Month: June 2013

Last night, Gandolfini, the terrifying yet relatable Tony Soprano, passed away. Alyssa eulogizes:

If you write about television, as I do, or watch it frequently, Gandolfini’s performance as Tony Soprano on the titular show that helped remake HBO and prestige television along with it was a major contribution to the world we inhabit together. … [M]ore than anything else, it was Gandolfini, who gave us a man who fascinated us and commanded our sympathy despite the enormity of his crimes, reminding us that people whose only sins are against each other’s hearts deserve our attention, too.

James Poniewozik reflects on how he changed television drama:

James Gandolfini was our usher into that new TV era, by taking a performance that could have been cartoonish (remember Analyze This?) and making it psychologically layered and unshakeable. This was a man who could show us a brute throttling a Mafia turncoat while looking at colleges with his daughter and make us think: I want to know this guy better. He could lead us, mildly contemplating an onion ring, to the finale’s famous cut-to-black, to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and leave us wondering whether he lived or died, and what he deserved, and what it all meant. We can only wonder what more Gandolfini would have done with a more fair measure of years.

Suderman nods:

Certainly [the show] was among the most influentual, with its creators and core ideas still reverberating through the so many of the high-quality dramas produced today.

And that influence, and it staying power, has a lot to do with the way Gandolfini payed Tony: powerful but conflcted, angry and often menacingly violent but not wholly heartless, driven and determined yet fundamentally confused about what he wanted out of life. Was he a monster? Or just the man next door? Gandolfini’s performance helped provide the only possible answer to that pair of questions: Yes. It was the perfect role, and he was the perfect actor for it. It’s impossible to imagine The Sopranos without Gandolfini, and nearly as difficult to imagine the modern TV drama landscape — with its emphasis on brooding serials led by aging male antiheroes — without his work on the show.

Marc Tracy wants critics to remember that Gandolfini wasn’t Tony:

I can hear the laptops clacking: obituarists are saying that the [Sopranos]’s obsession with death (“In the midst of death, we are in life. Or is it the other way around?”) has prepared us for Gandolfini’s death as we are prepared for nobody else’s death; that the final scene blah blah blah; that, indeed, “Whaddya gonna do?” No. At least when we ascribe attributes of a fictional character to her author, it is not always a fallacy—the author has created the character, and so it is fair to ask what he has invested her with. Gandolfini’s achievement was different: while Tony may share things with Gandolfini, ultimately what Gandolfini does is completely efface himself, disappearing into the role completely in order to make the entire thing work.

“The Sopranos” likely would have been a pretty good show no matter who was playing Tony (unless it was Steve Van Zandt, who played Silvio and reportedly auditioned for the part). Would it have been the American masterpiece it was with anyone other than Gandolfini? To ask the question, as Christopher Hitchens used to write, is to answer it.

DiFi stands up against the Obama administration and in defense of core American values:

Dear Secretary Hagel:

I have given a great deal of thought since visiting the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay on June 7, 2013, about the continued hunger strikes and force-feeding occurring there. I write to express to you my concerns and opposition to the force- feeding of detainees, not for reasons of medical necessity but as a matter of policy that stands in conflict with international norms …

During our visit, more than 60 percent of the 166 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were categorized by the Department of Defense as “hunger strikers,” with more than 40 of them being force-fed. Four detainees were in the facility’s hospital for problems related to their feeding or hunger strike. During our visit to the prison, we were briefed on the Department of Defense policies regarding force-feedings and I remain concerned that these policies are out of step with international norms, medical ethics and practices of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Medical Association (WMA), as well as numerous international organizations (including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and three UN Special Rapporteurs) have all criticized or opposed the force- feedings of detainees.

The WMA recently stated that “[f]orcible feeding is never ethically acceptable,” and “that physicians should never be used to break hunger strikes through acts such as force-feeding.” The American Medical Association has supported the WMA’s position on this matter. On May 13, 2013, several human rights and anti-torture organizations—citing the positions of the ICRC and WMA—wrote that the force-feeding of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility violates Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. Moreover, a recently published bipartisan Task Force on Detainee Treatment—led by former Congressman Asa Hutchinson and former Ambassador Jim Jones—found that the Department of Defense’s force-feeding practices were “contrary to established medical and professional ethical standards” and called on the United States to adopt standards of care, policies, and procedures in keeping with the guidelines developed by the WMA, “including affirmation that force-feeding is prohibited.”

In addition to the allegation that the Department of Defense’s force-feeding practices are out of sync with international norms, they also appear to deviate significantly from U.S. Bureau of Prison practices. Based on a review by Intelligence Committee staff, the significant differences between force-feedings at Guantanamo Bay and within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons relate to the manner in which detainees are force-fed, how often detainees are force-fed, and the safeguards and oversight in place during force-feedings.

Within the Bureau of Prisons, force-feeding is exceedingly rare. The Intelligence Committee staff has been told that no inmate within the Bureau of Prisons has been force-fed in more than six months. When force-feedings do occur within the Bureau of Prisons, we have been told that nearly 95% of the time they are conducted with a fully compliant inmate requiring no restraints. At Guantanamo Bay, on the other hand, all detainees being force-fed—regardless of their level of cooperation—are placed in chairs where they are forcibly restrained. The visual impression is one of restraint: of arms, legs, and body. Further, at Guantanamo Bay, detainees are fed twice a day in this manner, potentially over a substantial period of time. This also is inconsistent with the practice of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Additionally, the U.S. federal prison guidelines for force-feedings include several safeguards and oversight mechanisms that are not in place at Guantanamo Bay. These guidelines require the warden to notify a sentencing judge of the involuntary feeding, with background and an explanation of the reasons for involuntary feeding. Further, the Bureau of Prisons requires an individualized assessment of an inmate’s situation to guide how force-feedings are administered, a practice that I found largely absent at Guantanamo Bay. Finally, all force-feedings must be videotaped within the Bureau of Prisons.

Hunger strikes are a long known form of non-violent protest aimed at bringing attention to a cause, rather than an attempt of suicide. I believe that the current approach raises very important ethical questions and complicates the difficult situation regarding the continued indefinite detention at Guantanamo. I urge you to reevaluate the force-feeding policies at Guantanamo Bay and to put in place the most humane policies possible.

In today’s video from Fareed, he reviews how wrong he was about the Iraq War:

In an op-ed yesterday, Fareed restated his opposition to our intervention in Syria, highlighting the United States’ historical tendency to screw up such affairs:

In the mid-1980s, the scholar Samuel Huntington pondered why the United States, the world’s dominant power — which had won two world wars, deterred the Soviet Union and maintained global peace — was so bad at smaller military intervention.

Since World War II, he noted, the United States had engaged militarily in a series of conflicts around the world, and in almost every case the outcome had been inconclusive, muddled or worse. Huntington concluded that we rarely entered conflicts actually trying to win. Instead, he reasoned, U.S. military intervention has usually been sparked by a crisis, which put pressure on Washington to do something. But Americans rarely saw the problem as one that justified getting fully committed. So, we would join the fight in incremental ways and hope that this would change the outcome. It rarely does. (More recent conflicts where we have succeeded — the 1990 Persian Gulf War, Grenada and Panama — were all ones where we did fight to win, used massive force and achieved a quick, early knockout.)

In Syria, we have lofty ends but no one wants to use the means necessary to achieve them. So we are now giving arms to the opposition and hoping this will bring the regime to the negotiating table or force it to strike a deal. But, as Huntington observed, “military forces are not primarily instruments of communication to convey signals to an enemy; they are instead instruments of coercion to compel him to alter his behavior.”

He adds that if Obama is indeed engaging in some kind of clever realpolitik, it is with “Machiavellian rather than humanitarian” intent. Fareed also made an argument against intervening in Syria in a previous AA answer.

If you want to keep track of his other work, Fareed Zakaria GPS airs Sundays on CNN, as well as via podcast, and he is also an Editor-at-Large of TIME Magazine, a Washington Post columnist, and the author of The Post-American World, The Future of Freedom, and From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role. Fareed’s previous AA videos are here. Our full AA archive is here.

Betsy Morais reviews Daniel Post Senning’s Emily Post’s Manners in a Digital World: Living Well Online:

Many have handed down commandments on the rules of Web manners. Etiquette is a public performance, just as it was a century ago—but now “public” has become synonymous with “on the Internet.” Underlying all the prescriptions is the vanishing line between the manners of the analog universe and those of its virtual counterpart, since we move so seamlessly from one to the other.

Senning writes, “In an increasingly connected world, it is up to each individual to set boundaries.” We will be judged, then, by the standard of presence—the courtesy of acknowledging our surroundings. …

What we really need is a guide for those already immersed in the Internet; there is the alphabet, and then there is fluency. A Twitter user may be familiar with the “@” symbol, but it carries its own detailed rules. For instance, “.@” has different implications than “@” on its own. Depending on context, placing the period before the symbol can either be generous—“.@strugglingmusician has a terrific new video on YouTube”—or self-serving. (“.@minorcelebrity thanks for the compliment!”) As in “real life,” these kinds of signals are used as self-conscious indications of relative status.