Another Terrorist Plot

Kiefer Sutherland returns as Jack Bauer in “24,” the Fox series, whose eighth season is centered in New York. The two-part premiere is being broadcast on Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 8 p.m.
January 15, 2010

Without stretching the point too far, this is one reason for the continuing lack or realism in people's views on the real world. This series is a continuation of the mind-set that the good guys, the (North) American good guys, can and will always vanquish the bad guys. Nonsense.

Socialist soap

In his unending quest to control all facets of life, Señor Hugo has a new suggestion, or perhaps more of a directive: stop making capitalist soap operas, and make socialist ones.

Chavez: Venezuela needs ‘socialist’ soap operas
The Associated Press - Monday, Jan. 11, 2010 | 12:26 p.m.

President Hugo Chavez says there's too much capitalism on Venezuelan TV. So he's urging producers to start making films and TV shows that stress socialist values.  Chavez says producers should be making "socialist soap operas."

He said Sunday he recently visited Cuba "and they have soaps there. But they're not capitalist soap operas." Cuba does make some of its own programming. One of Sunday's offerings was "Our History: I Die for the Revolution." But its state-run television channels also airs Brazilian soaps, Walt Disney cartoons and programs such as "Desperate Housewives."

Oops. I Die for the Revolution doesn't stand a chance against Desperate Housewives, one would think.

Chavez-allied producers made a 2004 soap opera called "Love Inside the Barrio" that emphasized socialist values but failed to draw many viewers.

French official assailed over remarks

A French Official Is Assailed Over Remarks About Muslims
By Reuters

PARIS (Reuters) — A junior French minister has told young Muslims living in France that they should dress properly, find a job and stop speaking slang. The remarks by the minister for families, Nadine Morano, were condemned by opposition politicians from the left, who called the comments racist.

There are few charges that carry the weight of calling someone a racist. Right wing nuts tried it here in the US after President Obama's election, and even during the campaign

Ms. Morano, who is often outspoken, is a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s inner circle. She made the remarks on Monday evening in a small town in eastern France during a government-inspired debate on national identity. “We are not putting young Muslims on trial,” she said in a recording of the debate that was played on French radio. “I respect their situation. What I want is for them to feel French because they are French.”

The melting pot myth is charged with explosiveness.

Ms. Morano added, “I want them to love France when they live here, to find work and not to speak in slang. They shouldn’t put their caps on back to front.”

Try that here in America: I could tell whom was from the US on Mexican beaches easily, the cap backwards making it easier.

The comments tapped into stereotypical perceptions of youths from tough suburbs on the fringes of France’s big cities, many of whom are from immigrant backgrounds. On the other hand, wearing baggy trousers and caps backward and speaking a distinctive form of slang known as “verlan,” while once associated with young people from the French suburbs, have long since spread to high schools throughout the country and to youths of all backgrounds.

How interesting: it started in the suburbs (inherited from the US hip hop scene, and videos, I'm quite sure.

Socialist politicians and groups that combat racism accused Ms. Morano of stoking racial tensions. They also said that the government should abandon its series of national identity debates, out of concern that they could incite a violent backlash.

“This is a political operation designed to pit French people against each another and to create a war of culture and identity,” said Arnaud Montebourg, a Socialist member of Parliament.

What a bunch of mérde.

Ms. Morano’s office said her words had been taken out of context. About five million Muslims live in France, with many people having come from former French colonies in North and West Africa. Mr. Sarkozy’s government has tightly linked the issues of immigration and integration and began a national identity debate last month, playing on a theme that had served him well when he ran for president in 2007.

A bridge to somewhere

This a fascinating story. Human contact and international cooperation and understanding are victims of the fear, immigrant-bashing and xenophobia so prevalent these days. This man wants to resist such nonsense.

SIERRA BLANCA, Texas – In a swampy corner of his desolate ranch, Bill Addington proudly flouts the law.

Good for him.

The Department of Homeland Security has demanded that he tear down a rickety footbridge from his land across the Rio Grande into Mexico. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, authorities have shut down nearly a dozen of these informal river crossings along the Texas border. This is the last they know to be operating. They want it gone. Mr. Addington refuses.

Now that's great. How many terrorists are going to use that rickety little bridge 90 or so miles east of El Paso?

He crossed that bridge countless times as a boy, darting into Mexico to buy candy or watermelon juice or to flirt with the girls at church-hall dances. Mexicans crossed over, too, every day, to work the cotton fields for Mr. Addington's father – a U.S. Border Patrol agent. After a hard season's labor, they would all celebrate together with a night of bilingual poker, fueled by whiskey and calf-brain stew.

How ironic. His father was a wetback.

"They say it's a new era, but their vision of the border is a place of fear and trouble," he says. "We just don't see it that way. This is our home."

Common sense. Not something bureaucrats know.

He grew up on the river, soaring out over the international border on a tire swing, splashing in the lazy current, frying fresh-caught catfish with his Mexican buddies on one shore or the other. Border life has a unique culture and rhythm, he says, and he can't stand to see it locked down behind steel fencing. Or cut off by destroying a footbridge.

That's a point that is not often discussed, nor, I confess, one I thought of: making the border a garrison disrupts normal life, destroys culture.

The local sheriff, Arvin West, backs him up. Sheriff West believes that security imperatives will one day require the bridge to close. He acknowledges that it can enable illegal immigration -- in fact, his own grandfather used it to sneak into this country. But Mr. West says the bridge is hardly a threat and calls it ridiculous for the government to target a flimsy string of two-by-fours when miles of border remain unsecured. So for now, he vows to stand "toe to toe and nose to nose" against any federal official who tries to shut down the crossing.

The sheriff's grandfather crossed into the US on that bridge, and now the grandson is a law enforcement officer. Gives lie to the argument of cutting off immigration, no? Yes.

The letter from Homeland Security did contain a vague threat of unilateral action: "Our goal is to work...in a peaceful and cooperative manner," it read, "...however, we cannot allow your bridge" to remain open.

Mr. Addington shrugs off the warning. He'll take that risk, he says, for his friends across the border, for his fellow ranchers who rely on day laborers from Mexico, for the memory of those dances and the long evenings after the cotton harvest, when people from two nations bonded over barbecue.

"We should be building bridges, not walls," Mr. Addington says. "I'm not taking it down."

Israel, After 43 Years, Is Ready for Beatlemania

The Beatles in London in 1965 before flying to the United States. They were also booked for Israel, but the concert was canceled. The band was deemed to have “an insufficient artistic level.”

Black Moses dies at 65

Singer, Songwriter Isaac Hayes Dies

65? He always seemed young; and 65 is young ... well, not old, anyway (not from 55).

Baby Boomers Got the Blues

Seems my generation is filled with whinners. Nothing I didn't know; got any real new for me?

More than older or younger generations, boomers – born from 1946 to 1964 – worry that their income won't keep up with rising costs of living. They say it's harder to get ahead today than it was 10 years ago. They are more likely to say that their standard of living is lower than their folks' but that things don't look too good for their kids either (67 percent of younger generations, meanwhile, feel they have it better than their parents).

I don't feel that way at all. If my money ain't enough, I'll have to cut back; life is livable with the kind of money we got. A lot of boomers have become slaves to luxury, for sure.

Dress-Code Politics: Who Wears the Pants?

A fascinating piece on a point of debate and disagreement between the genders.

Jim Holt doesn't see himself as a "Neanderthal Man," but that's one of the nicer names he's been called since he expressed his view publicly, in this column, that panty hose are more professional than bare legs for working women. To be fair, Mr. Holt rescinded the firm's hose requirement, making them optional though firmly encouraged. But after receiving a torrent of hate mail, Mr. Holt has learned one lesson: It's dangerous for men to weigh in on women's professional dress. "That may be an understatement," Mr. Holt says. Dozens of women have written me in staunch favor of panty hose – the very same view expressed by Mr. Holt.

But when it comes to setting and enforcing dress codes in the workplace, it isn't the message but the messenger. What might sound like a mentor's advice coming from a woman can feel like oppression coming from a man. This is because what we are really dealing with here is power the power of executives, who are often men, to inflict attitudes toward dress, professionalism and sexuality on female subordinates.

On the upper, or just managerial, levels it does seem true; yet, in a more general sense, it isn't.

Latent anger over men's continued dominance in executive suites can boil over when women feel that men are prescribing skirt lengths, hose, footwear and other details of appropriate office attire. "We often respond badly because we figure men don't know what they are talking about – or that what they are really talking about is sex," says former television newscaster Mary Civiello, author of the recently published book, "Communication Counts: Business Presentations for Busy People." When a man acknowledges any awareness of a woman's body as implicitly occurs when he raises the topic of, say, a low-necked dress – his comments can be misinterpreted.

How can a man tell a woman that cleavage is inappropriate in a professional setting?

Yet learning the dress codes of a workplace is a normal part of professional growth – whether one works in an art gallery, an insurance office or the White House. It's the job of executives to guide and inform their subordinates, particularly those with promise.

When male managers avoid communicating with women employees, women are left unaware of unwritten rules – information that their male colleagues may get via frank discussions or the time-tested male method of imparting rules: teasing. "You wearing lunch?" a man might gently chastise a colleague in a stained tie, for instance.

A ot to lose. I remember Bill Brockington teaching such things.

True Love

Some people get quite very upset about gays and lesbians getting married: the sanctity of marriage beseiged by fags and lesbos. It is such an emotional, passionate gut-level issue that having any sort of rational discussion between disgreeing parties is nigh impossible. I don't see what is wrong: if people love one another, and want to get married, so what?

And then there is a perfect picture of what gay marriage is all about, really: two people in love. This is that picture.

Del Martin, 87, center left, and Phyllis Lyon, 84, center right, are married by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom , center, in a special ceremony at City Hall in San Francisco, Monday, June 16, 2008.

If this isn't love, what in the world is?

Soem things never change

This was then, Beatlemania, no cameras, just screams.
This is now: The Jonas Brothers, already one of the Walt Disney Company’s hottest acts, are about to be the subject of an onslaught of publicity that might make last year’s Hannah Montana madness look like a warm-up act. Digital cameras, and much younger fans.

John Hammond, Who Put His Money and Vision Where His Musical Taste Was

Another wonderful book.

Wonderfully written biography of a titan in the world of American music. A descendant of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (and of the Sloans of W&J fame), he grew up in a 5-floor mansion on East 91st Street, around the corner from 5th Avenue. The house not only had a squash court on the 3rd floor, but the court had a grandstand. Young John liked going down to the basement to listen to the music the servants liked. That led him to venturing to Harlem to listen to jazz. Dropping out of Yale, he entered the music business, and made an imprint: recorded Bessie Smith's last session, Lady Day's first, he suggested Prez and Lady Day duo; he suggested to Count Basie that he tour the country; suggested Teddy Wilson to Benny Goodman, as well as Charlie Christian; launched Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan to fame; launched Springsteen and SRV to fame, as well.

Along with his love of music was a devotion to racial integration and justice: he tried delivering food and clothes to the Scottsboro Boys; served on the board of NAACP beginning in his twenties.

An amazing man, a book worthy of a social titan.

a kiss is just a kiss ... or is it?

This again proves the case: can't make this stuff up.

Most of the time, a kiss is just a kiss in the stands at Seattle Mariners games. The crowd hardly even pays attention when fans smooch.

But then last week, a lesbian complained that an usher at Safeco Field asked her to stop kissing her date because it was making another fan uncomfortable.

The incident has exploded on local TV, on talk radio and in the blogosphere and has touched off a debate over public displays of affection in generally gay-friendly Seattle.

Someone wasn't watching the ballgame.

"Certain individuals have not yet caught up. Those people see a gay or lesbian couple and they stare or say something," said Josh Friedes of Equal Rights Washington. "This is one of the challenges of being gay. Everyday things can become sources of trauma."

As the Mariners played the Boston Red Sox on May 26, Sirbrina Guerrero and her date were approached in the third inning by an usher who told them their kissing was inappropriate, Guerrero said.

The usher, Guerrero said, told them he had received a complaint from a woman nearby who said that there were kids in the crowd of nearly 36,000 and that parents would have to explain why two women were kissing.

Parents would have to explain to kids? Well, yes; the problem is?

"I was really just shocked," Guerrero said. "Seattle is so gay-friendly. There was a couple like seven rows ahead making out. We were just showing affection." On Monday, Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale said that the club is investigating but that the usher was responding to a complaint of two women "making out" and "groping" in the stands.

Bubba and Angelina

Todd Purdum's article appears in the same magazine issue that has this cover of Angelina Jolie. The magazine has it this way on its website: This isn’t the first time everybody’s favorite humanitarian, mother, and sex goddess has posed for Vanity Fair. Here are the covers and spreads from all three of Angelina Jolie’s appearances, together with a sampling of her trademark edgy insights.

Everybody's (well, not mine) favorite humanitarian has much to show, too: the red of the lipstick and the silicon of the implants are eye-catching, certainly, and (pun intended) rather revealing.

A short and a CFO

These pictures are from a story in the WSJ about Lehman Brothers: the man is a hedge fund manager that questions Lehman's numbers, and, also, is short the stock; the woman is CFO of Lehman. So much for the facts; they don't matter much to me. And the story is just another one from the financial pages; one of many.

What does interest me is the dress of the two: he wears a white shirt and a tie; she wears an open-necked blouse and a simple necklace. A further point that occurs to me is that he looks focused and determined, whilst she looks almost stunned. Maybe it's just a different type of intensity. A closer look does reveal to me that she is just as intense-looking as he is.

A couple of other pictures are also interesting. The one of Einhorn is of his being at the World Series of Poker (WSJ: "wearing a lucky sweatshirt emblazoned with the handprints of his wife and three children, he finished in 18th place in the World Series of Poker's main event in Las Vegas"); notice the silly cap. The one of Callan is of her in, presumably, her office ("Erin Callan is known for being frank, fashionable.").

Cleavage and Bulge

from today's NYT's Arts section; notice the bulge. Now, let me compare the bulge and the cleavage. [the Merkel picture has this caption in Der Spiegel: Merkel was joined by other persons of note including Norway's Crown Prince Haakon (right), his wife Mette-Marit (second from left) and Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria (left).]

A new book

In the new book cart I found Worlds at war: the 2,500-year struggle between east and west, by Anthony Pagden. On the cover is detail of a Delacroix painting, The Battle of Giaour and Hassan. Giaour is a Byron poem.The word Giaour means is a Turkish adaptation of the Persian word gdwr or gbr, an infidel.

Kirkus Reviews Is there a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West? Scholars and pundits are divided; this broad-ranging survey comes down in the affirmative, even if the formulation is a "crude but useful phrase."Pagden (Political Science and History/UCLA; Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present, 2001, etc.) observes that one habit of the ancient Persians puzzled the Greeks most: their prostrating themselves before rulers and gods, which was not the behavior of free people. The habit still puzzles the West, and the gulf grows ever wider. Pagden's chronicle of a long history of mutual incomprehension begins in the age of Xerxes and wanders leisurely through ancient history, observing that "Oriental luxuriousness" set many a centurion off the straight and narrow. As Plutarch remarked, Plato wrote of four kinds of flattery, "but Cleopatra knew a thousand" and, as Pagden adds, used every one of them. Muhammad cherished luxury not at all, as the austere religion his followers spread at the point of a sword clearly indicated. That religion, writes Pagden, carried with it "perpetual hostility between Islam and both Jews and Christians." Charged with this enmity and posing few intellectual obstacles to impede access by ordinary people, Islam became a world religion uniting ethnically diverse cultures from western Africa to the western Pacific. In the permanent battlefield that was Moorish Spain, this new religion clashed with Christianity; the front would widen to embrace the Balkans and spread into Europe as far as Vienna, where only an army of united Christian nations could stem the tide. Later encounters with Islam were no more peaceful, though peacemakers have tried: Napoleon reckoned, for instance, that as long as it was kept out of civil society, religious belief was permissible, a formula that lately met with anguished protest when French educators tried to ban the veil (and the cross, and the Star of David) from the classroom. A cheerless but useful history.

Cultural values

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the self-appointed arbiter of cultural norms and standards of decency of American society, again can not forego the opportunity of thrashing what it contends are cultural elites that are out of touch with mainstream American values.

The Miley Cyrus Uproar

Smalltown, USA still insists on cultural norms alien to the elites of Manhattan or Hollywood.




This, one supposes, is okay. She's 15 years old, and is dressed as an idealized feminine woman: red lipstick (I wonder what Desmond Morris would say about that), low-cut dress, bare shoulders. Fifteen!

The photo the righteous folks at the WSJ, and their pompous allies, are upset about is this one.
So after the puritanical, holier-than-thou screamed, she apologized, saying she didn't realize the photo would be that way. Gimme a break.

Political cartoons

From the London Times. Perhaps the US is far too puritan a popular culture - in only a limited sense, for there are displays of images which are quite without much restraint, or modesty. It is impossible for anyone to say, or write, the word asshole in a major media outlet, yet soft-porn images are perfectly okay. The picture of that woman in an almost-bikini is from an advertisement on some website or media outlet that ran a poll on 'the hundred sexiest women.' That image is what is valued: blond, big ass, skinny, boobs, red lips.

Campaign trail gets bumpy for Chelsea Clinton

Getting a mite rough for Clinton junior. For the first time, she is facing the kind of scrutiny that has bedeviled the candidates and their surrogates along the campaign trail.

During a long day of campaigning in Oregon on Saturday, she mentioned at two different stops that during the course of the campaign a 7-year-old and an 11-year-old had separately asked her "with terror in their eyes" what will become of the Social Security system. It's possible they were precocious, or that their parents put them up to it, but one skeptical blogger wrote afterward that the story was "stunning in its absurdity."

She might have misspoken. (When asked for details, such as where and when Clinton met the children, the campaign could not provide them.)

IAC's Minority Interest

Here is a twist I knew nothing about: a black search engine. IACI, Barry Diller's company, will own it. Diller is also backing a news site run by Tina Brown.

The project [a search engine named RushmoreDrive that targets U.S. blacks] addresses an unmet need for a population that exceeds 50 million, half of whom are regular Internet users, says RushmoreDrive CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.

Huh?

Taylor says that program aims to do "identity search." Algorithms sift the Web and deliver results deemed particularly interesting to black users, drawing from both mainstream sources and black media and blogs. Taylor sees RushmoreDrive's role as aggregating all that content. "Black sites aren't competitors," he declares. "They're content providers."

Not competitors? I don't get that.

Some commentators, including blogger Jeff Jarvis, question the value of specialized search engines, likening them to fences that disrupt the "open prairie" of the Web. "Isn’t there a danger in creating a search engine segregated along racial lines? Does it create more separation? … Does it limit the world reached by the search?" Jarvis wrote on his blog, BuzzMachine.

Sort of my thinking: a kind of separation, segregation. I do understand the concept of identity, but I am not comfortable with separateness.

Taylor says the concept and patent-pending technology could spawn other identity group sites, including for women, Hispanics and the gay community.

I can understand that. So I ventured over the search engine, http://www.rushmoredrive.org/, and took a look. Found a story entitled The Sub-prime Crisis Affects Bourgie People Too. Bourgie is defined in Urban Dictionary as an adjective form of bourgeoisie or aternate for bourgeois (as used in Marxist analysis, rather than its French origin) usually employed in a pejorative sense. alt. spelling bougie. Yes, does say aternate. I suppose it is supposed to say alternate.

There's another definition for bourgie: Stemming from the French word bourgeoisie. Pronounced "boo-zhee" Someone who is class-conscious, with educated and discerning tastes, and interested in enjoying the finer things in life. It is definitely not high-class, aristoratic, snooty, or snobbish. “Bourgie” is as much an idea, and a state of mind, as it is an attitude towards enjoying good food, good friends, and good conversation, everyday. It evokes a mood of simple elegance, casual yet sophisticated—modern.

Yes, aristoratic; I suppose it should be aristocratic. Oy. Quality control is not a strong suit of this site.