Month: December 2006

[Clive]

Whether or not many American viewers have had a chance to tune in, Al Jazeera’s English-language channel has got off to a surprisingly good start. I don’t watch it every day, but from what I’ve seen so far, the journalism is solid and sober, and the coverage of Third World issues has been refreshingly un-condescending. (To put it bluntly, you don’t often see brown people talking about other brown people on TV.) Samantha Bee, on the other hand, is as mad as hell and can’t take it any more. If you haven’t yet caught the Daily Show reporter’s mischief-making visit to the newsroom, you’re in for a treat. The funniest thing I’ve seen in months. [Via ‘Aqoul]

[Clive]

It’s the turn of Jackie Danicki, American in London, libertarian blogger and all-round live-wire, who also finds time to run sites devoted to food, health and beauty. A new media consultant, she knows where all the bodies are buried in Silicon Valley:

Having rediscovered "The Color Purple", I struggled to reconcile the tale of individual struggle and triumph with the politics of author Alice Walker. How could a writer who created such harrowing accounts of suffering under the white racist and black patriarchal societies of the southern US proceed to count Fidel Castro as a friend and decry the "toxic culture" of globalization? How could a writer whose work celebrates the liberation of women feel such disgust for the very movement which is lifting so many African people out of poverty?

I know, I know: one should separate a writer’s politics from her work. Fortunately, the quality of "The Color Purple" is such that I was largely able to do just that for the duration of the story. It is staggering, captivating, and a complete contradiction.

[Clive]

A well-wisher writes:

Clive Davis, you are a pompous ass. Please stop posting so often. I may never come back if you continue your hourly regurgitations. We all understand Andrew is on vacation, stop using his space as your soapbox. Have a nice day.

Sorry, I’m just one of those compulsive linkers. Always have been. Besides, with any luck, my co-bloggers will be back soon.

[Clive]

Gary Hart gives The Book a thumbs-up, more or less.

Despite being new to the scene (although he did serve three terms in the Illinois State Senate), Obama casts himself in the role of a political veteran, using phrases like "the longer I served in Washington" (less than two years) and "the more time I spent on the Senate floor." But his particular upbringing gives him special insights into the transition of American politics in the 1960s and ’70s from debates over economic principles to a focus on culture and morality, and into the divisiveness, polarization and incivility that accompanied this transition.

 

[Clive]                                              

Jack Keane and Frederick Kagan sketch in more detail about their plan for Baghdad:

Of all the "surge" options out there, short ones are the most dangerous. Increasing troop levels in Baghdad for three or six months would virtually ensure defeat….  The only cure is to maintain our presence long enough either to root out the hiding enemy or to defeat him when he becomes impatient. A surge that lasted at least 18 months would achieve that aim.

It goes without saying that Juan Cole thinks the idea is doomed from the start. What’s the most depressing part of his list of "10 myths about Iraq"? Perhaps this:

The parliament was not able to meet in December because it could not attain a quorum. Many key Iraqi politicians live most of the time in London, and much of parliament is frequently abroad.

Meanwhile the NY Review of Books is running a long article by journalist Christian Caryl on how the country looks from ground level:

We have little impression of Iraqis as people trying to live lives that are larger and more complex than the war that engulfs them, and more often than not we end up viewing them merely as appendages of conflict.

Her thoughts on the courageous Iraqi blogger, Riverbend are an especially interesting mix of praise and criticism:

It is also the mistakes of the young Baghdad woman, her limitations, that make her narrative worth reading. The daughter of an upper-middle-class family, she is a progressive Muslim and an idealistic Iraqi nationalist, intent on demonstrating to her American readers the high level of Iraq’s cultural and economic development. And yet she is also distinctly oblivious to some of the darker sides of Saddam’s regime. "Some would say that they [the Kurds] had complete rights even before the war," she notes at one point, in a characteristic moment of blindness (she has apparently never heard of the poison gas attacks Saddam’s regime staged against Kurdish civilians). "The majority of Iraqis have a deep respect for other cultures and religions," she argues elsewhere. She decries American policies that seem to her aimed at dividing Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian communities, and makes a great point of emphasizing the mixed Sunni-Shia origins of her family.

As the story progresses, though, reality begins to catch up… Riverbend reminds me of those Soviet patriots who failed to understand the events that ushered in the final agony of the USSR. Many of those who lived well under the system were unable to see its crimes for what they were, making them dismissive or uncomprehending when the once-oppressed began to express their own political demands.

[Picture: Todd Pitman/AP]

[Clive]

That book choice struck a chord with this reader:

I retired in June from a long stint of public high school teaching in California.  I taught in many subjects, but primarily history for my first twenty years or so and thinking back, Terkel’s "Working" was one of the most exciting sources I ever used teaching anything.  Such a wonderful collection of folks so absolutely in their voices – and such compelling and thoughtful reflections!  If I were teaching still, I’d find ways to use it and the Michael Apted "Up" series, from seven to forty-nine. What a treat to read the reference to the fireman, which I remembered verbatim.

[Clive]

From George. W. Bush’s statement:

On Aug. 9, 1974, he stepped into the presidency without ever having sought the office. He assumed power in a period of great division and turmoil. For a nation that needed healing, and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we need him most.

[Clive]

Willie Nelson, Lone Star songsmith, performs "I Never Cared For You" on tour in Amsterdam. It’s almost note-for-note the same version he delivers on that terrific CD,  "Teatro".

The vintage clip of "Night Life" is also worth a look, just to see him looking so scrubbed and tidy and respectable. That was a long, long time ago.

[Clive]

We bought our youngest son, Anand, a train set for Christmas. (I’m desperate to have a go on it once all this blogging is out of the way.) Rummaging through the box, I just discovered a slip of paper bearing the all-important warning:

ATTENTION. The train may de-rail if the speed is too high. So please slowly increase the speed adjusting knob of train controller to prevent the train coming off the tracks.

It doesn’t say whether I have to hire an official to walk in front and wave a red flag

[Clive]

Great minds think alike, and all that… John Judis, author of a biography of William F. Buckley, among other titles, has put together his own selection of choice tomes from yesteryear. It’s a long list, and it’s firewalled, but here’s a taster:

Several books are personal touchstones that have shaped the way I think about American politics. Herbert Croly’s "The Promise of American Life" is high on the list, but so is David Riesman’s "The Lonely Crowd". I am still something of neo-neo-Marxist in my overall outlook, but Karl Lowith’s book, "Meaning in History", was among the first to shake my faith…

I have written two books on American foreign policy, but I still feel I don’t know the subject–perhaps because I have little first-hand knowledge of the world outside the United States. I was raised in the Wisconsin School, but on foreign policy, I prefer others to Williams himself, notably Walter LaFeber’s "The New Empire "(about the development of American expansionism in the late nineteenth century), Carl Parrini’s "Heir to Empire" (about America’s attempt to supplant Great Britain after World War I), and N. Gordon Levin’s "Woodrow Wilson and World Politics." The best one-volume biography of Wilson is August Heckscher’s little-known book, which never even went into paperback. The most powerful case for realism is Walter Lippmann’s "U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic", which he whipped off in the summer of 1943.

His comment about foreign travel reminds me that, in an ideal world, America and Europe would swap pundits and commentators for six months every couple of years. That way, we might find a way to speak the same language.