The Weekly Dish

Simply nauseating

“Tillman, probably acting out his nationalist-patriotic fantasies forged in years of exposure to Clint Eastwood and Rambo movies, decided to insert himself into a conflict he didn’t need to insert himself into. It wasn’t like he was defending the East coast from an invasion of a foreign power. THAT would have been heroic and laudable. What he did was make himself useful to a foreign invading army, and he paid for it. It’s hard to say I have any sympathy for his death because I don’t feel like his ’service’ was necessary. He wasn’t defending me, nor was he defending the Afghani people. He was acting out his macho, patriotic crap and I guess someone with a bigger gun did him in.” — from the Daily Collegian in New England.

I feel sick to my stomach.

Kerry suck-up watch

“YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio, April 27 — The man who would be president takes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — on whole wheat, strawberry jelly preferred to grape — twice a day on the campaign trail. He wears $15 reading glasses, off the rack at CVS. Before bedtime, he starts but rarely finishes movies like ’Seabiscuit’ and ’The Blues Brothers’ in his hotel suite. Come morning, he leaves $20 for the maid.” — Jodi Wilgoren, New York Times.

Semper fi

A CNN reporter is embedded with the Marines in Fallujah. His impressions:

“I have spoken to a lot [of Marines] who have been engaged in some of these firefights. In fact, I was in one of the combat surgical rooms where they were working on a couple of these guys.

“Two of them had been ambushed, not where the main fight is going on tonight, but their unit had been ambushed east of Fallujah. And seven people rolled in. There were two that had gunshot wounds. And they pulled a huge slug, a bullet, out of the leg of one of the Marines. And another one had a bullet wound right through the back.

“And, amazingly, they were trying to convince their commanders that they were ready to go and go back out. I have been really surprised at … the high degree of morale that these Marines have shown. Remember, they have only been here for a month and a half. Many of these units that are here now engaged in the initial invasion last year and were in Iraq for several months.

“Now they’re back. But they seem to be engaged. They’re taking casualties. But it’s really surprising. You don’t see much head-dragging or anything like that. I mean, you know, what you see is kind of more encouragement for these guys.

“And, for example, the one who had the gravest — the bullet in and out through his back — was trying to convince his commander that he’d be back. And his commander actually promised him that his spot was still going to be there. Another soldier who was injured in that huge firefight yesterday who I spoke to earlier this morning, he wanted to get back out there. But the only problem was, was that half his shoulder was missing around his firing arm.

“But he was convinced he would be able to sit there on a roof and not have to run anywhere and he could contribute that way. So it’s been surprising. But … the Marines that are here certainly appear to be geared up for whatever the future holds.”

Surprising? I would have been surprised if the Marines had acted any differently. And their very presence seems to have precipitated a truce in Fallujah.

E-mail of the week

“Last Sunday’s New York Times displayed the hypocrisy and hilarity of our nation’s marriage laws. While the paper ran a front-page story on Governor Romney’s position that he will prohibit same-sex couples residing outside Massachusetts from marrying there, it also included two particularly entertaining wedding announcements. Serving up a diptych of dysfunction, the Times [NYT] Styles section prominently displayed the Massachusetts wedding of former GE-CEO Jack Welch and Suzy Wetlaufer right alongside the New York marriage of Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi.

“Not to pick on Welch and Rushdie, but these two bald, past-their-prime alpha males, who between them have left five wives in their wake, are not exactly poster-children for the sanctity of marriage. The facts are well-tread. This is Welch’s third marriage, to a much-younger fellow divorcee, with whom he struck up an affair after being interviewed by her, only to be caught by his second wife after finding ’love e-mails’ in his in-box. Rushdie wed for the fourth time, to a knockout-of-a-woman twenty-five years his junior, for whom he supposedly dumped his third wife for after reading about her in a celebrity magazine and then meeting her at the Talk Magazine launch party.

“Now does Mitt Romney (on whose commonwealth’s books Welch’s indiscretion was sanctified) or George Pataki (whose state’slawsconsecrated Rushdie’s folly) honestly believe that these ’marriages’ are any more legitimate than the ones that gay couples want to have? How exactly does Jack and Suzy’s union serve to reinforce the culture of marriage? Does Salman, with nearly as many wives as novels, understand the responsibilities of matrimony better than gay men and women yearning to embrace that responsibility?” No one has yet answered that question. My guess is that no one can.