jktarot.com Editorial#3
Wizards of Iraq
Watching Fearful Leader last night during his propaganda conference, and noticing how, when he was truly pressed on the question of his mistakes, he made an appeal to the Lord, claiming that it was the "Almighty" who was the source of our freedom—but not apparently the source of any wisdom accessible to Fearful Leader in using his portion of this gift—I was reminded of a another fearful but lesser leader who also seems immune to the ravages of preemptive self-scrutiny. Bush has this way of not merely evading questions and implications, but indeed he gives the appearance of being earnestly free of any capacity to understand these things, and so reacts to equally earnest challenges about his errors and motives with the look of a person who hadn't been provided his PDB or script for the fiction of the moment. I say this as a lead to discussing our cartocultural topic, which is the latest PR effort of everyone's favorite playing-card company, US Games Systems, Inc., who we last saw trying to make some hay, or to protect what hay it had, out of the pile of corpses rendered by that lethal Tarot-reading team of Muhammed and Malvo. This time, seeking a much lower profile in a much more grotesque tragedy, Stuart Kaplan informs us that he is prepared to lessen the burden of US soldiers in Iraq by shipping into 1000 of their rucksacks a supposedly joyful pack of pleasures called Wizard cards. And no, it is not the latest Lord of the Rings cards, which USG also publishes, and nor is it one of those delightful enemies packs, which make it easier for Imperial forces to sort out the evil Iraqis from the regular ones. This $8 deck (the "Deluxe" edition costs an absurd $12) is in fact claimed to be the most popular card game sold by USG, a game promoted as "The Ultimate Game of Trump" (other than the Donald), and yet a game which Stuart Kaplan reportedly boasts takes "only thirty seconds to learn". Wow. That's a lot easier than learning Tarot, isn't it? Kaplan reportedly had all twenty-eight of his employees sign a note to be placed in each pack which thanks the soldiers for their service to their country. One wonders, or perhaps not if one has been paying any attention, what kind of message the Iraqis would like to include.

Now, no doubt some of you are thinking "What a nice gesture!", and perhaps you're also awaiting the discovery of the WMD in an Easter basket too, but I want to point out to you that Kaplan claims "We wanted to give [the soldiers] what we thought was the best." And yet that promotional spin does not square at all with this review of the Wizard pack, which notes that its "Deluxe" version is produced in a "cheap and nasty" fashion and while not a bad game, is certainly not in any way an ultimate game of trump or anything else. Additionally, noting the comparison of this USG card game to the game of Hearts, one should examine this article, where the point is made that card games have pretty much exhausted their appeal for soldiers posted to (or plagued to be in) Iraq. A very pertinent observation, from a group that sent 4500 books for soldiers in Iraq to read: "I’ve been in the field and I know how boring it can get...I always read anything I could get my hands on. With no TVs and nothing to do besides play hearts, Soldiers appreciate having some reading materials." Last time I checked, USG does also sell some books, but perhaps Kaplan doesn't see those products as his "best" offering. Or maybe he just couldn't bring himself to ship off 1000 copies of "Tarot for Dumbshits" to people already suffering from the lethal effects of gross ignorance and stupidity.

Finally, I'll point out that in the PR article, Kaplan is quoted as saying, "Anyone who has a child [in Iraq] thought this would be a war that would last a couple of months." He notes that these parents are now pained and surprised to realize their children will be serving the Imperial interest for years. I found this comment to be extraordinarily presumptuous and ignorant, even for Stuart Kaplan, and so I contacted his assistant, Bobbie Bensaid, and asked her about this and also about the claim she had a nephew in the United States 11th Airborne Division (which is not an active division in the US Army). She assured me there was a lot of misquoting going on in the article, that her nephew was in fact in the 101st Airborne, that she had reported her nephew as saying the situation in Iraq was "ugly" instead of "hectic", and that Stuart, she thinks, said parents HOPED, not THOUGHT, that the war would last a couple of months. She went on to say "Of course we are all wiser now. My nephew was supposed to be home May 1 as we hoped and were told, but actually his stay has been extended for another 4 months and who knows after that."

jktarot.com, moved by the plight of Bobbie's nephew (wherever he may actually be), offered this advice to Bensaid and Kaplan:

With all due respect to your concerns if you in do in fact have a nephew
stationed in Iraq, but if you and Stuart truly wish to do something to help
US soldiers in that "horrible situation", you might consider writing a letter
to George Bush, one signed by all the people in your company who would
agree to do so, and demand that US troops be immediately brought home
from Iraq. I think that might help them and their morale more than a pack
of playing cards.

J. Karlin 4/14/04
©2004 by J. Karlin, all rights reserved