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Saturday, April 27, 2002
Dr. Henry Jenkins Responds
-Henry Jenkins Bill Is Very Quick Today Bill Quick makes an astonishingly compact and convincing presentation of the Hansonian viewpoint that Islam is an honor-shame culture, and that Israel, the Jews or even the U.S. aren't the real problems. The real problem is the West's superiority on every practical - and I would argue moral - front is a humiliation that Islam can't endure; the only two options are the West's submission to Islam - as was the case 1,000 years ago when Muslims were last cheerful - or a crushing defeat that finally rids Islam of its superiority complex. Bill also notes that Imperial Japan was a honor-shame culture and we know where that led. Food for thought. New Media In the Old, Part 3.5: I Stand Corrected As Doc Searls has wisely noted, one of the most interesting and evolved aspects of the blogosphere is its ability to self-correct. As many have noted with glee, in Alex Beam's 4/2 assault on blogdom he embarrassingly mistook an April Fools jest for the real thing: a faux pas that has mocked Beam daily for as long as it has stood uncorrected, as it does to this day. In Part 3 of our “New Media In the Old” series, I mistook an article by Henry Jenkins to be an attack on blogging based upon this quote: "Like cockroaches after nuclear war, online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot coms." Reader and Reason magazine Associate Editor Jesse Walker noted this error just a day after our article was posted:
The thing is, Jenkins' comment sure sounds like a compliment to me: It sounds to me like he's saying that nimble amateurs have survived where well-funded corporate superpowers have blown themselves up. I clicked through to his piece. Only part of it was online, but the portion that was there seemed to be impressed by the blogging phenomenon. And that's exactly what I'd expect: Jenkins has made a career out of studying and praising self-publishing subcultures, especially the world of fan fiction. I'd be shocked if he didn't care for blogging. -Jesse Spurred by Walker’s letter, I dug further into the matter and came up with a larger chunk of the article here, which verifies Jesse’s take:
Ultimately, our media future could depend on the kind of uneasy truce that gets brokered between commercial media and these grass-roots intermediaries. Imagine a world where there are two kinds of media power: one comes through media concentration, where any message gains authority simply by being broadcast on network television; the other comes through grass-roots intermediaries, where a message gains visibility only if it is deemed relevant to a loose network of diverse publics. Broadcasting will place issues on the national agenda and define core values; bloggers will reframe those issues for different publics and ensure that everyone has a chance to be heard.[...] As the digital revolution enters a new phase, one based on diminished expectations and dwindling corporate investment, grass-roots intermediaries may have a moment to redefine the public perception of new media and to expand their influence. So blog this, please. A Third Way I feel like Bob the Builder: first I built a nice big Wall; then I tore it down (with the help of Steven Postrel, who did all the heavy lifting); now reader Leon Hadar suggests a third alternative with the help of the Jordanians. It’s good to have smart readers.
I've been following the debate on the idea of unilateral separation (the Wall) in the American and Israeli press, including on your blog. Dr. Steven Postrel provides a very intelligent and convincing counter-argument, and I do agree with many of the points he makes. But it's not clear how his proposal, basically perpetuating the current status quo and getting tougher/smarter ("Intrusive occupation") is going to work in the long-run (a few years, he suggests) and whether the outcome would be so different from the one resulting from a unilateral withdrawal (which also assumes that Israel will have the right to retaliate against terrorists, reenter the territories, maintain military basis, etc.). In fact, while short-term military incursions like the one we saw last week are (and will be) backed by the majority of the Israeli public, a permanent military occupation a la Southern Lebanon is bound to produce political tensions inside Israel (not to mention the reaction abroad). It will not be sustainable politically, militarily, etc. So how do we square the circle here? How do we get the kind of separation that will permit the Israelis to get out (for good) from most of the populated Arab areas in the West Bank, without threatening their security, assuming that neither Arafat nor any other potential Palestinian figure (they are mostly warlords) can deliver that kind of security. My proposal: An interim agreement (with Israel) allowing the Jordanian military to take control of most of the Arab towns and villages in the West Bank and establish order there, while creating the political and economic conditions for some form of autonomy or independence in the future (a few years), something along the lines of what we have in Cyprus today. In the context of such an agreement between Jordan and Israel, perhaps some form of free trade zone, will permit Palestinians to work in Israel, etc. It seems to me that such a plan could probably be implemented following the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the creation of a pro-American Jordan/Iraq bloc. Leon Hadar Friday, April 26, 2002
Saudis Hate Women, Wear Girl's Clothes Charles Johnson is mesquite smoking today. Check out his discovery of rampant Saudi misogyny. It isn't bad enough that the sexes relate to each other through the prism of the 12th century in his own sandbox, but Prince Pampered Fatass feels the need to swath himself in his delicate, effete, can't-handle-women-on-anything-close-to-equal-footing sensibility wherever he may go. This would seem to argue that Americans can bring their sensibility with them to Saudi Arabia. Or maybe that's just for princes. This Round Goes to Technology I am a realist about technology: I know its relentless march cannot be stopped, nor do I particularly want to stop it. But I also know it has a downside, as Kevin Ayers once sang:
Bit it ends with a curse Making life easy But making it worse” Imagine my surprise then when I found an aspect of technological advancement that has NO DOWNSIDE WHATSOEVER. Thanks to the Internet, faxes, and email, “recovery rates for missing children have soared,” according to this article in the NY Times:
....In 1989, about 62 percent of kidnapped children and runaways whose safety was considered seriously threatened were recovered safely, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nationwide clearinghouse, which handles 6,000 to 7,000 such cases a year. Now the recovery rate is about 93 percent. (The rate for all cases reported to the police, which includes those in which the child was merely separated from a parent for several hours, is more than 99 percent.) The improvement is even greater among the 5 percent of cases in which the kidnapper is not a family member. Before 1990, the recovery rate for such cases was about 35 percent. Since then, the recovery rate has been about 90 percent, the center reported.
"It has helped us to get information out to the public," Mr. Allen said. "It has enabled us to capture lead information. And it has enabled us to analyze that lead information and get it to law enforcement." In other words, it helps to have magnets when looking through a haystack. Today, the magnets come in many forms, including e-mail messages, faxes, databases and Web sites (the center operates Missingkids.com). The Convincing Postrels The wise and nearly omniscient Jerry and I have picked through Steven Postrel's remarkably well-argued anti-Wall post and we can’t find much wrong with it. I am convinced. Jerry is a bit skeptical that a more amenable leadership will evolve among the Palestinians under the proposed intrusive interim occupation, but he is skeptical that a more amenable Palestinian leadership will evolve under ANY circumstances. I’m curious to hear what Andrew Sullivan has to say about all this. By the way, the answer is yes: Steven Postrel is Virginia Postrel's husband. She’s convinced by his argument as well. But then again, she “nearly always finds Steve convincing.” I can see why. More On the Wall Another approach to the Wall that makes up in vigor what it lacks in nuance.
The Palestinians and the surrounding Arab population are calling for Israel's withdraw from the occupied territory. They are also insisting that the Palestinian Authority become the ruling party for this sovereign "nation." The final request is a cease and desist of settlements in the occupied territory, as well as a relocation and complete removal of existing settlements. Let's suggest that the Israelis agree to, and execute the above "proposals." The Israelis will have then abided by all the requests posed by the Palestinians, therefore all suicide bombings should stop and peace should reign supreme. If I were in charge of Israel, this is what I would do. I would say, "Look world, we are a peace-loving Jewish state, we have given the Palestinians what they asked for." I would then put up a friendly wall and place some nice flower planters on it, perhaps murals painted by Israeli and Palestinian children. If and when the first suicide bombing occurs, I would send a shower of bombs, raining bomb after bomb after bomb. This would go on until not one living creature stirred. I would then bulldoze every square acre of land until it was flat, tear down the wall, have a big hoe-down and sing "Ding, Dong the Palestinians are Dead." I would then put up a big sign on all the borders of my new and expanded Israel saying, "Welcome to all those who are friends. For those of you who do not fall into that category, please go away. Enjoy your stay." Extreme? Yes, of course. But it is my belief that if the Israelis do everything they are asked to do and the Palestinians fail to hold up their end of the bargain, the Israelis can, without hesitation, defend their people, land and way of life. I’m afraid the Palestinians WILL NOT stop being certifiable assholes even if the Israelis do everything they are asked. One final fact remains: the Palestinian majority cares nothing for peace, they have committed themselves to martyrdom, misery and self-pity, and I for one am sick of hearing their whining. Dawn Olsen Back to the Mines? I wrote the other day about oil and our need to move beyond it. There was the unexpected discovery that some of the oil fields are refilling from below, but that is not something to stake our future upon. Blogger Joe Katzman agrees with me, but thinks we need to ween ourselves in stages. Another unexpected development is clean-burning coal, which may lead to one of those stages - check it out. Miss Me? Okay, I'm back. I went out to get the mail and I was kidnapped by gypsies, but I escaped at the border, hitched a ride on a manure wagon - boy do I smell - and just got back. Of course there's more to it than that, but some stories are better left untold. The Webster of His Day Jim Treacher, Treacherous Jim, always searching, always penetrating, always probing, has another splendiferous new concept, a "Blogossary": check his entries, contribute your own. Hey, this could be another blook. (Via Jeff Jarvis, who often rules like a Blogger : Journalist :: Butterfly : Caterpillar) Thursday, April 25, 2002
NO To The Wall Wherein reader Steven Postrel lays a serious, if polite, smackdown on me.
1) If the Israelis remove themselves from the territories, will they also isolate the Palestinians from the outside world? If they do, then they will have turned the territories into a giant prison camp, which would almost certainly be unsustainable in the face of international and US pressure. Such isolation would result in starvation and disease on a mass scale, unless you want the Israelis also to act as wardens and run the prison camp, in which case there really would be no separation at all. Furthermore, if the Palestinians are not allowed to commute into Israel to work, they will not be economically viable, and will have nothing else to do but plot aggression. 2) If the Israelis do not isolate the territories from the outside world, then the Palestinians will import weapons of all kinds from their various foreign suppliers. In particular, we can expect massive amounts of mortars and short-range rockets to be brought in, and man-portable SAMs if these can be acquired. With these, the Palestinians will be able to terrorize Israel, since the parties will be in close proximity and walls can't stop indirect fire weapons. The Palestinians will get lots of help from skilled Hezbollah specialists in tactics and maintenance for these weapons. At some point, chemical weapons may be employed, since these are relatively easy to synthesize from civilian-use precursor substances used in everyday industry. 3) If the Israelis respond to mortar and rocket attacks by shooting back piecemeal, they will not be able to suppress the incoming fire. Terror attacks don't require militarily important results, just random destruction, so massed fire and careful target registering would not be required of the Palestiinans; they could fire and move, hiding their launchers among civilians or camoflauged positions. The only way to shut off this type of attack will be to go in and perform an operation of the type the IDF has just completed, only under much worse military conditions against a more well-armed foe. IF they are lucky, the Israelis would win, with high casualties, the position THEY HAVE RIGHT NOW--the set of options {occupation, expulsion, surrender}. It would just be a long and expensive detour right back to square one, only with an even worse international position (bad PR from the Wall itself combined with the use of heavy weaponry in civilian areas). 4) During the period when the Palestinians had de facto control of their own state, protected from intervention by Israel's policy of "separation", they would also have time to try destabilizing Jordan, whose population is majority Palestinian. With a war taking place next door, in which their brethren were slugging it out with the Jews on more-equal terms, the passions of the average Jordanian are likely to be inflamed with the hope of imminent victory, and the collapse of the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan is a plausible (though not probable) outcome. 5) The Wall would be perceived by all Arabs as a sign of weakness--the Jews are tiring! the Jews are giving in!--and would stimulate aggression by Hezbollah (Iran's proxy), Iraq, and possibly Syria (although I think Assad can be deterred). Any time Israel looks weak, the US loses prestige as well (see Reuel Gerecht's latest in the Weekly Standard for an assenting voice on this). When Israel looks strong, so do we, and when we look strong, the Arabs are far more tractable. In short, hopes that Israel can avoid the painful realities of the situation by retreating behind a physical barrier are vain. Because the Palestinians must be prevented from acquiring weapons and organizing their forces, the Israelis must maintain a strong presence among them. (Economic reality also dictates Palestinian employment within Israel.) This presence prevents the destruction of Israel by relatively efficient weapons, but it opens the door of vulnerability to the less efficient weapon of the suicide bomber. In order to minimize the suicide bomber threat, the Israelis will need a much more intrusive occupation, one that provides physical security to Palestinians, protecting them from one another as well as from Israelis. A much more intensive use of informers will be needed, to the extent that no Palestinian feels that he can safely plot with another. Provocation in the schools and local media will have to be ended. And economic self-betterment of the Palestinians will have to be encouraged, protecting their property rights, removing the more obnoxious settlements and allowing the Palestinians to spread out, constructing needed infrastructure, etc. After a few years of this policy, civic opposition to the Israeli occupation will spontaneously develop along nonviolent lines. This opposition will garner great sympathy from the international community and from within the left-to-moderate-blocs in Israel. At that point, the Israeli government will be able to negotiate a land-for-peace deal with leaders whose interest will be in peace, with a people who have something to lose by choosing war. By that point, too, we can hope that we have put a more acceptable regime in charge of Iraq, cowing the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Iranian government (which may be dissolved by its own people). I hope you don't mind my going on at such length. But I think that the logical flow of the argument is necessary in order to understand why the Wall is a bad idea. --Steven Postrel Why I Read Blogs I just read the third installment of the blogs in the media series and it made me consider why I now refer to blogs as often as I once referred to the DrudgeReport, MSNBC.com or CNN.com. I want news of course: what office nerd forced to shuffle paper, justify numbers and spit out data doesn't? It's an escape from your dreary existence. More importantly, I stay connected with what's happening in the world, state, city, town, block where I live on an as-it-happens basis. Of course I know when my news craving habit started: September 11. The feeling of helplessness and disconnection from my family, most especially my daughter, was almost unbearable. It seemed the bad news was only getting worse and at any moment another disaster might occur. I realize my need to stay connected was not unique, but my experience and reaction to that day was unique to ME, and I distinctly remember that day, vividly, in color, emotions fresh in my mind. I have a 10am - 7pm shift and drop my daughter off at daycare on my way to work. As I escorted her to her class I saw the teachers talking, crowded together, looking at the only TV. There was mass confusion and misinformation all over the news. All I was able to gather in the five minutes before I had to rush to work was that a plane had hit the World Trade Center building. This was just minutes, maybe even seconds before the second plane hit. By the time I got to the car and was on my way, shock and disbelief were giving way to mass chaos on the radio. I am an avid listener of Howard Stern in the morning and I would have thought it was a gag had I not just seen the evidence for myself. I knew from the tone and lack of humor in all their voices that this was for real. I then switched to NPR for a dose of hard facts. At some point in the journey first tower had fallen. My mind couldn't fathom such a thing. Was it even possible? God - how many people were in those buildings? What the hell was going on? I looked around for some sort of sign that this was a cruel joke and I was only one who wasn't in on it. The people in their cars were either in a state of disbelief or just plain blank. The roads seemed oddly deserted. I made it to work in record time; when I was just one block from work the second tower fell. I screamed "GOD - WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?" I put my head in my hands and sobbed like a blubbering fool. I cried so hard I could barely see the road. I suddenly became self-conscious and looked around: the light had changed and I hadn’t even noticed. I quickly worked my way to my office. In passing, I saw my co-workers huddled, deep in discourse, or frantically searching on the Internet. ALL THE MAJOR SITES WERE DOWN. I was deeply thankful for my radio: a connection to the outside world, something, anything to keep me in touch with what was going on. I survived that day, unlike the 3000+ who didn't. I was lucky not to have lost anyone close to me, but I was touched and scarred forever. They compare 9/11 to Pearl Harbor or JFK's assassination or any of the life-changing events that touch a nation. I still can't believe those buildings are gone or that people who were going about their everyday lives were caught in some sick twist of fate by the actions of fanatical madmen. It is just too much to take in - even 7 1/2 months later. Now I stay connected; never again do I want to be caught off-guard, uninformed. The big media news sources are helpful but they lack what the best blogs/blog writers are able to do: they take raw news, chew into little pieces, digest it and spit out in a way that I can understand, discern what it means, even formulate an opinion. Maybe I am lazy by allowing these writers to think for me, but if intelligent, educated, thoughtful and remarkably fair-minded people can give me a sense of what my world really means, then that is worth something to me. Thanks for working hard bloggers: my cluttered mind can be at peace for a little while. Dawn Olsen New Media In the Old, Part 3: Respect and Backlash Let us begin with words from blog sages Dave Winer and Doc Searls from February:
Jenkins' piece echoes a belief that's getting more hollow every day. He says "It may seem strange to imagine the blogging community as a force that will shape the information environment almost as powerfully as corporate media." It may seem strange to some, but to me it doesn't go far enough. Corporate media is disappearing. It's diseconomic. It fails to give people with minds what they want, differing perspectives and access to information. His quote, adapted to 1981, would go like this. "It may seem strange to imagine the personal computer community as a force that will shape the information environment almost as powerfully as mainframes and minis." They did said stuff like that. Instead, as we know, the PC devastated the mainframe culture’s control of information. When the revolution was over, IBM was tottering on bankruptcy (they recovered) and all their competition either transitioned to PCs, or retreated to the workstation market. In all cases, they lost control, and before that happened, to many, it was unthinkable that they could. Call us cockroaches if you want, I'm sure IBM thought Apple, Microsoft and Intel were cute and dirty too, but distributed and decentralized news is rapidly becoming an accomplished fact, as fractional horsepower computers overtook centralized and controlled computers in the 80s. Too much attention was paid to the dotcommers, the PC revolution also had carpetbaggers and charlatans. To pay attention to the excesses would be to miss the trend. -Dave Winer
Blogs are thickly woven into the web of what we know, what we want to know more about and how we inform each other. That makes them vastly different from the information distribution system that constitutes Journalism as Usual. -Doc Searls
....At Scripting.com, a site normally devoted to technical discussion of Web programming, people sent in pictures of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing and reports. "There is soot falling out of the sky outside my apartment in Brooklyn," wrote one contributor, Cameron Barrett. ...."We want to figure out why it happened, what it means and where we're going to go from here," said Mr. Winer. "The world's changed, and it's all very fresh. We need to talk about it." The first story to unambiguously herald blogging as a new species of journalism and the wave of the post-9/11 future came from James C. Bennett at the very end of 2001:
Weblogs, or "blogs" for the verbally spare, have come into their own since Sept. 11. Their combination of instantaneous comment, links to breaking news stories, and links to other blogs and their sources permitted a very rapid and fluid means of following and understanding events. Particularly useful was the ability of bloggers to check and fact-find on articles in the mainstream press, and particularly to pick apart and quickly expose errors by mainstream pundits, broadcast reporters and other sources.
All of these developments suggest a permanent change is in the offing. Bloggers and their readers may form only a small percentage of the Anglosphere populations, but they are typical "early adopters" -- trendsetters and opinion leaders. The crossover between the blogs and mainstream media means that ideas, opinions and identified errors from blogspace will be reflected more and more in mainstream media, to the extent that they remain distinct things. This writer feels much of academia and the media throughout the Anglosphere has come to resemble, in a way, the Church in Europe immediately before the Reformation. They have grown intellectually lazy, out of touch with the people they believe they exist to enlighten, and irrelevant to the needs they exist to serve. They have come to see their position, incomes and the respect of the public as entitlements due to them for their virtue, rather than earned by achievement. The intellectual monopoly of the medieval Church was undermined by the advanced communication technology of the printing press. Printers and pamphleteers mushroomed throughout northern Europe, and the rapid and hard-to-control exchange of ideas their network enabled created the medium for new awarenesses and attitudes. Large parts of the old structure of the Church were overthrown and replaced; that which was left was greatly transformed by the Counter-Reformation. Are these little Weblogs the harbinger of a similar reformation of the academia and media establishments of the Anglosphere? I wouldn't count it out. In mid-January the pendulum swung back as Jonah Goldberg weighed in on blogging in the National Review:
More important, blog sites don't make money. Again the pendulum swung in short order: in the New York Observer, Ron Rosenbaum compared Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan to George Orwell with a rhetorical effulgence that seemed to imply drug use as well, or maybe just a lack of sleep. Nonetheless, while he saw their quality of writing as comparable to one another, Rosenbaum saw one distinct advantage for Sullivan (hint - whose name is also a link?):
Rosenbaum inadvertently reveals a truth in passing on his way to another truth:
Rosenbaum’s other truth is that by taking advantage of the immediacy of the Web, Sullivan and many others including Matt Welch, Ken Layne and Charles Johnson on the West Coast (who take advantage of the time difference) take advantage of early posting by the mainstream media to get a jump on the next day’s news and opinion and posit preemptive eviscerations where necessary. Hot on the heels of Rosenbaum’s love letter came the first out and out assault on blogging, an attack so dismissive (and hilarious) that Steven Den Beste thought it had to be a troll: Tim Cavanaugh’s notorious "Let Slip the Blogs of War":
You can try to keep all the blog news straight in your head, to render a chronicle fit for posterity, but the fog of war blogging will get you. Where did I read that pithy comment about Arab paranoia 23 minutes ago? Was it by Virginia Postrel or Andrew Sullivan, or was it one of those other guys who's always saying how great Virginia Postrel and Andrew Sullivan are? Or no, wait, maybe it was the blog by the guy who thinks Mickey Kaus and Sullivan are geniuses and always links to their blogs, but thinks Postrel is an idiot - and always links to her blog to prove it?
Cavanaugh is offended by blogrolling (“Outside Jerry Lewis telethons, I can't remember the last time I've seen so many references to 'my good friend so-and-so,' 'consistently excellent work by X,' and so on”), the hawkishness of many bloggers, etc., but he finally gets to his main point after many a sarcastic paragraph:
There's a pretty severe disconnect here, between some of the most buoyant down-with-the-media-elite skylarking we've seen since 1995-era Jon Katz, and the fact that those same media elites are providing virtually all of the news the war bloggers congratulate themselves on serving up. ....But for consistently being first to find links to growing stories, Matt Drudge (whose relationship to mainstream reporting is infinitely more complex than the bloggers') is still far ahead of the pack, and the result is that after taking in the Drudge Report, you frequently spend the next 36 hours being alerted to the existence of some breaking story that you've already read. Cavanaugh’s other failing (he told me via email that he had never seen most of the sites he mentions in the article before he sat down to write the story with a list of them provided by his editor - pretty difficult to get a sense of continuity that way) is he doesn’t recognize that for the most part it isn’t hard news blog readers are looking for, it is ANALYSIS and COMMENTARY, as well as PERSPECTIVE on a given subject, drawn from the vast and varied backgrounds and areas of interest and expertise of the multifarious blogosphere. Most bloggers and blog readers already know the news, they want to know what it means. That is why blogs won’t replace the mainstream news gathering media, they will help keep it honest, focused, correct errors, and most importantly, provide context from the outside. It is the blogger’s editorial independence from the mainstream media that is revolutionary, not its news gathering abilities, which gain in power the closer the story is to home. Cavanaugh ends with a final insult: “But as long as courage lives and liberty endures, every American will be proud to have you out there, blogging for an audience of none.” Readership has been hotly debated of late, but suffice it to say that serious blogs have a daily readership of anywhere from 100 to 50,000, in the words of Bennett, "early adopters -- trendsetters and opinion leaders" who visit them each day; and, even taking into account repeat visitors, this is a long way from “none,” as “no one” can’t come back out of intense interest and curiosity throughout the day and drive up the hit count. As satire Cavanaugh’s piece is funny and gets at some of the idiosyncrasies of blogging, especially “warblogging,” but as serious criticism it’s limp to the point of impotence. Next: Part 4 - Sullivan and the Blogger's Manifesto The Wall Andrew Sullivan supports it, as does Nick Denton, and Dennis Ross in today’s WaPo:
Option three represents the failure of diplomacy, not its triumph. It runs the risk of emboldening those in the Arab world who believe that violence works. Twenty months of pain will not seem too great to those who will see that it produced a partial Israeli withdrawal -- and continuing violence may produce even more. If left with option three, we may want to work with the Israelis to make the withdrawal as practical as possible and to try to broker understandings between the Palestinians and Israelis to make the arrangements more stable and enduring. We may even consider the value of an international presence to fill in as the Israelis implement separation. Ultimately, separation may be the least bad of the available alternatives. In keeping with the truth-telling themes in President Bush's April 4 speech, the administration is going to have to face the real options before us and make its own hard decisions.
And Denton has a point: A wall may just buy the two generations the region needs to find peace. But I doubt it. A Wall was East Germany's solution to a different problem -- it was built to keep people in not out -- and it didn't work. The first problem is Jerusalem. It, just like Berlin, wants to be an international city, a free zone, and that will complicate any plan to build a wall. No one will reasonably be able to keep Muslims from the Temple Mount and Jews from the Wailing Wall and Christians from their holy places. Jerusalem must be free. So if you make Jerusalem an international city, you build a big hole in the wall where bombers masquerading as pilgrims can pass through. You are soon forced to build a wall within the wall. You might as well not build a wall at all. The second problem is image: The last thing Israel needs right now is to be seen as the wall-builders of our era. The third problem, is that building a wall just avoids the problem, the real problem: the hate. Fine, so a wall would make it yet harder for suicide-murderers to wander by a market or a hotel or a bus and trigger terror. But these merchants of hate, these people who will stop at nothing -- even selling their own children into death and murder and hell -- will find new ways to detonate hate. They invented the 737 bomb. They invented the woman bomb. They invented the child bomb. For all we know, they invented new, improved anthrax. A wall will not stop their weapons. A wall will not stop the retaliation. A wall will not stop the killing. A wall will not stop the hate.
An Israeli wall would be just as porous. The hate would still flow through. And if this wall does prevent Palestinians from killing Israelis, the pressure will still build up; they and their alleged allies will aim their hatred elsewhere. They will attack Israeli's friends. They will kill us. I am also less concerned that the pressure that would build within Palestinian society would find its outlet in us: let’s face it, they already hate us. We are the supporters, providers and enablers of the Little Satan, at least in their eyes. I see this changing little. Familiarity may breed contempt: cut off from Israel I think it more likely that the Palestinians would turn on their leadership than turn on us anymore than they have already. I believe any illusions we had about the temper of the Palestinians toward us was put to rest with the scenes of joyous dancing in the streets we all saw September 11. Another reason a wall might be a good idea is that the wall would give the Israeli government political cover to do what it knows it must: pull back from the settlements, which have never been anything more than a poke in the eye toward the Palestinians, a needless provocation, an unnecessary insult to accompany the necessary injury. Withdrawn to supportable borders, relatively secure from terrorist attack, Israel could perhaps get on with life and concern itself with such pleasantries as exporting its bio-tech industry to Cleveland. Sometimes separation of combatants is the only way to let intractable heat cool off, to allow the other side’s humanity to seep back into the equation, to simply stop the killing. We may have arrived at such a time. No Time to Cast Jews In a Favorable Light? The deeply insightful Noah checks back in:
Regarding the objections raised by Ted to what I had written in reference to the Yiddish series on NPR, they are valid and understandable given the somewhat heavy-handed phraseology I had used. I made it sound like Yiddishist antipathy to Israel is purely a reflex of their socialism and secularism, when clearly it's not. And by all means, not all Yiddishists are anti-Zionists (e.g., Harvard Yiddish Studies professor Ruth Wisse). But, as you recognized in what you amended to Ted's comments, the essential point I was making remains valid: Yiddish language, culture and entertainment are distinctly diaspora phenomenon, completely non-threatening in terms of any actual political power, and separate from and often opposed to Zionism (and the Hebrew language and culture associated with it). Which makes Yiddish culture more politically acceptable to the left in general and the Commissars of Culture at NPR specifically. Of course, that distinction is lost on those stalwart NPR listeners who were compelled to vent their outrage that anything at all related to Jews should be presented in a favorable light at this time. But that's not anti-Semitism, it's anti-Zionism. Get the difference? Israel In the News It was just a quick mention on the local news portion of "Morning Edition" a little bit ago (you know I’m monitoring NPR like a hawk): new Mayor Jane Campbell of Cleveland gave her first State of the City address yesterday and one of her most important themes is jobs, which have been leaking from the region at the rate of 37,000 lost last year alone. On a positive note, she said, “Cleveland's second Israeli-rooted life-sciences firm is preparing to locate its American operations here. More may follow.” In fact Israeli bio-tech is such a promising field that local leaders went on a "Cleveland Mission to Israel" back in January:
“Cleveland has a large medical research complex in place, including the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western University and Medical School and University Hospital, which together employ over 20,000 people in a variety of biomedical professions, including 3000 doctors,” said Dr. Kevin Trangle, who will lead a delegation of executives and institutional leaders from Cleveland’s biomedical community to Israel in January. ...Cleveland already plays host to Israeli life sciences companies. Quark Biotech (QBI) and Simbionix collaborate with the city’s research centers, drawing upon a wealth of expertise in R&D and business development. Simbionix develops and markets solutions for endoscopic surgery and medical training, and has entered into collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic for the development of new technologies for image guided endoscopy, assisted robotic endoscopy, simulators and related areas. “The Cleveland Clinic is dedicated to forming strong alliances with industry and taking part in the advance of medical technology,’ said Simbionix CEO David Barkay. Their decision to collaborate with us in the development of new technologies reflects this commitment.” The Cleveland Clinic Foundation recently became a shareholder in Simbionix, which will soon establish its headquarters, to include marketing operations and some R&D activities, in the city. Barkay cited the strong R&D focus of the city’s hospitals, as well as the high quality of life sciences graduates from Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University, as additional reasons to set up operations in the region. Government involvement in attracting life sciences companies to the Cleveland area is also well developed. The newly established Bio Park, located in the Cleveland area, is an incubator as well as a political apparatus, which involves both government and private enterprise, that has the singular goal of attracting new companies to the region and nurturing their growth. Funding for new companies is also available. Early Stage Partners, a $50 million VC fund, has been established to provide financial backing for companies at the startup stage. Jonathan Murray, a partner with Early Stage, will be attending the conference. “We would like to see the development of a two-way pipeline involving Cleveland and Israel,” the Cleveland Mission’s Trangle said. “There is substantial potential for financial, R&D and clinical collaborations here. Among the other advantages, Cleveland offers facilitation in gaining FDA approval through the utilization of its clinical facilities. Furthermore, Cleveland companies are continually looking for new innovative products to license, acquire or assist in their distribution. To Israeli companies, these factors will greatly facilitate the ultimate marketization of their technologies and products.” People wonder why we see eye-to-eye with Israel, why average Americans feel an affinity with Israel (even if the press doesn’t) that they will never feel for the Palestinians or Saudis or Egyptians, etc., etc: because Israel is an advanced, educated, developed, sophisticated, democratic, Western-style country with such niceties as a bio-tech industry that would capture the attention of business and civic leaders on the other side of the world. Can you imagine Jane Campbell leading a contingent to Saudi Arabia? For what, to visit the oil fields that American companies built in the first place before the Saudis “nationalized” them? See, the mayor of one of America’s larger cities would have to obscure herself with the freaking Shroud of Turin in order to walk the streets of Riyadh and unless she was planning to set up a series of date plantations along Lake Erie, there wouldn’t much business to talk about anyway. If they did find something to talk about, say a new Institute of Islamofascism right next to the Cleveland Clinic, the meetings would be interrupted with people hurling themselves to the floor at regular intervals, and all the contracts would be sprinkled with “by the grace of Allahs” every other line, and what with the mayor having to pick the linen out of her mouth every time she wanted to say something, even with all of the high-paying jobs that the Islamofascism Institute would generate, I get the feeling that she would just say “Thanks, but no thanks Prince Pampered Fatass. By the way, while we’re in the area, would you point us in the direction of Israel, please, where at least I can get a decent bagel for breakfast and not walk around looking like an escapee from a harem? Thanks.” Wednesday, April 24, 2002
The Longest Moment Okay, so I was working away, thinking deep exploratory thoughts about oil and energy policy when the 2-year-old came up to the office and started leaning all over me and strategically wedging herself between the computer and my torso. When I’m deep into mental gymnastics it takes some doing to snap me out of it and I’m rarely cheerful when so aroused, but she is 2 and cute and all and I am her father. So I took a break in the middle of oil bubbling up from fissures below the Gulf of Mexico and we went downstairs to play some ball. She has a very strong right arm (damn, none of the three are left-handed - may have to have one more) and she loves to whip that little pink bouncy ball. She hasn’t really caught on to the whole catch thing, but that will come. She threw, I chased, lobbed it back. She threw, I chased, lobbed it back. She loves to watch the ball bounce down the stairs, so every fifth throw or so she would heave it all the way to the stairs: BOINK...BOINK...BOINK...BOINK..boink, dribble, dribble, dribble. “HaaaaaHaHaHa, HeeeeHeHe,” she guffawed, giggled. “Do it again, my Daddy.” I retrieved the ball and we did it again - several times. After a little while I suggested we roll the ball to each other so we could sit down. She reluctantly agreed, and in a sudden, volcanic burst of energy, she didn’t so much run as careen across the living room toward the hallway where I had proposed we play the sit down roll game. She’s just over 2 1/2 and she’s in that get-taller-and-thinner-real-quick phase where suddenly she REALLY doesn’t look like a baby anymore - she’s a little girl - so her pants had kind of slipped down a little after all the running around, and she tripped. The half-second from when she tripped to when she smacked her forehead - WHAM! - on the single wooden half-step up out of the living room was like one of those E-X-T-E-N-D-E-D dramatic scenes from movies where everything comes together in very S-L-O-W motion from nine different camera angles: like in The Untouchables on the stairs, or after Christopher Walken shoots himself but before he dies in The Deer Hunter where Robert De Niro is trying to stuff his brains back in and for a millisecond you think “well maybe,” but then you go “no way” - you know it’s all over even though it hasn’t happened yet. These are the moments that lead human beings to believe most strongly in cause-and-effect, because even though it hasn’t happened yet, you know WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN, and then it does. So after the ugly, jolting half-second of anticipation she fell with all of her little weight and momentum right on her forehead and it sounded like a gunshot, echoing in the hallway and up the skylight. And of course I ran to her and scooped her up and kissed her head over and over, though not on the quickly expanding and livid-turning injury site, but around it. I hate that feeling of helplessness and anger - WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND DON’T GET HURT EVER AGAIN - and sorrow, and fear, and concern, and then just love. After she finished wailing for a bit, she calmed down to whimpering. My son brought the standard ice-in-a-plastic-bag-wrapped-in-a-towel and she even let me hold it there for a little while before it started to hurt in that itchy, cold sort of way. Then we sat quietly and hugged; then she wanted to play ball. So we did. Time Running Out For Oil, but Maybe Not As Soon As We Thought This sounds very familiar. We posted this a couple of days ago saying many of the same things. Freudenburg says:
There are two reasons. One is that the United States simply uses too much oil, too wastefully. The other is that we've already burned up almost all the petroleum we have. The calls for "energy independence" aren't based on realism; they're based on nostalgia. To be fair, we've had quite a petroleum history. Back in 1859, the United States was the country where the idea of drilling for oil originated, and for nearly a century thereafter, we were a virtual one-nation OPEC. Save for a few years around the turn of the last century, the United States produced over half of all the oil in the world more or less continuously until 1953. ....According to the American Petroleum Institute, the United States is now down to just 3 percent of the world's proven reserves of oil. Wishful thinking isn't going to change that. Unless the politicians can figure out how to turn their hot air into oil, we need to face the facts: It is no longer possible for the United States to drill its way to energy independence. This country simply doesn't have that much oil left, and if we use that oil faster, we will just run out sooner. Only if we recognize the facts can we start to talk about a realistic energy policy. If the United States is ever to become energy-independent again, it won't be because of oil.
Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the Gulf of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by petroleum surging up from deep below, scientists report. That may mean that current estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low.
Runs and Reruns This tale amply demonstrates the crossfire of conflicting needs and liabilities that defines modern health care. During its first run on the market, Lotronex found many fans:
Although Lotronex was originally approved only for women, because studies did not find that it helped men, doctors were free to prescribe it for men, and many men did use it. Several spoke at the meeting today, including William Brown, a lawyer who said that after suffering from irritable bowel syndrome for 40 years, he was "almost totally cured" by Lotronex. He urged the F.D.A. to bring the drug back, but to require continuing education for doctors so that they would know how to diagnose the bowel condition
After listening to hours of presentations, the panel members voted to bring Lotronex back to market, but to recommend it only for women with severe chronic diarrhea from a definitively diagnosed case of irritable bowel syndrome. The panel said that patients should take 1 milligram a day, half the dose that was initially approved. The group said doctors should be free to prescribe Lotronex for men. But the panel struggled to find a way to ensure that only doctors who could reliably diagnose irritable bowel syndrome would have access to the drug. A system proposed by the company, involving prescriptions with special stickers, was rejected by the panel as cumbersome and impractical. Other bowel disorders can be mistaken for the syndrome, and Lotronex may harm such patients. How to train and certify doctors are among the details that the F.D.A. must work out with the drug company, along with finding a way to keep track of patients. This time around let’s hope Lotronex has a more successful run, as there is nothing more irritable than an irritable bowel. The Return of Rosenbaum I had been very disappointed with Ron Rosenbaum since September 11. I had been a big fan, but he had been irrelevant to the discussion until 4/15 when he got down to business with a New York Observer column titled “’Second Holocaust,’ Roth’s Invention, Isn’t Novelistic,” meaning, it’s a real possibility:
What is harder to imagine are ways in which it won’t happen. A peace process? Goodwill among men? An end to suicidal fanaticism? In your dreams. Instead we must begin to examine the variety of nightmare scenarios.
There is a horrid but obvious dynamic going on here: At some deep level, Europeans, European politicians, European culture is aware that almost without exception every European nation was deeply complicit in Hitler’s genocide. Some manned the death camps, others stamped the orders for the transport of the Jews to the death camps, everyone knew what was going on—and yet the Nazis didn’t have to use much if any force to make them accomplices. For the most part, Europeans volunteered. Now Rosenbaum is back with a continuation of the same theme::
But, alas, I can’t share his optimism that "we will win" that war. As I suggested in my extremely gloomy previous essay, it’s only prudent to prepare for the ultimate destruction of the state of Israel by Islamo-fascist fury, not to mention weapons of mass destruction. ....Lie No. 1: There Is No Cause for Alarm Events are moving far more rapidly and grimly than I could have imagined when I suggested that a Second Holocaust is becoming a realistic possibility. I had focused in particular on the one-sided European anti-Israel sentiment—the equanimity with which European politicians and people regarded the massacre of Jewish children, and the alacrity with which they condemned attempts by the state of Israel to defend itself from mass murder as "war crimes." ....Further sad confirmation of my analysis of anti-Israel bias in my previous column came within days, as European anti-Israeli sentiment morphed without much transition at all into outright "death to the Jews" anti-Semitism. ....One of the things that strikes you if you spend any time researching the period before the beginning of the first Holocaust is the following syndrome: Time after time, evidence of Hitler’s genocidal intentions would surface, and time after time, useful idiots would say, "Oh, that’s being alarmist—he doesn’t really mean it." For years now, the Arab press has been filled with Hitlerian exterminationist rhetoric calling for the murder of the Jews. And the people of Israel—many of them children of Holocaust survivors—are supposed to regard any focus on such exterminationist sentiments, on "death to the Jews" marches in Europe, on Jews "should be shot" remarks by Oxford dons, as "alarmist." Lie No. 2: Self-Defense Is a War Crime In addition to the lone cry of "alarmist," I received a number of remarkably supportive reactions. One that meant the most to me came from a Holocaust survivor, who said he’d feared no one would come out and say what he felt. Another that meant a lot to me was a call from a writer I’d admired who publishes in a left-wing weekly and who, like me, had in the past been of the dovish, Peace Now, Shimon Peres, negotiation-will-bring-peace belief. He said what changed things for him were the "suicide bombers." Not just the suicide bombers—who he believes, like me, should be called by their proper name: "mass murderers"—but the celebration of them, not just by Palestinians but by every Arab populace. Certified Cool Stuff In a very interesting special museum section today, the NY Times has an article about items donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum:
You may not think the hat, one of 346 pieces added by the museum in 2001, particularly noteworthy. But here it is, in a prominent display case, testament to the continuing history of America's most representative sport, which the museum traces season by season, record by record, game by game. Indeed, because of the peculiar statistics-and-trivia-driven appeal of the sport and its habit of insinuating itself into the lives of children, it could be argued that in baseball, events become history at an accelerated pace.
Scheer Hilarity Per Charles, an editorial by Robert Scheer in the LA Times entitled "The Palestinian Side Must Be Told" would seem to imply that the Palestinian side is, um, not being told:
Interesting that Scheer, who must be blind and deaf as well as dumb, doesn’t mention NPR as among the American media that doesn’t present the Palestinian side. In fact, he fails to mention ANY specific media outlet that doesn’t present the Palestinian side, because other than maybe Fox News or a few Murdoch papers, THERE AREN’T ANY. This has to be one of the most twisted and inadvertently hilarious paragraphs written in the last ten years:
Olsen Disinters Expired Equine, Flogs It I imagine the reason I am so up in arms about NPR is that I have been naive. Unlike the many of you from whom I’ve recently heard (and the talk over on Charles's site), I have trusted NPR and more or less enjoyed its ”in-depth” coverage style until this bias issue recently began to sink in. Part of my blindness derives in part, I’m sure, from the fact that I have done commentaries for NPR and know quite a few employees, most of whom I like. So now I feel betrayed: if they have to take sides, I wish they would at least take the right one. The old sage himself, Martin Peretz from TNR explains some of the issues in his current column:
Milton Bradley: Get Out of Jail Free Card Okay, one win does not break the Curse of Kitaen as the Indians returned to their recent habit of hitting the ball with the authority of a tot’s T-ball team. This may be a “transitional” year after all. Reader Robert pointed out something I had missed:
After hitting a home run in Cleveland's 6-2 loss to Minnesota on Saturday night, Bradley said he usually doesn't drink and attributed the situation to his low tolerance for alcohol and an empty stomach. Another View of Yiddish-American Culture
You could point to opposition to Zionism in some socialist groups, but you could also point to opposition from many religious groups (from Reform to Orthodox). Secular Yiddish culture in the US was overwhelmingly supportive of Zionism and Israel, particularly from the 1930s on. In modern times, the most identifiably Jewish anti-Zionist groups have been religious movements unhappy with, among other things, the secular nature of Israel's government. Of course, how NPR chooses to use the history of Yiddish culture in America may well be something very different. Ted Can you imagine NPR doing a ten-week series hearkening back to the good ‘ol days of Stepin Fetchit, black minstrelsy, and Uncle Tomism? And at the same time contrast that with blatantly critical coverage of black activism? Excuse the expression: not in a coon's age. Don't They Read/Hear the News? Yet while NPR continues its anti-Israeli offensive, the Ohio Senate (registration required) yesterday passed a resolution in support of Israel:
It specifically mentions Iran and Iraq. The resolution accuses Yasser Arafat of harboring terrorist groups, lectures Arab nations on actions they must take for peace and laments "the tragic loss of life experienced by the Israeli and Palestinian people during the recent hostilities in the Mideast.''
Timothy F. Hagan, his Democratic challenger, said it is "more important than ever that this country stand up for our democratic ally Israel.'' "Every day Israelis are facing the same type of barbaric terror that the United States faced on Sept. 11. . . . No country should be expected to acquiesce in the face of this murderous behavior.''
Palestinian bombers, on the other hand, tend to get more vivid treatment, often with endearing photos and warm human-interest touches. The New York Times reported that one bomber "raised doves and adored children." This adoration apparently did not extend to the children being bombed. Part of the problem is that the attacks on Israeli civilians are too common to be considered news. Also, some reporters think Israel should shut up about suicide bombers and just learn to live with the problem.) Israel Attacked From the West NPR continues its assault on Israel this morning with a report from Anne Garrels in Ramallah, called “Palestinian Damage,” which virtually itemizes the destruction of property there by Israeli forces, quoting several Palestinians on the “mindlessness” of the damage and lingering over the fear children have of returning to school. Garrels also emphasizes that “even the most moderate” of Palestinians is dead-set against being blown up (by Israelis of course: blowing yourself up is a-okay, even praiseworthy) and/or having his property destroyed. There is no implication: it is flat-out asserted that all of this damage was intentional, wanton, and malicious. In some ways this report is even more disturbing than Julie McCarthy's jeremiad against Israel from Jenin last Friday, where at least the emphasis was on loss of life, which is always a regrettable and legitimate concern even if handled in an appallingly biased and misleading manner. This report simply dwells on crushed cars and broken computers. There must not be enough dead babies or planated quadriplegics to describe in clinical detail in Ramallah, so we talk about squished motor vehicles and savaged hard drives. Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Conductor Sex I thought this article was going to be about trains and I was thinking about the accident with the car rolling up the driveway with the lights out from The World According to Garp, but it isn't so forget it. “Get Your War On” Is In the House As I mentioned here, my first two picks for the 9/11 blog book aren’t even really blogs: Tony Pierce’s "Dear Kids From Afghanistan" photo essay, and David Rees’s "Get Your War On" (Pt. 6). The NY Times has now recognized Rees’s brilliance with a feature, "Like Dilbert, But Subversive and Online":
It's true. He had just introduced himself and ordered a chicken sandwich, and next thing you know he was rolling. The story, straightened into diagrammable form, was this: He once read an article about the Minutemen, who mixed politics with fierce irony (in the manner of Lenny Bruce), which Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter, pronounced dead after Sept. 11, which remark (along with the Minutemen) inspired Mr. Rees, a temp worker, to create his harshly satiric comic strip — just to prove such prognosticators wrong. Along the way, he suggested that the resilience of pop culture, its ability to make humor out of pain, was one source of America's strength.
“Let the games begin!” “God, I wonder what kind of fantasies Bush is having about that.? Do you think he fantasizes about publicly executing bin Laden during the Super Bowl? What if they draw and quarter him? “*cough* Pay per view.” “We won’t be able to kill that motherfucker enough! We’ll have to cryogenically freeze him after we kill him just so we can wake his ass up and kill him again! Or develop a way to make a corpse more dead through repeated, relentless post mortem killing. You know, kind of like we’re doing to an entire fucking country?” Raise a Little Hell Very interesting concept: four parents spread between Long Island, San Antonio, Canada, and Austria (and a fifth, nonparent as art director, from Northeast Ohio - hey, a neighbor) share in a blog about parenting. The result: Raising Hell. Here is an example from Michelle posted today:
MTV was showing a video. I don't remember what band it was, but the lead singer had just jumped into a sea of fans and was going back onto the stage to dive into the crowd again. DJ was enthralled. I explained the concept of stage diving to him. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. Natalie must have too, because she was standing on the couch, ready to launch herself to the floor. She wanted to stage dive. Hmmm. Hmmm. Yes. Bad idea. Very bad idea. But....but......excess steam......pent-up energy.....bored out of their minds. I did it. We took all the cushions off the couch and got all the pillows from the beds. We laid them down in the middle of the living room floor, just in front of the couch. I told the kids to pick out some music. DJ picked Metallica. Natalie picked Offspring. And I taught them to stage dive. It became our nightly ritual, tucked between dinner and story-time. Cushions on floor, music picked out, ready, set, dive! They sang the songs, they played air guitar and occasionally got me to jump with them. I held up cardboard signs scoring their dives. We laughed and cheered and I kept the Band-Aids and ice packs handy. The ritual stayed for a year or two. Not every single night, but most nights, we would gather round the couch cushions and I would put my kids in harms way for a few moments of giddy fun. Eventually they got too big, or as they say, the living room got too small, and there were more bruises and crashes than fun. Hockey and basketball and baseball have taken the place of our ritual. I like to think that our nightly stage dives had some sort of purpose, that when DJ is making a dive for the ball at third base or Natalie is diving to the floor to keep the basketball in play, that their skills were honed in a pretend mosh pit with Anthrax playing in the background. Humor me, ok? Beam His Ass Somewhere Rep. James Traficant of Youngstown: Franklin Foer notes that the convicted felon is
The Plot Thickens Check out this remarkable letter we received from Noah.
There’s less of a split personality here than meets the eye. The underlying modern Yiddish culture of the time celebrated in the NPR series was overwhelmingly secular and socialist in spirit, and as such, largely anti-Zionist. Yiddishists opposed Zionism with the concept of “doykeit,” which essentially meant “our (the Jews’) homeland is here” (i.e., as a minority community in the diaspora), and just like contemporary leftists voiced greater sympathy for the “Arab masses” in Palestine than their Zionist brothers and sisters. There was also intense linguistic and cultural animosity between proponents of Yiddish and Hebrew as to who should represent the true voice of Jews in the 20th Century. In the contemporary prospective, Yiddish culture can thus be seen as acceptable and politically correct form of identity politics for Jews – defined in terms of a nostalgia-tinged folk culture and a “progressive” take on all political issues. So Jews who represent that sort of thing are just fine with NPR. What’s not acceptable are Jews who believe Israel has a right to exist, and have the temerity to defend themselves and their families against terrorism. Noah Phallacy First it was the "hello probie", then Linda Lovelace dies, then this bit of sports memorabilia. I need a nap... Your Bill Is Due You may know that DailyPundit Bill Quick is famous for coining the phrase "blogosphere," but Bill shouldn’t only be known for his sparkling neologisms. What I like best about Bill is his near total lack of tact, as in these posts:
Look for lots more hysterical shrieking and fluttering from the EUniks after this charade is finished. Osama Shabaneh is Ashamed to be an American He says:
Love and Marriage? Horse and Carriage? I’m sure many of you have already seen the link from InstaGlenn, but I would be deeply remiss if I didn’t mention Dr. Frank's smoking hot analysis of the issue of anti-Semitism vs. anti-Israeli attitude from his perspective in England. Are they the same thing? No, they are not, but they sure as hell tend to run together; and almost as if by magic, the more vehemently one feels the former, the more vehemently one tends to express the latter:
"I'm So Mad I Could Just Explode" Biased? Well, yes, but many of the cartoons here also have the ring of truth. This is pretty stark: "Jewish: My mother wants me to grow up to be a concert violinist. Palestinian: My mother wants me to grow up to be a martyr, exploding into a thousand pieces." This dichotomy says several mouthfuls about worldview and mentality. (From Marty's sister - thanks) Acceptable Duality? Daryl from Ithaca thinks I am a bit dense in not comprehending an acceptable yin/yang duality in NPR programming, and in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in general:
Daryl Ballheads With my occasional diamond-oriented bleeps and blurps, I have found a lot of baseball fans out there. Though he doesn’t seem to hate the Yankees enough for my or Jerry’s taste, David Pinto has a real nice blog on baseball - he appears to be a generalist: not to stat-ist, no too fan-ish (like I am, for example), but just right. He discusses the roll of “clubhouse cancer” in relationship to Kenny Lofton, erstwhile Indian, in this post. He also rightly points to a (rare) excellent Gammons (shriveled mumbling Bostonian) piece on contraction: regarding which, the Expos and (arrogant little pricks) Twins are doing their best to humiliate (unfortunately, though, it’s not what the teams do, it’s what their sparse, creepy fans do that counts the most). While we’re on baseball blogs, my friend Tony Pierce has a baseball blog in addition to his regular blog (which currently sports lurid, revealing pictures of the L.A. Blogger's Bash lll - you must see these to fully comprehend that bloggers have faces and heads and reproductive organs and whatnot in REAL BODIES like everyone else you may meet walking down the street), and on his baseball blog, Tony expresses UNDUE AFFECTION FOR BOTH THE RED SOX AND THE TWINS. But I still like him. Or maybe I’m the one with the problem since I hate everyone except the Indians and Dodgers. The Job Isn't Finished Until the Tools Are Put Away, Or Shot If Necessary While I agree with the Hansonian line on many issues - for example, a crushing military defeat often must come before a people are willing to talk sense: the “I had to blow them up to get their attention” argument, I disagree strongly with the simultaneously arrogant and obtuse view that “America doesn’t do windows”: that America comes in, kicks ass, then moves on. In the case of Afghanistan (and eventually Iraq and who knows whichever other Arab/Islamic pisspot needs a new government next), if we value our efforts at all - including lives lost in the call of duty - then we are logically and morally required to stick around to make sure that things get done right and don’t slip back into the hellish chaos we fought bravely to rectify in the first place. The job isn’t done with “victory”: the job is done when the indigenous people have their shit sufficiently together to run things themselves and not before. This is all the more true if we feel we cannot trust peacekeeping troops from other countries to do it right, which unfortunately seems to be the case right now (not that we are perfect, blowing up Canadians and all). The emphatically named Max Boot makes just this point is a sensible editorial in the Opinion Journal:
Avoid a Meltdown This is an important point to keep in mind as the Bush administration debates what to do about peacekeeping, for the issue extends far beyond the Hindu Kush. It's bad enough that U.S. indifference might run the risk of Afghanistan reverting to the chaos of the early 1990s, which made it a breeding ground of international terrorism. It's inconceivable that we would allow that to happen in Iraq -- a far more strategically important state -- once Saddam Hussein is toppled. If we are to avoid a meltdown in the middle of the Middle East, the Pentagon and the Bush administration had better cast their reservations aside, and get ready for some extended peacekeeping duty. "Other Arabs From The Same General Area Who Are In Deep Denial About Never Being Able To Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death" Comedian Larry Miller has a very funny piece in the Weekly Standard: a bit obvious and ham-fisted, but funny nonetheless. He is upset with attorney Stanley Cohen for representing Hamas, which doesn’t bother me that much: attorneys represent whomever comes along, especially if they are twisted (leftist, but it doesn’t much matter here) publicity hounds like Cohen. Cohen is much more an American attorney who lives for the spotlight of controversy than he is a Jew. It’s that simple. Miller is also upset that “Greta Van Facelift” has representatives from organizations such as Hamas on her show, and that she is then nice to them. As someone who has sat on both sides of the interviewer’s table on both TV and radio, once you have made a commitment to having someone on your show - whether it is wise to have someone from Hamas on your show is another question, but the media in general’s only moral commitment is to “newsworthiness” - you are then obliged to be courteous to them. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask tough, direct questions: in fact, if you are courteous, you can usually ask much tougher questions, to which the questionee will respond that he or she was “set-up,” but tough shit, pal. The interviewer/interviewee obligation goes something like this: if the questioner remains civil and courteous, he can ask any damn thing he/she wants and you can either answer or refuse and take the consequences. So I am not that bothered by this arrangement either. Did Miller just start watching news shows? They often have unsavory guests on who happen to be “newsworthy,” and the host is typically civil to the unsavory guest. This isn’t necessarily a moral failure, especially if by having the guest on, and by killing him/her with kindness, the guest is lured into revealing something important, or even simply just “revealing.” Now, preconditions are another matter, and to agree in advance to preconditions regarding subject matter, etc., may shed the heinous guest in an inappropriately favorable light, which may very well be immoral, but that is not what Miller is talking about. Miller’s bluff, hyperbolic tone does hit some paydirt, though, in his description of the overall Middle Eastern issue:
There is no sacred moral obligation to find a homeland for the Palestinians because as a people they don’t exist, but there are a shitload of disgruntled “Other Arabs” sitting around causing trouble, of whom Israel would be better off if they were making trouble in their own territory, assuming that these “Other Arabs” would then be content to leave Israel alone. If not, as I have said before, they would then deserve whatever inevitable horrors would await them. (Thanks to Jerry, who I haven't thanked enough lately.) Justifiable Terror? A central issue to the problem of terrorism is its definition: this currently leaves the U.S. and many Arab/Islamic countries in disagreement over Palestinian terror, which they hold to be a legitimate pursuit of liberation from oppression. We, and obviously Israel, do not agree and condemn suicide bombing as terrorism. In a Slate article, Jim Holt reviews the philosophical underpinnings of terror:
NPR's Split Personality Demonstrating either remarkable balance, coldly cynical triangulation, or clinical schizophrenia, NPR programming currently ranges from the blatant anti-Israeli bias of Julie McCarthy's report from Jenin last Friday, to the joyful Judaica of their ongoing Yiddish Radio Project, whose sixth weekly installment will air this afternoon on “All Things Considered.” I believe if they run another McCarthy piece tomorrow next to the Yiddish show, matter as we know it will cease to exist. Highlighting this bizarre juxtaposition of viewpoints is a story in yesterday's NY Times that those inclined toward McCarthy’s perspective don’t take kindly to a weekly dose of cheerful Judaica.
But after the recent conflict in the Middle East, the project, a 10-week series on National Public Radio, has become something more: a lightning rod for listener criticism. That criticism has included some "good, old-fashioned anti-Semitism," said Henry Sapoznik, a co-producer of the series.
Others are of what Mr. Sapoznik called the "who is paying you to do this" kind, like a message lamenting the possible role of "some big donors" in selecting the Yiddish Radio Project for broadcast. Most notable, however, are those that connect events in the Middle East to the broadcasts. One such message complains of an "eternal blitz" of Yiddish radio, asking whether the series was "designed to obscure the Israeli brutality in Palestine." Another protests the presentation of "this kind of warm and fuzzy fluff" whenever Israel undertakes military action. Yet another says, "How do you say bloody Israeli storm troopers in Yiddish?" It continues: "How do you say, `Hey, these guys learned all the wrong lessons from the Nazis!' In Yiddish?"
But Mr. Sapoznik disagrees. He said that conflating the actions of the modern state of Israel with the contents of American radio shows made more than 50 years ago is "nativist anti-Semitism." He called that position something "right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," referring to the early 1900's Russian forgery purporting to detail a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. "If we had done a series on black Delta blues music at the same time as there was genocide in Rwanda," he said, "this wouldn't happen. People would never confuse blacks in America and blacks in Africa." Audio archives of the first five episodes of the Yiddish Radio Project are available here, tomorrow’s episode is previewed thusly:
Curse Lifted? After six ugly games, the Indians appear to be finally out from under the brutal Curse of Kitaen, winning on a home run by Russell Branyan. I fear for a season of vicious streaks, lurching hither and thither, limbs akimbo. I much perfer ten wins in a row to six losses in a row, by the way. Beyond Blair Strange and fascinating new blog from transplanted Australian author/writer Martin Roth which he calls “A Weblog From the Christian Counterculture,” a peculiar notion indeed. Roth began life Jewish in New Zealand, graduated from law school, became a journalist, worked on a kibbutz in Israel, lived in Japan for 17 years, became a Buddhist, wrote the first English-language article on karaoke (!), then moved to Australia and became - what else? - a Baptist. About par for the blogger course. Recent blog entries include a link to a treatise on the definition of the word "wowser" (“The term ‘wowser’- surely one of the most impressive and expressive of Australian coinages - is used to express healthy contempt for those who attempt to force their own morality on everyone.”), and a link to some thoughts on children, which fits right in with our recent discussions:
Monday, April 22, 2002
Mix Tapes 
We recently rented "High Fidelity" -- yes, I know, once again I'm way behind the pop-cult curve -- and I particularly enjoyed it because I used to "work" at a local record store (much like Jack Black and Todd Louiso "worked"). The dialog in the store scenes sounded as if someone had been taping our interactions with the customers -- spot on... My wife who is a big John Cusack fan, found it emotionally flat. But then again, she likes "Say Anything" rather than the amoralism in "Grifters" or "Grosse Point Blank". But the part that particularly resonated for me, was the fixation on the minutiae of mix tapes. I can't begin to count the number of mix tapes I've made in the last 20 years. I have boxes and boxes of them. Sometimes I just like to randomly dig one out to see what I was listening to in, say, 1991 (apparently lots of Brit bands: Lush, Kitchens of Distinction, Fatima Mansions, The Farm(!) and Danielle Dax). Mix tapes must seem almost quaint in this day and age of drag and drop file sharing and CD burning. But there's a definite art to making a great mix tape, in the segues, the themes, the timing (nailing the end of the tape with less than 5 seconds to spare), the subtext, the gestalt of the tape -- it is of the moment and it is timeless. It is therapy and it is emotional release. And the chicks dig it ;) We've all made them at one time or another, either for ourselves or for our significant other. I've made many for my wife who likes to play them while we're cooking dinner (I will admit to shuddering sometimes when the "disco tape" (Andrea True Connection, Donna Summer, Alicia Bridges, Johnnie Taylor, Wild Cherry) gets thrown in for like, the 300th time in a row. But then she'll put the "chick singer tape" (Pretenders, Liz Phair, Divinyls) so it's not all bad ;) My wife would also like me to mention, that if I ever make a mix tape for anyone but her, she's calling a divorce lawyer. Hang The DJ Remember the story about the guy in Chicago who played the Whitesnake song before the game Chuck Finley was pitching in last week? Well the other shoe finally dropped as the White Sox canned the part-time employee.
Sorry Ken, too late. Children and Sexuality: Perspectives While we’re on the serious-heat topic of children, let’s add sex to the mix. This defensive book review, written from way off in the bushes of the left, raises some interesting points: I’m all for the sex education, I’m more-or-less for access to birth control and abortion, but I am irrevocably opposed to sex between adults and minors, period, end of story. Intrigued? If so, this review of the same book takes a drastically different view of the same terrain, and zeroes in on the pedophilia angle, which the previous writer basically glosses over. There will be no glossing over pedophilia from my perspective. Apart from the issues at hand, though, taken together, these two articles offer a fascinating glimpse into the results of radically different perspectives and priorities. Been leaning somewhat left today, have to head right on this one. The Difference Between “Love” and “Like” We received a very thoughtful letter from Sandra that addresses some important issues which require some clarification regarding the "Baby Wars" posting and Dawn's follow-up letter.
I recognized many years ago that I did not have a maternal nature. Because I have a "respect" for parenting, I chose not to take the risk that I would be a bad parent. I chose to react logically (children are not to be taken lightly), not emotionally (children are cute and cuddly). Thus, while I do not like children, but I have the utmost respect for those who are willing to take on that responsibility and utter contempt for those who have children without taking this responsibility seriously. Children are entrusted to us by God. It is our responsibility as a society to see that they are protected and nurtured, although society can never take the place of the special bond between the child and his parents and should not try to do so. "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea." (Mark 9:42) Sandra
While I am not Dawn, I believe I can speak for her regarding this matter. Based upon your description of yourself, I would put you into this category of Dawn's: "People who do not want children and have made that conscious decision have my support and respect." I believe by the context of your thoughtful letter, in her phrase "People who do not like children are vermin," she is not using the word "like" (not to be Clintonian) the same way you are here: "Thus, while I do not like children..." I assume by saying you do not "like" children, you mean that they make you uncomfortable, uneasy, or perhaps even annoyed by some of their behavior. Dawn's use of the phrase "People who do not like children" implies those who actively seek to do them harm, which I am certain based upon your correspondence, you do not. The original subjects of this discussion were those who belittle the role of parenting, those who ridicule the people who do choose to parent and derive pleasure and satisfaction from it, those who reduce parenting to mere "breeding." Dawn, somewhat in a fit of hyperbole to which she is sometimes prone, equated the "ridiculers" with those who would actively harm children, the criminals. Obviously you are not of the criminal element, and the key phrase that distinguishes you from those who belittle and ridicule parenthood is this: " I have the utmost respect for those who are willing to take on that responsibility and utter contempt for those who have children without taking this responsibility seriously." In this regard we are in complete agreement, and your highly principled statement renders you firmly in the camp of child-lovers (in the deepest sense), even if you aren't a particular "child-liker." Thanks for your letter and we are sorry if we inadvertently cast aspersions your way. Best Wishes, Eric Olsen While we're in the gutter... Watching The Simpsons the other night with the pink "hello probie" device the aliens used on Maggie, prompted this link. Apparently they're very scarce and occasionally show up on eBay. Don't forget, Christmas is only 8 months away! Dawn Doesn’t Mess Around When it comes to kids, Dawn does not mince words.
Since they represent such a small segment, why waste time? We live in a free society where fortunately you are allowed to have as many children as you desire or none at all if you wish. I agree with your three respective analyses of the joys of parenthood, as well as recognizing the joys of freedom from parental responsibility. I have experienced both and they each have their appeals. I loathe irresponsible parents who treat their children as pets, slaves, chattel, or just plain crap. I stare in wonderment at mothers who are out shopping with five or more kids in tow, running amok, out of control. My thoughts are usually those of pity, but occasionally I find it just downright freakin' annoying. My opinions about children and the right to bear them have changed only slightly since having one of my own. First and foremost, they are the biggest and most important responsibility you can have, they are a tremendous amount of work, they require vast amounts of time and energy, and you rarely get as much back as you put in. They are also the most beautiful, beguiling, amazing, wonderful, lovable creatures that only God, in his graciousness, could bestow upon the two people who create them. People who do not want children and have made that conscious decision have my support and respect. People who do not like children are vermin. Guess who else doesn't appreciate, like or respect children, and who dedicate websites to their hatred of them: CHILD PORNOGRAPHERS, CHILD MOLESTERS, CHILD ABUSERS and CHILD MURDERERS. I think my stance on their kind has been stated quite clearly on this site. They should be systematically filtered and removed from society, then sterilized and/or extinguished. Dawn Olsen Beat Me in St. Louis Hot on the heels of the grant to combat goths, we now have a Missouri State Senator who apparently is shocked, shocked!! that people are having sex in St. Louis at a so-called "hotel sex bash" to be held this weekend.
Joey Davis, the (poorly titled) state head of Concerned Women for America, appeared with Loudon on Sunday and said guests at the sex conference would release bodily fluids that pose a health risk. The group protested a similar convention in February at a suburban Chicago hotel, but police there said the convention was private and protected by the First Amendment. What's scarier: Adults exploring safe-sex seminars, or the image of Chicago cops quoting the constitution? Beyond Oil There is much of the alarmist environmentalist propaganda that I don’t ascribe to, but I do agree with the basic tenets of this:
· That our nation's excessive dependence on Persian Gulf oil gives unstable and undemocratic governments undue influence over our foreign policy. · That our nation possesses only three percent of the world's oil reserves but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil supply and, therefore, can never drill its way to energy self-sufficiency. · That exploiting natural treasures such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would supply only a tiny fraction of our oil needs and would therefore prolong energy insecurity while senselessly destroying our natural heritage. · That raising fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks to 40 mpg by 2012 would save 1.9 million barrels of oil per day -- four times the expected peak output from the Arctic Refuge and more oil than we imported from Saudi Arabia last year. · That our government could further slash oil consumption by: raising fuel economy to 55 mpg by 2020; requiring replacement tires to be as energy efficient as those installed on new cars; enacting tax incentives for hybrid and fuel cell vehicles; reinvesting in public transit; promoting anti-sprawl "smart growth" of our cities; accelerating the development of plants for making motor fuel from crop wastes; ensuring production of 100,000 vehicles that run on non-polluting, hydrogen fuel cells by 2010 -- and one million such vehicles by 2020. · That pursuing this path of energy self-reliance will benefit our health, save us billions of dollars, preserve our environment, slow global warming, and enhance America's national security. We, the people of the United States of America, therefore call upon our elected leaders to lead an energy revolution that will reduce our nation's destructive reliance on oil and set us on a sustainable path toward lasting oil independence. Speaking of which, as things stand now, the safety excuse and the ENORMOUS PHALLUS FACTOR is driving the trend toward ever-larger private vehicles. If we don’t reverse the trend, we’ll all end up driving tanks and still get crushed by commercial trucks that don’t check both side-view mirrors before changing lanes. (link also from BookNotes) Stab! George, Stab! Note that President Bush is stabbing with his left hand, and that he is the same height as Osama. Curious? Look here if you dare. (Link via Craig at BookNotes, my favorite lefty) Cool Tunes - Earth, Wind & Fire Earth, Wind & Fire - the most successful soul/funk group of the ‘70s and one of the most important black bands of all time - has a vibrant new live CD coming out April 23 of previously unreleased material from their classic 1975 “That’s the Way of the World Tour.” Co-produced by Maurice White, the leader/singer/songwriter/drummer/producer of the band, Paul Klingberg, and my good friend Leo Sacks, That’s the Way of the World: Alive in ‘75 finds the band in peak form rocking sparkling versions of “Shining Star,” “Sun Goddess” (with guest Ramsey Lewis on keyboards), “Reasons,” “Mighty Mighty,” and 8 1/2 minutes of “That’s the Way Of the World.” The complex rhythms interlace magically, the group vocals soar and shimmer, and the sound quality is state of the art. The version of the band that is touring this summer is still fine, led by Maurice’s brother bassist Verdine White and lead singer Philip Bailey, but this disc is the next best thing to transporting yourself back 27 years when it was all still new, now, and smoking hot (chat live with Verdine online April 23). E,W&F holds a special place in my heart, as does 1975. I had just turned 17 when I went off to college at Wittenberg University, having attended lily-white Chagrin Falls High School, and I had spoken to maybe ten black people in my entire life to that point. When my mother and I arrived at the school filled with the usual trepidations, we were greeted at my dorm door by my assigned roommate, Ronald, who was black. I was startled if intrigued, my mother was stunned. Though not a prejudiced woman, her life experiences in SoCal and Ohio were similarly whitewashed and it had just never occurred to her that a black roommate for her son at nice little Lutheran Wittenberg was even a possibility. We both got over it. To spare you an overdose of multi-culti smarminess, we were tentative and respectful toward each other at first, but soon became genuine friends. He had his own circle of friends and I had mine, but we mixed easily and eventually had parties together. It was a starry-eyed desegregationist’s dream: familiarity did breed understanding, empathy, trust and friendship. My eyes were opened, my horizons widened, and while race never disappeared, it soon ceased to be the overarching principle. After a while, we really were just guys. I don’t want to carry this too far: the next year, when we could pick our own roommates, Ronald selected his best friend from high school, who was also at Wittenberg, and I paired up with a white friend (who I ended up not getting along with nearly as well as I did with Ronald). We didn’t see each other as much from then on, but we did see each other and we stayed friends, which seemed to give us both some extra satisfaction because by then it was strictly voluntary. I bring this up because Earth, Wind & Fire was Ronald’s favorite group. Through him, I came to truly love them - he and I connected powerfully through the group’s music. As the great David Ritz writes in the liner notes to the new disc,
Bio Earth, Wind & Fire was elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, with 7 Grammys, over 30 charting singles, and 20 charting albums (seven Top 10’s) from the ‘70s into the ‘90s. Now retired from the band, White stirred EW&F’s joyous blend of gospel, funk, jazz, rock, disco, and African music into a soulful, thumping nectar that he describes as “my love, my heart.” Maurice Williams was born one of nine children December 19, 1941, in Memphis, and raised by his grandmother while his father attended medical school in Chicago. White listened to R&B, blues, jazz, and early rock ‘n’ roll throughout his childhood, and sang gospel in church, at home and with a quartet, The Rosehill Jubilettes. Styling themselves after Sam Cooke’s Soul Stirrers, the Jubilettes traveled throughout the South performing at churches. At 12 White saw a marching band strut through the streets of Memphis and became fixed on the power of the drum. He went home, broke a broom in half and started rat-a-tat-tatting on any available surface. In junior high White became friends with multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones and they played together in various jazz ensembles. As a high school student, White played in a hot R&B band, The Mad Lads, and after graduation he joined his parents in Chicago. White was a pre-med student at Crane (now Malcolm X) Junior College when he passed the band room and felt inexorably drawn to the drum seat; he switched his major to music. In ‘62 White got a call to play for a Betty Everett Vee-Jay session, the session that yielded the classic “You’re No Good.” Now White was a real professional musician. He played on sets for Jerry Butler, The Impressions, John Lee Hooker, Jackie Wilson and others, then his friend Louis Satterfield pointed him in the direction of the legendary Chess Records. White became house drummer at Chess playing on hundreds of soul, blues and jazz records for Little Milton, Etta James, Billy Stewart, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Ramsey Lewis from ‘62-’67. “I was in there every day from noon until 6PM, then I’d go to school at the Chicago Conservatory of Music from 7PM until 10PM, then I’d go play at a club,” says White. White feels that his background as a drummer was the perfect training for his future as bandleader and producer. “The drummer has to learn everyone else’s part as well as his own. He has to think in terms of how everything fits together,” he says. White replaced drummer Red Holt in the Ramsey Lewis Trio in ‘67, and went on tour with him for most of the next two years, becoming a seasoned veteran of the road as well as the studio. White and keyboard players Wade Flemons and Don Whitehead formed a trio in ‘69 called the Salty Peppers, and recorded a single for their own Hummit Records called “La La Time,” which was picked up by Capitol. The trio headed to Los Angeles to pursue a deal, and with the addition of White’s younger brother Verdine on bass, a guitarist, horn section, and Sherry White sharing lead vocals, changed their name to Earth, Wind & Fire - a name derived from the elements of White’s astrological chart. White’s ambitious goal for the band was to master the “four principles of music: composition, musicianship, production and performance.” The ten-man band played around L.A. until they were signed to Warner Brothers by Joe Smith, and assigned Joe Wissert as producer. That group recorded two albums, Earth, Wind & Fire and The Need of Love, which were only moderate sellers and yielded no pop hits. On tour in Denver, White found singer/drummer Philip Bailey when Bailey’s pop band, Friends & Love, opened for EW&F in ‘71. When the original EW&F broke up in ‘72 under the strain of limited success, the White brothers formed a new band, recruiting Bailey to sing and percuss. The band hooked up with crack manager Bob Cavallo and then signed to Columbia. They released two more albums with Wissert producing, Last Days and Time and Head To the Sky, the latter of which was the band’s first hit, cracking the Top 30. Everything began to come together when White joined Wissert in the production duties for Open Our Eyes in ‘74, but a whole new universe opened up when White took over primary production duties (assisted by arranger Charles Stepney) for good on That’s the Way of the World (No. 1) in ‘75. A mature, confident classic of exceptional tunes, thrilling gospel harmonies and sophisticated horns, anchored by a cutthroat-funky rhythm section, World was originally envisioned as a movie soundtrack. “Happy Feelin’” features White’s African thumb piano, the kalimba (also the name of his production company); “Reasons” is a silky soul ballad standard; “Shining Star” (No. 1) is a deeply grooved funk workout with White and Bailey trading lines, ending with a timeless a cappella singalong that leaps out of the speakers; the title track is another standard, a jazzy, midtempo jam keyed to a distant trombone line (by White’s old Chicago friend Louis Satterfield), and White and Bailey’s octaved dual lead. The rest of the ‘70s brought nothing but multiplatinum for the band, whose wildly costumed, lighted and staged live shows (eventually featuring special effects by magician Doug Henning) became legendary. Gratitude (No. 1) is a rousing double-live album that includes two more great studio numbers: “Can’t Hide Love,” and the bouncy dancefloor-filler “Sing a Song” (No. 5). ’77 saw the release of EW&F’s best overall album, All ‘N All (No. 3), showcasing White’s newfound interest in Brazilian rhythms and an overt move into metaphysical lyrics. A magical blend of Latin jazz and soul, All is highlighted by the great “Fantasy” with Bailey’s impossibly soaring falsetto, and White’s funky versifying on “Serpentine Fire,”, but there are no bumps on this superhighway - even the instrumental interludes stick in the brain and heart. A Best Of (No. 6) album in ‘78 sold over 4 million copies and included two new singles, an uptown soul version of the Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life” (No. 9), and the band’s disco perennial, “September” (No. 8). The following year EW&F, in cahoots with the female trio the Emotions, grabbed disco by the balls with another great, “Boogie Wonderland” (No. 6), which derived from the I Am (No. 3) album. “After the Love Is Gone” (No. 2), another exemplary and moving ballad, ended the decade, and their peak period, in high style. Cool Tunes is a radio show in a magazine format Saturday nights at 10pm (Eastern) on WAPS, "The Summit," in Akron, Ohio. I play new music, reissues, and preview shows coming to town each week. Musically it is among the widest-ranging 2 hours in the country: modern rock, punk, electronica, jazz, reggae and ska, roots rock, Americana, blues, world, funk, hip hop, avant garde, etc. - if it's cool I play it. Cool Tunes has been proudly serving humanity since 1990. Each week we also do a written feature on Tres Producers about an artist played on that week’s show. This has been that. Tune in next Saturday, won’t you? Baby Wars My debate partner/opponent John Scalzi has joined the discussion on parenthood on a slightly less sanguine note than James Lileks or I have with recent posts. In fact, he has been veritably set upon by the braying hounds of the alt.support.childfree newsgroup. The impetus for the fray is an old column from March, 2000 wherein Scalzi, then the father of 1-year-old, reflected upon his lack of tolerance for “exploding baby” rumors and a similarly altered sense of humor regarding things infantile (literally) in general. The gist of the matter is a general contempt this particular group of militant “nonbreeders” has for all things parental and for the wee ones themselves. Not surprisingly, as Scalzi, Lileks and I are all fathers of little ones, I must take up the cudgel on their, our, behalf. I am sympathetic to the psychological needs of those who are childless, especially to those for whom this state is not a choice, but also to those who have voluntarily decided to forego parenthood for various reasons. There are many support sites for such people on the web; here is a testimonial from "Lyn," whose story I have selected because she is about my age and representative of a fairly common perspective.
In 1977, at age 23, I couldn't see the point of taking contraception for the rest of my child-bearing years and decided to have a tubal ligation. A major factor in being sterilised at that stage of my life was that I didn't have a partner. I knew further down the track a partner would have to be taken into consideration and I don't think that anyone except myself has the right to say what I can and can't do with my body. I thought I would find it difficult finding a doctor who would perform the operation so my first port of call was Family Planning. I told them what I wanted and asked them if they could send me to a sympathetic doctor. I had absolutely no problems. The doctor asked me lots of questions about why. I must have convinced him because at the end of the interview he agreed to perform the tubal ligation at the end of the following week. My family went along with the decision after I explained my reasons, in fact, my parents drove me to and from the hospital. After the tubal ligation I told my best friend and she was shocked. She has since had two kids of her own. I always get the feeling when there's a baby around that the mother expects you to go 'goo ga' about her wonderful baby, as if it's the centre of the universe. Maybe it's just me because I am not interested at all. My partner doesn't care that much about kids, and the decision was already taken out of his hands, so he's happy to go along with it. He also says that he's lazy, so now he doesn't have to spend his mental energy working it out for himself. I go to the movies in the middle of the day, I get involved in political, environmental and local government issues, I do volunteer work and I want to do some more travelling. I wouldn't have time for any of these things with a child around. I have to say it was the best and most important decision I have ever made. I can honestly say I have never regretted having the tubal ligation. She seems to have been (and to still be) particularly sensitive to pressure from the outside, especially from a future partner. In fact, her excuse for having a procedure as drastic as tubal ligation done at age 23 is that she didn’t want anyone telling her “what I can and can't do with my body” at some later point in time. She informs us that “she isn’t interested at all” in babies: those stupid things? It would appear that Lyn simply didn’t/doesn't trust herself: “I’ll show you world - and in particular all potential partners - that only I control my body. Me, me, me, me. You can’t make me have babies, and just to make sure that you can’t persuade me - because I don’t always trust myself, especially when I’m drinking, to do what I know I REALLY want to do - I’m going to have my baby-makng machinery fried. Ha ha ha ha to you!” She cut her hose to spite her fate. This constant shoring up of resolve and near-hysterical justification of childlessness bespeaks the real issue: we are programmed to the center of our beings to reproduce. If there is a biological answer to the question “what are we here for?,” the answer is to reproduce - the selfish gene and all. Until very recently, this was the cultural norm and expectation as well: the more children the merrier to help with the chores, to gird against the ravages of disease and misfortune, to continue the line and the name, to please and obey God. This remains the mindset among both pre-modern cultures and modern religious groups like the Catholic church, where sexual activity apart from attempted reproduction is still canonically forbidden. Sex is denied any value of its own when it is held to be legitimate for reproductive purposes only. No wonder there has been much effort made to disentangle sex from reproduction, and rightly so. The childless movement is just the final extension of this attempted detachment. So, my sympathy for the voluntarily childless derives from the fact that there is still great pressure, from within and without, for heterosexuals to have children. Incidentally, there is rich irony in the fact that many homosexuals want children, and object to the fact that the nonfecundity of their sexual practices should preclude them from doing so. Others are beginning to agree. When homosexuals are allowed to freely raise children, the cultural disconnect between sex and reproduction will be complete. For a number of reasons, the trend in the modern world is toward fewer children later in life: voluntary childlessness is also the final stop in THAT continuum, hence its growing prominence. I have no objection to voluntary childlessness: the very last person who should have a child is someone who doesn’t want one. Many bad parents are still created by perceived pressure from family, society, and hormones to breed. This is why I support choice in the abortion question despite grave reservations: we don’t need any more unwanted children running around generating societal dysfunction and clogging up prisons. If you don’t want kids, don’t have them, but don’t try to do to me what you feel has been done to you: please don’t stigmatize me. Don’t take my having kids as a personal affront to you and your decision to not have kids. Don’t be so solipsistic as to believe I had children specifically to annoy you, or to mock your decision not to breed. You don’t have to hate children to justify not having them, and just because you can’t relate to my paeans to the pleasures of parenthood, please don’t denigrate them as mawkish drivel driven by thoughtless instinct. All decisions are trade-offs. There is much to be missed in life while parenthood sucks up your time, energy, and psychic bandwidth. What parent would dispute this? All parenting guides caution against overexposure; every one I have ever seen demands that you get away from the kids on a regular basis, spend private time with your significant other and by yourself. The caricatures of children are true: they are demanding, imperious, selfish, draining, ill-mannered, disruptive, messy, destructive little beasts. No honest parent will deny this. We concede you point. You win. But, children are also loving, sharing, caring, growing, evolving, maturing, fascinating, surprising, fulfilling, delightful creatures that are half you and half someone you love (or loved). They are you, and they are someone entirely new simultaneously. In short, they are genuine miracles and the single greatest argument for religious belief: children are the physical manifestation of love. All THOSE clichés are true as well. The enormity of having actual children alters your perspective drastically toward the wondrous, lest the species end in a single generation of rampant infanticide. At some point in the history of our species, perhaps there was a generation born without the gooey baby love glasses. Near extinction of the species likely caused selection in favor of the goo-goggles. Allow the parents of the world your indulgence of their partial blindness, as it is best for the continuation of the species: YOUR species. Disparage them not, but imagine a piece each of yourself and your loved one, whipped into a unique whole in a great cosmic blender and poured out into the world. Imagine how protective, indulgent, and proud you would be of such a creature, at first tiny and helpless, but eventually large and fully-formed with your nurture and care, yet still containing the infant within. You’d focus on the good stuff too. Live your childless lives as untethered as kites sans strings, carefree in your pursuit of pleasure, culture, and adult conversation, unbogged by drooling spawn clinging parasitically to your legs, as resolute in your pursuit of unfettered self-actualization as the dogged sperm in his pursuit of some fervent actualization of his own. Let us live a bit of our forgone futures vicariously through you, as you may through us, each respecting and empathizing the choice of the other - a choice that, if we are honest, likely could have gone the other way for most of us. Sunday, April 21, 2002
Another Reason Blogging Rules All my life I have been dealing with the problem of procrastination. I am generally very busy, but often feverishly attending to things on the low end of the priority scale (“Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at the moment.” - Robert Benchley), a very Benchleyan state of affairs. Since I have been blogging, I find my whole mentality shifting for the better: not - what can I do to put off doing what I should be doing?, but - how can I squeeze as much productivity into each waking moment as possible? While I was inspired, and even encouraged into blogging by my correspondence with Andrew Sullivan, since I have joined the ranks I find I look most to Glenn Reynolds for inspiration and as role model. Not that our blog is styled after his, but for sheer productivity, seriousness of purpose, and consistently fine attitude, I look to Glenn. This man is a professor of law; pumps out between 10 and 30 incisive, pithy blog entries every day of the week; spends time with his family; writes books; writes a weekly column for TechCentralStation; a biweekly column for FoxNews.com; writes law review articles; writes, produces, plays, and records music; he even co-owns a record label. Absolutely freaking embarrassing, I must say. So now, with Glenn as a model, I concentrate on output, on getting things done, on productivity, on the bottom line. I don’t think of all the reasons why I shouldn’t do something, or what other interesting things I could be doing, I just do it and I cannot tell you what kind of psychic release this has been for me. Based upon such unfortunate details as the fact that I read some at 2, skipped two grades early on so that I graduated from high school at 16, always got high standard test scores, have always labored under high expectations from every corner, and the like, I HAVE BEEN A CLASSIC UNDERACHIEVER. Not that I haven’t achieved anything - I’ve achieved lot’s of things, but nowhere near what I should have achieved by this point in my life. But I’m not worried about that crap anymore: I’m chugging away, getting things done, writing a ton freely and easily - like gesture drawing or something - as though the dam has been breached, finally. Blog on. Baby Love There has been a fair amount of talk of late in blogland about the charms of parenting young children, and those charms are manifest and obvious: there is nothing more heart-melting, no bigger fat edible squish of love than “Daddy, I yove you” expressed with the unadulterated exuberance of a 2-year-old. But consider this - my almost-18-year-old has been on my mind an awful lot lately because she is about to graduate and go away: physically, but also psychically. Last night as she was going to bed she gave me a big hug and said “I love you, Daddy,” the first time she has called me “Daddy” in about 7 years. I didn’t make mention of it to her and I won’t, but this small atavism generated a flood of Polaroid moments spanning her first infant giggle to the announcement that she has been chosen to sing for her upcoming graduation ceremony. One of the reasons people feel so strongly about their children is that they can evoke pure baby love heart puddles in their parents at any age, without warning, without trying, just because. Max and the Blook I’m work, work, working on some big things that will be up in a little while, but for the moment: my partner on the 9/11 blog book, Max Power is on a great roll with some outstanding posts on his site regarding blood and oil, copyright laws (he’s a lawyer), anonymous blogging (you’re surprised? I thought “Max Power” was his real name too), even a plausible defense of the lottery (which I object to on every level down to my bowels). Check him out. Of equal importance: Max has posted the first batch of nominees for inclusion in the 9/11 blog book, now titled “Blog Nation: the Blook.” Check out the bounty, make comments, make suggestions. |
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