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03.30.03

Most people live their lives constantly trying to be liked. They stifle their opinions accordingly. I, on the hand, don’t care if I’m liked. My opinion often sticks out like a boner at a lesbian bar.

In the past few weeks, I have managed to alienate thousands with my view on Iraq. Excellent. These updates weed out the dazed and provide ballast to those who have their own point of view, which is to say, one that matches mine exactly.

At the risk of repeating myself, faux-liberal “peace” protesters continue to nauseate me, especially when they slow me down. Last week I had to step over a hysterical, faux-bloody woman lying on the street. "Get your heads out of the sand!” she screamed.

A construction worker yelled back “Get your ass off the street!”

I felt like spitting on the stupid hippie bitch.

I’m all for the right to protest, but my pace towards Sephora is important.

It is strange because usually I am on their side, the side of the opposition, the side of protest. Focusing on the horrible things our government has done is of utmost importance. But we must learn from past mistakes, not be shackled by them. Denying the good that America can do (and has done) is just as dangerous as blind patriotism.

What galls me most about these “peace” protesters is how ignorant or downright uncaring they are about what Iraqis want. It is the Iraqi regime, not the Iraqi people, that these “peace” protesters unknowingly defend because the Iraqi people overwhelmingly want this war.

Regarding the worldwide "peace" protests, Boston Globe columnist Jacob Jacoby is a lot harsher than I would be. He wrote:

“But where were the Iraqis? Where in this great chorus of antiwar passion were the voices of those for whom Iraq is not just a cause but a homeland? More than 4 million Iraqis have fled that homeland since Saddam came to power in 1979. Tens of thousands live in the United States, hundreds of thousands in Europe. Yet virtually none took part in the weekend's demonstrations. Don't they care about Iraq?

Of course they do. That is why they stayed away.”

Indeed.

Hilarious British columnist Julie Burchill is just as vitriolic as me but a hell of a lot funnier. She writes about how selfish the "peace” protesters are:

“I've just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, ‘Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know - what did Iraq do to us?’ Well, if you mean what did Saddam do to America The Beautiful, not an awful lot - but to millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don't they count?

Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY NAME! That's the giveaway. Who gives a stuff about their wet, white, western names? See how they write them so solemnly in a list on the bottom of the letters they send to the papers… We don't know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed. We're talking about a people - lots of them parents - subjected to an endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never be won without help from outside...

On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here? And is it a total coincidence that those stars most prominent in the anti-war movement are the most notoriously ‘difficult’ and vain - Streisand, Albarn, Michael, Madonna, Sean Penn...

What these supreme egotists achieve by putting themselves at the centre of every crisis is to make the Iraqi people effectively disappear. NOT IN MY NAME! is western imperialism of the sneakiest sort, putting our clean hands before the freedom of an enslaved people. But even those whose anti-war protests started in good faith now know that when Saddam's regime comes tumbling down, thousands of Iraqis will dance and sing with joy before the TV cameras, and thank our armed forces for giving them back their lives.

How embarrassing it will be for the peaceniks to have to explain to the celebrants how much better it would have been for them never to have been troubled by such joy!”

Julie Burchill, I aspire to your brilliance!

"I am not 'pro-war' but 'anti-Saddam Hussein'. If we had been able to overthrow the latter by peaceful means I would have been overjoyed. But all the pacifists wanted to do was to attack Bush in order to avoid ever incriminating Saddam Hussein. We have just gone through several weeks of almost Soviet anti-interventionist unanimity, in which the internal French debate over Iraq has consisted in maintaining, throughout the media, that war is the supreme evil. All the French moral and intellectual authorities thought they were obliged to speak up and assure the prince [Chirac] that he was right to oppose Washington's war machine... but to end up where? To propose, as the only solution for Iraqi misery, the reintroduction of the status quo...

What can you say.. when "anti-war" protesters chant, without causing a scandal, the slogan "Bush, Sharon, murderers!" but forbid themselves mentioning the name of Saddam Hussein even occasionally. All these young people have begun to speak 'Le Pen's [anti-Muslim French nationalist's] text' without knowing it; it's this which has prompted me to put the stakes of the Iraqi conflict in terms which are the opposite of the consensus within France."

A brave man, I'd say.

Many "liberal" publications dispute the idea that Iraqis want this war. This is perverse. Is it hatred of Bush and fear of American hegemony that drives them to assert the happiness of 23 million people living in the most repressive state since Stalinist Russia?

For one thing, these publications are usually quoting Iraqis in Baghdad, where Saddam’s iron grip is most tight. Secondly, reporters are always in the presence of a government “minder” who ensures that no one speaks out of line. Consider that insulting Saddam’s clothing is enough to get one's tongue cut out; obviously no one can critique the regime in front of a reporter!

Legendary NY Times analyst Judith Miller has said that she gave up on reporting from Baghdad because her very presence struck fear in the Iraqis around her. Even without a “minder”, these people are deathly afraid. Informers are literally everywhere. There isn't anyone who doesn't know someone who hasn't been tortured, maimed, raped, imprisoned or killed. Horror is always just a step away.

It is hard to imagine living like this. I can't even stand New York's stupid smoking ban let alone the fascist hell an Iraqi has to face every day.

On a more convincing note than my own, I give you Ken Joseph, an Assyrian Christian peace activist who went to Iraq to protest this war. I don’t know how many of you actually follow the links I give, but I strongly urge all of you to read this one. It is one of the most compelling, convincing looks into uncensored Iraqi opinion because it comes from a self-described pacifist who heard what the Iraqis really felt and then changed his mind in the face of it:

"I had been demonstrating against the war thinking I had been doing it for the very people I was here with now and yet I had not ever bothered to ask them what they wanted…

From a former member of the Army to a person working with the police to taxi drivers to store owners to mothers to government officials without exception when allowed to speak freely the message was the same - `Please bring on the war. We are ready. We have suffered long enough. We may lose our lives but some of us will survive and for our children's sake please, please end our misery...'

Even now Iraqis in the liberated zones have a hard time speaking their mind; such is their fear of Saddam's regime. Those who rebelled in 1991 were imprisoned, tortured or brutally slaughtered at the end of it because of our government's cowardly and cruel lack of commitment. Iraqis remember this. They are terrified of the same thing happening. This should stiffen our resolve. Trust will take time to build but build it we must; our convictions must be absolute and unfaltering.

Like anyone who isn't insane, I have doubts that Bush will follow through on his promise for a free, democratic Iraq, but this is no excuse to do nothing. We have got to fight for democracy in Iraq when the war is over. Will all of those people marching on the streets now march then? Will they march to keep Bush and Blair to their promises? I doubt it. I guess that they'll disappear into their homes once the opportunity to denigrate America has disappeared, for that, not the well-being of Iraqis, is their real priority.

I was at a party full of "hip" downtown types on Friday night. Revealing my view in this little world is like coming out of the closet as a child molesting leper. Such was their condescending disgust, and such is the loneliness of a robotic gay libertarian pro-war/pro-peace humanist.

But I choose principles over likability any day.

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I do enjoy Madonna. She is the greatest star in the history of modern celebrity. I value every non-cinematic move she makes but she is not infallible.

The video mix of American Life is better than the remixes I've heard, but I still hate the lyrics:

If you have all that and you're still unhappy then maybe there is a flaw in your character. Blame yourself, not "American life". It is arrogant and silly for rich people to complain about how good they have it. Oh pity you, you're still not satisfied. Fire the servants, sell your jets, burn the Prada and give your money to the poor. Then I'll listen, bitch.

I wonder what Iraqis would say about a rich American celebrity who denigrates the material wealth they crave while opposing a war that could bring it to them?

In interviews, Madonna never overtly speaks out against the war. In one interview she said:

Well gee, that's safe. Is there anyone for widows and orphans? Maybe Saddam Hussein, who's created millions of them.

She also said:

"I am not anti-Bush. I am not pro-Iraq. I am pro-peace."

For all its eroticization of camouflage and hi-tech weaponry, American Life is a quite a pistol-packing plea for peace. It's safe to say that anyone who realizes this war is necessary is also pro-peace. It's just that this war may be the only way to get there.

I'm overjoyed that Madonna is expressing herself. I am also overjoyed to express myself. American Life is disturbing, bizarre, grotesque, and just as shallow as the culture it berates. It is both hard to watch and hard not to watch. I can't say it's entertaining.

It's very easy to shout "peace" on the street or in a music video. It is much harder to actually create peace.

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Enough of this war talk. I have been obsessed with it for three weeks and must get back to doing what I do best, which is to be vapid.

From now on, anyone who sends me a picture of themselves modeling something from the Boutique gets a free House of Diabolique mix cd.

See the examples below from my hot underage boytoy in St. Louis:

And here he is again, looking even hotter, and although he is no longer wearing any of my merchandise, rest assured that he has surely just taken it off:

I only associate with goodlooking people. Such is the depth of my shallowness.

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