Repetition Foreign Policy

Looks like we are developing an Israeli policy towards terrorists. They attack us, we strike at some of their sites. They attack us, we hit back. This could go on for a while. Another attack eventually ensues. We launch some drone attacks on their sites. Then another attack occurs. Then maybe we invade somewhere, then we pull out. The rocket attacks resume, we retaliate on some training camps. This could go on for a while. We change Presidents, the same policy unfolds.

What to look for

When watching the decisions that appear from the political and social height, it is worth asking why certain obvious decisions are not made. Why was there no invasion? Why did so many people talk? Usually the invasions come quickly and the talk is regulated, so if it works the other way around, it is worth wondering about?

Yemen again

After the latest attempt to take down an airplane: two immediate conclusions present themselves. First, after 9/11 it is increasingly unlikely that an attack on an airplane will succeed, simply because passengers will not remain docile if an aggressive move is made on the plane.

The attitude learned from the seventies that highjackers just want to fly to Cuba or Libya, and so if you stay quiet, everything will work out, this attitude, which did not even last through the day of September 11^th, is now once again shown to be over. Passengers will jump anyone who makes a hostile move. Once it has been shown that any able bodied passenger will leap into the chest of a highjacker regardless of how much smoke is rising from his torso or what manner cutting implement he is holding.

The second conclusion has to be that there is some strong reason why the US does not invade Yemen, presumably because the Saudi's are opposed to it. Not that one would advocate such a move, but based on previous US excursions into small countries, Yemen would seem to be a prime target. It cannot be that the desert terrain has kept the US in check. That was hardly considered a reason for restraint before the US went into Afghanistan. It must be simply that some foreign policy concern is holding the US back from jumping on Yemen, a positive development for we hardly need a third messy invasion. There are surely elaborate plans on how to invade Yemen which have been simply shelved because some larger factor, i.e. Saudi Arabia or the general sense that US troops should stay very far way from Mecca, keeps us away from yet another crazy invasion.

Celebrity Contract

Looking at the Tiger Woods scandal from the vantage point of the ordinary citizen, one of the most curious aspects is the way in which a string of women came forward to declare that they had had sex with him. There clearly had been an implicit understanding between Woods and each woman, a bond or even contract that they would not go public with their relationship. So the interesting question is why did they do so and how did that sequence unfold? The string of "admissions" suggests a breakdown in the social code that protects celebrities generally.

There are any number of Hollywood actors and actresses with wholesome reputations who have for decades managed to preserve that impression despite behavior no different than Woods'. Usually the clean image of a celebrity is disturbed by the arrival of the police, as happened with Woods. But why did the local incident become a drawn out spectacle?

Why was there no long drawn out list of women after Hugh Grant got arrested? Surely his backseat tryst with Divine Brown could not have been the first time that he had stepped out on Elizabeth Hurley, yet there was no cluster of women all ready to confess that they too had slept with Hugh Grant. The same code of silence governed Eddie Murphy's reputation after he had been stopped by the police with a prostitute. Having had sex with a star used to mean not talking about it.

The silent agreement breaks down when the normal rules are not followed, such as when Mel Gibson makes anti-Semitic slurs, but if he had been merely slurring his speech nothing would have come of it beyond a DUI.

How many actors, sport stars, musicians have not been busted for drugs? When a celebrity gets arrested for possible drug consumption, it usually involves driving, but there almost never any investigation beyond that one interface with the public. No search warrant to look through the house. No wiretaps on all the other people who were at the party. None of the many possible steps the police could take to find out who was doing what with whom. And beyond the police's discretion, a vast code of silence prevents less known people from stating publically that they slept with, got high with, or did whatever with some famous person.

So what happened in Tiger Woods' case? Why did that code break down? Partially, because Tiger Woods did not provide a Hugh Grant apology the next day on a talk show. He did not cut the scandal off quickly as David Letterman did for himself and has done for other stars. But even beyond Woods' supposed mishandling of his own publicity, there is the striking way in which all those women felt that they had more to gain by telling their stories than by not. This shows something about the further democratization of fame, Andy's fifteen minutes and all, but really there is more, and as a total outsider to the circuit one can only guess what shifted in the discreet arrangement between stars and ordinary people.

Black Power

Toward the end of "Along the Watchtower"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU1uwBNSCF0

Jimi raises his fist in the Black Power sign, an archaic, almost scary, gesture now, but a clear effort back then to mobilize.

We ought not forget the moves that mattered when they did.

Robin Gladiator

The Guardian teases about Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe making what they suggest is a remake of Gladiator. All true, but on the other hand one could, given the rush to cash in on any thing that makes a buck, admire their restraint in waiting this long: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/23/robin-hood-russell-crowe-trailer-review

Many times I have used the opening scene of Gladiator when teaching Tacitus. They are a compelling nine minutes which turn the students' attention to the text at hand.

Nutcracking

So this morning WPSU advertised that it was going to play Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite later in the day. Anyone who listens to classical music has heard this piece in the last weeks.
At what audience is the advertisement aimed? At those listeners who have not heard the Nutcracker all year and now finally get there opportunity? Are there people who regularly listen to NPR news and yet lack the Nutcracker?

Or is the radio station advertising the obvious? Something akin to a classic rock station advertising that they are going to play Springsteen's "Santa Claus is coming to town." We know they will. We drive around town with the expectation that at some point the Boss will ask Clarence whether he has been good this year. Christmas music just happens, maybe it is a guilty pleasure, maybe it is a mind-numbing torture—both perhaps, but what shocks is that WPSU has no better idea of what to advertise other than the obvious, The Nutcracker at Christmas—yes, anything else.

Is there no other Classical Christmas music? Haven't composers for centuries written music for this most sacred Christian holiday? Why not turn to something we have not all heard for the billionth time? Sure throw in the Nutcracker once or twice—the gods of mass marketing must be respected--but please try a little harder to find some interesting Christmas music.

Yes, I am grinching about the local radio station, but this kind of mediocrity is hardly confined to the WPSU. It is part of broader tendency to think that stating the obvious is good enough, that you don't need to try harder to be smart.

Tiger Woods' Lynching

We all understand the desire to get back at someone for their betrayal. Still the photoshopped images of a beatup Tiger Woods standing next to his wife as she smiles with a golf club in her hand have more the look of a lynching. Instead this time it is the white woman who attacks the black man herself. No mob of white men to "defend" her required, though there does seem to be a pack of grumbling guys gathering.

We all so strongly identify with celebrities that it is easy to take sides in their marital disputes, especially if we can make a parallel between our own deceptions as fans and what we imagine Elin Nordegren must feel. In the midst of all this projection and imagining, there is room enough for nasty violence to creep in the public representation of the marital scandal. Sure, everyone sides with the betrayed wife, Tiger Woods is up there with Prince Charles, yet I can't remember any talk of taking a stick to the Prince of Wales. I do remember there being jokes about Frank Sinatra arranging for Woody Allen to get whacked back in the Mia Farrow scandal. Still the pictures of Tiger Woods with a black eye, scars and his teeth knocked out suggest much more than a spectator's involvement in a celebrity sex scandal. They have a far more sinister connotation.