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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Longhorn Laggard
Bill Gates says we won't see the latest Windows, Longhorn, until 2006 if we're lucky. I don't know about you, but I've had enough of this Gates-as-Moses-on-the-mountain nonsense. I like to see him as just another software developer who has missed deadline after deadline (this'll be the third Microsoft disappointment this year). Strip him of his name, put him in charge of a cash-strapped Silicon Valley startup, and he wouldn't last five minutes like this.
Still, this gives the Linux guys at least two years to get a toehold on more PC desktops. Not to mention Steve Jobs, whom I am still convinced intends to bring Mac OS X to the PC in the long run (today iTunes, tomorrow the world!) Gentlemen, start your engines.
Estrogen Island
My favorite virtual world, There, has suffered from some pinheaded business moves recently. First of all its board fired CEO Tom Melcher -- the guy who founded the place -- for no apparent reason, and replaced him with someone who just didn't have anything like the same creative energy. Said successor proceeded to fire literally half the company. It sounded like the same kind of bleeding dotcom story we've heard too many times in this part of the world, and I wrote There off as another sad story of the demise of a very good tech idea.
Yesterday came the first sign of a There recovery. There has partnered with iVillage, the online women's community (speaking of dotcoms that have seen better days). Somewhere hidden in the There world -- which, if you don't know, is the size of the Earth -- is a secret island for iVillage members. Men are allowed by invitation only. This is a very, very clever move, reminiscent of what Melcher loved to explain in his early presentations: "We decided that if we built a virtual world for women, men would want to come," he said. "The reverse is not true."
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Boobgate: The Nipple Speaks Out
As part of the promotional blitz for Janet Jackson's new CD, "Damita Jo," Virgin records has at last made Jackson's world-famous right nipple available for press interviews. Daily Blah caught up with the offending appendage by phone earlier this week.
Daily Blah: So how are you coping with your new-found fame?
Jackson's nipple: It's pretty lousy, to tell you the truth.
DB: How so?
JN: You know what? Even Z-list celebs get 15 minutes of fame. I had like five seconds in front of a global audience before she covered me up. That's it; those five seconds were never repeated. Every time the networks showed the moment again, they fuzzed me out with that dumbass pixelation. Have you seen me on the cover of the new album?
DB: No.
JN: Exactly. She's naked and yet she goes and covers me up again. Turns me furthest away from the camera, too. Like I was the one who did something wrong.
DB: But look at what you've achieved. You were the subject of the most TiVo'd moment in television history.
JN: Yeah, but ask yourself why was everyone rewinding their TiVos? Because they weren't sure if they'd seen me or not. It's the same whenever anyone talks about me now. They're never like, 'wow, what an amazing nipple that was,' they're always like, 'was it really exposed? I mean, I saw this flashy silver thing,' and blah, blah, blah. I feel like the freakin' invisible man. It's called a starburst, people. It's designed to show me off, not hide me. Get over it.
DB: Did it come as a surprise when you were revealed?
JN: Not really. The fact that she put the starburst on me and not Lefty told me something was up. But let me tell you, Timberlake is not a gentle guy. Did you see the way he ripped that leather cover? I was like 'woah, dude, watch the areola!' And then there was the sudden temperature change, which is never good. That's another reason I'm pissed -- for the handful of seconds everyone saw me, I was not exactly ready for my close-up.
DB: Any plans for a solo career?
JN: Not here. Are you kidding? The FCC would kill me. I'm thinking I'll jump ship next time we're in Europe; maybe Spain or Italy, where my kind shows up on TV all the time and nobody screams about it. They know how to treat a nipple with respect.
Daily Blah for... Monday, March 29, 2004
Confession of the Christ
It seems police departments ought to ditch the good cop, bad cop technique and simply screen The Passion of Christ. Seeing the movie convinced one man in Texas to confess to the slaying of his pregnant girlfriend, while a Norwegian neo-Nazi walked out of the film and owned up to a couple of street bombings.
Religion: the truth serum of the masses?
Dreamers Wake
To the Landmark Lumiere yesterday for an afternoon showing of Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which I'd been keen on seeing for some time. Not so much for the Bertolucci -- I was only recently introduced to his work a few months ago when, feverish and clutching a recuperative bowl of Chinese soup laced with garlic, I finally felt able to tackle the three-hour DVD of the Last Emperor. No, it was Paris in 1968 that intrigued me. Hell, any reenactment of the spirit of 1968 intrigues me, possibly because I never get sick of hearing "For What It's Worth" on a soundtrack. But the Parisian student revolt I knew very little about, except for one slogan I'd picked up tangentially in a book on the Beatles: "Sous les pierres, la plage" (beneath the cobblestones, the beach). This, the book said, symbolized the Situationist spirit behind the revolt that John Lennon amongst others became infatuated with: that life is a dream, and therefore we as dreamers have a responsibility to make it beautiful. I like that sentiment. The older I get, the more subjectivist the universe appears, the more it makes sense. We are each of us in charge of dreaming our own dream. A fearful or pessimistic outlook on life will inevitably turn it into a nightmare.
So this was the spirit in which I entered The Dreamers, hoping to learn a little something more about life and dreams and a time and place in which both seemed important. Bertolucci himself was in Paris in May 1968. What could he teach me? The answer: not very much. The Dreamers, in fact, is two movies stitched together in a not very artful way. The first concerns a Parisian brother and sister played by Louis Garrell and Eva Green, who adhere to just about every haughty French stereotype in the popular imagination. With a melange of incestuous intrigue and Godard references, the pair seduce an American movie buff played by Michael Pitt -- a relative unknown whose main aim here seems to be to provide European directors with a younger, cheaper clone of Leonardo diCaprio, right down to the floppy hair and wide-eyed mannerisms.
The second story, given incredibly short shrift by Bertolucci, is that of the revolt itself. Which, if his confused storyline is to be believed, effectively begins when the government fires the head of the Cinamatheque Francaise at the start of the film. After that, we see only the briefest snatches until the equally confused closing scenes when it suddenly invades the dreamers' melancholic and suicidal reverie. Bertolucci's sole attempt to stitch the two narratives together is to make Garrel's character an all-talk-but-no-action Maoist. Which feels like a terribly half-hearted addition to his character: we can all see the hypocrisy in quoting the little red book but never leaving one's apartment. It doesn't take the intrusion of a DiCaprio clone with ambiguous views on Vietnam to point this out.
What Bertolucci evidently wanted to make was a film about a love triangle and bodily fluids (boy, does he love his bodily fluids). He also wanted to make a film about film. He's really good at that sort of thing. A genius, in fact; the images stay with you long after you leave the theater. And perhaps he wanted to point out that all political movements rise and fall on the actions of people on its periphery, those who are only dimly aware of politics. Point taken. But what of the more fully fleshed-out characters at the epicenter of the drama? The real dreamers of 1968, it seems, will have to wait a little longer for their homage.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, March 25, 2004
Of Chomsky and Change
Woah. Hold the phone. Noam Chomsky effectively told his followers in his blog to vote for John Kerry rather than Ralph Nader. I know -- Noam Chomsky has a blog now? That was Kaila's reaction when she IM'd me. Who knew? Apparently it's part of this progressive blogger collective called "Z Blogs", and Chomsky, darling of the ultra-left, sits in the cube next to "Maggie's Farm."
Oh, Chomsky didn't endorse Kerry in so many words. But that was the point he was trying to make, in his academic cod-poetic way. We have to choose "whether we want to pay attention to the real world"; if we do so, we must "do something to try to prevent" Bush's reelection.
I admire Chomsky as an idealist; I'm just a little wary of him as an academic. I personally agree with him. I think Ralph Nader voters are (to merrily mix my metaphors) deluded myopic ostriches. No argument there. Nor do I fail to appreciate his analysis. He's a compelling thinker, and his linguistic science commands respect. It's just the man's conclusions that feel a little off. Or rather, the firmness of his conclusions. One might almost call him fundamentalist in his belief that no other logical minds could agree on any other possible conclusion from certain political events.
I was listening to an MP3 of Chomsky speaking in the car tonight -- it sounded like it had been bootlegged at some Harvard seminar. About half an hour in, I found myself offering devil's advocate arguments in my mind on behalf of the politicians he was slamming, who in this case happened to be President Clinton and Madeleine Albright. This had been recorded in 1999 or thereabouts, evidently after Clinton had just performed one of those periodic aerial bombings of Baghdad that someday will seem such a 1990's thing (and maybe car bombs in Baghdad will be what the 2000's will be remembered for). Chomsky was laying into Clinton so much, it made me wonder: where was he in 2000? Was he passionately arguing for Gore or was he one of those progressives who held back, stayed lukewarm in that now mythically beautiful long summer, perhaps even endorsed Nader? Did 958 of his Floridian fans saddle us with four years of Bush? Could he have made that difference?
The man seems to allow for too little devil's advocate play within himself or his work, play which seems to me -- good Socratic that I am -- to be one of the most essential and joyful parts of professional philosophy. We've got to keep questioning ourselves and our conclusions. And when we change our minds, admit it to ourselves and our followers. Practice humility. "The only thing I know is that I know nothing." That's the only way anyone achieves any true breakthrough, political or otherwise.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, March 24, 2004
'Bush is a Fear President'
Good piece in the Guardian on how Bush's response to fear and terror differs from both Roosevelt's reaction to the Depression and Spain's reaction to the Madrid bombings:
Had they reacted differently, the train bombs two weeks ago might have ended their generation of freedom. They might have wallowed in the fear that a pathetic band of murderers could somehow destroy their society. They might have moaned about the worst attack on Spanish soil in modern history.
That would not have been true. Many more died in many of the battles of the Spanish civil war, just as many more Americans died in many of the battles of the US civil war than were killed at the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001.
Daily Blah for... Monday, March 22, 2004
It's Al Qaeda, Stupid
The narrative of national security is beginning to look a lot better for the Democrats, thanks to Republican terrorism expert and well-timed whistleblower Richard Clarke. For three years, the story most Americans have believed is this: we're under attack from shadowy cabals of international terrorists, and not only did Bush knock that threat out of the park, he also had time and energy to invade Iraq -- which may or may not have been involved in 9/11, but who's quibbling when the world is down one dangerous madman? A Bush victory in November is entirely dependent on the majority of voters continuing to believe the truth of this particular plotline.
Now, with Clarke and the 9/11 commission, the opposition narrative seems to be coalescing. Here it is: The neocons have been obsessed with Iraq from the outset, and Bush dropped the ball on Al Qaeda the moment he entered office. He and his team did everything they could to pin 9/11 on Saddam. They entered Afghanistan half-heartedly, refusing to commit ground troops for crucial battles that could have tightened the noose on the truly guilty ones. They invaded Iraq too soon, diverting resources too early from war-torn and Qaeda-infested Afghanistan and pissing off the international community. Instead of mopping up one nest of terrorists, they went and did their damndest to create a whole new generation of them.
If Kerry has any smarts, this is the story he will tell over and over until November. In a nutshell, he'll say, Bush can't be trusted to lead America into battle against Al Qaeda. He made a mess of our 9/11 revenge. He broke the bank and sapped our good credit paying for an irrelevant Iraq adventure. Now, no matter what happens -- October Osama surprise or no -- we are in a more fundamentally dangerous position than before. We made a brand new snake pit to kill our troops in. Thanks for making our job twice as hard, Mr. President. Looks like our initial instincts about you were correct all along: you're a boy in chief executive's clothing. Time to put a grown-up in there.
This is how Kerry should package himself: as a grown-up. A skipper with a steady hand on the tiller. A man without Al Qaeda attention deficit disorder. Someone who won't make a drama out of an international crisis. Someone who knows who the enemy is.
Of course, whether he'll actually do this is a question I'm filing alongside "will he be smart enough to pick Edwards for Veep?". There are a lot of nail-biting weeks between now and November.
Vietnam Redux
Here's my Battlefield Vietnam review. At the end I had "all that's missing is the smell of napalm", but my editor cut it.
Y O U R T I M E / T E C H N O L O G Y
The Horrors Of An Electronic Vietnam
By CHRIS TAYLOR
PC war-game makers have tended to avoid the swampy waters of America's painfully controversial conflict. But Battlefield Vietnam (Electronic Arts; $39.95) wades right in with the most harrowing historical multiplayer game yet created. Playing it feels like wandering onto the set of a chaotic Vietnam movie. The ambiance is pitch-perfect; EA licensed original period antiwar hits like Fortunate Son so the tunes could blare ironically across the jungle. As in its predecessor, Battlefield 1942, players compete with strangers over the Internet on an intricate 3-D map (representing the Ho Chi Minh Trail, say, or the city of Hue). Your aim is to capture as many flags and annihilate as many opponents as possible. But in this game, jungle-shrouded snipers are among the features that heighten the anxiety level. The game's best moment comes when you launch a chopper attack to the strains of Ride of the Valkyries — a tip of the hat, of course, to Apocalypse Now.
Forget Norway
Sooner or later we all ponder that eternal question, "where do you find lions?" The answer, of course: Only in Kenya. Warning: in case you haven't come across it already, this is an insidious Flash animation whose haunting tune will inhabit your head for a minimum of three weeks. However, it is now the top Google result for "lions Kenya." The question is, when is the Kenya tourism board going to officially endorse it? And how will the Norwegians respond?
Daily Blah for... Sunday, March 21, 2004
I Am Worried About Elvis Mitchell
The New York Times' movie critic is usually a paragon of wisdom about what gives films heart and soul, and yet he gives "Eternal Sunshine" an unusually harsh going-over akin to mugging its main characters in a back alley. He poo-poos the idea of our hero walking alone on Valentine's Day as a "self-consciously poignant conceit," praises Dr. Mierzewak -- the bad guy, people -- as "the only functioning grown-up in the picture," and faults Kaufman for not providing a "social context" for characters accepting Mierzewak's memory erasure program. Which is a little like slamming C.S. Lewis for sending children off into Narnia without providing a "social context" for why they would want to walk into a wardrobe in the first place.
Of course many of us would want to erase our most painful memories if we could; it's in our nature, and it's in the nature of science fiction to provide solutions to our problems that have unintended consequences. Indeed, being careful what you wish for is the message of the Pope poem from which the film's title is taken. The brief shot of a woman in Mierzewak's waiting room, sobbing inconsolably with a box of parephenalia from a deceased dog, should be "social context" enough. But Mitchell, it seems, finds even the idea of removing one's memories of love too painful to contemplate. Perhaps that's why he calls it "the film equivalent of a Philip K Dick Hallmark card." Methinks the critic doth protest too much.
Here's the most telling line at the end of his review: "What becomes of the broken-hearted, after the conversation has dimmed, is that they get over it." This is an "adult realization," he insists with all the converted zeal of a man who claims to have gotten over a painful break-up. But it sounds like Mitchell is actually having a hard time finding closure. Why else would he name so many REM songs? Do yourself a favor, Elvis: put "Losing My Religion" on constant repeat, have a good cry, and try seeing this movie again in softer focus.
Eternally Memorable
Run, don't walk to your multiplex if you haven't yet seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Don't bother reading the rest of this review -- there could be a showing starting within minutes, and I'm just going to gush about it anyway. And you wouldn't want to have it overhyped, would you? Not that such a thing is possible with a film like this, a film that restores your faith in ... whoops, there I go. I'm serious -- stop reading, get running. I'll still be here when you get back, and then we can gush about it together.
[Pause for two hours]
You're back. Wasn't it amazing? Isn't Charlie Kaufman a genius? Aren't you astounded that the guy who wrote Being John Malkovich and Adaptation can keep playing this game of one-upmanship with himself? He keeps banging away at his favorite tropes -- the loser who thinks too much for his own good, the self-doubting internal monologue, the rich landscape of memories and dreams -- and yet always manages to come up with something breathtakingly fresh. A sure sign of this is the way his scripts have become like rehabilitation centers for actors who had gone way too Hollywood, viz. Nicholas Cage in Adaptation, Jim Carrey here. And I don't think anyone who's ever had a serious relationship can fail to have their heart reduced to a warm puddle of Jello by the charmingly imperfect Jim Carrey-Kate Winslet romance. (Now there's a pairing I never imagined myself praising.)
Here's how you know he loves her. For 90% of the movie, she exists purely inside his head. And yet even as a memory, she beats him over the head with the spotty truth of her reality. "I'm not just a concept," she warns him; it was at this point that I realized the movie was essentially a classic dialogue between the head and the heart, told in the least sentimental manner possible. In fact, many moments were more unnerving -- and certainly more likely to give me nightmares -- than the scariest horror movie. Forget 28 Days Later; we've all seen zombies on screen before. But who has ever seen a beloved face so graphically erased from memory, a childhood home eradicated, a bookstore (especially terrifying for bibliophiles like me) slowly deleted? No wonder the shadow of Alzheimer's scares the bejesus out of us. We can see ourselves racing through our own brains at the end of our days, struggling to hold on to our life's love, reminding ourselves over and over that they were, they are, more than just a concept.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, March 20, 2004
Bottom of the Class
The official Bush-Cheney website misspells "there" for "their." Tut tut. That's not even a C-student mistake. That's grade school. Looks like a few people in the campaign -- Dowd and his editors, assuming that with $106 million the Bush campaign can afford one or two professional web editors -- got a little left behind. They're not going to get their education vote there.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, March 18, 2004
Virtual Veteran
Sorry, I got lost for a day or so there. Lost in Vietnam. Battlefield Vietnam, to be precise. I do like it when playing computer games coincides with my job, but this one went beyond mere reporting. It also crossed the line from goofing off and has entered the wide open plains of obsession. Why, you may ask, would a self-avowed peacenik like me want to spend his nights -- and much of his early mornings -- blasting away at strangers on the Internet? What's so much fun about taking part in a morally dubious reconstruction of a morally dubious war?
To which I can only reply: I dunno, it just is. The environment is a big factor, I think. EA did a fantastic job making this particular sandbox. It's been fun to watch the Viet Cong players learning to adapt to the jungle over the first couple of days of the game's release; camping in the high ground so they can pick off G.I.s one by one. The irony of the ambient sound -- which includes songs like War (What is it Good For?) blasting from passing American tanks -- definitely appeals. I'm a firm believer in stimulating interest in history by simulating it as close as possible.
Indeed, there are plenty of positive things to say about virtual violence. The killer instincts of testosterone-ridden youth get sated in a safe way. When all gang warfare is conducted by computer, there's less room for the real thing. The closer you get to the reality of battle, the less likely you are to want war. Because in real life, there's no respawning. Perhaps if the neocons in the Pentagon had spent a little time playing this, we wouldn't be stuck in another lethal quagmire right now.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Name Calling
The administration ought to be very careful where it treads on this foreign leaders supporting Kerry story. I've no idea why they're pushing him to name them. Any idiot who has glanced at the international news pages over the last four years knows he probably isn't making it up. Said idiot also knows you don't reveal your sources on such sensitive matters. And the more they bring it up, the more Kerry gets to lambaste the Bushies for their utterly dismal diplomacy. At any moment he could strike back with "I don't need to name names. If you want evidence, ask the Spanish electorate," or "I'll 'fess up the moment the White House tells us who leaked the name of Valerie Plame," or "knowing this Administration, the offending countries would probably be invaded." Which brings up my major concern: Why isn't Kerry talking as tough as this? He needs to choose one devastating comeback, and fast.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, March 14, 2004
Going Dutch
For those of you who might be wondering, the translation of the comment at the end of the last blog -- from some bloke in Brazil -- is "Oi? This is very legal here." Which is strange, because I'd never heard of gay marriage being legal in Brazil. As far as I knew, the Netherlands was the only country in the world with legalized same-sex marriage. And according to this UPI story, it hasn't exactly caused a civilization-destroying flood of weddings. "there are about 50,000 same-sex couples in the Netherlands, of whom less than 10 percent have married [since the April 2001 legalization]," says the Dutch government.
I wonder what would happen if you mapped that statistic on to certain other Western countries? What paltry potential number of weddings would make them consider modifying their Constitution, their sacred founding document?
Do the math: The population of the Netherlands is around 16 million. The population of the US is currently estimated at 292,799,516 human souls (or at least it was at 11:07pm Pacific time Sunday night, according to this amusingly precise population clock from the US Census Bureau; the same page tells us the country is sucking in an international migrant every 24 seconds, which makes me feel like a very small part of a very large historical force). But let's make the sum easier and round it up to 293 million. What's 200,484 people between friends? So the US is larger than the Netherlands by a factor of about 18. Assuming American gays pair off with the same frequency as the Dutch (a huge overestimate, given the amount of closets in certain parts of this country) we're talking about a maximum base of 900,000 couples. And assuming that they want to marry as much as the Dutch, that means 9,000 gay couples would have been married over the last three years. Ah, you might say, but San Francisco managed to marry 3,500 couples in the space of a month. Yes, but that tapped into a vast groundswell of committed unions, most of whom were married in their minds already and live in the world capital of gay culture.
Still, it's a fair point, so let's double the estimate. Hell, let's triple it. Let's say Wedstock becomes this vast sea of never-ending happily-ever-afters starring utterly uncloseted gays sprinting two by two down to their nearest City Hall in a fantasy America with uniformly Utopian levels of tolerance in every state. We're still only talking about 27,000 weddings over three years. Or 9,000 a year. There are two and a half million heterosexual marriages in the US every year. To put it in language the average Joe in a sports bar can understand, The Hets would outscore The Homos by at least 277 to 1.
So all those rabid Hets fans would get all the assurance they seem to need: that their way of life is more popular, more sanctified, immune to attack, however they want to frame it. All we're asking, the more tolerant among us, is that the other team get to play the game. Ten straight Americans get married every minute of the year, if you average it out. Don't you think we have space for one non-standard marital union every hour? Or to put it another way, one gay wedding for every 150 legal migrants?
Ahem. I seem to have been carried away by that beguiling muse, comparative statistics. What was I going to say? Ah yes, Brazil. That same UPI story confirms that gay marriage is still illegal there, which means my Rio correspondent must either be confused about his country's laws or have a shaky understanding of what I was writing about. President da Silva is apparently sympathetic to gay causes; but let's face it, he's no Gavin Newsom. The tolerance of Sao Paulo notwithstanding, we are talking about a country where 132 people get killed every year just for being gay. That's like a Madrid train bombing once a year. Funny how Washington never declares a War on Hate, isn't it? Oi indeed.
Daily Blah for... Friday, March 12, 2004
Wedstock Deadlock
It's a sad day for San Francisco. Last night the state supreme court swooped in and ended same-sex marriages, pending a hearing on the matter. No justification was offered for this move by the majority Republican court; no harm was demonstrated. And yet there was harm in stopping what has come to be known as "Wedstock," the tide of unexpected bliss that has engulfed City Hall for a month. Just ask the couple that flew in from Phoenix for a marriage appointment that turned out to be an hour after the court ruled. Just look at the shattered dreams and crushed hopes of many years.
There will, one day, be legal gay marriage in America. It's an historical inevitability. As the New Yorker artfully pointed out this week, there is a generational divide on the matter. Poll after poll shows the under-30's get it. One day they will be the generation in power, and we will wonder what all the fuss was about. But you know what? I'm tired of waiting for that day. I've seen Wedstock first-hand, and I'm sick of the blinkered stupidity that prevents that kind of joy from being found everywhere.
So all snarkiness aside, I want to address opponents of gay marriage. I don't know how many of them are among my readers, but if I can reach just one -- if you can reach just one -- it's worth a little bit of pedestrian logic. Okay, opponents, exactly what is your objection?
1) You believe homosexuality is a sin against God.
If so, go back and read the Bible. I respect beliefs based on a religious text, but this one is not. Jesus says absolutely nothing about homosexual love, only love as a whole (and you'd think he would have specified if certain types of love were "forbidden."). Indeed, your belief is sanctioned by only one verse in the Old Testament: Leviticus 18:22. And a lot of things are sanctioned by the Old Testament, including slavery, animal sacrifice, polygamy, kosher food rules and execution as a punishment for working on the Sabbath. You cannot honestly and fairly believe in the literal truth of every word in the Old Testament unless you believe in all of these practices. Even if you did, most Christians believe that Christ represented a break with the rules of Leviticus. That's how they eat bacon cheeseburgers guilt-free.
2) You believe homosexuality is "unnatural."
I think what you really mean to say is "icky." Because you can't be talking about nature. Nature is utterly, flamboyantly, unrepentantly gay. Don't believe me? Check out Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl, the definitive work on this topic. You'll find it replete with photos and case studies. Gay couples are not only fully accepted in the animal kingdom, they're also good at raising kids. Somewhere in our evolution, it seems, we lost a little tolerance for diversity. Probably right around the same time we started making weapons.
3) You believe in preserving the "sanctity of marriage."
Then let's have a Constitutional amendment to ban drive-thru marriage chapels. Let's ban adultery. Let's ban divorce. But marriage has always been between a man and a woman, you say? Then you know little about early Church history. Check out Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe for a primer. Admittedly, marriage has been exclusively for men and women in recent centuries. But if wedlock traditions never changed, we'd all be demanding dowries for our daughters and prearranging marriages for our 12-year-olds. Have some flexibility, and you'll see that extending the institution of marriage to all committed partners is actually a good way to help preserve it.
4) You believe in "separate but equal" civil unions.
And how about installing separate water fountains, bathrooms and bus seats while you're at it? We don't want to go through another painful century of separate but equal. History has shown it works just about as well as Prohibition. And if a civil union is to have the same rights as a marriage -- well, why not call a spade a spade? Why not give gay couples their semantic due? Where do you get off treading on their happiness by denying them the M-word?
Everybody Hates Chris ...
... is the title of a new autobiographical pilot show Chris Rock just sold to Fox.
I like Rock, but I have to say, I really, really hope this one doesn't get picked up.
Nice going, namesake.
Why couldn't I have been called Raymond?
Religious Bigotry is Alive and Well ...
"What Can 30 million evangelicals do for America? Anything we want."
-- slogan on the program for the National Association of Evangelicals' annual conference, at which the keynote address was given yesterday by President Bush.
Anyone else hear the faint sound of jackboots?
Daily Blah for... Thursday, March 11, 2004
Learning to Love the L-words
Good on John Kerry for refusing to take back his characterization of Republicans as "crooked" and "lying." For far too long, mainstream Democrats have shied away from harsh words while their opponents get away with the most outrageous nonsense. What else is breaking practically all your campaign pledges but lying? What would you call the Texas gerrymandering or revealing Veronica Plame's name if they ain't crooked? Oh, and I understand there might be one or two doubts about the veracity of certain weapons intelligence attributed to a certain Middle-Eastern country we happened to invade recently.
 If Kerry can appropriate some of the Dean anger, all well and good. He's got to tell it like he sees it. Tradition has it that you shore up your base during the primaries and then rush to the center for the general election. But what is the center? Does it even exist? I remember sitting in the dining room of Wes and Joan Blades, founders of MoveOn.org, as Wes drew me a diagram of the American political spectrum according to MoveOn. It was shaped like an "M"; two big bell curves, the first basically progressive, the second basically conservative. You can try and stand in the middle and appeal to both sides, but it makes you look two-faced -- and the Republicans get to attack you, as they are already attacking Kerry, for "flip-flopping". No, the center cannot hold.
The current groundswell of outrage on the left has the potential to be as powerful as the "angry white male" earthquake of 1994. Kerry can ride that as long as he isn't afraid of using the L words: liberal for himself, liar for the incumbent. Liberal is a fine label with a noble tradition, and people respect you if you bear it proudly. And if the race boils down to the question of whether or not Bush has lied to America, Kerry has ample evidence. I don't think there's a court in the country that could convict him of slander.
Pop Will Eat Itself
George Michael announces his plan to 'retire' from the regular music industry, and make all future releases available for free via the Internet. Well, of course, he can afford to. He'll still have royalties from old album sales trickling in, and can just sell out the nearest amphitheater for the night any time he's feeling short on cash. What will be interesting to see is if this starts a trend among fortysomething pop stars, the ones who've already made it and can afford to take a stand against their paymasters -- like the Artist Formerly Known As, and the Boss. It's like the unstoppable spread of gay marriage; one conscientious decision can start a flood.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Nesting Time
We've had a couple of blissfully beautiful days that remind me why I live in San Francisco. The rains have finally stopped, the sky is pastel blue, and the temperature needle hovers around 70 degrees in the shade with just the gentlest of breezes. I've moved my office out to the back deck – thank God for Wi-fi and 5.8 Ghz cordless phones! Every so often I look up from my laptop and notice a couple of bluebirds shamelessly swiping twigs from my neighbor's roof. It used to be just the one bluebird, but evidently his partner decided he wasn't getting the right kind of twigs. "I can't build a nest with that!" I picture her saying. "Here, I'll come with you. Can't trust you to do anything on your own, can I?"
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Supreme "Apology"
It's nice to know even Chief Justices aren't immune to titilating sensationalism. Not content with introducing the Gilbert and Sullivan-themed robe to judicial history, that darling of political theater William Rehnquist has now written a book on the disputed presidential election [audience leans forward expectantly] of 1876. In which, interestingly enough, a Republican lost the national vote but won in judicial committee.
Sound familiar? Of course it does, that's the whole idea. Rehnquist has acted all indignant whenever his interviewers -- who are few and far between, even when he's just written a pot-boiler -- have suggested this book has any link to Bush vs. Gore. To hear him tell it, the book was something he tossed off during summer recess when he wasn't sipping mint juleps on the veranda. But he could have written about anything -- bridge, architecture, duck-hunting -- and had it published. Funny that he should have focused on a controversial election, isn't it? Eric Foner, the Columbia professor whose name was whispered in hushed tones back when I was a history student, called the book an elaborate if veiled apologia for what happened in 2000.
Did the soon-to-be 80-year-old Rehnquist feel the need to justify foisting Bush upon this world before he himself shuffles off it? Or did he just want to make us think that's what he's thinking in order to sell more books? Either way, why do I have this image stuck in my head of him playing the Salieri role in Amadeus? In a jaunty black-and-gold costume, of course.
Daily Blah for... Monday, March 08, 2004
The Mayor and the Model
In a mostly fawning profile in today's Chronicle, Kimberley Guilfoyle Newsom, first lady of San Francisco, finally addresses the question of why she's 3,000 miles away from her husband. Guilfoyle Newsom is, as every profile will tell you, a former lingerie model and assistant District Attorney who now appears in the Greta Van Susteren role on CNN and Court TV. She packed her bags for this New York-based cable gig practically the moment her husband of three years was elected mayor, which raised eyebrows and set tongues wagging across the city. Was their marriage on the rocks? Was she, a registered Republican, upset at his support for same-sex weddings? Or could she simply not stand to be around his hair gel much longer?
Now, belatedly, this self-described prima donna tries to put the questions to rest. "To the people who question our marriage, I want to ask: how is your marriage doing? Mine is fine," she says. Hubby is "kicking butt and I'm so proud of him. If I were there, he'd just be feeling guilty all the time that we never get to sit down for a meal." Pardon me? And that's a reason to work on the other side of the continent? To assuage your husband's supposed guilt over missing meals together? In a separate story, the Mayor reveals she was supposed to come back for Valentine's Day to help him move out of their Pacific Heights mansion, but didn't. Guilfoyle Newsom artfully deflects the question of their separation by ranting about sexism: "Why is it weird for the woman to be the bicoastal one? Men do it all the time." Remember, she's a prosecutor.
Still, there's little evidence for the rumor mill to convict on. Quite the opposite: we learn Newsom's pet names for his size four lingerie model wife are Swee'pea, Kimborlaree and Kimbo. "What a goof," says a misty-eyed Guilfoyle Newsom, chomping on buffalo wings in her New York apartment. But her answer on the hair gel question is a little weird: "His hair is gelled because it's so heavy and floppy and goes in his face and he doesn't know how to deal with it. He has no idea he's a handsome, good-looking guy! He's always running around with torn pockets and dirty shoes."
Huh? Are we talking about the same Gavin Newsom? Probably the most dapper-looking pretty boy in the city? He dated Jewel and he has no idea he's a good-looking guy? I've never seen a speck of dirt on his shoes. Evidently Guilfoyle Newsom, who appears to spend at least a couple of hours each day having her hair blow-dried for TV appearances, has standards of sartorial elegance far above the ordinary human. Imagine it: "You lost one stitch on the inside pocket of this Armani jacket, Gavin. Lose another and I'm moving to New York!" Call it Model Eye for the Mayor Guy.
Daily Blah for... Friday, March 05, 2004
Martha, Sue and Ken too
Heads will talk incessantly and industrial-sized containers of ink are about to be spilled over this story. But all of it boils down to a single cliché: it's a topsy-turvy world. I mean, who's going to offer tips on covering individual snow peas with mashed-potato florets now? Ken Lay? I like the idea: "Lay's Living." Each month Ken tells you how to decorate your apartment with his tasteless antiques and keep your ass out of prison. I see a huge market.
In any case, there's a far more pressing legal conundrum for 22.7 million of us: Is Sue going to sue Hatch for $10 million like she said? Damned if I can find the answer anywhere.
God Hates Shrimp
It's true. In fact, most forms of seafood are unclean in His sight. So what are you sitting there for? Forget gay marriage, protest shrimp eating! [Actual Bible verses supplied; all you have to do is scrawl them along with a simplistic theological message in crayon on a piece of card and go stand outside Red Lobster looking hateful!]
Thanks, Wonkette!
Daily Blah for... Thursday, March 04, 2004
Alpha Male Ad
I was reading Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising last night, which is a compelling argument for the existence of various psychological circuits imprinted upon our subconscious brains: the bio-survival circuit, the territorial circuit, the semantic circuit, and so on. All very familiar to Freudians and Jungians, but Wilson runs with the idea like an intellectual sprinter. Politics, he says, is a game of domination by and over the vast majority of us who are strongly hard-wired to see reality as a territorial, hierarchical, patriotic affair:
Why did Adlai Stevenson lose to Eisenhower, George McGovern to Nixon? Stevenson, McGovern and other darlings of the intelligentsia were speaking to the third [semantic] circuit, which is not very highly developed in most domesticated primates just yet. Eisenhower in his fatherly way and Nixon in his bullying Big Brother way knew just how to push the right second circuit emotional-territorial buttons to get a mob of primates to follow them. They were genetically-programmed alpha males, in ethological terms.
So this was uppermost in my mind this morning, when I read about Bush's first big TV ad of the campaign. It features images from 9/11 merging with pictures of children. The voice-over drones inanely about "freedom, faith, families and sacrifice." From a semantic perspective, it's a mess. The New York Times dissected the ad under its usual headings, and under "accuracy", it wrote – and it was the first time I've ever seen this – "this ad makes no verifiable claims." From a media perspective, it's a liability – drawing fire from the firefighters and families of 9/11 victims, who are outraged that Bush would wrap himself in those pictures so shamelessly.
It would take an idiot not to predict such a reaction, and I have no doubt Karl Rove expected it. The ad went out regardless because of its supposed psychological impact on the masses who rarely pay close attention to the news. We got hurt, it says, and Bush protected us. He's the alpha male of this tribe. You could hardly make a more base appeal to the emotional-territorial circuit if you tried.
But even if we look at the ad as pure subconscious emotional propaganda, does it work? I don't feel it does. This is 3/4/04, not 9/11/01. The shock of the attacks has faded, and you can't get it back for 30 seconds of wishing. Even for the masses who don't pay attention to the news, Bush has a cloud of unresolved emotional questions hanging over him. Is he really such a safe pair of hands? Were his war priorities skewed the wrong way? Is he ruled by neocons? Is the Constitution under attack? What about our jobs disappearing overseas?
True alpha males don't simply ignore the questions. Then they appear aloof, out of touch (as Bush is, given the fact that he only gets news from his advisers). If they simply harp on the same theme they've been singing for two and a half years, they begin to look desperate. The second-circuit subconscious starts to cast around for other larger-than-life alpha males. A tall, rich war hero would fit the territorial bill very nicely – just as long as he engages our emotions and not just our semantic circuits.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, March 03, 2004
The Kerry Cough
Dinner last night with Joe Klein and a few hundred assorted guests. Klein coughing constantly and drinking brandy for his throat. Says he caught it from covering Kerry; apparently everyone in the victorious Democratic campaign has this nasty little cough. Wonder if this is a sign of favor from the gods: after all, everyone remembers Clinton going hoarse in New Hampshire in ’92. If you really want the White House, it’s good to suffer a little along the way. Especially when you’re a Boston Brahmin.
That's Rich
News from the So Glad You Noticed Dept.: Frank Rich quoted me in his column in last Sunday’s New York Times. Or rather, he quoted my quote of Gavin Newsom channeling a Hollywood mogul: “Put a human face on it. Let’s not talk about it in theory. Give me a story. Give me lives.” Others may wonder why he didn’t just get a quote of his own. I, however, am happy to share, and will take it as a compliment.
In fact, I like to picture Mr. Rich sitting at his big New York desk, probably oak, possibly mahogany. The latest issue of Time sits on a lectern, open to my article, and Mr. Rich is staring at an immaculately polished old-style rotary phone. “You know,” he thinks to himself, “I could pick up this phone, and within five minutes I would be interviewing Gavin Newsom, for I am Frank Rich, super columnist. But it would be like trying to repaint a Picasso. This, right here, is the perfect quote. In its Hemmingway-esque brevity, repetition and imperfect grammar, it is like a beautifully flawed jewel. There is only one like it in the world. What kind of charlatan would not pay homage?” With that, he picks up his goose quill, unrolls a papyrus scroll and gets to work.
What I’m absolutely positive about is that it had nothing to do with him being on deadline, doing a Google News search for “gay marriage San Francisco”, and cutting and pasting the first quote he could find from a half-way reputable publication.
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