I have a small wish of my own in this season of public and private Utopias. It is that the emergence—or should I say ascendance?—of Barack Hussein Obama will allow the reentry into circulation of an old linguistic coinage. Exploited perhaps to greatest effect by James Baldwin, the word I have in mind is cat. Some of you will be old enough to remember it in real time, before the lugubrious and nerve-racking days when people never knew from one moment to the next what expression would put them in the wrong: the days of Negro and colored and black and African American and people of color. After all of this strenuous and heated and boring discourse, does not the very mien of our new president suggest something lithe and laid-back, agile but rested, cool but not too cool? A “cat” also, in jazz vernacular, can be a white person, just as Obama, in some non–Plessy v. Ferguson ways, can be. I think it might be rather nice to have a feline for president, even if only after enduring so many dogs. (Think, for one thing, of the kitten-like grace of those daughters.) The metaphor also puts us in mind of a useful cliché, which is that cats have nine lives—and an ability to land noiselessly and painlessly on their feet.In his Golden Globe acceptance speech, Mickey Rourke used "cat." I can't remember who he used it in reference to, but I do remember thinking "that's not a word you hear very often anymore."
When Mr. Rourke won a Golden Globe award for “The Wrestler” last Sunday, that comeback within a comeback movie was not merely a vindication for an aging, underemployed, sometimes mocked but mostly forgotten movie star.I had forgetten the French were fans, but I do remember being a big fan myself in the '80s, and was glad to see he was making a comback back in 2005 and 2006.
It was a needling reminder that the French, after so many years and after so much derision, never gave up on an actor who, in this country, became a living symbol of French contrariness — a human Security Council veto, the Tinseltown embodiment of the force de frappe and fromage de tête.
We mocked the French for admiring Mickey Rourke the way we laughed at their serious assessment of Jerry Lewis as a comic genius. In both cases, the French despised us right back for disparaging artists who are avatars of what they consider to be the best of American popular culture.
"Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.And he notes that his election marks the coming of age of new generation that will not be hindered by false choices.
But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.False choices are presented by those in power in order to limit options and it was good to see Obama note this. It is often a ploy by older, "serious" people to present false choices as the "hard reality." But Obama does recognize there are hard choices, they're just not always the ones presented.
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.
"Obama followed that soon enough with a paragraph appealing to hardliners, promising to "responsibly leave Iraq to its people" - hawks can hope the operative word is "responsibly" - and "forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan," which is a dovish way of saying he may have to risk the doves' charge of "Obama’s war.""Iraq and Afghanistan are the arenas for his hard choices. My favorite part of the speech was the multicultural bit:
"And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."As the New York Times observed
(APPLAUSE)
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.
And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
"There was a lot to reflect on in President Obama’s inaugural speech today, but there were two small points that are worth noting, two things that Mr. Obama mentioned that American politicians, especially presidents, never mention: Vietnam and atheism."Like Obama's election, the mention of the two topics symbolize a change in the zeitgeist and a new generation. The only old grumpies during the inauguration drama were the non-heteros - and they have their reasons - but they should recognize that religion is their main adversary.
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"To hear most American leaders tell it, the Constitutional freedom of religion allows you to be a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Christian Scientist, a Sikh — well you get the idea. Basically, a member of any religion. But they never talk about people who do not participate in an organized religion, or are even — gasp! — atheists."
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"At another point in his address, the new president was paying homage to our ancestors, “who carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.”
“For us,” he said, “they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sanh.”
Khe Sanh? The 1968 battle in Vietnam that was one of the many times the military leadership badly underestimated the power and intentions of the North Vietnamese Army, at great cost in the lives of American Marines?
Military historians still argue about what happened at Khe Sanh, which has become an iconic symbol of the tragic failures of Vietnam. (Go back and listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” for an example of what we mean.)
So why did Mr. Obama mention the battle? Perhaps because it also is a symbol of the courage and self-sacrifice of the Marines, and he wanted to include their service to America in his speech? We’re not certain. But it was interesting to note that he stopped there and did not go on to mention, say, Fallujah.
As for his reference to atheists, the answer could be simple: Mr. Obama actually meant it when he said, "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recrminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."
To House Bunny's credit, one of the montages shows Faris' character actually learning - it's the first intelligence makeover scene. But Faris who gets story credit on the movie, orginally had something slightly less inspirational in mind when she met with writers Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Luts.The picareque tale with bildungsroman traits reminded me of Zoolander, another story about a beautiful Ingénue and the theme of the cosmetic and superficial versus the authentic. The darker side Faris mentions brought to mind Martin Amis's journalistic journey into the porno industry.
"We met and talked, and they asked what I was thinking about and I said I was playing around with this idea about a Playboy bunny who's thrown out of the Mansion, and maybe she's addicted to drugs or has an abusive father and she has to go back to her small Christian town and everybody hates her, and maybe she can't kick her meth habit... They were smiling and nodding and they came back a week later and said, 'OR... she could become a house mom at a sorority!' I wanted to make something comedic, I was just out-loud musing about why a Playboy bunny would really be kicked out of the Mansion.
Faris was eventually talked down to something slightly more family-friendly. "We really wanted to make sure that even though she had lived in this fantasy deviant lifestyle, for whatever strange reason she was an innocent. We decided not to go down the darker avenues of what a Playboy bunny's duties might be."
If you're going to be a porno star, what do you need? It's pretty clear by now. You need to be an exhibitionist. You need to have a ferocious sex drive. You need to suffer from nostalgie de la boue (literally "mud nostalgia": a childish, even babyish delight in bodily functions and wastes). And - probably - you need damage in your past. You also need to be humourless. Chloe is not humourless. When she talked to me she was like someone peeping over a wall demarcating two different worlds, telling me stories about the other side.
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Fifteen minutes later, referring to the achievements of Lola, [porn star] Chloe stabbed a hand through the air at me, and shouted with joy and triumph (Chloe is the director, remember, and she was thrilled to have this scene in the can): "That's the kind of blowjob I was telling you about yesterday!"
I reeled out into the yard with my notebook, laughing, and shaking my head. There are plenty of "jokes" on a porno set, and there is much raucous mirth to dispel tension. But only a Chloe, only an exception, can inject humour. She sounded like Mel Brooks, in The Producers, saying, "That's our Hitler!"
Yet it’s worth reminding ourselves in the not too distant past, the exact opposite strategy was followed. In the 1970s both the United States and Israel thought that secular left-wing Arab nationalism was a bigger threat than religious fundamentalism. For that reason, Israel worked strongly to empower Hamas and undermine Fatah.And he points to a UPI article:
Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.
Israel “aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.
Israel’s support for Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,” said a former senior CIA official.
8:30It boggles my mind that Anna Faris wasn't nominated for The House Bunny, but it was good to see Kate Winslet and Anna Paquin win. And I was happy to see critics Dana Stevens, Jessica Winters and Stephanie Zacharek single out the House Bunny and Faris for praise.
Michael: The glitter on Eva Mendes’s shoulders is putting me into a trance. It also works on the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who bags the usual speech and makes way for Zac Ephron and Hayden Panetierre who are here to announce Best Actor in a Series.
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9:00
Julian: Here's the category everybody's been waiting for, which will answer the question: can the Golden Globes conquer death? And yes, as expected it can. Accepting on Heath Ledger's behalf is The Dark Knight director Chris Nolan. So far, the 20-second tribute clip of Ledger as the Joker is the most enthralling portion of the show. Nolan's speech is incredibly classy: "After Heath passed on, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema."
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9:23:
Julian: Apatow-acolytes Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen present Best Adapted Screenplay and tempt death by taking cruel digs at Mickey Rourke, who has no idea who they or Judd Apatow are. Simon Beaufoy wins for writing Slumdog Millionaire. Score another for John Lopez, who says: "Simon Beaufoy traces the journey of his script for Danny Boyle's film in a long-winded and extraneous way that makes me question how much he deserves that award."
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10:50:
Julian: There's only one possible reason for Sean Penn not showing up: He must have known that Mickey Rourke was going to win the Best Actor award for The Wrestler (right again, John). "It's been a very long road back for me," an emotional Rourke said, right after stumbling up the final few steps of that road to take his award. The cameras catch Darren Aronofsky smugly flicking off Rourke for calling him a "tough son-of-a-bitch." In a heartfelt, touching speech, Rourke thanks Axl Rose and his dogs, among others. And because the ceremony is running so short on time, Rourke sadly becomes the first winner to be ushered out to music. Thanks a lot, Colin Farrell.
Somewhere along the way, Detroit became our national ashtray, a safe place for everyone to stub out the butt of their jokes. This was never more evident than at the recent congressional hearings, featuring the heads of the Big Three automakers, now more often called the Detroit Three, as that sounds more synonymous with failure. Yes, they have been feckless and tone-deaf in the past, and now look like stalkers trying to make people love them with desperation moves such as Ford breaking the "Taurus" name out of mothballs, or Chrysler steering a herd of cattle through downtown Detroit for an auto show (some of the longhorns started humping each other in front of reporters, giving new meaning to the "Dodge Ram," which they were intended to advertise).As Hitchens once wrote in a gentle rebuke to something P.J. O'Rourke had penned, "That's quite funny, but it's not funny enough."
Don’t know what his chances are - he seems more like the type of guy you’d like to see in the House than the type who actually gets there. But let’s see. It’s important to aim high.Matt Yglesias responds
I would have said something similar about Al Franken, and now he’s a US Senator. And I think of Glenn Nye who’s being sworn in today as a member of the US House of Representatives - you haven’t traditionally seen guys leap from the foreign service into congress. But why not? And couldn’t the House use a labor lawyer slash major intellectual? Part of what happens in times of political change is that new people get pulled into the process. People who don’t usually vote, go vote. People who wouldn’t normally run for office run for officeA native of the 5th district comments in response to Yglesias:
If the machine doesn’t slate a candidate, there could be a dozen (who knows, maybe more?) machine regulars running, and the County Party will be officially neutral (though whoever is favored by Daley and the other bosses on an individual basis will get help), allowing those guys to slug it out.I don't know about Fritchey - Blagojevich also ran as a "reform" candidate - but Geoghegan is definitley uncorruptible* and frugal - he once told me he will wait for books to come out in paperback before purchasing them. He's sort of a combo throwback/modern personality. On the one hand he reminds me of Ioan Gruffudd's William Wilberforce, from the movie Amazing Grace, which had moved Annasophia Robb so. On the other hand, he has demonstrated again and again in his writings his appreciation of the absurdities of modern life. But then again he discusses these absurdities in a plainsong, common sense manner, which makes him seem like a very observant, often extremely humorous throwback inserted into the 21st Century.
Then Geoghegan may be able to slip through and get the special election nomination. Beating the Republican will be a cake walk (The only republican candidate I’ve heard about so far is the Ultra-racist head of the Illinois Minuteman Project - she won’t stand a chance).
That’s kind of how the State’s attorney race played out this past fall. The County Party did not endorse, several Party heavyweights slugged it out, and the career prosecutor with no political experience and few connections won the primary and then thrashed Tony Periaca.
Heck, Geoghegan’s probably in a better place than Alvarez was given his history as a Labor lawyer. Some union folk might buck the machine to back one of their own.
No matter what happens, its going to be a fun primary. I’ve got a front row seat, and I’ve just got to pick a side now. I want to see some evidence that Geoghegan can run a strong race, and then I’ll be there to volunteer. Otherwise, I’ll probably go with John Fritchey, since he exorcised the last vestiges of the old Rostenkowski machine from my old neighborhood (he ran Rostenkowski’s successor (I forget his name) out of the Ward Committeeman seat).
The new repertoires of struggle against Israel had four dimensions.What he doesn't say is that leftist groups were systematically targeted and destroyed by regimes in the region (see Saddam Hussein) while their religious rivals were allowed to persist.
# First, they depended on fundamentalist religious party organization (Hizbullah, Hamas), wherein cadres gained popularity in their own base by providing aid and services (e.g. hospitals, soup kitchens, etc.) This development marked a distinctive move away from the leftist romantic guerrilla model of the late 1960s and the 1970s, which was secular and less organic. Because they are religious and political communities, they can lace their guerrilla organizations and materiel through the civilian sphere. Guerrilla operations might be planned out in a civilian apartment building. Rockets might be stored in a mosque.
(Should you ever be in need of a free laugh, look up those Western "intellectuals" who believe that a vote for an Islamist party and an Islamic state is a way to vote against corruption! They have not lately studied Iran and Saudi Arabia.)
I first heard about the Dalits of India a few years ago when I saw the film Amazing Grace,* a film about the 19th century struggle to abolish the African slave trade in England. It’s a powerful story about a crusade for mercy and justice, but it seemed like ancient history until a film footnote said that there is even more slavery in the world today than ever before; India alone has 250 million people are trapped in some form of slavery. That’s almost the entire population of the United States. I couldn’t believe that this could be true in the 21 century.
But there is one aspect of the worldview of many Obama supporters that I find genuinely difficult to understand. These supporters insist that by symbolically including and sometimes compromising with even those on the Right with whom he vigorously disagrees, Obama will be able to chip away at the partisan hostilities and resentments, and erode the cultural divisions, that have inflamed and paralyzed our politics. People on the Right may disagree with him, claim these supporters, but they won't be wallowing in rage, suspicions, and hatred towards him. Instead, they'll feel respected and accommodated. They therefore won't be distracted by petty sideshow controversies. As a result, he'll encounter less reflexive resistance to implementing the key parts of his progressive agenda. A New Politics will emerge: one of respectful and civil disagreements, but not consumed by crippling partisan and cultural hatreds.Greenwald nicely summarizes what Obama campaigned on, but Morris and Clinton didn't have that strategy in mind. I agree that the wiretapping/FISA compromise during the election was a Morris maneuver, but Clinton and Morris passed rightwing/centrist legislation in order to stay in office. I don't believe Obama will be that transpartisan.* What's "new" is attempting to get beyond the 60s cultural wars without compromising one's principles. In part this mean successfully reframing the debate conservatives want to endlessly engage in. Clinton and Morris engaged in the debate on conservatives' terms and passed conservative legislation without getting much in return.
The one question I always return to when I hear this -- and we've been hearing it a lot to explain the Warren selection -- is this: in what conceivable sense is this approach "new"? Even for those who are convinced this will work, isn't this exactly the same thing Democrats have been doing for the last two decades: namely, accommodating and compromising with the Right in the name of bipartisan harmony and a desire to avoid partisan and cultural conflicts? This harmonious approach may be many things, but the one thing it seems not to be is "new."
In fact, wasn't this transpartisan mentality exactly the strategic premise that drove the Bill Clinton presidency, exactly what Dick Morris' triangulation tactics were designed to achieve? Clinton spent the entire decade extending cultural fig leafs to the Right, from V-chips to school uniforms. Here's how The New York Times explained the 1996 unveiling of his "school uniform" policy:By supporting measures like the school-uniform option, Mr. Clinton is trying to use the President's bully pulpit in this election year to articulate a moderate Democratic agenda that steps into the area of social issues that have long been the province of Republicans.
With this victory [1994] came new strains in the ANC-SACP alliance. While a number of Communists, notably Joe Slovo, occupied prominent positions on the ANC benches in parliament and in government, the ANC's programme did not threaten the existence of capitalism in South Africa and was heavily reliant on foreign investment and tourism. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela famously remarked:Greenwald is afraid that the Left will be "used" as the Communists were, but there's a good chance it will be not the Left but some of those on the Right and in the Center who will be treated this way. This is what Obama has campaigned on. And like the South African Communists, these allies** will get some of what they want and a laudatory footnote in the history books."There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"
These guys--and the others who are counseling Barack Obama and the Democrats to "go slow"--couldn't be more wrong. They are looking at Obama's election through the prism of Jimmy Carter's win in 1976 and Bill Clinton's victory in 1992. Both Carter and Clinton did misjudge the mood of the electorate. They tried unsuccessfully to govern a country from the center-left that was moving to the right (in Carter's case) or that was only just beginning to move leftward (in Clinton's case)--and they were rebuked by voters as a result.Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman agrees:
Obama is taking office under dramatically different circumstances.
The reality of this [Southern] strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.
But America in 1993 was a very different country - not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes - and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.
Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.
Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real "real America," a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.
In 1959, impatient with the United Party’s tolerance of racial segregation, she became a founder of the liberal Progressive Party, later known as the Progressive Federal Party, which favored a more inclusive, nonracial franchise that would lead to black majority rule. Some of the most relentless enforcers of apartheid eventually developed a grudging respect for her, even a hint of affection. James T. Kruger, the justice minister under Mr. Vorster during the Soweto riots, was one of the "bullies" Mrs. Suzman frequently denounced.The BBC has some video.
Years later, out of office, Mr. Kruger learned that Mrs. Suzman was planning a tourist visit to the Soviet Union with her husband. A keen amateur philatelist, he approached her in the parliamentary lobby and gave her a sheaf of self-addressed postcards and letters, each bearing new South African stamps, asking her to mail them back to him from Moscow.
When she said that the Soviet postal authorities would not accept South African stamps, she recalled, Mr. Kruger was puzzled. For Mrs. Suzman, the incident demonstrated the occluded world inhabited by many apartheid leaders, who often acted, she said, as if they belonged to the 17th, not the 20th century. "Poor old Jimmy Kruger," she said. "Like most of them, he knew very little of the world beyond South Africa."
With this victory [1994] came new strains in the ANC-SACP alliance. While a number of Communists, notably Joe Slovo, occupied prominent positions on the ANC benches in parliament and in government, the ANC's programme did not threaten the existence of capitalism in South Africa and was heavily reliant on foreign investment and tourism. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela famously remarked:In Burns and Cowell's brilliantly written obit, they note that Suzman was aware of her apparent ineffectualness."There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"
This was a variation on a critique she had long endured, and to some extent accepted - that by engaging in what was largely a charade of parliamentary politics in apartheid South Africa, she became complicit, however unwillingly, in the larger deceits of apartheid, which would ultimately be ended not by a small band of white dissenters, but by the more powerful forces of the black freedom struggle and external political pressure.
Among her friends, it was a reality Mrs. Suzman conceded, though she and many opponents of apartheid believed that it was important to keep the hopes of eventual democracy in the country alive and that she could help the victims of apartheid by her efforts to expose the evils of the system in and out of Parliament.
In a 1966 profile in The New York Times Magazine, Joseph Lelyveld, the newspaper's correspondent in South Africa at the time, recounted one of her favorite stories, about an overeager dinner host who gave a black man serving her a lecture on her parliamentary achievements.
"Do you know who this is, John?" the host asked. "This is Helen Suzman, the champion of your cause - the champion of human rights in South Africa."
"She waste her time," John replied, as Mrs. Suzman retold it later, laughing brightly as she repeated the line. "She waste her time."
In this microcosmic hell on Earth, there is always a lower circle. Yates shows us the schizophrenic son of the local realtor, on an outing from his asylum, and causes us to feel both the exquisite pain of madness and the unbearable toll that it exacts on the sane. To give you another sketch of the stupendous way in which Yates could both observe and write, here is how a crazy person smokes:Lagging behind his parents, he stood with his feet planted wide apart on the wet gravel, slightly pigeon-toed, and gave himself wholly to the business of lighting a cigarette - tamping it methodically on his thumbnail, inspecting it with a frown, fixing it carefully in his lips, hunching and cupping the match to it, and then taking the first deep pulls as intently as if the smoke of this particular cigarette were all he would ever have or expect of sensual gratification.
"Here is my real problem: this country was founded by and continues to be held together by people who have worked very hard to get where they are." Bake shrugged and wagged his head around. Could he speak of people having things they didn't deserve, in a roomful of such people? Now would not be the time to speak of timing. It would be unlucky to speak of luck. She continued. "And if you don't understand that, my friend, then we cannot continue this conversation."That ocurred to me also. The actor is Stephen Dillane.
The sudden way in which the whole possibility of communication was now on the line startled him. "I see you've researched the founding of this country." He would look for common ground.
"I watched John Adams on HBO. Every single episode."
"Wasn't the guy who played George Washington uncanny? I did think Jefferson looked distractingly like Martin Amis. I wonder if Martin is here?" He looked over his shoulders again. He needed Martin Amis to get over here right now and help him.
