Duty to Warn

AUSTIN, Texas -- Cheap irony and Christmas don't go well together. Christmas and war is another bad combination. But there it is. The only president we've got went down to the Capitol Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., the other day for a photo op with people who can't afford to eat.

"I hope people around this country realize that agencies such as this food bank need money. They need our contributions. Contribution are down. They shouldn't be down in a time of need," said GeeDubya Bush.

Right away, we notice real progress. When Bush was running for the presidency in 2000, the feds released their annual report on hunger in America, and Texas was once again in its perennial spot at the top of the list, No. 1 in Hunger.

Bush thought it was some dastardly scheme by the Clinton administration to make Texas, and hence Bush, look bad. He denied there were any hungry people in Texas and said, "You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas." Yeah, you would. But look on the bright side: so he didn't know there's hunger in Texas after six years in office; after only two years in Washington, he's discovered the problem.

When they realized that Sean Penn had arrived in Baghdad unannounced, the Western journalists in the city were taken aback. But they ultimately seemed more surprised by the great distance between media images and the man they actually met.

Quite a few other famous actors in the United States have expressed strong opposition to the impending war against Iraq. But so far, only one has traveled there so that actions and words could speak loudly together.

What Sean Penn said is still resonating.

After accompanying Penn to Baghdad and joining him on a wide range of visits -- including with UNICEF workers, Iraqi officials, patients in hospitals and young children in schools -- I sat with Penn as he wrote on a pad at a restaurant inside the Al-Rashid Hotel. Hours later, he was reading his words aloud at a news conference overflowing with reporters, photographers and TV crews from all over the world.

AUSTIN, Texas -- All right, fellow procrastinators. Of course, we have days to go before Christmas -- no point in precipitously plunging into purchasing yet. On the other hand, it is not too soon to begin thinking about just how long we can put it off. And following our customary habit of last-minute, one-stop shopping for all, check on the location of your nearest independent bookstore. Failing that, fall back on a chain. The bookstore is where you can't go wrong on everyone from Great Aunt Pearl to the new in-law who plays golf.

Among the year's special picks:

-- "War Is a Force That Gives Life Meaning," by Chris Hedges. A war correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, Hedges understands on a visceral level what war looks like and does to people. But this book is more important for his extraordinary intellectual struggle to understand the phenomenon. He may not have all the answers, but he sure has some. Heartbreakingly intelligent.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Gosh, I'm feeling ever so much better about the economy with the new Bush team on the job. William H. Donaldson to head the Securities and Exchange Commission: just the man to take on the Establishment! Founder of the Wall Street investment firm Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and former chairman of insurance giant Aetna. A veritable Ralph Nader.

The media report "Wall Street is delighted" that 71-year-old Donaldson, a longtime friend of the Bush family, will be their new regulator. Of course it is all-important that Wall Street should be delighted. Who do you think we're running this game for?

How words are used can be crucial to understanding and misunderstanding the world around us. The media lexicon is saturated with certain buzz phrases. They're popular -- but what do they mean?

"The use of words is to express ideas," James Madison wrote. "Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them." More than two centuries later, surveying the wreckage of public language in political spheres, you might be tempted to murmur: "Dream on, Jim."

With 2002 nearing its end in the midst of great international tension, here's a sampling of some top U.S. media jargon:

* "Pre-emptive"
This adjective represents a kind of inversion of the Golden Rule: "Do violence onto others just in case they might otherwise do violence onto you." Brandished by Uncle Sam, we're led to believe that's a noble concept.

* "Weapons of mass destruction"

AUSTIN, Texas -- Good grief. I turn my back for 10 minutes, and they bring back the old War Criminal.

Two generations of Americans have come to adulthood since Henry Kissinger last held political power, so I need to explain that War Criminal is not an affectionate sobriquet: The man is, in fact, a war criminal -- wanted for questioning in Chile, Argentina and France (concerning French citizens who disappeared in Chile). He cannot travel to Britain, Brazil and many other countries because they cannot guarantee his immunity from legal proceedings.

In addition to his role in the Chilean coup that brought the regime of Gen. Pinochet to power, Kissinger is wanted for questioning about the international terrorist network called Operation Condor, which conducted killings, kidnappings and bombings in several countries, including this one -- the 1976 bombing in Washington, D.C., that killed a noted Chilean dissident and his companion.

A dozen years after the Gulf War, public perceptions of it are now very helpful to the White House. That's part of a timeworn pattern. Illusions about previous wars make the next one seem acceptable. As George Orwell observed: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

It's not unusual to hear journalists and politicians say that the Gulf War had few casualties. Considering the magnitude of media spin, that myth is hardly surprising. "When the air war began in January 1991," recalls Patrick J. Sloyan, who covered the Gulf War as a Newsday correspondent, "the media was fed carefully selected footage by (Gen. Norman) Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia and (Gen. Colin) Powell in Washington, DC. Most of it was downright misleading."

Listeners don't get much news these days if they tune into commercial radio stations. Coverage of national and global events is scant at best, while local news -- once the pride of many AM radio stations -- is now an endangered species. The remaining community news is usually the "rip and read" variety from wire services.

But let's give credit where it's due. In the United States, thousands of radio outlets are doing a good job of gathering one particular type of news. The coverage is often meticulous and dependable as stations devote substantial resources to providing reliable up-to-the-minute information: If you want the latest news about traffic, in all kinds of weather, turn on the radio.

Using an array of helicopters, mobile phones and other assorted information relay systems, radio stations keep listeners posted on vehicular fender-benders, glitches, snarls and alternative routes. Where I live, a local "all news" CBS affiliate -- owned by the giant Infinity broadcasting conglomerate -- hypes "traffic and weather together" every 10 minutes, round the clock. And the quality of the traffic reports is impressive.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Judge William Wayne Justice, the man who brought the U.S. Constitution to Texas for 30 years, is retired. That makes a lot of stupid clods happy, including most in the Legislature, since they have never forgiven Justice for desegregating the schools. But the rest of us lost a towering public figure, a man whose record on the bench is so magnificent and whose personal conduct is so irreproachable that he is, verily, a secular saint.

(That'll cause him to choke on his coffee. Modesty is one of his many virtues.)

I know it's a painfully obvious point, but if ever a man lived up to his name, William Wayne Justice does. His decisions have changed our racial relations, our prisons and our juvenile detention facilities, improved the ability of a poor man to get justice, and given us "one man, one vote" in our elections, and that's just a small part of the record.

Justice is so revered in the world of the law that as a designated iconoclast, I naturally feel called upon to puncture his reputation. Personally, I think his single greatest trait is the ability to listen to poisonous piffle with a straight face.

Ever since the U.N. Security Council adopted its resolution about Iraq on Nov. 8, American politicians and journalists have been hailing the unanimous vote as a huge victory for international cooperation instead of unilateral action.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was close to ecstatic. "For a brief, shining moment last Friday," he wrote, "the world didn't seem like such a crazy place." The United Nations had proven its worth -- by proving its value to Washington. Among the benefits: "The Bush team discovered that the best way to legitimize its overwhelming might -- in a war of choice -- was not by simply imposing it, but by channeling it through the U.N."

But if the United Nations, serving as a conduit of American power, is now worthwhile because it offers the best way for the United States to "legitimize its overwhelming might," how different is that from unilateralism?