Cobb

Obama & The Law

VDH lobs several bombs in the direction of the Obama Administration. They are ideological, but more importantly they are significant legal questions. You need to read the whole thing. Here is a salient passage:

Here the question is not the usual Obama hypocrisy that has seen him demagogue and damn Guantamo, preventative detention, tribunals, renditions, the Patriot Act (just signed by a former critic via computerized autopen from the UK no less) and Predators—only to expand or embrace them all. Rather, the problem is a question of legality itself.

Is the War Powers Resolution the law of the land or not? Or are we to assume a progressive president is complying with both UN resolutions and an Arab League mandate, and therefore, as the good internationalist and Nobel Laureate, sees no reason to consult, as American law requires, his own elected U.S. Congress—the latter a more suspect and reactionary body that does not enjoy the moral stature of the UN or the Arab League?

Hmm. 

The Illusionist Imagination

Around Daddy's House, we like to watch movies and eat. Such is the luxury of the now. In doing so, we've developed and nurtured our appetite for Miyazake. Since Ponyo, we've been exclaiming 'Ham!' as an inside joke. Last evening it was The Illusionist, an animated film based on a story by Tati. 

I'm something of a sucker for aerial photography of verdant places where there are simple homes that any fool can afford. It is a romantic obsession borne of the life of a traveling consultant who spends too much on rent in the big city. But aside from that obvious problem, I share a more subtle dysfunction which is the general romance of foreign films, especially those whose characters are hyperreal, and good, and simple.

In The Illusionist, as in Il Postino, as in My Friend Totoro there is something too clear about the characters. The seem always to be invested with a simple goodness that makes their flaws acceptable. The is some purity about these bucolic types that we Americans cannot seem to see in ourselves. 

I suppose it would be facile to say from a conservative POV that this is a symptom of Hollywood - that makes the American countryside much more fecund for the likes of Leatherface and Suspect Zero. But why? Why do we turn over our judgement on Middle America to the imagination of Truman Capote? Why are we likely to believe that we'd be safer in Ulster than Ann Arbor? Consider Blood Simple or Fargo. Do we have murder in our hearts at bottom? 

For the time that I was an organic (and I'm tending to swing back that way at this point in life) I had a constant beef with the permanence of the yuppie in all of our media. Now that media is being distributed, it seems to have accentuated that problem. I'm thinking of 'Wedding Crashers' and why the babe had to be a rich babe. And on top of that a rebellious rich babe from a severely dysfunctional family.

But yeah, I don't like chick flicks like Steel Magnolias or Fried Green Tomatos either. Perhaps this is why Shawshank stands out like no other American film. Hmm.

The Atheists' Burial Ground

..from these honored dead we take increased devotion...

My new favorite TV show is River Monsters. Now that I have a new DVR that can hold 70 hours of HD, I might just get more episodes of everything. So I'm recording the marathon for this weekend. In the last episode I watched, I watched him listen to the tale of a busload of people drowned in a plunge into a river teeming with piranas. He winced in the company of the eyewitness. He doesn't appear to be the sort of fellow, who would merely do that for the camera. In fact, one of the things I like most about the host Jeremy Wade is that he's quite genuine. Not a guy for the cameras, or for the fakery. I admire his salt.

I'm considering ignoring most of the gnu atheists and their arguments but I can't help but jab every once in a while. I probably confuse atheists with humanists because essentially the loud ones keep explaining how much more savage religious people are. I percieve loud atheists to be the ones spitting on graves and mocking the hallows. So I wonder if any bother to draw logical lines. 

I Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond movie, Bond's seeming best pal is an ex-agent named Mathis. When he is killed, and after Bond kills the killers, Bond unceremoniously shoves his body into a dumpster. Bond's horrified date makes a remark to which Bond replies, "He wouldn't care." And his real name wasn't Mathis. I imagine atheists wouldn't care where their carbon atoms go, but I wonder how disciplined that particular lack of care would be. 

Why not desecrate atheist bodies, or better yet bury them under a Star of David for spite? Why not leave them in the open air at the crossroads for the ravens to pick? How about dumping their body overboard in the dead of night and never producing any evidence of their death outside of a hasty press release? 

I don't know how long a buried body has a right to its peace. The law is subject to regionalisms, but it is an interesting part of the law which is probably largely unexamined in perhaps the same way marriage law was before the homoactive began their plotting. There is certainly ample low hanging fruit for the Dawkins' dorks to deconstruct. 

I'm having second thoughts about criticizing the amorality of legal positivism. For all the Godless, cultureless, and clueless need some edifice upon which to justify their grubby self-interests; it might as well have the imprimatur of law. Call whatever statutory mumbo that comes out of the political sausage machine jumbo and the peasantry will salute. It creates order and passes for civilization. 

The stupid little atheist whipping boy in my head is confused about honoring the dead because he belongs to the cult of youth and  school of libertarian hands-off good will toward men. There is nothing in his universe worth sacrificing a life for, except perhaps the 'reproductive freedom' of his zipless galaxy of doable chicks. But he should know that nobody will come to his funeral if it coincides with some frothy secular event, like turn off your cell phone for an hour to save the planet day and his friends miss the tweet. His mother, poor blighter, is Eleanor Rigby. 

Gil-Scott Heron: Dead

There is a poem by Nikki Giovanni that sums up in about 25 lines everything I think about black consciousness. I could write about it for years, but the essential thing to say doesn't take more than 30 seconds. There are lyrics in a song by Lionel Ritchie that sums up my confidence that I would grow to be the man I expected to be despite all the odds. There's a song by the Isley Brothers that puts me immediately at peace every time I hear it. If I didn't know better I might say that everything I needed to know about black culture could be summed up that way. 

Once upon a time I didn't know better, and in those days it was important for me to find a way to express every emotion and cultural concept in my shared black language. I called it, as I finished my last experiments in it The Well-Wrapped Universe. I would never have to use any metaphors besides those invented in the 'hood to communicate my humanity to all of humanity - and as Earth Wind & Fire said, "If you don't understand me, it's your fault."

I knew I was being selfish even as I over-exaggerated self-referentially in post-modern blackness as a 'Boohabian persistent black object'. But it was still charming and fun in the 90s. I felt the beginning of the end when I found myself, a bit to my surprise, across in Europe trying to make myself understood. I knew I couldn't be so persistent when I found things I was looking for in Borges' poetry and in the lamentations of Chinua Achebe and spiral tales of Carlos Fuentes. Yeah, I was that multicultural. 

The problem with Gil Scott Heron is the same problem as with John Cheever. It's the same problem as with Issac Hayes and with Jesus Christ Superstar. He's too damned specific. It's like saying New Orleans and then humming When the Saints Go Marching In. You can't get away from the fact that Gil-Scott Heron wrote 'Angel Dust', 'Whitey on the Moon' and 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised'. You might want to think of Curtis Mayfield in some broader context than the Superfly Soundtrack. You might want to try to extend the cultural significance of The Wizard of Oz, but it's still always "I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too". And Vince Geraldi will always be Linus and Lucy and Mikey will always be Life Cereal and Wil Wheaton will always be Ensign Crusher. Forever.

Issac Hayes is the big bald black man who made the ungh sounds of the 70s like a natural man was supposed to. And Jesus Christ Superstar made all pop culture Jesus freaks and hippies approachable for a moment. But what I didn't know when I was 13 years old was that those symbols wouldn't last forever and explain more about the world than just that moment. It was hard for me to accept that Kwai Chang Caine's grasshopper lessons wouldn't serve me long after the show was canceled - especially when I learned that role was supposed to be for Bruce Lee. 

And I began to become resentful of all the things I knew to be true but only for my Well Wrapped Universe. I began to hate the fact that the world couldn't catch the flavor and it didn't want to study. That there is what Gerald Early calls lure and loathing. But I played in all sections of the orchestra, and mastered all the languages and idioms. 

Still. I was prepared to hear that Marvin Gaye's 'Whats Going On' was not the greatest album ever recorded. I was prepared to hear that Alex Haley's Roots was not the greatest American story ever told. But it was hard to give up the arcane gems. It was hard to have to explain The Last Poets. It was difficult to remind people that LA had KDAY, KGFJ, KJLH and KACE, each a different flavor of black radio. And as time went by, it was disappointing to explain Yellow Back Radio, you know, and break it down. It was painful to read High Cotton alone. It was ridiculously hard to give up on explaining George C. Wolfe and so now I explain the real killer. 

The real killer is when, above and beyond the Well Wrapped Universe you find superior examples. It's like dissing Michael Jackson in 1982 when John Landis was just discovering him.

So I look back on Gil Scott Heron and what can I say? He was deep to me as a teenager when I sat in the back of the bus and recited him and Richard Pryor like the perverse psuedo badass I was, or pretended to be. When the world was ruled by The Funk, and when Issac Hayes said ungh, you said ungh back. When you looked with admiration at the matron in the white uniform and 14 inch arms who stood in the back of the church and swung a mean tambourine; when the hardest working man in show business dropped to one knee and the sweat on his forehead let you know he was The Godfather; when all you had to do was say Aretha and everybody shutup. That was the day for Gil Scott Heron and all the ghetto poets of America. When Flip Wilson was preaching in The Church of What's Happenin' Now. When the New York Times used slang words to let the reader know that a Negro was speaking. That's when Gil Scott Heron's message to the masses was a thing to hold in reverence. When everybody had the expectation that some wino had more humanity in him than the President, when hippy dippy weathermen were funny, when you were excited to see Goldie Hawn  pop out of a little door and say 'sock it to me'. That was then. 

It's all so specific that unless you're over 40 years old, you probably have no idea of half the things I'm talking about. Just like I didn't get Bugs Bunny jokes about A ration cards or victory gardens or the aphrodesiac powers of nylon stockings until I went and studied. 

You can go and study Gil-Scott Heron, but his world is over. It's just taking up space in a part of my brain I don't use much any longer. His voice is coming out over the transistors of my old leather covered Federal radio on 1230 AM, hot times soulin' on the weekend, KGFJ.

A rat done bit my sister Nell
and Whitey's on the moon.
Her arms and legs began to swell
And Whitey's on the moon.  

There's some things you remember for which you'll never need Google. I'm prepared to accept those things only mean something to me, and only because it used to mean something to the me I used to be. That's what it means not to be televised. 

Playtime

Jacques Tati is the director of one of my favorite films of all time. Playtime is the story of a man who gets lost among people who are busy living. As I look at it, now about 18 years from my first viewing, it is as timeless as ever. Its humor is still intact. 

Watching it is difficult because Tati's camera doesn't tell you where to look. It's a completely different kind of storytelling than we are accustomed to; something you might not notice until you start watching this movie. 

This remix reminds me of how well my generation took to the international modern jet age. 

The Jughead

I'm going to a Prince concert tomorrow and I'm thinking about my favorite albums and songs of his. As I upload my collection of almost 3GB of Prince music to Amazon's Cloud Player I happened across The Jughead.

This was, without a doubt, the very last dance song I ever loved. By loved I mean, went out to a club with the hope in my heart that the DJ would play it, and I could dance with that girl to its beats. It was an unrequited love, alas. Only my lonely bedroom walls of my Brooklyn apartment shared the tune with my soul. If you ask me the day the music died, it wouldn't be after Diamonds and Pearls - there was surely other music and there still is for me, but not for dancing. I remember standing somewhere in a packed Manhattan dance club shaking my head in shame when they started playing some character named Woody Wood destroying that song by Frankie Beverly. There was no more joy, only pain. It was 1992. It was the end.

It sounds incongruous when you play Jughead today. It's hard to remember when the hip lingo talked about 'kicking the jams' and 'low pro' was a flavorful description. Back in the day, people were still 'clocking freaks' on the dance floor, and the best rapper money could buy (as Prince did for that album with his band, The New Power Generation) still sounded something like Chuck D.  Even as I heard it the twentieth time at my lonely pad, I knew it was the last gasp of funky dance music. It felt like a last ditch by Prince himself hearing him say 'Get stupid!' and then passing the mic. 

But at least there was that bit of New World Afrikan flavor in it. Marbella was one of the shout out cities, as was Stockholm; a far cry from New York, Cackalacka and Compton. That was then. 

Social Software Seduction

I had an imaginary fight with some bureaucrat and my killer line had something to do with the ability to write recursive algorithms. But I haven't written one in decades because in the ordinary course of my business, nobody can think of a purpose for their systems that might call for one. 

I write custom code, but around a small universe of systems for which most of the creativity has been squeezed out. It's interesting to do balance sheet forecasting considering the effect of inventory on cash, but only for a short while. 

This got me to thinking about who gets to write interesting code and for what purposes. Like who gets to write interesting books or music, you would be daunted by the mediocrity of the best-sellers. And this is a thing I keep seeing in social software. 

Yesterday, I was actually bored enough to watch ABC news with Diane Sawyer, and there was a segment in which some Silicon Valley dude offered $100,000 for kids with ideas to skip college and go directly into business (with him). All predatory jokes aside, they interviewed a kid who built an electric car. An electric car, well - I never heard that idea before. There's lots of money in the idea of the new, but really. Does anybody actually believe that kid is going to get market share? Market share - especially the mass market, belongs to the big money. Big money grows monoculture. Big money social software expands monoculture.

Now think of all the social software you can. What does it do? It does very little, but it does do it in the same way all software does - by narrowing human focus into the range of interactions the programmers can come up with. In short, it runs you through a maze. 

The interactivity of software is why using it is more mentally stimulating than watching television. I'd take a video game over a tv show any day. oftware does allow to interact but all the right actions are already known, and in some ways it's more restrictive than watching TV. If you are watching I Love Lucy, then you know there is a laugh track. If the joke isn't funny, you don't have to laugh. But with software, you have to interact precisely as the programmer wants you to or you don't get to the next level. Imagine not getting past the commercial break unless you laugh at Lucy's silly foibles.

In this way, even social software is close-ended. It gives you a transaction or two to generation and lets a zillion other folks see 'you' and your transactions. But you must transact to be seen. Social software is never so immersive as any sandbox video game, and never should be (unless you actually prefer There and Second Life to Facebook), but it still directs your attention. It seduces you into believing you are actually being social when you press its buttons, but what is 'social'? Social software processes the means toward shallow ends, like shopping, getting directions, going to a movie, clipping a coupon, getting something to eat. It's marginally more active than being a couch potato, but I say it's creating a new class of morons. Call them mombies. Mobile zombies. 

It's Saturday. You leave the house but not without your e-leash. Heaven forbid you wander into some area where the houses have burglar bars, or even worse no signal bars. You need to occupy yourself and your social software tells you where you can find other mombies who are about your speed. You can follow and friend and like and tweet and yelp and google each other all day long. Mombie verbs, all in sentences with social as the adjective. 

The programmer who sits next to me at work knows better. He spent three weekends putting down new flooring in his house. The programmer who sits across from me knows better. He installed race-quality rollbars in his convertible car. The programmer who sits across the way knows better. He went to catch some 8 foot waves.  I think I know better, I finished two books last week. Call us anti-social. We've always called programmers anti-social. Maybe that's not such a bad thing to be considering what's called social.

The news is that Google stole the executive that Pay Pal wouldn't pay. So now Google is going to create a new market for the masses that makes that very important part of shopping their business. Google will never invent, nor need to invent something as useful as cash. But mombies will use this new fungible as they buy their Starbucks. 

You need to know that there's money involved in all of this. People are figuring out another way to monetize your spare time. The advertizing dollars that once went into television commercials will be distributed to a new set of players in the interactive social software game. Slowly but surely all of the ads that are trapped in your TV will follow you in your mombie quests, so long as there are enough bars.

There will be better and worse social software, just as there are better and worse songs, books and movies. But what I see out there right now is pretty shallow, very seductive, and reflective of the same mass market appeal of television. So far, it ain't literature.

 

Chrysler TARP Paid Up?

I'm having a hard time answering a question that should be obvious which is whether or not the government's investment in the TARP is paying off. I challenge you all to find out exactly how much was loaned to Chrysler and how much of the reported 5.1 billion that was just reported yesterday actually did or did not recoup tax money.

A Question of Evangelism

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty."

I'm not going to be involved with the Runaway Slave thing today. An unfortunate series of events have conspired to keep me home working. And yet I am relieved to be in my hidey hole and not part of that thing which I think begs me to answer questions I'm not sure I have answers to.

It is part of my dilemma as a writer, that I am of a particular sort which defies explanation, except for those of my rivals and opponents who all feel confident that they've got my number. I have a love-hate obsession with describing myself and my purposes because I know them so well, and I fear others know them so tangentially. What am I doing here? Why can't I just do x? These are not questions I ask myself very often because I know the answers - it's just that I don't think anyone else wants to hear them.

Yesterday I went over to Booker Rising and read some of the comments that people over there have been making about what I write here. I have this oddment of conviction about myself that I acquired when I turned 30. I stopped qualifying my statements with 'IMHO' and just said what I meant, and let the counter arguments fall where they may, correcting myself as logic dictates. So I tell you what I really think, all of the time. The problem is, that's all it is. Whereas I think most people assume that I mean to tell other people how and what to think. I don't. I only presume that others might be doing what I do when I speak, which is give them the benefit of what makes sense to me. Still, when I say it, I don't mumble and I guess it sounds evangelistic.

I am quick to take correction when I am mistaken and to de-emphasize my conviction when I am wrong. These are not the qualities of what we tend to call 'Alpha Males'. The assumption, like the social prohibition of fat hairy guys in Speedos at the beach, that only certain types have any business speaking out in a non-subversive manner. So to hear me proclaim loudly some thing, and then to hear me disallow that speech on another occasion augers against the sort of heroism I gather people expect of one so bold. 

Which brings me to my relief.

At some point, I'm going to get out to meet Hindraker and Ponzi and other fellows at Claremont. In another life I was destined to attend college there, recruited as I was to the first coed class of Pitzer College in consideration of a Philosophy major with computer classes over at Mudd. It would have made a world of difference to me, I think in retrospect, and I would not be so much of the streets. On my credenza is the Rand Experts Guide 2010. I am open to the page with Eric V. Larson and I sit here with some consternation at the fact that I sat through a Meetup yesterday at Coco's in Manhattan Beach discussing our Afghanistan policy with people I know don't know our Afghanistan policy. When was the last time I read something by Eikenberry or Crocker on the matter? I hate forgetting. I hate not knowing. I hate spending time listening to people who don't know. 

But in the mean time there's this place I can walk up to, take a seat and be considered. It's called 'black Republican' and it is essentially meaningless because it is essentially derivative. I know that and I don't believe I can be convinced otherwise. For me to speak up on the matter, as welcome as I am to do so, comprises some element of compromise. That's because I'm not really seeking an audience. I'm not out to gather support for my position. I'm merely curious, and as usual, I'm saying what I say because I'm a writer. 

Of course that's not all there is to it, and it's not entirely under my control. But I have a conference call in 3 minutes, and I really have to go...

Cost of a Soul

It's not often that one sees, within the course of our pastime excursions into commonplace entertainment, something that transcends what it appears to be. By all appearances, the independent film Cost of a Soul, looked to be another slightly twisted ghetto flick. I was thinking perhaps some combination of Four Brothers, Three Kings and The Town. But this film turned out to be quite remarkable - one that goes one better on all of those movies. It is that rare film, a genuine tragedy. 

The texture of the film is artistic, there are hallmarks of a unique style. There are close ups. There is classical music. There is black and white. There is shaky cam. There are rolling street scenes and haunting echoed saxophone. There are rapid montages. There is crying faded to black. All of these well worn signatures add up to more than their sum. But the single most dramatic effect of this entire film is the single gunshot. The pistol has never been so dramatically cast. It reminds me of the way in which Speilberg in Saving Private Ryan made the sound effects of every other war movie sound cheap by comparison. Cost of a Soul has redefined the deadly pop and muzzle flash. 

There is no other film this resembles so much as Blood Simple in its haunting simplicity, and there has never been such a matter of fact tragedy as this has proven to be. If the question is how do you make an art film that doesn't become preachy and yet sends a deadly message home with finality, Cost of a Soul is the answer. 

The story is simple with all the appropriate twists, but there is no humor and no sly wit involved. There are no overworked emotional nudges. The entire screenplay is drily matter of fact. Here are the obligations of family and these are the deadly enemies of domestic tranquility - the drug dealer, the corrupt cop, the mob boss. How can two Iraq War veterans work it out when they've got nowhere to go? This is the kind of story that you might have expected Dragon Tatoo to be if it didn't drip into the pornographic. In that regard this is a classic American hard knock story, stripped of sentiment and driven to the point. And it delivers shot after shot, tragedy after tragedy until the last men fall.

They all fall down.

You can watch the film and know that it will all end in tears. You can get through the awkward moments and the single McGuffin borrowed from Pulp Fiction, the mysterious briefcase. But because this story is a tragedy, not a caper, not a mystery, not a gangster film, not a war movie, you don't expect to see what you do see. You see the good die. You see the bad die. You see the innocent and the guilty, the corrupt and the innocent strung together into the sort of destruction that is at once predictable and surprising. Surprising because there is no escape. There is no redemption. There is eyes wide open revenge that steamrolls every zigzag you imagine might lead to a better outcome.

There are passages of dialog and close ups that capture superb moments of acting. There are monologues worthy of Tarantino but remain sparse. There are silences that speak volumes. And yet it is raw - not quite into Demme territory. There isn't a single cast member that dominates, instead it is a morality tale that stays simple and powerful. That it does so with such a deft balance is what marks this as a surprisingly superb and yet raw bit of filmmaking. 

I think in a certain way this film will always be compared to Hustle and Flow. The difference is that dreams die harder here. Tragedy. It's something new in contemporary American film. I wonder if we can get used to it.

Obligatory Seriousness on the End of the World

Three weeks ago I was in Hollywood taking my neice on the Typical Tour and we came across the standard variety of fruits and nuts one expects to find cadging dollars from tourists. There were break dancers, chanting Krishnas, people dressed as Iron Man, Spiderman, Darth Vader and Naruto, paint can drummers and some cultists going on about the end of the world. 

It turns out that the cultists had more followers than a few, and just now I have come to discover the name of Harold Camping. Perhaps that was the man who said on the Michael Medved show yesterday that all of the sinners were going to be raised from their graves and their bones left above ground - literally billions of dead. Cultists!

It's rather coincidental then, that I have been reading Charles Stross' Laundry series and becoming more familiar with Lovecraftian fiction. It's something I've always been aware of but never been attracted to. In the latest book, The Fuller Memorandum, a similar scenario was to take place. In fact, it is one of the standard premises of the series called Case Nightmare Green. As much as Gnu Atheists like to make fun of the religious, a great deal of sci fi is equally ridiculous and unprovable. But I say all good fictions serve a purpose. Think 'War of the Worlds'. What is that but a 'scientifically plausible' Rapture? The point of Rapture, or Nuclear Winter, or Global Warming is to test the morality of people now who need to be scared into action by reckoning with their own mortality and the inevitable death of their neighbors. The point is not *when* it will happen, but *that* it could happen, especially if we sit around and do nothing to stop it. It's always the same thing, all you need is the proper nightmare scenario. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Now the Lovecraftian makes more sense to me - helping me to reckon with that which is completely absurd and obscure. That which, left untended, could cause men to lose their minds and personalities. Like the crazy gas that the enemy of Batman let loose in that movie, there are things out there that make people go bonkers, reducing them by way of sheer horror to inert husks of their former selves. Are there such gibbering horrors loose in our world? Yes, I believe there are. You might call it 'mental illness' or even traumatic stress disorder, or religious fundamentalism, or any number of labels. But there are poisons that infect and snap the mind. What would it take for you to consider it in your interest to dress up like Soulja Boy and dance for dollars on Hollywood Boulevard? Somebody is already there, and worse.

Worse is like the mind of Assad who is having his soldiers assassinate civilians in the streets of Syria, gunning them down like feral dogs. 

It is the end of somebody's world every day. And we don't have to look for reasons beyond the stars. What kind of madness compels us to find cosmic reasons in spite of the reality of today's tyranny? 

War TV

It was a boring day in Boston back in 1993 that I found myself at the central public library on Boylston. I was admiring the architecture of the building in the large lobby when I suddenly found myself face to face with a large life-sized photograph of combat. There was a photojournalism exhibit there that day and the pictures were shocking. I realized that I hadn't seen anything so graphic in a very long time. 

It reminded me that whatever I might think of Boston there were certainly worse places to be. And it also reminded me that all of the media we consume, very little of it sticks. We are addicted to a certain level of 'realism' that is less real than it seems. 

I've had a couple opportunities to remind people in conversation over the past week or so that American journalistic standards, unlike those in South America, do not allow pictures of dead bodies. Go ahead. Try to find one. And just last night, I was watching several comics on Netflix and one of them made that familiar remark about how much violence we allow kids to watch on television, and how little sex we do. But if you were an NBA fan, you surely saw the video of Rajan Rondo getting his elbow dislocated, and you cringed. That's the kind of violence that you never see in all of our media. The simple fact is that we have been exposed to a lot, but within some margins. No you haven't seen it all.

Here at the blog I recall several incidents that the media went close to a limit and the blogosphere went over the edge.Firstly there was the Nick Berg video, the poor fellow who was beheaded by jihadists went around the net like wildfire. I refused to publish it or even watch it where it was published. Then there was that maniac who went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech. There was something awfully sick about 'Richard McBeef' the screenplay he was writing. This morning I found a link to a video taken in Syria showing people shot down in the streets. It immediately reminded me of the lost art of photojournalism of the sort I think we could all benefit from: War TV. 

 

War TV is just that. A new channel on your lineup, in HD, documenting conflicts around the world 24/7. Forget the fake six o'clock news mantra 'If it bleeds, it leads' and show what real war looks like. 

When you show some idiot cracking his nuts from a fall off a skateboard onto a handrail, you generally have to have a disclaimer 'dont try this at home'. When you show somebody's head smacking the pavement after having been shot with an automatic rifle, the warning is superfluous. Slapstick is what it is, and so is brutality. If we showed enough of War TV, our regular instincts would jump in and we would not need the editorial so much. 

Just the other week, a girl fight in a McDonalds had the chatting classes afire with a thousand opinions, clustered into three categories. But wasn't that a waste of bandwidth, or testimony to how civilized we actually are over here in the States? I tend to believe the latter and I do so by keeping our mortality stats in mind.

War TV. It will be coming.

An EGBOK Moment

There is still something in me that refuses to believe that America will suddenly and dramatically collapse, despite the signs all around. We'll have to go through another civil war first is my guess. So with that far on the horizon I'm going to take a breath for a moment and remember how far we can indeed fall without breaking. 

Somebody thinks that I will pay three days of third world pay for foaming shampoo for pets. Is that sustainable? No. But it does mean a fool and his money will soon be parted and there's plenty of partying yet left to do in the Slice. 

I asked my colleague Don about figures and he gave me the ones I have decided to remember. They are all about new car sales. We hit a peak in 2000 of just over 19 million units on an annual basis. And we hit bottom in 2009 to somewhere around 10.5 million. Now Japan Inc is suffering and perhaps even fewer cars will be built and sold this year for America. But what do we really need new cars for? There's a post-industrial generation coming of age. Will they care about automobiles as much as I do. I wouldn't bet a cent on that. They'll spend 300 bucks a month for broadband though. Think about that.

We will survive the transition. 

 

 

Let's All Go Back to 1967!

Barack Obama is screwing up so wonderfully that it's going to be pretty difficult for any future president run so slipshod a policy in the Middle East. His declaration today is so hidebound, so regressive and so arrogantly ignorant that you couldn't invent it. It is a truth stranger than fiction that equates Hamas and the Knesset which is so bold in it's self-deception that... well, it's going to take a nice fat little war to show how insane his thinking is.

Here's a toast to the rockets. May the blood of a thousand future civilians mark this day in American foreign policy infamy.

West v Obama

Well now isn't this a fine kettle of fish. The pot calling the President un-black, but in a rather blackified way. Confused? You should be. 

I caught a whiff of this controversy the other day. Apparently, Cornel West, the fine feathered public intellectual who gives verbal dap of all sorts on every occasion, decided that he was saddened, yes saddened by the behaviors of the man who is not behaving like Brother President.

There's really not a lot going on here except for the hateration of a failed politician on a successful politician. West, however, probably actually believes that he's not political - that he's strictly intellectual and doing what an intellectual does best. But I say it's casuistry, except that it is not empty causitry - it has launched a thousand blogs of the sort Vision Circle used to be.

But if I'm to be serious for a moment, then what I honestly believe is transpiring is the slow reckoning of black Progressives with their inability to hold democratically elected politicians in check. They are finding that their racial lassos are incapable of forcing the truth out of their so-called Brothas. And Cornel West, the new intemolectual soul brother number one, is trying to claim that soul back by illustrating that Barack has none.

Of course we at Cobb knew that Obama was borrowing heavily during his internship in Chicago, and rather slyly got his honorary brotherhood card stamped at Wright's church, and the various 'communities' in which he played an organizer. Such are the formulae of soul, and so Obama's is appropriately formulaic. But it really didn't have to last much past 'the moment'.

Barack Obama's ascent is the death knell for the politically alternative Negro.  What's extra special about him is that, unlike Adolph Cesar's Sargeant Waters, he doesn't lord it all over his inferiors telling them that 'the black race doesn't need your type any more'. Obama is too smooth to say out loud what he doesn't want to be cought on record saying until he's absolutely sure it can't hurt him. Cornel West, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Michael Eric Dyson and Tavis Smiley all have to sit down and STFU because they have been pwned by the man behind the Presidential seal, and the world will little note nor long remember what they say here. 

Good.

Of Tea Parties and Runaway Slaves

One of the toughest things about being particularly literate and attempting always to be well read upon the subtleties of the day is that one often finds oneself in the company of those who are not. I am reminded at this particular moment of my first visit to Fenway Park. Not being a huge baseball fan, I wasn't particularly interested in buying expensive tickets, and so I found myself in the bleachers. If you've ever been in the bleachers at a Red Sox game, you must know what it's like to be surrounded by loud, rowdy fanatics on the very borderline of public drunkenness. Not my crowd. But it was still a good game and I rooted for the home team. 

It's often like that when I present myself as a Republican or as a conservative. I'm not so fanatical about it that I buy the expensive placements, but it doesn't mean that I particularly enjoy being associated with the rowdies. I'm a conservative and a Republican because my experience and thinking dictate that I should be. I didn't do it for the company. 

So this puts me in the odd position of, well, being a bloody individual who chooses what he chooses as an expression of will, not as some existential crutch. I do so with the express understanding that some conservatives have unfairly earned all conservatives the reputation of not having such a vocabulary as 'existential crutch'. Then again, there's a certain kind of projection going on in the minds of the opposition. 

It is with this sort of situation in mind that I deal with the loaded brickbat terms 'Tea Party' and 'Runaway Slave'. You see, this week I intend on attending an event with 'Runaway Slave' in the title. A certain minister C.L. Bryant is making a film about black American conservatives, and I'm very curious to check it out. Having been apprised of the situation, I'm going. It turns out that Breitbart is involved, as is Jesse Lee Peterson, two lightning rods.

I've encountered Peterson only briefly, and about 20 years ago through his association with BOND. It was at a Black Family Reunion in Exposition Park back in the days when that was going strong in Los Angeles. BOND reminded me of a gang for squares, a kind of bush league Alpha Phi Alpha for the kids who never made it to college. Snob that I am, and liberal that I was, it was easy for me to look down my nose at the whole program. But I did respect the young man I did meet, took his business card and smiled at the thought that there were still some people around who believed in the propriety of marriage, wearing a shirt and tie, and minding one's English. One is hard pressed at times to deal with the reality of hard knock cases trying their damnedest to become and remain respectable in a slavishly cynical society as ours can be. Such young men are so vulnerable. You never want to see their modest dreams upset, and wonder if they are properly self-possessed rather than merely enchanted by such a fearless leader as Minister Peterson. 

Without going back into the sort of scathing excoriation I might have served up to Peterson in my early days of 'black' conservatism, I know that he is not the sort who inspire the loyalty of bloody sophisticates such as myself. So I'll not belabor the analogy to Fenway Park. But we are on the same side, and we root for the same team.  Or perhaps I should say we are in the same American League. But, truth be told, I'm more of a Yankee fan. 

The same kind of disdainful fellowship I share with those addicted to analogies to slavery when speaking of the fate of contemporary black Americans. Powerful, tired, over-freighted metaphors keep peppering the dialog - enough to make me sneeze. How many times have I heard 'off the plantation' or 'house vs field' or 'Uncle Tom'? But there it is. And so it is with 'Tea Party' and other symbols of liberty and freedom that are abstracted into abuse by every partisan who joins the fracas. 

There's no way around the history. You can't avoid the terms, but I hope that Bryant and his collaborators can move beyond them quickly and smartly towards issues of import. Yet and still I know that it is impossible to corral all of the African American interest in the broad Right. So I'll be checking out the general progress of black conservative politics as it becomes manifest in its various ways, especially in Los Angeles. 

Quote of the Day

John Burroughs argued that the tendency to blame others was the ultimate admission of failure. It was an acceptance of the inability to change one’s destiny and therefore the belief that someone else was in the control of it. -- Belmont Club

Got Rice?

Once upon a time, when I was a Race Man, I used to look more seriously at questions of identity, politics and identity politics. Now I have shed that burden, but remains marginally curious at the depravity of those endless debates. Still, it has been a very long time since I have seen any update of the stereotypes about Asians in America (not brown Asians, but yellow Asians). It also bears mentioning that Asians themselves were not particularly interested in joining the conversation. I might guess why there is no 'Asian perspective' and that is because Asians themselves are too diverse and have never bought into unity theories as Hispanics and Blacks have. Aside from all that, they don't comprise a big enough voting block for any mainstream politician to give a rat's. 

So now I will (toungue in cheek) promote Kikka to speak for the millions in the context of Byron Hirota's classic Model Minority mythbuster. 

Other criticisms have been raised against the model minority thesis, mainly by researchers associated with the Asian American community organization, ASIAN, Inc., in San Francisco. First, more than half of the Asian/Pacific American population in the United States lives in only five metropolitan areas - Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York - and of these, more than nine-tenths are found in urban centers. These cities are not only high-income areas but also high-cost-of-living-areas. Thus, while Asian Americans (and others) living there may earn more, they also have to spend more.

Second, in areas with the highest density of Asian Americans, the percentage of Asian Americans in low-status, low-income occupations - that is, service workers, laborers, farm laborers, and private household workers - is considerably higher than among whites. In 1970, for example, fully 25 percent of all gainfully employed Chinese men in the United States were cooks, waiters, busboys, dishwashers, and janitors. Such a figure gives an impression of Asian American economic well-being that is quite different from based on consideration of median income alone.

Third, a detailed study of the San Francisco-Oakland Stanard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) showed that Asian Americans were unevenly dis- tributed in the economy. Professionals clustered in accounting, dentistry, nursing, health technology, and engineering and were underrepresented in law, teaching, administration, social services, and the higher levels of the medical professions. Managers were more likely to be self-employed than employees of large firms. Salespersons were retail clerks but seldom brokers or insurance agaents. Clerical workers were mostly file clerks, typists, or office machine operators, and not secretaries or receptionists. Few Asian Americans held jobs in the heavy-machine, electrical, paper, chemical, or construction industries. Most female operatives were garment workers. In short, Asian Americans were concentrated in occupations that did not pay as well as other jobs in the same industries.

I wonder how Asian Americans feel about their competence. Do they feel (or care) about their social capital for social or for inherent reasons? It's funny that I go back to the film Departures noting the biting irony that a Japanese cellist must lose his job due to declining interest in (Western) symphonic music in the big city, and must go back to basics in the country.

No Pledge of Allegiance

In the news are a couple items which remind me of the issue of loyalty. 

The first is the news that I have had my resume picked out of a pile to do some of the grunt work for a very large and popular company. Let's call it Bazillion.com. At the first news I was quite impressed with myself for having done nothing whatsoever to deserve their attention. But I guessed that somewhere in there was somebody who needed my skills and was reaching out. So I had a temporary high that has lasted about a week, and I took a moment to consider what I might do at such a place. It turns out, however, that it was something of a cattle call and they are likely to be singing that famous Flava Flav song to me after the formal process is complete. I can't do nothing for you man.

Still, given the operation of Chris Rock's Rule, a man is as decietful as his opportunities permit, I did give the alternatives some consideration. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that all I want to do is the exact same thing. For me it's all a question of funding and time. Can I get the time and money to build those things I want to build? Can I get the space and opportunity to create those things I wish to create? 

Such are the fundaments of loyalty. 

I stumbled across an interesting definition today. It's the idea of legal positivism. The Wiki says:

Legal positivism is a school of thought in philosophy of law and jurisprudence. The principal claims of modern legal positivism are that:

• There is no inherent or necessary connection between the validity conditions of law and ethics or morality.
• Laws are rules made, whether deliberately or unintentionally, by human beings

I don't quite understand why the second bullet point needs to be said, but that's aside. The very idea that there need be no necessary connection between the validity of a law and ethics or morality is a striking statement, especially given the number of lawyers in this country. They must have learned the term within the first semester of law school, and there must be no equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath for the likes of the JDs. What a setup. Such knowledge makes me want to exploit my own skills in amoral fashion, just to get ahead of the grip of law before the legal crew can understand what they are suing me for. 

That might lead me to cracking beyond mere hacking. But Anonymous has an object lesson of dying by the sword as their realm of anarchy descends into chaos. 

War rages between competing factions within the hacker collective Anonymous after this weekend's drama-filled takeover of the main Anonymous IRC server network. That network, used by Anons to plan and conduct attacks, was taken over by one of its own, an IRC moderator known as "Ryan."

His attack has sparked a debate over the "leadership" of Anonymous.

Hacking the hackers

The main Internet chat servers used by Anonymous have been run by a group called "AnonOps," which provides communications platforms for the group. Pointing IRC clients at anonops.ru or anonops.net would connect anyone to the servers, where they could then join channels like "#OpSony" and participate in various Anon activities.

Though Anonymous is often described as leaderless, factions like AnonOps by necessity have a loose structure; servers must be paid for, domain names must be registered, chat channels must have at least some moderation. Ryan was one of those IRC mods, and this weekend he proceeded with an attack that seized control of the AnonOps servers away from the small cabal of leaders who ran it.

As I said not long ago, the problem with Wikileaks and all such ultra-libertarian organizations is that everybody thinks they are equal and submit to no authority. And so without the rule of a moral law, people come to the daft conclusions that everyone can be equally right which is not only a logical fiction but the beginings of every political nightmare. 

Where are your allegiances, and how often do you renew your pledges?

Social Justice Under God

Here's a very nice problem that goes to the heart of one of the issues I find compelling these days. By what right are moral approbations applied from a religious / doctrinal perspective binding upon secular authorities in a democratic state?

More than 75 professors at Catholic University and other prominent Catholic colleges have written a pointed letter to Mr. Boehner saying that the Republican-supported budget he shepherded through the House of Representatives will hurt the poor, elderly and vulnerable, and therefore he has failed to uphold basic Catholic moral teaching.

“Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings,” the letter says. “From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.”

It brings up interesting questions about from which principles humanism and liberalism are informed. 

Recently, I listened to a seminar from a scholar named Bernard Lewis. He argued that the clash of civilizations is inevitable because only the Christian and the Muslim faiths contend that their worldview is essentially universal. Other religions do not make such universal claims. So it is the idea of a universal standard of morals and behaviors that we ultimately speak of 'human rights'. 

See the contradition? If you want your values to be universal, then you have to have some authority and infrastructure in place to defend them. This is at the center of a great number of discussions here, and I will bring up the point going forward. I call it Modernism - the presumption of the equal and immutable value of the soul.

Gary May

Congratulations go to Gary May who has just been named Dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Gary and I go way back to undergrad days in the mid 80s. He was NSBE chair one of the years that I was on the National Board.  I always knew that he was destined for something like this. Well I've known for about 6 or 7 years.  It has been a while since we hung out and it was about 5 years ago when I had a barbecue over at his place. He's an incredibly level-headed guy and methodical as all get-out. What always struck me about Gary was his sense of humility and dedication to the cause. It was a cause he understood, because he always put in the work, the cause of getting people through their studies. You see Gary was the straight A student who never made a big deal about his brains. It seems like it just never occurred to him that he might be something special or entitled to take advantage. He impressed me as somebody who just had a good discipline and ability to get through the maze and he wanted others to do the same.

Obviously he has learned to play politics, and that is his greater and deeper strength, because he is eminently trustworthy, showing no signs of weakness to temptation, but knowing how to work the back end of everything. I can't say that I necessarily like the way he operates. Me, I guess I'm a sucker for someone who confesses an ulterior motive over bourbon, but you'd never get that kind of banter out of Gary. Or Dr. May as I gather he is called now.

I offer my heartiest congratulations. The good guy won. You won't believe where he will be in 10 years. 

The Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

1. Protection

Liberals use the power of the state to protect against the dysfunctions of the family and community. 

Conservatives use the power of the family and community to defend against the dysfunctions of the state.

2. Trust

Liberals tend to trust everybody in general, but nobody in particular.

Conservatives tend to distrust everybody in general, but trust particular individuals.

3. Authority

Liberals tend to want powerful entities to never meddle while reserving a superpower to crush powerful entities that do.

Conservatives want to let powerful entities meddle as they please so long as none of them becomes a superpower. 

4. Conformity

Liberals tend to want radicalization when under threat. Let the most energetic wing win.

Conservatives tend to want conformity when under threat. Hunker down and ride out the storm. 

5. History

Liberals expect to institutionalize the lessons of history and spread the benefits to as many as possible. They call for global education.

Conservatives distrust the overproductions of institutions. When liberals say 'education' conservatives hear 're-education'.

6. Progress

Liberals believe the purpose of civilization is to discover more and more value in human diversity and to defend and expand protections and rights for all.

Conservatives believe that people never change and rights are specific contracts between specific people and that the purpose of civilization is to maintain that minimal, well-defined set. 

The Redemption of Michael Franti

I didnt' want to watch Michael Franti's show at the Jazz Fest. But I had friends in the audience with cold beer and a little patch of space. The reason I didn't want to see Franti's show is because I fell out of love with his music. Falling out of love with an artist can be one of two experiences. You're either disappointed with what they have become, or you become disappointed with what you used to be. For me it was a combination of both that made much of his stuff insufferable.

In particular, I refer to the tearjerking pathos of his album 'Home' or perhaps it was the other Chocolate Supa Highway? There's something about the border of folk music and politics that unnerves me. So I don't want to hear a song about the contemplation of suicide, or getting a letter about HIV in the mail, or any song that seems to require 'fuck the police' in the lyrics. It's not that I simply disagree with the politics but the juxtaposition with such agitprop inside dance music is unnerving. In other words, Franti makes art, not just entertainment, and I don't like mixing the two.

Franti is 1/3 of the way to redemption in my eyes, but not becuase I think any differently of him, but I think he has recognized that he has to have a party show, and today he had a party show which was a very long way from the music that made him famous. Today being the final day of the Jazz Fest in New Orleans, my first time. 

Franti is a frantic figure who knows how to rock the right crowd. But I almost hesitate to call him a performer. He is not so much a performer as he is a minister, and his performance is to create an effect in his audience. The effect was effective.

I dont' like crowds. At the same time, I think very highly of the idea of having mass rituals. So in my mind, which wasn't so far from alien observation mode, I am thinking about what happens when a man on stage directs a crowd. It's different from a DJ, but less different from a political speaker at a rally. The political content of the rally is what gives me pause, and I know that Franti is not merely in the music business to make people feel good but speaks of empowerment.

Franti uses a hiphop concert formula which is tried and true, which is to get the crowd to do the work when beats and lyrics from the stage are all unsurprising and the bars begin to drag on. You know the old critique - don't ask me to say 'ho' and raise my hands in the air and jump, if the music inspires, I'll do that on my own. Franti never stops asking.

The odd bit is that when he brought a violinist (or I should say fiddle player) onto the stage, he didn't have to ask twice. Here is the border between bluegrass and hiphop and the crowd absolutely loved it. I loved it. It had a kind of energy that is rarely heard anywhere outside of Phish (I think), and I hope to hear more of that.

Franti is redeemed by his willingness and ability to rock the crowd against no particular big ideas and messages. I can see that he gets that. Using his call and response and moshing it up in the crowd, he created an excellent atmosphere. And while I was marginally annoyed by the hugs and the passing of the herb I had to decline, I enjoyed exactly what he did produce on Sunday. It was the Holy Ghost part of church and the message was Big Easy. Celebrate life. Love. Peace. All good from the folk and party to the people.

So the question is whether such a man who can and does perform alter calls and gets people to send their babies and their grandparents up onto the stage to shake their stuff or rap into the mic or air guitar with real guitar props is content to party in that non-threatening bucket. I couldn't read it on his face that he was 100% in the party moment. There was too much structure and control in the whole offering. Franti is about 6 foot five and handsome, exuding a John the Baptist vibe and moving as widely around as any 45 year old could dream of, swapping out guitars for every song.

I saw another third of Franti on stage. The party man, not the political party man. And all of the music was designed to keep the good time party rolling. It gives me a reason to refresh my consideration of Franti and Spearhead. What's going on?

One Day of New Orleans Eats

 
 
Morning:

Carrot juice with ginger.

Bluebarry, Banana, Strawberry, Soy Milk Smoothie

Shrimp Creole Omlette

Bloody Mary

Grits & Hot Link

Biscuit with grape jelly

2 Glasses of water

--

Noon:

Pint of Milk

3 Beignets

Six Coors Beers

Soft Shell Crab Po Boy

--

Afternoon:

Two Cranberry & Vodka

Six BBQ Chicken Wings

--

Night:

Two Grey Goose Martinis

Glass of Chardonnay

3 Cornbreads

Fried Green Tomatoes

Roast Beef Po Boy

Crabcakes

Gator Souffle

Scallops & Pears with Blue Cheese & Pralines

Greens

Red Beans & Rice

4 Glasses of Water

 

No Street Vending Allowed

Russian Street Jazz

Unbelievable!

Trombone Shorty

Saw him yesterday. One of the best live performances I've ever been to. He straight rocked it out, funked it up, and blew the crowd away.

There's a Band in the Backyard

It must be New Orleans

 

Meet Me in New Orleans

I'm not the most interesting guy in the world, but I have some pretty funny jokes and I'm fairly good dinner company - especially if you want to talk about taboo subjects. You know, the kind that peasants aren't supposed to discuss, religion, politics, real talk about the sexes. And I do it with bourbon and cigars too. Well if you happen to be in New Orleans this weekend, you should be able to find me - I suppose the same way anyone does, via Foursquare.

 

Man On Fire

(from the archives May 2004)

Can you kill the man who tried to kill you? Yes or No? If he is part of an organization, should you kill the organizers? If you could, would you?

It's very difficult to talk about Denzel Washington's latest film without also talking about Abu Ghraib and bunch of other stuff. As much as I want to keep the subjects apart, I cannot manage it. I am at the point at which I am wanting to make the film a litmus test for sense and sensibility over the question of Iraq, but in a deeper way. However instead of stringing this character study together with what I've been talking about in 'Monsters on a Leash', let it stand as a metaphor for the man who does democracy's dirty work and sacrifice. Denzel Washington has given us a performance for the ages which resonates in many directions.

Here's what I'm getting at. I am trying to break through a kind of social phlegm which I believe to be a self-imposed exile. It is part and parcel of my antagonism to that which I describe as 'dainty'. If I were to call it 'liberal' then it would score me points with my conservative brethren but that's not my aim. Rather I am trying to reveal a kind of denial which will get us in deeper trouble. In the context of Man on Fire, it is the denial that there is a necessary good in the dealing with evil in the harshest ways. I am trying to break through the denial that says there are no noble ends worthy of extreme prejudice.

If the Geneva Conventioneers go to the movies, they would certainly have to give a huge failing grade to the Man on Fire. However I don't think they would convince many Americans that this is not an extraordinarily moving film. But let me qualify that one more step. A moving film in the genre of action is what I'm talking about, and I realize that many Americans don't go to the theater in order to see action films. I don't quite know what to make of such Americans because the great advantage of going to such events is the technology of emergence possible with the large screen and the booming system. Unless you are one of the types who are unimaginative enough to consider 'Sleepless in Seattle' a good reason to date... excuse me, my demographic is showing. 15 years ago, I'd go for a Tarkofsky at the Nuart, these days I go for a Scott at the Bridge. As for Amelie, she waits for pay per view. What I expect from an action film goes beyond the boom to the character in focus, the hero. What is his code?

From the very opening credits, I was stunned at the brilliance of director Tony Scott's sensibilities with light and film. I have been watching a great deal of digital entertainment recently: digital shorts, gaming and game cut scenes. Scott's ability with film expresses a much larger visual vocabulary, and his facility with it is often breathtaking. It is an accelerated communication I am witnessing, the visual equivalent of New Yawkese at a rapid clip. Not since Soderbergh's 'Traffic' has this kind of film been made, and yet where Traffic is an investigation into a series of characters and tragedies, 'Man on Fire' comes down to one. What does it take to unravel the kind of organization that sanctions terror and extortion? What happens when a man who can, does with trained lethality?

Washington brings a gravity to the action hero previously unknown. I even heistate to call him an action hero or this an action film. He is deliberate without being obsessed. He is damaged without self-pity. He has no attitude whatsoever. I regard him as the man who stands in disbelief at the fact that he remains alive despite the great damage done to him. He is mortally wounded, and yet he persists, seemingly in defiance of God. He is aligned to his condemnation, but ultimately accepts the opportunity for redemption offered by chance.

Washington's John W. Creasy is a frightening individual. For he makes life and death decisions on his own. He follows his own conscience, not a manual. He isn't following orders or procedures of the sort which in a democracy give the public the confidence that all is well enough. He is a protector, and he is not merely satisfied with punishing. Instead he demonstrates that it is possible to destroy all corruption - the full plant, leaves, stalk and roots. He is not a professional in the justice system, he is investigator, judge, jury and executioner. He is a scarred warrior past all ideology surviving on bible verses, whiskey and the deadly drills of the counter-terrorist trade. He knows he has gone too far.

This makes him frightening not because he a loose cannon. He paces in a cage of his own creation. He dulls his own blade. He could be sharp, deadly but he chooses to be disengaged. Such a man defies what is often expected of an assassin. We have become used to the idea that no man is capable of all that, and that given any such capability such a man should work as part of a team. We are led to believe that there is a button that can be pushed, a memorandum of understanding corroboratively agreed upon which sets in motion a series of professional actors who bring evildoers to justice. And this is satisfactory for the bourgie American citizen. Were we to find John W. Creasy somewhere in that bureaucracy, were we to know his sources and methods, we would be crying "Who let the dogs out?". We would resist his truth. We could forgive an ignorant brute, but Creasy is neither. He is an artist of death, an assassin. Echoes of 'The Professional'. But Creasy is completely self-possessed. He is a man without external sanction.

Think of the adage 'Women and children first.' When a ship is sinking, this is the rule. Why? While everyone knows that cowards will try to escape and women will die, there is more than mere chivalrous attitudes. There is an understanding that dirty work and sacrifice must be done in the interests of human survival. There is so much of our economy and culture that is available to the weaker sex, that perhaps we have forgotten about blood, guts and glory. We forget that there are monsters which arise and so we create thoughtcrime out of that which would arm us for the unthinkable. These are the thoughtcrimes which become armor in the conflict we dread. Those are the thoughtcrimes that are Creasy's training - it's what keeps him alive in the in-between times.

I think 'Man on Fire' is an excellent parable and a tragic drama. Technology has enabled the ordinary thug to commit crimes like none other in history. In the cracks of our society grow dangerous weeds. If Creasy makes us uneasy it is because he is today's man fighting tomorrows battles. One day we may come to understand him better. Until then our sensibilities may be challenged by his methods, but that is not the worst thing we face. We face our own unwillingness to fight.

 

The Ulsterman Conspiracy

I have just read one of the most mindblowing fictions I've ever seen. It rings perfectly true. If in fact it is true, it would blow the doors off of the Obama Administration. Even if it's not, it makes for extraordinary reading.

As I think about it, it seems more unlikely that some guy with a website I've never heard of would have access to the sort of insider that could and would leak such blockbuster information. I only hope that this story gets enough traction so that somebody can find this Ulsterman and wring a confession out of him.

The gut of the story is that Leon Panetta, in cooperation with White House Cheif of Staff  , pre-emptorily approved the mission to bag Osama against the protests of Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett who kept raising objections to the attack based upon political grounds of offending Muslims and the chance of failure. The military and intel guys agonized while Obama dithered.

If you've ever watched the movie 'Spy Game' with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, you can get the feeling for how something like this could happen.

Because He's Not Dead Yet

 
So imagine you get a chance to get Bin Laden. You know where he is. You've been scoping out his hideout for months. You've been eavesdropping on his conversation. Hell you even hacked his PS3 for fun and took out the whole network because you know he's been using it to communicate with Al Qaeda. Why just kill him immediately? And what's all this with a burial at sea? Just put a few stupid words in the mouth of Obama and everybody believes it - stupid people because they're gullible and smart people because they think they're smarter. 

C'mon. You don't get your mitts on Bin Laden just to kill him, and you don't have 40 SEALs who are too slow to tackle the dude. There's is no picture because he's not dead yet. They're twisting him on a spit and slow roasting him until he's so tender the secrets just drip of the bones. They've got him simmering in pentathol. 

By the way, does anybody think the exfil was done all in one swoop? There are still dudes back in the area slurping up traffic.

When I first heard the story break, I could have sworn it was a week delayed. But there was live tweeting going on by locals who heard the helo crash but didn't know what it was. They thought it was a drone attack. Anyway I was sure that there were networks to roll up in advance of the announcement. But it looks Obama had to speak fairly quickly about the 'kill' before the real-time world caught up with him. Still, our men in camo and blackface know how to get out of Dodge under the cover of darkness leaving no trail, so nobody knows exactly how they humped OBL out of the middle of Pakistan to 'the sea'. That's a dark trail - so dark that in fact OBL could be anywhere.

He's certainly not free or missing, that's for sure. He's never going to see the light of day. But is he dead at this very moment? You will never know.

The Triangle of Death

Obama got Osama. Nice.

So the details of the raid are starting to come in and it's very cool to consider who had to know what as the facts roll in. So here's the thing that has been on my mind for a while. This safehouse is clearly deep into Pakistan. You don't get a joint like that without lots of help, and I mean ISI and PakMil. I've been figuring that elements in the ISI have been playing this game for a while. Last June I wrote:

What if our troops found Osama? I mean practically speaking it should be understood that the reason why we don't find him is because he's got protection in Pakistan and Pakistan is generally off limits to our troops. We found Saddam, and he had a whole army to protect him - Osama's army only needs to be a few loyal and trusted men in the forbidden zone. So surely he is there. But what if?

You and I both know that if we found Osama, it would be all over. It being 'every reason' we are over there. GWBush's war would be declared over and our President would focus more closely on the domestic narratives he believes he has a better chance at controlling. And then so what if there was another mastermind?

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you Anwar Al-Awlaki.

What do I expect you to do about it? I expect you to remember you are an American and for that reason you are a target of his holy war. And if you cannot remember his name, or the names of the hundreds of his closest followers, maybe you can remember that he exists, is connected and has some time to become a mastermind. Maybe you can remember that the ending purposes of our global war on the Jihadis is not merely a convenient narrative that conforms to a dramatic arc - that it is full of reality and therefore unpredictable and messy. It requires work to combat it, deal with the facts of it, communicate the truth of it. It requires attention to detail, and that if *we* are to be organized and purposeful that we require loyalty when our leader communicates and trust when he doesn't. But for us, as for everyone, such matters take time to establish and maintain.

And before Obama was elected, I predicted that as Musharraf was a lame duck, we had a bipartisan new front. IE nobody would care much or raise a ruckus if and when we caught Bin Laden in 'off limits' territory of Pakistan. 

Now here's the cool thing. Obama is now poised to kick Karzai to the curb, once again and leave him to the crazed warlords. Which is to say that all of the bad blood Obama got for disssing McChrystal, Eikenberry et al, is now erased in the political victory of finding OBL somewhere other than Afghanistan. Land war in Asia? Now who has the last laugh. It is the mighty Obama who, never admitting to standing on the shoulders of GWBush, has now captured all the geopolitical glory he really cares about. So what if the Middle East goes to shit? We got Bin Laden!

But surely even Obama could not be blind the the fact that Hamas rued the day. They had the nerve to call him a great warrior. Hoo boy. Is there any question that these fools need to be restrained? I can't think of any reaction that I've heard from Israel on the news. Hmm. 

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So the SEALs ripped into Abbottabad, now synomomous with 'spider hole' and took OBL's compound apart, got the intel goods and shot the bastard in the head, along with all of his minions and immediate family. I wonder if they were dumped into the ocean as well. Probably not. Which leaves something of an interesting question about how many of the dead flunkies were left about on the floor, and who is going to miss them. 

But the bigger question is who in the ISI is now a little bit panicked. There has got to be some forensic evidence the team picked up which could lead to clues about who was running to the store for groceries and video tapes. And of course now that the US has the computers and files and whatnot, it's just a matter of time before more sluething yeilds more results. It is becoming clear that this is Obama's military style, which makes sense in the Ronald Reagan worldview of secret engagements with only the most special type of boots on the ground. I have growing confidence that such matters will work.

It is also interesting to note that the tweeters who didn't realize exactly what those helicopters and explosions were on the fateful night suggested that it might be a drone attack. It means that Abbottabad must have gotten one or two in the prior week, because you want that kind of misdirection when you're about to pull a covert op. Get people used to thinking they know what's up. 

All in all, I really hope some of the shooters picked up their shell casings. They would go really nice on eBay.

 

Osama Dead - Open Thread

Where were you when you found out? What are your reactions?

Coolest Electric Bicycle Ever

Just wow. I want one. Check out the gears on this badboy.

USC Festival of Books

A perfect day in the sun.

Megalodon is the group led by the sax man on stage. I like 'em a lot.

Making Up With Bernard

Bernard and Shirley Kinsey & Son were at the Festival of Books this weekend. It was always good to see them. This time around they had a scribe on hand with his iPad and I cut a short promo highlighting the virtues of Mr. Kinsey and his excellent coffee table book. I hope and expect that it will show up on his website as a testimonial bit, and now I feel a lot better for missing his February tour.

Religious Doom

In my Meetup schedule, I managed to meet some radical atheists. It's an interesting phenomenon, and I think I am getting closer to understanding what motivates some of them. I think it is the fear of oppression, but it is also a desire to end conflict. Very American.

My answer is that war and death are the solutions that atheists are very wary of dealing with. It goes to dealing with the courage of convictions. I didn't find at our meeting any militant atheists who were willing to do battle with militant theists for world domination, but I could see that perhaps few of the participants had long considered the proper limits of secular power. I'd like to take them down that road again.

Here's the nut of the issue. 

Let us consider the position of Misha. He believes in life after death and is convinced that he must prevail and is willing fight to the death. In opposition is Josh, who thinks that life after death is wishful thinking and is convinced that his opposition position from Misha is the only correct solution. As a consequence of Josh's ideology, he beleives that Misha has a right to his wrong opinions and will not oppress him if Misha will do the same. 

In sum, Josh wants and believes everybody should want secular rule because in the ideal, secular rule protects religious freedom. 

What Josh doesn't realize is that what he wants is a police state. He wants to do no violence to Misha but hates the fact that Misha (in his squalid religiously bigotted mind) wants influence over others. Josh wants a secular Leviathan but the fact of Josh's disturbance over the religious influence of Misha means that Leviathan is not beahving properly. Therefore Josh wants to become radical. 

Misha already believes that his God is Leviathan, but his God is not behaving properly because he is surrounded by infidels and heathens who don't heed the moral word of God. This Misha must endeavor on his quest for purity and purification. 

Josh and Misha are on a collision course. Misha is ready to die. Josh treasures life above all else. Who wins? Misha wins, of course. Josh will forever negotiate because his principles cannot involve the destruction of human life. 

This is the example that secular humanist atheists have not run through their heads enough times. And in their activism, they are enabling a liberal Leviathan police state that has cultural relativism at its soft moist core. It is only when they recognize the inevitability of conflict and war that they will begin to defend borders in the form of nationalism and cease to be fascinated by mere mixing without loyalty oaths.  Europe is beginning to see the light. The American left remains in the dark.

Breitbart

I know, I know. I'm supposed to be doing other things but today was the Festival of Books and I got the opportunity so I took it. I hung out with Andrew Breitbart today. This man is very interesting.

The first thing you notice about Breitbart is that he's a lot more energetic and natural in person than he's appeared to be in videos I recall of him. When he busted ACORN, I seem to recall him as smarter than the average bear and a lot more disciplined and articulate than the wildman he appears to be today. But I think he's just getting his groove. He's riding a large beast and has drawn a sword across the noses of some fierce enemies. But Breitbart has something very powerful going for him. He's genuine, and he's motivated to unite people. 

What's more, in some important ways, we two think alike. We think alike about Hollywood. He sees the big cultural picture. It turns out that my day today was connected to David Mamet two ways. You see, I went to the FOB to see Breitbart and Ricky Jay. As Andrew and I were walking, he mentioned to me that there's a book coming out by David Mamet that's going to turn the country, or at least the chatting classes of it, on its ear. But wouldn't you know that Ricky Jay was a consultant via Deceptive Practices to David Mamet in a number of films I always loved but didn't know Mamet was involved in, including Ronin, House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner. Triple wow. What Breitbart and I see about Hollywood is that it makes you love the bad guy and turns Americans against each other, and that finally all of the wickedness in the entertainment industry is just become that banal evil. It's boring, that decades long rehash of acceptable rebellion. 

Like me, Breitbart is a recycled liberal who thought his way out of the paper bag. He grew up in Santa Monica, and now finally looks the part - rather like we all want to look, perfectly comfortable with ourselves and other people on a sunny day in Southern Cal. 

Breitbart is smart in the way that people who have a million connections to other people are smart. He's heads-up smart. I didn't see it today, but I can tell he can get things done through other people and that is because even though he is clearly  a lightning rod, he's the first to connect dots and see what it is that other people do well. In the half hour we spent together, I had to make him talk about himself. I watched him get off the ETC stage where he had been rescheduled and hang out with friendly folks while other folks had stalking debates with him about controversies. On stage, he was polemical in the way you are for the media, offstage he was, quite literally, a man of the people. Kaus was in the audience. He noticed. 

Breitbart's strategy is to disintermediate what he calls the Hollywood Democrat Media Complex or something like that. The Yang to Hillary Clinton's VRWC. But he's not so shrill about it and understands what he's up against. He's up against money and the inability for journalists to talk out of school. So he's going to use judo against them. He'll be nimble and he'll be quick and watch big media trip on it's own, eh petard. It worked for the ACORN videos, what else can it work for? Hard to say, but he's got common sense on his side. I think he could be too clever by half - I see he's in the middle of the whirlwind right now, but he doesn't show any signs of fatigue. I think it's because, even though he drinks from the media firehose, he's got a very good sense of when people are trying to snow him. I watched people walk by and call him a racist, I could see the smug contempt on their faces. I could anticipate them jumping to their conclusions. Breitbart doesn't try to be wonky and out-wonk them, and that's why he survives.

His dust jacket speaks of Commonsense Conservatism. He told me that he didn't set out to support the Tea Party, but that after 30 times seeing them all over the country he realized that they were people he couldn't deny any longer. He had come to know too many of them to let the lies go unanswered, and I think that's where he is at his center. He just hates the arrogance of the lies and he wants to bust the liars. He's got a big streak of honesty in him, and I think he genuinely loves people.

Breitbart walks around in big man's shoes. Almost anonymous in the crowd but the guys at McSweeny's know him. One of the booth dudes gives him a book for free so an author could sign it. It's some kind of in-joke I don't quite get, but Breitbart handles it smoothly. He reminds me of Dennis Miller when Miller knows some fan is buttering him up for the big snarky remark. He's got the sense of when people are being real or fake. He doesn't hate the fakes, but you can tell he's out to expose them. We went over to the RAND tent. He knew somebody in that organization and left his regards. He can distinguish the distractions from the serious stuff and didn't give Birther Madness much of his attention. He's working on bigger plans.

It took me a while to determine if and how I should approach him, and I'm glad I did. He doesn't strike me as a wonky guy, and my interest is much more political philosophy than media presence. But media presence is a critical part of the game  - and the game is melioration of moral, honest ideas - something for which this is a false oligopoly in the Media Empire. Breitbart naturally understands it, and now he is a double agent. That's dangerous, of course, but he seems relentless and up to it. For now. He's going to be, through his websites, a force to reckon with. 

Famousity is an interesting beast. You cannot undo it. So Breitbart has to parlay his name into something that channels the common sense energy he sees in the Right into something that conveys the ability to see through the information conspiracy. I remember when I moved to NYC and tried to find more intellectual writing and all I heard was about The Nation. I had nowhere to go and it took me 8 years to find it on my own. I too am sick of the Frankfurt School and am not a joiner. Breitbart is aiming to defeat the naysayers and put the Democrat Media Conspiracy on its heels and beat back the Marxist social experiment. 

I'm on his side. 

 

Ouch

So I've got some kind of defect in my body that is causing me pain. Not agonizing pain. but disturbingly sharp stitches of pain at close intervals. I am in a PPO and so I am using the shotgun method. As many doctors and specialists as possible followed closely by yours truly. It's under my bottom rib on the right. So here's the details: 

The doctors are puzzled but determined. 

I met with Dr. Matsuno on Tuesday:

Dr. Matsuno is my regular doctor and he has four threads he is following.

1. Heartburn - therefore Prilosec and no greasy / fried food. 

2. Liver and or Kidney - therefore bloodwork taken Tuesday, results soon.

3. Gallbladder infection or stones. - therefore ultrasound.

4. Muscle pain - therefore ibuprophen

Matsuno's best guess is #3 and so he ordered me an ultrasound. That is scheduled for 5/25. That was his best guess because I felt pain when I breathed in deeply while he applied pressure under my right ribs, and there's not much stomach up in that area.

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I met with Dr. Jyotheesarma on Friday:

Dr Jyothee is a Gastrointestinal specialist. His idea is the following.

I did not feel pain in the same way and place as on Tuesday although I have been experiencing it regularly. He said that ibuprophen wouldn't help. His theories are as follows:

1. Gallstone in blocked bile duct - therefore ultrasound.

2. Bile duct infection / bile duct spincter spasm - ditto ultrasound

3. Upper GI infection or Heartburn - therefore Prilosec

4. Liver PH imbalance due to Pravastatin reaction. - therefore bloodwork

I noted today that none of this pain is gotten after eating. I didn't eat breakfast Tuesday morning when I had the problems, nor did I have pain today at this morning's appointment. However I got some sharp shocks just before lunch. And Thursday morning at 10:30 I was feeling it, again having had nothing more than a Red Bull that morning.

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Dr. Jyothee, being a specialist, got me a better date for the ultrasound (I though I could get it today, but anything is better than waiting until the end of the month). That is for Tuesday morning 5/2. 

I began taking the Prilosec anyway on the off chance that I'm just overanalyzing and overeating, which I doubt but you can't be too safe or sure.

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Today was a fairly decent day, I only got two or three attacks, none of which, I note, are in any proximity to my meals. So I'm taking it one day at a time, and with Prilosec just in case I just don't know what heartburn is.