• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami {A Japanese detective story/war novel/Kafka rip-off. It's great.}
• Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, by Christopher Hitchens {First drafts of history, second thoughts on received wisdom, versatile meditations on great works of literature -- all by a man who can write about anything.}
• The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse {The Rise and Fall of the "Black Shorts," and the best of Bertie and Jeeves. You'll need Wodehouse in your life eventually. Start here; you've 89 or so more to go.}
• The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, by Isaac Deutscher {Magnificient biography finally back in print, along with Volumes II and III. But better start before the revolution -- and Deutscher's conscience -- was betrayed.}
• Colossus, by Niall Ferguson {Why the U.S. can't hack neo-imperialism, much to Niall's chagrin.}
• Reflections on a Ravaged Century, by Robert Conquest {Don't even try to have an opinion about the twentieth century without reading him.}
• Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh {One of the funniest books, ever. Shrinks the remainder of the "innocent abroad" genre to the vanishing point.}
• Put Out More Flags, by Evelyn Waugh {Lapidary prose on the frisson between the wars. Basil Seal riding low before he rides again; Auden and Isherwood lampooned as "Parnsip and Pimpernell."}
• The Origins of Postmodernity, by Perry Anderson {Terrific writer from the London Review of Books and New Left Review, who ought to be more famous than he is, tackles lucidly the abstruse bloodhound gang -- from Habermas to Jameson -- of Theory.}
• The Counterlife, by Philip Roth {How Portnoy learned to stop complaining and write a brilliant postmodern novel.}
• Rise of the Vulcans, by James Mann {Probably the only low-blood pressure source on Bush's brain trust. Valuable for charting the progression of neo-neo-conservatism, and how Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz contravened, and then dismantled, the Kissinger realpolitik foreign policy machine.}
• Money, by Martin Amis {Forget Bonfire and Psycho. It took the English author of The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America to effectively chew up the Reagan era -- largely by reminding us that it was also the Thatcher era. A fine lesson in history repeating, too: Di and Charles were TV's original Ben and J. Lo; the Self-on-Massi sex tape is where Paris (if she can read) might have learned her stuff; and the cavalier cash flow in this soft-boiled checkbook who-dun-it tale rivals that of any West Coast dotcom monkey a decade later.}
• The War Against Cliche and Experience, by Martin Amis {If Amis kept on doing what he did in his award-winning collection of critical essays, James Wood would lose more hair. It's saying quite a lot that his non-fiction exceeds his fiction. Experience is by far the best memoir to appear in the last decade: a more muscular Speak, Memory, it's a midlife nostalgia trip pureed out of chronology, though somehow more cohesive than a stream-of-consciousness hodgepodge. Guaranteed to pluck at the coronary sinews for anyone dealing with the loss of a father.}
• Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis {A comic genius on academia, Amis is the pitch-perfect representative of postwar male rage. None of that Angry Young Man, stuff, though. His apoplexy is hilarious at any age. The faces: "crazy peasant," "sex life in ancient Rome," "shot-in-the-back." Moo, by Jane Smiley, The Straight Man, by Richard Russo and everything by David Lodge seem impossible without this Platonic key ring to rule them all, and on the campus, bind them.}
• The Letters of Kingsley Amis, edited by Zachary Leader {Pay close attention to the letters to Philip Larkin -- together with Larkin's Collected Letters (try eBay, sorry), these constitute the documentation of one of the most rewarding and hilarious literary friendships to date. Amuse yourself by guessing the exact page number where Kingsley abandons Communism.}
• The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, by V. Nabokov {I'm way underqualified, with my mean years on the planet, to state critical opinion. Still in larval adulation, which I understand is a longterm afflication. Read Anthony Lane's review in Nobody's Perfect. And M. Amis on Nabokov in toto in the prenominate War Against Cliche. And get a dictionary.}
• The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, edited by Leon Wieseltier {The style is dated and stilted, but the insights are not. Especially worthwhile: the Orwell essay, the Mansfield Park burn, and "The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time" (i.e. "What Do They Know of America, Who Only the Upper West Side Know?"}
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace {Self-indulgence and the consequences of a missing-in-action editor never had it so good. The state fair, cruise ship and TV pieces are the best. But also read the Lynch essay: it'll make you want to re-watch Blue Velvet, which you can conveniently buy below.}
• Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin (edited by Anthony Thwaite) {Poetus mirabilis and, after Auden, the occupant of a near empty Hall of Metrical Wonders in the Postwar Anglophone wing of the museum. Master ironist and curmudgeon you least want to bludgeon.}
• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, by Margaret Macmillan {A dryly told account of global dust-settling after what was then myopically known as "the Great War." Explores the follies of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau, which helped bring about WWII.}
• Doomed, Bourgeois, In Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman, edited by Mark Henrie {Discreet charms of the bourgeoisie given the scholarly treatment by the kinds of New Criterion-y people who liked Grosse Pointe Blank because John Cusack's assassin refused to unionize. Don't let the pedantry taint your judgment of Stillmania, though.}
• Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi {A beautiful paean to Western literature from an Eastern scholar living under Islamic statism; the Gatsby trial and Jane Austen dance chapters are particularly enjoyable.}
• Nobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker, by Anthony Lane {He needs to stop it with the creepy drooling over Natalie Portman, but Lane is still the best around for losing it at the movies.}
• The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl {Adult stories, less like his children�s stuff than what O. Henry would have been like if his ironic plot twists had involved wife-swapping, cannibalism, or turning infants into superhuman bee-monsters. Might be fun for the kid who never reads, actually.}
• The Brothers Karamazov, by F. Dostoevsky, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky {Incest! Murder! Theodicy!}
• Collected Non-Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges {A prose impresario short-winded enough to keep beside the toilet -- especially if your john is in a labrynith that transcends spacetime.}
• Love and Hydrogen: New and Selected Stories, by John Shepard {Stories narrated by John Ashcroft, John Entwistle, Nazi rocket riders, the creature from the black lagoon, and others.}
• My Life and Hard Times, by James Thurber {Think of David Sedaris, in turn of the century Columbus, Ohio. And without the gay schtick, or even a pretense at respect for his family.}
ALBUMS:
• You Are the Quarry, by Morrissey {He's back! And almost paid off the deficit incurred by Maladjusted. A few gripes: "America Is Not the World" never fulfills the promise of its title. It's an unwieldy blunderbuss, not a rapier -- and the use of "hamburger" as synecdoche for our national obesity problem is a new hackneyed low for the Oscar Wilde of the microphone. "I Have Forgiven Jesus" ultimately works, but I can't help but feel that that one was just too easy.}
• Weightlifting, by The Trashcan Sinatras {Remember them from your college radio daze? A brisk homecoming track, appositely named "Welcome Back" ("Everyone survived / Everyone's alive!" -- well, thank goodness) kicks off this highly accomplished return to musicmaking for an alt-pop band that shouldn't have stayed away so long.}
• Strange Bird, by Augie March {With a name like Augie, it has to be good. It is. Analogs fail me.}
• Evergreen, by Echo and the Bunnymen {Best 80's Band Comeback Album. No contest.}
• Mermaid Avenue, by Billy Bragg and Wilco {A fucking classic. Ukanian bloke Billy Bragg manages to capture the rhythms of dustbowl Americana better than Dylan -- the obvious disciple/witch doctor to perform a Woody Guthrie resurrection -- ever could do. All lyrics by Guthrie, music by Bragg and Wilco.}
• Don't Try This at Home, by Billy Bragg {Most people who hear Mermaid Avenue invariably want more of the man who brought it to them. This is Bragg's most "accessible" solo album, though not without the politics that's defined his career. "Accident Waiting to Happen" is a punk snarl against cultural fascism.}
• Galore, by Kirsty MacColl {May this earth angel charm the knickers off the winged principalities. MacColl died a few years ago in a boating accident, but I can only imagine how well-attended her funeral must have been by the panoply of musicians guilty of "sampling" her Celtic nightingale voice. This album consists mainly of covers, but that's more than all right for someone generous enough to never ask for top billing, despite consistently stealing the show.}
• These Are the Vistas, by the Bad Plus {"Smells Like Teen Spirit," the jazz standard. No kidding. Comes off not just better than you'd expect, but brilliantly.}
• SMiLE, by Brian Wilson {Reviewed here. Check to the right.}
• The Soft Bulletin, by the Flaming Lips {And the hard singing voice to take, but worth it anyway.}
• It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, by Public Enemy {More complicated rhymes and denser loops than have been on the radio before or sense, plus the guy with the big clock.}
• Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition, by the Velvet Underground {Funny, Lou Reed doesn't usually look this happy. Must be Laurie Anderson's doing.}
• Traitor In Our Midst, by the Country Gazette {What you always thought bluegrass was supposed to sound like.}
• The Modern Lovers, by the Modern Lovers {Speaking of Lou Reed, remember the guy with the guitar who gets shot in Something About Mary? Imagine that guy redoing "White Light/White Heat," but with lyrics about aging with dignity and eschewing drugs. That sounds like a snark, but it�s actually the SAM guy, and John Cale produced.}
• The Queen Is Dead, by The Smiths {I can't believe you don't own this already. The summa of the Moz/Marr collaboration.}
• The Boatman's Call, by Nick Cave {The Prince of Darkness may have been afraid to board a plane after 9/11, but this "New Testament" sound is proof of moisture's sustainability in Hell. "Into My Arms" is sweet enough to play your girlfriend on Valentine's Day, leaving the oldie-but-dreary "Deanna" to blast at her when she dumps you.}
• No Cities Left, by The Dears {The lead singer cried when Morrissey asked the band to open on the "You Are the Quarry" tour. That kind of gone-to-pieces sentimentalism can only lead one place: straight down. Get 'em while they're new and good.}
• The Boy With the Arab Strap, by Belle and Sebastian {Might as well order that black V-neck sweater, Rimbaud's Collected Poems, while you're at it. "Theoretical" bisexuality not a requisite, despite what angry twee detractors say.}
FILMS & TV:
• Cannibal! The Musical. {Trey Parker's college thesis, a feature-length movie musical about the only American ever convicted of cannibalism. Not for all markets, but better than most of his later stuff.}
• Before Sunset, directed by Richard Linklater {The sequel that doesn't feel like one. Why thirtysomethings who chat are more interesting than twentysomethings who do likewise. Some sluggish moments, but all made up for by a luminous final scene that made me fall in love with Julie Delpy once more. Bet it made Anthony Lane "spill [his] Sprite" again, too.}
• Collateral, directed by Michael Mann {Tom Cruise has always been a hard-working, as opposed to naturally gifted, actor. This part was his pension come early. Michael Mann is the Richard Avedon of the moving Los Angeles image. And Jamie Foxx ain't too shabby, either.}
• The Unbelievable Truth, directed by Hal Hartley {Surreal-ish debut from a master indy filmmaker and satirist. Yes, that is Edie Falco as the diner waitress.}
• Henry Fool, directed by Hal Hartley {Hartley's masterpiece. Probably the only movie about writers that's ever worked. Barton Fink, anyone?}
• Metropolitan, directed by Whit Stillman {Downwardly mobile 60's college jet set. Making a film about this demographic is like trying to play matchmaker to a Republican leper in Northampton, Mass. That the dialogue (and it's all dialogue) stays liquid-tongued is a monument to Stillman's talent... dare I say, genius?}
• Barcelona, directed by Whit Stillman {Anti-Americanism when it was more funny than scary. The "subtext" speech belongs in Bartlett's. The DVD commentary is, as someone from the earlier film might say, "priceless."}
• The Last Days of Disco, directed by Whit Stillman {An assault on 70's cliche in the best possible way -- the anti-54. Also known as Yuppies: A Defense. Chloe Sevigny gives grace to the one night stand, instead of head to Vincent Gallo.}
• Mr. Jealousy, directed by Noah Baumbach {Who wouldn't hunt down the ex-boyfriends of Annabella Sciorra? Eric Stoltz had fewer difficulties with girls in Mask. Chris Eigeman from the Stillman flicks swaps Mayflower pedigree for facial hair (modeled on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest jacket photo), to varying degrees of success. An underrated romantic comedy, but don't say I didn't warn you: this film may engender awkward relationship conversation. It may also plant supersleuth-stalker seeds in frail men's heads. Or so I've heard.}
• Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch {So many epigones, so far from this mark.}
• Father Ted: The Holy Trinity {BBC TV series about three priests on an island. No, not that kind of series, you sick fuck.}
Morrissey's in trouble over comments he made about immigrants in England:
"England is a memory now," he says, in an interview with the NME published yesterday. "The gates are flooded and anybody can have access to England and join in."
He goes on: "Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous. Travel to England and you have no idea where you are. It matters because the British identity is very attractive. I grew up into it and I find it very quaint and amusing. Other countries have held on to their basic identity, yet it seems to me that England was thrown away.
"You can't say, 'Everybody come into my house, sit on the bed, have what you like, do what you like.' It wouldn't work."
Not quite Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, but still breathtaking to behold from the man who calls George Bush and Tony Blair the inverted images of Osama bin Laden, and who thinks everyone in America is fat and stupid.
Mozzer's done this before with "National Front Disco," and I think in about a half decade there'll be a strong case for supposing him the strange, paradoxical standard-bearer of Larkinesque Little Englander sentiment. (Though the Pope of Mope has moved to Rome, so who knows?)
Larkin also didn't like the states: he'd never been here because he thought New York and L.A. were separated by "vast deserts of bigotry," which is an interesting turn of phrase from the great poet who was shabbily branded a racist when his correspondence and biography were published in the mid-90's. Terry Eagleton, lately the P.C. Torquemada lying and crying about Martin Amis, was at the fore of that thoroughly unenlightening and banal "row," too.
But Morrissey poses an interesting test for les bien-pensant. His politics is hardly right-wing in any definable way, and his tragically hip fans will go to any length to defend him. One of those fans -- and how's this for irony? -- is David Cameron, the leader of the Tory party, which has lately become green and multiculturalist to a cloying degree.
Still more irony? When I interviewed Billy Bragg a few summers ago he told me, in preparation for his book on English patriotism (!), that he'd amassed a new stable of favorite writers. They were: Peter Hitchens, Roger Scruton and Geoffrey Wheatcroft. (Now Bill's still more of a well-meaning socialist, and I'll love him forever for stumping for Oona King over George Galloway. But he's a socialist with a few warm beer-and-roast beef tendencies of cultural rootedness that "complicate" this image.)
There's a saying in my Eustonian part of the Anglo-American blogosphere apart from the one made famous by Nick Cohen's book title. "We are doomed."
Could've Been Worse. You Could've Been Lead Singer of The Fall
I took in Control last night, Anton Corbijn's bleak and gorgeously shot biopic of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division who's remembered today either as the Young Werther of Manchester or, as Woody Allen once said of Sylvia Plath, an interesting poet "whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality."
The theatre was refreshingly free of the college girl mentality. Most of the audience were, like me, in their late twenties and thus born sometime around Curtis's suicide; also, sadly, weaned on the post-punk revival of New York, which affords all of the gothic iconography on a trust-fund diet and sans the working-class angst that made the genre what it was. (Pity poor Julian Casablancas warding off his father's fashion models, and then his own.)
With just two studio albums to their credit, one released posthumously, Joy Division's legacy rests almost entirely on the moody gray aura of their stagecraft - complete with zombie-automaton movements by Curtis - and the bass-heavy, metallic instrumentals. If these Lithium bottles could sing...
Of course, you can't become a cult phenomenon if you're a well-adjusted young artist who waters the lawn on Sunday and changes nappies. Control, which is based on widow Deborah Curtis's memoir Touching from a distance, depicts its protagonist as a deeply tormented solipsist who only barely recognized the damage he was causing his family. The film is all about Debbie, really, given how difficult it must have been for her depict an unloving, philandering hubby who cried while having sex and couldn't bear to stay in the same room with his infant daughter. "Everyone hates me, I've made everyone hate me," Curtis tells an oddly magnanimous Tony Wilson, and I confess I found myself sympathizing with everyone just a bit. His heart belonged to another, Annik Honore, the kind of over-mascared Belgian waif Wes Anderson would do something insufferable with, who interviewed him for a fanzine she was writing and asked questions like, "What do you find beautiful?" (It's O.K. I choked on my Junior Mint, too.) Well within the parameters of rock star fame, you might say, but here's how Ian Curtis talked to his wife:
"If you wanted to sleep with other men, I wouldn't mind."
"Ian, when you say a thing like that, it makes me think you don't love me anymore."
"I don't think I do."
Well. Either this is a faithful dramatization of what chatter in the Curtis household was like, or it's the screenwriter's idea of plausible affectlessness at the dawn of the Thatcher era. Whatever the case, it put me in mind of the sillier moments in Mike Nichols's cracked-romance clunker Closer ("Did you swallow his cum?" "Yes." "How did it taste? How did it taste?!" "It tastes like you, but sweeter!"). And as if to capitalize on the mawkishness of that set piece, guess which famous Joy Division track is cued as Debbie walks away?
Thankfully, Control is bleak but not dire due to the humor of the supporting cast, i.e., the rest of the band and especially their manager Rob Gretton, played to scene-stealing perfection by Toby Kebbell. (Where's he been and what's he doing next?) Curtis's noblest gesture, in fact, may have been to play at giddiness on the eve of Joy Division's U.S. tour just for the sake of his mates. In keeping with his true nature, however, what he gave he also took away, since he hanged himself on that same eve. Suicide is not just self-murder, it's also a form of theft from which one is able to escape consequence.
One scanted element of the band's cultural significance was their Nazi iconography. The name Joy Division was taken from the ambiguously fictional term for a group of Jewish sex slaves in World War II concentration camps - as described in the 1965 novel The House of Dolls - and bassist Peter Hook and guitarist Bernard Sumner later admitted that the band was intrigued by fascism. They played up the aesthetic mainly to antagonize critics who were appalled that so many National Front-type skinheads kept turning up for gigs.
One doesn't mean to be a commissar about arthouse filmmaking, but, at the very least, some confrontation with this rancid political element might have helped beat back the Inside-Ian's-Head longueurs. All we get is one infamous riot the night Curtis collapsed with a seizure on stage, which the roughneck audience of course assumed was all part of the act. Instead, it was Michael Winterbottom's hilarious 24 Hour Party People that deftly handled the Fascism Question. Steve Coogan's Tony Wilson has the following exchange with a music journalist:
"How do you respond to charges that Joy Division are a neo-Nazi band?"
"Are you not aware of situationalism? Postmodernism? Haven't you heard of the free play of signs and signifiers?"
This must be why Mancunians - even those who would gladly don Che Guevara tees without a hint of irony or some vapid Derridian justification cooked up - used to call Wilson a fucking cunt. But the So It Goes host had a point. Fascist kitsch, if not actual fascism, in mainstream seventies music predated Joy Division: David Bowie went through his rather unfortunate Nietzsche-quoting, sieg hailing period, and Iggy Pop once dedicated the song "Rich Bitches" to all the "Hebrew women" in the audience.
Still, the dun-colored Hitler Youth uniforms were a new provocation, which is why New Order - founded by the remaining members of Joy Division after Curtis's death - went out of their way to distance themselves from British nationalism. Their explicitly anti-hooligan song "World in Motion" was commissioned by the Football Association in 1990 to champion England for that year's World Cup in Italy. The English club was already being sequestered on Sardinia due to the fear that heavy boozing and drug-use would make them and their fans violent. Italian counter-terrorism forces were enlisted to monitor the players, with the full consent of the Conservative Minister of Sport in London, who was still reeling from the notorious "Heysel disaster" in Brussels, and feared that Brits - not just National Front thugs - were becoming personas non grata on the continent.
Ask Billy Bragg - always more of a Clash man himself - about the perils of mixing pop and politics, but there's no avoiding the issue.
The press surrounding Amazon's Kindle e-book reader has largely focused on its design and functionality. I haven't held a Kindle, but the journalistic consensus seems to be that it corrects a lot of the flaws of Sony's reader without quite being ideal. (The Sony Reader is, IMHO, a piece of junk, if the sample in Borders was representative of the reading experience.)
But the question I haven't seen asked: if Kindle takes off, what purpose will publishers still serve ten years from now? Is the Kindle really just a play to take over the entire book industry? Think about what publishers do:
They find talent. Except that gatekeeper role has been largely delegated to literary agents for the last fifty years.
They print books. Or contract with printers. But with print-on-demand technology now putting the price of a high-quality one-off paperback book at about $3, investment in a printing of 10,000 perfectbound copies is less risky and less necessary than it once was. I could imagine a world where Amazon charges $10 for e-books and $15 for paper.
They market books. But not exclusively -- Amazon already has a successful recommendations policy in place. They have readers writing reviews and dynaminc bestseller lists. Having the marketing muscle to put ads in the New York Times Book Review matters less than ever for the tiny sliver of authors important enough to be advertised on such a platform. The long-tailish platform of electonic media and the internet makes Amazon a better marketing partner for most authors already.
They distribute books. Except that they don't do that either -- distribution is handled by a few huge companies like Ingram. There is no reason Amazon couldn't direct-mail e-books and print-on-demand copies while cutting deals with those few oligopolies to put paper copies on shelves.
They edit and design books. A lot of this has been outsourced to agents, though, who almost have to make the book polished before they even show it to an editor. And in an environment where the fixed cost of a print run is eliminated, these issues are less important.
So far as I can tell, the Kindle -- if its successors take off -- replaces those functions of publishing companies that haven't already been outsourced to independent contractors. Writers and readers stand to gain alike: Amazon-books are cheaper than normal books, and the lower publishing costs mean there's no reason Amazon can't outbid the measly 8% of cover price authors get from commercial publishers. (Why not split that $9.99/e-book price in half between author and Amazon?) Unless I am overlooking something, publishing companies look likely to become mere repositories of intellectual properties of the past.
My latest piece for TWS is live. It's on Garry Kasparov's arrest and Putin's crackdown on civil protest last weekend.
"NO MATTER WHAT happens, get Kasparov." So shouted one riot officer Saturday during the violently disrupted Dissenters' March in Moscow, according to David Nowak of the Moscow Times, one of the few newspapers left in Russia that doesn't have its reporting redacted by the Kremlin. When Nowak asked another officer why "seemingly peaceful bystanders" were being hauled off the streets at random and arrested, he was told, "Do you want me to [expletive] beat you with a baton?"
Welcome to life under Vladimir Putin, in which political opposition is met with swift and arbitrary punishment, and not even a tendentiously arrived at 70 percent approval rating is enough to satisfy executive confidence.
You would never know, judging by most of the U.S. media coverage of Garry Kasparov's arrest and subsequent jail sentence of five days, that the Dissenters' March was actually part of a multi-city spate of protests undertaken by Russians fed up with bullying dictatorship. It speaks well of Putin's propaganda, which brands all of his opponents as part of a monolithic sodality of crackpots and "jackals," that the Other Russia Coalition only organized two of the rallies held over the weekend--those in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Several others were independently staged in Nizny Novgorod, Tomsk, Orel, Pskov, Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga.
As was the case under the Soviet Union, state suppression of public square-style democratic activity in today's Russia occurs well before the announced khappening. On November 21, Putin addressed 5,000 of his claque, speaking of his political antagonists thus: "They aren't going to do anything to anyone. Even now, they're going to take to the streets. They have learned from Western experts and have received some training in neighboring republics. And now they are going to attempt provocations here." And as if to send a signal that such "provocations" would not be tolerated, on November 23, the day before Dissenters' March, counterterrorism agents raided the offices of Kasparov's organization, the United Civil Front. According to the Other Russia's website, the agents said they were looking for "materials dedicated to disrupting civil order." What they instead found and confiscated were 5,000 stickers reading, "Vote for the coalition list."
If we agree that Al Gore has done more than anyone else to alert the world about the perils of global warming, can we at least allow that one of the unmitigated benefits of the intervention in Iraq has been the restoration of that country's wetlands? The Guardian carries a story on the ecological revivification of "Eden":
By 2003, more than 90% of the Mesopotamian wetlands, dubbed the Garden of Eden, had been lost, and reduced to barren salt pans. Experts feared that the region, home to an ancient people considered the heirs of the Babylonians and Sumerians, would vanish by 2008.
Now, with a huge multibillion dollar restoration underway, funded by the US, Canadian and Italian governments and the United Nations environment programme (UNEP) many Ma'dan (Marsh Arabs) are returning to a life that has changed little in 5,000 years.
The objective here is to combine the accoutrements of modern life -- satellite television, wireless Internet, etc. -- with the traditional Marsh Arab mode of subsistence.
Do you suppose the engineers and scientists at work on this ambitious project are in line for a Nobel Peace Prize of their own? I'm feeling un-cynical today, so I'll say, "Sure."
Keeping the Anglo-American special relationship alive and kicking:
What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > Orwell's famous line about the Spanish Civil War can and should be applied to any historical circumstance or news organization: 'The raping and butchering in Chinese cities, the tortures in the cellars of the Gestapo, the elderly Jewish professors flung into cesspools, the machine-gunning of refugees along the Spanish roads - they all happened, and they did not happen any the less because the Daily Telegraph has suddenly found out about them when it is five years too late.'
If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > Socialize healthcare.
What would you do with the UN? > Get it to uphold its own resolutions.
What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The fusion of religion and technology.
Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > I am, but I never have to sleep on the couch because of it.
In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > 'I absolutely loved your interpretative dance sequence.'
What would you call your autobiography? > Why Should You Care?
Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > London or Prague.
What would your ideal holiday be? > After my over-insured yacht sinks off the Italian Riviera, I'm invited to stay with Monica Bellucci at her villa while Vincent Cassel is away shooting Ocean's Fourteen.
The Nation carries a sort-of cute envisioning of what the conversation would sound like between Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes -- both advisers to Rudy -- the day after their man took the White House. (The soundbites are real, cobbled together from a macedoine of sources.) But I think the real parody in the pages of the magazine comes courtesy of Chris Hedges. Taking a breather from his perpetual "Is it fascism yet?" all-points-bulletin, he's clapped out an hilarious editorial saying that... well, here, let him tell it:
I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture.
[...]
I will put the taxes I owe in an escrow account. I will go to court to challenge the legality of the war. Maybe a courageous judge will rule that the Constitution has been usurped and the government is guilty of what the postwar Nuremberg tribunal defined as a criminal war of aggression. Maybe not. I do not know.
I'd sell my pinky toe to get an inside peek at Hedges' place the day the IRS comes to repo. ("Not the butter sculpture of Reinhold Niebuhr!")
The ellipsis above accounts for various doomsday scenarios Hedges projects in the event a few subterranean facilities in Natanz are collapsed. All the old silly lefty tropes are on display here, from the very title of the piece, "Hands Off Iran." Technically, the GBU-28 bunker-buster is capable of a precision and dexterity a shade higher than manual. Also, for a journalist who has made a career reporting about the nature and dynamics of warfare, Hedges is a mite vague on what the "imminent" U.S. confrontation with Iran will look like: will there be decapitation of government, a full-scale occupation, what? It's more fun and makes for brisker copy to be all about blowback. But I wonder, would Hedges be so kind as to advocate the same policy of non-intervention for Iran's Revolutionary Guard and its murderous proxies in Iraq? "Hands off Mosul" would be a nice complementary op-ed, while we're on the subject of "fallout" and "regional conflagrations."
I have a favorite line from this one, however:
Let us hope sanity prevails. But sanity is a rare commodity in a White House that has twisted Trotsky's concept of permanent revolution into a policy of permanent war with nefarious aims--to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to strip citizens of their constitutional rights.
The nice thing about dropping allusions to things you haven't read is that there's always the chance other people haven't read them, either. Sadly, Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution -- twisted or pin-straight -- has no resonance with regime change in Iraq, Iran, or elsewhere, and for reasons the Nation should have tasked Ronald Aronson to explain to Hedges.
According to our author, evangelical Christians are fascists, Bush is a retarded Lev Davidovitch, and all that can save our disintegrating Republic is a new round of Nuremberg trials.
I, too, hear America singing, Chris. The song's just not nearly as interesting as all that.
This is almost a parody of cold war posturing (and I love the distaff stooge from the fascist, Kremlin-financed Nashi party getting the vapors for Volodya):
With Soviet-era songs blaring, the mostly young crowd of around 5,000 waved flags and chanted support for the 55-year-old leader, a former KGB spy who is by far Russia's most popular politician after eight years of strong economic growth.
Some young women had the president's name etched across their faces. "Victory for Putin is victory for Russia!" read a huge poster at the cavernous sports arena.
'COMPLETE RENEWAL'
"I really love Vladimir Putin," Irina Bleshchova, a 20-year-old journalism student and activist of the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth movement, told Reuters.
Calling him "the ideal man," she said: "I would like my future husband to be like Vladimir Putin." Before Putin spoke, a band played a racy song about how appealing Putin was.
My latest piece for TWS is now live. I argue that Georgia's now-canceled state of emergency doesn't really bear comparison to the situation in Pakistan. Rather, a better analog for judging how Mikheil Saakashvili's rollback of democratic reforms might not be irreversible is Turkey. The ties that bind are NATO and EU membership. Quote below, link follows:
A crucial aspect of this whole affair is that his pro-American orientation is not the will-o'-the-wisp that Musharraf's is. Saakashvili wants badly for Georgia to join NATO and the European Union, and while he was busying cracking down on civil liberties last week, something progressive did occur in his country: Russia formally ended its military presence there. NATO had made this a prerequisite for further ratification of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and thus any consideration Georgia's inclusion. On November 8, Andrei Popov, the commander of Russian military forces in the Caucasus, made good on the Kremlin's 1999 promise and signed the papers that officially transferred control to Georgia of the last of its Soviet era bases in Batumi. So its NATO Membership Action Plan can now technically move forward.
Remarkably, even Georgia's EU prospects have not been irreparably damaged by the state of emergency. The EU Special Representative to the south Caucasus, Peter Semneby, told EurasiaNet, "[I]f Georgia is successful now in turning the agenda towards the presidential elections, if the presidential elections are carried out successfully, then there should not be any lasting damage to these relations." Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has even announced on Polskie Radio that he will travel to Georgia soon to help resolve the Imedi impasse. He was solicited for this role by the United States and by the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
Here is a fine example of how the United States and Europe can still resort to an effective carrot-and-stick diplomacy with iniquitous partners who still place high premiums on their military and economic ties to the West. The rumors of the Bush Doctrine's death have been greatly exaggerated. It helps to compare Georgia not to Pakistan but to another often refractory and complicated ally: Turkey.
Sam Harris sent me this worthy and necessary appeal, which you can access via his website.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the most prominent advocate of free speech and women's rights in the Muslim world, and for this she must live under perpetual armed guard, even in the West. Unfortunately, on October 1st of this year, the Dutch government officially rescinded its promise to protect her. Now, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's friends, colleagues and admirers must come to her aid.
I have created a page on my website that links directly to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust. The money raised by this trust will pay Ayaan Hirsi Ali's security expenses. In the event that money remains after these costs have been met, it will be used to encourage and protect other dissidents in the Muslim world.
The ongoing protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a moral obligation. It is also a strategic one: for here is a woman doing work that most of us cannot do--indeed, would be terrified to do if given the chance--and yet this work is essential for preserving the freedoms we take for granted in the West.
If every reader of this email simply pledged ten dollars a month to protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the costs of her security would be covered for as long as the threat to her life remains.
In 2005, TIME included Ayaan Hirsi Ali in its list of the World's 100 Most Influential People. If you would like to know more about her, please read Christopher Caldwell's fine profile in the New York Times Magazine. You can also read the essay that Salman Rushdie and I recently published in the Los Angeles Times, or the one that Christopher Hitchens wrote for Slate.
Christopher Hitchens and Anne Applebaum are both wary of cheering the rosier state of affairs in Iraq. For one thing, the gains of the surge might prove temporary and in war journalism, hubris must be guarded by a bodyguard of dispassion. For another, not even faithful hawks cotton to the "Mission Accomplished" rhetoric anymore (they say they do, but they don't). But despite the noticeable and (for Iraqis) palpable de-escalation in daily violence, one barometer of progress is, I think, also the most cynical.
The Washington Post carries a front-page story today about what's really motivating the insurgency:
"I was out of work and needed the money," said Abu Nawall, the nom de guerre of an unemployed metal worker who was paid as much as $1,300 a month as an insurgent. He spoke in a phone interview from an Iraqi military base where he is being detained. "How else could I support my family?"
U.S. military commanders say that insurgents across the country are increasingly motivated more by money than ideology and that a growing number of insurgent cells, struggling to pay recruits, are turning to gangster-style racketeering operations.
That means they can be bought off by other parties, too. Namely, us.
Let's be real, though. No one with a conscience has been able to look calmly on something like the Sunni Awakening and not fret about the fact that former wage-killers of Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers are now fighting on our side against Al Qaeda. These are not allies in the true sense of the term because given the slightest change in the weather and they'll be back to killing those same civilians and soldiers. However, we must make do with what we can, especially in a region of the world where suicide is used as a weapon of mass destruction. So much of the nightmare that has defined this war has been a matter of sheer ideology. Clerical fascism that brooks no negotiation or compromise; it is totalitarian in the sense that individuality and personal materialism are anathema to the greater struggle. I recently happened upon this description of Islam by the Pakistani Qutb, Abu Ala Maududi:
�In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. �Muslim� is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And �Jihad� refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective.
[...]
Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which Nation assumes the role of the standard bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State.�
So it is a welcome occurrence that at least a handful of those fighting on behalf of such a doctrine look at the literal text of the thing and think, "Yeah, yeah. Show me the money." This is a shift in hearts and minds, all right, however insufficient or preliminary it may be.
A friend of mine, who always had a way of making amateur postmodern theory seem funnier than it had any right to be, emailed me over the weekend:
but they finally figured out a way to animate crispin glover- beowulf though- opening line of austin chronicle review was 'besides the inherent irony in animating a 1400 year old story...' i mean wtf, the only irony ive seen in last 7 years is that i cant remember the last time anyone used that word
correctly. this after npr piece on television and culture asks me am i from another country for not knowing the first three tv references they make. whats the point of studying media anymore. and then fed prosecution tell me
on tv last night that we dont want to put barry bonds away for 30 years b/c he did steroids and therefore tainted 10 years of national industry, its b/c in these 4 one-word answers he lied to us. and lastly while cancelling my
latest porn subscription i get a pop-up from the webmaster telling me they were sorry to see me go and wondered if id consider staying at a discounted price. after i said no they asked me why i was leaving (multiple choice)....
a.
b.
c. family pressure
d. found god
e.
Just when I thought that'd fulfilled the quota for Our Dumb Culture this week, Josh discovered this:
New Balance's Joy Division sneaker was one of the stupidest objects produced last year, and while gazing upon it might invoke feelings of dismay with existence similar to those expressed in Ian Curtis' lyrics, one imagines this wasn't quite what New Balance intended. It was just supposed to be "cool." Likewise, I'm sure Anton Corbijn, rock photographer extraordinaire, didn't mean to continue ruining Joy Division for us. But what really is anybody supposed to think of seeing the dapper young Sam Riley he cast as Curtis modeling a $1300 high-fashion outfit in the New York Times up against backdrops evoking all the gray, somber tones of the band's songs and hometown? And while we sit and read this rather dull and pointless bio of Riley, it's hard to escape the fact that we aren't reading the Arts section of the paper, but rather the Style section.
Mitchell Cohen has a fine essay in this month's Dissent about the areas of congruence, in style, rhetoric and fallacious logic, that exist between so-called "anti-Zionists" and classical anti-Semites. Cohen concludes:
If you judge a Jewish state by standards that you apply to no one else; if your neck veins bulge when you denounce Zionists but you�ve done no more than cluck �well, yes, very bad about Darfur�;
if there is nothing Hamas can do that you won�t blame �in the final analysis� on Israelis;
if your sneer at the Zionists doesn�t sound a whole lot different from American neoconservative sneers at leftists;
then you should not be surprised if you are criticized, fiercely so, by people who are serious about a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians and who won�t let you get away with a self-exonerating formula��I am anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic��to prevent scrutiny. If you are anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, then don�t use the categories, allusions, and smug hiss that are all too familiar to any student of prejudice.
Cohen spends a few paragraphs debunking the latterday absurdities of Tony Judt, who thinks that the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is a recent phenomenon, and that the notion of a Jewish state is an "anachronism" when in fact it very much of the moment. I respect Judt as an historian who provided a masterful analysis of European Stalinism. As Cohen rightly points out, this analysis was deeply enriched an understanding of how Moscow used "Zionist" as a code-word for Jew. The names Anna Pauker, Rudolph Slansky, Traicho Kostov and L?szl? Rajk may not resonate much anymore, but these were all undeviating Stalinists in charge of Soviet satellites, purged simply because of their Hebraic roots.
To understand Soviet anti-Semitism, one has to understand Stalin's lucubrations on the so-called National Question, the only work he ever produced as a pre-revolution Bolshevik that had any lasting policy impact. As a Georgian, Stalin knew that the tribalism that defined the Caucasus was anathema not only to Communist internationalism but to bourgeois nationalism as well. The "rootless cosmopolitan" was therefore the worst kind of subversive -- someone without organic ties to a people or state. It did not help, of course, that more Jews became Mensheviks than Bolsheviks, especially in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. ("Filthy, circumcised Yid" was how Stalin once described Julius Martov, the leader of the Menshevik Party.)
Oftentimes, after World War II, the Kremlin would accuse a Jew of being simultaneously a Zionist, a Trotskyist, a Titoist, and a CIA agent, a congeries of interests that, if legitimate, would have made postwar history even more interesting than it was.
Of course, the real anachronism is the term Zionist itself, at least as it has come to mean a supporter of Israel. Zionism was a 19th and 20th century political movement that underwent multiple permutations and revisions yet always agitated for the founding of a homeland for the Jews. Now that that homeland exists and will continue to do so indefinitely, the movement has become obsolete. The messianic reactionaries of Gush Emunim or other Greater Israel chauvinists are not, properly speaking, Zionists any more than Rush Limbaugh is a "rebel colonist" as opposed to an American jingoist. Ditto the most uncompromising elements of AIPAC.
When a conservative calls a liberal who believes in socialized healthcare a socialist he is resorting to a rhetorical flourish that indicates his own tendentiousness rather than the true politics of the liberal. Socialist, when used pejoratively, conjures all sorts of images of undesirable, radical behavior. Propagators of the archaic and meaningless term Zionist are trying to conjure the same thing, but they are acting under a veil of ignorance that pretends Zionist is a polemical identifier no different than any other. Of course, there is no ethnic or racial component attached to socialist.
In fact, there is already a term in the lexicon to describe people who advocate the physical or demographic destruction of a state: anarchists. But those who target only Israel for such destruction seem to be, at their very best, selective or discriminating anarchists. And it's their discrimination that raises eyebrows and gets them into trouble.
At what point did ideology cease to compel and the decision get made to spy for the Soviets simply because they were the most competent and efficient at international intrigue?
Today's New York Times brings word that the biggest non-catch of them all -- George Koval -- has died a nonagenarian in Moscow and been made a posthumous Hero of the Russian Federation by Vladimir Putin. He stole the American nuclear secrets that allowed Stalin to build his own bomb.
By 1934, Dr. Koval was in Moscow, excelling in difficult studies at the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology. Upon graduating with honors, he was recruited and trained by the G.R.U. and was sent back to the United States for nearly a decade of scientific espionage, from roughly 1940 to 1948.
How he communicated with his controllers is unknown, as is what specifically he gave the Soviets in terms of atomic secrets. However, it is clear that Moscow mastered the atom very quickly compared with all subsequent nuclear powers.
In the United States under a false name, Dr. Koval initially gathered information about new toxins that might find use in chemical arms. Then his G.R.U. controllers took a gamble and had him work under his own name. Dr. Koval was drafted into the Army, and by chance found himself moving toward the bomb project, then in its infancy.
The Army judged him smart and by 1943 sent him for special wartime training at City College in Manhattan. Considered a Harvard for the poor, it was famous for brilliant students, Communists and, after the war, Julius Rosenberg, who was executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for the Soviets.
But Dr. Koval steered clear of all debate on socialism and Russia, Dr. Bloom said. �He discussed no politics that I can recall. Never. He never talked about the Soviet Union, never ever, not a word.�
Which might have told you all you needed to know right there. It's actually a small feat that the Soviets even contrived to build a nuke at all. Lavrentia Beria was put in the charge of the project, and Stalin was given to remark that the theoretical physics required to bring it to completion sounded like so much "bourgeois mystification." That of course didn't stop him from threatening to shoot the scientists if they failed.
I kibbitz with Stephen Schwartz all the time about how the mere suggestion that someone was a Russian spy can almost be taken for proof in itself these days. Consider how many unsuspected moles there were and in what upper reaches of industry and government, and you come away feeling that McCarthyism was an ostentatious street brawl for a world championship fight that never happened.
Austan Goolsbee writes in today's New York Times on a paper by MIT's Michael Greenstone on the market for Iraqi sovereign debt. That is, government bonds. (Hat tip: Greg Mankiw.)
Goolsbee is an excellent writer and a sharp economist, so I won't recapitulate everything he says. The condensed version: (1) financial markets strip out a lot of the bluster and bad information that bias pundits and, usually, are surprisingly good predictors of the future; (2) the value of Iraqi bonds have plunged in the past few months; (3) Iraqi government is probably not going to survive long enough to pay off the bonds. Greenstone calculates that the bonds predict an 80% chance of government default, which essentially means the implosion of Baghdad. The original Greenstone chart -- reproduced below -- puts annual default rates at something like 8% annually.
Any Snarksmith readers who think the market is wrong should call their brokers. At 60% of face value, the return on these bonds is excellent, so long as someone keeps paying on them, and your investment will contribute ever so slightly to the Iraqis' ability to borrow on the capital markets at reasonable rates. Sadly, I won't be joining you on that bet.
If you're at all like me, you eagerly anticipate "Control," the new movie about Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division. He hanged himself, but not before inventing post-punk. Very sad indeed.
He predicted Bhutto's arrest, so I think he deserves your attention:
Rationally speaking, it is in Musharraf and Bhutto's interests to not allow the old supreme court to return. The reinstated supreme court would
a) get Musharraf out of office,
b) bring back the criminal charges against Bhutto
and c) bring back Nawaz Sharif, the Islamist Feudal Lord from whom Musharraf took power (and who has a long legacy of befriending Bin Laden). [Fn1, below]. In fact, the Supreme Court already brought Sharif back once before, only to have Musharraf throw him out.
Daniel Sieradski, my latest hire to man the ever-expanding Cabal, uncovers this embarrassing fact about the Ron Paul campaign:
According to the Lone Star Times, White Nationalists have become a noticeable source of financial contributions to the Paul campaign. Indeed, even Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, and one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in America, has personally contributed $500 to Paul�s campaign.
Though it�s true that Paul�s campaign has no control over who sends them money in advance, once it becomes apparent that a neo-Nazi leader is sending money, any sensible politician who does not wish to be identified with neo-Nazism should send the money back. Not so for Ron Paul, however, whose campaign is still making up its mind as to whether or not to return Black�s money.
Paul�s spokesman Jesse Benton told the Lone Star Times:
At this time, I cannot say that we will be rejecting Mr. Black�s contribution, but I will bring the matter to the attention of our campaign director again, and expect some sort of decision to be made in coming days.
Frankly, this is a no-brainer. Any other candidate would unequivocally reject that money as soon as its donor�s identity was known. That Paul�s campaign needs time to think about it is shocking.
I remember when Bob Dole returned money from Log Cabin Republicans because he thought they were too iffy to line his coffers. I guess when your campaign uses the iconography of a terrorist anarchist to raise millions, anything goes.
Tick-tock goes the clock until Andrew ("Yay!") Sullivan brings himself to mention this unflattering item.
Jewcy Office Party Captures Other Party Across the Street
Last night, Jewcy had a small, intimate housewarming party to celebrate our new digs in DUMBO. (We've got a ping-pong table, foosball, all courtesy of Law & Order: Special Victims' Unit, which shot an episode here a few weeks ago. Vincent D'Onofrio says "folks." Take a note.)
Anyway, as the affair was winding down, and the jazz trio that showed up uninvited began drinking themselves silly for their next non-scheduled gig, we noticed an odd thing happening across the way. Actually, Dan Koffler, one of our Cabal contributors, noticed it. I was deep in discussion with Dan about the prospect of abolishing the U.S. Senate and what it's like to share a desk with Michael Walzer when his attention not so much drifted as was hijacked. "Uh, yeah, that's some sex happening over there."
And how! We're still not sure if the building across from ours is residential or commercial, but one happy couple left the blinds open and got busy during our wine-tippled haze. They kept it up for about thirty minutes, with only a few water and breath-catching breaks. Many positions were tried. The lighting was adequate. Our cheering only seemed to encourage them.
Our intern Laura had a digital camera that shoots videos, so allow me to bring a little slice of office life right on home to you. Enjoy.
A small confession: Like Andrew Sullivan, I have an abiding affection for tough Catholic conservative women because they remind me of my mother. Peggy Noonan is one, and so far as Hillary's gendered crybaby routine is concerned, I think the former Reagan speechwriter nails it:
A word on toughness. Mrs. Clinton is certainly tough, to the point of hard. But toughness should have a purpose. In Mrs. Thatcher's case, its purpose was to push through a program she thought would make life better in her country. Mrs. Clinton's toughness seems to have no purpose beyond the personal accrual of power. What will she do with the power? Still unclear. It happens to be unclear in the case of several candidates, but with Mrs. Clinton there is a unique chasm between the ferocity and the purpose of the ferocity. There is something deeply unattractive in this, and it would be equally so if she were a man.
Noonan opens her column with a cute anecdote about Thatcher's famed ovaries of steel, which set many a stiff upper lip quivering. Christopher Hitchens said Thatcher "reeked of sex," and he has a famous story involving a disagreement with her, at some Conservative Party gathering, over a point of fact about Rhodesia. Picture a young Trotskyist Hitchens -- right about the point -- bowing before the Tory Bodicea, who kept telling him to go lower. The scene ends with Thatcher tapping the Hitch on the ass and calling him a "naughty boy." Surely one way to fuse wiles with guile. If only Hillary played like that.
"Just one of the boys" is an old feminine cliche, invented round about the time that Neolithic woman turned to her flummoxed hunter-gathering partner and said, "No, no, here. Let me do it." The best exponents of this tradition, the ones who command our attention, are the women who don't sacrifice their extra X-chromosome to show that their competence and stoicism are equal to that of any John Wayne figure. Would Condoleeza Rice waver over sending troops into battle any more than Fred Thompson would? It's hard to imagine, especially given that Condi chose the eminently masculine field of Sovietology (but still likes expensive handbags and jewelry), and Thompson's chose the performing arts.
I suspect Hillary's toughness problem relates to another old feminine cliche: she won't let her hair down. She's too busy catering to expectation and suffering the Clinton Popularity Syndrome that she's yet to level with the country. She's hardly "against" the war in Iraq now; wants only to know that it can be won and she can be the one to win it. Otherwise, it's a done deal. And there's every reason to believe if the United States does bomb Natanz, it'll be under her watch, not George Bush's.
Hillary learned the hard way last week that invoking gender as a balm against political wounds is so very nineties. She has to know better, being married to a man who treats women like shit. Moreover, it took a black man to set her right on this matter.
It'll be nice for Rudy if all his old corrupt city cronies wind up behind bars before he becomes president.
The grand jury, sitting in Westchester, has been hearing evidence about Mr. Kerik for more than a year as part of a broad federal investigation into a variety of allegations, including his acceptance of $165,000 in renovations from a contractor who was seeking a city license.
I just had a horrifying vision: Judith Nathan showing Judith Regan around a velvet-and-gilt Oval Office, except in my head it sounds like Fran Drescher tearing a cat in half with Janice from Friends.
Watching the bewildered look on Leslie Stahl's face when Nicolas Sarkozy walked off the set of 60 Minutes last week was, for me at least, worth a whole national election (one in which I have absolutely no voting power, but still).
Can there be any doubt that America's greatest asset is the outspoken and often critical ally we now have in the Elysee Palace? The French president addresses a rare joint session of Congress:
�I want to be your friend, your ally, your partner,� he said, �but I wish to be a friend who stands on his own two feet.�
He was able to chide the Bush administration to take a leadership role on climate change and to warn of the effects of the dollar�s sharp decline to a position far below parity with the euro � a decline that helps American exporters and hurts European exporters � and still draw applause.
[...]
But Mr. Sarkozy, who has always stated clearly that France was right to oppose the war in Iraq, did not utter the word Iraq. France has refused to help the United States on the ground in Iraq.
So the extraordinary embrace of the French president by American lawmakers reflected their approval of a new European leader who actually likes America and the reality that support for the Iraq war is no longer the acid test of French-American friendship.
No one can call Sarkozy "Bush's poodle" (the term never fit Tony Blair either, but that's a separate story). "Sarko l'Americain" sounds like a pool hall huckster in 30's film noir, which is appropriate given the man's love for our popular culture and showy work ethic. (What would French New Wave have been without Notorious or Public Enemy?)
Dogged in his opposition to aiding the war effort in Iraq, Sarkozy nonetheless has shown great willingness to confront the danger of a nuclear Iran and speak out against the witless anti-Americanism that bedevils his country just as witless Francophobia bedevils our own. Our oldest ally has proven, then, at the nadir of U.S. stature and influence, to be our strongest. Viva la something, all right.
The announcement that Pat Roberston had decided to throw his God-fearing weight behind Rudy Giuliani should come as no surprise to anyone who's followed the trajectory of America's Mayor since he abandoned his Churchillian stature in order to run for president. Giuliani learned the hard way that his social liberalism doesn't wash with the Christian right -- he recently came in second to last at the Values Voter Summit straw poll of Republican candidates (Mitt Romney was the favorite).
What better way, then, for the hero of 9/11 to split this difference than by snuggling up to the man who blamed secularism and abortion for that horrific day?
�I believe in God, I pray to God, pray to Jesus for guidance and for help,� Mr. Giuliani said. �I have very, very strong views on religion that come about from having wanted to be a priest when I was younger and having studied theology for four years in college, it�s an area that I know really, really well academically. I understand the history of religion. Man and women�s relationship to God is one of the strongest, if not the strongest motivating thing in human history.�
And Mr. Giuliani had appealed directly to Mr. Robertson for support, and gave a speech at the university he founded, Regent University, over the summer.
Yes, Virginia, endorsements do matter, particularly when they're sought after and when the endorser stands for everything the candidate knows to be abominable. Compare Giuliani's reticence on Robertson's 9/11 views to his outspokenness on Ron Paul's tepid but dim remarks. If only he had Pat to debate!
Last Tuesday, I attended an Intelligence Squared debate on the Upper East Side. The proposition before the house was this: "Russia Is Becoming Our Enemy Again." The answers against, as I try to show in this wrap-up for the Weekly Standard, all hinge on the definition of "Russia," "is," "becoming," "enemy" and "again." ("Our" gets a pass.)
American debates over Russia's present and future have always lent themselves to witty theatrics. Rossett alone twice reminded me of the Trotskyist Max Shachtman's devastating indictment of CPUSA chief Earl Browder in 1950: "There but for an accident of geography, stands a corpse!" First she recounted a dinner she attended in Moscow ten years ago at which one Russian held forth against a tide of Western skepticism about the positive direction in his which his country was headed. "His name was Gary Kasparov." Next, having poured herself a cup of tea at the lectern prior to her opening remarks, Rossett brandished the photographs of the dying Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB agent turned British citizen who was poisoned by Polonium 210, and a badly disfigured Victor Yushchenko, the current pro-Western reformist president of Ukraine. She invited the audience to imagine itself a Russian dissident sitting down with an envoy from the Kremlin to discuss the murder of a journalist in a foreign city. "Would you, without a second thought these days, drink that tea?"
I matriculated to Dartmouth College in 1998, the year that marked the beginning of the administration of Dr. James Wright. I won't soon forget my favorite classics professor's description of the incoming president as a "gray ponderous mass" and a mere "steward" of everything that had been accomplished already, to mixed fanfare and disdain, by his predecessor James O. Freedman. I should say the late James O. Freedman, as he died last year of cancer, Dartmouth's first Jewish president and a man who made it his mission to restore the love of learning and individuality to the beer-drenched quadrangles. Freedman caused a lot of giggles when he envisioned the ideal Dartmouth student as someone who'd read Catullus under a tree. (Try Derrida under the influence.)
And whenever I think of that pretentious and overcooked image, I'm reminded of Auden's "Under Which Lyre: A Reactionary Tract for the Times." Adam Kirsch, himself a Harvard man, has a characteristically fine essay on the wry subversiveness of the poem, delivered as the 1946 Phi Beta Kappa oration:
The comedy of the poem, and its prescience, lies in Auden�s description of Apollo, the presiding spirit of what he calls �the fattening forties.� The danger to postwar America, the poet suggests, lies in the soft tyranny of institutions, authorities, and experts�of people who know what�s best for you and don�t hesitate to make sure you know it, too. Auden gives a wonderful catalog of the things these Apollonians want to impose: colleges where �Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge,� with courses on �Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport�; poems that �Extol the doughnut and commend/The Common Man� (did Byron Price flinch at those lines?); even processed foods: �a glass of prune juice or a nice/Marsh-mallow salad.� In short, Auden is already predicting the dullest, most conformist aspects of American life in the Cold War years, the kind of prosperous mediocrity that gave the 1950s a bad name.
So here we're confronted with the wonderful set piece of an openly gay ex-Communist poet from Greenwich Village telling young Ivy Leaguers in perfect meter and rhyme, at the nascent Central Intelligence Agency's recruitment center, to damn consensus.
Dartmouth recently decided to eliminate one of its better traditions of allowing half of the Board of Trustees to be elected by the alumni while the other half is appointed by the administration. Now it's to be a 1/3 - 2/3 split in favor of direct appointments. Such are these reactionary times. A college doesn't want to be told what to do by the students it graduated. There's an Auden stave to describe this phenomenon as well:
And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.
Jamie has already alluded and linked to the big, sopping valentine Andrew Sullivan delivers to Barack Obama in next month's Atlantic. At the risk of affirming an official Shvitz position on this cover story, let me just say that it's one of the most homiletic and trite pieces of political journalism I've seen in a long time.
One is told, repeatedly, that Obama is the cure for what ails America because he's post-Boomer, multiracial and has an evocative full name that will cause some pleasantly puzzled expressions in Lahore and Jakarta. The man is the message, in other words, and never you mind about his policies, experience or whether or not he'd make the best wartime commander-in-chief.
What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial�it�s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West�s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.
Consider this hypothetical. It�s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man�Barack Hussein Obama�is the new face of America. In one simple image, America�s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama�s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.
Now consider this hypothetical. Long before sacred terror afflicted these shores or most Americans had even heard the name Osama Bin Laden, a civil war was raging in the Islamic world that pitted the theologically pure against the reformist, the moderate and the apostate. We've seen how Abu Musab-al Zarqawi treated his co-religionists, who weren't up to snuff and were thus "polytheists" worse than Jews and Christians. In Darfur, a genocide that has been blessed and encouraged by Bin Laden, is currently underway to eliminate black Muslims whom their Arab Muslim killers refer to as "niggers." If we're to judge a candidate for high office on the basis of his gene pool, I can't think of a better rallying point for Al Qaeda than a "brown-skinned man whose father was an African" and "attended a majority-Muslim school," then came to America and discovered Jesus Christ. (The name Ayaan Hirsi Ali has not helped an avowed atheist with a strong tongue and willingness to fight jihadism.) If you thought hope was powerful, wait until you see the audacity of dashed expectations.
Obama's heritage neither qualifies nor disqualifies him as president any more than Hillary's protean head of hair does her. And, as if to underscore the nonsense of his previous observation, Sullivan goes on to laud Obama for taking up his non-Muslim faith:
The best speech Obama has ever given was not his famous 2004 convention address, but a June 2007 speech in Connecticut. In it, he described his religious conversion:
One Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon called �The Audacity of Hope.� And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, he would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.
It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany. I didn�t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn�t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn�t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God�s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works.
That would be the same Rev. Wright who traveled to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to gladhand Muammar Qaddafi, and who spoke of 9/11 with the same roosting chickens rhetoric that has now become cliche on the radical fringes. Obama's spiritual awakening comes in a distant second to his political opportunism, since he has an odd way of rewarding his favorite apostle and phrasemaker. He disinvited Wright from delivering a public invocation last February, on the exact date he announced his White House run. According to one of the Obama's spokesmen, "Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself." Well, why shouldn't a church led by a man of questionable motive and political affiliations not have to defend itself when it is openly credited with imbuing the divine spark in a possible leader of the free world? If Wright had such a impact that Obama took up religion because of him, isn't he deserving of something more than this calculated and weasely distancing? In short, how is Obama's religiosity any different, or any less meretricious, than that of the other candidates?
I don't doubt that Obama is the freshest national politician the U.S. has seen in a quite a while. I admire him a lot and -- glib Skype conversations with my co-editor aside -- I still haven't made up my mind not to vote for him. But what benefits him and the country least are the kinds of shallow and sanctimonious hosannas that depict him as a saintly figure. Sullivan is good enough to confess that he's suffering from a kind of electoral affirmative action impulse that esteems black religiosity for being just that. Fine. But when it comes time for the 101st Airborne to touch down on Waziristan, or garrisons to be shuffled in Iraq so as to maintain the hard-won security that's been established there, I suspect we'll need tougher metrics for assessing leadership than smiling white condescension.
The current crisis in Pakistan is telling for how ineffectual the United States has been in exerting pressure on its "allies" in the war on terror. There is nothing at all surprising about a military dictator and coupist like General Musharraf declaring a state of emergency rule, which has turned his country overnight into a nuclear-armed Venezuela. (Despite squashing democracy, he had previously allowed dissent and criticism of his regime; there was also a constitution for him to suspend.)
Musharraf's real note of desperation was actually struck over a year ago when he, along with nervous American consent, signed the Waziristan Accords. This shameful pact recognized a kind Anbar Awakening in reverse: it ceded the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) near the border of Afghanistan to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The U.S., which has repeatedly offered to send ground soldiers in to help police and clear the mountainous terrain of Waziristan, is relegated to dropping bombs on it, acts which do little but rile tribal sympathies for Osama bin Laden and make for embarrassing media events. According to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of The Weekly Standard:
Emblematic of the latter is an October 30, 2006, strike against a madrassa in a Bajaur village that allegedly served as an al Qaeda training camp. While Zawahiri may have been the strike's target, the madrassa was affiliated with another key al Qaeda confederate, Faqir Mohammed, who had contracted a strategic marriage with a woman from the local Mamoond tribe. A U.S. Predator strike destroyed the school, but it hardly slowed down Mohammed, who gave an interview with NBC at the scene of the wreckage and later spoke at the funeral for the victims.
Why are we allowing this to continue? Because Musharraf claims (not without some justification) that the enemy within his own government is more perilous than the one without. (Leave aside for now the fact that the Taliban have already violated the FATA agreement by killing Pakistani forces outside of the designated tribal areas.) Indeed, Pakistan's Gen. Hamid Gul and Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg are openly flirtatious with the Bin Ladenist element, and there is every chance if that Musharraf falls they, not Benzair Bhutto, stand to benefit. The country would then become what Iran hopes to be in five years.
But now we get photos of Pakistan's professional class taking to the streets to defy an authoritarian the U.S. has supported to the hilt and with absolutely no evidence that doing so has been in its national interest. Condoleeza Rice sheepishly admits to being "disappointed" with Musharraf's crackdown on civil liberties, which is nice, even if it means that her boss's policy of democracy promotion doesn't always work out the way he planned it.
It all has me nostalgic for the salad days of 2004, when every liberal thought Pakistan's security apparatus, the ISI, was coordinating its arrests of Al Qaeda personnel to maximize Bush's electoral profile. Bin Laden was to have been paraded out in a cage at the climax of GOP festivities at Madison Square Garden. If only...
A man who looks like Jack Palance's lesbian sister gets to say things like this:
Putin is enormously popular. The device by which he is continuing his leadership, behind a competent but happily subordinate technician, is accepted there as good news. I suggest that we should agree with the Russian people. They are getting what they want and they want it because Putin has governed Russia for Russia and Russians, has put back self-respect in a country whose nadir reflected an American zenith.
Since (late) 2004, satisfying your jones for political and cultural commentary, day-old scoops and late-breaking marginalia, and whatever else finagles its way into the cyber-planetary potluck...
• Civil Disobedience on the Web By Michael Weiss {British bloggers stand up to threats of libel lawsuits., originally published in Slate.}
• Spray-Fire Atonement By Michael Weiss {How cognitive behavioral psychology can help High Holy Day Jews who repent too much., originally published in Slate.}
• Mutiny on the Manifesto By Michael Weiss {Spineless scalawags are sabotaging the most promising leftist doctrine in decades. Don't let them., originally published in Jewcy.}
• Rise of the Faux-cialists By Michael Weiss {Three poseurs who would have Marx spinning in his grave (plus their real-deal counterparts), originally published in Jewcy.}
• Stepson of the Time By Michael Weiss {A reconsideration of Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, originally published in The New Criterion.}
• The Surge Can Work By Michael Weiss {Everyone's wrong about the president's new war plan, originally published in Jewcy.}
• A Kibitz on Pure Reason By Michael Weiss {The author of Betraying Spinoza on rationalism, passion, and great 17th-century hair, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Brainwashing's Nemesis By Michael Weiss {How Rick Ross became a cult buster extraordinaire, originally published in Jewcy.}
• The Whiz Kid of Warfare By Michael Weiss {How Noah Shachtman has revolutionized military reporting, originally published in Jewcy.}
• A Blacklist The Left Could Use By Michael Weiss {Meet the Christopher Hitchens of postpunk, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Is Marriage the New Dating? By Michael Weiss {A divorcee, a young married, and a singleton debate wedded bliss, originally published in Jewcy.}
• The Jewish Jihad for Jesus By Michael Weiss {Why converts are leading the evangelical movement, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Tribal Threads By Michael Weiss {The designer of Gytha Mander on the holy land, holsters, and honeys, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Some Kind of Republican By Michael Weiss {The real legacy of John Hughes, published in Slate.}
The press surrounding Amazon's Kindle e-book reader has largely focused on its design and functionality. I haven't held a Kindle, but the journalistic consensus seems to be that it corrects a lot of the flaws of Sony's reader without quite being ideal. (The Sony Reader is, IMHO, a piece of junk, if the sample in Borders was representative of the reading experience.)
My latest piece for TWS is live. It's on Garry Kasparov's arrest and Putin's crackdown on civil protest last weekend.
The Nation carries a sort-of cute envisioning of what the 
My latest piece for TWS is now live. I argue that Georgia's now-canceled state of emergency doesn't really bear comparison to the situation in Pakistan. Rather, a better analog for judging how Mikheil Saakashvili's rollback of democratic reforms might not be irreversible is Turkey. The ties that bind are NATO and EU membership. Quote below, link follows:
Sam Harris sent me this worthy and necessary appeal, which you can access via his 
A friend of mine, who always had a way of making amateur postmodern theory seem funnier than it had any right to be, emailed me over the weekend:
A small confession: Like 
Last Tuesday, I attended an Intelligence Squared debate on the Upper East Side. The proposition before the house was this: "Russia Is Becoming Our Enemy Again." The answers against, as I try to show in this wrap-up for the Weekly Standard, all hinge on the definition of "Russia," "is," "becoming," "enemy" and "again." ("Our" gets a pass.)
I matriculated to Dartmouth College in 1998, the year that marked the beginning of the administration of Dr. James Wright. I won't soon forget my favorite classics professor's description of the incoming president as a "gray ponderous mass" and a mere "steward" of everything that had been accomplished already, to mixed fanfare and disdain, by his predecessor James O. Freedman. I should say the late James O. Freedman, as he died last year of cancer, Dartmouth's first Jewish president and a man who made it his mission to restore the love of learning and individuality to the beer-drenched quadrangles. Freedman caused a lot of giggles when he envisioned the ideal Dartmouth student as someone who'd read Catullus under a tree. (Try Derrida under the influence.)
Jamie has already alluded and linked to the big, sopping 
