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August 17, 2004

It's not sex. It's a Mossad plot. Well, of course.

: A certain well-known columnist joked in email to me the other day that he was convinced Jim McGreevey's alleged misteress Golan Cipel was actually an Israeli Mossad agent. I chortled and told the famous columnist that if only he had a blog, I'd be linking to him. Of course, I'd add: Heh!

Well, Aljazeera is on the case and they say it was, yup, a Mossad secret plot: Well, naturally. Everything is Israel's fault, isn't it?

And here Foreign Policy/Intelligence Columnist Andy Martin uncovers some secrets to this regards, and asserts that McGreevey sex scandal was an Israeli Intelligence operation.

"People have been confused by the McGreevey sex scandal," says Martin. "But McGreevey's dilemma is not a gay sex scandal. It is an Israeli intelligence operation gone sour. This is not a scandal about 'sex.' It is a scandal about 'secrets', Martin says.

"McGreevey said he had sex. He did. Golan Cipel says he is not gay. He's not. They are both right. Mr. Cipel was a junior Mossad case officer, originally posted to New York under official cover. The Mossad is well known for using human sex toys. McGreevey was lured into a relationship that was intended to penetrate New Jersey's homeland defenses.

"Since 9/11 there has been barely suppressed anger at the fact Israeli intelligence knew about the hijackers and said nothing. Israelis have found themselves under suspicion and restricted by some intelligence channels. The state homeland security position was seen as a back door way of spying on anti-terror preparations in the New York-New Jersey area, and possibly nationally.

This supposed expert works for a site we've never heard of. But that, of course, doesn't bother Aljazeera.

This is a new one on me: We'd heard that Jews were warned to leave the towers (just blood libel, of course) and now we're told they knew and didn't tell. And so this story insists that they happened to find a neighboring in-the-closet gay gov and seduced him to get valuable Jersey intelligence. Clever, those Jews.

: The Israeli connection gets weirder in a Haaretz story. First, they libel Jersey:

Long before Tony Soprano, New Jersey had a bad name, the seemingly negative mirror image of glittering cross-river New York City. It was the place from where Frank Sinatra launched his success, never to return again. Even though it does not lack wealthy suburbs and elegant estates, in the popular imagination New Jersey symbolizes corruption and sleaze. "North Louisiana," gloated the Wall Street Journal, which hopes to see the Democrats - who claim to struggle for the oppressed and against the fat cats - involved in scandals no less than the Republicans.

Believe me, this is no Louisiana.

And then Haaretz goes off on its own theory regarding the Israeli connection:

Maybe there are some who scoff at the idea of a war between New Jersey and Israel - which is often described as being "about the size of New Jersey" to give Americans an indication of Israel's size - but there should be no scoffing at how deep the feverish charges of dual loyalty of Israel and Jews can go. Nobody would say that the Greek background of former CIA director George Tenet made him tilt toward the land of his forefathers, neither against Washington nor in the old quarrel between Athens and Ankara. Nobody would suspect the Portuguese backgrounds of Terese Heinz Kerry or Dina Matos McGrevey had them plotting on behalf of Lisbon....

The difference, in one word, is Pollard, and in three words, "I deserve it." Nearly 19 years after Jonathan Pollard was arrested - a Jew, and in intelligence, and in the navy, and for pay - he continues to symbolize Israeli arrogance. Everyone spies, French on America and vice versa, but only Israel, when it is caught, behaves as if America is the one that should be ashamed because it did not give Israel what Israel deserved to have and forced it to steal....

New Jersey will survive. Jim and Golan might even patch up their relationship. Israel will continue to carry the millstone of double loyalty. When he came out of the closet, McGrevey chose to declare "I am a gay American," meaning, "I cheated on my wife, the institution of family, myself - but not my country."

: Meanwhile, the Village Voice sees a Republican conspiracy, of course. Michael Musto clicks:

I'm not buying into theories that the guy (who's straight, by the way) must be some kind of soigné Mossad spy, but I am still amazed by Golan's heights of nerve. His accusations, seemingly right out of Gore Vidal's dirty-politics drama The Best Man, couldn't come at a better time for Republicans, who, led by gaydar-activating Christie Todd Whitman herself, are demanding that McGreevey step down immediately, presumably so one of their own illustrious, sexually unconfused ranks can get voted into the job.

: The Trentonian reports that former FBI Director Louis Freh offered to take the NJ terrorism job for free. Instead, McGreevey appointed an Israeli with no experience and no security clearance.

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What a nice beard

: John Shabe, NJ.com blogger, shows us alleged NJ gubernatorial himstress Golan Cipel's alleged girlfriend, "who just happens to be a blonde in a tank top and low-rise jeans who isn't shy about showing off her large sunglasses." Go see for yourself

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If you read just one blog post this year....

: Go read this post by Ken (We're Glad He's Back) Layne, who in a drunken stupor of brilliant imagination, tells Blair (who sounds like an imaginary friend, a gigantic invisible kangaroo, perhaps -- but isn't) how the Bushies are getting Kerry elected thanks to Vietnam:

"Look at you people with this Vietnam boat nonsense. Every day, you're pounding home the fact that Kerry fought in Vietnam. You idiots started this stuff so early -- with the "Oh he protested the war" and the Jane Fonda photoshops -- that the Kerry people turned the whole Democratic convention into celebration of the Vietnam War. Nobody even remembers being against Vietnam anymore. The next Vietnam movie will be a buddy comedy starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and all they're going to do is kill Charlie and win medals and dance with beautiful girls. It'll make $300 million on the opening weekend. They're going to tear down that bummer memorial in Washington and put up a 1,000-foot statue of a smiling American soldier proudly standing on a stack of golden skulls. You morons have made Vietnam the Democrats' favorite memory and greatest victory. Then you scream hooray when a gang of addled old Nixon bagmen show up in a teevee commercial to bitch about Kerry fighting in Vietnam, and once again the normal people with lives only remember, again, that Kerry fought in Vietnam and the Bush campaign is upset about it."

"But," Tim sputtered, "He clearly claimed he was in Cambodia several days before he was in Cambodia. It was seared--"

"Stop that," I said, poking his neck with the corkscrew worm. "Listen to yourself. What are you doing, again? That's right, you're reminding people that the other guy fought in Vietnam. Have you become so brain dead that you think this helps your girly boy Bush? Do you honestly believe the coward boy can beat the War Monster?"

And that's just the beginning; the rest is brilliant. Go read the rest now. That's a friggin' order, soldier! Now!

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And W will do anything to get an Instalanche

: Dan Froomkin reports in the Washington Post that the White House site is going to get bloggier.

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And in the role of President...

: Jon Margolis (a long-ago colleague) writes in today's Times that movies -- and radio and the internet -- won't swing the election:

With talk radio, the 24-hour cable news networks, the Internet and blogging, technology and popular culture have all been offered up as vehicles for revolutionizing presidential politics. This election cycle, the Internet was a useful fund-raising and organizing tool for Howard Dean. Useful but insufficient; even a good tool cannot rescue a poor candidate. Talk radio and cable news are not inconsequential; if nothing else, they help explain the overall decline in the quality of American journalism. But they have not elected anyone.

Neither will "Fahrenheit 9/11"....

Campaigns are won or lost depending on what is happening in the world and how effectively the candidates campaign. Popular culture is just a postmodern term for entertainment, which is a lot more fun than politics, but totally different.

Right. We're smarter than that. We can tell a comedy act -- whether Moore or Coulter -- from a candidate, even if the comics think they're serious and the candidates don't know they're comical.

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The pretty American

: An exasperated correspondent gets to the sports section of The Times, expecting a respite from politican spin, and gets this in a report by Selena Roberts:

A cyclist revealed what it's like to perform without feeling the burden of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq, without thinking about hostility by political association, without checking the preset limits on her freedom to express herself.

The cyclist didn't censor her emotions at the end of Saturday's women's road race. She simply flashed an obscene gesture as she crossed the finish line.

And yet, she did not elicit worldwide glowering, morph into a microcosm of her country's arrogance or become an example on the United States Olympic Committee's most-wanted list of behavior miscreants.

That's because she was not an ugly American. Judith Arndt was a German - no qualifiers attached.....

Not to despair, though. Track and field is still to come, and Maurice Greene is on the way. If there is a man unburdened by Bush politics, undisturbed by worldwide detractors, uncontrolled by the U.S.O.C. nannies, it's Greene.

Says our sputtering correspondent:

Get it? Roberts makes a thinly veiled case that it's George Bush's fault if America's Olympic team underperforms, reasoning (1) Americans can't win and be good sports at the same time (good sportsmanship dulls the "edge"); (2) Bush's foreign policy is creating pressure on American athletes to act like good sports; (3) therefore, Bush is hurting our athletes' chances to bring home Olympic gold....

Shots at Bush coming and going. On the freakin' sports page.

Yeah, the Olympics aren't political. And neither is The Times. And I am Mark Spitz.

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No blogging the honeymoon, now!

: Blogger Terry Heaton's getting linked.

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Who needs a scorecard for these players?

: Rob Glaser and Real are gunning for Steve Jobs and Apple, trying to portray Apple as the big, bad corporate monster trying to mess with consumers' freedom.

Tough sell, Rob.

The problem is that Real has messed with its consumers since the beginning. Your software sucks. You make it impossible to find your free product and trick people into buying the product they don't want to and then you try to make it even more impossible to cancel that product. Your buggy software completely messed up my Treo and I'm not going to risk you messing up my iPod. Rob, your credibility with consumers is swiss-cheesey.

Apple, meanwhile, is the first company to make digital music work. Apple did what you couldn't do, Rob.

But having failed to come off as Prince Charming against Dark Prince Bill Gates, Glaser is trying the same poor-pitiful-me shtick against Jobs. He has an ad campaign out today. He started a blog (amusingly, with a new spelling of "blogisphere," not that I'm here to defend that word) and the promise of a weekly Q&A with Glaser called "Rock on[,] Rob." He's also trying to undercut the entire industry with 49-cent songs, admitting that he's losing money on every sale. Good for those who get cheap songs. But spite does not a product -- or a business plan -- make.

: UPDATE: Rafat Ali reports that Real took down comments from the Real blog. The comments reportedly weren't flattering.

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Exploding TV

: A key issue for media -- news and entertainment -- is being able serve consumers where, how, and when they want to be served. It's an issue not just for TV fun; it's an issue for any form of information and media. But we're seeing the issue start to bubble and boil in TV. See this from EDN.com (via Rafat Ali):

As broadband gets faster, storage gets cheaper, and home-networking products get smarter and more capable, video via the Internet will morph from a clumsy PC-based process into a painless remote-control operation. Video files might accumulate in a cache according to your predefined preferences, or improved compression might make an on-demand streaming approach more palatable. A PC might orchestrate the process, or you might buy a video server of some kind. You might sign up for programming subscriptions or choose programs one by one.

The details don't really matter. The point is that video will flow into your home at your command, and your network will deliver it when and where you want to consume it. We're a long way from that ideal today, but the trends are undeniable....

So to the content owners out there, please realize that exclusive deals no longer make business sense. It's shortsighted to limit the market for your high-value programming to the population served by a single delivery mechanism. Along with a few hundred million of my closest friends, I'm willing to pay a fair price for your product, so please focus on making it available to me through whatever medium I prefer.

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When did we Saudis stop beating your American wives?

: It had to be the oddest advertising meeting since the intro of New Coke: Saudi Arabia starts a campaign of radio ads in America to convince us they didn't help attack us. Not officially, anyway.

Stung by criticism about its role in fighting terrorism, Saudi Arabia has launched a radio advertising campaign in 19 U.S. cities citing the Sept. 11 commission report as proof that it has been a loyal ally in the fight against al-Qaida....

The ads don't address commission criticism of Saudi Arabia, which the report called "a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism." It said Saudi-funded Islamic schools have been exploited by extremists and, while Saudi cooperation against terrorism improved after the Sept. 11 attacks, "significant problems remained."

Here's the Saudi press release. Here's the text of the ads.

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Stop the presses! Another blogging panel!

: During the RNC, P.S. 122 is holding... drum roll, please.... yeah, what the hell, cue the band, too.... a blogging panel. I'm on it. Don't let that keep you away. Details here.

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Change ChangeThis

: Fred Wilson says I made a potshot at the launch of ChangeThis. Uh-huh.

I said that I don't much like the concept. I don't like the name -- valuing change for change's sake (why not ImproveThis?). I don't like the attitude ("People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position" -- well, speak for yourself, people). I don' t like the technology (PDFs are not interactive; they avoid conversation). I scanned the topics this morning and was unimpressed.

Now I've read the "manifestos" and I'm even more unimpressed:

: The Art of the Start is not a manifesto written for ChangeThis; it is an excerpt of Guy Kawasaki's new book. It's promotion. OK, that's cool.

This is the kind of business book that makes high-altitude generalizations treating business as religion, or at least a cult:

There really is only one question you should ask yourself before starting any new venture: Do I want to make meaning?
Meaning is not about money, power, or prestige. It's not even about creating a fun place to work. Among the meanings of “meaning” are to
• Make the world a better place.
• Increase the quality of life.
• Right a terrible wrong.
• Prevent the end of something good.
Goals such as these are a tremendous advantage as you travel down the difficult path ahead.

How self-important can we get? Oh, I do believe that many companies and many founders -- and employees and customers -- seek and reach greater meaning than just making money. Fine. But I do not believe this is true of every company; building a better burger does not right any wrongs. And I also believe it is more important -- to customers, employees, investors, and yourself -- to first ask whether you have a product customers need and a competitive plan and the necessary experience to pull it off. The hubris of "meaning" has lead to ventures such as ChangeThis and many a bubbleco I could name, which try to change the world from on top. The humility of "conversation" (pick up Cluetrain) leads to companies that help their customers change the world where it matters, from the bottom (see Blogger and eBay).

: The Customer Evangelist Manifesto retreads the postmostern business magazine theme I've read a dozen times now: How to help your customers sell your product for you. Well, that's how any successful internet product works. And I've seen better, more imaginative and visionary expressions of this view of marketing at Hugh MacLeod's blog.

: Stop Child Executions doesn't have an author; it's by Amnesty International. I can't disagree with a thing in this; I would stop all executions. I suspect most readers of this site would agree. So it's not what I would call a brave and provocative start. (The cutesy font choice the ChangeThis PDFs preserves does not serve this topic well.)

: For Richer, For Poorer argues that marriage -- including same-sex marriage -- is a human right. I can't disagree with that one, either. But I can't say that this advances the argument in new and compelling ways.

: The next one is entitled Kill Your Children. No, it's not about executions. It's not about drugs. It's not about smoking or pollution or drunk driving. It's about the evils and ills and dastardly plot that is Coke. It's sugar paranoia. Tin-foil-hat diet. Seen it before. Only thing is, I drank Coke all my life. I'm not fat. And I'm 50. Nya nya nya.

: The worst of all, though, is How to be a Boor, a guide to email etiquette for the utterly clueless, which is to say a guide that insults all of us.

My RSS reader today has one helluva lot more to read: more intelligent, more informed, more up-to-date, more provocative, more conversational.

[By the way, I was about to sputter that I couldn't quote from these manifestos because they made it practically impossible to actually "download" them (as they put it) and use Adobe Acrobat's functionality to cut-and-paste text. That does nothing to start a conversation. That's all about lecturing an audience from a pulpit. PDFs are not conversational and ChangeThis' implementation is even less so. But I did find that if you hit escape to "exit," as they put it, you can get the regular Acrobat functionality within the browser to cut-and-paste text (though beware that it will come with lots of inconvenient and unattractive line-enders).]

Finally, let me say that it's ChangeThis I don't like, not its apparent creator, Seth Godin. I like some of what Seth does, don't like some. This falls into the latter bucket.

: UPDATE: Timothy Lang says in the comments regarding the technology:

It's like taking Og's stone out of his hand and giving him a hefty, steel claw hammer, and Og throwing the hammer away shouting "Og like stone!"

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Gawked

: Jessica Coen had a good first day on the job at Gawker. But Denton failed us: No good pictures.

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