Pomp and Circumstance

I actually slept through the majority of the Oscars last night -- which isn't that unusual since I usually nod off pretty early on Sundays after abusing my body for the last few days -- but I made sure I was awake to see Steve Martin's opening remarks. Some of my favorites as reported by Reuters were:

Martin rounded out his monologue with a faux tribute to movie stars, set to stirring music: "Movie stars are many things, they can be tall, short, thin or skinny. They can be Democrats or ... skinny. ... We worship them, we idolize them, sometimes we're annoyed with them, like when they shoot their wives.

"Movie stars crave publicity but have the decency not to publicize that they have slept with me," he continued, as shots of a number of stars flashed on the screen -- Kidman, Berry, Julianne Moore, Renee Zellweger, Diane Lane, Julie Andrews, Ted Danson, the cartoon character Stitch and Ernest Borgnine."

Wrapping up, Martin said, "there are no losers tonight, but we're about to change all that."

I then made it through Chris Cooper's acceptance speech and promptly nodded off until my cell rang in the wee AM hours. I fumbled around, snagged it, switched it off and couldn't get back to sleep so I was lucky enough to catch most of Saddam's televised speech and man o man was that spooky!

Why oh why does my local PBS station run CNN late at night? Not ponly do I get no sleep that way but when I finally do doze off I'm shocked awake by the resumption of local programming with the Teletubbies at 6am every morning. Now that's a real nightmare!

Geneva Conventioneering

So I'm trying to figure out why exactly the photos the Iraqis have been circulating of American POWs is a breach of the Geneva Conventions but all the photos of Iraqi POWs in the Western media is okay. I don't have any international law background but does the difference lie in who is doing the actual dissemination of the images? For instance, I'm not aware of any "official" US military photos of POWs...it seems as if all the photos in circulation are courtesy of the international press. Conversely the American POW images are coming directly from the Iraqi government so I'm wondering if it's the source of the images that contributes to the behavior being frowned upon.

Just a guess. If anyone can explain it better to me please shoot me an e-mail.