I go back over this blog’s past few months and have to cringe a little over my political prognostications of Hillary’s demise and excess enthusiasm for Barack Obama who, it turns out, is mortal, flawed, and perhaps worst of all, a rather ordinary politician. He still might become president and still might be an adequate president. But he is not what I thought he was, nor what most of us thought he was. He is one more in a long line of Democrats who have been packaged by political geniuses to suit the temper of the times; who, in the end, can’t live up to the hype carefully designed on their behalf.
Kurt Andersen’s piece in New York provides a kind of elegy for the grand illusion that some of us (not just those “in the media”) shared:
Back in February, when the new prince was gliding thrillingly up and up toward nomination, a part of the thrill for the media was their happy astonishment that they were no longer cosmopolitan outliers but finally (unlike in 1984 with Gary Hart) in sync with America: Regular folks, white people in Iowa and Virginia and Wisconsin, were actually voting for Obama!
That was then. With the ten-point loss in Pennsylvania, the latest Reverend Wright eruption, and the shrinkage of Obama’s leads in the polls, the media are feeling lousy, and not just because their guy is taking a beating. If Obama is deemed to be an effete, out-of-touch yuppie, then the effete-yuppie media Establishment that’s embraced him must be equally oblivious and/or indifferent to the sentiments of the common folk.
Uh-oh. As the cratering of newspaper circulations accelerates (thousands a week are now abandoning the Times) and network-news audiences continue to shrink, for big-time mainstream journalists to seem even more out of touch makes some of them panic. And … so … it’s all … his fault, that highfalutin Obama!
Andersen’s still rooting for Obama but more, it appears, because he can’t abide the alternative: A Clinton win. The Clintons were merely tolerated all along, at least after 1994, because they were up against unattractive enemies. But the Obama vs. Clinton matchup has unleashed the anti-Clinton id, the beast many of us kept in the cellar throughout the 90s, the silent acknowledge that these people are liars! and what Bill did with Monica was disgusting! and how dare they cart off official gifts from dignitaries as if they owned them! and Jesus, he pardoned Mark Rich!? and how can she live with herself after screwing up health care reform? It’s hard to stop once you get started, and the Obama/Clinton contrast certainly got a lot of us started.
But the depressing fact is: Obama’s not up for this. He’s already looking defeated. He’s clearly embarrassed by the man who’s been revealed over the past couple of months. Not Rev. Wright, but himself. He hears questions about his judgment and is too smart not to agree at some level. The real explanation for his dalliances with the likes of Rev. Wright, Tony Rezco, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn — that if you want to succeed in southside Chicago politics, you need to show up with such people — isn’t acceptable to the broad American public and he knows it.
It isn’t fair, really. Bush, Gore, Kerry, Clinton, McCain, whoever you want to cite, they all cut deals with frauds, kooks and boodlers on their ways up the greazy pole, as did most of their legendary political predecessors. This is the dark side of “all politics is local.” Few politicians emerge from their home base without enemies and alliances that, later, they’ll wish they hadn’t made. Harry Truman was a product of the corrupt Pendergast machine in Kansas City. JFK’s ties with organized crime went back to his father’s years as a bootlegger, the source of much of the family fortune, and the connection obviously helped him secure Illinois’ electoral votes and thus the White House. Ronald Reagan’s relationship with MCA president Lew Wasserman was corrupt on both sides, to their mutual benefit and ultimately sparked Reagan’s political rise. Al Gore and his father had a crucial relationship with oilman and Soviet tool Armand Hammer. None of these men would have become president or vice-president without the help of their unsavory sponsors.
But, no matter. Obama’s political life has caught up with him and he’s become the proverbial deer in headlights ever since. He can’t go back to the gossamer appeals to hope. But he lacks much else to recommend him. Other than not being Hillary and not being McCain, for those who dislike those two warhorses.
Thinking about Barack Obama’s problem with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I was reminded of why, despite an interest in politics that goes back to when I was eight years old, I never considered running for office.
It seemed like all politicians went to church – like you just had to be a practicing something-or-other in order to get elected. I didn’t go to church. I’ve never gone regularly, and if you add up all the Sundays in my life, I’m sure I haven’t spent more than one percent of them in a pew. I just wasn’t raised that way.
My mother, feeling pangs of guilt, sent me to an Episcopal church in Connecticut for about six months when I was about 10, but she tells me I was impatient with Sunday school and asked to be relieved of it. What I mostly remember was a little store across the street from the church where I could buy flavored wax lips while waiting (and waiting) for my parents to pick me up. In my adult life, I’ve attended church sporadically, usually at someone’s invitation. My late wife got me to go to a Methodist church for awhile, but only because they had this great jazz-gospel organist. Repeating my own pattern, however, my son’s reasonable objections to Sunday School ended that.
My beliefs about God veer from hopeful agnosticism to “gimme a break” atheism. To anticipate what my wife now would say, yes I feel life on earth is a miracle, a holy thing, full of mysteries. But there’s another side to me that says: Every spiritual experience, every act of prophecy or other-awareness is, one day, going to be explained by physics. And maybe physics leads to God. But I won’t live long enough to find out.
But I digress. The point is, I figured early on that if I didn’t go to church, I could never successfully run for office. For some reason, it never occurred to me to do what Barack Obama and probably thousands of other politicians did, just expediently join a church and sit there every Sunday and pretend to agree. In Obama’s case, he chose a church in the heart of the community he hoped would elect him to public office. Poignantly, he also apparently chose this church because he wanted to understand African-American culture — a culture everyone assumed he was part of even though he really wasn’t.
But Obama’s strategem really was no different from what a white would-be politico of no particular religious upbringing would probably do. It’s just never occured to the news media to find out what the politician’s minister was really saying. I’m guessing Obama is being held accountable for statements he not only didn’t believe, but were probably said when he was out a side door, smoking a butt and politicking. Or maybe even sleeping. Church is a great place for a sitting-up nap, almost as good as the movies.
I just couldn’t do it, I guess. The indignity of having to do as John McCain did, describing some obvious whacko as a “spiritual advisor,” just seemed like more than I could ever bear. Some of the things Obama has said, about how Wright “brought me to Christ” make me queasy, now that we know what the Rev. Wright’s all about. Hillary has said plainly unbelievable things about her faith, too. I mean, we all know she’s hardly a pious person. Her reputation for foul mouthed vindictiveness, dishonesty and gargantuan ego does not track with what we’ve been led to believe religious people are all about. But she gets credit for being a churchgoer. For some voters, not going to church is a dealbreaker. To me, attending church insincerely is profane.
None of this is said to forgive Obama’s condoning of Wright’s poisonous lie that the government created and launched HIV as a genocidal plot against blacks. The idea that someone would take their children someplace they could hear such statements is inexcusable, especially if the point was mere political networking. Much as I want to, I can’t make it go away. If I vote for him in November, I’ll have to do so in spite of this.
Regarding the demands for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the presidential contest:
Can someone explain to me exactly what Barack Obama’s campaign has done to give Hillary any incentive to drop out? Unless you think a stream of insults, threats, impatient whining (e.g. Obama’s ‘movie…too long’ comment) and finger-pointing is what you think would motivate someone with the ego to fancy themselves a president.
Is this how he plans to handle diplomacy when he’s in the White House? He’s managing to look arrogant and weak at the same time, quite a trick.
Maybe they could bring in Al Gore to sigh at her.
Look, I’m aware that Obama hasn’t, directly, in his own words, called on Clinton to quit. But his surrogates have done so, presumably with the blessing of his campaign gurus. Let’s just say, he could stop the talk and he hasn’t.
It’s not over yet. Until it is, we can’t be sure of the outcome. And it would be a big mistake to end it prematurely. There’s been many a boxing match where one fighter won 14 rounds, only to get knocked out in the 15th.
All these Obama supporters calling on Clinton to drop out aren’t helping their candidate, either. They make Obama look like he’s afraid of a fight. And they themselves look like a stereotypical bunch of men telling a woman she can’t hack it in politics, so she might as well get back in the kitchen…. If Obama ends up the nominee, I’ll do handstands on the White House lawn. But only if he wins it, fair and square.
I probably find it a bit more troubling in what it says about Obama than Press does. The Obama campaign, which looked so savvy and professional for all of 2007 and the first two months of ‘08 has suddenly fallen into a self-destructive spiral. For a candidate who has arguably cinched the nomination, he’s acting like he’s desperately unsure of himself and wants Hillary out of the way so he can go into free-fall without consequence.
Or else why would he have signed off on denying revotes to two big and critical states, Michigan and Florida? A confident candidate would have encouraged a revote, which is the obviously fair thing to do. But Barack Obama is no longer a confident candidate. He’s a shell of what he was just 30 days ago.
For example, I thought Obama was awful on “The View.” If he can be pushed around by Elizabeth Hasselback, the meekest lil’ Republican on the planet, it’s scary to think what John McCain will be able to do to him. He may be sticking to his story on Rev. Wright, but it’s not a story that hangs together, or commends him to independent voters.
I admit, I fell hard for Obama a few months ago — maybe longer. I’m wondering about that now. Did I get caught up in his campaign irrationally? No question about it, he’s a brilliant person, but there are lots of brilliant people who won’t wake up next January as president. Obama still could get my vote, but he is much-diminished. There is absolutely no reason for Hillary to drop out, and I’m guessing there is a contingent of Obama-supporting Dems who are saying it but hoping she won’t actually do it. He needs the remaining weeks of this campaign to reestablish in our minds the qualities that made him seem like a potentially great president.
…singing “Lola” in honor of Kelly’s daughter. (I’m not sure if Kelly is in on the joke.)
Don’t you love how Disney just cuts him right off? This great performance: Filler till the credits.
To be fair, he got to perform the title song off his new album Working Man’s Cafeearlier in the program. This is really wonderful:
Davies was also on David Letterman last month, giving this hard-rocking performance:
Early in my blogging career, I wrote a salute to Ray and the Kinks, who managed to produce the greatest pop music of the 1960s without ever really being part of that transcendental decade. I was nervous about his solo career. The last several years of the Kinks produced more embarrassment than glory. But the album he was coming out with then, Other People’s Lives, had several great songs, and no really bad ones. The above songs sound, if anything, stronger. Really glad he’s back, really fun to see him try to make some sense out of Regis and Kelly, who both seem like they’ve taken Tourette’s-inducing pills.
Recovering from the debacle of TimesSelect, the New York Times is developing a superb repository of off-the-wall blogs. I just discovered this one, devoted to migraines.
The most recent post is a long essay by Jeff Tweedy, leader of Wilco (not one of my favorite bands, sorry to say). His descriptions of the mysterious condition are compelling, especially to someone like me who’s never had one but has lived with people who have. Tweedy now claims to have his migraines under control, but only after years of suffering, and a painkiller addiction that was a result of misguided care:
I had had a psychiatrist that was prescribing drugs to me without any conscience. I actually had a psychiatrist prescribe Vicodin to me as a way to alleviate anxiety. And I also had a therapist tell me that I needed the painkillers because I had migraines and that I didn’t need the antidepressants because they were just capping my creative energy. This guy was just a quack, an idiot. But when you’re in such a vulnerable and desperate state as I was, you want somebody to help you. I really wish I had been in a condition where I could have known and listened and understood that these people were out of their minds, but I wasn’t. I was vulnerable and I needed someone to help me. But I got really, really bad help.
Memoirs are great, if they’re well-written, tell a compelling story and…are true!
If you’re Margaret B. Jones Seltzer, here’s the situation with which you were faced: You’ve been “working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles,” and spent a brief time in a school gangster types attended, despite your generally affluent existence. So you’ve had a glimpse of that kind of life. And you’re a writer. You’ve got an imagination.
Imagination is nothing to be ashamed of.
Until about 10 years ago, when the memoir trend hit the publishing industry, you’d write a novel that combined what you know with what you imagined. You might be like Tom Wolfe, and imbue it with the fruits of journalistic research. Or you might pin your observations to a genre — crime fiction, say. As a novelist, you’ve got license to tell your story however you want, as long as it’s labeled “fiction.”
But now, publishers want truth. Or what they can sell as the truth. As a serious novel, Seltzer’s Love and Consequences wouldn’t have had much of a commercial prospect. But as a memoir, it looked like a big seller.
“I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require,” Mr. Frey said in an author’s note released yesterday that will be included in future editions of the book. “I altered events all the way through the book,” he added.
Because that’s what we do when we tell stories. We don’t sit and recite facts and expect the audience to stay interested. Even if all the materials we’re working with are in fact true, we shape them. It occured to many writers to go beyond mere “shaping,” but that’s okay, they could call it fiction.
At its inception as a communications medium, the novel was a fundamentally journalistic exercise; truth, but not literally true. Daniel Defoe, by most accounts the father of the English novel, was originally a journalist and pamphleteer whose most famous fictions, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders were extensions of his journalistic activism — Crusoe, an adventure-filled parable, and Flanders, a tour of different tiers of London society in the mid-1700s. Flanders’ saga reflected what Defoe knew of the streets he worked as a political tribune. Crusoe’s tale a reflection of his thinking on colonialism, economics, morality and faith. The things he described didn’t happen, but they reflected a lifetime observing things that did.
Margaret Seltzer’s observations of the 21st century equivalent of London’s demi-monde could have been valuable. She comes off as a sincere social critic:
“For whatever reason, I was really torn and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to,” Ms. Seltzer said. “I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it’s an ego thing — I don’t know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.”
Seltzer bowed to publishing realities and turned herself into someone who will have a hard time ever being believed again. She’s a fool and a liar and all that. But her story strikes me as tragic, too. A different publishing ethic might have prevented Seltzer from travelling a dark path. I haven’t read the book — and won’t, since it’s been withdrawn by the publisher — but I suspect it had the makings of a decent novel. But nobody wants novels like that anymore, or so publishers think.
*UPDATE, 3/4: If you want a good laugh at Seltzer’s expense, read this cringeworthy interview from her publicity materials. It was posted on Gawker. A sample:
Q: How did this book originate?
A: During my senior year of college one of my professors told me a friend of hers was working on a book and wanted to interview me. I declined. I wasn’t interested in the whole “South-Central-as-petting-zoo” thing. Then my home girl said the teacher might mess around and fail me for rejecting her friend, so I ended up calling the author and doing the interview. She was real nice and asked me if I had ever written anything. I ended up giving her one of a number of short stories I had written for my brothers’ kids and for the kids of my homies serving life sentences.
A month ago, I tossed off a comment on Althouse that included the following lines:
So that leaves Obama and McCain. I wish they could run together. They’d be like one of those old 1970s cop shows. The crusty old seen-it-all guy who goes by his gut, partnered with the brilliant rookie whose got courage to match his brains.
They both seem like leaders to me. Contrary to extremely popular belief, the presidency is not an ideological office. The needed skills are inertia-busting on the domestic front, and strategic courage on the international front. Plus the right kind of ego, an ego strong enough to surround themselves with very smart advisors and encourage candor from them.
Both seem to have these skills. If they end up running against each other, I don’t yet know which way I’d go. But if only one of them is in the race, that’s the one I’m voting for.
I was sort of kidding. In the same comment, I discussed briefly my distaste for Hillary Clinton and at greater length my dislike of Mitt Romney.
Recently, Salon’s Edward McClelland wrote a column suggesting that guys are supporting Obama and/or McCain — just to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House. His take-off point was my post:
John Stodder, a 52-year-old blogger from Palos Verdes Peninsula, Calif., looks at the presidential field and sees another buddy-cop pairing: John McCain and Barack Obama, supposed mavericks who break their parties’ rules, bound together by a common mission — keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
“I wish they could run together,” Stodder swoons. “They’d be like one of those old 1970s cop shows. The crusty old seen-it-all guy who goes by his gut, partnered with the brilliant rookie who’s got courage to match his brains.
I give McClelland huge props for crediting me with the line. I think it’s funny. I don’t actually think the White House is like a grungy detective precinct in a gritty urban core. The fact that I like both candidates (Obama more than McCain) is incidental.
The fact that they’re both men has nothing to do with why I like them. I was prepared to vote for Sen. Clinton until this year despite some misgivings, until her campaign’s empty-headed and scurrilous nature became apparent.
You hear a lot about the failure of the Clinton “inevitability” strategy. In America, what else could such a strategy do but fail? “Vote for me because you have no choice” might work in Cuba or Iran, but not here.
Anyway, my little brainstorm got another push into potential meme-dom today on NPR’s “Wait…Wait…Don’t Tell Me.” Listen to the first couple of minutes. (And thank you to my wife’s aunt for happening across the show.)
Sorry for the delay in posting. I’ve been on two business trips this past two weeks, to Phoenix, Arizona and to Richmond, Virginia. I didn’t bring my camera to AZ, but I had it in Richmond, a city I’d never seen before. I spent most of my time there in the ER at Virginia Commonwealth University Hospital, which was not the plan, obviously.
After discharge and navigating through a Soviet-style pharmacy, I decided to walk back to my hotel.
Here is a plaque on a building near the hospital. It seemed strange that I would get a serious diagnosis at such an historical location:
Then I saw this great old building, which wouldn’t look too out of place in San Francisco. It was on Governor’s Road, not too far from the Virginia governor’s mansion:
A little further away from all the Commonwealth’s majesty, I found this odd salute to the classical style of the old city:
I rested up and reunited with my colleagues for dinner at a restaurant that unabashedly bears the name, “The Tobacco Company.” You walk in, it smells like smoke. It has cigarette girls. You almost want to embrace and love all the tradition. Almost. My own condition is the result of overyielding the seductive calls of bad food. The evil of the American diet is in the vast amounts of sugar hidden in it. Tobacco is right out there, telling its users, “I’m killing you.” Maybe that’s part of its appeal. If James Dean had a chocolate-chip cookie hanging out of his mouth instead of a cigarette, how many posters would he sell?
So I told my dinner companions about my day at the hospital, then wandered out into the cobblestone street on a cool evening, immersing myself in this curiously timeless little city for the few minutes I had left to enjoy it.
I would have to get up at 3:30 a.m. to catch my flight — 12:30 a.m. Los Angeles time, which is my approximate bedtime. The cab driver who took us to the airport is a local historian who regaled us with tales of the Byrd family and what a close call the ratification of the Constitution had been. That unassuming plaque commemorates a pivotal moment in the nation’s history, it turns out. Only fitting that a pivotal moment in my life take place on the same site.
The medium is the message. Books and pamphlets gave us depth of thought and expression. Newspapers gave us context, but also sensation. Radio gave us intimacy. Television gives us sensory overload and 30-second sound bytes. The Internet gives us community and the ability to “drill down.”
Twitter gives us spitballs. Exhibitionism and spitballs.
Besides, there is a huge constituency of Tim Russert-haters out there who will turn him into a martyr if NBC decides not to keep him around. This might be the making of Ezra Klein’s punditry career.
This story, from Tuesday’s LA Times, frightened and relieved me at the same time.
Los Angeles Clippers’ center Chris Kaman is an exceptional person. Only a few men at any given time are capable of playing center in the NBA. There are hardly enough qualified centers to go around. Physical gifts like size, speed and shooting accuracy must combine with the ability to process rapidly the flow of the game, the positions of all the players, the coach’s designs.
Coming up as a ballplayer and student, Kaman had to learn all that, under the influence of powerful psycoactive medications he didn’t need — Ritalin and Adderall — from age 2 1/2 through high school for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However,
Kaman, who had trouble remembering plays and concentrating on the court in college and in the pros, disclosed Sunday that he was misdiagnosed.
Kaman actually had an anxiety disorder that caused him to over-analyze situations and scenarios.
“Growing up, I had to take the medication my whole life,” said Kaman, who said he grew so frustrated taking the medication that he would come home from school and cry.
“I can’t take back time. I wish I could. But I can’t. It really bothered me to take the medication every day. I felt I had to take the medication to make me feel like a regular person. It was kind of backward.”
His misdiagnosis was discovered in July by Hope139, a 5-year old organization based in Grandville, Mich., that studies the brain. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, between 3% and 5% of children have ADHD, with symptoms that include hyperactivity and impulsiveness.
According to Hope139’s research of about 40,000 patients, up to 15% of those on medicine for hyperactivity do not have the affliction.
You got kids? You get the impression as a parent that it’s a lot more than 3 to 5 percent of kids who are being diagnosed with ADHD. If your kid seems intelligent but gets bad grades, is rambunctious, talks too much, is forgetful, the ADHD diagnosis seems to linger in the air with every doctor visit.
Raising my son, I made up my mind to strap myself to the mast and get us through adolescent and not listen to any such diagnosis. As frustrating as raising my son could be at times, I did not want him taking these medications. I figured the cure to what seemed to be ailing him was merely to grow up. Which, at 17, he’s showing signs of doing, to our relief.
What happened to Kaman is exactly what I worried would happen to my son:
The medication Kaman took had the opposite effect on him, said Dr. Tim Royer, the organization’s chief executive.
Kaman’s brain was already working in overdrive, and the medication provided an added stimulus. The dosage was increased to the point that Kaman’s mind became overloaded and he became less animated. “He stopped being a behavioral problem, but he got too much medicine and it shut him down,” Royer said.
Kaman stopped taking medication once he entered college at Central Michigan because he no longer had to sit in one place for more than a couple of hours.
But his concentration in college, and once he signed with the Clippers, was still lacking. He could focus on the man he was guarding but not on weak-side defense, or as Royer put it, “He could see the tree in front of him, but not the forest.”
How is this generation of parents, pediatricians and psychologists going to be judged? Kaman’s story is going to become better-known soon, and we’ll all be taking a second look at how these medications were sold as the panacea to so many families.
Kaman is hoping to become a spokesman for children who are misdiagnosed or are simply looking for another alternative instead of taking medication for hyperactivity. “I’m using my resources as much as I can to try and help people,” he said. “I was trying to see if it worked first. I’m on a platform being in the NBA where I can help people.”
A more likely culprit than the role of race in the New Hampshire election was the “likely voter” modeling, with pollsters perhaps over-counting the boost of enthusiasm among Obama supporters following his victory in Iowa. Another possibility is that independents opted at the last minute to participate in the Republican primary, depriving Obama of crucial voters.
A further potential source of error stems from New Hampshire ballot rules. In previous contests, the state rotated candidate names from precinct to precinct, but this year the names were in alphabetical order, with Clinton near the top and Obama lower down. Stanford Professor Jon Krosnick, a survey specialist and expert witness in a lawsuit about ballot order in New Hampshire, has estimated a three percentage point or greater bounce for a big name candidate appearing high on the ballot. Therefore, if pre-election polls randomized candidate names, as most do, they would have underestimated Clinton’s support by at least three points.
Tim Russert reportedly said internal campaign tracking polls were as wrong as the public ones. Obama’s people were telling him he had a 14 point edge; Clinton’s were telling her he was ahead by 11.
Another underestimated factor — a frequently underestimated factor: Early absentee ballots. How many Democrats cast their ballots before the Iowa results? Hillary’s campaign emphasized rounding those up.
Anyway. As I said earlier, Obama needs to be tested while the public’s watching. Recovering from unexpected disappointment is a good next test.
The Good German (2006), which starred George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, didn’t get many good reviews. Critics seemed to use the movie’s release as a chance to complain about director Stephen Soderbergh’s career. The film’s homages to The Third Man, Casablanca, and Italian neorealism (and probably more references a more serious film buff would get) seem to have annoyed reviewers. There was probably an element of jealousy, too. When not making arty period films in black and white, Soderbergh and Clooney collaborate on the glitzy Oceans 11-12-13 franchise. Soderburgh gets respect and big bucks. Clooney lives in an Italian villa and dates gorgeous women.
Leave all that aside. I saw The Good German on DVD over the weekend and I loved it. Yes, the steals from old black and white films are, at times, pretty blatant. But I love those films, and the use Soderbergh makes of his allusions to them heightens his story.
Soderbergh, under a pseudonym, also edited the film, which means he is responsible for an astonishing scene near the end of the film involving a marching band, a crowd, a paid assassin and the movies’ two main characters.
The final scene is very close to the airport scene in Casablanca, but also inverts it. In Casablanca, Bogart’s Rick discovers his soul at the moment that Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa leaves his side. In The Good German, the two main characters also split up at the airport, but for the opposite reason. (Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.)
Curiously enough, some reviews knocked the cinematography because it wasn’t precisely like the black and white 40’s flicks, with Soderbergh’s film using higher contrast than his models did. Well, yes, that’s right. It’s different. It’s also very effective, focusing our attention on the characters’ eyes, mouths and posture, the conveyors of emotion. It also allows a better blending with the archival footage by which Soderbergh represents postwar Berlin.
At the same time, the sharp contrasts are ironic. We’re in a world of gray in The Good German. It is a microcosm of the moral ambiguity of the Cold War, capturing the U.S./Soviet drama at a point very near its beginning, in a tug-of-war over a German rocketeer who is also a war criminal. To keep him away from the Russians, some American officials want to keep his evil deeds a secret. Rockets “that can go halfway around the world” armed with atomic bombs are “the future,” explains a buffoonish Congressman. And so they were.
Clooney represents the moral certainty that Americans brought into WWII. His disillusionment at the end covers not just the postwar activities of the US government, but the whole notion of human goodness. And that disillusionment is written on Clooney’s high-contrast face, in a devastating long take that closes the movie. The Good German, a cinematic treat on many levels, also bucks “the greatest generation” myth, showing how WWII injected moral relativism into the bloodstream of our national security apparatus, and eventually our body politic. To a degree scarcely acknowledged in pop culture, that war brutalized the Americans who fought it. It changed us. Maybe we were the last innocents, but after the war, there were no innocents. Just the decieved.
I foresee this film’s reputation rising in the near future. Get in now at the ground floor.
I’m running into a lot of blog posts and articles like this:
(T)o watch Obama v. Clinton is to be reminded of watching Ali v. Foreman. The de facto knockout blow is about to be delivered tomorrow in the snowy streets of New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton certainly won’t drop out after her loss; she will stagger on but prove unable to stop Obama. And to watch the Clintons’ rage and desperation grow in the last days of this campaign will not be pretty. They will lash out at everyone, including Obama, the media, her own campaign, and maybe, eventually, each other.
This is a couple not known for their grace or for holding lightly to their grip on power.
There are many things to say about the deeper meaning of this moment and what its passing will signify. Suffice it to say that it will be good, very good, for us to say farewell to the couple that brought you Carville, Begala, Blumenthal, and Ickes; the “war room,” the use of private investigators, and attacks on women like Dolly Kyle Browning, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and Kathleen Willey; impeachment for perjurious, false and misleading testimony to a grand jury; contempt of court findings; the promiscuous smearing of those whom they viewed as threat to their power; the charges of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and assurances that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”; and so much more.
Get your kids out and put them in front of the TV: The Clinton Era officially ended at 9:34 p.m. EST when Edwards paired with Obama to bury Hillary as a non-agent of change.
Wow, again.
Posted by Tom Schaller on January 5, 2008 9:31 PM
I’d expand it. We’ve reached the end of what will be called the Bush-Clinton Era. You can’t explain the Clintons without the Bushes. You can’t explain Bush without the Clintons. It’s been going on since the conventions of 1988, when George H.W. Bush said “Read my lips,” and Bill Clinton said much, much more in a horrible nominating speech for Michael Dukakis, then went on “The Tonight Show” to make fun of himself.
The Bush “machine” and the Clinton “machine” each run much the same way; a thin veneer of idealism over a “back off, chump” culture of intimidation. Kennedys, but without the charm and poetry.
Bush’s presidency ushered in Clinton’s in many ways. His success in the Gulf War scared off stronger and more qualified Democratic challengers like Mario Cuomo, who thought a second Bush term was a foregone conclusion. Bush’s victory over Dukakis had already convinced some Democratic leaders that the party’s 70s-era liberalism needed to be moderated if the party was ever going to win again. Only with those two developments could a Clinton nomination have been possible.
Then add Ross Perot. It’s pretty clear that his presidential campaign of 1992 had as much to do with harming Bush as advancing an agenda. There was some bad blood there — some dark and probably well-earned grudge against the Bush clan. If Perot hadn’t have been on the ballot as an independent in 1992, Bush probably would’ve won. (Perot’s presence on the ballot also denied Clinton a majority in 1996.)
Clinton’s cycles of failure and success incubated George W. Bush’s political career. The second Bush copied key elements of Clinton’s success while exploiting his failures. He governed Texas as a moderate, and ran in 2000 as a “compassionate conservative,” a kind of tribute to Clinton’s “Third Way.” Like Clinton, Bush was a candidate of confessions, but he did Clinton one better by pronouncing Christianity as his salvation from the bottle.
Still, Bush would’ve had no chance against Al Gore if it wasn’t for the political damage inflicted on him by Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky affair and the various fundraising scandals. All the other conditions were perfect for Gore’s success. But he couldn’t capitalize because he was tainted by Clinton sleaze.
Who wasn’t tainted by Clinton sleaze? Surprisingly, Hillary Clinton. In what must have struck Gore in the middle of many nights as a horrible irony, he lost but Bill’s wife won a seat in the Senate.
Then 9/11/01 happened. Much of the politics of the past seven years has been reacting to that event. Both the incumbent but relatively new Bush Administration and the predecessor Clinton Administration were implicated for policy failures that led directly to the terrorist attack’s success. How much each Administration was to blame became a defining political dynamic ever since. 9/11 empowered Bush to invade Iraq, which he couldn’t have done without getting nervous Democrats like Hillary to support him.
Hillary Clinton’s vote (as well as John Kerry’s) to grant Bush war authority was like a poison pill for her presidential ambitions. Her only strategy for getting elected in 2008 was “inevitability,” but the war vote was a chink in that armor that a candidate not implicated in the war could exploit. And Barack Obama has done that — and so much more.
But the real reason the Bush-Clinton era has ended? We’re just tired of these people. We’re tired of criticizing them and we’re tired of defending them. We’re tired of how every day of the past three Administrations, stretching back 20 years, has been about a permanent campaign. We’re tired of the “derangement-syndromes” each family has stimulated in the body politic — the conspiracy theories, the name-calling, the gossip, the investigations. Yes, we’re glad to wave goodbye to Carville, Begala and the rest, but we’re also glad to send Karl Rove and Dick Cheney off with them. All these despised family retainers.
So what about this video?
Is she crying because she knows her time has come and gone? Hillary’s favorite phrase to describe herself was “tireless advocate,” but she looks awfully tired. You know she won’t let go of the hope that her campaign can succeed, but Clinton is no longer capable of being the underdog.
It’s dismal to be where she is right now — in free-fall, according to the polls, running against a candidate, Obama, who is almost immune to criticism right now no matter what happens. How does she keep going…knowing that defeat is almost inevitable?
After dropping my son off Thursday evening for his annual winter trip to San Diego, I walked back to my car, turned around, and saw this:
Isn’t it cool how Metro has revived this architectural gem? The lobby was full of people. I remember when going to Union Station felt like coming to a Greyhound station. My son’s 17. Seventy years from now, he’ll remember it not as a museum, but as that lively place where he caught the train to Nana’s.
Hillary Clinton’s sudden fall from the “inevitable frontrunner” position is going to create big and fast-moving waves through both parties’ nomination processes. Things might not be entirely as they seem.
That’s what went through my mind after reading this post on TownHall.com. According to Duane R. Patterson, a couple of unlikely lads have attached themselves to Mike Huckabee’s campaign: Dick Morris and Newt Gingrich.
Very quietly, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is meddling in the GOP primary field. A couple of weeks ago, there was a press release that indicated Rick Tyler, long time communications director for Gingrich, was taking a leave of absence from his day job, and helping out the communications effort for Mike Huckabee.
Mark Levin over on The Corner writes today that Newt and Dick Morris are both helping the Arkansas populist former governor, Newt behind the scenes, Morris publicly. The question is why is Newt doing this?
When the Tyler move became public, the theory developed that Newt still envisions himself running for the presidency, but didn’t think this cycle was the right time to run because of the aura of invincibility of Hillary Clinton. Newt would then benefit by helping out the perceived weakest of the GOP candidates, ensuring that come January ‘09, the Republicans would begin their four year wandering through the desert. This would set up Newt as the White Knight in 2012, riding to the rescue after President Hillary screwed things up in her first term.
But after Iowa last night, another theory is beginning to develop. Hillary’s aura of invincibility is no longer there. Barack Obama is now the frontrunner, and although very charismatic, he’s an empty suit, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Newt may now be thinking that there’s a window of opportunity this cycle. All that needs to take place is for Huckabee to take a couple of the early states, Rudy take a couple of the big states, McCain maybe taking a state here or there, and Romney to take a couple, and you have yourself a brokered convention. If the Republicans can’t decide on a clear frontrunner by the convention, could we potentially see the White Knight riding in a little earlier than expected into Minneapolis/St. Paul this September?
This reminds me of what President Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks squad did in the 1972 election — weakening the candidates who threatened Nixon, like Senators Ed Muskie and Ted Kennedy, while strengthening the one they could most easily beat, Sen. George McGovern. Except this is coming from within the party, and is seemingly a more elegant process of controlled quantum reactions to render a weak field even weaker.
Somehow, though, I don’t see Newt Gingrich as the ultimate beneficiary of all this. I’m not a Republican, so I know nothing, but my instinct tells me that if the GOP establishment pulls itself together, it will settle on Fred Thompson; and if it doesn’t, the nominee will be Rudy Giuliani.
The thing that’s harder to see is what happens if Hillary manages to beat Obama in New Hampshire. What if the campaign between the two of them becomes a mutual-assured-destruction dance? Does Edwards benefit by default? Or does Al Gore — reportedly out of the race because he feared the Clinton machine — suddenly get inspired to jump into the race? Does John Kerry (who despises John Edwards) unleash his ego on the public again?
The point is, last night’s results didn’t merely change the respective positions of the existing candidates. The effect is potentially much deeper. The script might change far more than we imagine.
Here is a somewhat standard-issue “Hillary Clinton campaign regroups” kind of story from the Washington Post’s politics page. Trying to minimize the humiliation of her third-place finish, brave words about “not reading too much into” the Iowa results, even though Clinton spent more than a year criss-crossing the state.
Internal polls evidently tell campaign Chairman Mark Penn that Obama owns the “change” message among many key demographics. Word is Clinton’s main support comes from older women. So, with destiny (and longtime Clintonistas) breathing down his neck…
“I think you’re going to see us moving aggressively to make sure that all voters understand that she is about change for all generations,” Penn said at approximately 2:30 a.m., as reporters surrounded him in the aisle of the plane midair somewhere over the Lake Michigan.
Not to make too much of it, but this is a weird quote. When people tell pollsters they want to see “change,” we should be assuming that the rest of this otherwise incomplete transitive verb-object form is “the government.” But “change for all generations?” If that’s what she’s all about, she definitely needs to be more specific. As it stands, Penn’s making this election sound a bit too Biblical.
Well, not exactly cryogenically, but frozen nonetheless:
Scientists trekking across a little visited part of Antarctica have discovered a bizarre relic of the Soviet Union is dominating the South Pole of Inaccessibility.
In the middle of no-where – literally the point on Antarctica furthest from the sea – an imposing bust of revolutionary Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin peers out onto the polar emptiness.
A Norwegian-US Scientific Traverse met Lenin this week while nearly a thousand kilometres to the south another group were “moving” the South Pole – literally.
A barber’s pole marks the actual spot but the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station sits on top of a moving ice-sheet - so the Pole moves.
The Inaccessibility Pole marks the point on Antarctica that is furthest from the ocean. At 3718 metres above sea-level it is in the Australian zone and seldom visited.
The Scientific Traverse this week made it to the Inaccessibility Pole for New Year’s Day and found a one time Soviet Union base buried under the ice.
The group’s website says Soviet scientists first visited the Pole in December 1958 and built a small cabin there.
After several weeks they left, putting the bust of Lenin on top of the chimney facing Moscow.
“Today the bust is clearly visible from many kilometres away, and remains as they left it on the chimney, although the cabin itself is buried under the snow,” the explorers say.
What does this tell us about Lenin and his progeny? Is he down there waiting for a call? Or is he just lost, another pioneer who went off-course?
What an exciting night for politics in the USA…the most exciting for me since somewhere back in the 70s.
A few months ago, I was telling people, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll probably end up voting for Hillary Clinton.” Not because I didn’t like Barack Obama, but because he seemed to be falling short. Not because I couldn’t vote for any Republican against Clinton. But I knew I couldn’t vote for Mitt Romney, the presumed favorite with all the money. The Reeps I could tolerate seemed unlikely to survive the gantlet.
All of that has changed.
After Iowa, I agree with RealClearPolitics’ John Ellis. Romney is finished. The Republican establishment that was backing him will drop him if he can’t be competitive with Mike Huckabee–a thoroughly unacceptable candidate–and will choose from among John McCain, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani to lead the Anyone-But-Huckabee brigade. All of whom I like at least a little better than the egotistical, robotic Romney.
Huckabee is here because Romney conjured him, like the sorcerer’s apprentice. Romney, a moderate, formerly pro-choice Republican primarily known for his business acumen, cynically tried to turn himself into a “values” candidate to appease the GOP’s social conservatives. It wasn’t real. The evangelical voter is not going to be led in a values campaign by someone who practices a religion for which, let’s face it, evangelicals have contempt. They might have tolerated him, but he asked for more. Romney put the question out there to the Christian right: Who will lead you? Who will bash gays for you? Who will deny women’s rights for you? The answer came back: Some guy named Huckabee. Not you. He’s a Christian. You’re not.
Ellis correctly identifies the opportunity Romney missed:
Romney’s only real choice was to run as a Republican Gary Hart, the candidate of “new ideas” for a party in desperate need of same. That would have at least given him the flexibility to play to his strengths; his intellectual prowess, his business acumen, his demonstrable executive skills and his admirable personal qualities. And it would have enabled him to attract a wide array of advisors and intellectuals to help him think through innovative policy positions on what appear to be intractable issues.
Hillary’s not quite as far down the Loserville vortex as Romney, but tonight’s Iowa vote was as much a repudiation of her — and of the Clinton gang including her husband — as an endorsement of an Obama future. But she has already signalled what she’ll say tomorrow and for the rest of the campaign. Politico’s Ben Smith got a copy of the talking points.
— The race begins here in Iowa but it ends when Democrats throughout America have their say. Hillary remains more than 20 points ahead nationally, 7 points ahead in New Hampshire and ahead in Nevada, South Carolina and the large Feb. 5th states
— We’re going to continue to make the case that in these serious times when America faces big challenges, it will take a leader with Hillary’s strength and experience to deliver real change.
— Hillary has the resources to run a national campaign where she will compete across the country in the weeks ahead. This campaign was built for a marathon.
And so on. She’s not giving up. She’s going to try to take Obama apart. Suddenly, it will be Hillary playing a Giuliani-like role, scaring everyone about 9/11, 9/11, do you really trust Obama to handle another 9/11? Among the dumbest political prognostications of the last week was the claim of Hugh Hewitt — a helplessly smitten Romney fanboy – that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was going wake up voters to the need for a “serious” candidate:
Senator Obama has to be reeling as voters realize that impressing Oprah has very little to do with being Commander-in-Chief in wartime, and Governor Huckabee’s “aw shucks” shtick is suddenly and transparently exposed as inadequate to the task ahead.
This is the tack Hillary will surely take against Obama — and y’know, I hope she does. He was not the front-runner until a poll showing him with a big lead came out in the Des Moines Register a few days ago. He has not gotten the scrutiny a front-runner must get. He hasn’t had to keep his composure against a wave of attacks, only some of which will be visible to us.
As I write in the middle of the night, I’m sure Team Clinton is working the phones, trying to staunch a flood of campaign money flowing in the winner’s direction. The Clinton machine will not quit. It is the most ruthless, single-minded campaign organization since Richard Nixon’s.
At least that’s the reputation.
I want to see how Obama handles Clinton’s coming assault. I suspect and hope he’ll show grace under pressure. He’ll make mistakes but the genius is in the way you recover from those mistakes. I believe Obama will demonstrate his complete “adequacy to the task ahead.” So, yeah, Hillary, do your worst. Bring it on. You’ll be doing your country a service — showing us what this potentially great new American leader is capable of.
And if Obama should succumb? It’ll be a sad day, but it’s better to find out now.
This Christmas is the perfect illustration of the truth that life is long and things change, sometimes for the better.
A year ago, I thought I was going spend this Christmas in a prison camp while the people who gained various benefits from my prosecution would be free to enjoy lavish holidays. I thought I would miss my son’s last year in high school. I would, of course, have to give up my job and leave my wife having to scramble to keep my family from a desperate situation.
To enjoy Christmas 2006 required all my powers of denial. I did take a nice picture. But that was a moment created outside of me, by the sea, wind and sun. Inside, I was edgy and angry.
Now, a year later, I’m free pending appeal thanks to the wisdom of the Ninth Circuit; and will be free for awhile, perhaps forever. Renewed freedom opened so many doors. For example, my son wrote a musical for his senior project. I got to watch the staged reading of it last week — and it was incredible. (Check out his website for the project here.) He and his writing partner only started working on it this summer. He only began writing music a little over a year ago. Despite a few years of piano lessons, I wasn’t even sure he could read music, much less write it. Much less write lyrics, create characters, write dialogue…it was an unbelievable experience. His music is astonishing.
And I would have missed it. Who knows, maybe with all the chaos resulting from my absence, he wouldn’t have written it. But I was here, he did write it and I got to hear it. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.
Thanks to the Ninth Circuit, I’ll be able to see him graduate and get him started on his life. He worked at a grocery store and earned 2/3rds of what he needed for a new notebook computer to facilitate his creative endeavors. Thanks to the job I was able to keep, for Christmas, we were able to make up the rest, and now, as I write, he’s setting it up. Meanwhile, my wife, son and I were able to help my parents do their usual Christmas at their home, which means a lot to them, especially now. I couldn’t have helped them from a bunk bed in Kern County.
It took a while for my family to adjust to this period of freedom. It’s hard to stop looking up to see if the anvil is still hanging over your head. But we’re breathing again, more or less normally.
Timing is everything. It could turn out I will still have to spend a year in Tracy at some point in the future. I believe in my innocence. I believe in what justice should mean, and I will never stop fighting for it. But if my appeal doesn’t turn out like I expect? Not like I want to, but if I had to, I could handle the stretch in 2009 or 2010. My son will be more independent. Other things in my life will reach a certain balance that I’m still trying to create. I’ve been given time to overcome the reckless destruction of my previous career and to get a new one off the ground.
Thanks to my family, all my family, to my friends, to the people I work for, and to everyone who made it possible for me to enjoy this blessed day. Merry Christmas to all of you.
Here’s a heartwarming family story for the holiday season.
John Darwin, a British man, worried about debts from a failed career in rental properties, fakes death by drowning on a canoe trip. His wife Anne knew he was thinking about going on the lam, but when he disappeared, she claims she thought he was really dead.
According to her account, Darwin began planning to fake his death in early 2002 because he believed it was the only way the couple could escape growing debts related to their apartment rental business.
She said she doubted he would go through with the plan and initially believed he had died when he disappeared in March 2002. But she said he returned to their family home in northern England in February 2003, looking dirty, thin and “disheveled.”
For the next three years, she told the newspapers, Darwin lived with her in their family home, spending most of his time in a small room in an apartment building they owned next door. She said his secret room was connected to their bedroom by a passageway that was knocked into the wall and hidden behind a large wardrobe.
“I was always on eggshells when friends and family came to stay in case someone wandered into John’s room and saw him,” she said, adding that he would often take walks disguised in a woolly hat and faking a limp.
He was hiding in his secret room, she said, on the day in April 2003 that she and their two grown sons returned home from the coroner’s inquest at which John Darwin was officially declared dead, she said.
The declaration allowed her to collect life insurance payouts of about $50,000 in cash and an additional $260,000 to pay off the mortgage on their house, she told the newspapers.
Anne Darwin said her husband insisted that their sons not be told that he was alive. But he said he missed the boys and would have her put them on speakerphone when they called so he could hear their voices, she said. Sometimes, when they asked her a question that she could not answer, she said he would write down an answer for her to read to them.
Little side stories are coming out in the British press about this time in hiding. I especially liked this one, which has a very L.A. feel about it. Even a dead man can be a NIMBY: Keep reading →
If David Corn of The Nation is to be believed — and his reputation as a reporter is solid despite his affiliation with a far-left news source — the Hillary Clinton campaign’s recent harshness against Barack Obama comes straight from the heart:
When talking to Clintonites in recent days, I’ve noticed that they’ve come to despise Obama. I suppose that may be natural in the final weeks of a competitive campaign when much is at stake. But these people don’t need any prompting in private conversations to decry Obama as a dishonest poser. They’re not spinning for strategic purposes. They truly believe it. And other Democrats in Washington report encountering the same when speaking with Clinton campaign people. “They really, really hate Obama,” one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. “They can’t stand him. They talk about him as if he’s worse than Bush.” What do they hate about him? After all, there aren’t a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn’t gone for the jugular during the campaign. “It’s his presumptuousness,” this operative says. “That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?” You mean, he’s, uh, uppity? “Yes.” A senior House Democratic aide notes, “The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible.”
That is, the Clintonites–and the campaign–may be overreacting. Will Democratic voters really buy the Clinton argument that Obama is an inauthentic and a dissembling scoundrel? Until the caucus-goers of Iowa speak, there is no way to know if Clinton’s DEFCON-1 assault on Obama will succeed or backfire. But the Clinton attacks do say something about Hillary Clinton. She’s adopting a whatever-it-takes strategy, mixing legitimate criticisms with truth-stretching blasts. And her campaign aides have adopted a we-must-destroy-him mindset that they justify by viewing Obama as a political lowlife.
Whatever-it-takes often works in political campaigns. But we all know that hatred can be blinding. Clinton is, as has been noted, running the risk of alienating those kindhearted souls of Iowa by slamming the lovable, likable and inspiring Barack Obama. She could end up looking a bit desperate. Candidates are always responsible for their campaigns, and they can be judged accordingly. If the Clinton campaign throws anything it can against Obama–with little regard for accuracy or decency–that will reflect her own character and values. It could, to turn her words against her, be a disqualification for the job.
Clinton is playing with fire. In explaining to reporters that she will be tougher on Obama, she said, “Now the fun part starts.” That was tasteless. It’s a remark that certainly can–and will be–used against her.
Whatever happened to “Don’t get mad, get even?” (Attributed to Robert Kennedy.) Or “revenge is a dish best served cold?”
My image of the Clinton campaign operations over the years was that all the emotion was on the upbeat side, the “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” orgy of idealism in 1992-93, combined with a steely, unemotional ruthlessness in dealing with its foes. If Hillary’s got a bunch of people around her feeding her paranoia about Obama, thinking they’ve got to save the country from Obama, then some kind of contagion has gotten loose.
Hopefully, for his sake, Obama won’t give way to the dark side himself. A cooler, more confident Obama emerging victorious out of Iowa could suddenly find himself formidable.
ADDED: I finally took a look at the “kindergarten” press release Clinton’s campaign manager is now trying to spin as a “silly” joke that “the spin machine” sold to a gullible press. TPM has the release in this post. Keep reading →
Nothing like a cold to make me feel useless…Two things guaranteed to depress me are lack of sleep and being sick. It’s not a terrible thing to be depressed, though. I’m more likely to be too optimistic than the opposite, so getting sick and falling into a torpor is mental and spiritual correction, perhaps.
I’m watching Marshall Crenshaw, the singer/songwriter, on a program on the less-well-known PBS station KLCS on this Saturday night. He’s singing solo with a slighly amplified hollow-body guitar, intercut with interview clips. He’s talking about how he built up a following — the spark and determination it took “to make yourself known in the world” — and I’m glad he’s proud. But the fact is, he got pigeon-holed back when he emerged in the early 1980s as a “power-pop” performer, and that turned out to be an obstacle he could never overcome.
Why does the music media automatically dismiss the best contemporary songwriters? The best craftspeople in this most soulful of art forms? Crenshaw should be performing in front of a band, with at least three singers who can support his somewhat thin but expressive voice and more importantly can perform the brilliant vocal arrangements you can hear on so many of his recorded songs. But there is no budget for him to do this anymore. He’s a power-popper, and those guys are supposed to be selling insurance now.
Now (as I’m watching) he’s admitting he expected to be more successful. He seems to be blaming himself, claiming that he cultivated attention, but once he got it, it overwhelmed him. That’s not what I think went wrong. For the past 30 years, the rock press and the industry’s promotional machine is always biased toward artists who make big gestures, like U2, or who have some obvious PR hook, like the grunge-rockers. Song craftspersons are treated with suspicion if the craft doesn’t come with a Dionysian kind of persona.
If you saw tonight’s Marshall Crenshaw TV show and want to know what the fuss is all about, the answer is in his studio recordings. Here (after the jump) are the songs I suggest you download first. He wrote all but four of them: Keep reading →
The Tunguska asteroid of 1908, discussed here, is often referred to as an “event” of unspecified origin because no crater had been identified. Now, it appears, one has been found.
In their new study, a team of Italian scientists used acoustic imagery to investigate the bottom of Lake Cheko, about five miles (eight kilometers) north of the explosion’s suspected epicenter.
“When our expedition [was at] Tunguska, we didn’t have a clue that Lake Cheko might fill a crater,” said Luca Gasperini, a geologist with the Marine Science Institute in Bologna who led the study.
“We searched its bottom looking for extraterrestrial particles trapped in the mud. We mapped the basin and took samples. As we examined the data, we couldn’t believe what they were suggesting.
“The funnel-like shape of the basin and samples from its sedimentary deposits suggest that the lake fills an impact crater,” Gasperini said.
The crater is not round, but elongated, like a trench. The mental picture I get is of a wheel-shaped chunk, spinning and rolling and then diving into the muddy ground.
If the chunk survived the explosion long enough to create a trench, wouldn’t that mean it’s still down there somewhere?
Kurt Andersen’s piece in New York provides a kind of elegy for the grand illusion that some of us (not just those “in the media”) shared:
