Comedy Central fails to amuse. But it's Halloween!

A news item from the IMDB:

Comedy Central Pulls Clips from YouTube

In what could amount to a telling blow to the video website YouTube.com -- purchased by Google last month for $1.6 billion -- Comedy Central has forced it to remove thousands of clips from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report, and South Park, the New York Post reported today (Monday). Ordinarily, when such clips are removed from the website at the request of the copyright owner, they are quickly replaced. But according to the Post, in this instance, those who originally posted the Comedy Central clips said that they have received emails from the site warning them that if they uploaded the clips again, it would "result in the deletion of your [YouTube] account.

Surprise. This has already been noted by Youtube regulars, it would seem. As to their speculation about the reasons for it, we feel confident that a little quick research will turn them up.

We had speculated in an earlier post that Google would gradually find ways to render its new acquisition worthless. And we would submit that Viacom are fools to cut off the greatest source of free publicity for its own network yet discovered. Copyright law is its own worst enemy.

On the other hand, it's Halloween! Hooray! We here at DHAIP extend to you and yours the best wishes of the season.

We recommend the ghost stories of M.R. James, J. Sheridan LeFanu, and H. R. Wakefield, read by candlelight -- truly elegant chills. In film we suggest The Uninvited (1944), The Haunting (1963 -- not the remake by any means), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Don't Look Now (1973), Suspiria (1977) or of course The Shining (1980). Kick back and get scared by someone other than the government for a change. Happy Halloween!

The complicated Lynne Cheney.

In the recent reawakening of interest in Lynne Cheney's past literary career -- the subject of much scurrilous humor and thoughtful analysis -- we find ourselves mildly puzzled at the presence of what appears to be a former thoughtful feminist scholar at the side of our staunchly conservative Vice/Shadow President of the United States, Dick Cheney.

The "Acknowledgements" of her rediscovered and most celebrated work, Sisters, features the following mention:

"I owe a particular debt to the men and women working to bring to light details of the daily personal lives of nineteenth-century women. Linda Gordon, author of Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right is one such researcher; G. J. Barker-Benfield, author of Horrors of the Half-Known Life, is another. I would also like to acknowledge Carrol Smith-Rosenberg. Her article, 'The Female World of Love and Ritual,' in Signs (1975), helped guide my thinking."

Has Dick read these? Does he know? And can Lynne Cheney, author of Sisters, really be the same as this one?

As a reminder of Mrs. Cheney's views on academia, we present a brief sampling of some of the comments that were cited in that report as "anti-American":

49. Wasima Alikhan, Islamic Academy of Las Vegas: “[I]gnorance breeds hate.”

50. David Coleman, student, University of Oklahoma: “[I]ntolerance breeds hate, hate breeds violence and violence breeds death, destruction and heartache.”

51. “Hate breeds hate.”—sign at University of Maryland

52. “An eye for an eye makes the world blind.”—sign at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

53. Ivy League student:“What you have to look at is the underlying reasons. Poverty breeds resentment and resentment breeds anger.”

54. Brown student activist: “I consider myself a patriot. I think this country does wonderful things for its citizens, but we must acknowledge the terrible things it often does to the citizens of other countries.”

55. Bill Crain, professor of psychology, City College of New York: “Our diplomacy is horrible.”

Strong stuff.

Or how about this Lynne Cheney? Can the years have made that much of a difference?

We encourage Lynne Cheney to acknowledge, rather than seek to forget, her personal history with feminism, to revisit her roots, and to write another gay-themed historical romance. Our staff has determined that this was the "good" Lynne Cheney, who was apparently absorbed and made away with by the one that's in place now. But the old one must be there, somewhere, inside.

The ultimate Bush speech, by Harold Pinter.

In our relentless attempts to mine the back files of Youtube before its new owner Google finds a way to render this great resource useless, we came across a document to be cherished: the Nobel lecture of last year's laureate, the remarkable and brilliant dramatist Mr. Harold Pinter. With our usual care for your well-being, we have judged it worth the 46 minutes it will take to watch it in its entirety. (The video consists of a 76 year-old man sitting in a wheelchair, speaking to the camera, not using any profanity. The video contains no violence, nudity, or drug use. And yet someone has flagged the material as "inappropriate." We wonder if you will have any theories as to why.)

We offer an excerpt. Our president has wasted many words over his six years in office regarding Saddam Hussein, the still-elusive Osama bin Laden, connections and not-connections between the two, and the meaning and nature of authority and America. Mr. Pinter has kindly volunteered his services as speechwriter. Often heralded as a master of compression, he has succeeded in paring down the rhetoric to its white-hot core. The "brief address" he proposes that George Bush make is a precise, luminous x-ray of the neocon skull. This is the Conservative Message. This is all there is:


God is good. God is great. God is good.

MY God is good.

Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God.

Saddam's God is bad. Except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian.

We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God.

I am not a barbarian. I am a democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy.

We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation.

I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is.

They all are.

I possess moral authority.

See this fist? This is my moral authority.

And don't you forget it.


Mr. Pinter delivers this speech well. But we would pay Broadway prices to see it delivered by the actor it was written for.

Human suffering.

In the wake of Rush Limbaugh's extraordinary demonstration of human decency, we have another response to Michael J. Fox's campaign ad -- a supergroup of concerned celebrities giving us their opinion of stem-cell research:



This deserves analysis. First, of course, we have James Caviezel (known for playing Jesus in a recent film by B'nai B'rith award-winner Mel Gibson) and, to his right, what appears to be one corner of Christ Himself. He (Caviezel) murmurs something reverently in what we suppose is Aramaic, although no one on our staff has been able to determine the language for certain. It could just as easily be Finnish. This would seem to indicate that Christ has approved this message.

Then appears Jeff Suppan, a "pitcher" for the St. Louis Cardinals, who are apparently some form of sports organization. (Our fact-checkers are looking into it.) His nickname, according to the ever-invaluable Wikipedia, is Soup. He informs us that the state law in question will make cloning a "Constitutional right." The passage of this law would apparently allow innumerable and dangerous clones to overrun society, possibly engineering some form of revolt. The sports world is understandably concerned.

So much so that Kurt Warner, another sports figure (Wikipedia again) who may or not be affiliated with Soup. Among other accomplishments Mr. Warner apparently recently won the NFC's Offensive Player of the Week award. (We can only assume that this is an honor and not a personal judgment.) Mr. Warner informs us that no cures would be possible for "at least fifteen years," thus dashing any hopes of instant gratification. This then means money down the drain. Fifteen years is an unimaginable amount of time. By then we may very well all be dead.

Patricia Heaton, who like everybody else loves Raymond (which during its run was the most popular network show among conservatives, as opposed to "The West Wing" among liberals), warns us that lower-income women will be "seduced" into selling their eggs, then using the money, presumably, not to better their lives, but instead to buy crack and cheap wine.

In a rare display of solidarity in the world of professional sports, another player (for somebody... who can keep track of it all?), Mark Sweeney, tells us that twenty-five women have died and 6000 have complained of complications. He does not actually say from what, or where, or how, but we must assume that this is the result of lower-income egg-selling, which apparently this amendment will make compulsory.

A quick reappearance by Kurt Warner, pointing out that the amount of money that has been spent telling Missourians that this amendment is good must mean that it's not. No corresponding figure is given on how much money has been spent to convince them otherwise. We can only assume a great deal less. Then Christ returns, and tells the camera, "You know now. Don't do it. Vote no on 2." The effect is devastating.

What can we say? Clearly all of these celebrities and sports persons have had their lives directly affected by these horrors: Soup has been cloned, Warner has waited fifteen years for nothing, Patricia Heaton has been seduced, Sweeney has suffered complications, and James Caviezel has of course died for the sins of all mankind. In the face of such a display of suffering, how is it that Michael J. Fox can dare to show his face?

It is our official prediction (think carefully) that the amendment to allow stem-cell research will not pass in Missouri.

A refutation of science.

Clearly some people have nothing better to do with their time than be spoilsports.

Fortunately Mr. Efthimiou's irresponsible assertions can be disproved on all three counts:

The War on Halloween.

We've been so busy being depressive here, we'd almost forgotten the holiday season! We're a mere four days from the ONLY HOLIDAY THAT MATTERS, and our favorite time of year has arrived: when the souls of the dead creep blindly through the darkness, when the wind is brisk and leaves scuttle merrily across the pavement, when the evenings are rosy and filled with Dickensian -- oops, pardon us, Lovecraftian cheer, and when every heart overflows with the murky glory of Halloween! All the other holidays are comparatively worthless, in our opinion. You're entitled to your own viewpoint, of course, but we won't endorse it.

It warms the heart to know that everyone, no matter what their age or belief system, can get into the spirit of things. (Hallelujah Night sounds charming, but it's impossible not to detect the pleasing note of panic underlying it.) There may be naysayers, certainly: those who tell us that Halloween is the Devil's game night, and that those who celebrate it are promoting the works of evil. Most likely true, but what of it? The distrust of the religious toward Halloween, as much as the holiday's curious appeal to more fun people, testifies to its importance. It awakens our primal intuitions, on at least two very basic levels: the power of disguise and the immediacy of death.

"We were all there when Janco arrived with his masks, and everyone immediately put one on. Then something strange happened. Not only did the mask immediately call for a costume, it also demanded a quite definite, passionate gesture, bordering on madness. Although we could not have imagined it five minutes earlier, we were walking around with the most bizarre movements, festooned and draped with impossible objects, each one of us trying to outdo the other... The motive power of the masks was irresistibly coveyed to us."
-- Hugo Ball

"The moment you take someone's face away in that way, it's the most electrifying impression: suddenly to find oneself knowing that that thing one lives with, and which one knows is transmitting something all the time, is no longer there. It's the most extraordinary sense of liberation."
-- Peter Brook

And the dead must have their day:



And yet ever and again we hear reports of active Halloween suppression, for one reason or another.

We at DHAIP deplore this. The collective unconscious must have its escape valve. Social repression, as with individual repression, only festers into mass perversion. We demand that Halloween be made into a federal holiday, and that the President indicate his respect for the tradition by wearing an evil clown costume. All the time.

We must continue to joyfully celebrate and keep Halloween in our own fashion. It has never made us a penny richer, but we say bless it, all the same!

The dark horse.

So where will the next war be?

We have noted a curious phenomenon in these past few years. With a disastrous war already undertaken and rumbling along quite steadily, with the national resources stretched thin and patience stretched thinner, it would seem counterintuitive that another war should be a question on everybody's minds. And yet the question above is asked as frequently, if not more, as "When will this war end?".

But there's something in the air! Violence, like the crisp scent of autumn leaves, leads our instincts to tell us it will grow yet colder before spring returns.

Even those who have never read 1984 have an instinctive understanding that war must be eternal to be economically viable. Everyone can feel the vibration -- the shudder the clock makes before it strikes the hour.

So we offer a tip to the oddsmakers. North Korea's too difficult. For many the smart money's on Iran. But take nothing for granted.

Lugar went on to warn that there was a “real risk” that Venezuela could “act in concert” with other countries and that “we have a responsibility to plan appropriate contingencies that protect the American people.”

An interestingly terrifying phrase that last. Protect us from what?

And of course there exist other motives than oil.

Start placing your bets!


"...they cannot persuade us to enjoy this rotting pie of human flesh they present to us... One day they will have to admit that we reacted very politely."
--Hugo Ball, 1916

A word to the wise.

The fact that we are less than a month away from the publication of over a thousand pages of Pynchon has caused us a certain conflict of interest here at DHAIP, on two levels:

A: It does not behoove us to be enthusiastic about the future, professionally speaking.

B: Advertising is not our game.

Therefore, we officially predict disappointment in the finished product and refuse to link to any site offering copies for sale.

But nothing in our mission statement prevents us, I believe, in mentioning that if there is any living author who has caught, in his writing, some genuine, alarming hint of the dark, vast, insanely complex matrices on which we struggle to live and to perceive what controls us, then that author is currently seventy years of age, and perhaps unlikely to exert himself so thoroughly in our service again. We must, as Italo Calvino suggests, recognize that which, in the midst of Inferno, is not Inferno, and give it room -- perhaps a thousand pages' worth of space will do.

In his touching refusal to allow a single clear picture of himself to be taken for over forty years, Mr. Pynchon has accomplished -- in an era in which the desire for public exposure has been elevated from mere perversion to Darwinian imperative -- an act of modesty tantamount to heroism. It is a barbaric NO, not shouted from the rooftops, but whispered politely from the shadows of an unfrequented barroom.

Thus, we endorse nothing. We only mention.

Ungood News.

To balance out the previous post.

The real reason capitalism is the greatest economic system: it ends civilization the fastest. And we here at DHAIP are highly curious to see what comes afterward.

But then isn't everybody?

Best news of the week.

Our spirits were uncharacteristically lifted by this.

Jaime Ocampo says he proudly tells people he meets in the street that “the police are different now - we read”... “I think of myself as [Don] Quixote and my buddy, my partner, as Sancho Panza, who has to watch my back,” says Pedro Martinez, referring to the Spanish classic his class read last year in a digested version. “They were a little crazy, but we are a little crazy, too.”

Now granted an appreciation of Cervantes may not dissuade the average Mexican police officer from throwing you into a cell until you can raise enough money to bribe your way out -- a practice for which they are currently notorious. But we here at DHAIP are adamantly in favor of this program, and demand that it be put into practice in the USA. Lacking any possibility of a philosopher-king, we can at least insist on a scholar-policeman. Who can be cold-hearted enough for the unjustified use of lethal force after ingesting, say, the exuberant humanism of Whitman? A policeman who can say, "I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself," is the policeman whom we at DHAIP will trust to carry a firearm and billy club. What cop would beat a man to death in a jail-cell after digesting the moral anguish of Dostoevsky, or violate a prisoner's civil rights after identifying with Ellison's Invisible Man?

But why not that philosopher-king after all? Let us insist on literature courses for our president. Let us posit Bush reading Kafka. Hunched in the Oval Office as he has been for uninterrupted hours -- Cheney's running things today -- his eyes and mouth hang open as Joseph K.'s intolerable plight becomes his own. He sets The Trial down for a moment, to ponder what he has read. "Gosh," he says at last -- his thoughts have wandered to Guantanamo and the secret European prisons -- "I guess maybe the mental anguish of uncertainty can be a form of torture, and I too have been complicit in the unthinking horror of modernity." He presses the buzzer for more Cheetos; the bag on his desk is cheerlessly empty. Suddenly a sense of the vast building around him sends him into a reeling nausea of self-doubt. What happens in all these offices? What is all this work that's being done, and according to whose plan, and why? He wonders: why doesn't he know more? Late that night he will wander aimlessly through the deserted halls and rooms, picking through memos, blinking at foreign names and unfamiliar places, wondering of what significance he is, or anything at all....

That, we submit, is not a man to go around starting wars at the drop of a hat. Let him now proceed to Beckett.


"We've never been 'stay the course,' George."
--George Bush to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week"

"Unfortunately I am afraid, as always, of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something..."
--Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

The New Theater

We here at DHAIP certainly do all we can to encourage the arts. However, if one is to believe all one hears, the US military were the ones who truly found the cutting edge. Abu Ghraib or Avant-Garde?

It comes in eleven parts. Here is part one. The rest are linked thereto. The digressions are many. We advise sticking with it. His observations on Casablanca and Vertigo should please any true film buff.

Curiously enough Congressman Chris Shays (R-CT) has recently provided an eerie echo to this idea, claiming the incidents at Abu Ghraib to be pornography rather than torture... a rare case of an American conservative preferring sex to violence. Not a trend, we're guessing.

The Lightning-Rod Men

"...you mere man who comes here to put you and your pipestem between clay and sky, do you think that because you can strike a bit of green light from the Leyden jar that you can thoroughly avert the supernal bolt? Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you?"

Do you ever wonder exactly why the USA is losing the fight in Iraq? And why we didn't commit more troops in the first place, just to be sure it was a done deal? Bush still had the popular edge then -- it would scarcely have been a PR risk. And why Bush won't pull out even now, when the short-term sense of failure would surely be overwhelmed by the relief over no more deaths? Or why he didn't simply pull the troops out after that soul-stirring election they had over there, and count on the short American attention span not to notice how badly things went afterwards (vide Afghanistan)?

We here at the Pessimism Info Center have been brainstorming this one for a while, and at last we've come up with a sufficiently cyncial and paranoid answer... that we don't want to win. Bad enough for you? We're pretty proud!

Rick Santorum provides us with an interesting analogy to illustrate the principle, which Mr. Colbert twists about:



But Santorum is actually saying that the USA is Mount Doom, and the eye of Sauron is the attention of the terrorists... no, forget it. To sum up: in Santorum's view (and in the PIC's theory, the administration's as well), the longer the Iraqis take the brunt of the terrorist attacks, the less rough stuff, terror-wise, we get on the homefront.

That somewhat blunts Bush's self-congratulatory rhetoric about having "liberated" the Iraqis, since after all we're only using them as decoys, you see, a bit embarrassing to admit, naturally, their being sitting ducks as it were -- possibly up to 600,000 sitting ducks so far -- and let's not even mention the American troops out there in harm's way -- but thankfully nobody's noticed those hobbits yet. (Frodogeorge and Samdick wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, humming God Bless America as they march into the lair of Sauron Hussein, oops Osauron bin Laden! An Image For OUR TIMES. Watch out for that spider!)

So in this cold bit of realpolitik a long war is exactly what the neocons are going for: a lightning-rod for jihad. Because no one minds Iraqis and GIs dying, just ordinary people, or so the logic goes....

But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbors, the lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.

-- Herman Melville

Ominous portents! Duck and cover!

We here at AIP have recently noticed certain flarings of cautious optimism regarding the results of the upcoming midterm elections. Pooh! we say. Committed as we are to firm opposition to any premature hope, we advise battening down the hatches for further thundersqualls of outrage. Consider that this election is probably more important than the 2008 presidential round, to the GOP, anyway. We remain convinced that the Republicans do not intend to lose, and that, well -- what can we say?

We certainly do not endorse irresponsible conspiracy theories -- no, no, no, no, no, not in the least. All we will say is that there's a week left of potential October Surprises, and that there still exist numerous methods of rallying support.

And the Tarot is looking ominous: the Magician holds sway, the Hanged Man, the Tower...

We see:

Someone long lost being found
Sages and wise men baffled and inactive
An unforeseen retreat
A disaster, narrowly averted
A tall stranger

The Tarot is of course unreliable, but we here at the Pessimism Info Center are frankly alarmed. If two Tuesdays pass without great cause for gloom we'll be frankly surprised. Which means of course that everything's on schedule.

Resumption of service and statement of renewed purpose.

Following some technical issues and management disputes, Adventures in Pessimism will now break through the radio silence to resume scheduled programming. Any indication of conflict within the organization can be safely disregarded. There is no reason to regard any content or information contained in our broadcasts as anything but irrefutable. The world has become more dangerous these days and it is best that we adopt, adapt, and adjust. Signal on: now...



"--leads me to a brief statement in deepest and humblest respect to pessimism. Let us be clear: Pessimism is a Blessing and a Duty. Make stickers of that statement and post them in shop-windows ten seconds before the bricks hit. It is our duty as humans and as United States of Amerikansans to be as thoroughly pessimistic as possible. Let no one shake you from your negativity! Be prepared to give forth at any needed instant a thundering walloping billowing crackling nnnnnNO!oooo slamming and hammering from treetops and stonewalls and archways and the spires of cathedrals. This is your last line of defense. Cast it off at your peril. Say NONBUTSUTDUC to the world and dodge as syllables fall like spiked raindrops to the floor-mats. People who tell you to 'cheer up' are TERRORISTS. They deserve no more consideration than your own son would if he was a terrorist too. (Is he? Have you asked yet?) I call them 'cheer-uppers.' Needless to say I hate them. If you don't then you should at least fear and ostracize them, out of respect to your country.

REMEMBER: ONLY THROUGH PESSIMISM WILL YOU SURVIVE THE NEXT DECADE. IF YOU'RE DETERMINED TO BE OPTIMISTIC YOU MAY AS WELL CRAWL RIGHT INTO YOUR GRAVE.

This concludes our resumptive broadcast. Please stand for the hymn."

---MISSION ACCOMPLISHED---