An interesting fact about the likely Best Picture winner (assuming it's The Aviator or Million Dollar Baby) at tonight's Oscar ceremony: it will be the first film set in Los Angeles to earn that award. It's hard to believe that with all the classic films set in the city, from Sunset Blvd. to Chinatown to The Graduate to L.A. Confidential, not once has the Academy recognized a film set in the film capitol for its top honor.

The consistently excellent (and frequent Smythe's World commenter) Prof. David Johnson has finally been getting some long overdue props from the Big Feet in the liberal blogosphere, over his "Cousin Oliver" post, so it might be appropriate to note that other posts of his are worth reading too. His take on the wasteful and morally obtuse spectacle of flyovers at big sporting events has the precision and elegance of a Matt Leinart touchdown pass.

Well, here's an interesting theory on Gannongate...we probably shouldn't be jumping ahead of ourselves on this one. Right now, the one unanswered question that keeps this scandal going is who approved Guckert's "Day Pass". While the media is still covering this story as part of the Bush Administration's efforts to create a state media, the real story is much simpler: a gay prostitute obtained entry to the White House by pretending to be a journalist. So who was/were his client(s)? Was there blackmail involved? Did he obtain inside dope (such as the stories he "broke" on the Daschle-Thune race, or on the Rathergate forgeries) from his clients? Everything else is just inside baseball for the media.

I cannot let this day go by without wishing a happy 40th birthday to a very special person, my sister Jennifer. Hope you're having fun in Paris.

Rev. Gene Scott dead: Beloved by stoners, parodied by Robin Williams, immortalized by Werner Herzog, this televangelist was a ubiquitous presence on local TV for over three decades. No hypocrite he: denunciations of abortion and conspiratorial ravings about gay cartoon characters were not his style. His sermons went off on historical tangents that would have been the envy of Umberto Eco, and perhaps his most distinctive habit was to replay, over and over, the same hymn when he was dissastified with the amount of money he was raising. "I want to know, I want to know if Jesus welcomes me there...."

Paul Krugman has another timely column, this time on the likelihood that the Bush Administration will gin up some new "terrorist threat" to take the focus off its floundering domestic programs (in this case, the D.O.A. efforts to gut Social Security):

The ultimate demonstration of Mr. Bush's true priorities was his attempt to appoint Bernard Kerik as homeland security director. Either the administration didn't bother to do even the most basic background checks, or it regarded protecting the nation from terrorists as a matter of so little importance that it didn't matter who was in charge.

My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling into an unnecessary trap if they focus only on domestic policies, and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart.

Bush's "undeserved reputation" referred to above is especially nagging. The public gives him credit for preventing another major terrorist attack on American soil in the 3-plus years since 9/11, but it wasn't as if there was anything comparable to that in the 3-plus years before 9/11. For the WTC to fall, it took years of planning, a cadre of dozens of highly motivated wackos, and an incredible string of luck, facilitated by an Administration staffed with Peter Principal rejects and white "recipients" of affirmative action, euphemistically called "neoconservatives", that were too filled with their own arrogant self-importance to pay attention to the signs in front of them.

In short, even if we had done nothing after 9/11, it is still unlikely we would have had to face a similar attack in the last three years, just as we did not face a similar attack in the six-plus years after Oklahoma City. Krugman's point, that the Administration continues to overlook obvious areas where terrorists could attack in favor of ideological boogeymen overseas, does lead to the frightening conclusion that our luck may soon run out.

Clara Alice Robinson v. Valley Presbyterian Hospital: On Friday night, Clara Robinson, a 90-year old woman, great-grandmother of six, grandmother of eight, mother of two, and widow of James C. Robinson, fell at her home in Van Nuys, fracturing her right knee cap. When the excruciating pain from her injury made sleep impossible, two of her grandchildren (Cat Ruderman and Steven Smith) called the paramedics at three in the morning. As the closest hospital to her home, Sherman Oaks Medical Center, was full, the paramedics decided to take her two miles away to Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys. After several hours of being unattended, a doctor finally examined her, and x-rays subsequently confirmed that her knee was shattered. She was fitted with a full leg cast to her right leg, and released from the hospital Sunday night.

When I first found out that my grandmother's knee was busted, I experienced a hollow, numb feeling of dread. Even more than my parents, she is the one person from whom I always felt gave me unconditional love. For someone who is in her tenth decade, she continues to possess an alert mind and an impish disposition; she reads constantly, her TV viewing habits are impeccable (with the exception of an occasional "Matlock" episode), and her sense of humor is mordant and wry. She has suffered numerous falls in the past few years, including two broken legs and a heart attack, so any injury inflicted on her invariably sucks the wind out of my lungs.

When she told me Friday morning that she was in an incredible amount of pain, I knew this injury was especially serious. Her habit in the past has been to apologize for causing such a bother, and that she would be alright if we just got her into bed. Her tibia might be sticking out of her leg, but she would be loath to admit she needed help. So when I heard about her condition, I knew it meant trouble.

After the ambulance picked up my grandmother, I followed her to Valley Presbyterian. She was taken to the Emergency Room, where she was placed in a cot. I got there a little before 4:00 a.m., and they still had not examined her, or done anything other than attach some gadgets to her to monitor her heartbeat. Other than the Tylenol I had given her earlier, there had been no efforts taken to alleviate her pain, nor did they inquire with either myself or her as to past medical conditions, such as her pacemaker. At about 4:30 a.m., I finally dragooned a nurse, handed him my grandmother's last complete medical exam, and went home to bed. I'm still ashamed that I didn't stay longer, or cold-cock the nearest doctor.

The next morning, she was finally examined, her fractured knee confirmed, and I awaited the worst. The obvious solution, full surgery to repair the knee, was problematic, due to her age and weakened heart condition. The doctors decided the best option, or perhaps the cheapest option, was to put her leg in a cast. She obviously would not be on her feet again for a long time, but it promised to be the least invasive approach to her injury.

Yesterday, the hospital contacted us to announce my grandmother was checking out that day. Since she had seemed in poor condition when I visited her Saturday, I was surprised, to say the least. Needless to say, her house is not normally equipped with full nursing care and a wheelchair, so my family made inquiries as to whether it would be necessary for her to leave that day. The hospital answered in the affirmative: if she wasn't out by midnight, Medicare would no longer pay for her stay at the hospital. The other option offered by Medicare was for her to be placed in a convalescent home, which we immediately rejected. The hospital would, however, arrange for a wheelchair to be delivered to her residence (they refused to let us borrow one of the theirs), and we could pick her up once we got it.

We were supposed to receive the chair before six o'clock. From 5 to 8 p.m., we received several phone calls from the hospital, reminding us that Mrs. Robinson was technically not admitted there anymore, and wondering when we were going to pick her up. Each time, we told them that we were still waiting for her wheelchair, without which we would be unable to get her from the car taking her from the hospital into her house. Still, the wheelchair was not forthcoming. Finally, at about 8:30 p.m., I decided that just waiting around at the house with my aunt and uncle wasn't going to cut it, and that since my grandma perhaps could use some company, I would go down to the hospital.

Those of you who live outside Southern California might know that over the last few days, we have experienced a rainstorm of near-Biblical proportions. Last night was truly the worst of it. Beginning at 8 p.m., and continuing into the wee hours of the morning, the East Valley experienced, on average, two inches of rainfall per hour. Every half mile or so, where the streets intersected, there would be a foot-deep lake (or worse), and the intensity of the showers narrowed visibility to almost nothing. And it was cold, by SoCal standards. It was the sort of weather that might kill an old person just for being exposed to it.

For the next ninety minutes or so, I sat with my grandmother in her room, intermittantly watching "Desperate Housewives" and calling my uncle (her son-in-law) to find out the status of the wheelchair. Every so often, one of the nurses would stop by, asking, in as polite a way as possible under the circumstances, if we were ready to leave. Still, the wheelchair had not been delivered yet, so I asked someone who looked like she might be in charge if the hospital could find out what was going on. A few minutes later, she informed me that the wheelchair would definitely be delivered to our home, "tonight or tomorrow morning". I asked if, due to the late hour, the indefiniteness of the wheelchair's status, and the terrible conditions outside, we could prevail upon the hospital to "readmit" my grandmother for one more night. And again, after consulting with higher-ups at the hospital, she came back a few minutes later, repeating the mantra we had heard all day: No.

Finally, at about ten-thirty in the evening, my uncle calls to tell me that the people delivering the wheelchair were on the way, and that I might as well start the process of bringing her home. She was wheeled down to the outpatient section, and one of the nurses assisted me in the arduous process of putting a ninety-year old woman in a full leg cast into the front seat of a Mitsubishi Eclipse. The Eclipse is a nice, relatively spacious sports car, but it's not the optimal mode of transportation in this situation. For the first time in my life, I'd wished I owned an SUV.

It took about ten minutes to drive/float the two miles from hospital to home. When I got there, I discovered that the wheelchair still hadn't arrived. So my grandmother waited, in the front seat of my car, for about five minutes, while my uncle and I, not wanting to leave her alone, stood ankle-deep in water, waiting for the wheelchair. When it was finally delivered, it took another ten minutes to maneuver my grandmother out of the car, taking great pains not to twist her leg or put any undue pressure on her cast, before we were finally able to put her in the chair and wheel her to the house. It took four of us: my uncle and I, and the two caregivers who had delivered the chair, to complete the task in a driving rainstorm. It was like a scene out of King Lear.

I'm certain that many of the people reading this have had similar, or possibly even worse, encounters with hospitals (and mind you, this was a hospital, not an H.M.O.) The thing that struck me the most was how dehumanizing the entire experience was. The hospital treated my grandmother not as someone who was sick and needed care, but as a thing, a commodity, for whom it provided the absolute minimal service possible before they shipped her on her merry way. The hospital itself was immaculate, its facilities state-of-the-art, its medical practitioners top-notch, and its nurses unfailingly polite and dedicated, but all to a point. Once the patient's needs began to conflict with the bottom line, she was no longer a significant factor, so they got rid of her.

Hunter Thompson Dead: I first read him in the summer after I graduated from high school. His portrayals of Hubert Humphrey, Sonny Barger, Al Davis, and, especially, Richard Nixon resonate, even today; Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, 1972 is as readable today as it was the day it was published. It's hard to imagine an America without him.

Kudos and major props to my homie Ronald Schmidt (also, the Godfather of my nephew) for his book, This is the City: Making Model Citizens in Los Angeles, which just received a very favorable review from the LA Times. The book, which is sort of a non-fiction version of City of Quartz, focuses on the attempt by a number of civic leaders to shape the way Angelenos came to see themselves. In spite of that rather dry description, it's actually a rather entertaining read, especially for Jack Webb fans.

With friends like these: What Kevin Drum said. Whatever validity there may be to Prof. Estrich's argument that the LA Times does not seek out the voices of women for the Op-Ed page, making a snide remark about an illness suffered by your adversary is cruel and offensive. No wonder Dukakis lost.

Actually, I don't even accept the sincerity of her underlying argument. Estrich's column isn't exactly a must-read; her attacks on Arriana Huffington's candidacy (for being a poor mom), and her puffery of Ahnolt Ziffel during the 2003 recall (especially after the Times published accurate accounts of his serial gropery), were hardly endearing to progressives or feminists. That she criticized the Times for publishing a piece by a conservative writer (Charlotte Allen) on the grounds that she possessed thin literary credentials, is hardly an argument that a blogger is going take seriously. Should the Times (and other papers) seek out feminist voices and female writers (of any political persuasion)? Absofreakinglutely. Should Kinsley succumb to a protection racket, backed by a prominent law professor, to hire her pals and cronies? Well, if he does, I think I may have just discovered a way to use this website to wet my beak....

Connecting the dots: The first story laying out the intimate connections between Karl Rove, GOPUSA/Talon News, and Jeff Gannon. Note in particular Gannon's work on a pet project of Rove's, the Thune-Daschle Senate race.

Great Daily Show last night, focusing, at long last, on the blogosphere. "Ted Hitler" gets it !! [link via Americablog]

Oddly, the MoDo column on Gannongate is more insightful, and pulls fewer punches, than the article by Mr. Grassy Knoll himself, Sid Blumenthal. Money quote:

Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a military-stud Web site is a recommendation?

Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House, even on gay issues, was endearing. One of his stories mocked John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" with the headline "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."

With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes. If you're their critic, nothing goes. They're waging a jihad against journalists - buying them off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail for doing their jobs and replacing them with ringers.

Frank Rich is also worth reading on the subject. All three understand why this story is perhaps a tad more important than the off-the-cuff remarks of a cable news executive: an Administration that has created a propaganda outfit, complete with its own version of state TV (FoxNews), and with pundits and bloggers willing to parrot the official line at a very affordable price, finally gets burned.

It turns out that "Talon News" didn't even exist when "Jeff Gannon" asked his first question at a White House press briefing. In other words, the news service seems to have been created to provide Mr. Guckert a front to gain access into the White House, rather than serve any legitimate journalistic purpose. For whose benefit?

A beautiful example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, from the Washington Monthly, on the issue of "tort reform":

The news coverage may be creating some unexpected consequences: Some academic researchers suspect that all the hype about the litigation crisis might actually be making Americans more litigious by giving them the erroneous impression that compensation is available through the courts for most injuries. As McCann says, "Tort reformers may have produced more frivolous claims while making legitimate claims harder to bring."

It seems WaPost media critic Howard Kurtz has done a 180 on Gannongate. I guess there's nothing like having your principal source lie to you to concentrate the mind.

Another perspective on Gannongate:

The only thing that almost surprised me about the "Jeff Gannon" story was that the White House ran the operation. But, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The White House has taken over the work formerly done by the intelligence agencies. While there has never been a time when the intelligence agencies and the White House and Congress all got along and worked together like good children, in the past there was at least a stated goal of using intelligence to make decisions. That's over. Decisions are now made and brazenly thrown out in public, and the intelligence flunkies better come up with the supporting evidence fast, unless they're ready for immediate retirement (at best). The current happy working environment requires the "intelligence data" to completely support predetermined White House policy, while intelligence data that doesn't meet current Bush Administration policy (Bin Laden agents preparing for a massive hijacking & air attack campaign within the United States in the fall of 2001, for example, or inept Arab flight-school students demanding to fly passenger jets when they can't manage to pilot a Cessna) is tossed aside, totally ignored, while those who bring in the inconvenient intel are removed and destroyed.

And the White House has a fantastic new weapon unknown to any American intelligence agency save for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI: There is no oversight. Nobody can get in the way. Better still, it doesn't matter if you get caught. There's no penalty for lies, obstruction, killing 1,500 Americans in Iraq, handing out billions of taxpayer dollars to your friends' companies, inventing fake New York terrorist plots to scare the hell out of voters right before the election, the widespread torturing of foreign suspects, engineering the transformation of Iraq from a beaten secular rogue state to an emboldened Islamic rogue state, the failure to prosecute a single U.S. "terrorist," or even blowing the cover of your own spies and double-agents to tip the polls for a week. Nothing is punishable. So why not plant a weirdo in the press-briefing room and call on him to make fun of whatever limp opposition remains? Send your opponents scrambling to keep up with whatever falsehoods you're currently peddling, and your people can keep on with the hard work: Sending another $100 billion straight to your donors who run the defense industry and untold billions to the boys running the "homeland security" business.

--Ken Layne

Frank Rich, on the Right's latest vendetta against a pinko Hollywood pervert:

Just when it seemed that Hollywood had turned a post-election page in the culture wars, the commissars of the right cooked up a new, if highly unlikely, grievance against "Holly-weird," as they so wittily call it. This was no easy task.

They couldn't credibly complain that "The Passion of the Christ" was snubbed by the movie industry's "elite" (translation: Jews), since it nailed three nominations, including one for makeup (translation: really big noses). That showing bested not only "Fahrenheit 9/11" but "Shrek 2," the year's top moneymaker. Nor could they resume hostilities against their perennial bogeymen Ben Affleck, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand and Whoopi Goldberg. All are nonplayers in this year's awards.

So what do you do? Imagine SpongeBob tendencies in the carefully sanitized J.M. Barrie of "Finding Neverland"? Attack a recently deceased American legend, Ray Charles, for demanding that his mistress get an abortion in "Ray"? No, only a counterintuitive route could work. Hence, the campaign against Clint Eastwood, a former Republican officeholder (mayor of Carmel in the late 1980s), Nixon appointee to the National Council of the Arts and action hero whose breakthrough role in the Vietnam era was as a vigilante cop, Dirty Harry, whom Pauline Kael famously called "fascist." There hasn't been a Hollywood subversive this preposterous since the then 10-year-old Shirley Temple's name surfaced at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing in 1938.

[link via TalkLeft]

The fallback position of the Beltway press on the "Gannon" story has been that it was somehow inappropriate to "go after" his personal life (ie., his homosexuality), as if it were somehow not germane to the discussion of how a non-credentialed "reporter" using a fake name was able to gain access inside the White House. AmericaBlog, which has done some of the most aggressive reporting on the subject, has a detailed post up about some of the more unsavory aspects of Mr. Guckert's "personal life", and why it is relevant to the scandal. It's very explicit, so you've been warned....

Friday night, I attended a party at a loft next to MacArthur Park in downtown L.A. hosted by Mark Brown of Buzznet. For those of you who are new to the internets, Buzznet is front and center of the emerging "photoblog" trend, and those of you who are intrigued by the potential of sites such as this one, who own a digital camera, and who also have the same desire for self-publicity should check out that site. Also, Mr. Brown is a terrific host, whose willingness to put up with the chainsmoking of myself and a documentary crew from French television is proof he has the patience of Job.

One of the discussions I had was about one of the most remarkeable posts in the history of political blogs, one I briefly alluded to last week: this Michael Totten piece, about an afterparty attended by himself, Christopher Hitchens, and several Iraqis following a televised panel they did on the elections two weeks ago. Totten is one of the more conservative links on my blogroll, which may be an indication of how far left I've traveled. He's what used to be known as a "Jackson Democrat" (after Scoop Jackson), a hawk on foreign policy with liberal views on other issues, but unlike other bloggers who pay lip service to those principles, he walks the walk. He's a fine writer and photographer, especially concerning his frequent traveling, and the aforementioned post is one reason why he's such a terrific blogger.

Totten completely exposes himself in that post. Having said and done any number of idiotic things myself, I know how hard it can be to put myself on the line, to write something that may make me look like a fool (at least intentionally). The temptation to edit out the embarassing details is strong. Totten, on the other hand, does not come off looking all that good; for example, his recounting of the patronizing manner in which he and Mr. Hitchens announced there would be certain limitations to this "self-government" thing the Iraqis were seizing at the polls that day, and his genuine discomfort with the angry reaction his guests had at their presumption, has already been much commented on. The relentless manner of his kissing up to Hitchens, as well as his description of the way in which the odious Mr. Hitchens loses himself to the bottle, are discomforting to the reader.

But Totten is too smart not to know this, yet he still (I hope accurately) gives his readers a warts-and-all version of what happened that night. He gives a rationale for his opinions that the reader can agree or disagree with, but he doesn't hide behind a curtain of false dignity. It makes for fascinating reading, and at the end, you can't help feeling a grudging respect for the man.

A good blog should always inform the reader that it is fronted by a real, flawed human being, and Totten's post does that, in the tradition of Andrew Sullivan's infamous post about his backed-up toilet. Any blogger who does not allow his audience to see his inner assclown will remain mired in mediocrity, which is why Michael Totten has, and deserves, a large audience.