Friday, December 22, 2006
NEVER UNDERSTAND. From The Economist's third-hand report, it seems Frances Fukuyama has a reasonable view of the Iraq invasion and the preemptive war strategy that goes with:...The problem with such a strategy is that it requires the United States to be able to accurately predict the future, not just in terms of enemy capabilities but also in terms of the complex calculations that foreign leaders will make years hence. “In Iraq,” [Fukuyama] said, “American knowledge of enemy capabilities — even its near-term capabilities with respect to weapons of mass destruction — was sorely deficient”...
According to Fukuyama, the primary lesson that America should learn from its travails in Iraq is ... that there are limits to what any nation can do in promoting democracy abroad. “No country has ever been democratized without the people doing it themselves,” he noted. The demand must come from within...
“Ultimately, democracy is spread by the prestige and moral credibility of countries that are democratic,” Fukuyama said, pointing out that the United States was a beacon to Eastern European countries throughout the Cold War because of what America represented, not because of the way it used its military power. But The Economist's commentator takes exception:Most of that is common sense, but I'm not sure about the conclusion.
If it was a matter of "prestige and moral credibility", why didn't the captive nations dream about Switzerland or Sweden? What they liked about America was the proof it offered that titanic military power could be reconciled with liberal and economic order. There was no necessary trade-off between a strong country and a free people, as the Soviet model presumed.
Fukuyama omits, too, the role played prosperity. It was the consumerist wealth of the West that made its model irresistible to threadbare communist states. So much so that the broad masses in Russia didn't much care what the model was, so long as the consumer goods came with it.
I doubt that American prosperity has quite the same tantalising effect on the Iraqi or the Iranian sensibility.
So actually, as far as I can see, the way that America uses its military power will be quite central to any spreading of democracy in the Middle East. If you can be victorious, kind and smart, then people are going to want to find out how you did it. And I can't see why Fukuyama would want to argue to the contrary. Forgive the long quotes, but without them it's hard to see what the beef is -- or rather, with them it's hard to see it, too. Of course the Eastern Europeans admired our military power -- but those of them who expected us to use it to free their countries were sorely disappointed.
Still, the world turned and the Bloc was broken. Is the commentator suggesting that we should have stepped to the Soviets in 1956, as we later stepped to Saddam? If not, what is the problem with admitting that the Iraq invasion was a mistake?
Not that it is entirely clear that commentator doesn't think it was a mistake. But if so, he or she won't cop to it. The argument is simply pushed in an another direction: what's wrong with having big armed forces? As if Fukuyama or anyone else were suggesting we shouldn't. Not bloody likely!
This piece strikes me as part of the persistently messy thinking seen elsewhere: that as wrong as we have demonstrably been on Iraq, we must have been right in some way -- which will be revealed if only we keep digging. This tic can be amusing, but as the better-than-usually-spoken case above shows, it is disturbing, too. Because if you don't know that you went wrong, you have very little chance of going right.
6:57 PM by roy edroso
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A HOLLY JOLLY JIMBO! Today's Lileks is all about how he didn't like his hair stylist because she wasn't friendly and didn't have big tits:My stylist was unpleasant. Usually I get a cheerful lass with a balloony bosom (displayed for all to see, so we can marvel at the tattoos) but this time I got a sullen minx who radiated indifference and self-regard...
Spare me the emails about how I shouldn’t have tipped her at all! It was a decent enough cut, and she has to make a living. I just won’t use her again. I’m North Dakotan that way. I’ll show the little snit what I think, and tip her exactly what the custom demands. I may be reaching here, but I think that if there'd been an Eulenspiegel Society chapter in Fargo during Lileks' formative years, he mightn't need snow on his patio furniture to make him happy today.
1:58 PM by roy edroso
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A NATIONAL REVIEW CHRISTMAS!
Myrna Bluth: Christmas is about presents.
Carrie Lukas: Christmas is about school vouchers.
Jennifer Roeback Morse: Mine is the one true religion.
Jennifer Graham: Christ suffered, and I follow his example by cleaning up after an exotic pet.
Michael Novak: This Christmas, spare a thought for the truly unfortunate, like George W. Bush.
Jonah Goldberg: Rudy should take a black guy around the country and beat him up.
In this time of good will toward men, l thank the staff of the magazine, and all the other imbeciles and madmen who constitute my subject matter, for the hours of pleasure they have given my readers and me in this dwindling year. The best is yet to come!
10:29 AM by roy edroso
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Thursday, December 21, 2006
THE SELF-CORRECTING POWER OF THE BLOGOSPHERE COMPELS YOU! The Anchoress complains that she was misquoted by Eric Boehlert:Writes Boehlert:
Warbloggers, stressing their contempt for the First Amendment — “The government needs to slap down the press,” urged The Anchoress — would prefer that information about the war in Iraq be disseminated only by the United States military, despite the fact the bipartisan Iraq Study Group just concluded that for years the U.S. military wildly underreported violence inside Iraq.
Well…that’s crap. First of all, what I wrote was, “The government needs to slap down the press and demand some accountability,” which is very different from “the government needs to slap down the press.” Right. If someone said that I said, "I slapped down the bitch," when what I really said was, "I slapped down the bitch and demanded his money," that would totally misrepresent me, too.
Oh, and if you were thinking of looking for the implied follow-up to "First of all," don't bother. Or do. Keep fact-checking my ass!
UPDATE. The Ole Perfesser, perdictably, exhibits similar, basic reading problems, then says that the MSM is a-scared.
4:50 PM by roy edroso
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A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE FROM SUSETTE KELO AND ALICUBLOG. The unfortunate victim of SCOTUS' Kelo decision has sent a Christmas card to the people who forced her off her land so they could build some condos for yuppie dipshits. Per the Hartford Courant, her holiday verse reads in part:Your houses, your homes, your family, your friends
May they live in misery that never ends
I curse you all. May you rot in hell
To each of you I send this spell The Courant quotes some of the people who got Kelo's card. They are uniformly dismissive. One marvels that eviction from her longtime home would so exercise Kelo: "The things she's angry about were not done to be mean-spirited toward her personally."
In other words, if you fuck someone over for money, but with a heart unblighted by negative feelings, your victims shouldn't be angry about it.
Come to think of it, this seems to be the operating principle of much of our current government -- of both the official and permanent varieties. If you are dissatisfied with, let alone outraged by, the great job engine and war machine that has replaced the inefficient Republic of yore, you are thought to suffer from an attitude problem.
Recently our ruling class got a little whiff of the discontent their own actions have begun to provoke. May they receive much, much more of the same in the days to come.
Happy holidays and rot in hell from alicublog!
1:43 PM by roy edroso
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MORE CHRISTMAS TREASURES! Been to Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser's place lately? Her recent assertion that Republicans are "oppressed" by being called Republicans apparently signaled a blast-off into Althouse territory, where reality is an increasingly distant, shrinking object.
Last weekend she asked her readers why the 62-year-old lady in the ad on her own page is clad in fetishwear. "Feels good" would be my guess, but she might have thought to ask her own advertiser. Maybe Dr. Mrs. was just trying to stimulate a discussion; surprisingly, the one thus engendered in comments is less full of he-man woman hating than usual.
Then, back to oppressed Republicans: Lefty prof calls student a "white shitbag." Dr. Mrs. parries, "Now imagine the tables were turned and a white professor called a black student Democrat the same type of derogatory name in reverse?" In comments, General J.C. Christian, Patriot, engages, and Dr. Mrs. cries, "If you want to get into revenge from what happened years ago, then when will it end?" and later invokes Michael Richards, apparently as another white man oppressed by oversensitivity to ancient injustices. I wonder what percentage of Dr. Mrs.' time is spent outside her home, office, and car.
But the plum, my dears, is this:I was sitting at the spa yesterday flipping through magazines and came across the December issue of Us Magazine. I know, I know, I should quit reading these magazines, but I am interested as a psychologist, in how pop culture affects the political thinking in our schools and society--so give me a break. I know just what she means. As a social critic, I am very interested in the effect of hardcore pornography on both my society and myself. I don't know why people are always making inferences, or throwing me out of public restrooms.
This is the best Christmas ever!
12:46 PM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, December 20, 2006
FULL METAL STOCKING. alicublog must have been good this year, because Santa has of late bestowed upon us a lot of Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters columns. Today's is a book review:IF a prize were awarded for the most-improved government publication of the decade, we could choose the winner now: "Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency" (MCWP 3-33.5 for the Marine Corps). Rising above abysmal earlier drafts, the Army and Marines have come through with doctrine that will truly help our troops. What was wrong with the old drafts? "Too much 'peace, love and understanding' silliness," says the General. Hmm. Here is a pdf of one of those "early drafts"; my reading of it has not been thorough, but I can't be sure what parts Peters finds so hippie-ish. Maybe it's the references to "human rights considerations," "reconstruction efforts," etc. Maybe it's the declaration that the first military objective of counterinsurgency is to "Protect the population."
As we have seen, despite his occasional, probably tactical, professions of interest in the welfare of the wogs, Peters is nowadays less interested in democracy than in order, by any means necessary. Attend to one of his cavils with even the new, tougher manual:The drafters cite the anomalous example of Malaya (while downplaying that campaign's violence), but ignore the same-decade example of the Mau-Mau revolt, in which the British won a complete victory -- thanks to concentration camps, hanging courts and aggressive military operations. Where once the General was waxing sentimental about the aspirations of the fledgling Iraqi Republic ("More and more Iraqis are stepping up to build a better society"), he now speaks admiringly of the concentration camps and hanging courts installed by a dying empire. What a difference nine months, and perhaps a change in medication, makes!
Heedless cruelty is not really what makes a prize Peters peroration, though: it's teh crazy, and the General obligingly brings the batshit:A huge gap remaining in the doctrine is that, except for a few careful mentions, it ignores the role of the media. Generals have told me frankly that it was just too loaded an issue - any suggestion that the media are complicit in shaping outcomes excites punitive media outrage.
To be fair, the generals are right. Had the manual described the media's irresponsible, partisan and too-often-destructive roles, it would have ignited a firestorm. Yet, in an age when media lies and partisan spin can overturn the verdict of the battlefield, embolden our enemies and decide the outcome of an entire war, pretending the media aren't active participants in a conflict cripples any efforts that we make.
The media are now combatants -- even if we're not allowed to shoot back. Our enemies are explicit in describing the importance of winning through the media. Without factoring in media effects, any counterinsurgency plan will go forward at a limp. This is delightful. One imagines the tone of the conversation just prior to the moment when "Generals... told me frankly that it was just too loaded an issue": The MSM is the enemy! Wade into them. Spill their blood, shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of news that a moment before was your best face on a bad situation -- (sharp wave of the riding crop) -- you'll know what to do.
"Too loaded," indeed. Hope your holidays are equally festive.
UPDATE. Speaking of Our Enemy The Media, Commenter MSW144 points out this corker by previously proven culture war madman Stanley Kurtz:...Media coverage of Iraq has been biased, and that bias has indeed helped to shape events there for the worse. At the same time, conservative distrust of the media’s very real bias has inclined us to dismiss reports about problems in Iraq that are real.
In the end, I think the media bears fundamental responsibility for this. This conclusion is a duh-huh-wha? brain-freezer on the order of "And though I may be down right now, at least I don't work for Jews," but Kurtz' explanation is ever better:Had they been less biased–had they reported acts of heroism and the many good things we have done in Iraq–I think conservatives would actually have taken their reporting of the problems in Iraq more seriously. In effect, the media’s consistent liberal bias discredits even its valid reports. I guess we could have observed every precaution, and equipped all of our warnings that Iraq was a mistake with a little picture of G.I. Joe giving a chocolate bar to an Arab, thus encouraging conservatives to pay attention. Maybe eventually America will resemble Quebec, with bilingual road signs -- e.g., one might say DANGER: BRIDGE OUT, while the one for conservatives might say SUPPORT OUR TROOPS BY NOTICING THAT THE BRIDGE IS OUT! SEMPER FI! It would be a nuisance, but we're liberals -- we should be kind to retards.
UPDATE II. At OpinionJournal, Joseph Rago (didn't he co-write Hair?) hates blogs but hates the cursed MSM ever worse. How to reconcile? Rago breaks it down:Certainly the MSM, such as it is, collapsed itself. It was once utterly dominant yet made itself vulnerable by playing on its reputed accuracy and disinterest to pursue adversarial agendas. Still, as far from perfect as that system was, it was and is not wholly imperfect. The technology of ink on paper is highly advanced, and has over centuries accumulated a major institutional culture that screens editorially for originality, expertise and seriousness.
Of course, once a technosocial force like the blog is loosed on the world, it does not go away because some find it undesirable. So grieving over the lost establishment is pointless, and kind of sad. But democracy does not work well, so to speak, without checks and balances. And in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we've allowed decay to pass for progress. If I understand Rago correctly, rightwing blogs ought to recognize that they aren't replacing the MSM -- rightwing magazines and newspapers are! So Rago and the newsprint boys will provide the "originality, expertise and seriousness," and you punks can do the Michael Moore jokes.
Early results indicate that the blogboys are clashing with the paperboys over this, each fighting for the right to take Pinch Sulzburger's throne, just as soon as the New York Times gets a clue that all those millions in paid circulation and advertising dollars are as nothing compared to the awesome potential power held by a bunch of assholes with free websites. Someday their girlfriends who are temporarily located in another state will show up, and then you'll all see!
The crisis will last until Jeff Jarvis chimes in, at which point everyone will realize it's bullshit.
10:19 AM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, December 19, 2006
SHORTER GREG GUTFIELD: I'm working on as many BOOK and TELEVISION and WEB projects as I can schedule before Republicans find an even more self-loathing homosexual.
(This is my first exposure to Gutfield, and a great disappointment. I search in vain for that great contemporary right-wing satirist -- someone like P.J. O'Rourke, only good. Yet their nominees turn out stuff like "Hey!" says some guy I disagree with, "I'm a pretentious ass! Greg Gutfield was right!" Gutfield's a satirist like Mark Steyn is a sage.
Jim Treacher is about their best bet, but he chafes when I call him right-wing, so maybe we should just refer to him as "questioning.")
UPDATE. The selections currently seen at Treacher's site are not his best work, but he writes very funny emails.
UPDATE II. Many of my readers are lazy gits (frequently leaving comments to the effect of, "Jesus Christ, I actually followed the link -- I thought you were full of shit but etc"), so I guess I should reproduce a bit of Gutfield's I Can't Believe It's Not Satire:Paris' gay Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who was stabbed by an immigrant Muslim, is organizing the European contingency which features Limahl, Johnny Hallyday and Ciccolina. Whoopie Goldberg, along with Robin Williams will be hosting the kick off party at the Sheraton Riyadh. There will be refreshments and karaoke, hosted by David Hyde Pierce. Surely you see the hypocrisy of Delanoe taking his stabbed-up ass to Riyadh where I bet they will stab his ass up!
I have to add a bleg, though. Where do you purchase the publication -- I assume it comes out at regular intervals, possibly daily -- cataloguing the most appropriate names to use when you want to signify "A-list" or, as Gutfield has done, Gay List? Not having had the literary advantage of a job as a gossip columnist, I cannot call these things easily to mind, and I can see where it might come in handy when you're writing "satire."
10:43 AM by roy edroso
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Monday, December 18, 2006
TODAY'S LILEKS LESSON. Early on he writes this:The forecasts look barren, and most Minnesotans regard the weather with irrational trepidation. Oh. we’ll pay for this. Pay for it hard. Later, he shares with us the contents of his typical breakfast:...one sausage, squeezed dry; one container of yogurt... I've probably said too much already. But I cannot refrain from observing that if you're going to write things like "...pay for this. Pay for it hard," you should not reveal on the same page that you breakfast like a fashion model.
This has been today's Lileks lesson.
9:33 AM by roy edroso
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ARTS ROUNDUP. Leslie Kritzer is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches. Being, as regular readers will know, an ineffably butch Budweiser-pounding mook with unmanicured nails, I don't take in cabaret shows much, but I was hauled to this one and I'm not sorry I was, despite the drink prices at Joe's Pub.
LKIPLALM is billed as a recreation of Patti LuPone's famously looney late-shows at the now defunct Les Mouches, done, presumably, to work off some of the scenery she consumed in Evita every night. Channeler Leslie Kritzer knows the spectacle of a hopped-up Broadway diva regaling gayest Chelsea with a bizarre mix of show tunes, "Mr. Tambourine Man," and mood-swing banter would be comedy gold, and she does get plenty of laughs -- e.g., mentioning her "brother Bobby", she waits only for the faintest hint of applause before throwing her arms out and howling "OH THANK YOU! HE'LL BE SO PLEASED!"
But Kritzer has a deeper game going, too. She sings the shit out of the songs, being well-equipped to do so, and commands the character utterly, so that even the weirder selections ("Heaven is a Disco"!), and the more byzantine vocal arrangements, wind up much more interesting than mere feats of parody. The strangeness of "Patti LuPone" is only coincidentally a comedienne's trick, and mainly a full-length portrait of a show-biz monster trying, with the powerful but ultimately limited gifts at her command, to blast through self-absorption into the hearts of an audience that she believes/hopes really Gets Her. Kritzer never pulls a gimp string to indicate this; she sticks to the script (accompanied by LuPone's original arranger!) and lets her performance do the talking. It's acting of the highest sort flying under the colors of chanteusery.
The Queen. One reason I'm not as much of an auteurist as I used to be is Stephen Frears. He cheerfully hops from style to style in deference to whatever text he is treating, yet has given me enough pleasure, from Prick Up Your Ears through High Fidelity, that I just can't relegate him to Less Than Meets the Eye. His may not be major films but they're smart and they work, and that's a lot these days. One can do worse than serve a good script well.
That cuts two ways, of course. The faults of The Queen are very plainly the script's, and maybe a more ambitious director would have overcome them. It's not just the apparently low budget that leaves the movie looking like an exceptional Masterpiece Theatre episode. Frears doesn't do quantum leaps -- he does good blocking.
I don't mean to carp. There's plenty of wonderful stuff here. It was a brilliant idea to treat the death of Princess Diana as a dramatic crisis of the British monarchy, and the pinched scale of the film well-suits the extraordinary point of distinction between this and, say, costume dramas like Cromwell -- Dianagate was, on the film's terms, a crisis not of the blood-and-thunder sort but of the television age, and the slightly shoddy look of The Queen perfectly suits it: Tony Blair doing PM business in a footballer's jersey and HRH in a Range Rover are fine visual equivalents to the absurd modernity of the situation.
The acting is just delicious. I was worried at first by Helen Mirren -- she seemed to be leaking a bit more sentimentality than I had expected. But this turned out to be a clever move: aside from some muted histrionics, her Elizabeth grows frostier in affect, though clearly more troubled in spirit, as the crisis overwhelms her. I love her. I love James Cromwell, too, and lousy dialect aside, his Philip is perfect in its petty imperiousness -- he might have been a humble burgher protected by lackeys (and his own thick skin) from all evidence of his impotence. Alex Jennings resembles a young Edward Fox, which adds a beautiful, old-England fillip to the lip-chewing desperation of his unloved Charles to find the correct sliver of space in which to hide and mourn.
Michael Sheen and Helen McCrory as the Blairs are lovely -- the first shot of them in their car, waiting for their first official visit to the Queen, is played, lit, and shot to make them resemble intelligent weasels curiously snuffling outside the Palace -- but they are put in the unlovely position of carrying the secondary theme: New Labour's first crisis as an overblown domestic incident ("It's not as if I have anything better to do!" cries the PM at one point). This is where the drama runs into heavy sledding: while it is fascinating to see how the political is made personal, it's sort of gross to see the personal made political. When Cherie plays devil's advocate in Tony's shifting feelings toward the Queen (even pulling a Freudian card), the tactic is stagey, neat, and evasive, and splitting Blair's cynicism off and onto a PR character really gives the game away. I think it might have been better, in the manner of those old costume dramas, to let Tony be more fully responsible -- not just constitutionally but dramatically -- for the forces arrayed against the Queen's stasis. Modern exigencies be damned: Blair v. Windsor is more crackling drama than Blair et alia v. the monarchical bureaucracy -- as the wonderful final confrontation of Tony and Liz shows.
Still, this is a vision worthy of dispute and even contemplation. I was annoyed, when I first saw it, at the (it seemed) ludicrous bit in which the Queen raptures over a stag that is later hunted down and butchered. Dramatically it is corn, or whatever Brits have instead of corn (Toad inna Hole, perhaps). But on consideration I think it has a proper Shakespearean resonance. The prefatory title card of The Queen quotes Henry IV: Uneasy lies the head etc. But this incident sent me to As You Like It: "What shall he have that killed the deer?/His leather skin and horns to wear." Jacques saw the deer's horns as "a victory branch"; his Lords took them as a sign of cuckoldry.
Caprice. Ronald Firbank was known to me only as a favorite of Auden's before I read this short novel. I can see why Auden liked him. Though it's full of conversation, Firbank's method is poetic; it takes several pages of dense language to ascertain that Sally Sinquier is an English girl from a country family of some standing who runs off to London in pursuit of theatrical fame ("'Somehow it makes no difference,' she murmured, turning toward a glass. To feign Ophelia -- no matter what!"). Once launched, her career -- in every sense -- is recognizable to any reader of Bright Young Thing chroniclers such as Waugh and Huxley. There are pretenders, there is deceit, scandal o'erhangs, defeat is imminent and then cruelly realized. But the charm of Firbank's language is unique, as seen in this description of the little theatre in which Sally, as yet on the cusp only of success, is obliged to sleep:An absence of ventilation made the room an oven and discouraged sleep. Through the width of skylight, in inert recumbence, she could follow wonderingly the frail pristine tints of dawn. Flushed, rose-barred, it spread above her with fantastic drifting bars masking the morning stars.
From a neighboring church a clock struck five.
Miss Sinquier sighed; she had not closed her eyes the whole night through.
"One needs a blind," she mused, "and a pane --"
She looked about her for something to throw.
Cinquento Italian things -- a chest, a crucifix, a huge guitar, a grim carved catafalque all purple sticks and violet legs (Juliet's) crowded the floor.
"A mess of glass... and cut my feet..." she murmured, gathering about herself a negligee of oxydised knitted stuff and sauntering out toward the footlights in quest of air.
Notwithstanding the thermometer, she could hear Miss May Mant breathing nasally from behind the door. One could go on for quite some time like this without much hint of plot, but Firbank has a good one and ties it up nicely in less than a hundred pages. It's a minor work affording major pleasure.
1:23 AM by roy edroso
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