GaraLog

Early Summer Culture Notes

High and low culture experiences of the last few weeks:

Theater

Next to Normal:  Broadway musical centering on a manic-depressive suicidal mother.  Went because Alice Ripley won the Tony for that part, didn't know much about the play.  You would think it would be weird and depressing, but it's terrific -- download the soundtrack if you can't see it.

Film

Eden is West:  Latest Costa-Gavras film, opened the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival last month, about undocumented migrants in Europe, centering on one Chaplinesque character of (deliberately) indeterminate national origin, and his Candidean experiences once in France.  One of the best things I've seen about what the world might look like through the eyes of an "illegal" immigrant.

The Hangover:  Latest in a series of guy-type R-rated comedies (most of which involve Judd Apatow, like Knocked Up, Superbad, I Love You Man, etc.)  that it is now deemed cool to like despite their broad vulgar humor, without losing your femAnist credentials.  Mostly because they are hysterically funny.  Get yourself to the mall to see it.

Away We Go:  Shaggy indie film about hipsterish couple approaching mid-30s, she's pregnant, his hippieish parents, who they moved to be near to, are taking off to Belgium, so they go on an extended road trip to check out other cities where they have tenuous connections to friends and relatives.  Uneven, and Maya Rudolph, while admirably unactressy, is a little too stolid to hold interest for two hours.  Best seen as a series of sketches, with some memorable, if over-the-top bits by Allison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Art

Napoleon III Makes Over Paris:  Photos now up in a small gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, documenting the Paris that was torn down to make way for the grand plans and broad boulevards we know today.  Worth ducking into if you are there for something else, particularly if you love Paris, as I have come to.  Down the hall from the exhibit is a new Matisse acquisition also worth seeing.

DVD

Five Days:  HBO series, two discs, five hours, of a BBC drama, set somewhere outside London, about the disappearance of a mother and her two children.  The 24ish conceit is that each episode is a different day in the investigation: Day One, Day Five, Day 28, and so on.  Compelling, though more because of complex family dynamics, race relations, press misbehavior, police culture than any classic whodunit aspects.

TV

Watched the first episode of Hung on HBO last week and agree with Nancy Franklin's dead-on assessment in this week's New Yorker fhat the main character is unmemorable in every respect except the one that is meant to make him exceptional, and around which the show's premise is organized -- and that you don't get to see.  Enjoying the new season of Weeds, which began a few weeks ago, though it has completely jumped the shark, with Nancy fearing for her life from Mexican drug gangs.  Nurse Jackie, the new Edie Falco show after it, has grown on me.  But what is it with these HBO/Showtime series, all based on "mainstream" characters with transgressive behavior, like drug dealing, prostitution, serial killing, pill popping?  Long way from "Leave it to Beaver."

All the little birdies on Jaybird Street...

I asked my daughter Zoe the other day if she had seen the picture I posted of her grandmother, and she said she didn't read my blog much anymore since I post so rarely.  Good point.  I have been a little busy, or maybe have little to say.  So I will prove it by stepping up the pace this lazy Fourth of July weekend, and start by saying that like many people, I haven't quite figured out Twitter.

I signed up a few months ago for no particular reason, posted what I thought were a few gems of the 140-character genre, then quieted down, and now my tweets are almost exclusively alerts that I have posted something longer on this blog.  There's not much reason why anyone would want to follow me, yet every day I get one or two e-mails from Twitter saying I have a new follower.  Some of these people I know -- they probably joined Twitter and it went through their e-mail address book, they saw I was a fellow prospective tweeter (note the careful distinction here between the verb and noun forms) and thought they would follow me.  They may eventually feel, as I came to, that life is too short to be deluged with the tweets of your I.T. staff about how funny Blazing Saddles is or what topping is on the pizza they just ordered, and drop me.

Many who follow me, though, are strangers -- where did they come from?  I don't have time to read all their profiles.  Maybe they will see this post and comment, adding to my limited store of knowledge about this strange practice.

I've been in the White House twice since I started tweeting (notice how I worked that in there), and each time have resisted the temptation to tweet from there, since it seemed tacky -- bad guest practice.  After I left the first time, I noted that Andy Stern of SEIU, who was at the same event with me, had tweeted from the scene.  This week, I was sitting ten feet from the President while he was speaking, and thought about furtively tweeting -- I noticed the White House staff, standing around the perimeter, hardly looked up from their Blackberries -- but was nervous I would be called out.  Imagine if the President had stopped his remarks to say to the group, "now, let's pause for a moment until I have everyone's COMPLETE attention."  Ever since I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of a Wayne Newton concert (I was twelve, ok?!) and he turned the spotlight on me, I've been a little shy about that kind of thing.

Thought upon hearing that Governor Mark Sanford used state funds to pay for a trip to Argentina to meet with his mistress

At least there is one use of government "stimulus" funds that he is not opposed to.

Happy birthday, Mom!

Returned from an overseas trip today to find an envelope from my mother containing this picture -- printed from somewhere on the web, I'm not sure -- of her all suited up for marching with her VFW auxiliary unit in the local Memorial Day Parade.  Today is her 79th birthday, and I challenge you to find a better-looking, younger-looking nearly 80-year old:

Thank God they didn't release the one of him mooning Ahmadinejad

What is it about Presidents and shoes in the Middle East?

I was amused by this item about the Israelis being insulted when the White House released this photo of the President on the phone with Prime Minister Netanyahu.  They took umbrage at the fact that his feet are up on his desk, with the soles of his feet visible, a gesture signifying contempt in the Middle East and many parts of the world.  Not likely the White House intended it that way, and I'm not sure what Emily Post would have to say about telephone protocol (does Hillary Clinton have to wear a head covering when texting King Abdullah?), but the incident brought back one of my most uncomfortable memories.

About fifteen years ago, when I was at Human Rights Watch, we were visited by a delegation of Chinese lawyers touring the United States, a relatively unusual exchange at the time.  HRW was not the Chinese government's favorite organization, since at the time we were sponsoring a sister organization, "Committee to End the Chinese Gulag."  So the meeting was a little delicate.  We were presenting the work of our various units, and mine at the time was focused on our work on human rights in the U.S., and we figured the Chinese would appreciate the fact that we criticized our own country (this was before Bush gave us much more material to work with) as well as theirs.

For some reason, I was a little late for the meeting, so I entered our conference room and took my seat at one end of the big table (which had originally been at Random House, where our founder, Robert L. Bernstein, had been President, so many famous authors and human rights figures like Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel had sat around it).  Restless waiting for my turn, I fidgeted in my seat a bit, and at one point (I was certainly not conscious of this at the time), apparently I rocked back in my chair, pushing my foot against the table.  Probably too casual a gesture (I also tend to sling my leg over the sofa during business meetings, etc.), and my mother would chastise me, as she has all my life for transgressions like making too much noise eating potato chips), but I certainly had no intention of creating a major international diplomatic incident.

It came my time to speak.  I made a nice little presentation about our U.S. human rights work.  The Chinese looked grim.  Then when I finished the head of the Chinese delegation cleared his throat and addressed whoever was running the meeting for Human Rights Watch, probably Executive Director Ken Roth.

"We have been all over the United States this week.  We have met with members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.  And no one," he said, pointing at me, " has shown us the disrespect of exposing the sole of his shoe to us."

I wanted to slink under the table.  I don't remember what followed -- profuse apologies from Ken and me, the Chinese somberly nodding and moving on, probably.  Later colleagues assured me that they were overplaying the thing, they were uhappy with us for other reasons and wanted to score a point.  But I felt like an idiot.

Of course, THROWING your shoe at a head of state is a perfectly appropriate way of expressing opposition to a government's policies.

Dreams of a nerd

This one, from last night:  somehow I am in a room with Eisenhower, Truman and FDR, and some of their wives.  They are watching television, I think.  Someone introduces me as a visitor from the future.  Eisenhower asks me how Albert Dawes is doing on the Supreme Court.  Now Albert Dawes is a composer, there is a Charles Dawes who was Wilson's Vice-President, I believe.  But then again FDR, Eisenhower and Truman never sat around watching television.

Obama and the left

As the Obama Administration has in recent days taken a couple of steps in the civil liberties/national security area  – trying to block the release of torture photos and declaring an intent to retain some form of military commissions for terror suspects (while considering a system of preventive detention), the media has had some fun with a story line about the left’s “souring,” as Politico put it, on President Obama.  There were similar stories in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.  As someone who spends a fair amount of time with a pretty broad spectrum of the so-called left, I think it’s a bogus narrative, and moreover reveals some uncomfortable realities about which people are perceived to speak for the left and what issues they consider important.

I should say first off that while I think the President was dealt an awful hand on Guantanamo, military commissions, the misdeeds of the prior administration and the like, I do have some serious concerns about the discontinuity in several areas between his policies in this realm and those of the Bush Administration.  I wouldn’t use the kind of language in condemning them that the Center for Constitutional Rights and, until this morning, the ACLU has been using, both because I think that is counterproductive and, more importantly, fails to recognize real and profound differences both in policy and tone.  But I think there are genuine concerns, and the human rights and civil liberties groups should continue to do their job and hold the Administration accountable.  It is not their job to worry about the political environment in which Obama is operating.

That said, there is something a little strange about a situation in which the President gives a thoughtful, passionate and eloquent speech on terrorism, national security and human rights, which he did today, which is extremely forceful in its reiteration of the end to torture and the closing of Guantanamo, despite the drumbeat of criticism he is getting from the right, and two things happen.  First, TPM Café, to take one prominent blog of the left, reports all day a steady parade of dismay from human rights and civil liberties organizations.  Second, Dick Cheney in his speech just following Obama’s, and Rush Limbaugh on his radio show this afternoon, essentially accuse the President of waving a white flag to Al Qaeda.  Both were categorical and withering in their attacks.  They heard the same speech that, say, Michael Ratner of CCR did.  Go figure.

Bottom line in terms of Obama’s leadership is that most people are likely to think he got it right, and is striking the right balance, in the metaphor he seems to favor.  I think for various reasons he strikes the balance too heavily on the alleged security side – the torture photos are going to come out anyway some way or another, and why be on the wrong side of that; we have a perfectly good judicial system to try suspected terrorists; long-term preventive detention violates core notions of human rights and due process – but I think he makes a thoughtful case, in the context of principles and values that I have come to trust in him, for why he lands where he does, and what he plans to do to safeguard rights given the choices he is making.  David Cole, no civil liberties slouch, says as much in a Times blog post today.  So let the fights go on, and I hope our civil liberties advocates win most of them and that they don’t have to find themselves too often in opposition to the President.

What I object to, though, and this is the point of the post that I am only now, quite long-windedly getting to, is the characterization of this important debate as an abandonment or betrayal of the left by Obama.  Here’s why.

In the first place, though other critics of the Administration’s civil liberties/security policies may not agree with me, I think Obama and the people around him are operating in entirely good faith.  This is not some kind of political triangulation, a Sister Souljah moment designed to show the broader public that Obama can smack down his friends – the kind of false test the center-right is always demanding of progressive politicians.  Obama has genuine real-world issues to balance, and I have no reason to believe he has not arrived at his few possibly mistaken decisions genuinely and in a typically thoughtful and engaged manner.

Second, who decided that the civil liberties of suspected terrorists – the toughest cases for almost anyone to figure out – are the make-or-break issue for “the left?”  Here we have an Administration that is making an all-out effort to pass national health care, and is nearer to getting it, or something close to it, than we have ever been, despite being in the middle of an economic crisis.  The stimulus package and the proposed budget constitute the largest shift in social welfare policy – the strongest series of steps to protect poor and working people – since the Great Society over forty years ago.  The long-delayed children’s health insurance bill was signed into law, and with the full inclusion of immigrant children, thanks to the leadership shown by the White House.  Great strides have been taken in changing our idiotic Cuba policy, with barely a whimper, thanks to Obama’s exquisite sense of timing, and we are moving on various fronts to talk with our adversaries and deal respectfully with parts of the world given the back of America’s hand by the Bush Adminstration.  The EPA and Interior Department have taken step after step to strengthen environmental standards and conservation, after years of a government which substantially dismantled regulations.  I could go on and on.

There is a category of concern among progressives that is not so much about where Obama comes out as about whether he is moving quickly or deliberately enough.  Despite being behind the tide of history, no one seems to fault him on his opposition to same-sex marriage.  But there are other obviously wrongheaded policies, like the ban on gays in the military, that he has not yet moved to reverse, despite declaring his intent to do so.  A number of steps, including the one I mentioned above on child health insurance, have been taken to bring about a more humane approach to the treatment of immigrants, but immigration reform is still in the pipeline.  He’s outspokenly pro-choice, and repealed the global gag rule on his second day in office, but has not moved on promised pro-choice legislation.  Same is true with respect to labor and the Employee Free Choice Act.  On all these matters, time will tell.  At this moment I choose to trust Obama’s intentions while working to create a climate in which he will have the room – and face the pressure, where necessary – to do the right thing.  He is doing so many other things at once, particularly on key issues of vital importance to poor people, that it is hard to fault Obama for not moving more quickly on immigration reform or a few other matters that are guaranteed red meat for the far right.  To judge from the Cuba policy and a number of other issues, the President has a better sense of timing than most of his critics.  (Not to mention a more genuinely democratic base of support, and a considerably more diverse Cabinet and White House staff than virtually any institution in the “progressive infrastructure,” but I’ll leave that discussion to another day.)

Another development that seems to be causing anxiety among some progressives is the Supreme Court vacancy created by David Souter’s resignation.  Here no one expects the President to appoint someone hostile to civil rights and liberties, but there are a number of voices calling on him to begin to counter the forty-year rightward trend on the court by selecting someone of avowedly liberal views, someone who will be a balance to Scalia and Thomas, even if their voice may be raised for many years in dissent.  I certainly think the court needs that, and over his four or eight-year opportunity to shape the court, I hope the President makes some picks like that – Harold Koh, for example, once he’s spent some time at the State Department.  But I think it’s unlikely he’ll do so now, guaranteeing a battle royal in the Senate when he is trying to move health care, the budget and other matters.  And by temperament and instinct, Obama doesn’t seem to think that way.  That’s fine with me.  But if it ends up as Elena Kagan or a similarly non-ideological warrior, I expect many of my fellow progressives to cluck about missed opportunities.

If I have any significant zone of worry about the Obama administration, it is not so much about discontinuity in national security policies as discontinuity in financial and banking policies.  Some good steps have been taken, like the credit card reform bill he is about to sign (despite its being saddled with appalling pro-gun provisions, since Western and Southern Democrats are no less in thrall to the NRA than Republicans), but I have a lot of disquiet about the Summers/Geithner axis and the possibility that the markets will recover, if not thrive for some time, without the necessary corrective actions to an out-of-control financial sector that thse guys had as much as anyone to do with creating, without genuine accountability, without recovery in the “real” economy.  We have progressive institutions that are strong and vocal on human rights and civil liberties, and that is vitally important.  But we lack the voices on economic justice, or the voices that are there lack the access to media.  Not to mention the fact that the policy infrastructure, the parallel universe of ideas to Rubinomics, has also suffered from underinvestment.

If what the left in America is most concerned about is poverty and inequality, Obama is shaping up as an extraordinary champion and deserves more vocal support. But that the media, looking as always for an intramural fight, focuses instead on an important but limited set of issues that have to do with identity and rights (and readers of this blog or anything else I’ve written and done for thirty years should know that I don’t have to establish my bona fides on those matters), and can find dissatisfaction there, it is because what they see as the principal organs of the left have little to say or do about the issues of most concern to the lives of poor and working people.  We have lost ground steadily in debates over the Supreme Court, and the role of judges generally in recent decades, because we have allowed those debates to be framed almost entirely in terms of issues like separation of church and state or abortion.  I want a court that forcefully upholds those rights. But I also want one that is, as the President has put it to the derision of the right, “empathetic” to those who have been economically marginalized in a society all of whose key institutions have steadily sided in recent years with the rich against the poor.  If we can get people to care about the Supreme Court not just because it is going to stop some Alabama judge from putting the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn, not just because it is going to force the government to treat a suspected terrorist more fairly, but also because the court has a critical role to play in fairness for working people, we will have made a genuine and important change in this country’s politics.

Because I think Obama has a deep understanding of all this, despite doing some things – and he will do more, no doubt – that we may be bound to oppose, I have more confidence in him at this juncture than in most of his liberal critics.  So this is one fairly satisfied liberal (or whatever we call ourselves these days) right now.

An App a Day

I got an iPhone a few months ago, and like many new users I am still a bit in thrall to it (having gotten past the awkwardness of the touchpad keyboard, but not past the inadequacy of the battery). I have downloaded dozens of applications, some of which make life much easier (I can blog or Twitter from the iPhone, find a restaurant table or movie, make a Skype call, continue reading a Kindle book already synchronized with the Kindle itself, add to my Amazon wishlist or Netflix queue, etc.  )

Some applications are absolutely without redeeming social value but cool, like iSteam, which steams over photographs like a bathroom mirror when you are taking a shower . You can rub off the steam by running a finger across the screen, or steam it up again by blowing into the microphone.  Many people have Shazam, which you hold up to the radio when there is a song on you can't think of the name of.  It scans its database and nine times of ten comes up with it, and then you can go right to iTunes and download it.  It's like something out of "24."  Someone just turned me on to Slydial, which you can use to call someone and go straight into their voicemail ("Hi, it's me. Pick up!  OK, I guess you're not there, which is too bad, because I was hoping to have a direct and personal discussion with you about the need for us to break up/our decision not to give you the grant/why you haven't received my payment yet, etc.")

I haven't really used, but am comforted by the fact that I have Sit or Squat, which uses GPS and a Wiki approach to let you know where the nearest free public restroom (or, if you are in the Congo or the Australian outback, squatting hole) is.  And now I have Peterson's Guide to Backyard Birds, which will tell you what is sitting on the branch outside your window and even play their distinctive call for you.

They say young techies who develop iPhone applications are among the few people in this economy making any money.  So I am trying to dream up new applications.  When I was in Florida, I thought a good one might be Gator Alert.  They could tag all the alligators (or is it crocodiles?) in Florida and use GPS to let you know how close you are to one.  That one I would even pay for.

Wait: Barney Fife Wasn't Jewish?

From TPM DC, this item:

Arkansas state Sen. Kim Hendren, who is currently the only announced Republican candidate for U.S. Senator against Democratic incumbent Blanche Lincoln in 2010, has apologized for referring to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as "that Jew," at a county Republican meeting last week.

"I don't use a teleprompter and occasionally I put my foot in my month," Hendren told Arkansas blogger Jason Tolbert.

"At the meeting I was attempting to explain that unlike Sen. Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on 'The Andy Griffith Show,'" he explained. "I made the mistake of referring to Sen. Schumer as 'that Jew' and I should not have put it that way as this took away from what I was trying to say."

Late Update: Hendren gave a further apology to the Associated Press. "When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn't because I don't like Jewish people," he said. He also added: "I shouldn't have gotten into this Jewish business because it distracts from the issue."

Not so funny, really. Every once in a while you get a glimpse of what too many people in the country really think.  In case you ever wonder why Barack Obama got only 53% of the vote.

 

Scenes from a morning walk in Rome

Typepad, my blogging service, is acting up, as it has a tendency to do lately -- I am either going to have to find time to complain to their tech people or switch to another service -- so after several failed attempts (in the Rome Fiumicino airport after a plate of spaghetti puttanesca and nursing a small bottle of Orvieto Classic0)  I am going to have to forgo my witty text and commentary and just show you the pictures.  Sorry.