Month: December 2006

Kuala Lumpur, Boxing Day.

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One American idea I like the sound of: elected law enforcement officials. One idea I don’t like: the constant media speculation that surrounds criminal cases long before they reach court. Although it was striking how much of the UK press also ignored that convention in their coverage of the recent Ipswich murders, even before the main suspect had been charged. The amount of gossip and speculation was amazing. At one point, the background noise was so deafening that I assumed the law had been changed somewhere along the line, and I just hadn’t noticed. But no, apparently it hasn’t. As Telegraph columnist Nigel Farndale observes, the reporters – and the police – simply decided to play by different rules.

The curious thing about this case is that the police seem to have been as much to blame as the media. Both seem to have been confused about the rules of contempt, which, actually, are quite clear: liability applies from the moment of arrest, not from the moment a suspect is charged. Not only were the two suspects in this case identified in the press as soon as they were arrested, but their whole life stories were reported in Technicolor detail, thereby potentially prejudicing jurors against them

I’ve noticed that the French media also seems to get a reasonably free hand to publish all sorts of rumours before a case is formally heard. I was living in the US during the early stages of the O.J. case, and never got used to the constant barrage of "facts" emanating from news anchors and Geraldo-style talking heads. None of my American friends thought there was anything odd about it. Are they right? Does the system balance itself out in the end? For all I know, the rate of miscarriages of justice could be roughly the same in both countries. I’d love to know the answer.

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Next year marks the 25th anniversary of his death. None of his records means as much to me as the second version of the Goldberg Variations, recorded a year before he fell victim to a stroke. We’re so lucky that director Bruno Monsaingeon was on hand with his video cameras. For some reason, the DVD has been out of circulation for quite a while. This YouTube clip contains the opening aria and the first half-dozen variations. Magical.

Gould looks terrible – fat, puffy, pasty, partly unshaven. His dark blue Viyella shirt, with the cuffs unbuttoned, looks simply sleazy. And all the celebrated "mannerisms" are on display; he sways and sings and sighs and makes gestures of conducting himself and more gestures that seem to signify his going into a trance. Yet as one watches, one gradually abandons all these prejudiced observations and becomes a participant in Gould’s extraordinary performance. Not only is he playing beautifully, and passionately, but he looks serenely and profoundly happy in his transcendental ability to do what he is doing. Never before has he so clearly achieved his youthful goal of ecstasy.

Otto Friedrich, Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations.

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Professor Bainbridge casts an eye over the candidate’s record, and gives him a low grade:

Given the deleterious effects the trial lawyer industry has had on the American economy…  I remain unconvinced that a trial lawyer ought to have much authority over the economy.

The rhetoric about fighting poverty doesn’t go down too well, either:

His concern might be more plausible if he has demonstrated such concern in private life. Unfortunately, as the Washington Times reports, "During his career of allegedly championing the helpless, he took no pro bono cases."

French Quarter, New Orleans, 6:35am.

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Here comes the choice of Norman Geras, proprietor of Normblog. Professor emeritus in government at the University of Manchester, and an authority on Marx, he’s currently rambling around Australia, where he’s cheering on the home side in the Ashes series. (The less said about that, the better. The subject is just too painful for English readers.)

Some time ago I read "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates, and followed up with three other of his novels – "Easter Parade", "Cold Spring Harbor" and "A Special Providence". Somewhere in there I formed the intention of reading all of his work. This year I’ve read two more of the novels: "A Good School" and  "Young Hearts Crying". I’ll nominate this last as my pick of the year. I love Yates’s writing. From the first page I feel settled in it, like I’m listening to an old friend talking. The world he describes is often one of hopes on the downward slope to defeat, of the compromises and small deceptions that find their way into the spaces between those living side by side, of the wear and tear of daily lives, and of the humanity that endures within them despite everything. "Young Hearts Crying" isn’t the best of Yates’s novels, but it has all these qualities, and like his other books it tells a gripping story.

[Clive]

Not everyone approves of the old rebel. One reader points out that Terkel got into a nasty slanging match with Christopher Hitchens not too long ago. Yes, I should have mentioned that. Another adds that Studs has a leftist agenda. True. And this reader thinks the fireman’s comments were unfair to bank staff:

I’m also a public high school teacher, and I would never share the Studs Terkel quote from the fireman with my English classes.  What a myopic view, a kind of reverse snobbery that shows how ignorant the fireman is about how our society works.

I’d better stress that the whole point of the "old" books choices was to gather a lot of different viewpoints across the spectrum. (For some reason, after I sent out the initial requests, I got more responses from conservative bloggers than from left-wingers.) As for me,  I’m right-wing on some issues, left-wing on others. Like most people, I guess.

[Clive]

Martin Peretz isn’t impressed with calls for a reprieve:

Italian Prime Minister Prodi has now protested the anticipated execution by hanging of Saddam Hussein because he doesn’t believe in capital punishment. I don’t believe in capital punishment either. Did Prodi believe the death sentence for Adolf Eichmann also wrong? I didn’t. Even if Saddam is not exactly in the category of Eichmann, he – like Pol Pot and other leaders of deliberately killer regimes – has no claim on our conscience. What’s more there is something prissy and finicky in Prodi if Saddam’s fate can touch his soul.

Well, if Prodi is genuinely opposed to the death penalty, then he’s right to speak up. But I’m with Peretz on this one, despite feeling  uncomfortable about my double-standards. I’m glad we don’t routinely execute murderers in the UK (the Japanese hanged four convicts over Christmas, in case you hadn’t heard) yet I do lean toward what you could call the Nuremberg Principle, i.e. some crimes are so heinous that only the ultimate penalty will do. (One of my all-time favourite books is Albert Speer’s prison diaries but if truth be told, the former Armaments Minister probably deserved to be hanged instead of being given 20 years.) In Saddam’s case, justice would have been best served if he’d been given a quick hearing by his fellow-Iraqis and then dispatched, Ceausescu-style. The trial in Baghdad became an ugly farce very early on.

Bronwen Maddox states the opposite view in today’s London Times:

The rapid confirmation of the death sentence against Saddam Hussein is a long step backwards for Iraq. It is a brutal, if inevitable, display of victor’s justice that offends the principles that the US said it sought to uphold in toppling Iraq’s dictator.

BTW, Peretz also has a good post on Tony Blair’s dodgy holidaying habits and his taste for schmoozing with the super-rich. That’s one side of TB’s character which has always baffled me.

[Photo: AFP]

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And then there are the end-of-year performance targets to worry about. No wonder everyone’s so stressed:

In the past, companies would try to hold off making layoffs during the holiday season, but no longer. The fourth quarter has become the most common time for layoff announcements, said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm. "There’s no stigma anymore."

[Clive]

Music by Brazil’s greatest songwriter, Antonio Carlos Jobim, performed by the ethereal trio of Japanese pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto, cellist Jaques [sic] Morelenbaum and his wife, Paula. Their tribute album, "Casa" was recorded in Jobim’s home in Rio. A gorgeous disc, as is the follow-up, "A Day in New York". Paula Morelenbaum’s singing is so simple, yet so evocative.