[Note that within a week after this was posted, the blog in question was presumably deleted and remained so for quite some time until late in 2009 apparently. Concerning the initial act of hiding the blog, see this subsequent post.]

Eros and thanatos, meeting, in such a loving, lustful embrace. This post will appear to contain echoes of that earlier post, on the romance of anthropology and how to get public attention. It will give the notion of a “surge” a whole new twist.

This post could have been titled, “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

The newest revelations of the private side of “military anthropology” tend to reconfirm what a number of us have been thinking about those who would prostitute knowledge in return for recognition and rewards from the towering penile implants of power, such as the Pentagon. And with a mouth swollen with such rewards, and a face dripping with newfound recognition, the only trouble some have is in deciding between savoring or swallowing immediately (spitting is not an option).

She loves a man in uniform (well, of course we already knew that about Montgomery McFate, the Condoleeza Rice of anthropology who has championed the cause of integrating anthropologists in counterinsurgency missions, known as the Human Terrain System). McFate, writing under the name “Pentagon Diva”, has been “outed” by Elle, More, and now Wired’s Danger Room as the author of a sexually flirtatious blog called “I luv a man in a uniform.”

The current post (from June 15, 2008), as I check the blog, is about David Kilcullen, another face in the Rogues’ Gallery of social scientists who have championed counterinsurgency work for academics. The photo shows a man with his face hidden behind a banner that says “killer” — no but “killer” in the good sense (?) (Oddly enough, she identifies him as having a PhD in anthropology, which he does not, but that is inconsequential anyway: the two share the same goals.)

Now, when the Diva first met Dave, she wondered naturally, whether he wore his holster on the left or the right… but it quickly became apparent that Dave has so much hoo-0-ah juice that females naturally bend over and expose their back-seamed fishnet stockings for his delectation and approval.

McFate has apparently learned enough from her gender and sexuality courses in anthropology — and let me stop to thank Yale University once again for unleashing this little darling onto the world — to know how to turn them inside out.

McFate believes that dogs also share her love of a man in uniform. Now this is really offensive, to dogs, because it’s also not true. My dogs, like those of others who report the same, instinctively hate anyone in any kind of uniform — nature’s good sense, always acknowledged by me with a quiet “good boy” and a pat on the head. Of course this has a lot to do with upbringing as well. Unlike certain parents of human children, I don’t raise dogs to become whores. And no, I don’t mind married women like McFate drooling over the swollen, smelly glands of men in blood stained uniforms — this is all about showing those Islamo-Fascists what a superior, civilized culture looks like. And what it smells and feels like too, for that matter.

The Pentagon Diva, aka McFate, aka McFellate, asks important questions on her blog too, it’s not all silly sexual innuendo. She asks the very reasonable, sober question, “Why is Admiral Eric Olson so freakin’ HOT?” She doesn’t answer that one clearly, but mentions her love of warhammers, and her love of neo-paganism. Aw, Adolf would have been proud to have spawned such a child from beyond his 1945 bunker:

we’ve had the neo-cons, and now it’s time for the neo-pagans. Some neo-paganism would really liven up the scene at the Pentagon! Just think, we could roast some pigs in a fire pit at Ground Zero, drink psychotropic reindeer urine, raid the State Department in our long boats, and sacrifice some virgins in the E Ring…. And we need a foreign policy to go with our new neo-paganism. I think Conan really summed it up best. When asked the question: what is best in life? Conan replied: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.” Forget all this nonsense about nation-building – I want Thor the Admiral to crush MY enemies!!!

In answering another critical question, “Why is Paul Van Riper so screamingly HOT????“, (it’s because he looks like a Roman Senator, she says — for some people, debauchery and blood lust really gets the man in the u-boat all wet), she refers to ordinary Americans in these terms: “the glorious, overweight, self-complacent American populace.”

At least she still loves the Americans who count, such as General David Petraeus, about whom she writes: “A man with posture like that can do it to me anytime!”

McFate tells Elle she has been accused of “prostituting” the science, and she may be playing up to that deliberately, seeing that her blog is a testament to such “prostitution” allegations. (I did not intend to offend sex trade workers, by the way). A joke about a joke about a joke? I don’t think McFate means anything on that blog to be taken seriously. There is definitely something “in your face” of not just her blog persona, but of her multiple self-representations, like someone laughing at you, everybody, employers included, laughing all the way to the bank. Or perhaps she is sick of it all, and wants to get fired. It was her Human Terrain System that exposed a colleague to such danger that he was killed in a bomb blast, and perhaps she is just drowning sorrow in champagne.

Regardless, her character in that blog if not elsewhere brings to mind something that came out of a Stanley Kubrick script, not so much in terms of associations with images of the sex trade, but more in terms of “sucking up” to power and marketing one’s skills to the men in uniform:

•••••••

Montgomery McFate’s husband (Sean McFate) is also “The Musical Mercenary,” the title of his blog. It turns out that, yes, he really is a mercenary, and yes he has a passion for opera.

Both Montgomery and her husband have their blogs linked with and boasted about by a hedonistic, snobbish, putatively anti-corporate blogger known as Cintra Wilson.

Both Montgomery and Sean McFate seem to have also feigned anonymity, as if they want all of us to know who exactly is behind their blogs: Montgomery does not deny that it is her blog when asked by WIRED, and two other magazines report it, not as some secret or scoop, but in a matter of fact manner. Sean takes an “Ooops, I’ve been outed!” approach when linking to National Public Radio’s interview with him — again, NPR does not indicate it has found out any secret, and clearly they are simply repeating what he told them. How much personal fame can you acquire if you are serious about anonymity? Besides, faking anonymity is much more playful.

Montgomery claims to be a Democrat, and her husband claims to hate war. She mocks the neo-cons who employ her. Ah, c’est la vie, I guess, not all of us can afford to be morally pure and free of contradictions when we are hunting down truck loads of cash. She’s patriotic but she sees Americans as fat and complacent, and the narcissistic clique that forms part of the set she belongs to can’t stop laughing at the bad dress sense of ordinary Americans, not to mention academics. I recall a promising debate on a discussion board hosted by Small Wars Journal, that began by dissecting reasons why anthropologists rejected a new role as mercenaries, and then amazingly side tracked itself with each of the contributors going on and on and on and on about what academics wear, and how unfashionably silly they look. Watch that discussion unfold for yourself.

And the representations of her, carefully stroked and repeated by her to various magazines, are so varied and layered: beatnik, punk rocking, chain smoking, itinerant Ivy League urchin, fatigue-wearing scholar turned conqueror of the world — wow, what a rush, of pure and unbridled “grrl” power. Had F. Scott Fitzgerald lived to the present, a revised version of The Great Gatsby might have included these characters.

One cannot help but getting a case of the “creeps” when reading some of their materials online. Speaking of Kubrick, there is something about this pair, and their coterie of fashion-conscious, cocktailing, media limelighting, know-all-the-right-people braggarts, that reminds me of another Kubrick production, A Clockwork Orange. Defacing the world, laughing, rampaging, devil-may-care, catch-me-if-you-can, I’m better than you, the darlings of intrigued journalists from fashion and women’s magazines to National Public Radio. Jet-setting hooligans and cosmopolitan vandals. I don’t think McFate is actually all that serious, about anything, except herself of course. She has found a way to gain notoriety, and having done so, has found new ways of converting notoriety into fame. The last trick is to cash in on that fame.

This one is for Sean McFate, who surely appreciates his ultraviolence to the strains of old Ludwig Van:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

and who could forget this one…

Imperialism, it’s so “operatic.”