Lizz Winstead's website, News from Iraq

I just went and read old issues of the Unfiltered blog today and found a link to Lizz Winstead's brand new website. Lizz has a comic bit here about her departure called "I'm all lost in the Super Wal-Mart." She promises she is on the way to doing a daily Podcast, and that sounds thrilling. Although her role was to play the funny girl on the radio, Lizz was and is generally incredibly well-informed. I liked that she said in an interview that it was problematic for Daily Show host John Stewart to be so friendly to arch-villain guests like Henry Kissinger. And indeed, it turns out that she is a fan of Barry Crimmins, who pointed out in his book that one should follow at least one rule: Never Shake Hands with a War Criminal.

And then it's down a not-so amusing or liberating avenue in the Pop Culture universe; I went to see "Sin City" last night (no link, because I'm sure it's easy enough to find it.) The movie reminded me of the book Male Fantasies, about the pulp fiction of Germany in the 1920s, where dead women figured significantly in the plot as the reasons for heroic quests of vengeance, but in which the heroes never actually have sex with anyone. The closest to an actual relatiionship in this movie was articulated in the line, "I'll love you always....and never," as studyly mand and woman embraced with guns in hand. Theleweit argues that these kinds of stories and characters reveal something about the sexual roots of Nazi psychology, which rejects all forms of male vulnerability and seeks instead a pornography of death. As in the proto-Nazi pulp fiction, the only "money shots" in this movie were various different colors of cartoon-blood (white, red, and yellow) spurting out of various wounds - at which members of the audience cheered enthusiastically. ick. And next week, perhaps they'll be killing some Iraqis...just like the heroine asked, "kill him for me...kill him good."

Speaking of Iraq, Juan Cole has a good set of answers to important questions about the meaning of the Sunnis decisions to cooperate with the Iraqi army and police forces, which certainly raised my eyebrow when I saw it reported in the NYT this AM.