Since all my predictions about Obama made back in November, when the press was calling him dead in the water (look it up!) have all come true. (Win Iowa , lose New Hampshire, win nomination) I know the world will be hanging on this one, made shortly before noon Tuesday August 19.
(Okay I did, at a later date, predict Jim Webb as veep choice and that seems unlikely. He withdrew his name, though I wouldn’t rule out him being “persuaded”.)
But I do have a strong feeling now that if Obama is as smart and shrewd as I think he is (no drama, but no dreamer) and he wants gravitas, especially in the wake of Georgia, Russia and all that, he’ll have made up his mind when that mini war broke out last Friday. And would have chosen Sam Nunn.
Nunn’s flown under the radar for a lot of folk in the past decade, but he’s doggedly devoted himself to a forgotten but all-important cause: the reduction of nuclear weapons, security of the nuclear arsenals that remain, relentless attention to non proliferation. His Nuclear Threat Initiative organization has kept its eye on the prize–making us more secure in a proliferating nuclear environment–while nobody else has paid nearly enough attention to it.
It has meant that Nunn knows Russia, he’s dealt with civilian and military authorities on all levels for a decade. He’s someone who must distrust Putin, who won’t be fooled by him, but who can probably hit the ground running as the most knowledgeable person about dealing with him. And with his nukes. And with all the other nukes floating around.
So that’s my prediction: the choice of Nunn will be hailed as brilliant. And it will be.
But the choice of Biden? For gravitas? Give me a break. I’ll never forget sitting in the Senate gallery before an important (to those of us who care about civil liberties) vote on an idiot flag burning bill meant to pander to those historically ignorant enough not to realize America was founded by dissidents who wouldn’t bow down to a graven image.
Biden had co sponsored it in an attempt, supposedly, to head off a Constitutional Amendment. Bob Kerrey, who lost a leg in Vietnam–for love of country not a painted piece of cloth–wasn’t going along with this cynical ploy.
Anyway down on the Senate floor, shortly before Kerrey was to give a brilliant speech on the question, Biden came up to Kerrey and in an oil way put his arm around Kerrey as if, it’s all politics, and I thought I saw Kerrey cringe.
I wouldn’t blame him. Biden’s sagacity and earnestness act would only go over in the class of dummies that is the U.S. Senate.
If Obama doesn’t pick Nunn, he’ll have missed an opportunity. But go to that website anyway. You may not agree with his approach to the long obscured nuclear dilemmas we face, but it might shake you out of a state of denial. Props to Nunn for sticking with it.
Do you think the timing was accidental? While they shilled for the Party of mass murderers in China, the Olypmics served as a useful diversion for the Putinizing of Georgia. Wasn’t it convenient that Putin had George Bush where he wanted him, in the weirdly powerful KGB mental karate powerlock of his gaze. (Remember Bush’s pathetic “I looked into his eyes and knew I could trust him”?).
Once again–and I’m certain it entered into Putin’s calculations–the whole world was pretending to be celebrating the oneness of the human spirit–and thus much too busy to pay attention to the crushing of a democratic nation. The media as usual was complicit in not wishing to let a potentially world-changing tragedy to distract it very much. Come on! The U.S. swim team is piling up the gold!
Meanwhile the bodies are piling up on the streets of Georgia. All hail the Olympic spirit!
Probably not. But I bet the thought has crossed her mind, certainly Bill’s bitter brain. The thought first crossed my mind when as far back as May, the issue of whether she would allow herself to be nominated and let her delegates vote for her was raised and not resolved. In fact I raised it even earlier than that in a post here about why Hillary kept hanging on after the numbers were against her. I’d suggested she wanted the historic and symbolic meaningfulness of allowing her self to be nominated at the convention, allowing her near-majority of delegates to demonstrate their strength (for a national television audience, for the future) and as a milestone for women in politics.
Then, when the numbers clearly indicated she lost and she sort of conceded, the question of whether she’d still have her name put in nomination just hung there. Was it a requirement of the primary system that her pledged delegates vote for her at the convention. And if it wasn’t a requirement that pledged delegates vote for whom they were selected then Obama’s delegates were free to change their minds weren’t they? Seemed like an opening.
At first I thought one aspect of Obama’s foreign trip was to demonstrate to the world that the nomination was signed, sealed and delivered. But don’t forget we’re dealing with the Clintons, and the foreign trip may have backfired in the polls.
And now Obama’s people have announced that they want the Florida and Michigan results fully counted, not cut in half. Which means that in some calculations Hillary moves ahead in the primary popular vote count, and closer in the delegate count.
And then the clincher for me: Hillary publicly declared “I don’t want to be nominated.” Translation in Hillary speak: “I have to say this, but what I’m really saying is that there’s nothing to bar me from being nominated”–otherwise why so conspicuously beg her supporters not to, unless she wanted to remind them that they could–”and so if some of you PUMAS out there want to nominate me and see if by then some super delegates, even pledged delegates have changed their mind and want to get a kind of Wendall Willie draft thing going, well gosh, I guess I’d have to respect their fervor. After all I asked them not to, but I can’t help it if they love me and feel I’ll be better for the party.”
And now two weeks before the convention the matter has still not been resolved and more people are beginning to wonder if her failure to close off the option is part of a deliberate strategy. See this piece in the American Thinker.
I don’t think there’s a realistic possibility, but it’s clear the Clintons are positioning themselves in case lightning strikes in some form. Cue the (false) ending of every horror movie ever made where things seem safe at last.
In any case if she’s not plotting to steal the nomination, she should immediately say to her delegates, I release you from your pledge, all I want is a prime time speech. But even if she does, you know that in a certain part of her mind she’s maintaining the “audacity of hope”.
\ I was going to write about it earlier this year when the news emerged that the government had paid off the former chief anthrax “person of interest”, Steven Hatfill, $5.8 million dollars for subjecting him to what they admitted was wrongful suspicion. I was going to write about the “Shakespeare Connection”.
But I wasn’t sure if would be beating a dead horse: said metaphorical horse being the pseudo-science of “forensic linguistics” promoted by so called “Shakespeare Super Sleuth” Don Foster, the Vassar professor who gave us the “The Great Shakespeare ‘Funeral Elegy’ Fiasco” as I called it in The Shakespeare Wars. Foster used the fame from his later-discredited claim that he had identified a previously unrecognized long poem–a barely readable 600 line snoozathon–as a lost work of Shakespeare’ it became a foundation for a self-promoting career as a “super sleuth”, in high-profile criminal cases which featured Foster claiming his “science” of “foresnic linguisitcs” couild identify the lingusitic “fingerprints” of potential suspects, and nail them for a crime they might otherwise have gotten away with.
One problem. He was often wrong. He was wrong about the wretched poem he claimed he found Shakespeare’s fingerprints in. He was wrong in the Jon Benet case, wrong in somehow convincing Vanity Fair that he could shed light on the anthrax case. Poor gullible VF (disclosure: I wrote for them regularly and feel bad theyapparently allowed Foster to convince them he had any particular crime solving skills).
Especially with the revelation in today’s Times about VF and their “super sleuth”.
It turns out Foster had been forced to retract his Shakespearean claim, thus pulling the rug out of the inflated self-image he ‘d built upon it. And now it turns out that he has retracted his Vanity Fair story and that he and VF have had to apologize for Foster’s article.
According to today’s (August 2, 2008)’s Times :
Dr. Hatfill also sued Vanity Fair for publishing along with Reader’s Digest which published a condensed version. As part of a 2007 settlement, other terms of which were confidential, the defendants issued a statement retracting any implication that Dr. Hatfill had been behind the attacks.”
Amazing! Why haven’t we heard about this latest Don Foster retraction? (I published excerpts from the first one in my book).* What is the text of the retraction? “Confidential terms:” suggests money was aid too. How much responsibility did Foster take? Didn’t anybody at least Google his past failures?
A question better asked about whoever, if any, anthrax investigators cooperated with Foster and took his “forensic linguistics” seriously. For all we know it could be the endorsement of Foster’s “science” that kept the government on the trail of the wrong suspect. Old fashioned investigators always seem to be intimidated by those who used computers and Foster frquently claimed computer basis for his “forensic lingusitics” claims.
But there may be more to it. I found myself fascinated by this Glenn Greenwald article. which makes a pretty persuasive case that the pre-suicide scientist, Bruce Ivins was at the very least involved in spinning the investigation, spreading false information that would link the genomic “fingerprints” of the anthrax to Iraq. (The “bentonite clue” for those of you who have read the Greenwald piece.) Greenwald wants to know if the sources who fed ABC News (lead Hatfill accuser in the media, were part of a disinformation conspiracy. Could Ivins have been a part? Could Ivins have been a source for the Foster/VF piece. If not then who? Foster and VF could help solve the crime and reveal if there were people in the government invovled in spreading deliberate disinformation that added its weight to the false intelligence about Iraqi WMD that helped to lead us into war.
I found Greenwald’s insistence that the ABC news investigative team give up its sources if it turns out they were deliberate liars, persuasive but problematic, since I’m against reporters being forced to reveal sources by the government</em. But looked at another way they may be sitting on a big news story and that voluntary disclosure that they’d been tricked might be valuable to closing the case, especially if Ivins was a source.
it seems to me that VF should, at the very least, question Foster about whether Ivins was a source and then consider voluntary disclosure if he was. Better for them to quiz Foster before the Feds decide to quiz them about his sources.
It’s too bad because I’ve come to feel a kind of fondness for Foster who gave me such a great character, and chapter, for my book. Perfectly illustrated the perils of Shakeseare intoxication.
Was Foster merely misled by vanity, as he appeared to be with Shakespeare and Jon Benet (bet you never thought you ‘d hear those two in the same sentence). Or was he the vicitim of sinister forces.
Frankly, I think the “sinister force” may be the vengeful ghost of Shakespeare who put a curse on all future Foster endeavors because Foster tried to pin that wretched poem on him.
*UPDATE: (8/4): I see that Richard Fernandez in his thoughtful post on the subject has a link to a New York Sun story from February 2007, which quotes from the settlement Conde Nast agreed to on behalf of Foster and VF. According to The Sun this is the key portion:
“Neither Condé Nast Publications nor the article’s author intended to imply that they had concluded that Steven J. Hatfill, M.D., perpetrated the anthrax attacks that occurred in the United States in the fall of 2001. To the extent any statements contained in the article might be read to convey that Condé Nast and Prof. Foster were accusing Dr. Hatfill of perpetrating these attacks, Condé Nast and Prof. Foster retract any such implication,” the statement said. The statement from Reader’s Digest was essentially identical.
I don’t know about you, but Cheever gets to me. Maybe I’m a sucker for beautiful melancholy or melancholy beauty. I don’t know which the following passage is, but it always had a kind of power over me. The first words of Bullet Park:
‘Paint me a small railroad stattion, then, ten minutes before dark.”
Paint me: it suddenly occurred to me that he was addressing this to someone specific, to a painter. To Edward Hopper, the Cheever of the visual arts?
Because what follows is pure Hopper through the lense of Cheever:
Remember, the station ten minutes before dark. Ten minutes all too exactly!
“The architecture of the station is oddly informal, gloomy but unserious, and mostly resembles a pergola, cottage or summer house although this is a climate of harsh winters. The lamps along the platform burn with a nearly palpable plaintiveness. The setting seems in some way to be at the heart of the matter.”
The heart of the matter! Not an accident, I think more likely a conscious tribute to that other master of melancholy: Graham Greeene, in the title of (I believe) his greatest, indeed his most beautifully melancholy work.
And “the lamps along the platform…”. Kills me The palpable plaintiveness! Just so. I feel it all too often. For a while after my intitial enchantment with Cheever, I allowed the disenchantment, the alcoholism of the journals, etc. make me think he was “merely” the poet of the hangover. But he’s so much more. His hangovers like Greene’s are painfully spirtual, or rather trials of the spirit. Agony of the soul that no Alka-seltzer can salve.
“You wake in a Pullman bedroom at three a.m. in a city the name of which you do not know and may never discover. A man stands on a platform with a child on his shoulders. They are waving good bye to some traveler, but what is the child doing up so late, and why is the man crying?”
Unbearable. But unbelievably beautiful in some sad way too: the masterful compression of that station platform tableau. A novel in itself.
And as if to numb us to the pain he draws back:
“On a siding beyond the platform there is a lighted dining car where a waiter sits alone at a table adding up his accounts. Beyond this is a water tower and beyond this is a well-lighted and empty street.”
Whew.The journey through the hell of melancholy is over. You’ve come to the “well lighted and empty street”. A tirubte to “A Clean Well Lighted Place”? A respite from darkness and the sorrow of human being.
I don’t know. I think it’s somehow beautiful if only in its truth.
I know this is the fourth or fifth time I’ve done a post saying basically the same thing in different ways, but nobody’s done anything about it and there’s still time, but time is running out.
The jailing of a blogger/dissident yesterday by Chinese authorities as part of their on- going pre Olympic dissident-cleansing campaign is somethiing that should be of particular concern to all bloggers of all ideologies in addition to free speech and human rights activists.
Once again: follow the money. The networks and advertisers are betting they’ll cash in big on the fascist Olympics (a phrase I use because the hysterical worship of physical perfection has always been a characteristic of fascism, and because China is a police state regime which demands idolatry of the party, another key fascist trait).
If enough millions of people register displeasure at the networks and advertisers becoming enablers of police state terror with the advertisers and networs, and threaten to boycott their products in the market place as well as their tainted spectacle on tv, the result might at least force the release of dissidents such as those in the article I linked to. Maybe more. Maybe less, but shouldn’t we try?
What is needed is a central website for citizens to make their boycott pledge, asap. Where are the wizard techies who could put this together?
I’m so glad my colleage Emily Yoffe at Slate called my attention to this column by Mona Charen about the Israaeli Hezbullah “exchange. You know all the ones the defenders of “even handedness”, diplomacy, moral equivalence were all so excited about. A real breakthrough for peace.
The Israelis got back the remains of two dead bodies kidnaped by the Lebanese wing of Hezbullah, the loathesome band of psychopathic murderers sponsored by Iran. The Israelis gave back alive this unspeakable excuse for a human being who—in 1979– snuck into Israel invaded a family’s home, killed the father in front of his four year old daughter’s eyes. Then oh-so-bravely–a real credit to his faith–killed the helpless four year old (the coward was obviously threatened by her) by smashing her head with a rifle butt.
And when he was returned to Lebanon he was greeted as a national hero by a nation of cheering crowds. As Mona Charen asks, “What kind of people celebrate a child murderer?”
One answer is: this is the kind of people Israel is supposed to trust its security and its children to by bargaining as if they were dealing with human beings. To all of those who call for “sacrifices on both sides for peace”, and blame “both sides” for the endless conflict think about your own moral stance. You are arguing we should be treating cold blooded child murderers and the nations who celebrate them them as your equals.Until you dissociate yourself from them, metaphorically, they are.
Sorry, I don’t care how “dark’ and “deeply sophisticated” pop culture critics” call it, how deeply darkly and darkly and deeply serious they want us to believe it is, so they can reserve both their aura of intellectual sophistication and their pop cult street cred, . I don’t care how “iconic” comic book heroes have become. At a certain point even super aware cultural critics like myself who revel in rock and tv have to draw a line, however lonely it is on this side of it. I’ve always thought one sure way of spotting a pseud when it comes to cultural critics is the over-praise he or she devotes to comic book super hero movies.
Have you ever in your life seen alleged cultural critics mimic each other or try to out do each other in terrifiedly telling us how horrifically dark the new Batman: The Dark Knight will be. (it opens today). Why it even has “dark” in the title Knight(Knight=night, get it) for the clueless, but the air off over-over excitement, over statement, over-gush that has preceded this film is vritually sickening in its athletic self mimicry.
Oooh. it’s a comic book franchise but it’s like, really, really dark. Scary kids! But (don’t tell the kids) it’s really made for subtler sophisticated adults like us our nations staunch and hardy pop culture critics who can look into the heart of darkness and see…Batman.
Oh right, it’s got Heath Ledger and he plays a scary clown. Whoever would have thought of it before, a scary clown. Clowns are suosed to be funny! So ironic!! He’s already been handed not just a posthumous Oscar but pretty much a Nobel prize for Scary Clowns.
Jeez. go read a book or something (remember them). or see a brilliant smart, truly dark movie (Double Indemnity, Chinatown again. It’s sad to see desparate critics so undernourished by crap international CGI fare and super advanced cartoons that they clutch for dear life onto something that is marketed to them by clever studio as “dark”. You could watch the advance hype build and the suckers all climb on the choo choo to “darkness”. Sad that one has to depend on something like this to be the intellectual high point of your (writing) summer. At least the audiences have, you know, lives. It’s not their profession to take this seriously. (That’s dark.)
But it goes beyond just this film, which by the way, I’m sure is very, very dark. It probably makes Dostoevesky look like Archie&Veronica. But why not give the big D. himself a try first, (or at least Conrad) then you might get a sense of proportion. Wouldn’t be blown away by a comic book movie.
Still I must admit that it’s not just Batman or super hero movies: I hate all super heroes in general, in particular the cult of super hero comics as Something More than they are, fun for kids. Don’t get me wrong I read Superman comix as a kid, but the only thing I took away from it that was anyway original or thought provoking was the concept of “Bizarro world”–the badly drawn, cracked mirror image of the comic book “real world”. In Bizarro world super powers are all a joke.
Let’s face it we all livein “bizarro world”. That’s the way the real world is! That’s the thing that those who worship the “darkness” of really, really, really, “dark” Batman movies won’t admit. That the movie I’d like to see.
If I want truly scary this summer I’ll go see the Abba movie. Meanwhile the only super hero movies I’ll watch are the ones (re)done by “Mystery Science Theater 3000″. Anybody seen their Santa Claus Versus the Martains? Unbelieveably hilarious. Far more brilliant than any Batman movie you’ll see even if they take dark to the nth power. I won’t spoil the ending for you.
A commenter justly calls me to task for typos and and asks why. (In the last post I left the second “p” out of purportedly. I won’t make any wisecracks about people not being able to figure it out, the commenter is correct in that it looks “unprofessional” and I’ve corrected it. (Or “unrofessional” as I originally had it.)
The mechanical reason is that the “p” key on my iBook has come unmoored and all “p”s require a greater effort to make them register. (Does anyone else have this experience: that iBooks begin to fall apart after 3 years and the extended warranties run out, and the best option then becomes not to repair, but to buy a new one? Wonder why?
But I have been negligent in using spell-check in part (originally “in art”) because I’ve been trying to do shorter posts, thinking that I’ll do them more frequently. But I think I only have a certain number of ideas that I don’t think are obvious, run of the mill and are worth bothering readers with. Many bloggers don’t allow this to inhibit them, I just can’t write anything for the sake of writing something.
And so when I do get an idea I think is a blog item I race to get it on the screen, on to the site in the improvisational, yes sometimes unprofessional way, that I thought was part of the spirit of blogging. Different from journalism and book writing that goes through layers of copy-editors, editors, proofreaders, all to the good for the most part. But different. More considered obviously. I think the form is designed for the not-too-over-considered and subsequent re thinking. Sharing first draft thoughts with readers and getting their reaction. I maintain that my misspellings are a sign of this blog’s un mediated authenticity! (only half-serious here)
Nonetheless I don’t think this is a widely shared attitude, or anyway when misspellings become frequent, some people’s tolerance for what I regard as the Kerouac-like immediacy of the blog can become irritating. So I will give in to The Man, if that’s what you want and go back to spellcheck, however much it inhibits my spontaneous creativity. (Kidding!) But interesting that Safari spellcheck still considers : “blog” and “bloggers” misspellings. And as I point out in discussing the blogger morphing of “teh” from misprint to deliberate alternative specifiersometimes typos can take on a life and dignity of their own.
BTW, iBook users, I’d like to hear if your machines start falling apart like clock-work after three years.
Have you been following the hacker-caused furor over the latest manifestation of the “Stormworm” virus? It seems that they’ve devised an ingenious temptation to click on their virus-infected video link. They send out mass emails with subject lines that seem to be news stories about the beginning of the Third World War, purportedly a U.S. invasion of Iran that has already involved nuclear detonations. If you open it, inside they invite you to click on the infected video link to see the mushroom clouds.
A list of “stormworm” World War III subject lines has been circulating among cyber security websites. It includes the following:
Here are some of the subject headings:
Iran USA conflict developed into war
More than 10000 Iranians were murdered
Negotiations between USA and Iran ended in War
Occupation of Iran
Plans for Iran attack began
The Iran’s Leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Jihad to USA
The World War III has already begun
The begining of The World War III
The military operation in Iran has begun
The secret war against Iran
Third War in Iran
Third World War has begun
US Army crossed Iran’s borders
US Army invaded Iran
US army is about 20 kilometers from Tegeran
US soldiers occupied Iran
USA attacked Iran
USA declares war on Iran
USA occupeid Iran
USA unleashed war on Iran
War between USA&Iran
War with Iran is the reality now
Washington prefers to shoot first
The following is a selection of the body text:
20000 US soldiers in Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
Iran USA conflict developed into war http://xxxxxxxx.com/
More than 10000 Iranians were murdered http://xxxxxxxx.com/
Negotiations between USA and Iran ended in War http://xxxxxxxx.com/
Occupation of Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
Plans for Iran attack began http://xxxxxxxx.com/
The World War III has already begun http://xxxxxxxx.com/
The begining of The World War III http://xxxxxxxx.com/
The military operation in Iran has begun http://xxxxxxxx.com/
The secret war against Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
Third War in Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
Third World War has begun http://xxxxxxxx.com/
US Army crossed Iran’s borders http://xxxxxxxx.com/
US Army invaded Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
US army is about 20 kilometers from Tegeran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
US soldiers occupied Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
USA attacked Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
USA declares war on Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
USA occupeid Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
USA unleashed war on Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
War between USA&Iran http://xxxxxxxx.com/
War with Iran is the reality now http://xxxxxxxx.com/
Washington prefers to shoot first http://xxxxxxxx.com/
it’s almost an incantation of tribal fears. Almost like the EKG of that subdomain of the collective Unconscious where we collectively repress our nuclear war fears.
So here’s my question: what would be your first e mail of the apocalypse.How would you imagine the start? What would you say to a friend or lover, if you’d just heard a bulletin that nuclear detonations had begun? What would you put in the subject line? And/or what would you put in the body of the text, if it looked like the long goodbye was upon us?
…a thrilling personal confrontation…The Shakespeare Wars comes to us in waves of new revelations —Billy Collins, former U.S. poet laureate
Acclaimed journalist Ron Rosenbaum wrestles with the weightiest issues of Shakespeare studies in a down-to-earth manner that readers will applaud. —Publisher’s Weekly
Cultural journalism of the highest order. —Kirkus Reviews
Timely not least for the economy and clarity with which he outlines the casus belli…with Rosenbaum’s dispatches we now have a better sense of what the fuss is about. —John Sutherland, The Financial Times
A remarkable journey by one of the most original journalists and writers of our time. —David Remnick
A work of importance and fascination. —George Steiner, the [U.K.] Observer
A provacative work of cultural history that is as compelling as it is thoughtful, as readable as it is smart..Mr. Rosenbaum has made an important contribution to our understanding not just of Hitler, but of the cultural processes by which we try to come to terms with history as well… He has written an exciting, lucid book. —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Intriguing, thought provoking and intelligent. —Ian Kershaw in The Guardian [U.k.]
Brilliant…restlessly probing and deeply intelligent. —Lance Morrow, Time
In Explaining Hitler, profound historical questions spring urgently and hauntingly to life. —Sam Tanenhaus
Cultural criticism served up as riveting narrative history —Marc Fisher The Washington Post
Ron Rosenbaum is one of the great masters of the metaphysical detective story, a nonfiction writer in the spirit of Borges, Nabokov and Poe. —Errol Morris (director of The Fog of War)
Few journalists inspire the kind of cult following that Rosenbaum has —Scott McLemee Newsday
I plan on hanging Ron Rosenbaum’s ‘marriage proposal’ [column] in a prominent place. Should my husband begin to take me for granted, he will be reminded that I am not without options. —Rosanne Cash
You made me look like a f_____g lunatic. —Oliver Stone
ALSO AVAILABLE (an anthology of others’ work): Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism
Bi-weekly Spectator columnist at Slate
BUY The Shakespeare Wars
BUY Explaining Hitler
BUY The Secret Parts of Fortune
