We now know a) the man who tried to incinerate the passengers of Northwest flight 253 bound for Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day is named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; b) he is Nigerian by birth, born to a wealthy family; his father made his money in banking; c) his father warned US officials at least two months ago that Abdulmutallab had recently espoused serious religious beliefs and had suddenly eschewed his mechanical engineering studies to study Islam in Yemen; d) the airline attack was organized by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in response to recent operations against the organization in Yemen by US intelligence; e) Abdulmutallab say he is “the first of many.”

What we don’t seem to know (or aren’t being told) is how and why.  How will be illuminated slowly, but eventually. And the how is only interesting because he was caught so far into the execution of the plan. 

He bought a one-way ticket (in fairness, some sources report round-trip) from Amsterdam to Detroit.  He bought the ticket on December 16, a little over a week before the flight.   He paid for the ticket in cash.

Each of these variables should have raised concern independently (as the system is supposed to).  Together, well… I doubt if anyone is going to be able to use cash to buy a one-way ticket to the US in Ghana any time soon. 

The why – why the 23-year-old decided to suddenly leave a nominally promising future in a respected field to give his life as a response to something that had obviously not negatively affected him directly, or at least substantially – we probably already know. 

Many will guess what they always guess: Radical Islam.  Fine.  Obviously a branch of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.  Obviously “The Base” (whether it is in Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, or the good old Pakistan-Afghanistan border region) is an Islamic organization that has carried out attacks on “infidels” and Western nations in the past.  This latest is attack is just an extension of a fight that we shouldn’t plan on finishing any time soon. 

But this explanation does not cover Abdulmutallab. 

As mentioned, Abdulmutallab came from a good family.  One that could probably buy and sell yours.  He was the youngest son.  He had a fine education.  As a boy, he attended the British School of Lome, in Togo. An administrator from the school, Rose Amegah, said he was "a perfect example of a good student… Punctual, serious, but keeping to himself most of the times, Farouk was a brilliant student.”

NPR interviewed fellow students that said there was nothing unusual about Abdulmutallab.  One student said only that “with the benefit of hindsight,” yeah, maybe he was a bit religious and sometimes kept to himself.

Before heading to Yemem in August, Abdulmutallab told his father that he could study for free in Yemen, that he didn’t need any of his family’s money to pay for that education, as he certainly had needed for his mechanical engineering education.

It’s unfair to blame the parents.  Just like the Columbine shootings ten years ago were not the faults of the parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, that Abdulmutallab tried to set a plan on fire is not the fault of Abdulmutallab's father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab.

Regardless, just like Harris and Klebold of Columbine High, Abdulmutallab’s troubles started at home.  Although these kids had families and even a few friends, they were inexplicably lonely.  They felt like the world did not appreciate them or understand them – and they craved both appreciation and understanding. 

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Abdulmutallab “sought friends online, through Facebook and in Islamic chat rooms: ‘My name is Umar but you can call me Farouk.’ He often invited readers to ‘have your say’ and once wrote, ‘May Allah reward you for reading and reward you more for helping.’”

It’s hard to know what to do about kids who feel like their in the stop-motion Land of Misfit Toys.  What’s clear is that it is a local issue that a universal outcry will do little to solve.  And, once again, exasperating a false divide between Islam and the Christian West is not going to do anything other than create more bad options for more lonely kids.

Few things are better than stories about porn stars who don’t want attention. But the story about former Ft. Myers Beach Town Manager Scott Janke, who was fired a week ago for being married to an adult film actress named Jazella Moore (her real name is Anabela Mota; so, if she wanted to avoid spurious nomenclatures, she was already all set), is even better because it has both the ACLU and Bill O’Reilly and his peevish blondies on The O’Reilly Factor up in a fuss.

Last Tuesday, Janke was fired after city council members learned that his wife like to do things in front of cameras that should only be seen by non-Floridians between the ages of 13 and 70. As reported by USA Today, "Janke, who had worked for the town since March 2008, canceled all media interviews around midday Thursday, saying his wife is upset by all the attention." After starring in films such as "The Cock Pit 3" (2009; you can find the link yourself), Ms. Moore is now upset by the attention. It must feel like she is standing naked in front of a thousand video cameras. Instead of, I suppose, just three.

Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, was taken aback by the firing, calling it a poor decision. "This might go down as one of the top 10 poor judgments by public officials in Florida history," Simon said.

Last night on O’Reilly, Bill and the panel guest that was not Megyn Kelly pointed out that this decision – which was pushed by the town’s mayor – was unconstitutional since it infringed upon Janke’s right to associate with his wife. I’ve breezed through the Bill of Rights and can’t actually find anything that says we can hook up with whomever we want; I’m also not, technically, qualified to interpret the 218-year-old document, though. And when they stopped to consider how all of this began, Megyn Kelly chimed up with her usual forced truculence, "I’ll bet that the mayor was sitting around watching some videos and he was like, ‘Hey! I know that girl!’"

"Just kidding. I’m kidding…But no, really…" Kelly added as the others looked on.

Megyn in Washington Life.

 

The story gets more and more remarkable and unbelievable. Not only is Moore a 43-year-old (43!) porn star that has a current website and a video that, as mentioned, came out this year, she actually thought that her profession wouldn’t ever become public. While I’ve read anonymous poetry and received anonymous donations, I’ve never enjoyed me some anonymous porn. Maybe she didn’t realize that websites are on the internet and that people own DVD players.

After this chaos, Janke and Moore (Mota, whatever) are out of there. Earlier today, Janke held a web-chat with The News-Press in which he said he and his wife and her 15-year-old triplets (can you say Cock Pit 4…um…in three years…) are leaving Ft. Myers Beach with their "heads held high." They did not say where they are going to go. They don’t like to make their private lives public. So back off.

The most unfortunate issue of this sad sad tale is one that no one seems to be addressing. Janke is married to a porn star. Great. Maybe their sex life is more creative, more experimental than yours. However, Janke can never watch porn. And, if he does, it has to be his wife’s. And if it’s his wife’s, he watches her with other people.

Maybe as a porn star, Moore (Mota, whatever) is more opened minded. But I have a number of friends who don’t "get" pornography. One ex-girlfriend was appalled to find porn I left on her computer; it made her think something was wrong with her. Another friend asked my why any man would watch porn when they had a girlfriend or an option for sex – adding that the boyfriend she had for 10 years would call her every time he was masturbating so that she knew he was thinking of her. A woman seems to want men to think of her and only her when you’re in a relationship.

For Janke, that threat is increased. It’s raised. It’s severe. If he’s caught watching pornography, he’s not just watching strangers fucking, or women he will never meet. He is watching his wife’s friends perform unmentionable, acrobatic sexual acts. Moore walks in on him and she’s bound to say, "What the hell are you doing watching Karen? Do you like her? Do you want to fuck her? Well, fine! Maybe you should! I hope you and Karen are very happy together!"

That’s about where the door slams.

 

 

Every weekend (read: every third weekend) I do laundry. Since my apartment has the proper hookups for a clothes washer and dryer, but is curiously without either washer or dryer, the dirty clothes and I get in the car and go visit Michael.

Michael isn’t his name, but il s’appelle Michael, so I call him Michael. He is a 62-year-old Vietnam War veteran, who has been living in Los Angeles for the past 20 years, most of those spent along the select stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard where Boystown fades into a grungier Hollywood. For those 20 years, Michael told me, he has been in entertainment, he has been something of a stand-up comedian. It wasn’t until the third time I spoke with Michael, that I realized it’s been the same three jokes for 20 years.

In New York, it’s common for comedians to perform at laundromats as practice at the beginnings of their careers. Certainly, Michael might have outgrown the odd audiences as well if he’d stocked his repertoire with more than: the one about the three ducks, the one about the little white boy and the M&Ms, and the one about the guy in the bar.

A guy walks into a busy bar in a strange town. He sits right smack in the middle of the bar. He looks around for a moment and then announces loudly, "All of you on this side of the bar are fat assholes," motioning to his right. He looks to his left and says, "And all of you on this side of the bar are sons of bitches." The man sits back down. From the left comes a very large man. He taps the stranger sitting at the center of the bar on the shoulder and says threateningly, "Listen buddy, I ain’t no son of a bitch." The man looks at the huge guy and replies, "Well then get your ass over to the other side."

Michael is always hoping to be paid for his jokes. Last weekend he told me he was hungry. In anticipation for at least one of the three jokes, I bought him a turkey sandwich at Whole Foods, a meal for which he seemed genuinely gracious. Not only was there a joke in the future, but he also tipped me to go to Subway for breakfast.

"Sometimes you get that taste for bacon and eggs," said Michael. "Me and some other vets went down to IHOP last weekend and got the pancakes and the eggs and the whole thing. And I can’t eat no syrup usually because I’m a diabetic and I got no teeth left. But this syrup weren’t too sugary. Just good. But they charge us nine bucks for that. If you want the good stuff, lemme tell you, go to Subway. Two-oh-seven for bacon en eggs. Which reminds me about the ducks. There were these…"

Three ducks went swimming in a pond behind a house. The pond was private and protected by a fence, but the ducks didn’t care and jumped the fence and swam and blew bubbles and had a great time. But then the cops come and break up the party and take the ducks to before a judge. The judge brings the first duck up and says, "What’s your name?" The duck says, "Quack." "Well, Quack, what were you doing in the pond?" "Nothin, your honor," says Quack, "Just swimming and blowing bubbles." The judge tells him to go stand to the side and brings up the second duck. "What’s your name," asks the judge. "Quack Quack," says the second duck. "And what do you have to say for yourself? Why were you in the pond?" The second duck innocently says, "Nothin, your honor. Me and Quack were just swimmin and blowin bubbles." "Ok," says the judge, "You go stand in the corner as well." The judge brings in the third duck. "I suppose your name is Quack Quack Quack," insists the judge. "No," says the third duck. "My name’s bubbles."

Most of the time, I’ll give Michael money, in addition to food, if I think about it. I want him to be able to buy alcohol. There is certainly something unethical in that. Something reminiscent of Jacksonian policy in Georgia in the nineteenth century. However, I’m not using alcohol to coerce American Indians to give up their land or sign away their birthrights. Sometimes a guy just needs a beer from the 7-Eleven that is conveniently next to the Mexican restaurant that is conveniently next to the laundromat.

After two jokes, I usually beg off, saying that I need to finish my laundry, which is, just as usually, the complete truth. Michael always gets in one more joke. Michael is a black man, tall and sinewy, with hands that feel like they’ve dragged through a desert at night. His clothes are gifts from one of the Hispanic workers at the laundromat, who doesn’t speak a word of English. For his finale, Michael likes to sit on the narrow ledge of the laundromat window. He places the turkey sandwich on the ground because he needs both hands for this one. His eyes laugh thinking about the joke he’s about to tell. He doesn’t remember that I’ve heard this twice already. He calls me a different name every time he sees me. Today it’s Sunglasses.

Listen, Sunglasses. There was this white boy who looked probably like you did when you were five. He gets this bag of M&Ms and smears them all over his face. (Michael mimes like he is washing his face.) He goes up to his mom and says, "Ma look! I’m a black man!" WHACK! "Go talk to your father," says his mom. So the boy goes and finds his father, smears the M&Ms all over his face (same motion) and says, "Pa! Look at me! I’m a black man!" WHACK! "Go talk to your grandfather." The little boy walks away and goes to his grandpa. M&Ms on his face (again, Michael acts it out). "Hey Granddad! Look! I’m a Blackman!" WHACK! He gets slapped again. "Go back and talk to your mother," says the grandpa. So, the boy goes back to his mother who says, "Well, did you learn anything?" "Yeah," says the boy. "I’ve been a black man for five minutes and already I hate you white people."

I’m walking up 19th Avenue in San Francisco, walking from the Daly City Bay Area Rapid Transit station to the San Francisco State University campus.  Then I’m walking down 19th Avenue.  We have one hill in Nashville and I’ve walked it once to get from my house near Broadway to the karaoke lounge up the street.  Now I’m walking up 19th Avenue again.  I took a cab back to Broardway.  These hills are killing me.

I arrive at the 7th Annual World Affairs Challenge on the school’s campus.  The event is run by a uniquely necessary and altogether admirable organization called World Savvy.  The goal of the organization couldn’t be simpler: to engage young people in world events.

When I was in eighth grade, I found myself with a few other selected classmates drawing and studying a piece of the globe (Southern Italy and Sicily as luck would have it; arguably one of the most famous and interesting parts of the world map) that would be combined with others down at the University of Tennessee campus to form a cloud-covered earthly monstrosity.  I learned but didn’t care.  In contrast, World Savvy seemed to make the middle school and high school kids care by engaging them in debates and quizzes – sounds like a fun little Saturday competition

Not necessarily.  When I was enjoying a club sandwich with freshly cooked bacon on a soft roll down by the only open café on campus, I overheard one kid admonish is parents.

“You guys are not going home,” he said.  “You make me come here and spend all day working and you guys get to go home and goof off?  That’s not fair.”

Ok.  So the organization forced the kids to care.  So what?  They cared.  Besides spelling Hillary Clinton’s name “Hilary” on the quiz, the event met its goal.

The same school year I drew the Mafia infested island on a giant triangle of Plexiglas, I told my social studies teacher that I didn’t care about abortion – meaning that I was indifferent not only whether or not someone had the baby, but also that I was indifferent whether or not someone was pro-life or pro-choice.  The latter function upset the poor woman, who couldn’t pronounce her P’s and whose subsequent reprobation came out as, “Being fro-life or fro-choice is very imfortant to society.  You have to care.” 

That teacher was unable to make me care about abortion because she was unable to engage me in a meaningful way.  Her lobbying for afros is the only thing I remember from her class.

World Savvy engaged the kids meaningfully by creating competition.  They awarded various categories from “Rising Star” within each team (there were around 50 teams) to “Most Creative” poster to “Best Overall Presentation.”

I was unable to witness any of the presentations, but heard that many were well thought out – and that the winning high school team, a Jesuit all-boys school, was particularly “sharp,” in the words of the woman sitting in front of me at the awards ceremony.

The winning poster (and winning team overall) in the middle school division was a particularly brave display of the indecencies suffered by the LGBT community.  There was one boy was in the group of five.  I can’t speak to how homosexual females are treated in middle school, but I know that, at least in suburban Tennessee, a boy’s participation in the creation of that argument and poster would be something beyond courageous – regardless of his sexual orientation.

As I perused the posters during the competition, harshly appointing unsolicited judgments alongside my friend who was an actual judge at the World Savvy event (her opinions were already submitted), we came upon the LGBT poster.  I considered its argument but was more overwhelmed with its stark neatness, contrasted against the other, less immaculate posters.

“You know,” I said, “when you think about it, if there was one poster you’d expect to look cleaner and neater than all the others, it would definitely be the…um…gay one.”

I’m walking up 19th Avenue in San Francisco .  It’s cold like a campsite sunrise.  I’m remembering how lonely I felt when my friend shamed me for pointing out the gay poster was “neat” (maybe a bit too loudly) at the World Savvy event.  Too bad, lonely boy.  The only boy in eighth grade that doesn’t care about abortion.

Under the bridge of the Daly City BART station, I know why I don’t care: there’s nothing funny about it.  I climb the broken escalator and silently apologize to my friend and insert my transit card and wonder when I’ll start to take serious things seriously.

 

We used to put the conditional, ethical advertisement "Not Tested on Animals" on bottles of cosmetics and lotions. Those aren’t there anymore. I just checked every bottle in my bathroom, including the grapefruit nail polish and the Evian facial mist ("Skin Care Atomizer," actually, and, no; no one knows what that means). This only leads me to believe that a) we just assume that everyone is treating animals ethically these days or b) no one cares anymore and we’re back to testing everything except lipstick on pigs.

If Monday’s events in Connecticut tell us anything, they say we should be testing anxiolytics on cats, dogs, parrots, parakeets, goldfish, gerbils, hamsters, mice, rats, snakes, iguanas, and yes chimpanzees. Not for the benefit of humans, but for the benefit of chimpanzees.

On Monday, in the unfortunate city of Stamford, a pet chimpanzee ripped the face (pas de "Skin Care Atomizer" facial mist) off of its owner’s friend when it escaped its house and that friend came over to rectify that situation. After the chimp lunged at the friend, the owner ran in and called 911. She returned with a butcher knife and stabbed the chimp (it’s not a monkey) several times. Police officers eventually arrived and one of those officers shot the chimp dead when said chimp (it would be better if CHiPs were on the case) tried to enter his patrol car. That…is going to lead to more than a few nightmares.

 

The chimp had apparently become agitated earlier in the day and its owner had given it Xanax as abatement. This is an owner who, according to a family friend, also gave the chip "steak, lobster, ice cream and Italian food." Perhaps even delicious delicious gnocchi in a sweet vodka sauce with freshly ground pepper.

At their investigative best, the Associated Press talked to a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dr. Emil Coccaro admitted that "Xanax could have made [the chimp] worse," and then the AP added the finest paraphrased verse of the year: if human studies are any indication (italics added).

If human studies are any indication. Dr. Coccaro continued, saying, Xanax can lead to aggression in people who were unstable to begin with.

I feel like I’m about to turn into a cartoonish version of a conservative radio host who yells about the benefits of animal testing and castrating young men. But I find it hard to believe that Xanax wasn’t at least tested freaking stressed-out on rats and mice before being handed out to frequent fliers.

The possibility of testing anxiolytics on humans for the benefit of their household pets is quite delicious. But is it "right" ethically? To find out, I am writing, right here-right now, an open letter to "THE ETHICIST" Randy Cohen of The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Cohen rarely gets anything "right," but at least he’s good at stating the obvious and eliciting dubious circumstances from white folks between the ages of 40- and 65-years-old. So…here goes:

Dear THE ETHICIST,

I am a young man living in the middle of America. I’m reticent to name the exact location because I’m not in an important city like New York or Los Angeles or Washington, D.C. Fine. I live in a red state. Anyway, I have a friend who owns a pet chimpanzee. Many people think it is a monkey, but it’s not. It’s a chimpanzee. That’s not my question. My question is this: This chimpanzee recently ripped the face off of another friend after the owner gave the chimp Xanax to calm him. In the aftermath, the chief of psychiatry at Chicago Medical Center said that if studies done on humans are any indication the Xanax could have made the chimp more aggressive. Sometimes my Pomeranian, Vixen, gets a bit depressed so I fill his water bowl with chilled Jägermeister. Is that wrong?

Sincerely,
T.B., Middle of America

In my father’s defense, the year was 2002. There was no way he could have known that by mid-summer, Dick Cheney had already decided to take the country to war in Iraq, to ignore advice from retired marine General Anthony Zinni (experience in Mesopotamia) and from Colin Powel, and to embrace a flawed National Intelligence Estimate like it was his 4-year-old son dying of typhoid along a bucolic stretch of Oregon Trail. There was no way he could have known all that when he came to Cheney’s defense, saying, He is a self-made man. Nothing was given to him.

Partially true. He wasn’t given a diploma at Yale because he flunked out of school. However, he was given two DWI citations and a heart condition that some say may have altered his personality from the cautious Secretary of Defense he was under George H. W. Bush to the bellicose Vice President he became under George W. Bush.

I like to argue that the heart condition changed Cheney into something he’d never before been: a little brother. Richard Cheney, Jr. grew up in Casper, Wyoming, the eldest of three children. (If he would have been blessed with his mother’s maiden named, he’d be Dick Dickey.) His younger brother, Bob, was born 14 months after Dick. That’s an age difference perfect for taunting.

In his latest book, comedian Denis Leary, a younger sibling himself, explains how he used to taunt his brother with tactics such as rearranging his record collection (un-Alphabetizing, Leary called it) or slathering goo on his brother’s headphones. Leary knew he was going to get beaten, but the pleasure of watching his brother get furious was worth it. Even while the beating transpired, the younger Leary would continue to laugh, which only incensed the elder Leary more.

Post heart condition, Dick Cheney has become that taunting little brother for the citizens of the United States of America. He does whatever he wants not because he’s in bed with Big Oil or because post-life he was promised a Lake of Fire view from the third circle of hell by Satan. He acts out of pure jest, tomfoolery and spite.

As Bob Woodward recalled today, after the invasion of Iraq, "Cheney had a celebratory dinner with some aides and friends. ‘Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do,’ Cheney told the group as they toasted Bush and laughed at Powell."

Earlier this year, he teased the entire state of West Virginia with the quip: "So we had Cheneys on both sides of the family — and we don’t even live in West Virginia …You can say these things when you’re not running for re-election." He got a public beat down from 323-year-old West Virginia senator Robert Byrd, but it was so worth it.

 

He even smirked sardonically on national television. When asked what he thought about the possibility that a majority of Americans didn’t approve of the war in Iraq, the Vice President responded, "So?" You half expected him to stick out his tongue at the reporter and crawl into the fetal position while the reporter punched his arm; Cheney crying for MOM! until she could come and reprimand the elder sibling, "Don’t hit your brother!"

It’s the strangest phenomenon. How did a man who, during the first Gulf War, refused to attack Baghdad out of caution and dubious intelligence suddenly become a little brother who seems to think that everything – war, diplomacy, murder, insider trading – is just for fun? Just a tease?

Does anyone know if Joe Biden is an only child?