In his latest column, the once very enthusiastic about Iraq Tom Friedman laments the lack of leadership and organization being shown by America:

Here’s this week’s news quiz. It’s just one question, but it’s a big one: Who’s in charge of U.S. policy in Iraq? No, seriously, give yourself a simple test. Just look in a mirror and mouth these words: “Overall coordinator and strategist of U.S. policy in Iraq today,” and tell me whose picture comes into your head.

George Bush? Donald Rumsfeld? Porter Goss? Dick Cheney? Condi Rice? Steve Hadley? Colin Powell? General Casey? Karl Rove? Bono? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Tommy Franks? David Stern? (He should be in charge.)

This is an interesting question and Friedman brings up the very important point that. “We are losing a public relations war in the Muslim world to people sawing the heads off other Muslims.” But I think there is a broader question here that almost all of us prefer to avoid.

Have we made ourselves less safe?

That is the broad question we don’t want to ask. And there are several subsets of that question that also seem impossible to face head-on.

During the campaign, nearly every outlet from newspapers, to cable TV, to bloggers expressed shock at how much false information Americans seemed to be buying into when it came to Iraq. Huge swaths of voters believed that we found a WMD program and that Saddam was connected with 9-11.

Our misinformed public can be in part explained by the relentless distortions being offered by the Bush media juggernaut.

But that doesn’t explain all of it.

By the time November rolled around, Americans had plenty of access to information. During the the veep debate, Dick Cheney himself explained that there was no connection between Saddam and 9-11. And forget what anyone was saying. The stories about how misinformed the public seemed to be were everywhere and impossible to miss.

On some level, people didn’t want to be informed.

We don’t want to be informed and we really don’t want to ask those other questions. See if we consider that we didn’t face any threat from Iraq and then we consider that by invading Iraq we may very well have made our country less safe (there is, after all, no evidence to the contrary) then we are left once again with a question that no one on either side of the aisle wants to confront: What have we done?

I’m not sure that this a direct hit in terms of what’s going on. But I am convinced that there is some deep and important psychological explanation for the break that still exists between a now very clear reality and the perceptions held by a massive percentage of Americans.

The Hollywood machine was created to build stars. Stars can be packaged and promoted. And once the stars are big enough, they can move product. If you have a big enough star in your movie, then you are almost guaranteed to make money on your movie once the international and DVD rights are sold off.

So the incentive to create and land stars is obvious. It takes the risk out of a very risky business. But what if a star is created and no one buys into his or her star power? What if Hollywood decides someone is an A-list player, but then it turns out that said person can’t actually put people in the seats? And that ultimately is the test of star-power (even though the Hollywood machine, agents and managers make every effort to come up with less measurable metrics such as the number of invites to PDiddy’s Hampton’s bashes).

An example. The case of Colin Farrell. Farrell is the quintessential rising movie star. He’s in the magazines. He’s known for being a playboy. He’s got a little bit of that bad-boy edge. He’s sold as sexy. He is allowed to be wildly uninteresting during talkshow appearances (the ultimate measuring stick of one’s star power). There is simply no doubt that Farrell is a Hollywood A-list creation.

But here’s the problem. Movie goers don’t really seem to agree. His latest movie, Alexander, has been a terrible bust. Sure, it’s getting bad reviews and it’s a long R-rated movie released during an era and a season when short, family oriented picts are where the money is.

But we’re talking about dismal numbers here. After endless promotion by Farrell (and Angelina Jolie and Oliver Stone), Alexander has only pulled about $21 million at the box office. Spongebob made that much in popcorn sales.

Christmas with the Kranks beat Colin.

So you’re thinking that maybe this was just an aberration. We love Colin, we just hate this movie. Well, let’s take a look at Farrell’s career. Which movie provides us with an example of a blockbuster or of a mediocre film that still managed to bring in box office numbers because Farrell was the lead?

What if Colin Farrell really isn’t that big of a star?

Kottke fills us in on the soon to be broadcast defeat of Ken Jennings.

Don’t worry. It can’t possibly be over. Stay tuned for the Ken Jennings talkshow circuit, the Ken Jennings expose on Dateline, your chance to win a date with Ken Jenning’s mom on MTV, a visit to the White House (that’s two plus million of intellectual elitism), the file sharing version of Ken Jennings’ unlikely night with Paris Hilton, the Ken Jennings bobblehead doll, Ken Jennings dropping a towel and jumping into the arms of Terrell Owens, the Jennings Lifetime Network biopic (Two Million Doesn’t Go That Far When You Have Four Wives), the Ken Jennings Jeopardy boardgame, the Jennings v Trebek WWE pay-per-view cage fight, the Ken Jennings Learning Annex class (What is another faux-educational ripoff?), Ken Jennings’ return for the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions (I hear he shows up with three or four tatts, a mohawk and a pierced forehead), the Ken Jennings diet (once you realize how much smarter he is than you, you won’t be able to eat a thing), the Swift Boat Vets assertion that Jennings often didn’t actually respond in the form of a question, and the Jennings tell-all book (“The money was cool. Trebek; sort of a dick.”).

From The New York Times:

“About a month ago, under the pseudonym Doris Glück, she published a book in Germany, I Was Married to a Holy Warrior, in which she described how she fell in love with an Egyptian, married him and then watched, appalled, as he became progressively more militant and, finally, fully engaged in jihad.”

Here are the top ten search engine phrases that ultimately brought visitors to this site last Thursday and Friday:

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But don’t worry. We’re not all about towel dropping. Just take a look at the top ten search phrases that brought visitors here the day before:

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I never thought I could feel so happy to see Ashlee Simpson.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Two more extremely high ranking officials have resigned from the CIA.

Now some might think the events of recent years would suggest that an upheaval is a necessary step. But wouldn’t the same logic suggest that some at the Pentagon should be out as well? Why is it that the upheaval is taking place at the government agency from which the most negative-on-Bush vibes were emanating?

Say that doesn’t bother you; we still need wholesale changes at the CIA. Well, exactly what is it about the Bush team that gives you confidence that they are the right team to rebuild intelligence?

Isn’t that sort of like counting on O.J. to find the real killers?