Phawker

ASSOCIATED PRESS: After months of debate, President Barack Obama will spell out a costly Afghanistan war expansion to a skeptical public Tuesday night, coupling an infusion of as many as 35,000 more troops with a vow that there will be no endless U.S. commitment. His first orders have already been made: at least one group of Marines who will be in place by Christmas. Obama has said that he prefers “not to hand off anything to the next president” and that his strategy will “put us on a path toward ending the war.” But he doesn’t plan to give any more exact timetable than that Tuesday night. The president will end his 92-day review of the war with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.  Obama’s war escalation includes sending 30,000 to 35,000 more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year, on top of the 71,000 already there. There also will be a fresh focus on training Afghan forces to take over the fight and allow the Americans to leave. On a few of the bigger questions most on the minds of increasingly restive members of Congress and the public, such as how much the additional $30 billion to $35 billion cost will balloon the already skyrocketed federal deficit, how long the U.S. commitment will continue and how it will wind down, Obama was expected to make references without offering specifics. MORE

ANDREW SULLIVAN: I’m going to give the speech a chance. It’s a very difficult situation, and, after Bush’s grotesque mismanagement, no options are anything but varieties of awful. But everything I hear sounds like conventional drift to me – Bush’s policy with a much more interesting and intelligent discussion beforehand. So instead of staying in neo-colonial occupation against an insurgency that now feeds off US intervention with no real strategy, we will stay in neo-colonial occupation against an insurgency that now feeds off US intervention with lots of super-smart defenses of the indefensible. MORE

NEW YORKER: The President has come under heavy criticism for taking the time to ponder the imponderables. “The urgent necessity,” a respected Washington columnist wrote the other day, “is to make a decision—whether or not it is right.” Really? Does the columnist suppose that a country unable to find the patience for weeks (even months) of thinking could summon the stamina for years (even decades) of killing and dying? What Obama seems to have discovered is that this is no longer the war that began eight years ago. That war was an act of retribution and prevention. But now who are we punishing? What are we preventing? The old narrative is broken. The fifth war is becoming a sixth. MORE

[SOURCE: National Priorities Project]

DAILY NEWS:The U.S. House already has passed a sweeping health-care bill, and the Senate narrowly voted Nov. 21 to open debate on its own measure, crafted by Majority Leader Harry Reid. If the Senate approves a bill and the two houses of Congress work out an agreeable plan, we could have the most significant new domestic program enacted since Social Security. “I think we’ll see a bill passed, and there’s a pretty good chance of including a public [insurance option,” said Pennsylvania’s newly Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter. “We have to take one step at a time.” The battle will be intensely partisan, and Organizing for America, a group funded by the Democratic National Committee, has targeted U.S. representatives like suburban Republican Jim Gerlach who voted against the House health-care bill, but whose districts voted for President Obama in 2008. Gerlach said that he’s used to critical ads and e-mail dumps from such activists, but plans to oppose any “government-run approach [to health care that will create too many tax increases and cost millions of jobs.” Conservative groups will work just as hard to keep Republicans and moderate Democrats from backing anything like the current bills. Here are some questions and answers about the health-care-reform bills. MORE

RELATED: How It Will Impact The ‘Average Joe’

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FRESH AIR

From 1967 to 1969, Tommy and Dick Smothers challenged the censors at CBS and the political establishment who tried to tame their wildly popular — and politically left-leaning — show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The brothers lost their show, but later won a battle in court. TV critic David Bianculli joins host Terry Gross to talk about the legendary comedy duo who tackled political issues and censorship.Based on extensive interviews with the Smothers Brothers and other key players, Bianculli describes the siblings’ lives both onscreen and behind the scenes in a new book, Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Bianculli is a frequent contributor and guest host on Fresh Air. His previous books are Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously and Dictionary of Teleliteracy: Television’s 500 Biggest Hits, Misses, and Events. His website is www.tvworthwatching.com. Here’s an excerpt from Dangerously Funny:

However, by becoming unexpected martyrs to the cause of free speech, the Smothers Brothers lost their most influential national TV platform just when that freedom mattered the most. Like Elvis Presley when he was shipped off to the army, or Muhammad Ali when he was stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to fight in Vietnam, the Smothers Brothers were nonconformist iconoclasts, pop-culture heroes yanked from the national spotlight in their prime. Muhammad Ali became the champ again, and Elvis returned to record many more number-one hits, but Tom and Dick Smothers never again enjoyed the influence or mass popularity of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. In terms of introducing and encouraging new talent, pushing the boundaries of network television, and reflecting the youth movement and embracing its antiwar stance and anti-administration politics, the show was, quite literally, their finest Hour.

What, exactly, made the Smothers Brothers so important a guiding force in the 1960s? Mostly, they were in the right place at the right time, reacting to the ’60s as events unfurled around them. They were the first members of their generation with a prime-time pulpit, and they used it. Each season, the average age of their writing staff got younger, and the satiric edge of the material being televised — or censored — got sharper. Yet in an era when most families still watched television together, in the same room on the same TV set, the greatest and most impressive achievement of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was that it spoke to and attracted young viewers without alienating older ones. With its humor, guest list, and high caliber of entertainment, it bridged the generation gap at a time when that gap was becoming a Grand Canyon-like chasm. MORE

BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY When it comes to sports, I almost always fall into the “traditionalist” camp. And, truly, I like the tradition of Detroit and Dallas hosting Thanksgiving Day games. But there is no disputing that it is an unfair advantage. Every year, Dallas gets a 9-day layoff coming into the season’s stretch drive. Usually their game after Thanksgiving will be against a team on six days of rest. This is an advantage, and so is the fact that the Cowboys are at home for the Thanksgiving game. This means that their opponent on short rest must travel to Dallas, while the Cowboys are at least at home and can prepare a bit. Yes, there are seven other Thursday games in 2009, so other teams enjoy this advantage as well. But the current Thanksgiving “tradition” gives the Lions and Cowboys an entrenched edge, year in, year out. It should stop, the games should be rotated among all teams.

Staying on the Thanksgiving topic, the Lions frequently play their division foes on Turkey Day. They play an AFC team every other year (for TV-related reasons), and an NFC team in odd-numbered years. Twelve of the last thirteen times they’ve lined up against an NFC team, it has been in-division (Packers 6, Bears 4, Vikings 2 and the Falcons snuck in there in 2005). Thus those NFC North teams are benefiting from the 9-day-layoff advantage (particularly Green Bay). Over the same span, the Cowboys have played NFC East teams only 5 of 13 times. The Eagles have played the Cowboys on Thanksgiving once in the 44 seasons since Dallas started hosting the game in 1966 (it was in 1989, a 27-0 Eagles whitewashing in which Reggie White was the recipient of the first ever “Turkey Leg Award”, which was, of course, an actual turkey leg). Not allowing other teams in the Cowboys’ division to enjoy the same advantage that Dallas gets gives the Cowboys even more of an edge. THE NFL FAVORS THE COWBOYS!! The ‘Boys are good for ratings after all, might as well help them out!

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BRIAN ENO: We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localized stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness. I think this is good news. MORE

INQUIRER: Forty-three minutes past midnight, a crackle pierced the summer air. For a moment, Leroy Lewis, perched on a concrete wall beside a rowhouse in his Juniata Park neighborhood, talking to two friends, dismissed the sound as leftover fireworks. When Lewis, 19, turned to look, he saw a young man, his baseball cap tilted low, moving from the alleyway across the narrow street, pointing a gun, hunting. “The next shot was me looking at him,” Lewis recounted later. “I just seen a whole bunch of fire.”Lewis took off, dipping behind parked cars, as bullets cut through his stomach, his buttocks, an ankle, a shoulder, and a thigh. His friends were also hit, one in the chest, the other in a thigh. As Lewis collapsed a block away on some rowhouse steps, shot six times, one thought filled his mind: “I’m going to die.”

Hours later, as chief trauma surgeon Amy Goldberg scanned the list of patients rushed into Temple University Hospital’s emergency room overnight on July 9, 2008, one name stood out. “Not again,” Goldberg thought. Ten months before, on Sept. 1, 2007, she had stitched and stapled together Lewis’ stomach, ripped open by a bullet. Goldberg, 48, remembered how Lewis had worked hard to recover, in the hospital for weeks, visiting the trauma clinic for months, calling her Miss Amy. Lewis admitted to hospital staff that he’d sold drugs, on and off. But unlike many gunshot patients – brooding, itching to get back to the street – Lewis, then 18, said he wanted to change. MORE

["Death Of Cleopatra" by GUIDO CAGNACCI]

INQLINGS: Cleopatra, comin’ atcha. Next year, the Franklin Institute will be the first stop in a traveling exhibition about the enigmatic Egyptian queen. “Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt,” opening June 5, follows the FI’s 2007 blockbuster “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” which National Geographic, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology also had a hand in. Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.) was Egypt’s last pharaoh before the Romans stepped in to conquer. The Romans later tried to rewrite history and destroy all traces of her existence. Remnants from her rule will be woven into the story of the search for her history and tomb by archaeologists Zahi Hawass, who’s trying to find the tomb of lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and Franck Goddio, who uncovered her palace and two ancient cities that had been lost beneath the Mediterranean after earthquakes and tidal waves. MORE

BY AARON STELLA Welcome back, folks. This chapter of my life story marks the eleventh of its kind. Upon each recounting, I am required to dredge up buried memories that I rarely visit. Recently, however, the impact of my past has become gruesomely clear. There is much left to be done, from what I can see—but I shall be better for it in the end. For those of you who haven’t been following along, you can read the whole story beginning to end after the jump. But for now, onward and upward. So, picking up where I left off last, I’ve won my freedom from the psych ward via good behavior and clearing a series of mental health tests. It was in the gloomy halls of the ward, however, that I discovered a freedom I never realized: that I was the only person worthy of being loved and trusted, and that I could live my life how I saw fit. After returning home from the ward, DHR (Department of Human Resources) met with my mother and me separately and concluded it was best for me not to continue to live with my family. DHR found a family that was willing to take me into their care. And so I transferred what little belongings I had within a few days. It just so happened that my new family was the family of the most popular boy in my high school. Hitherto I had led a fairly friendless existence at school, and so when I heard it was this particular family, I had to contain my excitement: their son was a sinewy southern charmer with a drawl that could turn you to butter and widely rumored to be well-endowed. Straight as an arrow, of course, but my proximity to him was satisfying enough.

The family itself was even poorer then the last I lived with: I note this fact because I came from a family with a yearly household income hovering around two hundred grand (courtesy of my father’s doctor salary); the one after, around $45K (blind mobility specialist); and now, about $26K (a welder). The mother acted as the school nurse at the Catholic high school where her children and I attended, in exchange for free tuition for her offspring. The family lived in a humble home in the Cullman, Alabama, countryside. Their backyard was a 10-acre pasture that held their 10 cows (aka life-savings), and about 250 yards past their front doorstep was a small lake where they often fished for carp. On my first day, I washed dishes with the mother of the house. She told me that she believed homosexuality to be a disease, which evidenced with having an effeminate, freeloading artist for a brother who was openly gay—the “condition” from which all his vices came. I told her I thought differently. She said her word is law; and that if I ever made a pass at one of her boys (she had two, both remarkably beautiful), she would beat me to a bloody pulp. I assured her that wouldn’t happen, so long of course that they didn’t make the first move. Whoops, wrong answer. Open mouth. Insert foot.

I spent the first months with my new family during the last half of spring semester of my junior year. My memory of that time is sort of a wash. Via my new residence with the popular boy, to whom I disclosed all the harrowing exploits that had preceded, the kids from my high school accepted me into their clique. I didn’t particularly care for any of them, but I was in thrall to their newfound acceptance of me from the get-go. I wasn’t about to spoil this chance of “being loved” amongst my peers; it was what any insecure high-school kid wants. Deep down, however, I found high school life to be a farce: education—the point of our daily tenure gets cast to the wayside to accommodate the hierarchies that will carry over into the vacuous, hostile world we will enter after. And the parents—all they care about is whether their kid is a football star or the sexiest cheerleader or prom king or prom queen or class president or whatever other meaningless titles they’ve aspired to since their own high school days. All parents concern themselves with their kids’ grades, sure, but if that were the extent of their concerns, then why does the social hell of high school exist?

So I made friends, but I became especially close with the popular boy. He was as sincere as he was kind, not to mention sharp as tack. Once summer came, we got jobs. He did dishwashing for a small, family-owned Italian restaurant, and I worked as the groundskeeper at the palatial Benedictine convent situated up the road from our high school. It was my first real job. I was terrible at it. The popular boy gave me a crash course (no pun intended) on how to drive a tractor the morning of my first day. Needless to say, in the course of my employment there, I destroyed a family of hibiscuses, crashed the Buick into an tree, got a poison oak rash all over my arms, and managed somehow to tear up the wrong floor in the wrong wing of the convent that the nuns were planning to convert into a hospital. And, wouldn’t you know, they still paid me? Fancy that.

Come the middle of the summer, I began visiting the foster family who first took me in after I stopped living with my biological family. The family I was living with currently was not too keen about these visits. They felt this other family would try to brainwash me—and, as it turned out, that was in fact their intent. They told me that I couldn’t trust my parents, which I already knew, nor the family I stayed with now, that nobody except them cared about me. Then they propositioned me to go live on a tobacco farm in Tennessee, where neither the state nor my parents would ever be able to find me. I jumped at the chance. Sure I had made some friends; sure, I was becoming closer with the popular boy, and working, somewhat happily; but there I could live a life that was my own. On my return home that evening, the parents of my current family forbade me from seeing the other family again. I threw a fit, telling them that they couldn’t stop me. At that, the father of the family walked me outside to the barn where he kept his rusty old tractor and told me to get on and ride the thing till I calmed down. Tearful and despondent, I began aimlessly rolling around the tall grass of the field. Be it by pure physical exhaustion from crying or the din of the motor, a doorway opened for meditative thought: I observed the cows grazing placidly, and the majestic bull nudging his harem to different corners of the field so as to not obstruct my path. I held my head toward the sun as it set while my mind drifted into a place absent memory and meaning. Then, at the tail of twilight, I hopped off the sputtering beast, and met the family back inside as they were saying their prayers. The father and mother nodded to me, and we ate our meal in silence to the song of chattering cicadas.

A week later, I was informed that the other family who offered to whisk me away to Tennessee had kidnapped another adolescent and fled the state, and soon after came to learn that they were wanted felons in three states for abducting children. What was I to think? They had shown me such love, the first of its kind within the bounds of family. And now, I find out that they’re child abductors? The teenager they had kidnapped became the subject of an Amber Alert (reserved alert for missing persons typically younger than 18-years-old). He was found later, in a drugged daze; yet he remembers that his abductors forced him to marry their daughter. That could have been me, I thought, forced to marry her. You would think that a discovery of this magnitude would scare people my age—make them paranoid—not to mention all the events preceding, but it didn’t. And that scared me.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Interested newcomers to the ongoing saga of Aaron’s outrageous autobiography can read the whole thing beginning to end below.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS: Allen Iverson’s retirement could be a short one. A person with knowledge of the talks says the Philadelphia 76ers have been approached about signing their former franchise superstar, and team management has held internal discussions about bringing Iverson back. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because talks have not been made public, says Iverson is among the free-agent candidates the Sixers are considering to replace injured point guard Lou Williams, who’s expected to miss eight weeks after jaw surgery. “I think we would look at all the options for sure, but nothing has really happened,” Peter Luukko, COO of Comcast-Spectacor, which owns the 76ers and Flyers, told The Associated Press. “We have had no formal discussions.” With no apparent interest from NBA teams, Iverson announced his plan to retire this week. His statement read more like a job pitch for a playoff contender rather than a final farewell. Iverson said he planned to retire, but also stated that “I feel strongly that I can still compete at the highest level.” The statement also said Iverson has tremendous love for the game and the desire to play, adding there is “a whole lot left in my tank.” MORE

SIXERVILLE: The 76ers, knowing they will be without the injured Lou Williams for two months, have internally discussed the possibility of bringing back Allen Iverson. As of about 3:30 Saturday afternoon, Comcast-Spectacor chief operating officer Peter Luukko was contemplating discussing the situation later in the day with chairman Ed Snider. It remained unclear whether Snider, who couldn’t wait to trade Iverson to Denver in December of 2006, would sign off on a return by the four-time scoring champion. MORE

Vice founder Suroosh Alvi goes to Mecca with mom and dad. Takes camera. Fascinating, Captain.

INQUIRER: Mr. Alberts rose to fame in the 1950s as one of The Four Aces, whose hits included “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” “Stranger in Paradise” and the Jule Styne number “Three Coins in a Fountain.” But generations of Philadelphians knew him as “Uncle Al,” a tuxedoed fatherly figure with a white pompadour, blinding smile and infinite patience, as he gave screen time to young singers, hoofers, and comedians on Saturdays. The program started on Channel 48 in 1968 and two years later moved to Channel 6. His show, which also toured local theaters, launched the careers of such performers as Andrea McArdle, Sister Sledge, Teddy Pendergrass, and Jarrod Spector. “It was like going to church – a staple of life in Philadelphia,” said McArdle, the first star of Annie on Broadway. She was 8 or 9 when she first appeared on the Showcase. Mr. Alberts’ wife was “Aunt Stella” to the show’s performers: 6-year-old “Teeny Boppers,” 7-to-14-year-old “Gold Nuggets” and 14-to-19-year-old “Show Stoppers.” All had dragged their mommies to the monthly audition at J&A Caterers in South Philadelphia. MORE

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009, directed by Werner Herzog, 121 minutes, U.S.)

OH MY GOD (2009, directed by Paul Rodger, 93 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC

If you think the Batman series has turned dark, you won’t believe the latest film franchise.  Bad Lieutenant, the 1992 film gave Harvey Keitel a chance to wail naked as the drug-addicted criminal cop has returned, re-imagined by its producer Edward Pressman as a showcase for the long-dismantled weirdness of Nicholas Cage. Helmed by German director Werner Herzog , this new Bad Lieutenant allows the director to show another crazed character out on a limb but what is most surprising is the story’s transformation from one of sin and guilt to darkened farce.

In the original directed by Abel Ferrara, Keitel’s character (known only as “The Lieutenant”) was a scary lost soul, drowning in sex and drugs and secretly hoping for his soul (and the NY Mets’) redemption.  Keitel’s character was frightening and dangerous, we related to him the way we might a wounded shark, with a mix of pity and fear.  Herzog’s Lieutenant is set in post-Katrina New Orleans, a place he sees as being Godless and irredeemable, like the first American post-apocalypse story set in the real world.

Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a cop with a painful bad back that has left him self-medicating with what he can shake out of his suspects.  Early on we see him dive into the muck to save a drowning prisoner, so we suspect there is a heart buried in there somewhere, obscured by the jittery dementia of his addiction.  When he protects his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes ) from a violent John, Terence runs afoul of a local mobster and is forced to raise money by going into business with a local drug dealer named Big Fate (believably played by real life rapper Xzibit).

The original film has maintained its power as one of the most resonant crime films of the 90′s, disturbing and uncompromising in its examination of The Lieutenant’s depravity.  Herzog’s film is not as dark, its lead character missing the sadism and predatory power of the original.  What it does have is Nicholas Cage, an movie star market-tested to be irresistible on screen, and that he is.  With his stiff, bad back posture and his awkward, trying-to-act-straight amphetamine energy, it’s a gas to see Cage in no condition to save the world.  He shakes down club-goers for their drugs, plants evidence on suspects and makes out with their girlfriends.  All this got big laughs from the audience, it’s a testament to Cage’s on-screen persona that we can so easily find ourselves rooting for a corrupt cop.

Herzog taps into his ability to give power to the absurd and he works the cop genre (with a script by longtime TV cop show writer William Finkelstein) with a unambiguous verve that makes the film unlike anything else in the director’s filmography .  It’s hard not to make comparisons to the original; I miss God hanging over the proceedings, ready to bring his wrath down on this maverick cop.  Of course that was NYC in the nineties, a much different place than modern New Orleans. Herzog brings a foreigner’s eye to modern day New Orleans, presenting his vision of a place that God and government has abandoned, a nightmare that adds the necessary weight to the giddy kick of Cage’s bad boy.

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God is still haunting locals theaters though, most visibly in the debut documentary from director Paul Rodger titled Oh My God.  Rodger had a simple premise, wander the globe, thrust the camera in people’s faces and ask “What is God?”  He never gets far beyond this though, he doesn’t find a way to sort through or expand on these ideas, instead the movie becomes an endless parade of faces giving short vague answers (has “God is Love” ever sounded more trite?) while its slick world beat gumbo rock surges uninterrupted for ninety three minutes.  He checks in with many of the world’s greatest religious thinkers, namely Hugh Jackman , Ringo Starr, Seal and magician David Copperfield. Okay, assorted monks and priests get their say too but by editing their comments down to a few short sentences, Rodger gives the film the heft of bumper sticker spirituality. Oh My God wants to illuminate the Big Ideas, but its shallow premise emits the beam of a keychain flashlight.

jonathan –

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.

American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.

Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.

So tomorrow, I’ll be giving thanks for my family — for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.

But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.

The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.

We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.

So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.

It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.

In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.

You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished — and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.

So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.

With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,

President Barack Obama