron Mask” even seems to break that rule). For the most part, men are not portrayed as being so powerless. I’d say this goes for the news, too. Women, on the other hand, are the perfect object for victimization in pop-culture, non-pop-culture, and the news. Honestly, I began to think that women were victimized more in reality. I did a little online research to see if indeed women were more likely to be on the receiving end of violent crime. I came upon this website, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Men are indeed much more on the receiving end of victimization. I couldn’t find info on abduction and/or torture. I go through all of this because what really upsets me is how skewed the perceptions of women as victims are. There’s a book called The Culture of Fear. I have not read it, but I see it referenced a lot and know that it deals with fear being a means to control “the masses” and public perception. I also think that portraying the victimization of women, whether it is as entertainment or as news can foster an idea that this IS what happens, and therefore it’s out there, not that it is exactly okay to victimize women, but it’s out there — just like lying is not okay, but it happens all the time (perhaps not on the same scale).

My other hesitation to post about this was because there has been a long standing clash between some white feminists and some feminists of color. I do not want to diminish the importance of any human being, which is probably the main reaction to this phenomenon of underreporting missing minority women. I would agree that it does indicate a disconcerting lack of concern for all individuals regardless of skin color. But I am also not prepared to get into a really big discussion of white feminism vs. feminism of color, and that is probably because I am white and have not looked into it too deeply.

So I guess my feelings on Figueroa are as follows: I am not a fan of any woman’s disappearance being paraded on TV, newspapers, or internet. I usually see these things as private matters, and I do not want to be a voyeur. I do, though, see the helpfulness of publicizing a face of a missing person to report leads. So I guess it gets a bit complex there. As for the fact that minority women are not given the same media attention, well, that is flat out wrong that our media reports that way, obviously. (though any good businessperson will tell you that news is a business, and they report on what sells, so the larger society is equally guilty.) Clearly there are issues of race and class at play. Clearly as a nation we value some people over others. This is wrong. But again, I think it is wrong period to treat the victimization of women as entertainment.

The blogger on All Spin Zone wanted any blogger to link to mention Latoyia Figueroa to get her name out there to try to get leads. I do not know how to post pictures, so just click on All Spin Zone.

• Making your Wedding Make a Difference
  Interesting idea for wedding presents…
  (tags: wedding gifts random)
• HOW-TO: Make a customized RSS screensaver in Tiger - Engadget - www.engadget.com
  Very cool. Finally discovered the wonders of quartz composer…
  (tags: rss osx tiger mac screensaver howto apple code geek development cool)
• The All Spin Zone / Missing Pregnant 25 YO Mother Alert (Non-White Division)
  Non-white missing woman… where’s the 24 hour love on CNN? MSNBC? Fox? anyone?
  (tags: media news race missing woman know)
• CNN.com - Blair: World slept after 9/11 - Jul 26, 2005
  No, not exactly. I’m blogging about this separately, so this is just a reminder.
  (tags: vote know politics terrorism iraq)

Google announced their new personalized home page, similar to My Yahoo. I’m a big fan of Google’s simple, clean designs and their personalized home page follows in those footsteps. I like it. Yahoo, on the other hand, always seems cluttered to me. There’s just too much going on and a lot of it has to do with the infrastructure of the page. What I mean is that the boxes and the background and everything else just end up being too much. So, give the Google version a whirl. They also allow any RSS feed and have neat hookups to their email service among other things.

• eminem song - Zeropaid Community Forums
  interesting sponsored link ads
  (tags: geek code development advertising sponsored links)

This was the current poll and results on ESPN.com an hour ago:

I’m a bit surprised that there are people that would consider taking him in the second or third round. Once upon a time, I’m sure Ricky Williams was a football stud, but I’m not sure I really would take a chance on him when so many other decent and more reliable picks are available in the second or third round… just think of the WR and RB still available in those rounds… you could pick up Kevin Jones or Corey Dillon at that point in the draft and BOTH of those guys are going to be more reliable for this season.

I answered that I would take him in the sixth round or later. As a long shot keeper for next year, he might be worth a few points of cap space at the end of the draft… but I’d rather have a rookie RB sitting second or third on the bench than him. Just saying…

Josh Marshall puts another log on the circumstantial fire:

I’ve told you many times how Sen. Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is a shame to the office, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the White House political operation if there ever was one.

…

Note that there are no congressional investigations into the origin of the Niger forgeries, the outing of Valerie Plame, and countless other scandals and mysteries large and small. (Remember, after the 2004 election, Roberts announced that there’s now not enough time for the investigation into possible political manipulation of Iraqi WMD intel, which he promised prior to the election.)

But now there will be congressional hearings into whether the CIA does a good enough job at protecting the ‘cover’ of its agents in its Directorate of Operations.

This is pretty odd. It’s interesting that we’re having Congressional hearings about the question of what “having cover” means, especially since the CIA itself was the one that asked the Justice Department to investigate this. Clearly, they think that something was amiss here. From the Times article linked above:

But agency officials apparently believe that the law does apply to Ms. Wilson, possibly because she took overseas business trips in the five years before 2003. The C.I.A. sought an investigation, and the Justice Department and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, concurred in choosing to pursue the case.

A number of Ms. Wilson’s former colleagues have spoken out in recent days, saying the exposure of her cover was a serious offense.

What makes me curious, though, is that we’re now going to have a congressional hearing into the CIA’s process of granting cover to their covert agents. I’ll be interested to see whether these hearings are open or closed to the press and public, as well as how much Valerie Plame/Wilson’s name comes up. I would think that the CIA’s practices regarding cover aren’t something we want to make too public. Granted, sophisticated foreign intelligence agencies probably know all this stuff… but do small terrorist groups? I would rather not have to worry about recruiting more informants overseas because it’s easier to identify agents…

So, if the hearings end up on CNN live, well, I’ll be looking for other signs that it’s a show to deflect attention from the White House…

Here’s the latest sports buzz as defined by bloggers. The following ESPN.com articles were mentioned most often on blogs.

The Pistons blog at MVN, Motoring, has a good take on the top story, Larry Brown’s departure from Detroit. Because of the rumors that started during the playoffs, the story didn’t catch many by surprise. People were still annoyed, though. Read on.

16 - NBA - Pistons, Brown close to buyout of coaching contract [Read Blogs]
9 - GOLF/BRITISHOPEN05 - Woods goes wire to wire for British Open win [Read Blogs]
8 - Page 2 - Bayless: Riff Raff [Read Blogs]
7 - NFL - Super agent: Rosenhaus saves drowning boy [Read Blogs]
7 - http://games.espn.go.com/cgi/flb/OutOfTheBox/index [Read Blogs]
6 - NFL - Owens will report, but ‘won’t be happy’ [Read Blogs]
6 - NHL - Penguins win chance to draft phenom Crosby [Read Blogs]
6 - http://sports.espn.go.com/chat/sportsnation/fiftyfifty/index [Read Blogs]
6 - OLY/TDF2005 - Lance goes all out, wins Stage 20 [Read Blogs]
6 - NHL - NHL, players’ union reaches agreement in principle [Read Blogs]
6 - http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=250720120 [Read Blogs]
5 - Page 2 - Jackpot Jay: Poker’s 10 commandments [Read Blogs]
5 - http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=4217 [Read Blogs]
5 - MLB - Leiter making Yankees return [Read Blogs]
5 - COLUMNIST - Wojciechowski: The Big One [Read Blogs]
5 - NBA - Net gains: Abdur-Rahim, Robinson agree to deals [Read Blogs]
5 - NCAA - Northwestern flip over White House visit flap [Read Blogs]
5 - http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index [Read Blogs]

Even more interesting revelations from AG Gonzales that bring up even more interesting questions. Frank Rich also brings up some oddities about the timeline at the start of the investigation. Atrios reports:

Return of Heads Up Gate

I’m glad Frank Rich reminded the world of the absolutely unjustifiable delay the White House was granted allowing them to hold off on officially being required to maintain documents. It’s one tidbit of this case that I’d forgotten. NPR reported at the time:

The White house asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day before issuing a directive to preserve all documents and logs which led one seasoned federal prosecutor to wonder why they wanted to wait a day, and who at the justice department told them they could do that, and why?

It’s another part of this scandal which should’ve raised more than a few eyebrows among the beltway kool kids, but they weren’t too concerned about it at the time.

APJ lets us know that we’ve learned something new - that Gonzales told Andy Card that night.

While we’re walking down memory lane, we must also remember that the documents were also vetted by Gonzales before they even got to the Justice Department.

All of this is building up a circumstantial case against the White House, at least as far as a cover up is concerned.

On a personal note, I’m reluctant to get to “rah-rah” about this case. It’s serious, I think, and the accusations are just as serious. If a White House staffer leaked a name of a CIA employee in an act of petty revenge, well, that goes to the heart of our government, doesn’t it? We’ve built a system (or believe we have, at least) that strives to keep personal favor out of government. Do your job to according to the law and to the best of your ability and our system succeeds, that’s the idea, right?

Cynicism mutes my default idealism, though. First, these people are senior enough that the law works weirdly. It’s like the laws of physics as you approach the speed of light… things get a little odd, and maybe you can outrun the law. So, even if there is something here, the chances of us knowing before 20 years go by is small. Second, the political aspect of this story makes me uncomfortable. I remember the Clinton years and I remember being deeply frustrated and annoyed that a partisan witch hunt got a President impeached. That millions of dollars were spent investigating a real estate deal that turned up nothing. That rather than shut down the investigation when it didn’t turn up anything, the special prosecutor decided to investigate a blowjob.

I also remember that it all seemed at least plausible at the time, especially to those inclined to distrust the President.

Well, I distrust Karl Rove and I distrust the White House. I don’t want to be sucked into an investigation that might be built up on the same false pretenses as the Clinton scandal. So, I’m being cautious and watching the news with interest.

It does seem that this investigation has proceeded with less partisan furor moving it along. The Democrats are surely fanning the flames, but they’re not pushing very hard. Also, the investigation seems a lot more focused and, quite frankly, a lot less like a witch hunt due to the relative silence from the prosecutor. Ken Starr’s investigation was a constant leak factory, as much a made-for-TV event as a real investigation. Fitzgerald’s investigation has been relatively quiet by any standard. So, I hold out some hope of it being clean.

So, I’m waiting and seeing. And hoping that does make a difference in 2006.