Attn Alias Fans: The Russian word for "Peace" is mir, nor "Irina". However, "Irene" is the Greek Goddess of Peace, and that sort of sounds like "Irina". Now go back to your chat rooms.

Outside the window of my Warner Center office, I can see the first evidence that the worst fire in almost a decade has finally reached Los Angeles County. The hills above Chatsworth are aflame, and the air quality outside looks like it came from a Mexican location scene from the movie Traffic. For the first time, we're starting to see ashes floating down from the sky. The fires so far have been in relatively sparsely-populated areas to the north and east of the city; if they extend to the Valley itself, the damage, in terms of property and lives, will increase geometrically.

BTW, my esteemed bloghomie Matt Welch will be in the No-Spin Zone tonight, speaking on the efficacy of the government insuring hillside residences in fire zones. No doubt, O'Reilly will blame it all on the Clintons.

The SF Chronicle gives my brother's club a good write-up. I've always wanted to go to The Smell, and even wanted to have my 40th birthday there, but then I realized the lack of a liquor license would mean that I would either have to pay for the drinks, or I would be telling the invitees to "BYOB", and that didn't seem right. Though I probably missed Deerhoof. [link via LA Observed]

Frank Rich doesn't have a twice-a-week column anymore, so when he does opine about politics, it is well worth reading. Here, he attacks the complacent media coverage of The Bush Debacle, and the slow emergence of a press willing to call this Administration on its lies. Disappointingly, he doesn't mention his own paper's sorry track record in this area. The post-Raines coverage of the war and its aftermath has been toothless, particularly over the Plame Affair, where it has been completely outclassed by the Washington Post.

Speaking of the New York Times, a much-derided historical footnote has been in the news this past week. A Russian historian at Columbia, hired by the Times to investigate the reporting of long-deceased correspondent Walter Duranty, has concluded that the 1931 dispatches from Moscow that won him the Pulizer Prize were, by and large, Stalinist propaganda, and has privately urged that said prize be revoked. Duranty, who played the same role with Stalin that Howard Kurtz plays with the current President, with a little Krauthammerian tolerance for authoritarianism mixed in, has been a target for some time; back in the 1930's, his "reporting" was attacked by none other than Leon Trotsky, and Ukrainian groups in this country have more recently focused on his subsequent whitewashing of a famine that claimed the lives of millions. In fact, much of the commentary about the Pulitzer's investigation of Duranty has focused on his coverage of the famine, even though it had nothing to do with the original award.

Here's hoping the Pulitzer Prize Board does the right thing and rejects the efforts at revisionist history. Duranty was a disgrace to journalism, and his stories aided and abetted one of the great mass murderers of history. But the people who dole out the Pulitzer Prize didn't care at the time that it was honoring someone who was explaining away a tyrant's actions, and who was rationalizing the emergence of a totalitarian state. Duranty's columns at the time frankly mentioned that Stalin was an absolute dictator, but said it didn't matter. In 1932, the Pulitzer Prize Board could have cared less.

Revoking an award should be done only if the honoree cheated to win (ie., Janet Cooke making up stories, or JFK winning the award for a book that was ghostwritten for him), or is subsequently discovered to have done something totally inconsistent with that honor (ie., the Hockey H.O.F.'s efforts at revoking the membership given to Alan Eagleson, founder of the player's union, after he pled guilty to embezzling money from said union). It should not happen just because we have changed our minds about obsequious journalism about mass murder. In sports, it is akin to revoking OJ Simpson's Heisman Trophy because he subsequently killed two people; no matter what sort of rat the Juice became later in life, he was still the best college football player in 1968. Letting Duranty keep his dirty honor reminds us that achievement and character are completely different concepts.

UPDATE: The Great Duranty lives !!

I love my nephew !

It's not online, but this week's New Yorker features an article by Jeffrey Toobin about the difficulties prosecutors have in constructing a winnable criminal case against former Enron executives and BushLite Crony Capitalism poster-boys Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. One problem is the unwillingness of lower-level executives to rat out their former bosses; none of the trials are scheduled to commence until the middle of next year, reducing any sense of urgency on the defendant's behalf to cop a plea. The trial judge presiding in the Andrew Fastow case, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt, is an interesting character in his own right, sort of a Southwest version of Janice Rogers Brown. Nominated by Ronald Reagan, Judge Hoyt, an African- American, once opined in a 1997 environmental case that

"...physical differences among races were the product of their environments. 'Why do you think Chinese people are short? Because there is so much damn wind over there they need to be short. Why are they so tall in Africa? Because they need to be tall. It's environmental,' he said. 'I mean, you don't jump up and get a banana off a tree if you're only 4 feet. If you're 7 feet tall and you're standing in China, then you're going to get blown away by that Siberian wind, aren't you?' "

So much for Yao Ming. He later recused himself. More recently, Judge Hoyt threw out the conviction last August of a man who had driven a truck into an abortion clinic, holding that the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was unconstitutional.

As it turns out, State A.G. Bill Lockyer still believes that Ahnold Ziffel should be investigated, even though he voted for him. With the potential for more post-election bombshells about the governor-elect to come out, it's refreshing that at least one Democrat in Sacramento has an instinct for opportunism.

Elsewhere: Slate.com has an hilarious dialogue on the World Series, between Charles Pierce (the sportswriter from Friday Altercation) and Allan Barra; where else can you hear the Yankees middle relievers described as a "trip to Mordor"? Prof. DeLong has a scathing piece on Justice Scalia, who recently recused himself from hearing the Pledge of Allegiance case due to his personal relationship with one of the interested parties (ie., "God"), and the logical ramifications of his judicial philosophy. And Spinsanity tears a new one into NaziPundit.

This is an indication that I'm getting old. Yesterday's LA Times had a profile of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, who, it turns out, is an alumna of my high school, Harvard-Westlake. Except when I was going there, it was just "Harvard", and had an oh-so-strict policy about not admitting women onto our ivied corridors. The school went co-ed well after I graduated (in 1981; famous classmates: film directors Brad Silberling and Andrew Fleming, and novelist Ben Sherwood), which means she, like the Collins Twins, was born after I started matriculating there. I suck.

I used to live in an apartment on Bunker Hill that claimed in its advertising that it was "adjacent" to the soon-to-be-built Disney Center. That was fourteen years ago, just after I passed the bar and was earning good money for the first time. Unfortunately, the Disney Center wouldn't even be started for another ten years, and my memories of living and working in Downtown Los Angeles were bleak and depressing. Nothing ever happened there until the Troubles of April 1992, but by then I had returned to the glamour and excitement of the Valley.

Anyway, tonight the Frank Gehry-designed concert hall opens to the public for the first time. In the past year, two major architectural accomplishments (Our Lady of Angels Cathedral opened last year) have been completed in the Downtown area, and the people of this community are starting to get a civic center that they can go to, rather than escape from.

William Greider, on the late Vermont Senator George Aiken:

George Aiken was a conservative Republican of the old school -- a conservator of cherished values and regular order in governing institutions, not a radical right-winger like the present crowd. In private life, Aiken was a nurseryman. He wrote a celebrated book in the 1930s, "Pioneering in Wild Flowers," in which he described his self-learned methods for propagating the rare species of wild flowers hiding in his native woodlands. It's still in print and still a charming and educational book to read.

Aiken could see the future even then. Eventually, he realized, development and aesthetic tastes would put unbearable pressure on the pink lady slipper and other natural gems. To prevent their extinction, he explained, Vermont and other forested states needed laws prohibiting their harvest in the wild (those laws are now standard). Instead, people could cultivate the plants for sale from seed or cuttings, thus multiplying the supply and protecting the species in wild places from human predators.

He was, in other words, a wise, plain-spoken environmentalist before that term came into usage. One misses his type in public life, especially in the Republican party.

Not willing to be outdone by recent events in Texas and California, Florida Governor Jeb Bush has assertively moved to reclaim for his state the distinction of being the Moron Capital of America by signing this legislation, which gives him the arbitrary power to impose force-feeding on comatose patients, in defiance of the wishes of the next-of-kin.

Just in time for Halloween, an important public health warning.

State A.G. Bill Lockyer claims to have voted for Ahnold Ziffel, saying he opposed the recall, thought that the slate of replacement candidates was a "crappy list", but "...chose Schwarzenegger in the replacement election because he stood for 'hope, change, reform, opportunity, upbeat problem solving.' He added, 'I want that. I'm tired of transactional, cynical, dealmaking politics.' No word on whether the state's top law-enforcement officer, who was hinting in the days before the election that a criminal prosecution of The Pig might be warranted, is now soft on workplace groping, although he did add that while he now believed the charges against the governor-elect, "I'm convinced Arnold didn't really understand that he was caught up in frat boy behavior". Boys will be boys !!

A good encapsulation of everything wrong with Disney's decision to can Gregg Easterbrook may be found here. For those of you who don't follow controversies in the blogosphere or on the pages of the New Republic, Easterbrook is a very fine writer, famous for his oft-contrarian work on environmental issues, religion, and, of all things, pro football, who used an unfortunate choice of words in a blogpost concerning the movie Kill Bill, which made it seem like he was anti-Semitic.

One of his targets in his post was Michael Eisner, long-time CEO of Disney, parent company of ESPN.com, which terminated Easterbrook's hilarious football column, "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" (ironically, Easterbrook had criticized Eisner, among others, for being a Jewish movie executive who had greenlighted the Tarentino bloodfest, presumably in contradiction to the religious tenets of Judaism; TMQ is famous for its soft-core descriptions of pro football cheerleaders, which is not entirely consistent with the religious beliefs of most Christians).

As with the controversy over Rush Limbaugh's remarks several weeks ago about Donovan McNabb, I feel the corporate reaction of purging the officious commentator only exacerbates the problem. Even though I view most charges of "political correctness" skeptically, as an excuse by others to justify racist opinions, it doesn't mean that the phenomenum doesn't exist. Censoring ill-phrased comments is appropriate, and Limbaugh and Easterbrook were rightly attacked for the remarks they made. I thought that Rush never should have been hired by ESPN in the first place, and I disagree with most of Easterbrook's takes on pro football (he seems to have an unhealthy obsession with the running game).

But forcing the offender into some public Maoist self-criticism ritual is precisely the wrong approach, one that guarantees that a large portion of the public is going to view such opinions as forbidden fruit, and speaking such opinions as courageous rather than bigoted. In particular, ESPN has apparently removed TMQ from its website altogether, and its football parade ads that were so ubiquitous at the beginning of the season have been all but pulled, due to the conspicuous participation of Mr. Limbaugh. Down the memory hole....

Once Limbaugh was hired, ESPN knew what it was going to get from him. His statement, while wrong in the specific (McNabb isn't overrated b/c he's black; he's overrated b/c he's a quarterback), was not racist per se, and is certainly no more outrageous than some of the things Howard Cosell used to say on MNF. He was hired for his opinions, and when he was wrong, Tom Jackson and Steve Young certainly had the right to stand up to him.

Many of the same people who jumped down Easterbrook's back on this case do not hesitate to impose similar criteria on Clarence Thomas every time a civil rights case is brought to the Supreme Court, or on Catholic politicians where the issue of abortion is concerned (or, for that matter, on Jewish writers concerning the domestic policy of Sharon). Political discourse in a free society often means saying something that does not sound pleasant to the ear, and when an attempt to do so goes awry, the speaker should be argued with, not bullied by the rest of us.

Things not to do ever again: watch a Bruins game at the Rose Bowl. It is a depressing place, with none of the amenities a sports fan has come to expect when attending games. The game itself was boring (alma mater is now oh and four in games I've attended), the crowd was docile (who could have thought that 60,000 fans could make so little noise, on a day when their side was winning), and I actually had to use my cell phone in what was a futile attempt to get the SC-Notre Dame score. The word "stalinist" gets thrown around loosely, much like the words "racist" and "fascist", but there has to be a way to describe UCLA's unwillingness to announce any score that might favor their crosstown rival. When my friend Deborah asked, with a minute to go, if I wanted to leave to catch the shuttle to Old Town, I enthusiastically supported the motion; as it turns out, I missed CAL's only impressive drive of the game.

Well, I went and saw the Corvids tonight, and for those of you who might expect me to snark away at my less than ideologically-pure bloghomies, well, I can't help you. They were actually pretty good, much better than a band that has supposedly never performed live should be...it just makes me wish I had had the gumption to have abandoned my fledgling legal practice in the early-90's and sought asylum in the Czech Republic. Busking, pitchers of Budvar, smokin' fatties with Vaclav Havel...all of that must have been better than 3-day depos on CERCLA litigation in Riverside County, or helping my dad appraise the art collection of Peter Bogdanovich during his Chapter 7.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the American track and field program is as dirty as the East German women's swim team used to be. What is even more pathetic is how mediocre we are in track events: looking back on the '72 team, which was thought at the time to be a huge disappointment, what with Ryun and Pre getting shut out and two of our best sprinters not showing up for their prelims, the U.S. was still competitive in just about every running event. Today, the only events Americans have a prayer of winning are the sprints, and even then it's a battle just to win a medal.

In the end, this scandal is going to spread far beyond the U.S. track team....

Two new ballot initiatives to look forward to on the March ballot: an attempt to revoke the law permitting illegal immigrants from qualifying for drivers licenses, and a petition to revoke the LA ordinance banning lap dancing. And by the way, those of you who want to see some candid snaps of yours truly, check out this one, taken at my b-day party two weeks ago.

This probably won't shock anyone, but a lab in the Bay Area has been busted for distributing a designer version of anabolic steroids, THG, to an unknown number of American athletes. For what it's worth, the lab is run by one Victor Conte, who is the "nutritionist" for Barry Bonds, among others. Those athletes who've been caught using THG will be suspended for up to two years, making them ineligible for the 2004 Athens Games.