MWF

Please click here for my current blog:

2010-03-05T16:49:00.019-05:00

I am no longer located here. Click above for my new blog. --AI

Time for a change ...

2010-03-05T14:57:00.003-05:00

As some of you know, last summer I used my meager HTML skills to redesign this Web site to fit the vision I had always had for it. I really hate templates and I was SO happy to finally have a look that I was proud of. Unfortunately, I redesigned it in a way that made it looked all kinds of fucked up on every other computer in the world. I've been tinkering with it for months but just can't seem to get it right. I could get someone to fix it but it's looking like it would be more trouble than it's worth (if you're interested, though, be my guest ... I have cash). Short of professional help, however, I've finally decided just to make a clean break and, for now, let someone who knows what he/she is doing design my blog for me. The picture you see above is what I've looked at every day ... and as much as I hate to see it go, it's time to admit that NO ONE ELSE is seeing it. (There's a good, Virginia Woolf–esque life lesson in that, I'm sure.) So join me, if you will, in saying good luck and so long to MWF (I'm getting sick of that name, too, by the way) and joining me over at its successor, There's Himself: The Blog of Andrew Ivers. The blog you see before you (formerly Rags & Bones) has been around for three years, five months, and two hundred and sixty five posts. Although I hate to lose my niche in the blogosphere, I'm excited about having a site that people might start visiting again. You can expect the same kind of stuff—a lot of news, often if not daily, with my occasional commentary ... plus posts on film, literature, and other interesting stuff. And a decent essay thrown in at least once a month. Basically, an online version of my head. And, of course, you can read my book reviews (as soon as they exist) at The Middle East Reading Room, and my adventures in canonical literature at Litterae. So get your friends and come on other to thereshimself.com. It's time to get excited. MWF

Oscar rush

2010-03-04T18:15:00.005-05:00

Trying to get back into movies yet again. I just watched Nights of Cabiria, so my Netflix queue is finally moving again after about a month. Inglorious Basterds is coming tomorrow. I've heard pretty good stuff about it. And after that is Throne of Blood—just in time for a re-reading of Macbeth. Kurosawa is ALWAYS fun, but I've never seen this one. On the new movies front, I'm basically going down the list of movies at the local theaters: Crazy Heart, Single Man, Most Dangerous Man in America, Hurt Locker, Shutter Island, Ghost Writer, White Ribbon. I can tell instinctively that this is gonna be a be-as-impulsive-as-possible-for-as-long-as-you-can kind of situation ... so I'll just try to make the most of it. MWF

Up in the Air

2010-03-04T17:57:00.005-05:00

I've been meaning to write about this for a while too (in case it wasn't obvious, I'm only now making good on my promise to write more about movies). In the words of my illustrious film mentor, Avis Meyer, this film is a solid B. There are a lot of really good things about it, but nothing spectacular. George Clooney gives another hilarious performance, with great support from a handful of known and unknown talent. The direction is smooth, the story is tight, and the shooting location, well, PERFECT. I think my only problem with the movie is that the ending is way too vacuous. Clooney's character—even though he's set up as too naive to suspect an unhappy ending—seems far too capable and passionate (despite a veneer of blithe indifference) to doom himself to a drifter's demise. It just doesn't make sense. The movie builds you up for this Hollywood ending then tries to be all La Dolce Vita in the last ten minutes. It just doesn't wash. Still, it's worth seeing. Very entertaining. MWF

Why Avatar is a bad movie

2010-03-03T15:53:00.015-05:00

I've been meaning to write this for a couple of months, and with the Oscars coming up it's now or never. I'll say up front that I have pretty strict criteria when it comes to movies made for pure entertainment, so I don't have anything against people who enjoyed this. I also don't have that much against James Cameron for making it. I just think he's capable of making much better movies and I'm a little baffled that this is being billed as his masterpiece just because of its technological prowess (it isn't that hard to build a decent story around great effects—look at 2001 or Star Wars).

As critics and audiences have noted ad nauseam, this movie has almost no story. No original story anyway. If you've seen a certain cowboys-and-indians flick whose name need not be repeated, you already know—almost scene for scene—what is coming next. And without a story, Avatar becomes a three-hour phantasmagoria; the only thing that keeps you awake are the Lucasian gimmicks, a fact that in and of itself should settle the magnum opus debate. Even if the acting and directing were good, the story is so hollow it overshadows any other talent in the film. I might be alone in this, but when a movie has that much money and work put into it and still can't drum up a decent plot, it shows such a contempt for its audience that the best acting and directing in the world can't convince me the story's worth following.

What's especially frustrating about this is that Cameron can make amazing movies. Aliens and T2 remain riveting precisely because their stories have a masterful command of suspended disbelief. There really could be a race of super insects deep in outer space somewhere that would wreak havoc on the humans who encounter them; there really could be a computerized weapons system that becomes self-aware and turns on its masters. Avatar asks us to belief far too much: Humans encounter a race of beings on a planet just like Earth who live, point-for-point, in a way totally opposite than us. They have a literal symbiosis with their environment that mirrors the religious symbiosis professed by human naturalists and Native Americans. The plundering humans have the crass mindset of nineteenth-century imperialists, despite that it's the future and, Iraq War conspiracies aside, corporations haven't used the Marines to facilitate land-grabbing for about seventy-five years. Oh, and rather than encounter this other species face-to-face, there's elaborate new technology that turns us into them. Which takes years to make. AAAND the new guy is a cripple so his avatar is like a new body.

One god machine is usually too much for a top-tier movie. Avatar has a whole pantheon. Nothing about this story feels natural, even within the rather wide bounds of science fiction. It feels contrived to make a statement, which undercuts all of its grandeur.

To be fair to Mr. Cameron, Peter Jackson—with the help of Professor Tolkien—has ruined the sensibilities of most audiences. The Lord of the Rings movies have become the benchmark for epic fantasy on the big screen. But they're simply unbeatable if only because no one else in the last hundred years has told that kind of story quite so well as Tolkien. So directors get stuck mimicking him—or, in this case, just stealing another epic story and draping it over a new setting ... which would not be so horrible if any of it were reworked to fit the new setting.

This movie's gotten a lot of buzz—and nine nods—because James Cameron made it, but once the buzz has died away I can't imagine anyone going back to this in five or ten or fifteen years (there simply aren't any lasting qualities, just the rush of immediate spectacle). Here's hoping by then James Cameron will have bounced back with a film or two worth seeing. MWF

New Yorker win

2010-03-02T07:13:00.003-05:00

I had a teacher in high school who claimed he only read the New Yorker. I often dreamed about doing the same thing myself. This would definitely be the week to start. The March 1st issue has a fascinating review essay asking "Can psychiatry be a science?" (with a great closing line, btw), an article by Calvin Trillin (need I say more?) about an elusive Chinese chef, a report on politics in Ukraine, a profile of Paul Krugman, a column by Steve Coll, an Anthony Lane film review, and an article about some people living in the woods outside New York City. I mean, I'm going to be reading this all month! MWF

Blogging filler

2010-02-26T11:01:00.001-05:00

Been sick this week. And am kind of sick of news, too. I'm listening to Diane Rehm's Friday News Roundup (Hour 2: International News Roundup) for inspiration. MWF

Fixing the OLC

2010-02-23T12:13:00.002-05:00

Here's what Yale has to say about the Office of Legal Counsel debacle. I sure hope he's right. MWF

Bulletproof vest!

2010-02-22T19:29:00.007-05:00

My Heldref loyalty will be truly proven Wednesday night when I opt for a happy hour over a screening of A Fist Full of Dollars at the American Art Museum (click here). Does anyone know if this place has like a premo screen or just your standard art museum digital projector? I'm curious, at least for the future. Thanks, YouTube, for providing this temporary substitute for the coolness I'm about to miss. It's so wonderful to see these movies get their due. I have great memories of watching these with my dad and brother on weekend afternoons—and studying them when I really got into film in high school—but I feel like they're greatly neglected by most people these days. Maybe the whole post-apocalyptic/Cormac McCarthy craze will revive their popularity? One can only hope ... MWF

The boots on the ground

2010-02-22T19:03:00.003-05:00

Rajiv Chandrasekaran's profile of the Marines fighting on the ground in Marja. Worth reading. Some classic, Ernie Pyle–style reporting. Dozens and dozens of great pictures, too. MWF

Alexander Haig, Nixon aide, aged 85

2010-02-22T18:25:00.005-05:00

Alexander Haig died on Saturday. If you're not familiar with him, I recommend reading an obit or two (click here and here for the Post and the Times). He was a very interesting man. Kissinger remarked that during the "final days" period of the Nixon administration Haig—chief of staff after Bob Haldeman left the position in May 1973—held the country together while he, Kissinger, held the world together. He had a second bout with controversy during the Reagan administration. His confirmation as secretary of state was tumultuous—and he would only last eighteen months—but he had at least one memorable contribution: When Reagan was shot on in March 1981, Haig famously rushed to the Sit Room, telling the Washington press corps that until the vice president arrived back at the White House, "I am in control here" (a crisis later dramatized in a hilarious performance by Richard Dreyfuss):

All joking aside, however, he was a very fascinating man. And most conclude he was a pretty good egg. As the Post obit attests, his generally peaceful management of the Nixon downfall might well prove his greatest contribution to this country. MWF

The torture report

2010-02-22T15:09:00.009-05:00

Sullivan pickup from Isikoff on John Yoo and the executive powers debate/scandal—depending on your take—the latest chapter of which is a report issued last week from the Office of Professional Responsibility. If nothing else, it makes you wonder just how inadequate our law on this issue have become—and what's being done to fix them. (Yoo told OPR investigators that the president could legally authorize the massacre of an entire village.) Obviously no one's going to touch these guys: as Isikoff reports, the Justice Department declared last month that it has no standard by which to prosecute Yoo or his former boss, Jay Bybee. But what comes next? Truth and reconciliation? That's not really this country's style, unfortunately. Expanded congressional oversight or other legislation on the order of the 1973 War Powers Act? Probably not under this president—unless it suddenly becomes incredibly popular among Republicans. The real problem seems to be that this is everyone's purview and, thus, no one's.

It's clearly an executive prerogative, but the White House played this one so well in public that it gave the impression of considerable detachment between the legal advice and the policy—when, in fact, the latter was dictating the former (with all due respect to the vacuous precedent Yoo was working with), and the former, in turn, permitting the latter. And, of course, a third party actually did the deeds. The responsibility was spread so thin that no one has to own up to it. But that can't be the way to conduct state policy—even if we are going to use "enhanced interrogation."

Reading the news about the OPR report, I recalled a quote that James Traub points out in an upcoming article in World Affairs. Reacting to a controversial operation in Gaza, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni said (according to the U.N. report that has itself become a source of fierce debate), "[Israel] is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild—and this is a good thing." Traub uses this and a couple of other situations as case studies in the inadequacies of wartime law, and although he does not breach the issue of torture per se it's clearly in the same wheelhouse. In war there will always be a berserker contingent. The question is whether anyone cares to stop them—and whether you can fight a war without them.

James Fallows (thanks again, Mr. Sullivan) remarks that the OPR report will be our generation's Hiroshima (as in the book by New Yorker report John Hersey detailing the nuclear attack on the Japanese city on August 6, 1945). But that's a pretty grim assessment if you consider that, in the most important instances, the question of proportionality in war (which the bombing of Japan points up) remains largely academic—the kind of thing debated most by philosophy students. And, of course, most people condone Truman's decision. Unless politicians take it up as a major issue—there isn't going to be a trial or any other public event to stir up national interest—I'm really afraid this issue is going to slip away without ever being properly resolved. MWF

Third time ...

2010-02-22T14:50:00.003-05:00

I'm planning to get to the Shakespeare Theatre Company this week. They're putting on Richard II and Henry V (with Michael Hayden playing the title role of each). As readers of this blog probably know, I wasn't too happy with their recent As You Like It. Their Lear last summer wasn't too good, either. They only play they've really done well in recent memory was Twelfth Night, more than a year ago. I'm hoping a history (or two) might be different, though. And I'm also excited to see that the same guy who directed Twelfth Night last year will be doing Cymbeline next year. It's a late comedy that delivers much better than any of the others. But for now—tonight, I hope—it's Richard II. MWF

Red meat

2010-02-22T14:34:00.003-05:00

The British takeaway from CPAC's conference here over the weekend, care of the Economist. All I know is they ruined the Adams Morgan Qdoba for all the regular residents and somehow found there way to the Big Hunt on Saturday night. I've never seen so many cheap suits in my life, God love 'em. Actually, I have. Every day on the Metro. MWF

Second draft of history

2010-02-22T12:39:00.005-05:00

I'm pretty excited about this book (The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, by Ken Gormley)—a complete history of the Ken Starr investigation. It's not an issue that's near the top of my reading list, but I am very glad to see it's getting (in the words of yesterday's Post review) a "restrained, fair-minded, soup-to-nuts" telling. I was too young to really appreciate how outrageous all of this was when it happened, but books like this (and Jeffrey Toobin's) help show just what a sea change this scandal marked in the life of American politics and political journalism. In hindsight, it's hard to believe it actually happened. Here's the Times review as well. MWF

"Chatroulette"

2010-02-22T10:09:00.005-05:00

Man, this is some crazy shit. I can't justify making this my "Time(s) to learn something" post this week: although it was in yesterday's paper, I can't say this is really something I want to "learn" about. It is, however, as I said, some crazy shit. MWF

Heaven's waitin down on the tracks ...

2010-02-19T18:19:00.004-05:00

Well, here we are: the weekend already! Thought I'd start things off right with a classic pump-up track from the Boss. MWF

Nice recovery, dingus

2010-02-19T11:41:00.005-05:00

At least someone's manning the helm over there:

_______________________

Boston: I'd say the Buddhism comments were directed at that Fox News commentator that said Tiger should convert to Christianity in order to be forgiven and saved.

Paul Farhi: Interesting take, Boston. Those comments were from Brit Hume. I felt the Buddhism reference was a little awkward, but it probably gained him from sympathy from any person of faith.

_______________________

I must admit that I was incensed enough to post a comment—something I rarely do. Which I guess puts me outside the realm of people this stuff is aimed at, anyway ... which means I'm probably the only one who cares. But I still stick by the belief that anything you want to be taken seriously should at least be vetted a bit (and THIS comment clearly wasn't either ... he means "gained him SOME sympathy" ... God, Post, do you have ANY editors left over there?). I stand by my conclusion that most live journalism remains utterly pointless. MWF

For fuck's sake. Post fail ...

2010-02-19T11:19:00.004-05:00

You know, it's bad enough that the Post is live-blogging the Tiger Woods apology (right here, folks, if you dare) ... but their people don't even have the goddamn facts right:

Paul Farhi: Has he EVER talked about Buddhism before? Don't recall it.

Posted 11:13 a.m., 2.19.2010

_______________________

Liz Kelly: Tiger's talking about Buddhism now. Didn't see that coming.

Posted 11:12 a.m., 2.19.2010

_______________________

Paul Farhi: Wow. Buddhism! Playing the religion card.

Posted 11:12 a.m., 2.19.2010

Woods's professed Buddhist beliefs were a matter of record (click here) and controversy (click here and here) throughout the early stages of this scandal. You morons asked for real-time journalism? This is what you get. Nothing. MWF

The end of postwar fiction ... obviously

2010-02-17T18:45:00.006-05:00

A poorly written and very strange assessment from the Guardian of the demise of the postwar American novelist. I don't really agree that this was America's "greatest literary generation." Actually, its the hundred years BEFORE 1945 that did most of the heavy lifting—starting with the New England Renaissance and wending all the way through the Moderns. So I don't really know what all the fuss is about. I think this guy's picture of America begins with World War II (fine for your average Briton, but not so much for someone purporting to be an expert). I'm also not really down with an adult using "Am lit" in a newspaper—or winging off a sentence like this ... "But The Widows of Eastwick, three short of the intended 26 full-length fictions from this man of letters"—(this isn't any better in context, by the way)—"became the last when he was diagnosed, just 10 days after our conversation (according to the dated poems in Endpoint, his final volume of verse) with the pneumonia that would lead to diagnosis of lung cancer and his death on the date that lay in wait for Salinger 12 months later" ... and expecting anyone to actually take him seriously. This really doesn't belong on Arts and Letters Daily. Or in the Guardian. MWF

Sullivan on Marc Thiessen

2010-02-17T15:52:00.003-05:00

Andrew Sullivan unleashes on Marc Thiessen's bizarre attempt to defend torture as a matter of Catholic principle. (Although, I must say, the rhetorical technique of mentioning about forty-five times that Thiessen worked for Dick Cheney kind of loses its effect after awhile.) Anyway, Sullivan points up yet another example of what Cornell West calls Constantinian Christianity—a religion based in belief but ultimately subservient to earthly powers, usually those of state. Which is kind of what old JC was all about ending. What a wonderful way to kick off Lent. MWF

On the clock

2010-02-17T14:17:00.002-05:00

When I was putting together Monday's "Times(s) to learn" installment, I was reminded Irving Tobin, a New Jersey man profiled in the New Yorker a few years ago (actually it was SIX years ago ... god, that makes me feel old) for his amazing (and only somewhat successful) attempt to read every word of every issue of the New York Times. As of December 2003 he was one year, five months, and four days (or a little more than five hundred days) behind. I wonder how he's doing now ... MWF

Schmidle on Pakistan

2010-02-17T11:09:00.003-05:00

I just cracked my copy of the Fall/Winter issue of the Journal of International Affairs and was delighted to see World Affairs author Nicholas Schmidle get a nod for his book, To Live or to Perish: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan. The editors laud him for his interviews with militants in Swat and Waziristan, which "reveal the complexity of changing alliances between Pakistani Islamist militants and the Afghan Taliban." I couldn't agree more. The article he wrote for us last fall was an incredibly succinct and clear-eyed picture of the power-brokering that rules much of Pakistan's hinterlands. For his troubles, Schmidle has been kicked out of Pakistan twice. Sounds like a good journalist to me. Oh and here's his Web site. MWF

Because I do not hope

2010-02-17T10:23:00.003-05:00

Today is Ash Wednesday. I know I have something to say about it but I'm not quite sure what just yet. I'm going to check back in after my annual reading of T. S. Eliot's poem of the same name (this is the only version available online, apparently). I should have some more ideas knocking around by then ... MWF

Mind = blown

2010-02-15T20:27:00.002-05:00

I tweeted this the other day but I feel the need to really give it some attention. From Harper's Index, December 2009 (which is apparently available online; they just take a reeeeally long time loading them up; anyway) … "Ratio of Katie Couric's salary"—that's the woman who reads the news that other people report and conducts largely pointless interviews with leaders of men, etc.—"to the total operating expenses of NPR's seventeen foreign bureaus: 3:2." Now, I know that this is one of those "bigger than anyone person" problems—which is why it makes a great Harper’s Index item. But, Jesus … I mean, does that amazing/infuriate anyone else? I can only hope that come pledge time Ms. Couric ponies up a mil or two for her local NPR station. MWF

The one sport I follow

2010-02-15T20:13:00.001-05:00

More bad news for Floyd Landis. Can't say I'm surprised. What an asshole. MWF

Time(s) to learn: Yemen, Haiti

2010-02-15T19:50:00.004-05:00

I think this is going to be a regular feature, now that I’m reading the paper regularly again: an article from the New York Times that really teaches me something I don’t know, rather than just giving a bit of an update. There’s a tie today between Thomas Friedman’s column from last Sunday’s paper (catching up still, yes) and an Op-Ed from the same paper by Amy Wilentz, who’s been reporting on Haiti for at least a quarter of a century, by the looks of it. The first (click here) is an amazingly succinct primer on Yemen. Friedman puts a lot of people off (including me), but when he talks about the Middle East, I listen. If you read nothing else about Yemen, read this and you’ll at least have some idea of why it’s important and what’s been going on. The second piece (click here) will do the same service, but for Haiti—at least the politics, and a bit of the culture. I have actually had my eye out for this kind of article—I don’t really know much about Haiti—so this was a real pleasure to find. Props to both reporters on a job well done. MWF

Good Iran book

2010-02-15T18:59:00.005-05:00

I’ve just read about half of this book—A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind, by Michael Axworthy—as background for an essay I’m putting together for my other blog. I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a one-volume intro to Iran, or an intro to any part of Persian history. I wouldn’t read it on its own if you’re looking for a lot of depth. (I sometimes got the impression that the author glosses over some details. But, then again, if you’re unfamiliar with the subject, a basic approach is probably a good one to start with.) I’m also reading a few chapters from Homa Katouzian’s The Persians: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Iran, which is very thorough but also QUITE dense. I suppose what I’m saying is that they go well together. The essay, whenever it eventually comes together, will be a review of a timely new book by Said Amir Arjomand called After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors, which I’m pairing with a book I’ve wanted to read for years, Terence Ward’s Searching for Hassan: An American Family’s Journey Home to Iran. MWF

The inimitable Karl Pilkington, everyone

2010-02-13T13:06:00.004-05:00

This is Karl Pilkington after he was asked to contribute to Esquire (yes, the magazine Esquire). Couldn't be bothered. (To produce a "list of thoughts," that is. THOUGHTS!) ... I thought of Karl yesterday when I saw that the inventor of the Frisbee—someone he never mentions by name but whose accomplishment he's perennially obsessed with—died at the age of ninety. He was a regular da Vinci, him. Props, as always, to Ricky's blog. MWF

Teaching The Merchant of Venice

2010-02-12T19:15:00.003-05:00

A very interesting essay from the American Scholar, chronicling one professor's experience teaching The Merchant of Venice throughout the last thirty years. Maybe it's because I never read it in a class, but I had never considered all the different angles this author, Paula Marantz Cohen, runs through. I pretty much just enjoyed Bassanio and Portia and left it at that—even after I'd been through grad school—although I never doubted there was more there somewhere. I suppose it's obvious, but, for example, I never realized that everyone's actions in the play—not just Shylock's—come out of an irrational impulse for revenge; that Portia herself has a few reasons to assert her power (although knowing that Shakespeare perceived the phenomenon of inexplicable and untraceable melancholy—see Hamlet, among others—I'm not entirely sold on the argument that Antonio is in love with Bassanio). Anyway, I always got the sense that everyone was in the wrong—that no one makes the right decision—but I never saw the reasons for it quite so clearly. Just as interesting is the way Cohen and her students struggle to make sense of the play in the classroom. Some typical reactions, but some intriguing ones as well. You have to wonder if the need to posit a sequel has more to do with a generation raised on the ad nauseam blockbuster cycle than it does with the anxiety induced by the limits of form—in this case, that the play must eventually conclude. All the same, I'm proud of Cohen for introducing to her students a play whose complexity—and perhaps flaws—point up this and other conundrums of life and art. MWF

Marja commences

2010-02-12T18:34:00.005-05:00

American, NATO, and Afghan forces have commenced operations in the Afghan town of Marja in an effort to clear—and, more importantly, hold—the worst Taliban bastion in Helmand Province. Here are reports from Al Jazeera, BBC News, CNN, The National, Reuters, the Times and the Post. And here's a quick crib from Dexter Filkins. As he points out, it's what happens after the sweep is complete that will determine the success of the latest coalition efforts in this war. MWF

Smarten up, folks

2010-02-12T18:27:00.004-05:00

I was gonna call a cap on the number of post I would put up about Times stories in a single day ... but I just can't help but ask, upon reading this story about the European Parliament, why this entire legislative body has decided to do away with formal wear. Is this an anomaly or do they always look like they're dressed for a faculty retreat? I'm not even being funny—is this how they always dress? Someone please fill me in. Also, apparently Bono is part of the EU. MWF

Salinger letters

2010-02-12T17:57:00.002-05:00

Enough Salinger for one day, I know, but this is pretty big news: a stash of eleven Salinger letters, dating from 1951 to 1993, surfaced in a collection at the Morgan Library and Museum, in New York, which will soon exhibit them. Read it here. MWF

The Marja offensive

2010-02-12T17:36:00.004-05:00

Dexter Filkins reporting from Kabul on the upcoming coalition offensive in Marja, Helmand Province. Filkins had a pretty amusing dispatch a few days ago as well—about Afghanistan's crazy-ass Jalalabad-to-Kabul highway (click here). MWF

Yemen update, again

2010-02-12T17:22:00.004-05:00

Looks like a missed a spot during my Yemen update earlier today: apparently the Houthi rebels in the north reached a cease-fire agreement with the government late yesterday. The question now is whether it'll last. Here's the report from the Times. MWF

First time for everything

2010-02-12T17:05:00.004-05:00

My friend Gagan is going to New York for the first time this weekend. Figured she could use a little something to hum along to while she's there. Hope she and her host Nicole have a wonderful weekend! MWF

Hard to stomach (get it?)

2010-02-12T14:19:00.012-05:00

Got this from WAY down in the clip pile: a Jan. 12 story from the Post about the death of the sans-notebook waiter. I don't know how I feel about this. My initial reaction is that it's a shame—a waiter who actually does it well shows an amazing amount of craft pride, which presumably translates into better service in other ways (he makes sure the food is right before it comes out, remembers to keep an eye on you) and reflects the general caliber of the restaurant. A waiter who pulls out a notepad looks like an amateur. (And for those of you who feel more comfortable with a waiter who writes down orders, take a glance at that pad sometime—it's not exactly a steel trap either.)

There's also the issue of authority in play here (ordering audibles are one of the things killing off waiters' memories). Special culinary requests tend to diminish the adventure of fine dining—having a real expert prepare something you've never had before. People aren't really down with that anymore—and yet, paradoxically, people these days love to ask the opinions of waiters at mid-level restaurants, which makes just about as much sense as asking the guy at the next table. It didn't matter that much back in the day but now restaurants cater to the specializing crowd, to the detriment of the rest of us.

On top of that, is it a good thing that we tailor our own diets now or does the nationwide focus on "healthier" foods and remote culinary authorities (as opposed to local ones)—as Michael Pollan posits in In Defense of Food—belie the replacement of actually healthy food and traditional gastronomical wisdom with mass-market substitutes of both? (In other words, does it make sense to dine at a restaurant and remake their dishes with advice from people who don't know the nuances of the food in question and often see consumption in terms of chemicals rather than whole foods or meals?) Hard to say. And I might have strayed a bit from my topic. So let me close by saying I'll miss these old-school folks ... and that perhaps I should take this as an excuse to have lunch at the Palm. Nice. MWF

Marbury v. Madison in Iraq

2010-02-12T12:54:00.006-05:00

As the parliamentary election season kicks off in Iraq, something of a constitutional crisis has embroiled the country and threatened to expose major faults in budding democracy there (click here). The latest trouble began when the provincial council in Tikrit, a Sunni stronghold, voted to dismiss a local governor whose party has allied with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in the upcoming election. The prime minister has twice use the Iraqi Army to stymie the council, including once earlier this week. He's also roughed-up a few opposition candidates, and yesterday (click here) a commission run by two Shiite politicians—candidates themselves—banned more than five hundred Sunni hopefuls, including two prominent Sunni politicians, under the pretext of expunging Baathists from the ballot. One of those Shiites, incidentally, is our old friend Ahmed Chalabi. What a mess. You have to wonder if democracy might just have to wait for this generation of Iraqi politicians to die off. Years of power politics won't just wash away over night. One of the most disheartening lines I've come across is at the tail end of Ernesto Londono's report in the Post: "The de-Baathification of candidates has become the dominant theme of the campaign season ... It has eclipsed bread-and-butter issues such as security and the government's inability to deliver basic services." So Maliki oppresses rivals and legit skepticism in one blow. MWF

Update on Yemen

2010-02-12T12:06:00.004-05:00

Sudarsan Raghavan's latest report from Sanaa, this on the civil war the Yemeni government is fighting against Shiite insurgents in the northern part of the country—apparently with the help of some dubious allies ("radical Sunnis and former jihadists"). The former have a penchant for rough tactics, like "destroying Shiite mosques and building Sunni ones." And the head of the armed forces, not to mention other authorities, counts himself among "an ultraconservative brand of Sunni Islam" and is apparently the type to use violence to spread its dominance—a la al-Qaeda. This same bloc—known as Salafists—is now fighting against al-Qaeda as part of the global antiterror fight, but it's hard to say if that isn't a short-term ploy. The rebellion in the north is actually a reaction by Shiites against government-backed Salafist policies. The takeaway is that Yemen's government is lousy with violent extremists and will probably prove a shaky ally in the long run, despite the demands of Western countries. What's a superpower to do? MWF

Mary Daly, former BC professor

2010-02-12T11:18:00.005-05:00

Found this in the Big Pile as well: the obituary of Mary Daly, 81, a Boston College professor whose feminism brought her head-to-head with school administration. She refused to open her theology classes to men (although she did offer to tutor male students who wanted to take her courses) and eventually lost her position because of it. She garnered an obits in the Guardian and the Times (click here and here). MWF

China greases the rails

2010-02-12T11:15:00.002-05:00

This is an oldie but a goodie—a report from about a month ago on the state of China's lobby in Washington. Pretty interesting. MWF

Salinger redux

2010-02-12T10:36:00.005-05:00

Although I posted a lot of links after J. D. Salinger died a few weeks ago, I don't think I ever called out Lilian Ross's article, which ran on the Web only a few days after the author's death and then in the Talk of the Town a few days after that. It's a profile of a man who truly couldn't bear growing up—for good or ill. At least he shared some of his wisdom with us before he packed it in.

Rounding out other Salinger appreciations: his Economist obituary and an article from the Times profiling his relatively normal life in Cornish. And here is a defense of Salinger and the pianist Glenn Gould from the New Statesman. It has a number of great lines, including: "Neither man really did live in 'seclusion.' That invariably is merely the dismissive epithet used by the media to describe any person—think Greta Garbo, Thomas Pynchon or even, more recently, Tiger Woods—who will not do what the media expect of them: give constant interviews, smile away on talk shows, issue press releases, and so on." MWF

Time(s) to learn something

2010-02-12T10:17:00.013-05:00

Waiting for the train home last night I came across this headline: "Germany, Forced to Buoy Greece, Rues Euro Shift ... Some Rescue Expected ... Champion of Currency Is Reluctant to Play the Leading Role." The headline appeared on the top right of the front page of the New York Times—the column usually reserved for the most serious news—and I had absolutely NO idea what it meant. After multiple readings of the headline failed to illuminate the situation, I reluctantly began reading the story ... and the next thing I knew I had read almost the entire thing. I think I was sucked in, in part, because I'd been reading Middle East news all day and really needed a break. But it was also a really, really good recap of a lot of complicated issues. I recommend it highly. Along with the reporter, Nicholas Kulish, who looks to be the Times's Berlin bureau chief. Read the article here. Also, here's another article on the same story—this one about how Greece's plight could frighten off other Baltic states who were planning to sign up for the euro. MWF

Good Time Charlie

2010-02-11T22:51:00.004-05:00

Charlie Wilson died this week. Here are obits from the Times, Post, Reuters, and the London Times. Also a few interesting pieces from the Daily Beast here and here. My favorite line was from the Post obit, originally from a 2007 interview with Time magazine: "We were fighting the evil empire ... It would have been like not supplying the Soviets against Hitler in World War II ... Anyway, who the hell had ever heard of the Taliban then?" One of God's own prototypes ... MWF

Grade-A moron

2010-02-11T17:40:00.004-05:00

This asshole invented the style of awful local news that helped ruin broadcast journalism. Thanks, dick. MWF

Afghan police: le suck

2010-02-11T15:24:00.003-05:00

Dug these two out of the pile of papers I was snowed in with over the weekend (that's the FIRST snowstorm, not the SECOND one, for those of you keeping score at home): reports from the Times on the Afghan police (click here) and the old porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan—in the latter's Baluchistan Province (click here). Apparently things aren't going too well for these guys. MWF

Grandmothers of the disappeared

2010-02-11T15:13:00.002-05:00

This is a story whose history I'll readily admit knowing very little about—Latin America is one of my big blind spots when it comes to history and international affairs—but it was a pretty striking story all the same, even in the context of the nasty Cold War shit that went down in South and Central America. MWF

God bless the Metro section

2010-02-11T15:08:00.004-05:00

Always worth taking the time each day to peek into the Metro section at the obits. Why? Cause every few days or so you see a hilarious headline like this: "George Peck, 92: World War II hero tricked German soldiers into surrendering." Yeah, that really happened. MWF

Another non-story about China

2010-02-11T14:44:00.007-05:00

The Economist has a cover story this week on U.S.-China relations. Probably worth reading. Although I must say that I didn't learn much about the latest kerfuffle (over an arms sale to Taiwan) that I didn't already known from watching the "Hartsfield's Landing" episode of West Wing: most of our relationship with China follows an established pattern of diplomatic tussles that have little effect on our practical interactions. Both countries are too big and too preoccupied to risk a real flare-up. That what they say to each other is such big news time and again just goes to prove how few hard-and-fast changes actually occur in this relationship. Having said that ... this article gives some good background. And it does mention, eventually, the issue of Iran—which could actually become an issue in the next few years.

While we're on the subject I should also mention that Gordon G. Chang has an upcoming article in the March/April issue of World Affairs that I can't wait to plug. It's really solid—and details why the Communist Party's bubble is about to burst. MWF

Helmand update

2010-02-11T14:09:00.003-05:00

Rajiv Chandrasekaran reporting in yesterday's Post on a major Marine offensive planned in Helmand Province—in Marja, to be exact, which is an insurgent stronghold in the area and a center for opium growth and processing. The attack is set to begin in the next few days. MWF

Snowtime. Again.

2010-02-11T13:51:00.020-05:00

Well the federal government is shut down AGAIN today, but we're pushing onward here. There is a MASSIVE pile of papers and magazines on my desk ... important issues of the world waiting to make their appearance on this blog. I'm gonna try to get most of them up today. Meantime, here are some pictures of the snow, as of my commute this morning: E Street, Union Station, Dupont, and 18th Street.

P.S. You can't see it in the pictures very well, but this city really sucks at clearing intersections for pedestrians. There are lakes everywhere. Still, it's a really beautiful day to walk around. MWF

More blogging later

2010-02-08T21:09:00.003-05:00

Well, the federal government was closed today so, you know, not much to blog about. More to come on Wednesday. Until then ... MWF

Postmortem

2010-02-07T15:12:00.003-05:00

Finally dug out from under the two feet of snow that feel in the District this weekend. I stopped by the office on the way home from the domicile of my gracious weekend hosts to snap a picture of the post-blizzard view of 18th Street. If anyone is looking for some virgin snow to play in, Heldref's parking lot is almost entirely untouched—i.e., covered in loads of snow and ice. It's gonna be a fun week ... MWF

Accumulating by a magnitude

2010-02-05T16:12:00.004-05:00

Just got a taste of the snow when I went to throw out some garbage and it has gotten nice and thick—and pretty relentless. It seems like sizable flakes mixed with light sleet. Who knows what kind of havoc it's going to wreak on this city. I, for one, am headed toward my temporary weekend domicile. Be safe, everyone! Ivers out. MWF

Update on Pakistani Taliban

2010-02-05T15:58:00.004-05:00

An update from earlier this week on the Pakistani Taliban, who are reeling from the almost certain loss of their second leader (Hakimullah Mesud) in a matter of months. This group has been unstable ever since Pakistan's controversial Swat campaign last summer. MWF

A very narrow market

2010-02-05T15:41:00.004-05:00

My friend Jack Coatar was in town last month and snapped this shot of an ad in the Navy Yard Metro station. It raises a question I've often asked myself—and which Jack put to me—while gazing upon many an ad unique to our nation's capital: Who the fuck is this for? In this specific case, Lockheed Martin is bragging about its warships. Cool. Who the fuck sells a warship through a subway ad? (Subquestion: Who strikes fear into the heart of the enemy with a word like littoral?) As Jack pointed out, it's all worth it if one admiral is persuaded ... but are there many admirals riding subways? My guess is that this ad is meant to inspire pride in the people who have already issued contracts—and inspire confidence in the Lockheed Martin in general. Still, it's a really weird thing to see on the subway. And it isn't alone—DC is lousy with political and military ads targeted at such small audiences that they hardly seem worth the effort of putting them up, muchless paying for them (although I'm sure old LM has the cash). I guess all I really mean to say is if you're buying, say, high-tech hardware for troops in Afghanistan, I hope you base your decision on more than a couple of dozen words you read on the way to work. MWF

The iron horse

2010-02-05T15:26:00.007-05:00

My mom sent me this clipping from the Post-Dispatch about Jones Typewriter, St. Louis's last (as far as I know) one-stop shop for "typewriter and business machine" needs. The man on the right in this picture—Vernon—has personally touched up many a machine for me over the years, including the Smith-Corona that's been with me since I moved out East. I was actually relieved to hear the place was still in business—someone told me last fall that it had gone under. If you're interested in writing at all, you should at least try giving a typewriter a few pecks sometime while you still can—if only to know what your predecessors have known. Nothing beats them for writing letters (type-written letters are at once formal and personal), and if you are typing a formal work it's almost impossible to retype something you think is poorly written. I'm not a Luddite by any means (obviously), but gosh have typewriters done wonders for me. MWF

Jon Lee Anderson on Haiti

2010-02-05T15:20:00.004-05:00

Jon Lee Anderson, one of my favorite reporters working today, has a report from Haiti in this week's New Yorker. Check it out. And I still can't recommend enough his previous article, about the president of Somalia (click here). MWF

Gonna have weather

2010-02-05T15:10:00.007-05:00

A major storm is about to slam the DC area, but I'm going to try to fill my Friday blogging quotient before I dash out of the office. Perhaps the most sobering information about the storm yet came on the front page of Thursday's Post, in a "snow odds" infographic: 0-6 inches: 5 percent, 6-10 inches: 15 percent, 10-16 inches: 40 percent, 16-plus: 40 percent. Yikes! Looks like we might top a few records before this whole thing wraps up. Luckily, I've been invited to a birthday sleepover with some very good friends of mine in Adams Morgan, just a short walk (or, let's face it, cab ride) away from my office. As of this writing, snow is only sticking on the trees and lamposts—and the infamous 18th Street awnings at Luna and Heldref—but the flakes have been getting fatter and fatter all day. It's only a matter of time. MWF

The old DCI

2010-02-03T10:41:00.004-05:00

Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta is in the news after appearing on the Hill yesterday. For anyone looking to learn more about him, I'll once again recommend Jane Mayer's New Yorker profile from last summer. Still a great insight into the man's style—and his plans for the agency. MWF

Normal Rockwell's birthday

2010-02-03T10:18:00.004-05:00

It's Normal Rockwell's birthday (thanks, Google). Figured I'd start things off with my favorite of his works: Freedom from Fear, from the Four Freedoms series he painted to commemorate FDR's famous speech. It's all about the way the father is holding that newspaper, and slight slump in his shoulders, and the way Rockwell makes his face at once loving and sullen. Gets me every time. Good work, Norm. MWF

I mean

2010-02-01T10:17:00.006-05:00

How could I write an appreciation of J. D. Salinger without mentioning his masterful dialogue? Thanks to Dave Eggers for reminding me:

When I was about twenty I read the rest of the books and stories, and when I began to teach, about ten years ago, I usually included a Salinger story in every syllabus, usually demonstrating the use of dialogue to illuminate character. His is still my favorite dialogue, the dialogue that rings truest, that’s at once very naturalistic and musical; it’s really remarkable how difficult it is to do what he does between quotation marks. MWF

J. D. Salinger, author, aged 91

2010-01-29T20:15:00.017-05:00

Jerome David Salinger—elegant rebel, master of the refined revolt—died on Wednesday at his home in New Hampshire. He was 91. (Click here, here, and here for articles, and here for the New Yorker page.)

Although he hadn’t published a word since 1965, he remains one of the most influential storytellers of the twentieth century, having reconceived notions of youth in ways perhaps only Dickens and Twain had before him. Whether young in age or not, Salinger’s heroes are almost always haunted by the ideals of innocence—by what has been lost and (rarely without gratitude) what has survived.

His works form a kind of gentleman’s complaint, a call for decency amid the oppressive mix of conformity and hedonism that plagued postwar New York. Salinger might have used genteel words like “trifle,” but he was anything but conventional when it came to the dictates of church and state, not to mention family and friends.

Sometimes downplayed as “adolescent” literature, Salinger’s fiction endures precisely because it catalogues the perils of growing up—which, as Salinger himself helped us understand, rarely end at age eighteen. Salinger’s novels and stories are sometimes cynical but ultimately aim toward rejuvenation—literally. In his works, as in Huck Finn, youth becomes a time when children confront the reality of choice. Characters are often normal individuals in normal circumstances encountering the commonplace that David Foster Wallace calls the “natural, basic self-centeredness” that keeps us from being better people. Sometimes they fight it, sometimes they don’t. But it is never an accident if it defeats them:

“I am utterly convinced,” Seymour Glass states at the beginning of “Hapworth 16, 1924,” Salinger’s last published story, “that if A’s hat blows off while he is sauntering down the street, it is the charming duty of B to pick it up and hand it to A without examining A’s face or combing it for gratitude!”

Salinger’s attitude falls somewhere between Hemingway’s fatalism and Kerouac’s triumphalism. The question Holden Caulfield tussles with from page one of The Catcher in the Rye—whether you can survive as an adult without becoming someone else’s prostitute (which is to say: In the modern world, let alone the nuclear age, can any individual even presume to have a soul, or a sacred self?)—lurks behind all of Salinger’s writing (and his own biography). His protagonists want neither cynical contentment nor outright rebellion and ultimately find peace in the anxiety of not settling. Salvation lies not in one, big choice (as so often in literature) but dozens and dozens of seemingly insignificant ones—whether to get out of a bathtub, whether to eat a sandwich—actions that, upon reflection, actually do define the lives of adults in a world where the powers that be rank economy and status over wisdom, morality, civility, religion, and even love.

“I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it?” Holden asks at the end of his story. “The answer is you don’t. I think I am but how do I know? I swear it’s a stupid question.”

In this and other moments in his fiction, Salinger captures not only the absurdity of postwar hubris (“a lot of people,” including Holden’s own brother, want to know when he’s going to act normal again—as if it were that easy), but also, more importantly, the timeless, agonizing uncertainty that sooner or later afflicts every thinking person. It induces hysteria in Eloise at the end of “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” and convinces Zooey he’s a “twenty-five-year-old freak” after his brother Seymour—his god, essentially—kills himself. These characters (and others), daunted by ambiguity, fear the knowledge of their own existence. Yet in true Salinger fashion, that fear itself uncovers a certain hope that it is not too late for them after all.

Not too late, that is, for them to exercise their free will, which is Salinger’s ultimate theme. That’s why his narratives never seem to conclude: Their plots recede to mere incident, overshadowed by the much more important truth that character is choice, and choice is self.

Surely this, if nothing else, validates Salinger’s accomplishment—if, that is, to borrow another line from Wallace, “Fiction is about what it is to be a fucking human being.” That Salinger portrayed this struggle at all—not to mention as eloquently as he did—is reason enough to keep reading him for years to come. MWF

The new World Affairs Online

2010-01-27T19:54:00.005-05:00

Hey, y'all, just wanted to pass the word about the NEW World Affairs Web site: World Affairs Daily, featuring fourteen new blogs every week (authors include Andrew Bacevich, Jagdish Bhagwati, Peter Collier, Ann Marlowe, Joshua Muravchik, David Rieff, and more) as well as English-language news from around the world, aggregated twice every day. And, of course, you can still read all of the journal's brilliant content at the site as well. Speaking of which, we just opened an article by Joel Kotkin on the myth of American decline and an article by Geoffrey Wheatcroft on the fundamental problems plaguing U.S. foreign policy—and how they transcend any one administration.

Check it out! MWF

Quote for the day

2010-01-25T14:03:00.004-05:00

I haven't been reading much the last couple of weeks, so there's a decided dearth of stories to put up here. Until I get something good, savor this quote from Arthur C. Clarke, from the wonderful documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.

Behind everyone alive today, there stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, about a hundred billion human beings have walked on this planet. Now, a hundred billion is about the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. So this means that for everyone who's ever lived there could be a star. Now of course stars are suns with planets circling around them. So isn't it an interesting thought that there's enough land in the sky for everyone to have a whole world? MWF

Rebound Monday

2010-01-25T09:14:00.006-05:00

I just want to let everyone know that it's 64 degrees outside as I write this. 64 degrees. I mean, I'm beside myself. Somehow it doesn't matter that this is going to be the busiest week I've had since at least August. It's just too pleasant to feel bad about anything. I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of this day that I just instinctively got up at 7:06 AM and, somehow, made it to the office before anyone else. That, too, will be amazing while it lasts. And, in celebration of all of these good things, I'm going to share another song—the ULTIMATE good times song: "Up on Cripple Creek," as performed by The Band at their last concert. MWF

Ivers out

2010-01-22T19:49:00.005-05:00

I don't think I can pull off any proper "blogging" today. World Affairs and Explicator are wrapping up consecutively and this was one of those days. One of those days where songs like this make a lot of sense (try not to actually WATCH this clip, though). Yes, one of THOSE days. Anyway, I hope to get up a few things next week. I've been watching/rewatching a lot of Fellini movies in the last week, which should generate some comment soon. Nights of Cabiria is up tonight. Or maybe just all of Time out of Mind.

Best weekend wishes, everyone. MWF

Nihilo sanctum estne

2010-01-20T14:20:00.005-05:00

Awesome little column from Forbes on the eternal eloquence of the Latin language (and how it will help us in the age of Twitter and all that crap). Thank you, ALD, once again, for being the only people in the world to pick up this sort of thing. I, for one, can say that, other than Dr. William Charron's logic course at SLU, no other practice has sharpened my thinking quite so well as the study of Latin.

Vivit lingua Latina! MWF

Fallows on the Google-China debacle

2010-01-20T14:06:00.003-05:00

Here's James Fallows from the Atlantic Monthly, who's spent quite a bit of time on the ground in China (and might be there now, possibly?), talking about the long-term effects of Google's threatened pullout from the PRC. Click here, here, and here. MWF

One year down

2010-01-20T13:28:00.006-05:00

Commemorate President Obama's first year in office with a special symposium in World Affairs: "Obama's Year One," with articles by Robert Kagan, Charles Lane, and Ed Pilkington. And here's Andrew Sullivan with another knockout pro-Obama post. One year on, I still think Barack Obama is precisely the kind of president this country needs at this moment in history. And I can't help but wonder whether all of the caution and compromise that the Left and the Right deride him for equally will be seen in retrospect as the kind of wise moderation—a resolve to only fight the most necessary fights, both here and abroad—affected by his greatest predecessors as necessary in times of change and tumult. MWF

MLK Day

2010-01-18T20:55:00.002-05:00

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not servile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later, all people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. MWF

You mean my whole fallacy is wrong

2010-01-15T18:00:00.004-05:00

You know, this article looked like it knew what it was talking about, but I'm pretty sure it's just a bunch of bullshit. He never really takes it up anywhere but in the intro, but the author claims that traditional newswriting is way too context-oriented and that "seekers of news are abandoning print news for the Internet" because "on the Internet, news articles get to the point." I mean, that could not be further from the truth. Online news chatter (cf. everything on this blog, for starters) is all about driving niche news—the opposite of getting to the point. A blogger takes an article from the Times (like the one this author slams) and picks out pet parts, leaving absolutely no context for readers (except a link to the original story, that is—an obvious admission on the part of he blogger that he's not, in fact, actually a reporter). I don't know what else he could mean by "Internet news," but the only people who get to the point are broadcast copywriters and wire service reporters. I'm all for cutting down verbiage, but the facts don't always just speak for themselves. That's why people read the New York Times instead of just asking people on the street what happened yesterday. The dig on the "mysterious lead" style of writing (which is pretty awesome) aside, we just need to throw this in the bin with Stanley Fish's columns and stop letting these old guys opine about the "new media." I mean, how you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

OK, I'm done. MWF

The Kindle apologist

2010-01-15T17:40:00.003-05:00

I really can't bring myself to read another article about Kindle, but this one seems pretty good (although one out of five pages was enough for me). I'm on the record as being solidly unimpressed by this little gadget, but I've looked at the Sony Reader more than once and wager I'll probably get one in the next few years out of sheer curiosity. This is in no way my argument against digital readers but I'm always baffled by how happy people are in these articles to ditch all of the ink and paper. I'm mean, what's the fun of air travel—much less the morning commute—without a newspaper under the arm and a good book stuffed in the carryon? To paraphrase Dr. Alan Grant, you can't just suppress two thousand years of gut instinct. Enjoy it while it lasts, I guess. MWF

The Somali connection

2010-01-15T17:21:00.009-05:00

Another great Post story about Yemen (again by Sudarsan Ragavan). This one's about the ties between Somalia and Yemen, especially the spillover of Somalia's war refugees (mostly impressionable and desperate young men) into southern Yemen. I'll take this as another opportunity to recommend Jon Lee Anderson's New Yorker profile of Somali's president. Here's an incredible anecdote from the Post article:

In September, a gang of al-Shabab fighters grabbed 14-year-old Saber Ahmed at his father's shop in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. They blindfolded him and took him to a nearby militia base, he said. There, they brought out recruits he knew from his neighborhood, who urged him to join. The peer pressure didn't work. Then, an al-Shabab commander gave him an ultimatum. "He said, 'We will kill you if you don't join us,' " recalled Ahmed ... After 20 days of training, he was sent to the front lines. Within hours, he said, a battle erupted; Ahmed was shot in the leg. He managed to crawl to his house. His father took him to a hospital. When Ahmed regained consciousness, his father gave him $100 and ordered him to flee to Yemen. In the Somali port of Bossaso, he handed the money to a smuggler, who placed him on a crowded boat headed for a treacherous sea. As the boat neared Yemen, it flipped over. Ahmed swam nearly a mile to the shore. He later learned that seven passengers had drowned. MWF

Revisiting Tora Bora

2010-01-15T15:29:00.008-05:00

This is a great bit of journalism as historical accounting. Peter Bergen, the editor of Foreign Policy's AfPak Channel (which you should take a look at if you haven't yet), returns to the story of Tora Bora and tries to shake out the facts. The full story ran in the New Repubic in December. (Here's a map of the area in question, too.) Worth reading all the way through. Bergen doesn't mince his words, by the way. Based on extensive interviews and official accounts, he concludes that "Tora Bora constitutes one of the greatest military blunders in recent U.S. history." And apparently that blunder is best attributed to Pentagon pushback against a CIA request for enough Army Rangers (800) to win the battle. Rumsfeld was the point man back home but Bush and Cheney were certainly in the loop.

A few funny tidbits from the article: Bin Laden's son bitching about his dad's crazy, day-long hikes up through the mountain passes near Tora Bora (dads can be so weird like that!) and the revelation (to me, anyway) that General Tommy Franks, retired since his last hurrah in Iraq, is on the board of Chuck E. Cheese's (WHAT?!). The AfPak Channel also has a reading list. Check it out. MWF

History's children

2010-01-13T15:24:00.013-05:00

We just opened the full-text version of Michael Zantovsky's article in World Affairs. Read it here. Zantovsky was political director and spokesman for Czech President Vaclav Havel and is currently Czech ambassador to Britain. This piece, on 1989 and its fallout, has tons of good lines, but this is my favorite:

Based on the known record, history is more likely a complex process in which each event is to a larger, smaller, or infinitesimal extent the result of everything that has happened before combined with a healthy dose of randomness. As such, it carries forward and perpetuates, at least for a time, not only human growth and human achievements but also our weaknesses, fallacies, inconsistencies, and failures. That is why it comes back to haunt us so often. One can only ask whether the post–Cold War world would be any different if Communism was smashed to dust and eradicated the way Nazism was. In the event, to the vast relief of people in the West and East alike, it imploded peacefully. But perhaps in doing so, it was also allowed to scatter tiny bits of its tyrannical self, its messianic arrogance, its ignorance of human nature, and its fundamental immorality to the ends of the earth. It is gone but not dead. In any case, democracies seem to have been much more aware of their fundamental values and the price of liberty when the totalitarian threat was still around. MWF

Someone's bullshit political agenda

2010-01-13T14:21:00.004-05:00

I was out at Dulles this weekend helping to ferry Senator Coatar back to St. Louis and, remembering that DIA is featured in a totally sweet aerial shot from Clear and Present Danger, was determined to find a totally sweet clip to put up here. Unfortunately, this vintage trailer was all I could find. Still pretty cool, though. Thanks to my traveling companion on Sunday for the awesome quote at the top of this post. MWF

Dept. of Misnomers

2010-01-13T13:04:00.003-05:00

Good article by William Saletan in Slate on the misuse of the term terrorist in the wake of the bombing of the CIA base in Afghanistan a few weeks ago. Worth reading for the line where he calls out Joe Lieberman for saying, in reference to the Fort Hood shooter, "Dr. Hasan had become an Islamic extremist and, therefore, ... this was an act of terrorism." Saletan's reply: "If that's all we mean by terrorism, then our enemies are right: It's just a code word for people whose religion we don't like." And, while we're on the subject, another salvo in the "Anatomy of a Terrorist" debate, from Week in Review. MWF

The old magic

2010-01-13T11:53:00.008-05:00

So, I used to be REALLY into movies—especially in high school and college. I'm not really sure what happened but at some point in the last few years I kind of stopped caring. Some of it was moving away from St. Louis, I think. It was a lot easier to see all the smaller stuff when I could read about it weeks in advance and wait for it to trickle into the local moviehouses—of which there are two and which I was never able to replace either in Boston or DC (another reason I lost interest, perhaps). Anyway, I'm resolved to get back in the swing of things and do more than just keep re-watching Rear Window and Michael Clayton. I began with what was at the time the latest issue of my old mainstay, Film Comment (pictured). I carried this thing with me back home for Christmas and read pretty much every word of it—and dog-eared any page that mentioned a movie I should see (which was about one in three). Now I have to actually watch them ... but I'm confident that between Netflix and the theaters in the greater Washington area, I'll do pretty well. For sentimental reasons I think my first foray should be to the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. It's where, in a single week back in the summer of 2004, I saw for the first time not only La Dolce Vita but Lawrence of Arabia—the latter on the Silver's magnificent 70 mm screen no less. It's time to get back the old magic. MWF

Baby Marquard

2010-01-11T23:23:00.005-05:00

Congrats to my dear friends Mike and Sam on the birth of their son:

Samuel Hammons
Jan. 10, 2010, 7:18 PM
St. Louis, Missouri
10 lbs., 7 oz. / 21.25 in.

And congrats to baby Samuel upon completing his first day!
I'm a very proud godfather! MWF

Drone wars

2010-01-11T13:36:00.003-05:00

Apparently the Air Force drones that fly over Iraq and Afghanistan are churning out more footage than analysts—who monitor footage live—can handle. Another part of the intel puzzle, as this story points out: "Government agencies are still having trouble making sense of the flood of data they collect for intelligence purposes." MWF

Call me Tucker

2010-01-11T11:23:00.005-05:00

Tucker Carlson has a new site, the Daily Caller. Here's what Howard Kurtz thinks of it. And here's the take from Ariana Huffington. Looks like they're off to a pretty juicy start ... good luck, Tucker! MWF

Biuliani continued

2010-01-08T11:31:00.002-05:00

Here's some more fun times from the king of New York. MWF

Yemen blog

2010-01-08T11:23:00.004-05:00

Just came across this blog. It's all about Yemen. Props to Andrew Sullivan for linking it. Also, here's the word on Yemen today, from the second graph of this morning's A1 story in the Post: "The concerns highlight the extent to which the United States, as it deepens its military engagement [in Yemen], is teaming up with a government facing internal divisions that in some ways are more complex than those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." Yikes. MWF

The whole happiness thing

2010-01-08T11:06:00.003-05:00

Happiness is a pretty big deal these days. Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out about it, reviewed here by Reason. More interesting than her rant, though, is this piece from the Sunday Post, by a woman who has been studying happiness for years in a variety of countries and actually sounds like she knows what she’s talking about. Her conclusion? It’s all pretty relative. MWF

Biuliani

2010-01-08T10:49:00.005-05:00

The former mayor of New York on Good Morning America mouthing off about Obama’s antiterrorism policies. I love that while pointing out that the shoe bomber occurred under Bush—which makes 43 and 44 about one for one—Stephanopoulos also slips in that the most unprecedented terrorist attack in U.S. history also took place under Obama’s predecessor. Nice one, George. MWF

Old Burma

2010-01-08T10:42:00.004-05:00

Unfortunately this article is not available for free online, but you might want to read a copy at your local newsstand. A really good long piece on Myanmar and all of its problems. There’s also a story in this issue about the end of cash. MWF

Spotlight on Yemen

2010-01-06T18:29:00.005-05:00

There’ve been a lot of stories about Yemen lately. The Post had a pretty good one on Sunday, although it was a little weird how much overlap there was between it and the Op-Ed in the same paper (which seems not to exist on the Post’s Web site?), which was written by a Yemeni expert, Christopher Boucek, who has a pretty strong stance on international intervention in the country (and who was also quoted in the first article). Anyway, the news story was a good primer on U.S.-Yemeni relations. This is another piece about Yemens president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and here is a photo essay from the Times. Finally, a few words from the Economist. Oh, and Steve Coll, too, of course! MWF

World Affairs in the Washington Post

2010-01-04T18:47:00.004-05:00

Today has been a little Post heavy and I apologize for that, but I just have to brag on World Affairs a little bit. Our roundtable on Obama’s first year in office—featuring Robert Kagan, Chuck Lane, and Ed Pilkington—was trotted out in the Outlook section of Sunday’s paper. The journal hits newsstands in two weeks—just in time to help you beef up on Beltway tidbits for all of those State of the Union parties. MWF

The ‘quiet ally’

2010-01-04T18:40:00.006-05:00

Story from this morning’s Post about the role Jordan has played in US counterterrorism work throughout the Middle East, including a profile of intelligence work Jordanians are doing in Af/Pak. This is a country and a topic I know very little about, I have to admit, but I hope more’s been written about both. MWF

Skycranes = skyscrapers

2010-01-04T13:58:00.004-05:00

Dubai is now the home of the tallest building in the world or something. Whatevs. MWF

Johnny Apple strikes again

2010-01-04T13:37:00.004-05:00

Speaking of sweet old school reporters who have met their demise, the Post reported this morning that the wine cellars of famed Times political and culinary reporter R. W. “Johnny” Apple Jr. will be going on sale soon. For those of you who haven’t heard of Mr. Apple, you should head directly to this New Yorker profile by Calvin Trillin. He’s a pretty amazing fellow. MWF

Sweet old school reporter dies

2010-01-04T12:36:00.007-05:00

Let’s start off the new year right, with an obit I saw over the weekend: William Tuohy, 83, Chicago native and Pulitzer Prize–winning foreign correspondent for the LA Times. He won his Pulitzer in 1969 for his coverage of the Vietnam War. He also worked in the Middle East and Europe. In one particularly noteworthy adventure, Tuohy traveled to Tehran shortly after the 1979 revolution to retrieve the body of a colleague who had been killed there. He escaped unscathed, to the surprise of US officials. This is a quote from one of his editors: “He could arrive in some hellhole by plane in the early afternoon, assess the situation, talk to the right people, and file a spot-on assessment within hours. . . . He just knew intuitively how to work under extremely high pressure.” Here’s to a great reporter and the amazing era of journalism that’s dying with him. MWF

Tip a cup o’ kindness

2009-12-31T13:21:00.002-05:00

If we have to hear the words of Robert Burns abused by millions of people today, let’s at least hear them used well, too . . . and, while we’re at it, indulge in the most comic and beautiful moment of Americana ever captured on film.

Best wishes for 2010!

All the news

2009-12-30T13:15:00.006-05:00

This is Carl Kasell’s last day reading the news on NPR’s Morning Edition, a job he has had since the show first began in 1979. I miss him already. No one can put it down quite so smooth. Dude was getting up at 1 AM to read the news every morning—and check out this beautiful quote about DC:

I look out the window in the morning sometimes, and the sun is rising, and the people are going to work. . . . I look at Washington as being that big, sleeping giant, just stretching and waking up . . .

Carl and I are clearly kindred spirits. Thank God he’ll still be doing Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!

Sectarian fighting in Pakistan

2009-12-30T12:38:00.006-05:00

There is something eerily familiar about this story. Especially the second paragraph, which cribs for Western readers the religious nuances of a recent spate of sectarian violence in Karachi. It sounds more like a report from Iraq in 2005 than Af/Pak today. This article from the Guardian lays it out even more explicitly, saying the attack is perceived as an attempt “spark a sectarian war.” Here’s hoping we learned out lesson the first time around.

Japan is finally interesting

2009-12-30T11:37:00.003-05:00

Funny little article from yesterday’s Post. Apparently there was a bit of a hiccup recently in U.S.-Japanese relations, over the relocation of a Marine base from one part of Okinawa to another. According to the article, this is the latest in a series of small incidents that have occurred since Yukio Hatoyama took over as Japan’s PM and ended half a century of leadership under the Liberal Democratic Party. It’s hard to tell if this is real news or just a slow week, but U.S. allies in Asia “have viewed the tussle . . . with alarm.” Upon hearing about this, my World Affairs partner in crime, M. K. Bricker, totally upstaged me by finding an even older article about this from earlier this month. Here it is.

Final St. Louis thoughts

2009-12-28T17:40:00.001-05:00

Developing . . .

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-26T00:32:00.003-05:00

Today was so exciting that I almost forgot to post this lovely picture of our white Christmas! And if you think this is meager, you just don’t understand how snow works in St. Louis. This is about as good as it gets—and when the weather feels so miserable, you’re happy to have some flurries swirling outside your windows. Here’s to a day or two away from the usual hubbub.

Merry Christmas!

Miracle on Loran Street

2009-12-25T09:59:00.003-05:00

So last night none other than Jasmine the fifteen-year-old, blind, deaf, emaciated lap dog showed up on our doorstep. It was a regular Christmas miracle! She was very wet and cold so we had to give her a bath. Then we tried to take her back to her house but no one was home. Speculation was rampant in the Ivers living room as to how this little creature made it to our domicile. The more optimistic among us postulated that there must have been some kind of accident; others talked of neglect, abandonment, and the need for “prosecution.” Eventually we got hold of Jasmine’s owner, who was very happy to come scoop her up and explain that the little tyke had escaped during a domestic disaster that involved a flooded basement. Anyway, it was fun to have some little paws scampering around here again—Jasmine even made a dent in the hoard of food that our former pet left behind! Lesson learned: there’s always room at this inn!