Questions silly, questions tough

Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake asks playfully in her post from the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas:

“1. What do you listen to or have on in the background when you are hanging out at FDL? Please be specific. (If it’s porn, please don’t be specific.)

“2. If you were on death row, what would your last meal be?

“3. What is your favorite movie of all time?”

I’ll play along. What do I listen to or have on in the background as I read FDL? Well, not porn, if for no other reason that all that ecstatic moaning and stuff would be a little distracting. I don’t have a TV in my den, so I listen to CDs on the little shelf stereo that sits above my desk. My taste in music is fairly eclectic – right now, Madeleine Peyroux’s bluesy “Careless Love” is spinning (fabulously retro). I also love Native American flutist Carlos Nakai, Celtic singer Niamh Parsons and the exotic Anam Ali’s “Portrait of Grace.” I like instrumental music that evokes a mood, but I also got a huge charge (you’ll never guess why) out of Neil Young’s latest “Living With War.”

I rarely listen to the radio while I write or surf, as I find it distracting, too. But if there’s something going on in the wide old world that I don’t want to miss the breaking news about, I’ll tune to NPR.

If I were on death row, I think I’d go for simple, which is pretty much what I prefer even for meals that won’t be my last: A salmon fillet grilled with lemon, garlic, pepper and sea salt and a tasty spinach salad with dried cranberries, walnuts, carrots and a light dressing of raspberry vinaigrette. Normally, I’d forego a glass of dry white wine with the meal – wine makes me drowsy – but in this case, I think I’d go ahead and enjoy a lovely glass of the best available. Drowsiness wouldn’t be an issue, right?

I hate to admit it, but I’m the world’s worst movie-watcher, which probably makes me very, very strange in these entertainment media-charged times. But I just don’t have a favorite. I hardly ever watch a movie more than once (unlike good books, which I’ll read over and over). Still, one flick that made me laugh until my sides ached was “Jumping Jack Flash” with Whoopie Goldberg, made way back in the 80s. Speaking of Whoopie, I guess I do have a favorite movie after all: “The Color Purple.”

Christy mentioned in her post that she met former ambassador to Iraq Joe Wilson and later got to sit by the pool with him and some other VIPs and shoot the breeze. I greatly admire the man for taking a stand and calling foul regarding the Bush administration’s lie about Saddam’s attempt to buy Nigerian yellowcake – and I’m ashamed of and infuriated by the administration officials who callously blew his CIA wife’s cover as an act of revenge and warning. I hope fervently that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will bring them to justice and that they spend a long, long time locked up for their crimes.

Nevertheless, I do hope that someone will ask Mr. Wilson, between mimosas, why he waited so long to write his editorial for the New York Times spelling out the yellowcake lie.

See, I can't help but think that perhaps if he’d done it much sooner – like right after the Bush’s State of the Union Address with its famous 16 words – all the other whoppers the administration was telling us and the world about Saddam and his non-existent WMD might have come to light and America would not have been propelled into a illegal, tragic, shameful war against Iraq.

Just askin’, because it’s a question I’ve never heard answered. And I’d like to know why other officials in positions of power or specific knowledge waited until well after the war started to come forward, as well.

It niggles at me.