Amazing Race lays Hanoi-sized egg

If you have ever watched "The Amazing Race" TV show on CBS network, you know the protocol. A diverse collection of two-person teams race around the world at breakneck pace, stopping at various tourist traps, landmarks and special events. At these colorful pit stops, they are usually required to participate in various contests and exercises: scaling mountains and walls and ladders into the stratosphere; dancing some intricate local tribal dances or engaging in some arcane ceremony; answering questions and quizzes about the history of wherever they are, and so forth. After they perform some telegenic activity (whilst inevitably arguing with each other about who is going to do it, who is right, etc)... they pick up the sacred clue to the next location, and off they go. The last pair to arrive at each locale is eliminated, until finally, there is one pair left, who are thereby proclaimed the winners.

Needless to say, it probably isn't easy to find distinctive, cool places to send the contestants. There is a bit of a travelogue on each show, as narrators quickly explain local history and customs, and provide interesting details, such as how many feet into the air they will have to climb, or how far away they are from such-and-such or so-and-so. It all tends to run together, so the challenge is to make each new location stand out and become uniquely interesting to the viewer.

Sometimes a locale is obviously chosen strictly for its emotional or political value, to stop viewers from getting bored and picking up that deadly remote. Or to get some drama going from the contestants' reactions to such a place.

On the March 17th show, it was Hanoi. HANOI.

H.A.N.O.I.

I was somewhat dumbfounded.

As soon as I saw the smashed-up B-52, I thought, oh shit. I saw that coming like a freight train.

And then I instantly wondered... who is working for CBS? Who is working for "The Amazing Race"? Do they not associate with regular people out here in the American heartland? Do they understand the emotional reaction to a downed American B-52 from The Vietnam War? Good Lord.

Well, John McCain did, and a bunch of other veterans did, too. The shit hit the fan in short order.

From Yahoo:

Usually, it is "Amazing Race" contestants with loose lips that stir up controversy for being insensitive, offensive, or ugly Americans while dashing around the less scenic or underprivileged countries of the world on the competition reality show. But with last week's Vietnam-based episode, it was the producers and network that found themselves on the receiving end of public backlash.

Veterans, conservative newscasters, politicians like Arizona Sen. John McCain, and plenty of the show's fans were upset that the show filmed at the site of a crashed U.S. B-52 bomber, and featured a segment where players had to listen to a pro-communist anthem being sung in front of a portrait of Ho Chi Minh and then find one of the song's lyrics in a sea of propaganda posters. Vietnam War veteran and American Legion National Commander James E. Koutz sent a letter to CBS Thursday, asking that the network apologize for "its disgraceful slap-in-the face administered to American war heroes. We only wish that the network would not be so eager to broadcast anti-American propaganda."

And yes, they got their official apology.

From the National Post:

Senator John McCain is among those who have accepted CBS’ apology for a passage on The Amazing Race where contestants visited the wreckage of an American B-52 bomber in Vietnam, writing on Twitter that the “issue is closed.”

The national commander of the American Legion, James Koutz, has also accepted the apology. Commander Koutz said said he believed it was sincere and heartfelt.

The segment aired March 17 and angered many veterans, particularly those who served in the Vietnam War. As part of its scavenger hunt game, contestants on the show had to visit the site in Hanoi, which Vietnamese authorities turned into a memorial.

Before this Sunday’s edition of The Amazing Race, host Phil Keoghan read a statement apologizing to veterans and families who may have been offended.

For my part, I continue to be amazed at the mainstream media's general cluelessness about such matters. I could have easily predicted this reaction, as everyone I know could too.

As I asked, above: WHO works for these people? Didn't anybody on the show's staff speak up and say, "Hey, ya think maybe this isn't such a good idea?"

Fascism is sexier than communism

Lara Logan, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CBS News, held forth at some length on the Charlie Rose show on Tuesday night. And in doing so, she deprived me of sleep. Her starry-eyed warmonger vibe was terribly disturbing, her bloodthirsty ranting and raving reminding me of General Jack D. Ripper in Dr Strangelove.

Dear God, I thought, I hope nobody else is watching this.

We must, she insisted, finish this war. More troops! (When pressed, she said at least 40,000.) She was adamant that we must track the terrorists into Pakistan and kill them all.

Logan clearly relishes repeating the word "kill"; she didn't use any of the new and improved euphemisms for warfare. I almost expected her to lick her lips in anticipation. I have rarely seen someone so exultant at the prospect of more war, of expanded war. And I realize, she startled me because she is a woman and I have seen advanced war-fever in women so very rarely.

Logan is beautiful, blond and South African. When she speaks of terrorist attacks on convoys, her eyes sparkle with vengeance. She reminds me of the character of Jane in VS Naipaul's novel Guerrillas, a beautiful British woman who also enjoyed being where the action is:

She was without consistency or even without coherence. She knew only what she was and what she had been born to; to this knowledge she was tethered; it was her stability, enabling her to adventure in security. Adventuring, she was indifferent, perhaps blind, to the contradiction between what she said and what she was so secure of being; and this indifference or blindness, this absence of the sense of the absurd, was part of her unassailability.

And this is what is so thoroughly hypnotic about Lara Logan: unassailability. Like Robert Duvall waving away the pesky incoming enemy fire in Apocalypse Now, one intuitively knows Logan will emerge intact, eyes gleaming, from any war she covers... possibly holding some executed terrorist's head aloft, as Judith brandished the head of Holofernes.

On some level, I am stunned that such an openly pro-war political partisan is considered an objective journalist. (If anyone still believes in "journalistic objectivity"--Lara will talk you right out of it.) Then again, it is entirely logical that this is the type of person who wants to charge right into the thick of it. Do we expect anti-war journalists to choose the wartime beat? (Ed Bradley was an exception, may his soul rest in peace.)

Undoubtedly, Lara Logan is a gal who loves her work.

Investigating, I see that Logan is married to a federal defense contractor from Texas whom she met in Iraq. (Well of course she is.) But then I find a series of cool stories on HuffPo about her. Our Lara is a homewrecker! The defense contractor already belonged to someone else when she met him. (And I can tell you right now, speaking of guided missiles, that dude didn't know what hit him.)

Keep your eye on her. She is our very own Tokyo Rose, threatening Al-Qaeda over the airwaves, pumping up the reputation of the US military and encouraging the never-ending storm of war-death to continue. She is a collaborator with the war, and takes a proprietary interest. She unabashedly loves it.

I expect her to enter politics. I predict she will go very far.




~*~

My wonderful blog post title comes courtesy of the late Susan Sontag.

Octuplets mom obsessed with having kids

I don't really know what to say about this... which as my regular readers know, is pretty unusual for me.

So, opening the floor for discussion, as they say.

What do you think? I just end up shaking my head in abject amazement. A 33-year-old woman with 14 kids? And no husband or grandma to help? Yow! Daisy's mouth is agape.

Grandma: Octuplets mom obsessed with having kids

By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 31, 10:30 am ET

LOS ANGELES – The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week conceived all 14 of her children through in vitro fertilization, is not married and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager, her mother said.

Angela Suleman told The Associated Press she was not supportive when her daughter, Nadya Suleman, decided to have more embryos implanted last year.

"It can't go on any longer," she said in a phone interview Friday. "She's got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn't want to get married."

Nadya Suleman, 33, gave birth Monday in nearby Bellflower. She was expected to remain in the hospital for at least a few more days, and her newborns for at least a month.

A spokeswoman at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center said the babies were doing well and seven were breathing unassisted.

While her daughter recovers, Angela Suleman is taking care of the other six children, ages 2 through 7, at the family home in Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

She said she warned her daughter that when she gets home from the hospital, "I'm going to be gone."

Angela Suleman said her daughter always had trouble conceiving and underwent in vitro fertilization treatments because her fallopian tubes are "plugged up."

There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies and her daughter didn't want them destroyed, so she decided to have more children.

Her mother and doctors have said the woman was told she had the option to abort some of the embryos and, later, the fetuses. She refused.

Her mother said she does not believe her daughter will have any more children.

"She doesn't have any more (frozen embryos), so it's over now," she said. "It has to be."

Nadya Suleman wanted to have children since she was a teenager, "but luckily she couldn't," her mother said.

"Instead of becoming a kindergarten teacher or something, she started having them, but not the normal way," he mother said.

Her daughter's obsession with children caused Angela Suleman considerable stress, so she sought help from a psychologist, who told her to order her daughter out of the house.

"Maybe she wouldn't have had so many kids then, but she is a grown woman," Angela Suleman said. "I feel responsible and I didn't want to throw her out."

Yolanda Garcia, 49, of Whittier, said she helped care for Nadya Suleman's autistic son three years ago.

"From what I could tell back then, she was pretty happy with herself, saying she liked having kids and she wanted 12 kids in all," Garcia told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

"She told me that all of her kids were through in vitro, and I said 'Gosh, how can you afford that and go to school at the same time?"' she added. "And she said it's because she got paid for it."

Garcia said she did not ask for details.

Nadya Suleman holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University, Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counseling, college spokeswoman Paula Selleck told the Press-Telegram.

Her fertility doctor has not been identified. Her mother told the Los Angeles Times all the children came from the same sperm donor but she declined to identify him.

Birth certificates reviewed by The Associated Press identify a David Solomon as the father for the four oldest children. Certificates for the other children were not immediately available.

The news that the octuplets' mother already had six children sparked an ethical debate. Some medical experts were disturbed to hear that she was offered fertility treatment, and troubled by the possibility that she was implanted with so many embryos.

Others worried that she would be overwhelmed trying to raise so many children and would end up relying on public support.

The eight babies — six boys and two girls — were delivered by Cesarean section weighing between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces. Forty-six physicians and staff assisted in the deliveries.

Forty-six doctors? (Holy shit, I don't think that came cheap.) As I said, I hardly know what to say. It appears the mom has already filed for bankruptcy:

Octuplets' Family Filed For Bankruptcy

BELLFLOWER, California
Jan. 30, 2009

(CBS) CBS News has learned that the family of the octuplets born this week outside Los Angeles filed for bankruptcy and abandoned a home a little over a year-and-a-half ago.

Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman says the mother is in her mid-thirties and lives with her parents.

There's been no mention of the octuplets' father, Kauffman observes.

The grandfather, she adds, is apparently going to head back to his native Iraq to earn money for the growing family. He told CBS News he's a former Iraqi military man.

Kauffman reported Thursday, and the octuplets' maternal grandmother now confirms to the Los Angeles Times, that the babies' mother already had six young children.

And a family acquaintance had told Kauffman that two of the six other kids are twins, and the six range in age from about two to about seven.

The mother's name is still being kept under wraps.

But her mother, Angela Suleman, also tells the newspaper her daughter conceived the octuplets through a fertility program.

Suleman told the Times her daughter had embryos implanted and, "They all happened to take."

On The Early Show Friday, the scientific director of an Atlanta-area fertility clinic blasted whichever clinic did the implantations, saying he's "stunned."

Doctors at the hospital where the octuplets were born, Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif., some 17 miles southeast of L.A., say the patient came to them already three months pregnant.

Asked at a news conference whether fertility assistance should be provided for a mother who already has multiple children, Dr. Harold Henry, part of the team that delivered the octuplets, said, "Kaiser has no policy on that," adding that doctors counseled the woman on her options.

"The options," said Henry, "were to continue the pregnancy or to selectively abort. The patient chose to continue the pregnancy."

Dr. Karen Maples, who also helped deliver the octuplets, read a statement from the mother saying, "My family and I are ecstatic about all of their arrivals."

The woman and her children live in a neighborhood of small, one-story homes, Kauffman reports, all with two-to-three bedrooms at most. Soon, she pointed out, there will be 14 children and at least three adults living in one of the homes -- until the grandfather heads back to his native Iraq.

Kauffman says unanswered questions include where the woman got the fertility treatments and how they were paid for.

On The Early Show Friday, Michael Tucker, scientific director of Georgia Reproductive Specialists, says all these developments leave him "stunned. As the story's unfolded and it's gone from the potential use of just fertility drugs, or misuse thereof, to actual, apparently, IVF (in-vitro fertilization) with transfer of embryos, this is just remarkable to me that any practitioner in our field of reproductive medicine would undertake such a practice."

Tucker, who has a doctorate in reproductive physiology, says it's "absolutely" possible the octuplets' mother got pregnant with them by taking fertility drugs on her own without the help of a clinic, "and that seemed the most plausible scenario, simply because the profession, we're policed by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, has focused so minutely on the fact that we need to reduce the number of embryos that we transfer. We really are all about seeking the one, the one embryo that's going to make the healthy, single-born baby.

"And this kind of multiple plethora excess of babies is too much of a good thing. And it's rather a slap in the face of the whole profession, simply because it's going in the wrong direction.

"And it's unfortunate," Arthur Kaplan from UPenn (University of Pennsylvania) said, "the media tend to go goo-goo gaga over this and, in fact, it's really a bit of a medical disaster."

"Had she walked into a fertility clinic and said, 'Listen, I've got other children, the oldest seven, the youngest two,' co-anchor Julie Chen asked Tucker, "is there any ethical responsibility on the clinic's part to say, 'I'm not going to treat you,' or, 'You know what? This is not a good idea?" '

"Suffice to say," Tucker responded, "I've been in this business for 25 years now. And it's pretty much standard practice in all clinics to have some form of psychological evaluation of the patient. Also, their sociological circumstances. And I'm stunned, actually, that a clinic would proceed to treat a patient in this circumstance and then even to get to perhaps the transfer of embryos and ponder the transfer in, I believe, the lady's mid-30s, a 35-year-old -- she should be receiving two embryos, maximum, as a transfer into her uterus to have had eight transferred is somewhat -- is extremely irresponsible."

So, there is also the additional question of just how all of these babies occurred... I mean, you don't think mainstream medicine in the USA is UNETHICAL ((gasp)) do you? Banish the thought!

60 Minutes and why Calorie Restriction goes nowhere

...is one of the subject lines on my Calorie Restriction mailing list this week. Alas, if you saw 60 Minutes on CBS Sunday night, you know why.

Not real flattering.

And it was sexist too.

First, the story focused on Resveratrol, the active ingredient in red wine that has so many healthful properties. (And I sell it!--she momentarily preened.) Researchers believe that it can "turn on the longevity gene" and they are currently developing a supplement/pill that will have the higher concentrations necessary to do this.

So far, so good.

And then the story turned to the Calorie Restriction Society and I just gritted my teeth. Oh no, I thought.

I was right.

From the transcript of the show:

Meet the members of CRS - the Calorie Restriction Society - a group that has been severely restricting their calories for years now. They are also part of a Washington University study to see if humans "mimic" the monkeys. Does this kind of self-denial makes them live longer, healthier lives?

60 Minutes joined them for what they call "happy hour," consisting of a cocktail of low-calorie soup for starters, and walnuts, and baby food - green bean puree on flour-free bread to top off this feast fit for a flea.

So far the participants have lowered their blood pressure, reduced body fat, and lessened risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and even cancer. And what's more, to one husband anyway, starvation has its sexy side. "To be honest, if you saw her without any clothes, you'd see she looks pretty darn good, like a woman like of many, many years younger," the man told 60 Minutes.

Their emissaries travel the world, spreading the faith and the word: hunger turns on the survival gene.

The skinnies may not die young, but given their diet they just might die of boredom. But if the scientists at Sirtris are on the right track, it could mean forget dieting, forget the sweaty business of working out - just pop a pill and you are in guilt-free couch potato paradise.

Yes, we must assure the men, it makes the women LOOK GOOD! Offensive as hell. (Let's hear about how the men look!)

One email-list participant wrote of the experience:

[We hoped "60 Minutes" would share] some of the brilliant comments by Richard Schulman and Don Dowden, both of whom shared insights about the way they practice CR and the significant success they have had.

A woman replies:

This is what I wanted to hear! In fact they cut ALL comments by anyone except Paul describing Meredith without clothes.

It should be obvious to anyone, without having to ask, why CR doesn't go anywhere as a scientifically viable alternative to unproven "miracle drugs."

The fault rests squarely on the MSM (mainstream media) and their treatment of the subject matter.

As one thoroughly disappointed in the coverage, let me add my hearty amen to that. Several people are emailing CBS:

I've also emailed them to tell them what I though of the editing on the show. Very poor representation of CRON* in humans, and hardly mentioning the years of research behind it, the excellent results in humans, completely lying about our experience on the diet... and not even giving a chance for the other CRers in the clip to talk about how they feel. He practically used a voice over for almost all of that section!

Indeed, the focus seemed to be, look at these weird thin people who have made guinea pigs of themselves. Do they say this about any other 'diet' that people find useful? Why are various goofy fad diets (yes, I'm lookin at you, Dr Atkins) treated respectfully by the mainstream media, but CR is not? In fact, CR was presented primarily as a counter-point to the Resveratrol story:

Yup, it really wasn't about CR it was about CR effects in a bottle, pop a pill and live longer! Gee, you don't need self control like these poor CR folks, if revenge is living longer, we win. The story is about living longer in a pill, CR was background.

And besides that, the arrogant nastiness directed at the menu overlooked the main reasons for the food being eaten by the folks on CR, which is that they are exceptionally nutrient-rich, densely packed with vitamins and minerals. This fact wasn't mentioned at all in the story, which focused only on calories, not surprisingly. Another comment:

I wish the CR Society representatives featured on 60 minutes would have chosen different foods. The baby food on bread is probably a big turn off to most viewers, including myself. It makes CR look like a cult. There are many people who practice CR by eating better tasting foods.

Personally, I see no difference between "baby food" on bread, or anything else on bread... but the choice of the word "baby food" was certainly interesting, when the word purée would have been used exclusively if this was some sort of gourmet cooking show. Obviously, it was deliberately used for effect.

One CRS member's response was to write a post titled Media: How Does It Portray CR?:

If I depended on the media, I would think people on a CR diet must:

* Peel their apples, eat the peels and throw away the rest;
* Lick their plates in public to get every last scrap;
* Make oddball, tasteless canapes, perhaps with baby food;
* Make one food only and eat that same food day in and day out.
* Eat horrible looking food, portrayed as unappealingly as possible;

Here's the reality: you can eat absolutely any food you desire, as long as you meet your nutritional needs within your calorie limit. This is not that hard. My wife makes all sort of dishes (most recently, Indian cuisine). There is nothing she makes that I don't eat (except asparagus - yuck - some people will eat anything!). I just make sure I know what the nutritional value is, then eat an appropriate amount.

You can even eat pure, totally adulterated, junk food. But you will have to limit the amount of junk so you have enough remaining calories for the day to get 100% of your nutritional needs.

Reality: You can eat perfectly normal food similar to what you are used to, but you will probably also start eating more nutritious foods.

I don't think that rather undramatic reality would have made "good television" though, now would it? Fuck the facts, we want razzle-dazzle bozo weirdness!

Jerry Springer, call your office.

Whatever happened to real reporting?

...

*CRON stands for Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition

Hillary's ever-changing biography

Left: Clinton in Bosnia in 1996, photo from NECN.com.


Did I tell you guys about the time I went to North Korea and was taken up into a space ship with the ghost of Joan Crawford, all while she screamed NO WIRE HANGERS! at the aliens? I'm sure I have, I've told the story many times.

Well, never mind that, I misspoke.

Do you just love the word "misspoke" or what? Hopefully, some 6-year-olds are paying attention, or some precocious kid like Stewie: "Lie? I didn't....LIE, exactly... I... MISSPOKE, yes, that's it, I misspoke!" Misspoke is the new "Whoops, got caught making shit up again!"

Those crazy politicians, you just have to watch them every minute, or it'll be a new whopper every day.

In this case, you've undoubtedly heard the latest, but it's just so outrageous and awful, it bears repeating:

CBS News Video Contradicts Clinton's Story

CBS' Sharyl Attkisson Was On Bosnia Trip - And Got A Warm, Sniper-Free Welcome; Clinton Says She "Misspoke"

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2008

Hillary Clinton greatly misstated an experience in Bosnia that has opened the door for her foreign policy experience to be scrutinized. Sharyl Attkisson reports.

(CBS/AP) It was supposed to be an example of Hillary Rodham Clinton's battle-tested experience:

"I remember landing under sniper fire," Clinton said at a recent campaign event.

It started when, in a recent speech, Clinton spoke of her visit to Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1996 as first lady.

The brutal war was over, but hostilities continued. And though the trip was exactly 12 years ago Tuesday, the memories seemed etched in Clinton's mind.

"There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base," she said.

Problem is: that's not how it happened at all. And we should know: CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson and a CBS News crew accompanied the First Lady on that Bosnia trip.

A photograph shows Clinton talking to Attkisson on the military flight into Tuzla.

And pictures CBS News recorded show the greeting ceremony when the plane landed. Compare that to Clinton's account: "I remember landing under sniper fire," she said. "There was no greeting ceremony and we were basically told to run to our cars. That is what happened."

But there was no sniper fire either when Clinton visited two army outposts, where she posed for photos. And no sniper fire back at the base, where she sang in a USO show starring Sinbad and Sheryl Crow.

Asked about the issue during a meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News' editorial board on Monday, Clinton said she "misspoke."

"I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things - millions of words a day - so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.

A spokesman for rival Barack Obama's campaign questioned whether Clinton misspoke, saying her comments came in what appeared to be prepared remarks for the Iraq speech. His campaign's statement included a link to the speech on Clinton's campaign Web site with her account of running to the cars.

Clinton's campaign said what is on the Web site is not the prepared text, but a transcript of her remarks, including comments before the speech in which she talked about the trip to Bosnia.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a written statement that Clinton's Bosnia story "joins a growing list of instances in which Senator Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policymaking."

Referring to the CBS News video, Clinton aides said Monday, it "was not quite as dramatic as Clinton put it."

"She meant that there was fire on the hillside around the area when we landed, which was the case," said Clinton campaign aide Lissa Muscatine.

Mike Allen of Politico.com said: "Who knows if she misremembered, misspoke, exaggerated, whatever. It makes the case for Sen. Obama that all this experience that she's been talking about is at least partly in her imagination."

Hundreds of thousands have viewed the video online in just the past few days.

There's a saying: Never let your memories be greater than your dreams.

When you're running for president, maybe it should be: never let your memories be greater than the video.

~*~

And monkeys might fly out of my butt!



Did I tell you guys about the time I jumped out of an airplane over Chechnya, delivering humanitarian aid to the suffering masses? I didn't? I did? Well...

Oh, never mind.