Posts by Russell Wellen

Russ Wellen is an editor at Freezerbox whose area of concentration is nuclear deproliferation. He's working on a novel titled Blunt Force Trauma Queen.

"Unsexiest" Woman Holds Mirror Up to Maxim's Judges
Posted by Russell Wellen, AlterNet on March 22, 2008 at 7:37 AM.

"Am I really the unsexiest woman in the world?"

That's the rhetorical question actress Sarah Jessica Parker posed to Grazia (which actually bills itself as Britain's "first glossy magazine"). She was responding to the title of "Unsexiest Woman Alive" bestowed upon her by a poll of the readers of another magazine, Maxim.

In questioning their choice, Ms. Parker fails to notice that she's acquiescing to the notion that there really is an unsexiest woman in the world. But she deserves credit for bravely admitting that it caused her significant pain, enhanced, in turn, by her husband's anger.

"Do I fit some ideals and standards of some men writing in a men's magazine?" she asked. "Maybe not." (Plaudits also for taking the trouble to Q & A herself, thus lightening the interviewer's work load.)

Again, Ms. Parker is on the right track, but only halfway there. She herself illustrated the point in the 1991 film "LA Story." Playing SanDeE*, a dizzy, flirtatious young woman, she beguiles the middle-aged Steve Martin. (And, in the process, makes it impossible for girls to ever unselfconsciously twirl again.)

By parodying it in its most juvenile and blatant form to a T, Ms. Parker draped herself with the mantle of sexiness and the rest was history. It's indicative of her intelligence that her career was built on irony.

Maxim's readers likely weren't singling her out for a lack of sexiness, which no red-blooded man can dispute at this point. Arguably, it's her long face to which they object.

In fact, Ms. Parker is the latest in a long line of formidable women stretching from Cleopatra to Bette Davis to Madonna. Though lacking the symmetry of a classic beauty, they bent men -- and the world -- to their whims, whether by disposition, determination, or talent.

The case can be made that Maxim's readers object to having a sex symbol chosen for them on the basis of her success in a "women's" TV series. Also, there's no disputing that La Parker is ubiquitous -- besides TV, from billboards to magazine ads to commercials -- not to mention, much the richer for it.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Experience Is to Hillary as 9/11 Is to Giuliani
Posted by Russell Wellen, Scholars and Rogues on January 20, 2008 at 6:28 PM.

Rudolph Giuliani's ritualistic incantations of 9/11 have become a national joke. In truth, his inspirational presence was overshadowed by his failure to prepare the city for a terrorist attack.

Also he failed to upgrade the infamous faulty radios used by first responders, many of whom he infuriated by calling off the search for bodies at Ground Zero just when the volunteers felt they were on the brink of finding more.

Hillary's got her own equivalent of Giuliani's 9/11: her "experience." It's gospel to much of the public but some in the media aren't buying it.

Like Timothy Noah at Slate: "Oh, please."

And Ari Emanuel on Huffington Post: "Give me a break,"

What's the problem? For starters, the amount of experience she claims. "Thirty-five years takes you back to 1973," Noah writes, "half of which Hillary spent in law school, for crying out loud."

Emanuel asks, "And what about [Obama's] time at Harvard Law (where he was the first black president in the history of the Harvard Law Review)? Doesn't count? But your time at Yale Law does?"

Second, how much of that time was spent in government? Hillary's electability derives in large part from what she calls her "firsthand knowledge of what goes on inside a White House."

But, Noah writes, her "chief role [was] that of kibitzer." She "did not hold a security clearance, did not attend meetings of the National Security Council, and was not given a copy of the president's daily intelligence briefing."

Emanuel makes the case that, with Biden, Dodd, and Richardson out of the race, and Kucinich, who practically teethed on politics, marginalized, neither of the leading Democratic candidates has significant government experience.

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Baseball's Mitchell Report Fails to Step Up to Plate With a Plan
Posted by Russell Wellen, Scholars and Rogues on December 26, 2007 at 11:24 AM.

Shortly after former Senator George Mitchell released his report on performance-enhancing drug use by major league baseball players, he suggested those singled out be granted amnesty. But he had to know that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig was planning to take each violation "case by case" and dole out penalties as he saw fit. By outing a couple of teams worth of players and then washing his hands of the consequences, Mitchell couldn't have been more disingenuous.

Why name names in the first place? It's hard to tell which paragon of good government he resembles more: J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy. Which sets a worse example for young T-ball players? Drug use or a witch hunt?

The lead dog on this story has been ESPN's Howard Bryant. In "Friction and fractures erode faith in Mitchell's investigation," a lengthy investigative piece written before the report's release, he exposed the flaws of its methodology.

Among them is Mitchell's compromising affiliation with the Boston Red Sox (none on the list), from whose board of directors he's been on hiatus during the investigation and its aftermath. More to the point, in the absence of cooperation by players and their union, he's opted for law enforcement's usual path of least resistance -- squeezing the little guy.

Team trainers, strength coaches and clubhouse attendants feared for their jobs if they didn't cooperate. Worse, Mitchell's investigators pressured them to rat out not only those they knew used performance-enhancing drugs, but to speculate on those who might have.

Crime-stopper Mitchell got his Public Enemy Number One all right: Roger Clemens. While he's at it, why not send Clemens to Gitmo for the threat he poses to our national pastime?

We asked Rich Herschlag, co-author of "Before the Glory," a recent book chronicling baseball players' childhoods and the paths they took to the major leagues, about the effect on lesser-known players whose names cropped up on the list.

"Brian Roberts is the poster boy for what is wrong with the process and the report it produced," he responded. "So let me get this straight -- a one-time roommate. . . says he never saw Roberts doing the stuff or buying the stuff [but] remembers a conversation from at least a couple of years back during which Roberts says he tried it 'once or twice in 2003.'

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Hillary Clinton Is Telling the Truth, That's the Problem
Posted by Russell Wellen, AlterNet on December 24, 2007 at 1:07 PM.

Hillary Clinton has been called everything from a hawk to a "war goddess" (by AntiWar.com's Justin Raimondo, and on a regular basis). But just how strong on defense is she?

We all know that she voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq and dragged her heels on turning against the war. Regarding Iran, she has insisted that "we cannot take any option off the table."

Also, she was the only Democratic senator to support the Kyl-Lieberman amendment which called for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated a terrorist organization. The better, she maintained to "apply greater diplomatic pressure on Iran." "See?" a supporter might exclaim. "Once elected president, she'll choose diplomacy over war every time. She just talks like that to win."

Many a sober-sided soul misplaced their critical faculties in the wake of 9/11. Are we being too hard on Hillary? In the spirit of the holiday season, shouldn't we let bygones be bygones?

Sure -- if any of the above instances were aberrations. But, as Stephen Zunes demonstrates in a three-part blockbuster series on Foreign Policy in Focus, Hillary's not talking tough just to win votes. Far from the option of last resort for her, force comes in a much-too-close-for-comfort second to diplomacy.

In articles on her Iraq, military, and international law policies, Zunes demonstrates that they're consistent with those she supported, and even advocated, while her husband was president. Reading all three will outfit you with all the talking points you need to disarm a Hillary supporter. We've cherry-picked the most eye-opening.

* Of her White House days, Zunes writes that "when President Bill Clinton and others correctly expressed concerns that bombing Serbia would likely lead to. . . ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Hillary Clinton successfully pushed her husband to bomb that country anyway." She also defended the bombing raid on the Sudanese chemical-weapons-plant-that-wasn't. (If you'll recall, it was a pharmaceutical plant.)

* Hillary supports military aid, including missiles which can be nuclear weaponized, to Israel, Pakistan and India, all of which have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. She even voted to end restrictions on US nuclear cooperation with such states.

* After defending Israel's right to occupy Palestinian territory, not to mention its erection of The Wall, she denounced the International Court of Justice for calling on Israel to abide by international humanitarian law.

*Besides supporting her husband's bombing of Iraq, Hillary, Zunes writes, "has expressed pride that [his] administration changed underlying U.S. policy toward Iraq from 'containment' to 'regime change.'" Hindsight may be 20/20, but imagine seeking credit for that!

*During the Senate debate over the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq, Clinton was the only Democrat to accept all of the Bush administration's claims about Iraq.

*When Barack Obama noted that the use of nuclear weapons against terrorists amounted to overkill, Hillary replied, "I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons."

As if the above weren't troubling enough, Hillary's stances and votes on international law are downright chilling:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Conning Condi
Posted by Russell Wellen on March 5, 2007 at 9:49 PM.

In a surprise move, writes Jim Lobe on Antiwar.com, "U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has appointed a prominent neoconservative hawk and leading champion of the Iraq war to the post of State Department Counselor." Her right-hand man, Philip Zelikow, who was also executive director of the 9/11 Commission and gained further notoriety when he proclaimed that the US invaded Iraq to protect Israel, resigned. He'll be replaced by Elliot Cohen, an American Enterprise Institute type, who learned at the feet of Paul Wolfowitz.

In fact, writes Lobe, Cohen was "particularly scathing about [the Iraq Study Group's] recommendations for Washington to directly engage Syria and Iran and revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process -- recommendations which Rice herself has explicitly endorsed in the last few weeks."

With Rice spreading her diplomatic wings ever wider -- besides promoting the Syria-Iran talks, she did an end run around Cheney on North Korea -- what gives? Is this just another example of her "one step forward, two steps back" syndrome when it comes to promoting diplomacy over force?

If you'll recall, she helped broker a peace in Lebanon last summer. But not before giving her blessings for the carnage to run its course when she said that a cease-fire "will be a false promise if it returns us to the status quo."

Lobe quotes the New America Foundation's Steven Clemons (who also runs a great blog: The Washington Note): "Rice never takes Cheney head-on and is very careful not to take on people who might antagonize him."

Or as Jim Lobe, when contacted, said of Rice. She "triangulates all the time."

But what about Cohen? He must know Rice is using him as a spoonful of sugar to make the diplomacy go down for Cheney.

Lobe then quotes Chris Nelson, editor of the Washington insider newsletter, The Nelson Report. "'And, if she's really planning to put her foot down on the Israelis, which [Washington] will have to do if it wants to get a real process with the Palestinians then a guy like Cohen up there on the [State Department's] seventh floor who is in on it and can claim influence on the outcome can help.'"