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February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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February 23,
2002
Skate Date
by David Vest
You knew the evening would turn weird when NBC's
cameras momentarily lost track of Hungarian figure skater Julia
Sebestyen. With the eyes of everyone on the planet, with the
apparent exception of the network's director, trained on the
"long program," NBC appeared for agonizing seconds
not to realize that Sebestyen had skated out of the picture,
then searched frantically for the lone athlete, whose bright
red costume somehow eluded a succession of shots.
Too bad. While not a favorite for a medal, Sebestyen is plenty
good enough to be worth watching even if she wasn't mighty easy
on the eyes.
It's one thing to show a head shot when the skater is doing intricate
footwork, or to focus on feet just when pairs skaters are doing
a dramatic overhead lift. "Even Homer nods," as Alexander
Pope reminds us. And no one really frets when NBC zooms in on
the faces of skaters when they've just finish their programs
and are trying to catch their breath, with snot dripping from
their noses. That goes with the territory.
But video-taped shots of empty ice as backdrop for voice-over
narration while the action continues off camera, italicized by
the word "Live" displayed onscreen, hours after the
fact, are a bit over the top.
One could imagine the screams coming through the snakes of wire
running from the truck parked outside the venue. "She was
alone in the goddamn arena, for God's sake. Dressed in sparkles
and glitter. Where the hell did she GO? Did she fall through
the fucking ICE?"
All was forgiven, of course, as soon as Sarah Hughes came out
for her program. The instant she finished her routine, it was
clear to everyone that unless Michelle Kwan or Irina Slutskaya
skated blindfolded and with their hair on fire, the gold was
going to Hughes, even if she had sucked eggs on her short routine
a couple of nights earlier. No way could the judges permit blatant
perfection to finish second (or third) behind people who turned
in visibly inferior performances, especially not after what had
happened earlier in the pairs competition -- although, granted,
awarding a second Gold Medal to Canada's Sales and Pelletier
merely for not stumbling was a little like giving half the Nobel
Prize for Literature to the survivor of a spelling bee.
It took the judges a while to work out the math so that Slutskaya
would beat Kwan, but not by enough to put her ahead of Hughes.
(If that's not what they did, it was a reasonable facsimile thereof.)
Had Slutskaya won the short program, as many people indeed thought
she had, the math challenge for the judges would have been more
complex but not impossible.
Never mind the rules and the Byzantine scoring procedures. The
fact is, whoever won the long program was going to win the gold.
Until about 10 or 12 years ago, I am reliably informed, the skaters
were required to perform something called "school figures"
that counted heavily in the overall score. The skaters had to
skate around slowly, make something like a "figure 8"
on the ice, then skate over it again. A judge on skates would
determine whether they "stayed inside the lines" and
give them a mark. Since this was only a little less boring than
watching paint dry, it was seldom shown on TV.
The end result was that a skater might stumble into a 4th or
5th place finish in the long program -- and skate away with the
gold medal because of her performance in the "school figures."
Something like having the national championship in football decided
by a written test taken by the athletes before the game.
Imagine, if you can, the scandal of waiting (and remember, this
tape-delayed thing ended at 11:30 p.m. on the West Coast) breathlessly
for Slutskaya's scores, then watching Hughes squeal in amazement,
only to be dryly informed that scores in the "school figures"
had vaulted someone who had just landed on her butt three times
into first place.
At least we were spared THAT.
One can only hope the powers-that-be succeed in putting some
transparency into this process of selecting winners. These 5-4
votes are too hard on our nerves. Think of the chaos if we conducted
presidential elections this way!
David Vest
is a regular writer for CounterPunch, a poet and piano-player
for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band, The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.mindspring.com/~dcqv
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