Be careful with that bare-bones argument -- someone could lose an eye

Is there really so little woe weighing down the world at the moment that governments across the globe are considering it a prudent use of their time to attempt to get the various international Fashion Week runway shows to bar "overly thin" models from walking out designs?

Madrid has already done it, London is resisting it and now, in what is surely a sign of approaching aesthetic apocalypse, they're debating it for Milan.

Madrid fashion organizers have taken the unprecedented step of rejecting underweight women, saying they wanted to project an image of beauty and health -- not a waif-like look.

The new Spanish rules say models with a body mass index (BMI) -- a ratio of height to weight -- below 18 are not allowed to appear at the shows. ... In effect, models who weigh less than 125 pounds are prohibited from working the runways.

All right, sorry if I'm bursting anyone's voluptuous little bubble here, but a BMI of 18 is not borderline anorexic. Hell, mine is around 18, and I'm not some sickly sack of sinew spelunking myself across the floor by my flaking fingernails or letting furry woodland creatures nest in the hollow under my ribcage to symbiotically warm me. Instead I get taken for a ballet dancer, about the most freakishly in-shape breed of human there is, about once a week on my way to work. I would love to see someone tally up all the famous and indisputably fit-looking models who would be shown the door if this nonsense came to pass industry-wide.

Speaking of which, given that willowy wraiths have been wafting about the annals of fashion for decades now, why is a crackdown suddenly necessary? Why else:

Madrid's regional government imposed the rules on fashion week to protect the models as well as teenagers who may develop anorexia as they try to copy underweight catwalk stars.

Oh, please -- that spiel gets more, uh, spielen than phony Iraq/Sept. 11 connections, and that doesn't make either worth listening to. But wait! Here comes a corroborating voice with about as much authority on fostering individuality as President Bush has on celebrating "Constitution Day:"

Supporters of the ban were joined by 'Harry Potter' author JK Rowling, who told London's Evening Standard she did not want her children to grow up to be "empty-headed, self-obsessed clones."

Yes, take it from the woman whose works have sold millions, grossed billions and been called "the first literary status symbol for the young" that was already being read by a solid majority of kids back in 2001 - originality is where it's at.

Bottom line, if you're going to kick a model off the runway for her weight, don't do it because of some supposed benevolent concern for the health and well being of that perpetual proportion of the populace consisting of vacuous human herd animals who, if they weren't starving themselves, would just be engaging in some other form of socially motivated self-destruction.

Do it because, just as they do on the disproportionately plump, the clothes look like crap on animate skeletons.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go savor my daily ration of a Listerine strip on a saltine.

If god is their co-pilot, he appears to be drunk

While Vatican officials are no doubt too busy reinforcing the bullet-proof glass on the Pope Mobile to bother with smiting my eternal soul, once again, I'd like to take a moment thank current events for reiterating one of my basic tenants of philosophy for living - that religion is among the absolute most idiotic and unstable platforms upon which to construct identity or argue from. I swear, it's the San Andreas fault or Gulf Coast hurricane zone of the metaphysical topography, because no tenants are ever going to compromise, much less pack up and leave.

The latest interdenominational uproar and unwinnable pontifical pissing contest stems from Pope Benedict's recent quotation of a medieval scholar calling Islam's notion of holy war "evil and inhuman," allegedly as part of a blanket condemnation of violence in the name of religion and a call for dialogue among faiths that, as they say, went a bit awry. Now, I realize he's relatively new on the global spiritual leadership scene and all, but anyone at all acquainted with politics can tell you it doesn't matter what you mean – it matters what you say and how vocal and influential a contingent you offend when you say it.

And in the realm of "interfaith dialogue," it's perfectly OK to spout things like this when followers of another figmental figure cast the first stone:

"You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad (holy war) and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God's rule is established governing all people and nations," said the statement by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups in Iraq. ...

"If the stupid pig is prancing with his blasphemies in his house," [Another Iraqi extremist group, Ansar al-Sunna] said in a Web statement, referring to the pope, "then let him wait for the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock on the walls of Rome."

Productive, reasonable and eloquent stuff there, all right. It just makes you pause and marvel at man's capacity for reaching collective enlightenment through faith. And of course, guess which glimmering "Christian nation" gets dragged into the papal fray by mere virtue of existing:

In Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used the comments to call for protests against the United States. He argued that while the pope may have been deceived into making his remarks, the words give the West an "excuse for suppressing Muslims" by depicting them as terrorists.

Seriously, before the churches start exploding or those "America is 80 percent Christian!" polls get too widely disseminated and both fanatical factions finally get the full-on holy war they've been salivating for, can those of us who aren't Christians or are roundly unaffiliated with the entire deitistical enterprise get some kind of symbol or something to wear so we don't get taken out in the canonical crossfire? Like trendy "Not My Pontiff" T-shirts with edgy little Warhol-esque renderings of the pope on them?

But, I suppose, the almighty feelings were hurt, so all is justified:

"His comments really hurt Muslims all over the world," Umar Nawawi of the radical Islamic Defenders' Front said in Jakarta. "We should remind him not to say such things which can only fuel a holy war."

How, by starting one first instead of taking the high road of reason? That'll learn 'im, all right. Good job, boys, way to be earthly envoys of the good, the just, the beautiful and the harmonious.

What were our silly founding fathers thinking trying to keep religion out of politics?

Decoding the Oracle of Dubya

President Bush, apparently needing something to fill his time other than talking torture 'n' "tehrah" and attempting to fundraise for Republican legislative candidates without infecting them with virulent cases of disaffection-by-association with him and his policies, is now prognosticating a "Third Great Awakening" of rampant religiosity catalyzed by these "times of crisis:"

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history.

Because the people Bush meets on his travels are a regular cross-section of America that's never, ever pre-filtered for ideological simpatico. Though unnervingly, recent polls appear to concur–not only are respondents reporting increased levels of belief in God and spiritual affiliation, but the nuances of their faiths are also being intriguingly correlated with contemporary political issue positions more commonly classified in the red state/blue state dichotomy. The president, ever the astute student of history, had this to add:

Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

Though he made a point of claiming he's not really saying his supporters equal good and everyone else equals evil, Bush does seem to assume this alleged swelling of Christian sentiment is something to celebrate. Though given his tendency to invoke another major world religion when tossing out catchy euphemisms for the ephemeral enemy in his war on terrorism, I fail to see how stoking religious fervor of any persuasion is something positive. Isn't much of the problem here the cluster of vocal religious nuts wanting to wage holy war on another sect of religious nuts greater in number but blessedly less actively fanatical?

Regardless, when you start sorting your world in absolutes, it's easy to get a little too sure of yourself–and for your press secretary to start spouting borderline delusions. Take this snippet voiced by Tony Snow Sept. 13 on "Good Morning America" on the topic of across-the-isle congeniality:

I would love to hear Democrats step up and say, "I'd love to help you, Mr. President ... because we are impressed with the fact you ended up getting intelligence that foiled numerous plots that were aimed at Americans."

Yeah, I'm sure that's up there on the Democratic agenda, right between "co-sponsor legislation with Rick Santorum" and "violate selves with rusty garden tools."

Though it's human nature to band together in threatening times, those in power have already played that hand, and the unity that had been within flapping-distance of their partisan banner has dissipated. If there really is a religious revival in our midst, at least this time the electorate is rallying around an all-powerful spiritual construct as opposed to its thinks-he's-all-powerful stuttering mortal conduit in the Oval Office.

But still, when people get too comfortable with perceived coherence of their places in the world and start feeling a little too good about themselves, they can get reckless and blindly self-righteous at one end, complacent and lazy at the other.

I realize I've said it before, but one of my favorite bits of Nietzschean philosophy describes how groups like to preserve their "plebian weakness" by using social and institutional sanctions to produce guilt that discourages individuals from rising above the collective mediocrity, while simultaneously rationalizing their own ordinariness by preaching doctrines of essential equality in the eyes of some higher, other-worldly authority.

Take this country's education system and its preoccupation with self-esteem and making every student feel like an extra-special superstar for merely showing up. In a bit of anecdotal evidence scorching enough to compel anyone still carrying the torch for scientific literacy in this country to just give up and go join the Discovery Institute, the Oct. issue of The Atlantic Monthly reports, "despite faring worse on a standardized eighth-grade science test than students in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, American students are more than twice as likely as their peers in those countries to enjoy high 'self-confidence' in their ability to learn science." Well, as long as they feel good about their incompetence, that's all that really matters, because their identity as citizens of the most powerful country on earth supersedes such substantive trifles.

Not that the perils of mindless ideological action aren't multi-cultural. Vengeance, to take one manifestation, is truly a global commodity. For a silly yet telling example, the AP reported Sept. 13 that officials in Australia are finding dismembered stingray carcasses on Queensland beaches–victims, they suspect, of retaliation-by-proxy for the death of Steve Irwin at the barb of one of their species last week. Yes, human beings, the most intellectually and ethically advanced creatures on the planet, are scooping up stingrays and slicing off their tails to avenge the death of the "Crocodile Hunter." Christ, people, what if one of them is Jesus? Way to go.

Yes, though at least Tucker Carlson no longer has license to blaspheme bipeds across the land with his repugnant dance routines and Dr. House is back to his dreamy, Vicodin-popping, sonovabitchin' self, I'd at least wait until Katie Couric stops leading the ratings perched atop the network news anchor desk like some kind of over-coifed toy canine before I'd register divine endorsement of our culture's current course.

Would that actual events were really so inspiring

If all this fuss over ABC's "Path to 9/11" miniseries has reassured us of anything, it's that despite all that's allegedly changed fundamentally in the five years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the truth remains far less important than the version that gets broadcast in stimulating dialogue.

And in the "liberal" propaganda tube better known as the entertainment industry, it's apparently still a-OK to play "docudrama" with characterizations of real political actors and events. Assuming, of course, that the reality-based jumping off point is the 9/11 Commission Report and the Clinton administration and not the life of Ronald Reagan, in which case it's all about accuracy.

But ex-leaders of any ideological stripe can take comfort from the fact that even those who make their rather comfortable livings spinning the truth can fall victim to and survive such alleged scripted distortion.

Take malevolent genius/political advisor Karl Rove, who the authors of a new "biography" claim invited a Catholic priest to bless his new office upon moving into the White House–an office whose previous occupant just happened to have been Hillary Clinton, and was therefore, the authors claim Rove joked, haunted by lollygagging left-wing demons and some skewed political feng shui:

[Authors] Slater and Hudson both say they're stumped over why Rove, known to be agnostic, wanted any blessing at all.

"A formal exorcism didn't happen, that's true," Slater said. "But it was a real religious ceremony. Rove made more than a passing reference to Hillary Clinton. They talked about the fact, in a joking way, that this had been her office and Hillary was still in there."

For though President Bush may have the direct-dial line, apparently it takes the likes of Hillary to drive non-believers to god. But I suppose, when you've got pressing matters to mastermind, you can't waste all your own evil energy battling residual Hillary-juju.

And, hey, if Clay Aiken is fit to play policy wonk and staff the delightfully named "President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities," and the rumor mill has actually churned up the phrase "Defense Secretary Lieberman," at this point little is too far-fetched to at least entertain.

American culture is officially an oxymoron

And currently up for online bids is bronze-plated proof, courtesy of Hollywood's first family of freakdom:

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have yet to show their baby daughter off in public, but eager fans were given an unusual preview with the chance to see a bronze cast depicting her first solid stool.

The scatological sculpture -- more doodoo than Dada -- is purportedly cast from 19-week old Suri's first bowel movement and will be shown at the Capla Kesting gallery in Brooklyn, New York, before being auctioned off for charity.

Do click on the link–there's a picture. Classy.

Though upon reading this my first instinct was to deem everyone involved in any step of this... thing's production or dissemination sick and wrong–squared; in fact they are all merely playing out the great American tradition of blending truth and fiction until audiences, so far as they're entertained, cease to give a crap.

From reality television to true crime to President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" (or his new assassination film), give the people a choice among dull but confirmed reality, engaging but predictable narrative and grotesque but magnetically plausible theatre, you can bet they'll line up to gawk at the last.

Any X-Philes out there will be familiar with this bit of homegrown showmanship and advertising history, but for everyone else, go check out the tale of the Feejee Mermaid, one of P.T. Barnum's delightful bits of "humbug."

Not only is it a cool story, but this humble and chimerical creature illuminates an enduring facet of our national character: That to get people buzzing and ponying up their money, forget straight reality and full-on fakery–we're most enamored of what lies somewhere in between.

Politicians also realize this–that though most Americans can't name their congressmen or Supreme Court Justices, odds are they're up on all their oratorical faux pas, sex scandals, major photos ops and celebrity co-minglings.

That's why I think it would be a much more politically adventurous and all-around engaging election come 2008 if the candidates choose desiccated and deformed pieces of quasi-humanity or zoological oddity spewed forth from dark and uncharted fathoms as running mates.

No, not Lieberman, Rove or even Katherine Harris–who wouldn't want to fully participate and own our own democracy if '08 became a contest between Clinton-Chupacabra and Obama-Ogopogo to take on McCain-Mothman?

But I suppose, I'm getting ahead of myself here–I should probably wait and see who that ubiquitous and supernaturally well-connected space alien the Weekly World News always captures hobnobing around at the Capitol decides to endorse.

The politics of pulp

A prime slice of primary-source American history was spared the shredder this week in Ohio as paper ballots from the 2004 presidential election were given a reprieve from their scheduled destruction, with some pushing for the ballots to be saved so a more thorough investigation into the numerical irregularities and "extremely shoddy handling of ballots" researchers have already documented can proceed and the system can be improved for future contests.

Of course, others contend the punchcard packrats aren't looking out for history or democracy (or even toward designing some fabulously snappy White House Christmas cards or executive wallpaper), but merely dredging up past disgruntlement and playing politics.

I have to admit, the critics have a point–we wouldn't want to offend or undermine anyone's current authority over something so trifling. We're merely talking about the most fundamental tenant of a democratic state, after all–it's not like someone airbrushed a promo shot of Katie Couric or something.

Besides, how dare anyone have the audacity to imply an electoral system that produces leaders this articulate might be slightly flawed?

"We face an enemy that has an ideology," Mr. Bush continued. "They believe things. The best way to describe their ideology is to relate to you the fact that they think the opposite of the way we think."

Gee, combine that pearl of cultured wisdom with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's Hitler analogy, and I now understand everything that's going on in the world today and just what to do about it–thanks, Mr. President!

Perhaps it's no coincidence that another term for "voting rights" is "suffrage."