Barry Yourgrau writes, performs & attempts humor in multimedia. His early works A Man Jumps Out of An Airplane & Wearing Dad's Head are considered surreal classics. His book Haunted Traveller plays with imaginary travels. Fans know him too from MTV, NPR & the film The Sadness of Sex in which he starred. For kids (?) there's recent NASTYbooks series. South African-born BY lives in NYC, travels a lot. Has great nostalgia for years in LA. More info @ www.yourgrau.com & www.nastybook.com.
Another dispatch from a universe constructed according to Mel Brooks' theory of comedy versus tragedy: Tragedy is when I get a hangnail, comedy is when you trip and fall down the stairs.
In his op-ed in today's Washington Post, "The Smart Way out of a Foolish War," Zbigniew Brzezinski asks what price the American public would have been willing to accept if honestly informed about the Iraq invasion's "costs":
"Nonetheless, if the American people had been asked more than five years ago whether Bush's obsession with the removal of Saddam Hussein was worth 4,000 American lives, almost 30,000 wounded Americans and several trillion dollars -- not to mention the less precisely measurable damage to the United States' world-wide credibility, legitimacy and moral standing -- the answer almost certainly would have been an unequivocal "no."
Is there a prominent omission here in the list of what would provoke a "no" from the American people?
Or is it my imagination?
What about the concept, "Scores if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, untold wounded, and millions driven into being refugees"-- wouldn't this have also provoked a "no" from the famous "American people"?
Why is this omitted in the calculations by an ostensibly wise man like Mr. Brzezinski?
Can you wonder why non-Americans get a little put-off when they hear this stuff from even supposedly enlightened American powers that be?
