The Dish

A reader writes:

This and this are why I read your blog every day that I can — usually checking in more than once. I am an active composer of so-called "modern classical" music, and that first post just drove me nutty. I know your point of view on pot, but I've never gotten the point of it. It doesn't help me to think or understand or be creative. No stimulant or depressant chemicals do.

When I read your comment that jazz is "impossible without weed", it was everything I could do to stop from writing you a scolding letter, since many of my friends who are working jazz musicians here in NYC simply don't touch the stuff. And, while I have no beef with your friend's use of pot to help him free up his inhibitions to do his job/art, I'm also sort of tired of the cliche that artists need weed or that weed can solve problems of writer's block. I write and compose every day without the help of chemical stimulation. So do most of my colleagues. We have learned to turn OFF that nagging inner voice of criticism by simply doing the work. It's that easy. (And that hard, too.)

But I didn't write that scolding email.

Instead, I went and did a bit of composing (working on a piece for saxophone quartet to be premiered in just a few months). Later, when I needed to take a little break (or, rather, procrastinate!), I surfed to the Daily Dish again to find the quote from David Foster Wallace. How beautiful. I followed the link and read the entire speech, which was even better than the quote by itself.

To sum up: your first post kind of annoyed me. Got me to thinking. Got me to get to work on a Sunday with a deadline looming. Your second post gave me great peace of mind. Got me to thinking, too. And will get me back to work in just a few minutes with just a little bit more of my self centered and at peace with the task of creating something from nothing.

And so, I'll keep coming back to this blog–usually checking in more than once.

Thank you.

… read this.

Goldens Bridge, New York, 1.41 am.

Despite all the recent hype for The Hurt Locker, Chris Orr predicts that the Academy will still cave to Avatar:

For the Academy to elevate so small a picture over one so big would be wildly out of keeping both with its recent, much-discussed desire to keep the Oscars "relevant" to a mass audience, and with its lifelong prejudice in favor of films that succeed commercially. To whit: Over the past 20 years, the highest- or second-highest-grossing of the five Best Picture nominees has won 19 times. The third-highest-grossing has won once-in 1999, when American Beauty's $130 million box office narrowly trailed The Green Mile's $136 million. The fourth- and fifth-highest-grossing nominees have not won a single time in over two decades. Where does The Hurt Locker stand in this year's overcrowded field of nominees? Number eight out of ten.

Or less than one-fiftieth of Avatar's domestic gross. I have to say that so far, this has to be among the dreariest, least funny, most tired Oscars I can remember. But I guess I block most of them out after a while.

It's still unclear whether Adam Gadhan has been captured in Pakistan, but there is confirmation of the capture of Abu Yahya Mujahdeen Al-Adam, whom the NYT describes as

having been born in Pennsylvania and who was thought to be affiliated with the operations division of Al Qaeda, commanding fighters in Afghanistan.

That's both a good in itself and with real and professional interrogation, rather than torture,  a potential boon for good intelligence in the Afghan counter-insurgency. It follows the capture of key Taliban leader Mullah Baradar, who is also now under serious rather than comic book interrogation. I don't pretend to know if we are seeing a real shift in Pakistan's attitude, but I do see a real shift in Washington away from the negligence and weakness of the Bush years. Lexington notes:

An anti-Obama bumper-sticker asked: “So you’re for abortion but against killing terrorists?” Most of these barbs are bunk.

Yes, Mr Obama favours trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of September 11th 2001, in a civilian court. But that is not a sign of weakness. Several terrorists were successfully prosecuted in civilian courts under George Bush. And though Mr Obama is willing to admit his country’s failings, he is quite ruthless about blowing its enemies to scraps. American drones fired missiles at suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas 55 times last year, killing hundreds of jihadists and who knows how many civilians. This year, the killing has accelerated; so far more than a dozen strikes have been reported. Mr Obama orders assassinations at a far brisker pace than George Bush ever did. Mr Obama orders assassinations at a far brisker pace than George Bush ever did. For some reason, his habit of blowing up alleged terrorists and bystanders from the air causes less global outrage than the smothering of a lone Hamas operative, allegedly by Israel, in a hotel room in Dubai. But whether you think it justified or not, it is hardly evidence that the president is “against killing terrorists”.

The trailer.

For what we are about to endure, may the Lord make us truly, er …

No you really can't make this up:

A supporter sent her the biblical passage Isaiah 49:16: "See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me."

"If what was good enough for God, scribbling on the palm of his hand, it's good enough for me, for us," Palin said. "In that passage he says, I wrote your name on the palm of my hand to remember you. And I'm like okay, I'm in good company."

What some liberals fail to see in their Pavlovian reaction to this riff is that it was clearly meant partly as a joke, and partly as a way of cementing her identity with the Christianist base. The response is interesting: the crowd both applauds and laughs.

She uses the trope of evangelical literal use of the Bible to justify everything and anything – and she does it jokingly as another jibe against the "mainstream media" with a bit of self-deprecation thrown in. Genius.

It also provokes a response from the liberal blogosphere and media that cements the idea that she is out of her mind, a religious nut-job, etc, which completes the circle for her base. In this populist climate, with recession continuing, with alienation high, with fundamentalism at the heart of the new Republicanism, she is not to be under-estimated or dismissed. She is the next Republican nominee by default at this point.

This is a stunning, even beautiful, quote from a random voter in Iraq's very Iraqi election today. It says a lot about the stoicism of the people of Iraq that after a hundred bomb blasts and thirty-eight dead, they still made it to the polls to cast their vote. Can you imagine Americans having that kind of courage in turning out to vote?

The fact that this happened at all is a wondrous thing and the people we need to thank for it first are the servicemembers of the US military whose skills, flexibility and sacrifice made this possible. The second are the Iraqi people themselves whose mere endurance through unfathomable trauma and violence and war is miraculous. So many of them have died, of course, literally countless of them. But those who have barely survived to be bribed and flattered in this strange form of democracy have managed to pull off an election that seems a lot more credible than the recent one in Afghanistan. The Obama administration deserves some credit as well.

But we have been here before. The mere fact of an election does not change the underlying, dangerous dynamics that can and, in my judgment, probably will tip the country back into its normal condition of civil war or dictatorship. Petraeus on Fareed's show today:

“All progress that has been made to date — all of the legislation that’s been passed and so forth, has all required cross-sectarian, cross-ethnic coalitions, and I think that actually will continue to be the case. Because when you do the math, there’s no way that a prime minister will be elected without a cross-sectarian, and indeed cross-ethnic, coalition developing to elect that individual and the other key members that will be part of the package.”

I hope he's right. But many of the really tough decisions were postponed till after these elections, and we simply do not have solid evidence that the surge worked in terms of its core criteria: creating a non-sectarian politics and a functioning non-sectarian government. Previous elections intensified sectarian violence; many Sunni candidates were barred from running; internal tensions within Kurdistan are running high and critical and explosive issues between the Kurds and the Shiites are unresolved.

Stay tuned – but don't trust anyone, including Obama or Biden, claiming success or victory at this point. Success is when there are no occupying troops and a functioning multi-sectarian government. These elections tell us close to nothing about the future possibility of that. How Iraqi politicians react to the results will.

(An Iraqi election worker counts ballot papers March 7, 2010 at a polling station in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqis in 18 Iraqi provinces voted today to elect their candidates to the 325-seat parliament at about 10,000 polling centers. By Muhannad Fala'ah /Getty.)

A reader writes:

Kim Elsesser misses the point. The awards aren't given out on the basis of the actor, they're given out on the basis of the role. So long as Hollywood continues to treat male and female roles as two separate spices, the salt and pepper of screenplay seasoning, it makes sense to give separate awards.

Thinking about the best supporting actor and actress awards should help make this clear.

They aren't given out to support-males and support-females, lesser examples of the gender. They are given out because the role of supporting male is different from the role of lead male, and the same for the female roles. The photos that you posted of Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry make the point perfectly. She should have been awarded the Oscar for best actor in a leading male role. 'Actor in a Leading Role' is shorthand for such a role, because it's one almost exclusively played by a man, but it need not be. If anything should be changed, it's the name of the award.

Another writes:

Contra Kim Elsesser, I think there are a number of sports that should be genderless as well. Any of the shooting sports—archery, rifle, whatever. But even more, what about ski jumping, which is not currently a winter Olympic sport even though there are some women who actually jump farther than the men. How about half-pipe snowboarding? Or that freestyle jumping thing they do with skis? Why not have men and women compete together in fencing? I competed against women in college; fencing is more about reflexes and speed and eye-hand coordination than strength.