DEF “HAWAIIAN SUCKER PUNCH 2012” TOUR, PART 1: I WANT TO GO HOME

Liveblogging from the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach. I’ve been here for 36 hours and haven’t slept for any of them. And I didn’t sleep the preceding 18 hours before that. And I’m not sleeping now thanks to three different luaus playing jazz singalong versions of Adult Contemporary hits led by Steve Perry impersonators below my balcony.

Also, it’s windy and rainy. And lunch nearly killed me.

So I’m a little pricklier than usual.

I’ve been to the Hilton Hawaiian Village before – they have a telephones-related event here every year, and somewhere between 1998 and 2003, I stayed in this resort annually. I stopped due to budgetary/commercial reasons, but someone struck a deal with someone and here I am again.

In many respects, the resort is just as I remember it – the beach and the layout, of course, but also the myriad overpriced boutiques and restaurants in the complex. And, of course, the Epic Boobs girls wandering around modeling beachwear.

Another thing that hasn't changed – it’s a very depressing place.

At least to me. There’s something about resorts that bugs me. Maybe it’s because I read too many Carl Hiaasen novels, or because American food just does something to release the wrong chemicals in my brain. But there’s an intensely unlikeable vibe about tourist resorts – a weird juxtaposition of serene tropical Pacific beauty and commercially driven artifice populated by people I have next to nothing in common with apart from immediate geographical location, all soundtracked to popular inoffensive taste with a modicum of local flavor thrown in for effect. And, as hinted at earlier, the food is a hit-and-miss proposition. (And even when it’s good, there’s often too much of it.)

Mind you, I don’t feel this way all the time when I’m here. Just when I’m jet-lagged. The rest of the time I’m too busy to notice. I’ll probably feel better after a good night’s sleep.

Whenever that’s going to be. I have two more nights to go. And the jazz band has now switched to John F***ing Mayer.

Please kill me.

Wide awake,

This is dF

BRING OUT YR DEAD. AND WE’LL PEE ON THEM.

Pop quiz: Yr running for President in a highly contested race. You were popular for about two weeks then started fading back due to poor debate performances. The Iowa Caucus went badly enough that you retreated to home base for a rethink. New Hampshire was even worse. South Carolina is yr last chance. You need a headline – something topical and something big you can use to boost yr popularity by showing people that you are not only Presidential material, but someone who can beat the incumbent POTUS.

What do you do?

If yr Rick Perry, you decide to defend those Marines peeing on dead Taliban fighters as ill-advised hijinks.

Kind of like how Abu Ghraib was the equivalent of frat hazing, and Gitmo was like Club Med with jumpsuits and hoods. Because, honestly, who wouldn’t pee on the corpse of someone they just killed with automatic weapons?

The thing about this is that I know Perry is only saying this because (1) it’s a new way to bag on the Obama Admin, and (2) it’s a way to show how far he’d be willing to Support The Troops as their Commander-In-Chief.

And I know that, at some abstract level, Perry is trying to exploit the idea that war is a brutal, ugly business – not in the sense that war is something to be avoided (quite the opposite), but in the sense that because war is ugly, it’s therefore unfair to treat US soldiers like criminals when they occasionally step over the line with a little bad judgment.

But what it comes out sounding like is: “There’s nothing majorly wrong with peeing on the corpses of people you just killed on a battlefield. Misguided, maybe. Disrespectful, okay. But not something you ought to go to jail for.”

Which isn’t surprising since Perry obviously hasn’t thought the argument through. Apart from his silly comparisons to General Patton pissing in the Rhein (a major river being somewhat different from a dead guy), the fact of the matter is that the entire argument falls apart in the face of a simple question: “So if this isn’t criminal, does that mean it’s legal for Taliban fighters to pee on dead Marines?”

So I don’t think this is going to help Perry take South Carolina, no.

The depressing thing, of course, is that it probably won’t hurt him too much either. I don’t have the facts to back this up, but if Zogby did a poll asking how many Americans support peeing on the Taliban, alive or dead, I'm guessing you’d get a pretty high number in favor of it.

All I can really add is that no one should really be surprised at the Marines Group Corpse Whizz meme. War requires you to kill people, and a major component of training young men to do that is to dehumanize the enemy via hatred, bigotry and (where applicable) racism. Under those conditions, some guys are going to pee on dead people, and a whole lot worse. So you don’t get to act surprised when they do – especially if yr one of the people who supported the war in the first place.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean you get to use “War Isn’t Supposed To Be Pretty” as an excuse for behavior that by any current definition can be classified as criminal. There’s no legal way to pee on a corpse, as far as I know – not even if it's on fire. So the Marines in the video don't get a lot of sympathy from me – not least since they were dumb enough to videotape it and put it on YouTube.

Have a good day buddy,

This is dF