Once-proud branches of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are now rushing to shed that video-stung ACORN tag:

One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the best-funded affiliates. Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.

The former close association with President Obama — which prompted the conservative targeting against ACORN in the first place — seems to have been lost in this rebranding scramble. Or, more likely, it’s long since worn off, and the taint of scandal has wiped out any lingering positive vibes that the brand might have retained.

Among the predictable anti-1960s culture-war changes proposed by the newly-reactionary Texas State Board of Education for school textbooks is an almost out-of-place targeting of the nation’s third President:

- Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment.

Despite a rationalization that Jefferson’s ideas were derivative of others’ (and thus are curriculum-redundant), it’s pretty clear that his lack of devotion to strict Christian ethics puts him out of favor with modern-day conservatives.

As it turns out, this makes for strange bedfellows. A long-standing argument on the left that Jefferson was too much of a socio-political extremist to merit continued reverence basically aims for the same result: A marginalization of Jeffersonian ideals within American political culture. While there hasn’t been a concerted push from the liberal side to excise the Sage of Monticello from U.S. history, an unexpected impetus from across the political aisle could prompt a critical reappraisal that transcends ideology.

Considering all this, I guess it’s a wonder that Jefferson hasn’t been purged from his founding-father perch yet. The notion of his ideals might be just about correct, considering that they incur offense from both sides of the political divide, might be what’s saving him.

Rielle Hunter is back, with a tell-all interview in GQ Magazine about her Presidential-quashing paternity affair with John Edwards.

Not that I care much for political scandal, even one as sorted as this one. I am happy to see that Hunter took a little time in the interview to acknowledge her antecedaneous 1980s fictional depiction:

There’s been one time period in my entire life that I would qualify myself as promiscuous. There’s this Jay McInerney book ["Story of My Life," narrated by a character based on Hunter, who briefly dated McInerney], and let’s correct a part of that right now. In my early twenties, there was a time period when I, in the late ’80s, did cocaine. And partied. I was living in New York City… But the point being, I was never, as it’s been reported, a drug addict. The word “addiction” means inability to stop. I stopped doing drugs in my twenties. As for being promiscuous, I would say that I was a bit promiscuous for about six months. But it was because I was partying, and there were a lot of very good-looking available 20-year-old men around that you’d be partying with, and there was a lot of, you know, hooking up going on.

So Hunter confirms that she was the inspiration for Alison Poole. At least, the Alison Poole character in “Story of My Life”. Maybe not so much for Poole’s crossover appearance in another, contemporary literary setting:

It must have also impressed fellow ’80s lit sensation Bret Easton Ellis, because he wrote McInerney’s Alison Poole right into the cultural earthquake that was “American Psycho.” Being “American Psycho,” Poole’s scene was short and includes brutal sodomy — and the Kentucky Derby, if memory serves.

No need for Hunter to deny ever attending the Kentucky Derby. Or hooking up with Patrick Bateman — because let’s face it, Edwards was close enough.

UPDATE: I guess I need to reread “Glamorama”, because I’d completely forgotten that Ellis had revived Poole-slash-Hunter in that later novel:

In “Glamorama”, Poole’s characterization is amplified, but only slightly more nuanced. She’s the coke-addled, sex-fiend girlfriend of a jealous club owner who happens to also be sleeping with the protagonist of the novel, Victor Ward, who is a model and promoter. Once again, the first time readers meet her is during a sex scene. After which, she berates Ward for not breaking up with his other girlfriend, a supermodel… Later, Poole loses it at her boyfriend Damien’s club opening after a rival for Ward’s affections, Lauren Hynde, sets her off.

As with the “American Psycho” appearance, no surprise that Hunter wouldn’t have brought up this later, even more unflattering portrayal. All told, I still go with the late truth about Hunter, because it’s easily stranger than either Ellis’ or McInerney’s fiction.

Now that the Supreme Court has OKed unbridled corporation spending on political campaigns, one intrepid company is cutting out the middleman:

In a soothing voice, a narrator bemoans that “as much as corporate interests gave to politicians, we could never be absolutely sure they would do our bidding.” The ad includes images of gleaming office towers and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and promises Murray Hill will bring “enlightened self-interest and corporate accounting” to Congress.

It concludes with a rousing call to action: “Vote for Murray Hill Incorporated for Congress — for the best democracy money can buy.”

Yep, Murray Hill Inc. for Congress is dripping with sarcasm, right down to a franchising program for other corporate-politico aspirants:

The first corporation to enter into a franchise agreement with Murray Hill Inc. is Computer Umbrella Inc. of Sterling Virginia. Computer Umbrella’s own Designated Human, Jonathan Stewart, is charting the corporation’s run for U.S. Congress in Virginia’s 10th District.

“We are proud to embrace the Murray Hill Inc. Brand,“ Stewart says. “From steel to silicon, it’s America’s entrepreneurs who find and exploit the new markets. The democracy market in Washington DC today looks like Silicon Valley 30 years ago. CUI wants to position itself as early leader in this emerging market along with Murray Hill Inc.”

There are pesky electoral and Constitutional requirements to overcome before corporate entities start stumping for office. But imagine the possibilities:

- Individual office-seekers setting up their candidacies as corporations, so that any irregularities or scandals later on can be deflected from them personally (“I didn’t hire those hookers, it was my limited liability partnership!”)

- Launching single-purpose business ventures every election cycle

- Watching mergers and acquisitions consolidate a fragmented corporate-constituent landscape

- Initial public offerings and stock market indexes for tracking incumbent performances

And if Murray Hill Inc. doesn’t make it to Capitol Hill, maybe the plucky PR firm could run for a local position in New York. I’m thinking a certain Manhattan neighborhood would be a good fit.

Niger is one African country, Nigeria is another. This subtle distinction seems to elude geographically-challenged oil traders:

“Markets took off at around the same time a Reuters story came out about gunfire erupting in the Niger capital in an apparent coup bid, mistaken by many as being Nigeria,” said Tom Bentz, analyst at BNP Paribas Commodities.

Reuters first broke news of heavy gunfire and a coup in Niger’s capital, Niamey, on Thursday. Prices jumped to a one-month high of $79.29 a barrel during the day. While a coup in Nigeria would almost certainly rock crude oil benchmarks, a coup in Niger — which has yet to produce oil — would almost certainly not, barring linguistic confusion.

Not that everyone on the commodities desk was swallowing false petro-politics:

Traders said that an oil market version of the game “Chinese whispers” rather than poor geography may have been behind the jump, as some scrambled to call the market amid mounting confusion over the titles of the two countries which share the same first five letters. The fact that Nigeria’s main oil producing region is called the Niger Delta and is an area of political unrest probably also stoked the rumours. A popular trading mantra is “buy the rumour, sell the fact”.

The upshot: Budding financial professionals should bookmark Google Maps for quick reference, to avoid such simplistic confusion.

Meanwhile, don’t feel too sorry for Niger’s lack of oil reserves; regardless of its new junta-led political order, it remains the world’s fourth-largest producer of uranium. No word of volatility on the uranium-trading markets; maybe they thought the coup was in Nigeria, too…

While Manhattan has just successfully spurned the potentially-disruptive Federal trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, my upstate hometown is ready to take the rebound as the new venue.

The offer is not driven by a sense of justice, so much:

“If they want to have it here, we’ve got the state-of-the-art courthouse,” [Newburgh, NY] Mayor Nicholas Valentine — a Republican — told radio host Curtis Sliwa this morning. “I’ll offer it to them, but there’s got to be money attached.”

He cited the figure of $200 million floated by New York City officials.

“Two hundred million and something dollars to Newburgh would completely change this city around. It would double my police force. It would pay off my debt,” Valentine said. “Maybe it’s just crazy enough that we could pull something like this off.”

Given the town’s previous brush with quasi-Islamic terrorism, I’d say the “crazy” rating is pretty high in this instance. A money-grab for hosting a media-circus public tribunal? I think we can slot this proposal under the “this is why the terrorists hate us” category.

It’s nearly a decade old now, but this techno-tuned song about Russian leader Vladimir Putin is still going strong:

How strong? In keeping with the cult-of-personality theme in Putin’s political career, consider the winning of hearts and minds via urban sing-a-longs:

It’s winter in Russia. At night, Muscovites crowd the clubs and request their karaoke favorite, “A Man Like Putin.” I want a man like Putin, who’s full of strength. I want a man like Putin, who doesn’t drink. I want a man like Putin, who won’t make me sad.

The techno-pop tune by the duo Singing Together first appeared mysteriously in 2002 and quickly topped the charts in Russia. It went on to become a Putin theme song, still played at his rallies. Catchy and ironic, this was a new kind of propaganda song.

Popular propaganda has morphed into pop-prop — certainly a long way, stylistically, from old-wave Soviet agitprop. And to underline that shift, it appears that “A Man Like Putin” was written and produced on the strength of a $300 bet, then later co-opted by pro-Putin boosters. I guess free-market sensibilities are verifiably ingrained in Mother Russia now…

Between this lyrical adulation and his feats-of-strength outdoorsman photos, one wonders if Putin didn’t engineer his rise to power just so he could pick up chicks easier. Sort of a Bill Clinton blueprint for political deftness.

I was quite amused today to see a copy of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue: An American Life” sitting on dashboard of my morning bus, obviously in possession of the bus driver.

Because it was all too obvious that he was practically brandishing the hardcover, making sure that every rider that got onboard had a good view of it. Between that, and the staredowns he was administering, I’m pretty sure the driver was daring someone, anyone, to challenge him on it. Given the well-known proclivities of a good cross-section of New Yorkers, I’d imagine the odds are good that he got into more than one verbal joust with various passengers during his shift.

All I can say is that, during my half-hour trip, no one took the bait. Not that you could tell the difference by the driver’s customarily crabby demeanor.

In Mexico, it’s not the Mayan home-grown 2012 doomsday that’s the big calender-numerological worry. Rather, it’s this year, for historical-repeat reasons:

First there was 1810, when an insurgent priest named Miguel Hidalgo gave a nighttime battle cry that sent thousands of Mexicans into the streets to oust the Spaniards. Then came 1910, the year that was supposed to be the government’s crowning centennial. Parades were held, banquets given — and within a month, the Mexican Revolution began.

The numerology isn’t fringe thinking in Mexico. It’s regularly discussed in the nation’s biggest newspapers and by politicians. On a recent morning, leading newspaper El Universal awoke its readers with three foreboding opinion columns on the matter: “The Fear of 2010,” “The Impending Revolution” and “2010: Third Revolution?”

“In matters historical, sometimes numbers say more than words,” wrote one author in a piece titled “1810, 1910, 2010,” that appeared on New Year’s Day.

This kind of talk has become so common that the imagined revolution even has a name already: the estallido social, or the “social explosion.” Nearly every day, Mexican politicians can be heard warning darkly of its coming.

Disregarding the persuasiveness of a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s hard to imagine an imminent full-scale regime change south of the border. But at least they’ve already got a name for the anticipated three-peat — branding first!

Not only did New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow make an overt comparison between Sarah Palin and Lady GaGa in the headline of his “Lady BlahBlah” piece today; he also weaved some GaGa-ness into the body of his writing:

I embedded as many of her song/cd titles as possible in my column. How many can you find?

I’m a sucker for word games! Especially pop-cultural ones. In descending order, starting from the top of the column, I find:

1. She’s never speechless.

2. And, she has one of the best poker faces in the game…

3. She continues to command the spotlight while they dance in the dark.

4. The race for the nomination may not be given to the slick or to the strong, but to this fame monster who seems to have the stamina to endure until the end.

Really not that many embeddings, even considering how short Blow’s column is. Overall, I prefer comparing Palin to G.I. Joe’s Baroness…

It’s a little sad that, with a new active front opening in the War on Terror, the only thing most Americans know about Yemen is that Chandler Bing once fled there to avoid breaking up with a girl.

Leading to… “Friends” as a proto-al Qaeda sleeper cell? It’s not like those Central-Perky twits had anything else to occupy their fictional lives with. Discuss. Or, better yet, don’t.

For Americans, today’s month-day-year timestamp works in reverse:

That’s because it’s only the second palindrome day of the 21st century, meaning that if you flip the day over it reads the same: 01/02/2010. (And, no, this is not another story about Sarah Palin, though it could be since “Harass Sarah” is sort of a cool palindrome…

The rest of the world, with its alternate (and, I think, more logically progressive) day-month-year method of dating, misses out on this palidromic sensation (even though they’ll get their version on February 1). Then again, they also miss out on having Palin on the poli-cultural scene for at least the next four years. So it’s an even trade-off.

In the wake of the attempted Christmas Day plane bombing in Detroit, the predictable (and largely pointless) overreaction has made flying that much more laborious in these United States.

And, as luck would have it, I’m due for some cross-country travel in the next few days. So, from a purely selfish perspective, that wannabe al-Qaeda jerk has really put a crimp in my schedule. And not solely through delays that everyone else on the boarding calls will get, but also because past experience tells me I’ll likely get extra-special “security” scrutiny, thanks to rough profiling.

I’ll reiterate my objections from nearly five years ago, because the logic-illogic swirl still applies:

On the one hand, I understand the need for vigilance. On the other hand, it’s happening to me. And it’s happened enough times now that I’ve gotten past seeing any bright sides to the process. Instead, I do a look-through of the rest of the boarding party and wonder, for instance, why the red-headed pasty-white fellow didn’t have to endure the same treatment I got — because after all, he looks Irish, so there’s a chance he could be IRA. (That the Irish Republican Army is unlikely to carry out operations against American targets is beside the point.)

What especially aggravates me is the hollowness of the whole procedure. It’s not going to prevent a single terrorist who’s worth his skills from getting on a plane. It’s just about entirely cosmetic: Other passengers see someone who fits an ethnic profile, so having that person pulled aside and cleared (or not) is designed to put everyone else’s mind at ease.

At least this time, it’s a late-afternoon flight, so I’ll have plenty of time to burn if needed. I don’t suppose a blogged pre-admission of no guilt would save both me and the TSA some time, would it? Didn’t think so.

After teetering on the brink of collapse a year ago, the big banks are suddenly coming up with billions of dollars to put toward TARP repayments.

And it’s not hard to figure out why:

Look what’s happened in the past two weeks. First, Bank of America agreed to pay back $45 billion in TARP funds. Bank of America found that the pay restrictions were complicating the search for a new boss to replace Ken Lewis. It raised $20 billion from the public and agreed to sell $3 billion in assets. The smaller, leaner, better-capitalized bank was able to hire a new CEO on Wednesday.

Citigroup, which is keeping its CEO but which wants to retain its legions of highly paid investment bankers, also sprang into action. Earlier this week, it announced it would pay back $20 billion in TARP funds and terminate an agreement under which taxpayers were guaranteeing losses on a big chunk of its loans. Citi raised $20.5 billion of capital, said it would give employees $1.7 billion in stock rather than cash for bonuses. Once the money was paid back to the Treasury, Citi noted, “it will no longer be deemed to be a beneficiary of “exceptional financial assistance” under TARP beginning in 2010.” Translation: [TARP executive pay czar] Ken Feinberg won’t be allowed to tell us how much to pay our folks.

In other words, the megabanks are paying back in order to pay out. That’s one way to maneuver around a salary cap — and it doesn’t even involve getting mired in some sort of messy financial-world caponomics.

…Well, “plunge” is a real stretch. But I’m invoking alliterative license — four P’s in a row, zing! — to headline the news that the number of inmates in America looks to go down this year, for the first time since 1972.

Not surprisingly, it’s not because there are fewer crimes being committed:

Instead, the economic crisis forced states to reconsider who they put behind bars and how long they kept them there, said Kim English, research director for the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.

In Texas, parole rates were once among the lowest in the nation, with as few as 15 percent of inmates being granted release as recently as five years ago. Now, the parole rate is more than 30 percent after Texas began identifying low-risk candidates for parole.

In Mississippi, a truth-in-sentencing law required drug offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences. That’s been reduced to less than 25 percent.

California’s budget problems are expected to result in the release of 37,000 inmates in the next two years. The state also is under a federal court order to shed 40,000 inmates because its prisons are so overcrowded that they are no longer constitutional, [prison-issues advisor James] Austin said.

Not that a sub-one-percent drop in incarcerations is going to dent the U.S.’s distinction in having the largest prisoner population among the world’s nations — some 1.6 million people behind bars in Federal and State institutions. And I’m sure a re-crackdown on crime will gain steam as soon as recovery-fattened tax rolls are able to pay for it.

Still, it seems counter-intuitive that a slow economy would lead to fewer jailings. When business is bad, it gets bad all over, it seems.

There have been so many naked-model ads for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that this latest one, featuring Joanna Krupa, really shouldn’t cause anyone to bat an eye.

Anyone other than the Catholic League, which objects to the whole ornate-cross-as-angelic-bikini imagery. For that matter, Krupa’s work here does inspire me to convert to Catholicism, animal activism, and blondes — almost.

As for that “Be an Angel for Animals” theme, the heavenly wings seem to be incongruent with PETA’s core values:

Is that angel’s wings made from real feathers???? Oh the horror!

Maybe PETA was so enamored of its takeoff on the Victoria’s Secret iconic Angels campaign that it overlooked bird byproducts (real or synthetic, doesn’t matter in terms of visual messaging) in an anti-cruelty ad. Or else avian suffering doesn’t make the ethical-treatment cut.

At what point does public commonweal override individual privacy? That’s the painful point of contention right now in Argentina, as about 400 orphans from the 1976-83 “dirty war” will be forced to provide DNA samples to determine if their biological parents were victims of the era’s dictatorship.

Children of the “disappeared” were often given to military or police families considered loyal to the military government. Some have grown up not even knowing they were adopted until activists or judges announced efforts to obtain their DNA…

The Argentine law may be unprecedented in requiring tests of people who aren’t suspected of crimes, said Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director for the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, Calif.

Large forensic DNA databases in Britain and the U.S. have generated controversy because they include people who have been arrested but not convicted or, in some cases, even charged. Pilot projects in Britain, the U.S. and France that used DNA tests to confirm family ties of asylum seekers also have raised ethical concerns.

The Argentine law has created a furor among some rights advocates.

“If an adult doesn’t want to know his origins, you have to respect it,” said Julio Strassera, a former prosecutor who put top military leaders on trial.

Some who have recovered their identities welcome the law, saying it removes a heavy burden from people who suspect they might have been stolen at birth.

“The state cannot leave in the hands of a young person, raised by a member of the military, manipulated by guilt, the decision of whether or not to learn his true identity,” said Horacio Pietragalla, who learned in 2003 that he was taken as a baby from his biological mother, Liliana Corti.

Under the new law, the state “tells you the truth. After that, you have to decide what you want to do with that truth,” he said.

In the past, DNA findings have sometimes been made public against an orphan’s wishes, either because a judge announced it or because the biological family released the information. The new law provides no guarantee of privacy either.

Pietragalla has reconnected with his biological family, but others want nothing to do with their blood relatives.

Quagmires don’t get much murkier than this. Ultimately, the orphans are being played as pawns between the left and right in Argentine society. It’s not like the biological families can reclaim the wayward children — they’re all full-grown adults now. It all boils down to identity politics.

If Jesus always came off as too namby-pamby for your liking, the Conservative Bible Project will deliver a Scripture free from suspected liberal-leaning translative interpretation:

The project’s authors argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes.

“Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it’s professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible,” said Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, the project’s online home.

Experts who have devoted their careers to unraveling the ancient texts of the Scriptures, many in long-extinct languages, are predictably skeptical about a project by amateur translators.

“This is not making scripture understandable to people today, it’s reworking scripture to support a particular political or social agenda,” said Timothy Paul Jones, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., who calls himself a theological conservative.

Religious publishers already provide an alphabet soup of Bible translations for a range of theological outlooks, from the King James Version (KJV) to the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and beyond. The most widely used traditional translations were overseen by scholars who are considered the best minds in conservative Christianity.

“The phrase ‘theological conservative’ does not mean that someone is politically conservative,” said Schlafly, who lives in Far Hills, N.J.

This liberal slanting, Schlafly argues, ranges from changing gendered language — Jesus calling his disciples to be “fishers of people” rather than “fishers of men” — to more subtle choices, like the 2001 English Standard Version of the Bible, which uses “comrade” and “laborer” more often than the conservative-friendly “volunteer.”

I guess these conservative cranks have run out of secular topics on which to focus their outrage, so now they’re turning to the spiritual. When you start probing for conspiracies among chapter and verse, I’d say you’ve pretty completely lost touch with this mortal coil.

As long as they’re looking for historical material that will jibe with and validate their pre-conceived notions, I’ll point the CBP in an obvious direction: Albert Rosenberg’s weirdo Gnostic/”Aryan Christ” theories. It’s a brush of Nazism with which to tar this latest Bible-cleansing effort; but it shows how unoriginal the effort is to begin with.

News of former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton getting engaged triggered this never-before-realization by me:

Everyone’s heard of New York’s a-little-too-hip Chelsea neighborhood. And everyone’s heard of (in one way or another) the nearby Hell’s Kitchen section of town.

What not everyone might know is that these two zones are, in fact, adjacent to one another. And furthermore, efforts to gentrify Hell’s Kitchen have led to a mostly real-estate bred movement to replace the colorful moniker with “Clinton”, which is in fact the historical name of the area.

So, you can see where this is going. Yes, you can indeed stroll from the 20s to the 50s on the West Side, and correctly claim to have taken a “Chelsea-Clinton walk”. Or a “Chelsea-Hell’s walk”, either way.

From the same state that saw a cessation of marriage-license granting due to same-sex union fears comes a movement to outlaw all Golden State divorces.

Relax. It’s decidedly tongue-in-cheek, albeit with serious undertones:

The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act is meant to be a satirical statement after California voters outlawed gay marriage in 2008, largely on the argument that a ban is needed to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage. If that’s the case, then [organizer John] Marcotte reasons voters should have no problem banning divorce.

“Since California has decided to protect traditional marriage, I think it would be hypocritical of us not to sacrifice some of our own rights to protect traditional marriage even more,” the 38-year-old married father of two said.

Makes just as much sense as does getting married in the first place.

Live (make that “posthumously”), from Baghdad (make that “Europe”, or more likely “location undetermined”), it’s the Saddam Channel, satellite-beaming into Iraq:

The Saddam Channel debuted on Friday, the first day of this year’s Eid for Sunnis. The holiday started Saturday for Shiites. The station’s official name alternates between “Al-Lafeta” (“the banner”) and “Al-Arabi” (“the Arab”).

It is mostly a montage of flattering, still images of Saddam – some of him dressed in military uniform, others in a suit, even one astride a white horse. One image shows his sons Odai and Qusai smiling with their father, and another their bodies after they and Saddam’s grandson, Mustafa, were killed in a July 2003 gunfight with U.S. troops…

All the pictures are set against audio recordings of Saddam making speeches and reciting poetry. Patriotic songs urge listeners to “liberate our country.” None of the pictures appear to be recent, and no announcers or commentators appear or speak.

The motive appears to be to influence the upcoming national parliamentary elections. If so, it’s hamhanded propaganda on the cheap. I’m guessing the all-Saddam all-the-time audiovisual is intended to conjure up the “good old days” of Hussein’s dictatorship, along with whatever martyrdom he now holds among segment of Iraqi society. But without some original commentary to drive home that concept, the old photos and recordings amount to soft messaging, and less chance at any measurable electoral/political result. For all this lack of production values, the mystery backers might as well have tossed this up online — except, of course, that even a boring TV feed like this still has more reach and impact than an even more anonymous website.

Can’t wait to see what becomes of Saddam TV after the election-time blitz blows over. If it’s anything like the typical American single-purpose cable channel, it’ll soon abandon the one-note format in an attempt at broadening the audience (and attracting more advertisers, natch). Think in terms of MTV no longer playing its signature music videos — along with about a jillion other cable TV examples. So Iraqi tube-watchers can look forward to The Saddam Channel morphing into TSC, with a slate of reality shows, classic made-for-TV movies, and maybe a half-hour of Saddam retrospectives per day…