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Table of Contents
five-ring circus
Explainer's Olympics Roundup
five-ring circus
ad report card
You Did Not Shoot Rainbows Out of Your Butt. Five-Tenths Deduction.
Ads We Hate
five-ring circus
Advanced Search
The 2008 Olympics
architecture
five-ring circus
Instant House
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
assessment
five-ring circus
McCain's BFF
Dispatches From Beijing
books
five-ring circus
What's Wrong With Environmental Alarmism
The Silver Lining
bushisms
five-ring circus
Bushism of the Day
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
chatterbox
five-ring circus
Mary Matalin, Publisher
"Why Not Just Use Beavers?"
culture gabfest
five-ring circus
The Culture Gabfest, Twilight of the Idols Edition
Down With the Perfect 10!
dear prudence
five-ring circus
Fertile Family Secret
The Sap-o-Meter Widget
did you see this?
five-ring circus
Policeman's Poor Showing
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
dispatches
five-ring circus
Travels in the Former Soviet Union
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
dispatches
foreigners
A Terror Tour of Israel
Al-Qaida at 20
dispatches
foreigners
Notes on Fashion Week
The Dissident Within
dispatches
gearbox
Dispatches From Fashion Week
Shrimp My Ride
election scorecard
green room
Election Scorecard
Paparazzi in the Woods
explainer
hot document
Why Are Georgia and Georgia Both Named Georgia?
How To Picket Tropic Thunder
explainer
human guinea pig
The Afterlife for Scientologists
Spandex Fantasy
explainer
human nature
Why Do Fencers Shriek?
Olympic Inflation
family
human nature
No One Likes a Cheater
Ghosts in the Machine
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
1/140
jurisprudence
the chat room
C.S.Oy
What's So Funny?
map the candidates
the green lantern
He's Not Skiing
What's the Deal With Offshore Drilling?
medical examiner
the has-been
Organ Failure
Bush Owes to China
medical examiner
the undercover economist
Alternative Universe
The Wisdom of Crowds?
movies
today's business press
There's Something About Robert Downey Jr.
Inflation Nation
poem
today's business press
"A Bristle of Wings in the Ivy"
Greenspan Bites Back
politics
today's business press
82 Days and Counting
Banky Panky
politics
today's business press
The Lives of Barack Obama
Andrew Cuomo, Market Savior
press box
today's business press
Conventional Nonsense
China Beats the United States
reading list
today's papers
To Your Health
The Caucasus Bog
shopping
today's papers
Easy on the Eyes
Midnight Plane to Georgia
slate v
today's papers
Poor Kobe's Olympic Dream
Message Received
slate v
today's papers
Damned Spot: Obama Is Rubber, McCain Is Glue
Russian Roulette
slate v
war stories
Why Blackface?
Lonely Night in Georgia
slate v
well-traveled
Dear Prudence: My BFF Won't Let Me Date!
Eco-Touring in Honduras
technology
well-traveled
An Army of Ones and Zeroes
Baseball, Dominican-Style
technology
well-traveled
The Google Black Hole
The Mecca of the Mouse
technology
xx factor xxtra
The Death of Planned Obsolescence
Unnecessarily Evil
the browser
Going Dark
the chat room
After the Affair
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
ad report card
Ads We Hate
2/140
The most annoying commercials in the universe.
By Seth Stevenson
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 6:50 AM ET
The slogan on Greyhound's most recent ad campaign: "There's a
reason you've never heard of 'bus rage.' " A clever line, extolling
the alleged laid-back nature of bus travel. Two problems. 1) I
myself have experienced "bus rage"—every single time I've
ridden a bus. 2) The ads went up just in time for the occurrence
of what must be the absolute worst case of bus rage in history—
an incident in Canada in which a Greyhound passenger beheaded
his seatmate with a knife and then began "hacking off pieces of
the victim's body and eating them." If you hadn't heard of bus
rage before, you have now!
Which brings us to the topic at hand: another edition of the "Ads
We Hate" mailbag. Yes, it's Ad Report Card readers' chance to
sound off on commercials they love to detest. Commercials so
bad, they deserve to be murdered and eaten.
I'll get things started with one of my own recent unfaves: the
Lincoln Financial Group spots in which people's older, future
selves travel back in time to offer guidance. In one, a man is
sitting on a plane preparing for takeoff when suddenly his
wrinkly future self takes the adjacent seat, looks over, and
commends his younger self for saving money by flying coach.
After some anodyne advice about the importance of financial
planning, the future dude stands up to leave. "Where are you
going?" the younger man asks his elder self. "Back to first class;
we can afford it now," smiles the older him.
So many problems here. First, the passenger manifest would
show two people with the same Social Security number boarding
the flight. TSA red flag! But more important: The plane would
explode the instant the old man sat down. We all know that
meeting a past/future incarnation of ourselves will cause a
violent rip in the space-time continuum. And finally: Screw you,
future me! You think you're better than present me? It's crowded
back here, and there're babies crying! So cough up the first-class
ticket, gramps, or I buy a yacht and drain your nascent
retirement accounts. Yup, I'll be paying the penalty for early
withdrawal, too. We'll see who's smug then!
But wait, there's an even worse Lincoln Financial spot: A
woman is waiting in a hospital hallway, her husband apparently
in grave danger, when she meets her future self. "How's he
doing?" asks the supernatural visitor, and the woman replies that
she doesn't know. The future her then launches into an earnest
lecture about the importance of good investing. ("We have a plan
to help grow and protect our money throughout our life.") Only
at the very end of this speech does she casually tack on the
information that, oh, by the way, the husband will be fine. So if
you knew he'd be fine, why'd you ask? And how dare you make
that poor woman sit through a pitch for a brokerage firm before
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
revealing the fate of her husband. Yeesh, future lady. Way to
bury the lede.
Ah, it feels good to get that off my chest. Now let's pass the hate
bong around to my readers. Take a nice big hit and then let it all
out:
The most frustrating ad I've seen in awhile is the one from Chase
touting the fact that users can check their credit card
information via text message—while shopping for a 70" HDTV
with the Queen song that goes "I want it all, and I want it now!"
blaring in the background. It seems irresponsible to suggest that
you ought to be out spending thousands on a TV if you don't
even know about how much debt you're carrying around. The ad
must be effective, since it's still on the air, but I saw it again
recently and noticed that the dialogue has changed. The original
starts off with the wife/girlfriend saying to the man, "You're
right, we need a new TV." In the current version, she has a
second line, delivered from off-screen: "Just don't go
overboard." I confirmed this today while watching a two-monthold TV recording that contained the original commercial.
—Brian M.
Lots of mail about this Chase spot. Many readers noticed the
added line, and I did, too. It seems the "I want it all" ethos may
have felt spot-on at the time of the ad's conception but didn't
quite fit the national mood as the economy began to implode.
Perhaps Chase can keep tweaking the spot as conditions change
on the ground. Fall 2008: "You're right, we need a new TV. The
big one you bought a few months ago was repossessed." Spring
2009: "You're right, we need a new TV. The littler one you got
last fall was stolen by a gang of unemployed financial services
executives—they've been looting the neighborhood for food and
valuables." Winter 2010: "You're right, we need a new TV. We
can watch it from our underground bunker while hiding from
marauding animals and zombies."
I especially enjoyed your article about inappropriate musical
choices in television commercials. On that note, I wonder if
you've seen this spot for Wishbone salad dressing, which uses
the song "Bump" by Spank Rock. Sure, they didn't use any of the
lyrics, but I have to wonder why they'd create an association
between "delicious vinaigrette dressings" and one of the filthiest
songs I've ever heard.
—Noreen T.
Well, the ad does say they're changing "everything" about salad
dressing. I'd argue that "Bump" is the perfect soundtrack to
accompany that mission. Why shouldn't a vegetable vinaigrette
conjure sentiments like "You get it from behind, in just Chanel
pumps"? For their next ad, I suggest they use "Toss My Salad,"
by underpublicized genius Filthy Sex Toy. (Given Filthy Sex
Toy's graphic lyrics, I must sternly warn you that what you will
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see should you click on that link is in no way safe for work. And
yet I must also stress that fabulous entertainment awaits
beyond.)
ad truly was. They should make a new ad, but this time the
husband can berate his wife for being a mindless spendthrift. I
wonder if Suzanne is helping to pay the mortgage.
Don't know if you've caught the ad with the tennis game run
amok from the Ladders, but it's truly awful. There's a wellgroomed, patrician-looking fellow trying to play tennis when a
pack of undesirables invades the court. They're sloppy and
crude. Some are clearly minorities and, worse than that, many of
them are chubby. Unfortunately, they changed the last line of the
ad from "the premium job site with only 100k-plus jobs and only
100k-plus people" to "only 100k-plus jobs and only 100k-plus
job-seekers." It was perfect when they didn't mince words about
the site's clear feeling that some folks are just better than the
unwashed masses and shouldn't be asked to travel the same
crowded byways, even on the Internet.
—Sean F.
—Michael M.
This ad for an online, high-end jobs listing site features another
re-edited voice-over. Before the change, the ad was off-thecharts offensive. After the change, it's still pretty outrageous.
They should have at least made the protagonist a woman or
Asian or something. As it is, the ad seems to boast that the
Ladders offers its services only to fit, attractive, well-bred white
men. And don't get me started on the notion that some of us are
inherently "100k-plus people." What happens when we quit our
law firm jobs to volunteer in a soup kitchen? Do we become
zero-k people? Or is the 100k-plus designation written into our
superior DNA?
What's up with those incredibly crappy Nintendo DS ads? (You
know, the ones with random celebrities making grunting noises
while they play a game—long shots with no dialogue, or action,
or sense.)
—Kareem E.
I'm a huge fan of the DS. You haven't lived until you've played
Tamagotchi Corner Shop. But I agree: The ads are bizarre.
Generally, an endorsement from a popular young celebrity is
supposed to make the product on offer seem cool. This campaign
somehow manages to turn the tables, making celebrity itself look
pathetic and solitary. Consider the Liv Tyler spot, which shows
her doing Brain Age quizzes alone in her room. Wow,
glamorous! I wish I could be just like Liv Tyler, sitting around
by myself ... doing math ... (Also, she's just a terrible actress
here—scrunching her lips, knitting her brow, and emitting
strange, glottal warblings. Though, come to think of it, that's a
fair description of her performance in Jersey Girl.)
Given the complete meltdown of the real-estate market caused
by buyers purchasing homes they could not afford, I think it
would be great to revisit how horrible and nasty this Century 21
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
This ad may turn out to be a lasting artifact of the housing
bubble, appearing as an illustrative clip in documentaries
decades from now. I hated the spot—which features a wife
bullying her husband into buying a house—when it came out in
2006. At this point, I mostly just find it comical. (Though I'd
note that I'm a renter.) I imagine the hectoring wife and her
appropriately cautious husband are feeling the pinch right about
now as their rate adjusts. Meanwhile Suzanne, their enabling
Realtor, is going to night school in pursuit of a new career.
I remembered you comparing "Vince wit Shamwow" to Billy
Mays, and thought you might enjoy seeing Mays' new spiel,
selling health insurance.
—Andrew L.
This ad is kind of amazing. Watch Billy Mays' hand gestures—
they never stop! Hands go out, palms facing each other. Hands
come back in, fists balled. Hands go back out, index fingers
extended. It's either OCD or some sort of primitive sign
language. I think it's happening because he has no tangible
product to demonstrate. They should have let him use a sheaf of
insurance documentation to wipe up spills with. Or maybe a
wallet card for dabbing on grout?
OK, I suppose that's enough hate for now. But you can always
express your rage—or adoration, or puzzlement—via e-mail to
adreportcard@slate.com. I'll be taking a short break from the
column (my future self advised me to take a vacation), but my
able replacements will field all your rants and queries.
Advanced Search
Friday, October 19, 2001, at 6:39 PM ET
architecture
Instant House
Would you buy a home that was made in a factory?
By Witold Rybczynski
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
Click here to read a slide-show essay about "Home Delivery,"
4/140
a new exhibition of prefabricated housing at the Museum of
Modern Art.
assessment
McCain's BFF
Lindsey Graham may be more valuable as McCain's running buddy than as his
running mate.
By Melinda Henneberger
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 12:46 PM ET
John McCain and South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey
Graham have logged so many miles together, in nearly a decade
of buddy-movie-style campaign road trips, that the conservative
blogs call Graham "McCain's Mini Me." (And "Grahamnesty,"
in a swipe at McCain's immigration plan, and—because seventh
grade is forever—"Senator Dramatic Chipmunk." ) Their policy
differences are imperceptible, and when they switch positions,
they tend to do that in tandem also, as when they simultaneously
dropped their opposition to offshore drilling. On a personal
level, they share a sense of humor based on insult—think George
W. Bush, only funny—an interest in military history, and a
history in the military.
Yet in other ways, Graham is not only an unexpected BFF for
McCain but his opposite, as fluent in the emotional realm as the
presidential candidate is flummoxed. Graham has a facility with
language and a dexterity in expressing feelings that the older
man simply lacks. Which is why, as McCain's Mouth and
running buddy, Graham is as important to the presumptive
nominee as any official running mate.
Their bond dates to the 2000 presidential campaign, when
Graham chose McCain over Bush—one asked for his support,
the other didn't—then jumped on the bus with him and basically
never got off. After McCain lost the nomination, he and Graham
kept right on campaigning for Republican congressional
candidates all over the country. During one of those trips, which
I went along on, Graham was leafing through the Victoria's
Secret catalog he'd brought with him, and McCain was mocking
him for leafing through the Victoria's Secret catalog he'd brought
with him. After Graham stopped looking at girls in push-up bras,
he raised the topic of abortion with me, out of nowhere, and
started an incredibly serious philosophical discussion about
ensoulment and moral gray areas—easily the most earnest and
gut-level conversation I've ever had with an elected official. It
went on for a while and got so deep I had kind of forgotten
McCain was sitting across from us until the plane started to land,
at which point I looked over and saw that he was mortified by all
the heavy talk and, quite possibly, by the entire topic: "Profiles
in courage here, looking out the window,'' he said,
acknowledging his discomfort.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Graham consistently expresses McCain's sentiments better than
McCain himself can. If you want a lousy interview with
McCain, ask about his wife—not for any lack of feeling, I
suspect, but for lack of words about feelings. His old-school way
of expressing affection? If he likes you, and you work for him,
you're an "incompetent jerk''; if he likes you, and you're a bunch
of reporters writing down his bons mots, it's "What do you want,
you little jerks?''; and if you're a kid who's just asked about his
age, and he wants to show that sure, fine, he likes you anyway,
it's "Thanks for the question, you little jerk. You're drafted.''
This is not to say he isn't emotional; on the contrary, as one
former Clinton administration official recently told the
Washington Post: In "the many, many years that I've been in
Washington, John McCain is far and away the most emotional
politician I have ever met. … People don't understand that, so
they keep talking about his temperament, his temper. He reacts
emotionally, therefore unpredictably." But while McCain's
outpourings of feeling sometimes take him places he really
shouldn't go, Graham's tend to be better targeted—and often
unleashed on McCain's behalf, in an emotional vocabulary
McCain doesn't have. (Here he is on Meet the Press, throwing
his hands in the air and his heart into the debate over the troop
surge in Iraq—yet keeping calm in comparison with his jousting
partner, Jim Webb.)
Maybe some of his E.Q. comes from growing up in a bar;
Graham's folks had a little neighborhood beer joint in Central,
S.C., and the family lived in the back. "I've heard every story
and then some,'' he once said. "And I've heard 'Satin Sheets to
Lie On and Satin Pillows to Cry On' a thousand times. … [I]t
was a great place to learn about life. I had wives call up wanting
to know if their husband's there and I'm answering the phone at 9
years of age. And I'd say, 'Well, he said he isn't here.' So I
learned the hard way about a little bit of diplomacy."
Both of his parents died when he was in college, and he
eventually adopted his teenage sister—an experience of
nurturing that few college boys would be up for. After law
school, also at the University of South Carolina, he served in
Germany in the Air Force (and still serves in the Air Force
Reserves). On his return to South Carolina, he hung out his
shingle and, as a trial lawyer, made a pretty good living off his
ability to wield emotion. He financed his first political run with
some of his winnings from a multimillion-dollar award in a
medical malpractice case. He won that race, went to the state
legislature in 1992, came to Congress in the Gingrich Revolution
of 1994, and rose to national prominence just a few years later,
when he served as a House manager of the impeachment
proceedings against Bill Clinton.
Sometimes Graham makes his points with charm, other times
with venom. On Fox News Sunday recently, expertly playing to
the audience's emotions—which, as we should know by now, is
how elections are won—he viscerally appealed to Hillary voters
5/140
by suggesting that Obama thinks of them as a bunch of racists:
"We're not going to run a campaign like he did in the primary,
[that] every time somebody brings up a challenge to who you are
and what you believe, 'You're a racist.' That's not going to
happen in this campaign."
Graham says he has no interest in the vice-presidential
nomination, anyway—or in being attorney general—or anything
at all other than to stay exactly where he is and help McCain
from the Senate. But if McCain is elected, he'll wield enormous
power there as First Friend.
Of course, Obama himself has never said such a thing—and had
he muttered it under his breath in the third grade, we surely
would have heard about it by now. Graham, on the other hand,
has made blanket accusations of racism; last year, he thundered
to a Hispanic audience, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut
up"—a remark that caused quite a ruckus among the
conservative opponents of immigration-reform legislation he
was referring to.
books
Though many Senate colleagues see the McCain-Graham
relationship as a father-son connection, no 52-year-old son
would so willingly play sidekick. Graham was literally knocked
to the ground by a bunch of photographers trying to get to
McCain on their visit to Israel in April. "I almost dislocated my
knee, and John is screaming, 'Get up! Get up!' " he told Politico.
"Apparently, my fate in life is to be instructed." Yet he doesn't
seem to mind, and is more deferential than any official running
mate I can remember: "If I make his day better by being
someone he can talk to, confide in, have a good laugh with, I am
honored to play that role. I enjoy his company."
And vice versa, obviously. But what else does Graham get for
his loyalty and service? Publicity, for one thing: He's in every
shot—like this one and this one (and this, too; that's him, holding
the Dalai Lama's other hand). Graham is also up for re-election
this year and has not been subtle about bragging that his
closeness with McCain will benefit South Carolina if his friend
wins the election. "If he gets to be president, South Carolina's
interests will have a receptive audience due to our relationship,"
Graham told the AP.
When it comes to the McCain veepstakes, then, wouldn't
Graham seem to be an obvious front-runner? With his military
background, foreign-policy cred, regional appeal, and efficacy as
a surrogate, you'd think so. But as the New York Times so
delicately phrased it: "Mr. Graham is a single man—is that still a
challenge to be on a national ticket?"
A: Yes, it is, even if that wasn't really Graham in his underwear
in GQ two years ago; the image was Photoshopped, and in the
accompanying article, Graham shrugged and said, essentially,
Nah, I'm not gay, just a lonely dude workaholic with no personal
life, other than couch surfing chez McCain or with a female aide
and her husband, whom he's known since high school. His lack
of a wife briefly seemed to be at issue during his 2002 Senate
race, when the state Democratic chairman, Dick Harpootlian,
called him "a little too light in the loafers to fill Strom
Thurmond's shoes." (Later, Harpootlian pleaded light in the
head, saying he didn't know that was an anti-gay slur.)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
What's Wrong With Environmental
Alarmism
How to mobilize, but not paralyze, the public with fear.
By Annie Murphy Paul
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 7:05 AM ET
Remember Alar? If you were in the vicinity of a television in the
spring of 1989, it's likely you do. Alar was a potentially cancercausing chemical sprayed on apples, brought to public attention
by a high-profile report on 60 Minutes. I was in high school
then, and I vividly recall the pictures of bright-red apples,
suddenly sinister, on the evening news and the swift
disappearance of the fruit from crisper drawers and lunchroom
trays, whisked away as if by a magic spell.
In fact, the fate of Alar-tainted apples was decided by a savvy
piece of public relations. The Natural Resources Defense
Council offered the producers of 60 Minutes an exclusive look at
its report on potentially carcinogenic pesticides in exchange for
the promise of a feature story. From the NRDC's list of 23
chemicals, the news program chose to focus on Alar for the
simple reason that it made a good story. Apples, kids, cancer:
Predictably, mothers were soon pouring bottles of apple juice
down the drain, and growers were promising to stop using Alar
on their crops. 60 Minutes and the NRDC had effectively used
public panic to fill what they viewed as gaps in government
regulation.
In a time of waning will and dwindling resources for such
regulation, the emotional reactions of consumers are
increasingly deployed to remove dangers, real or perceived,
from the environment. This year's signature scare has featured
bisphenol A, a chemical commonly used in plastics. When
media reports linked BPA to an elevated risk of cancer and to
alterations in behavior and brain function in animals, a collective
howl went up from parents all over the country. As a story, BPA
went Alar one better: Here were potentially toxic chemicals in
baby bottles. Even as officials from the Food and Drug
Administration assured consumers that BPA posed little risk,
Wal-Mart declared that it was phasing out baby products
containing the substance, and the manufacturer Nalgene
announced that it would remove BPA from its popular sport
bottles.
6/140
But the most compelling story isn't necessarily the most accurate
or important one. In the case of Alar, subsequent research
indicated that the chemical may not have been so dangerous
after all. And what happened to the other 22 chemicals on the
NRDC's list? Who knows? As for BPA, the baby-bottle panic of
2008 may also have been overblown. Public outrage can force
swift change, but it's a blunt instrument, poorly suited to
evaluating the many potential risks we face. It relies not on sober
analysis but on visceral alarm, especially about the most
vulnerable in our midst, children.
How to move the public to necessary action while at the same
time conveying the often-numbing complexities of
environmental hazards? That's the dilemma confronting
Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children, a new
book that argues that thousands of environmental chemicals are
wreaking havoc on the health of American children. Its authors
are Philip Shabecoff, who was for 14 years the chief
environmental correspondent for the New York Times, and his
wife, Alice Shabecoff, who is a freelance journalist and former
executive director of the National Consumers League.
The Shabecoffs would seem to have the complexity part
covered. In 368 exhaustive, and exhausting, pages, they
document "the toxic assault on our children," who are exposed
daily to pesticides, car exhaust, waste-site runoff, and industrialplant emissions, as well as to chemicals found in consumer
goods like cleaning products, cosmetics, and clothing. Such
exposures, they claim, have led to a steep increase in the
incidence of serious childhood illnesses like asthma, autism, and
cancer. "What is happening to our children as a result of toxic
substances in the environment is criminal," they declare. The
Shabecoffs structure their account like a legal case, issuing
indictments, marshalling evidence, and naming victims,
perpetrators, and co-conspirators. The result, however, is less
John Grisham and more of a court reporter's transcript: fact upon
fact, piled so punishingly high that readers may feel they should
be paid by the hour.
The sheer accumulation of detail is enough to overwhelm but not
quite enough to persuade. Some crucial connective tissue is
missing: the links that would prove, or at least strongly indicate,
a cause-and-effect relationship between particular chemicals and
specific illnesses. We read, for example, about a toddler named
Jobori Montgomery who has asthma and about a teenager named
Justin O'Neill who died of a rare brain cancer. Both lived near
the oil refineries and petrochemical plants of Port Arthur,
Texas—a relationship that is suggestive but hardly definitive.
Causation in such cases is notoriously difficult to demonstrate,
and the Shabecoffs don't really try; instead, they bridge the gap
with fist-shaking rants against the evils of the chemical industry
and vague, grandiose calls to "rethink our economic priorities"
and "reinvent the American community." Their rhetoric leaves
the reader with the paralyzing sense that danger lurks in every
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
corner, without providing even the fleeting relief of pitching
some newly identified threat in the trash.
In a bow to what Poisoned Profits clearly wishes to be, its last
few lines quote from Rachel Carson's 1962 classic, Silent Spring.
Carson's book, of course, is the ultimate example of storytelling
as agent of change: Her eloquent parable of despoiled nature has
been credited with launching the modern environmental
movement, and it helped lead to the 1972 government ban on the
pesticide DDT. The Shabecoffs' invocation of Carson prompts a
question very pertinent to their own endeavor: How did she pull
off that feat, and is it possible—or even desirable—to replicate
her achievement, almost half a century later?
Carson's considerable ability as a stylist and her status as a
secular saint (she died of cancer just two years after Silent
Spring's publication) tend to obscure what made her book such a
devastatingly effective vehicle for her then-unfamiliar views.
Carson had a fine eye for observation and a fierce passion for the
natural world, but she also had a talent for managing information
for maximum impact. Silent Spring offers not just lovely
language and appalling anecdotes (though it has plenty of both);
it also provides us with a conceptual framework and a set of
priorities, a way to think about the issues it raises.
Carson carefully filtered out inessential detail, writing in a
compressed style that has the spare authority of Scripture or a
great play. "Chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or
gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing
from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death," she
wrote. "Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until
they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and sunlight,
combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and
work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells."
She embedded sharp details in a sweeping structure that had the
inevitable, irresistible force of allegory. The book opens with a
vision of an American town seized by a toxic blight: "There was
a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they
gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The
feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds
seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and
could not fly. It was a spring without voices."
And she gently but insistently implicated all of us in the damage
that was being wrought. Describing a ground squirrel
grotesquely contorted in death from the spraying of a poisonous
insecticide, she asked: "By acquiescing in an act that can cause
such suffering to a living creature, who among is us is not
diminished as a human being?" At the book's end, the reader
feels not resigned but invigorated, filled with a bracing desire to
put things right.
It's true that Carson had the advantages as well as the burdens of
a pioneer: Her book was borne along by the adolescent energy
7/140
and the moral clarity of a new movement. Following in the
tracks of Silent Spring, the Shabecoffs traverse less virgin
intellectual territory. Compared with poisons like DDT and
aldrin, another banned pesticide, current environmental threats
are subtler in their effects and less susceptible to confident
conclusions about cause and effect. An entire industry of
influence and spin has arisen, far more sophisticated than in
Carson's day. (Her critics in the chemical industry reached for
the stereotype closest to hand, calling her shrill and hysterical—
charges that withered on contact with her stern prose.) Scientists,
with their cautious statements and careful parsings, are often
little help to the activist, as the Shabecoffs note with dismayed
surprise. And the public, though more aware of environmental
issues, has grown jaded in the face of constant alarms.
Still, the Shabecoffs' task is essentially the same as Carson's
was: to make sense of the world and what we've done to it, to
give us the lay of the land and a clear path forward. To do so in a
way that compels both thought and action, without
oversimplifying or sensationalizing, was Carson's great gift—a
gift that looks rarer and more necessary with each passing
season.
bushisms
Bushism of the Day
By Jacob Weisberg
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 2:34 PM ET
"I'm coming as the president of a friend, and I'm coming as a
sportsman."—On his trip to the Olympics in China, Washington,
D.C., July 30, 2008
Got a Bushism? Send it to bushisms@slate.com. For more, see
"The Complete Bushisms."
.
.
chatterbox
Mary Matalin, Publisher
When political hacks edit books.
By Timothy Noah
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 7:04 PM ET
Jerome R. Corsi has written a book about Barack Obama
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
cleverly titled The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of
Personality. The book is published by Threshold Editions, Mary
Matalin's imprint at Simon & Schuster. It "was not designed to
be, and does not set out to be, a political book," Matalin sniffed
to Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman of the New York Times.
Rather, it is "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that."
Corsi holds a doctorate in government from Harvard University,
and the book's cover highlights Corsi's academic credential with
the byline "Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.d."
But Corsi, a staff reporter for the hard-right World Net Daily and
co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out
Against John Kerry, a 2004 hit job published by the hard-right
Regnery, maintains his scholarly posture with some difficulty. In
his off-hours, Corsi calls Arabs "ragheads" and Bill Clinton an
"anti-American communist" on Internet message boards. Susan
Estrich is "Susan Estrogen" and Katie Couric is "Little Katie
Communist." In the past, Corsi's fellow conservative, Debbie
Schlussel, has even accused Corsi of plagiarism (though, to be
fair, this looks to me more like garden-variety theft, i.e., taking
an idea and some facts from another columnist without
extending the usual courtesy of a citation; a minor offense in
journalism, if not in academia).
Why did Corsi write The Obama Nation? Was it in disinterested
pursuit of scholarly truth? Er, not exactly. "The goal is to defeat
Obama," he told the Times. "I don't want Obama to be in office."
I haven't read The Obama Nation. But both the Times and Media
Matters for America, a liberal watchdog Web site (and the
source of my above links to "ragheads," etc.), cite multiple errors
in the book. Ordinarily, when an author or an editor discovers
errors in a book's text, he or she arranges to correct them in the
next printing. I've done this myself. But neither Corsi nor
Matalin responded to e-mails from me asking whether they
intended to correct any errors in The Obama Nation—it would
be a miracle if there were none. In the Times, Corsi brushed
aside the Media Matters critique because of its politics. Now, I
yield to no one in my skepticism regarding the veracity of Media
Matters' chief executive officer, the former right-wing hit man
David Brock. But Media Matters operates on the principle of
transparency, providing links and video clips necessary to assess
its claims of falsehood. Sometimes the claims hold up;
sometimes they seem like a reach. Most of its findings
concerning The Obama Nation are unassailable. For instance,
Obama either has or hasn't stated publicly when he stopped
using marijuana and cocaine. According to Corsi, he hasn't.
According to Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father he has.
"I stopped getting high" when he was an undergraduate at
Columbia, Obama writes. The Times further notes that in 2003,
Obama told the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill., in
response to a question about drug use, "I haven't done anything
since I was 20 years old." When the Times confronted Corsi with
this information, he changed the subject from his book's obvious
error to what he deems the unreliability of self-reporting on
8/140
matters of drug use. Which, of course, was entirely beside the
point.
Rogen and his new film, Pineapple Express; and the death of
comedian Bernie Mac.
All this raises the question of whether the world of
"conservative" publishing, which includes not only Matalin's
imprint at Simon & Schuster but also Random House's Crown
Forum and Penguin Group USA's Sentinel, aspires even to the
standards of the nonideological (or what conservatives call the
"liberal") publishing establishment, which are nothing to write
home about. What I've learned about The Obama Nation
suggests it does not. What the hell is Mary Matalin doing
running a publishing imprint in the first place? She is a
professional propagandist, a political operative who learned her
craft at the feet not of Maxwell Perkins but of Lee Atwater.
Truth is not what she's about; campaigns are, and for Matalin,
The Obama Nation would appear to be just another campaign.
This isn't to say that, through her Threshold imprint, Matalin is
subverting Simon & Schuster's pursuit of profit to partisan ends.
Quite the contrary. Simon & Schuster and the other big
publishing houses have started conservative imprints, at arms'
length and with noses held, because they recognize them to be a
gold mine. The Obama Nation, the Times reports, will debut on
its best-seller list this Sunday at No. 1. But part of the deal,
clearly, is that conservative imprints aren't required to adhere to
the same standards of truth as the grown-up divisions. If an
Erwin Glikes or even an Adam Bellow is available to edit your
conservative fall list, fine. But in a pinch, a Mary Matalin will
do. It's what George W. Bush memorably dubbed the soft
bigotry of low expectations. The conservative movement has
won the publishing houses' attention but not their respect. Does
it even care?
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
The official Web site of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Slate's Olympics Twitter feed.
Slate's Olympics Twitter feed, explained.
Dana's review of Pineapple Express.
The Pineapple Express Web site.
The Original Kings of Comedy, which featured Bernie Mac's
strongest stand-up.
The Bernie Mac Show, which featured the watered-down TV
version.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Josh's pick: badminton at the Olympics.
Dana's pick: Mahmoud Darwish's book of prose poems, Memory
for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982.
Stephen's pick: Isaac Hayes' albums Hot Buttered Soul and
Black Moses.
You can reach the Culture Gabfest at culturefest@slate.com.
Posted by Amanda Aronczyk on Aug. 14, 2008 at 3:58 p.m.
July 31, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 13 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
culture gabfest
The Culture Gabfest, Twilight of the
Idols Edition
Listen to Slate's show about the week in culture.
ByJosh Levin, Stephen Metcalf, and Dana Stevens
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 3:58 PM ET
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 14 with Josh Levin, Stephen
Metcalf, and Dana Stevens by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by
clicking here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss the Beijing
Olympics and "The Redeem Team"; too-famous-too-fast Seth
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking
here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss Joss Whedon's
new Web-only musical miniseries Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along
Blog," Starbucks' abrupt move to shutter a number of its stores in
the United States and abroad, and Google's newest challenger in
the search field, Cuil.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
The new Web miniseries from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator
Joss Whedon, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
The pre-eminent Joss Whedon Web community, Whedonesque.
The Guild, another Web series (preferred by some Culturefest
9/140
gabbers) .
Eulogies from Slate readers for some of the 600 U.S. Starbucks
stores set to close.
Taylor Clark's Slate piece explaining how Starbucks actually
helps mom-and-pop coffeehouses.
The new search engine Cuil.
Slate's reader contest: Figure out the best questions to ask Cuil,
or any other search engine, to gauge its strengths and
weaknesses.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Julia's pick: Curtis Sittenfeld's forthcoming novel American
Wife, a fictionalized portrait of Laura Bush.
Dana's pick: Carla Bozulich's album Red Headed Stranger, a
song-by-song remake of Willie Nelson's classic concept album.
Stephen's pick: Haven in a Heartless World, by American
historian Christopher Lasch.
Posted by Matt Lieber on July 17 at 10:45 a.m.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Julia's pick: the Boggle-like Facebook word game Prolific
(Facebook login required).
Stephen's pick: Scottish novelist Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir
trilogy.
Dana's pick: WWII-era singer Jo Stafford, as heard on WNYC's
Evening Music, hosted by David Garland.
Posted by Matt Lieber on July 31 at 10:59 a.m.
July 17, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 12 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking
here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss the new
Batman movie The Dark Knight, The New Yorker's cover
depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as anti-American
mujahideen, and the mysterious relationship between Madonna
and Alex Rodriguez.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
The Dark Knight Web site.
The New Yorker cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as
anti-American fist-bumpers.
Jack Shafer's critique of the members of the press fretting about
the corrupting power of the cover.
Christopher Beam's confession that in a roundabout way, he
might be the one who gave rise to the cover in the first place.
The New York Times' Bill Carter's piece asking why comedians
have such trouble making fun of Obama.
Us Weekly's take on the A-Rod-Madonna liaison.
The New Yorker's explanation of how Kabbalah figures in.
Madonna's history with '80s slugger Jose Canseco.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
July 2, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 11 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
You can also download the program here, or you
can subscribe to the biweekly Culture Gabfest
podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss the re-release
of Liz Phair's feminist indie-rock masterpiece Exile in Guyville,
the media's semihysterical reaction to news of a "pregnancy
pact" among teenage girls at a high school in Gloucester, Mass.,
and the death of comedian George Carlin.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville.
New York magazine's culture blog Vulture interviews Liz Phair.
Meghan O'Rourke's 2003 critical re-evaluation of Liz Phair.
Liz Phair's response.
Time magazine's original report on the "pregnancy pact" at a
Gloucester, Mass., public high school.
Time follows up.
Christopher Caldwell considers the political dogmas at play in
the Gloucester story.
George Carlin, RIP.
Jerry Seinfeld remembers George Carlin.
Cullen Murphy explains why flight attendants really talk like
that.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Julia's pick: Listener Robin Winning's song of the summer,
"That's Not My Name" by the Ting Tings.
Dana's pick: Stephen Colbert's green screen challenge: Make
John McCain interesting.
Stephen's pick: The greatest song of any summer ever, the
Rolling Stones' "Miss You."
10/140
Posted by Matt Lieber on July 2 at 6:02 p.m.
this is a secret, and having a chance to vent your feelings might
help you release them.
—Prudie
dear prudence
Dear Prudence Letter: My BFF Won't Let Me Date!
Fertile Family Secret
I found out my mom was an egg donor. Now I fear she loves my half-siblings
more than me.
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 6:59 AM ET
Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click
here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to
prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)
Dear Prudence,
I am a college student who has been fortunate to grow up in a
wonderful, loving family, and I'm very close to my parents and
younger siblings. Recently, when I commented about an article I
was reading on sperm donation, my mother disclosed to me her
decision several years ago to have her eggs harvested and given
to an infertile couple who were friends of the family. I was
devastated by this news. That family conceived triplets with my
mother's eggs, and I have met the children on many occasions.
My mother insists that those children are not "her kids" and that
she simply helped her friends become parents. My father is the
only other person in our family who is aware of the situation,
and the other family now lives in a different state. On one hand,
I love her even more for such a selfless act, but on the other I
feel upset by this news. Am I ridiculous for feeling intensely
jealous and heartbroken? She is my and my full siblings' mom,
and I don't want to know anything about these half-siblings.
How can I get rid of the disdain I've developed for these children
and erase the fear that she loves them as much as (or more than)
me?
—Jealous and Confused Son
Dear Jealous,
There you were, innocently enjoying your life, and your mother
had to shove in your head not only the image of her eggs being
harvested and fertilized, but the knowledge that the result was
Huey, Dewey, and Louie. But try thinking of it this way: Your
mother donated a microscopic bit of herself to allow this other
couple to start their family, and that was the end of her
involvement. The other woman spent nine months pregnant with
triplets, gave birth to them, and she and her husband are now
raising them far away. Your mother is right not to consider
herself this threesome's mother, and you shouldn't, either. You
say you are torn because, as angry as you are, you also admire
your mother's selflessness. Try, when thoughts about this come
up, to focus on your mother's generosity, not on your jealousy.
But if you stay emotionally stuck, go to your college counseling
service to talk about this. Your burden is compounded because
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Dear Prudence,
I recently moved into a condominium. In the unit across from
mine is a young female, close to my age, who had put a cozy
little bench into the common area in the breezeway. I have since
installed a storm door on my front door, and I have to open it out
into the patio in order to open my interior door. The position of
the bench is straddling the wall between our two front doors—it
is difficult for me to open my storm door and access the lock to
my other door. So, I moved her bench 2 inches toward her door,
which allows my storm door to fully open. Each day, she moves
it back. It could not be inconveniencing her in any way for it to
be 2 inches closer to her own door. One day, I decided to test her
to make sure I wasn't imagining things. I slightly moved her
bench as usual and left my storm door open, in hopes that she
would realize why I must move her bench. When I came home,
she had shut my storm door and returned her bench to its
original location! Should I leave it and be inconvenienced to
avoid causing ill will? Or should I tell her to get her bench the
hell off my side of the wall and put it by her own door?
—Waiting With Red Masking Tape
Dear Waiting,
Knock on her door one night with a smile on your face and a
bottle of wine in your hand and tell her you're sorry you haven't
introduced yourself. Assuming she lets you in, say you wanted
to talk to her about making the breezeway comfortable for both
of you. Do you want to smile and give her a bottle of wine? No,
you'd rather hogtie her and have her watch while you chop her
beloved bench into cordwood, but we're talking about the best
way to end this tug of war before hostilities escalate. Go outside
with her and show her that because of your storm door, you have
to bang into her bench to get in your place. Ask if she'd mind
moving her bench—tell her it's very pretty—back a couple of
inches so you don't damage it. Either she'll agree, or she's a nut.
If you conclude she's a nut, be grateful you're not going through
life that way and decide it's probably better to live with this
slight inconvenience than engage in an endless border skirmish.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
My husband and I live three miles from where I work, and with
gas prices increasing, I want to buy a Vespa scooter for the
commute. My husband is convinced that riding a scooter
anywhere in our town is nothing short of suicide; a friend of his
died in a motorcycle accident when he was younger. (His friend
11/140
had been drinking prior to the crash.) Based on this experience,
my husband wants to show me every scooter accident since 1990
on YouTube. I'm not proposing riding at night or on the fourlane roads or interstates. The route to work is mainly on
neighborhood streets where the top speed is about 35 mph. My
husband's "compromise" is for us to buy scooters after we are
retired and living at the beach because he'll be able to ride with
me. But retirement is about 25 years away, and we don't even
own a beach house. I feel like my life is being constrained by his
fear. Am I wrong here?
—Scooter Mama
looking around now for stores where you can put in an
application. You're right that this likely isn't personal: You
happen to work for an insecure bully, and he finds you
gratifyingly vulnerable. Work up your nerve and request a
meeting with him. Emphasize that you enjoy the job and have
learned a lot from him. Then explain that when he criticizes you
so fiercely your performance suffers. Ask him if he can temper
his tone so that you can learn better. Definitely rehearse this
conversation with a friend, who can role-play being a jerk.
Perhaps he'll have a little more respect for you for standing up
for yourself. Probably he'll just keep after you. But you will
know you did what you could before you had to find another job.
Dear Scooter,
Appreciate that while you find your husband's objections to be
overbearing, it is also utterly endearing that he is so concerned
about keeping you in one piece. I'm with him in sharing a terror
of motorcycles, but I have a petite neighbor in her late 50s who I
have to admit looks adorable tootling around town on her
scooter. You're right, waiting 25 years is no compromise. Tell
your husband the compromise is no highways, no going faster
that 35 mph, and no riding late at night. Once he sees how much
money you save on gas, he might even start fighting you in the
morning over who gets to drive the Vespa to work.
—Prudie
—Prudie
dispatches
Dear Prudence,
I'm in my early 20s, and I recently began working at a pet store.
I love the job—the work is interesting, I'm good at it, the money
is decent, my co-workers are friendly, and the customers love
me. I could easily see myself working here for several years.
There's only one problem: I'm terrified of my boss! He's very
strict and hypercritical, and sometimes he can be downright
nasty. I'm not used to this kind of work environment, and I'm so
nervous around him that it's affecting my job performance. It's
turning into a vicious cycle: He criticizes me, I stress out and do
a bad job, he criticizes me for it, and so forth. Today he really let
me have it, and as soon as my shift ended, I sobbed for the rest
of the day. Even though this was my dream job, I'm beginning to
dread going to work. I've looked for advice on how to deal with
a difficult boss, but most of the advice applies only to corporate
settings, where you can complain to human resources. Can you
suggest any tricks for staying cool, not taking his wrath so
personally, and currying his favor?
—Pet Store Cinderella
Dear Pet Store,
First, accept that this may end up being one of those situations in
which there are no good alternatives: Either you stay and it starts
affecting your mental health or you go and have to give up a job
you really enjoy. But the retail world is always in need of
dedicated workers who get along with their colleagues and
please their customers. Since you like the pet business, start
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
did you see this?
Policeman's Poor Showing
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 12:06 PM ET
Travels in the Former Soviet Union
Uzbekistan's human rights activists are paranoid, weak, and unbelievably
brave.
By Joshua Kucera
Friday, May 23, 2008, at 12:56 PM ET
From: Joshua Kucera
Subject: "Why Can't We Live Together?"
Posted Monday, May 19, 2008, at 2:56 PM ET
TSKHINVALI, South Ossetia—The first time I enter
Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, the hotel staff
immediately calls the police. They tell me that no one can
process my journalist accreditation until Wednesday. It is a
Sunday afternoon, and the following Tuesday is the May Day
holiday, making it a four-day weekend. Can't I just stay until
then and see the town as a tourist, I ask? Nope. So about 20
minutes after I arrive, the police drive me back to the border
with Georgia proper and tell me to try again later. I come back
on Wednesday and find that the accreditation process consists of
writing my name in a book and filling out a small piece of paper
that I am told to carry with me everywhere I go. It takes about a
minute.
I'm visiting South Ossetia as part of a tour across the southern
edge of the former Soviet Union, looking at the wildly different
12/140
directions the newly independent countries have taken since
1991. In the case of South Ossetia, a self-proclaimed
independent country that is, in fact, neither independent nor a
country, "nowhere" is probably the best way to describe where
it's gone. It's perhaps the closest you can get today to
experiencing the old Soviet Union, as well as a good place to get
the flavor of a good old-fashioned, Cold-War-style proxy war
between the United States and Russia. South Ossetia broke away
from Georgia after a chaotic 18-month war that killed 1,000 (of
a population of 60,000) between 1990 and 1992. Today, South
Ossetia is propped up by Russia: Moscow pays government
salaries and provides the bulk of the peacekeeping forces.
Billboards around Tskhinvali show Vladimir Putin with the
legend "Our President." (This is during the summer of 2007. The
billboards were later replaced with signs featuring new President
Dmitry Medvedev that read, "The Russian Bear Is the Friend of
the Snow Leopard," leopards being a symbol of the Ossetian
nation.) Meanwhile, in Georgia proper, the United States is
conducting an extensive training program for the Georgian
military. Of course, Washington has bigger fish to fry than South
Ossetia—it's training the Georgians to serve in Iraq, where the
tiny ex-Soviet country is the highest per-capita contributor of
troops, with about 2,000 in the sandbox.
When I finally make it to Tskhinvali, I meet with the head of the
press office, Irina Gagloeva, and she asks me whom I want to
talk to. I give her the list of government officials I'd like to
interview. The president? He's in Moscow. The prime minister?
Likewise. The minister of defense or the chief of the armed
forces? Absolutely impossible to talk to anyone about anything
military, she says. Finally, we set up meetings with the foreign
minister and the deputy prime minister. That shouldn't take very
long, she says, so you can leave tomorrow. I tell her I also want
time to talk to people outside the government—journalists,
academics, ordinary people—and to get the flavor of South
Ossetia. I was hoping to stay until Sunday, a four-day trip. No,
she says. Finally, she relents and lets me stay until Saturday.
"Saturday, 5 p.m., Joshua goodbye." She also forbids me to visit
Kurta, where a rival government advocating reintegration with
Georgia established itself last year. It's clear that the government
does not want journalists roaming around South Ossetia.
That afternoon, I set out to walk around town and take some
photos. My first subject is a small group of palm trees that were
given to the government of South Ossetia by Abkhazia, its sister
breakaway territory. A policeman, who looks about 16, comes
over and asks for my passport and accreditation. Everything
checks out, and he lets me go. But a few minutes later, I see a
picturesque abandoned shop with two flags flying out front—
South Ossetian and Russian. The South Ossetian flag is almost
never seen here without a Russian flag alongside. I snap a
picture, and another policeman comes up and asks to see the last
photo I took. I figure he thinks I had taken one of a policeman or
some other forbidden subject, so I confidently show him the
photo of the shop. "Come with me," he says, and we get in his
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Lada Niva jeep and drive to the nearby police station. "Is there a
problem with the photo?" I ask. "Yes, there's a problem." At the
police station, I wait on a ratty couch for about an hour, until two
officials from the foreign ministry arrive. They drive me back to
the hotel and tell me to stay there until morning. But I haven't
eaten dinner, and there is no restaurant in the hotel, I protest.
One relents and says I can go out to eat. But nothing more, and I
must be back at the hotel by 9:30. They tell the receptionist to
call the police if I'm not back. What's the problem? I ask again.
"People might think you're a spy," one of them tells me. This is
all for my safety, he explains. What sort of dangers are out there
in Tskhinvali? I ask. "Maybe Georgians would attack you and
blame us," he says. I never find out why they were freaked out
by the photo.
The next day, I meet with Deputy Prime Minister Boris
Chochiev. When I tell him about my experiences with the police,
he looks concerned and says he will investigate. Then he adds:
"You know, people don't trust foreign journalists. The
international journalists who travel from Georgia are usually
following someone's orders." Whose orders? "The orders of
those who support Georgia. They don't want true information;
they want to represent us as just a small bunch of separatists that
don't want to live with Georgia. But why don't we want to live
with Georgia? This is what they don't want to write."
Chochiev, a jovial man with a bushy mustache, is also a
historian, and he gives me two books that he wrote on this very
subject: South Ossetia: A Chronicle of the Events of the
Georgian Aggression 1988-1992 and Memories of a Nation:
Victims of Georgia's Aggressive Policy Against South Ossetia.
Ossetians say they have nothing in common with Georgia and
that South Ossetia is an artificial creation thrown together by
ethnic Georgian Bolsheviks who wanted to separate and weaken
the Ossetian nation. (A much larger portion of the Ossetian
people lives in North Ossetia, a part of Russia just across the
Caucasus mountains from South Ossetia.) They say that
throughout the Soviet era, Georgia populated South Ossetia with
ethnic Georgians and restricted the use of the Ossetian language.
South Ossetia now appears to be a police state. Close to half the
men I see on the street are police or military, and many men not
in uniform openly wear pistols. Many of the police are engaged
in make-work duties, it appears (including monitoring foreign
journalists). There is a large detachment on the top floor of my
hotel, allegedly providing security for the hotel (although I seem
to be the only guest), and when some rowdy teenagers disrupt a
concert celebrating Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet
victory over Germany in World War II, a dozen or so police,
including OMON forces (comparable to a SWAT team) are there
to intercede.
There are very few shops and little activity on the streets, even
for a town of 40,000—but especially for the capital of a would-
13/140
be independent republic. The biggest industry besides the
security apparatus, which is almost all funded from Moscow, is
subsistence farming.
People here blame the United States for providing military
support to Georgia and emboldening Tbilisi to act against South
Ossetia, and there is no ambivalence about the relationship with
Moscow. Russia and Ossetia have been military allies since at
least the 19th century. Moscow has traditionally relied on its
fellow Christian Ossetians against the many Muslim nations in
the Caucasus as well as against the independent-minded
Georgians.
In 2001, the speaker of the South Ossetian parliament wrote a
letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking him to annex
the country. Foreign Minister Murat Djioev tells me that joining
Russia is also his desire, but independence is the first step on
that path. For now, though, Russia seems satisfied to exercise de
facto control over South Ossetia. It has given Russian passports
to South Ossetians—who can't travel on their South Ossetian
passports—and now 96 percent of South Ossetians are Russian
citizens. I ask Djioev about the Russian flags and Putin
billboards around town. "I want us to be part of Russia, but I
understand this won't happen quickly. As Russian citizens, we
want to demonstrate that the Russian flag is our flag and Putin is
our president," he says. Several top officials, including the
minister of defense and the head of the security service, are
Russians. Djioev makes no apologies for it. "When it's necessary
to invite a Russian specialist here, we'll do it. In San Marino,
many of the top officials are Italians, and nobody criticizes them
for it," he says. (Russia will, in 2008, move to formalize ties
with South Ossetia as well as Abkhazia, further ratcheting up
tensions with Georgia.)
One night at the Café Farn, where I had gotten to know many of
the regulars, a burly, jolly, and extremely drunken man comes
over. "He's spetsnaz"—a special-forces soldier—one of my
friends at the table tells me. "Russian or South Ossetian
spetsnaz?" I ask. "Russian," he says, to the visible discomfort of
the other people at the table. "Well, Russian and South
Ossetian," he says. "But never mind," he adds and pours a round
of vodka shots.
South Ossetia's position has lately become more precarious.
Dmitri Sanakoev, a former South Ossetian defense minister and
veteran of the 1990-92 war, changed sides, and in 2006 he was
elected president of South Ossetia in an "alternative" poll
organized by a few ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia.
He now runs a separatist state within this separatist state,
advocating reintegration with Georgia from a village just on the
outskirts of Tskhinvali. It is widely assumed in South Ossetia
that Sanakoev changed sides only because the Georgian
government offered to pay off his considerable gambling debts.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The Georgian government initially held Sanakoev at arm's
length, but it is now cooperating with him in increasingly highprofile ways. During my visit, several members of the Georgian
parliament went to Kurta, his capital, for a meeting and photo-op
with the government there.
A crew from South Ossetian state television covered the event,
and they invited along me and Zarina, a 21-year-old assistant
press officer for the South Ossetian government. Zarina has
already given me the South Ossetian nationalist party line:
Georgians hate Ossetians and denied everything to Ossetians
under communism. They killed Ossetian children in the war. The
hypercarbonated Ossetian mineral water is far better than the
famed Georgian Borjomi. Oh, and the Internet is bad in South
Ossetia because Georgians interfere with it.
The Kurta government turns on the charm for the visitors from
Tskhinvali. While we wait for the parliamentarians to arrive, a
series of government staffers comes over to the Tskhinvali
visitors to make friendly small talk and offer us coffee. One
sixtysomething woman, wearing an evening dress with a
plunging neckline, comes over to us. Soon she is crying
theatrically: "Why can't we live together? Why do we have to be
divided," she says, sobbing.
The Kurta prime minister introduces himself, flashing a big
smile of gold teeth. "Welcome to Kurta, please come anytime!"
he says and gives each of us his business card, which features
the same symbol the Tskhinvali government uses, but in the
Georgian language as well as Ossetian and Russian.
Zarina is unimpressed with the prime minister and the rest of the
Kurta hospitality. "If someone is smiling at you, and inside you
know he hates you, what can you think?" she asks after he
leaves. "He is the prime minister of four villages," she adds with
as much disdain as she can muster. She seems unaware of the
irony of these words coming from a representative of a
government that rules over 60,000 people but has a president and
a foreign ministry.
We notice that the podium flies a South Ossetian flag next to a
Georgian flag. Zarina, again, is appalled. "Our people cannot
tolerate that the Georgian flag and the South Ossetian flag are
together after this genocide, after they killed little children," she
says.
It is tempting to dismiss this as hysteria from a government
apparatchik, but the emotion Ossetians feel about the war is real.
After my interview with Chochiev, I went to get lunch at the
Café Farn. When my new friends saw Memories of a Nation,
they somberly paged through, looking for photos of friends and
family who had been killed. After all, 1,000 people in such a
small community is a lot, and the war touched everyone here.
Zarina tells me that as a 5-year-old, she lived in nearby Gori,
where her father was stationed as a Soviet army officer. She
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remembers Georgian soldiers breaking into the barracks and
forcing the family out because they were ethnic Ossetians. They
fled to Tskhinvali. "I didn't understand anything, but I was so
scared," she says.
Eventually, the parliamentarians arrive, meet, and have a short
press conference. Then the charm offensive resumes, and the
Kurta government press officers invite the Tskhinvali visitors to
the cafeteria for lunch. The Tskhinvalians are mortified at the
prospect of breaking bread with the enemy, torn between two
Caucasian imperatives: hospitality and their nation. The Kurta
officials literally have to drag them by the crooks of their elbows
into the cafeteria, and the Tskhinvalians give in. A bottle of
homemade wine is produced. "Let's toast! No politics, just to us,
all of us," one of the Kurtans proposes.
We eat as quickly as we can, make awkward conversation, and
say our goodbyes. I ask Zarina what she thinks of it all. "They
are monsters," she says.
From: Joshua Kucera
Subject: The Cult of Heydar Aliyev
Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008, at 1:27 PM ET
GANJA, Azerbaijan—In the State History Museum of Ganja,
Azerbaijan's second city, there is a painting called "A Great
Voice Rises From Moscow." It shows an ethereal being plunging
a fiery sword into a chaotic city full of rioters. Clearly, there is a
message here, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is.
"This is in 1990, when Russians and Armenians were attacking
our people and we said, 'Heydar Aliyev, come help us,' "
explains my guide, Ulker, a second-year university student in
history. But I don't understand the sword and who is holding it, I
say. "This is God saying, 'Enough,' " she explains.
That painting is subtle compared with one in the next room that
features a bare-chested Mikhail Gorbachev peering over the
turret of a tank that he is driving across a map of Azerbaijan.
Gorbachev—who is portrayed as hairy as a gorilla—is thrusting
a long spear at Baku, the capital. From outside Azerbaijan's
borders, sharks and wolves attack from various directions.
"This one is about how everyone attacked us like animals,"
Ulker explains.
By most measures, Azerbaijanis shouldn't have this
victimization complex. Their economy is the fastest-growing in
the world, and with vast, recently discovered reserves of oil and
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
gas off the Caspian Sea coast, they (unlike most of the
neighbors) have largely been able to run their country without
interference from the United States or Russia, both of which are
eager to curry favor with the government rather than strong-arm
it.
But Azerbaijan still smarts from the humiliating loss of nearly
14* percent of its territory, including the former autonomous
region of Nagorno-Karabakh, to its enemies, the Armenians.
Aliyev, who died in 2003 and was succeeded by his son, Ilham,
skillfully manipulated this humiliation to build his personality
cult into one of the most extensive in the world.
Today, Azerbaijan is full of Heydar Aliyev boulevards, parks,
statues, and billboards. Every history museum has at least one
room devoted to Heydar Aliyev, and every major town has a
museum devoted exclusively to him. An American who taught
in Azerbaijan tells me that the school curriculum is similarly
Heydar-heavy.
Throughout the museum in Ganja, a simple narrative explains
the country's recent history: Armenia attacked Azerbaijan
without provocation, Russia schemed behind the scenes to help
the Armenians, and no one in the world was on Azerbaijan's
side. Then Heydar Aliyev came to lead Azerbaijan into the era
of peace and prosperity it currently enjoys.
"All people love Heydar Aliyev," Ulker says. "Before, we used
to be poor. Now we are rich. He doesn't think about his family;
he only thinks about the Azerbaijani people," she says.
Ulker asks whether I'd been to Armenia and whether I liked
Armenian people. "Of course. They're good people, like
everywhere," I say. She is shocked: "No! They killed our
people." I say that Azeris killed Armenians, too. "No, they
didn't," she insists.
I expected the anti-Armenian propaganda. But what surprises me
is how many anti-Russian elements the narrative contains. The
standard villain is "the Armenians and Russians," always paired
together. In the room on World War II, Ulker explains how
Azerbaijan sent people to fight fascism and Moscow took 80
percent of Azerbaijan's oil. "Before, the Russians took all our oil
and gave it to other countries, and we were poor. Now we're
independent, and we can sell the oil ourselves," she says.
Over-the-top propaganda notwithstanding, most Azerbaijanis do
seem to like Heydar Aliyev. Even his critics admit that he was
shrewd and highly intelligent and that his strong hand was what
Azerbaijan needed in the chaos of the early 1990s, during which
he succeeded two feckless post-Soviet presidents at a time when
many observers doubted Azerbaijan could survive as an
independent country. And most people, while rarely as devoted
as Ulker, don't admit any reservations about him. They do,
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however, seem faintly embarrassed about the abundance of
memorials.
"When he was ruling the country, he didn't let this cult of
personality get too out-of-hand," says Eldar Namazov, a former
top aide to Heydar Aliyev who broke with the president in the
late 1990s and now heads a small opposition political party. "He
was smart, and he knew what he was doing."
"But the people in charge now aren't as smart. They're going too
far, and now people are laughing at it," he says. He describes a
fountain in Baku, which, at its grand opening, spouted a wall of
water on which was projected a movie of Heydar Aliyev saying,
"The independence of Azerbaijan will be forever." Namazov
laughs at the memory. "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it
with my own eyes," he says.
The current regime has concerns about its legitimacy, and the
celebrations of Heydar Aliyev are a way of shoring up their
authority, one Western diplomat tells me. He says the
government is tying the broad national agenda that Heydar
Aliyev established—secularism and a Western orientation—to
the personality of Aliyev, who is regarded by most Azerbaijanis
as the founder of their nation.
"Ataturk is everywhere in Turkey, and he represents secularism
and democracy. Here it's the same thing: Heydar Aliyev
represents a secular government and an orientation toward the
West," the diplomat says.
The proliferation of Aliyev memorials across the country is not
ordered from the top, both the diplomat and Namazov say;
overzealous local officials are to blame.
"Power is pretty much concentrated at the top here, and local
officials understand that to curry favor with the central
government they can put up these statues and parks," the
diplomat says.
Namazov tells me the narrative that I saw in the Ganja museum
is one that Heydar Aliyev himself established. "He had a
standard story that he told a million times whenever he met
international officials or journalists. If the person was new in the
region, he told the long version, which took maybe an hour. If
the person knew what he was doing, he got the short version,
which was 15 or 20 minutes."
"There were several key episodes in the story," he says. Heydar
Aliyev was invited to go to Moscow to be part of the Soviet
government, but he didn't want to go. If he hadn't been from a
Muslim republic, he would have been premier of the Soviet
Union. Gorbachev schemed against him. He left the Communist
Party as a protest against Soviet policy on Nagorno-Karabakh.
He then went back to Nakhcivan, his hometown, to be a private
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
citizen. After the first two disastrous governments of
independent Azerbaijan, "the people" demanded that he come to
Baku and lead them. As president, there were two assassination
attempts and, again, "the people" saved him.
"He also told this story around Azerbaijan, and this is the same
story you see today—maybe with some embellishments," he
says. "Like the sharks."
Correction, May 26, 2008: This story originally stated that
Azerbaijan suffered the loss of nearly 20 percent of its territory.
Most analysts estimate the loss at closer to 14 percent. (Return
to corrected sentence.)
From: Joshua Kucera
Subject: A Mosque Booms in Baku
Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2008, at 12:27 PM ET
BAKU, Azerbaijan—The Abu Bakr mosque is in a modest
commercial district not far from Baku's train station, next to a
gas station and a noisy construction site. A branch of the
religious-goods chain called Muslim Shop stands nearby.
Abu Bakr's young imam, Gemat Suleymanov, preaches a Saudistyle fundamentalist Sunni Islam, known as Salafism or
Wahhabism, which the government of Azerbaijan fears. The
government has closed down all other such mosques in the
country but has allowed Abu Bakr to remain open, probably
because it fears the Suleymanov's charisma and popularity.
One Friday morning, I visit Abu Bakr and meet Meydan, a
twentysomething guy in a Brazil soccer jersey who is a member
of the mosque. I want to sit in on the service, but I'm not sure
what kind of reception an American would get. Meydan is
exceedingly welcoming. He takes me to a mosque official who
tells me it's no problem. I just have to verify that I showered that
morning and promise to face forward during the service.
The service starts at 2 p.m., so Meydan tells me I should come
back at 1. I get there at 1:15, and the building is already packed.
I find Meydan and head toward the front, tiptoeing through the
worshippers, dodging their open Qurans (some in Arabic, some
in Russian). The mosque's walls are white, in the Wahhabi style,
but although the mosque is just 10 years old, the walls are dirty
and some paint is peeling.
Once we're settled in, he explains why he likes this mosque more
than the Shiite ones that are more traditionally Azeri. "The
Shiites do things that are not true Islam—they pray at the graves
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of holy men, they drink holy water, and they beat themselves,"
he says, referring—in a somewhat crude fashion—to various
Shiite traditions. One of his friends takes out his cell phone,
which he uses to show me a video of a black-turbaned Shiite
cleric furiously beating himself around the head. "Normal people
don't do this—not even Christians," he says. He uses the cellphone video to proselytize to his friends. "I want to show them
that this is not the way to be," he says.
Meydan tells me he especially admires the form of Islam
practiced in Saudi Arabia. "If you go to Saudi Arabia and have
nowhere to stay, you can ask any Muslim, and he will let you
stay at his house for three days. That's where you see true
Islam," he says.
I also meet Elshad, who operates the mosque's sound system.
He's wearing a blue polo shirt with the logo of British
Petroleum, where he works as an engineer. He says BP gives
him whichever two days off per week he wants, so he spends
Friday at the mosque. (Azerbaijan, despite being populated
almost exclusively by Muslims, has a Monday-through-Friday
workweek.) "More and more people are coming here, because
it's not just a variant of religion, it's the true religion," he says.
At exactly 2, Imam Suleymanov walks up the stairs to the pulpit
and begins his sermon. The crowd is rapt, and several young
men use their cell phones to record him. The sermon is in Azeri,
so I can't understand a word, but I don't need a translation to
understand Suleymanov's appeal: He has an easy conversational
style, and he makes the congregation laugh several times.
Afterward, I walk out with Elshad. He had told me earlier that
10,000 people visit the mosque for the Friday service. I assumed
that was an exaggeration, but outside are masses of people who
have listened to the sermon on loudspeakers under a large
canopy, and 10,000 is probably not far from the truth.
Chechnya, and it threatened to shut down the mosque in 2003. It
did imprison Ilgar Ibragimogly, another popular imam in Baku.
Earlier, I had met Arif Yusunov, a Baku analyst who has written
a book called Islam in Azerbaijan. The rise of Islam, he told me,
is directly related to Azerbaijan's Western geopolitical
orientation. According to his theory, Azerbaijanis generally see
three directions the country can take: toward the United States,
Russia, or the Islamic world. Russia supports Armenia in the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and so has no chance to win Baku's
favor. Azerbaijanis are generally inclined to the West, but
Yusunov argues that they lost respect for Washington after it
supported the deeply flawed election of Ilham Aliyev as
president in 2003. As a result, more and more people are turning
to Islam—not just as a religion but a political orientation, he
says.
The heavy Western expat presence in Baku—illustrated most
vividly by the dozens of Irish bars downtown and the loutish
oilmen who frequent them—combined with rising economic
inequality and ugly nationalism is a dangerous enough mix
without fundamentalist religion. But it seems possible that in
Azerbaijan, as in Iran or Chechnya, social discontent could take
on a religious character.
In an interview after the service, Suleymanov stresses many
times—without my raising the issue—that he does not support
terrorism or radical groups like al-Qaida, which he calls "antiIslam." He denies that the mosque has ever had a problem with
the government and dodges any further questions on the topic.
He says he doesn't want the government to force women to cover
their heads, and he tries to strike a moderate tone. The only time
he sounds at all radical is when the conversation turns to
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the part of Azerbaijan that
Armenians have controlled since the early 1990s.
I ask Elshad what the sermon was about.
"He told us how to be good Muslims, what not to do."
"Like what?"
"Like not to be a suicide bomber."
"Did he really specifically mention suicide bombers?"
"No, but we know what he means."
The topic of terrorism is a sensitive one at Abu Bakr. Since 9/11,
the Azerbaijani government has capitalized on the West's fear of
Islamic terrorism to smear any manifestation of social discontent
with the label "terrorist " or "Wahhabi." The government has
accused Abu Bakr of being a recruiting center for fighters in
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"We have terrorists in Islam, but there are Armenian terrorists as
well. They committed acts of terrorism on the Baku metro," he
says, referring to a 1994 attack in which 20 people were killed—
the incident is generally attributed to a group advocating
independence for the small Lezghi minority in northern
Azerbaijan. "Wasn't that Lezghis?" I ask. "Yes, but the
Armenians paid them," he responds.
I ask how he thinks the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh can be
solved. "Only war," he says. "It's a waste of time to talk with the
Armenians. The government has been talking with them for
more than 10 years, and we've had no results. Armenians are
stealing from our graves, and the government is wasting its time.
The only solution is war."
I ask whether he is happy with the Azerbaijani government's
orientation to the West. "It is no problem to have economic ties
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to the West," he says. "But we cannot take their religion or
culture."
From: Joshua Kucera
Subject: The World's Worst Spies
Posted Thursday, May 22, 2008, at 11:40 AM ET
NAKHCIVAN, Azerbaijan—When I told people in Azerbaijan
that I was going to Nakhcivan, I heard the same three things over
and over: Nakhcivan is unbearably hot, it is bleak and poor, and
it is a dictatorship. People especially relished telling me about
the last point. "You don't need to go to Turkmenistan. You can
just go to Nakhcivan; it's the same thing," one opposition
politician told me, referring to the most famously repressive
place in the former Soviet Union. "You know, if you don't tell
the government beforehand that you are going, they might arrest
you at the airport," a Western diplomat warned me.
Nakhcivan is an autonomous republic of Azerbaijan separated
from the "mainland" by a caprice of Soviet border-drawing.
Wedged between Iran and Armenia, with a sliver of a connection
to Turkey—the only land border with Azerbaijan's closest ally—
it is a sensitive and important part of Azerbaijan. It's also a place
of political significance—Heydar Aliyev, the president for 10
years, was from Nakhcivan, as was Abulfaz Elchibey, the
president who preceded him. These days, the "Nakhcivani clan"
boasts several members in President Ilham Aliyev's inner circle.
My initial impression of Nakhcivan was that the conventional
wisdom is wrong. Nakhcivan, said to be the least-developed part
of Azerbaijan, has brand-new roads, construction going up all
around the small capital (also called Nakhcivan), and a generally
pleasant air. Even the weather confounded my expectations—my
visit coincided with a rare cool spell.
I took the train to Culfa, a historic town on the border with Iran.
The Lonely Planet travel guide, published in 2004, claims that
Culfa is "plagued by bureaucrats who like nothing better than
interviewing foreigners at great length and pontificating about
the town's enormous strategic importance." But the authorities
there seemed to be completely uninterested in me. Similarly, I
took photos all around Nakhcivan—something that had caused
great consternation in South Ossetia—and the police never
bothered me.
But it didn't take long to realize that while the government may
have refined its tactics somewhat, it still tries to keep a tight lid
on things. I was greeted at the airport by Asiman, a young
English-speaking assistant in the protocol office of the Ministry
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
of Foreign Affairs. Whenever I met him, he asked what I was
doing around town and whom I was meeting with. At first, I
chalked it up to simple curiosity—very few foreigners (other
than Iranians or Turks) come to Nakhcivan. The waiter at the
cafeteria where I ate most of my meals even asked for my
autograph.
But Asiman's curiosity came to have a bit of an edge. "So, who
did you meet with today?" he would ask me every time I saw
him. Oh, a politician, some journalists. "Which journalists?
Which politician? What did they tell you?" he asked.
The last afternoon I was in Nakhcivan, I met with Asiman and
Ali Alizade, the head of his office. I asked Alizade about
Nakhcivan's reputation as a police state and where he thought
this reputation had come from.
"I was told you met with Vagif Mahmudov and Malakhat
Nasibova. I think they told you about this. They are from the
opposition, and they don't like the government," he said. All this
was true. Mahmudov is an opposition politician, and Nasibova is
the local correspondent for Turan, the opposition news agency.
And they had in fact told me that Nakhcivan was a repressive
place.
But I told him that diplomats in Baku, several other Azerbaijani
sources, and my travel guides—in short, virtually every source
of information I had about Nakhcivan—had said it was an
oppressive place. Asiman piped up, "Which diplomats?" I
pointed out that his habit of asking that kind of question didn't
help the perception.
I admitted that thus far I'd had no real problems with the
government, but I asked if the government watched opposition
figures like, for example, Mahmudov and Nasibova. "Ah—so
they did tell you about this!" Alizade said, triumphantly. I gave
up, said my goodbyes, and went back to my hotel to pack for the
flight back to Baku.
Waiting in the lobby was a young journalist who said she wanted
to interview me about Nakhcivan and Azerbaijan. She spoke
good but oddly formal English.
"What do you think about the democratic processes of
Azerbaijan and the Nakhcivan Autonomous Republic?" she
asked me. I told her that three days in Nakhcivan weren't enough
to make me an expert on its democratic processes, but I gave a
boilerplate answer about international criticism of the
Azerbaijani elections of 2003 and 2005, suppression of the
media, and so on. I also mentioned that the government took an
inordinate interest in where I was going and whom I was talking
to, which didn't speak well of its democratic processes. That was
the only statement she wrote down in her notebook.
18/140
Then her questions began to center on Nasibova.
"So, I understand you met with Malakhat Nasibova. What did
she say to you?" she asked. "What does she think about the
democratic processes of the Nakhcivan Autonomous Republic?"
I said Nasibova was a friendly and open woman and would
certainly answer these questions herself. "Yes, I am going to call
her," she said. "But what did she tell you about the elections of
2005?"
"In Iran, there are so many restrictions, and people are so
unhappy," he told me. "We go to Azerbaijan so we can feel
free."
From: Joshua Kucera
Subject: A Land Where Dissidents Love America
Posted Friday, May 23, 2008, at 12:56 PM ET
During the "interview," I got a phone call from a friend. "Was
that Malakhat?" my interrogator asked when I hung up.
Heydar Aliyev rose from obscurity in Nakhcivan to become a
top KGB operator and eventually the head of the agency. I think
he would be appalled at the shoddy skills of today's generation
of Nakhcivan spies.
Ironically, I had barely spoken with Nasibova. I spent more time
with Mahmudov. "The situation in Nakhcivan is very difficult,
much more anti-democratic than the rest of Azerbaijan," he told
me. Whenever he said the name of Nakhcivan's leader, Vasif
Talibov, he lowered his voice.
The handful of independent journalists and civil-society officials
in Nakhcivan report regular harassment. Just days after my visit,
opposition activist Ilham Sadigov was kidnapped by masked
men, and Nasibova was told she would be killed if she wrote
about it. (He was later released.)
During my short time in Nakhcivan, I heard other stories. One
young man who lived for a time in Istanbul said he received
regular anonymous phone calls in Azeri—he believes from
Nakhcivan—asking him whom he was meeting with and why he
was learning Turkish. A pair of Korean missionaries was
arrested when they went to Culfa, their translator told me. Some
Iranians were arrested when they tried to visit the Alinca Castle,
one of Nakhcivan's few tourist attractions, according to a taxi
driver who took them there.
Of course, it could be worse. After I flew back to Baku, I shared
a taxi from the airport with two ethnic Azeri men from Tabriz,
Iran—or as they called it, South Azerbaijan. I mentioned that I
had seen a lot of Iranians in Nakhcivan and asked why they liked
it there. "In Iran, it's illegal to read or write in our language, and
if you speak it, the police will suspect you of being a separatist,"
one of them said.
For what it's worth, he was a separatist. He argued that Iran
should either become a federal state with each of its five major
ethnic groups getting its own territory, or failing that, Azeris
should split off, join with Azerbaijan, and form a new state with
Tabriz as the capital. "There are 30 million Azeris living in Iran,
and we can't use our own language," he said.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan—When Tashpulat Yuldashev, a
former top official in the Uzbekistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs
who is now a dissident political analyst, invites me to his home
in the mountains, I expect a pleasant villa among the vacation
homes of Tashkent's elite. It's late July, and most people in
Tashkent who can afford it are in the mountains, where the air is
cooler.
But Tavaksay turns out to be a simple farming community next
to a crumbling sanatorium. He greets me and Marina Kozlova,
my translator who is also an independent journalist, outside his
shabby house and shows us the patch of tomatoes, potatoes, and
melons that provide his sustenance. "I'm in the middle class, and
you see how I live," he says.
Unlike in many countries, where being a democratic activist
ensures a reasonably lucrative life of grants from Western NGOs
and travel to international conferences, the ones I meet in
Uzbekistan live hand-to-mouth. Most don't speak English, and
they have mouths full of gold teeth, a fashion of simple village
people rather than cosmopolitan elites.
That there are democratic activists in Uzbekistan at all is
remarkable. The country is a regular on Freedom House's "Worst
of the Worst" list of human rights violators. It has banned any
serious opposition political parties, kicked out most Western
nonprofits, and has one of the worst torture records on the
planet. When protests erupted in the city of Andijan in 2005,
government troops opened fire, killing hundreds.
Uzbekistan's government has plenty of critics based outside the
country. But I'm surprised to find that there is a handful of
human rights activists, independent journalists, and opposition
politicians living and operating openly here. While they are the
angriest and most critical of all the people I speak to during my
time in Uzbekistan, they are also the only ones who will allow
their names to be published.
In addition to being brave, the activists are paranoid, weak, and
divided. Several believe they are being poisoned by the
government. Many of the dissidents I meet accuse the other
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dissidents of being government agents. One complains that the
Western organization that used to employ him did not pay for his
mysterious illness to be treated in Europe, and therefore, he
concluded, it must have been infiltrated by Uzbekistan's National
Security Service.
Of course, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not
out to get you. Along with the many implausible stories are welldocumented patterns of police surveillance and harassment. And
all the dissidents live under threat of even worse: The
government has infamously boiled suspected dissidents to death.
Inside his house, Yuldashev offers us Nescafé in small bowls—
the Uzbek style—and fresh melon. He lives alone—his wife, he
says, was spying on him. He's lived here since 1995, when he
fell out of favor with President Islam Karimov for advocating
democratic reforms. But his time away from the capital has not
diminished his belief in the influence he can wield. He drops
hints that he is willing to take part in whatever government
forms when Karimov eventually falls and suggests deputy prime
minister as an appropriate post.
Yuldashev says he has been keeping a diary that details
government abuses. He says it contains a record of how much he
thinks the government is spending to spy on him. "Maybe it's 1
billion sum [close to $1 million]."
The diary, he says, is just one part of a blackmail strategy—it is
already online and will be made public if he is detained. "I know
that I can be arrested and tortured. But I have four nuclear
bombs strapped to me, and one of them is the diary. Compared
with what I have in this diary, Andijan is child's play." He won't
give any hints as to what the other three "bombs" are.
If the information he has is so powerful, why doesn't he just go
abroad and publish it? "I want to be a hero. If I am touched, I'll
be famous all over the world. I'll be the only person able to beat
Karimov. I'm not going to declare war on them; they will have to
declare it on me, and then I'll beat them."
While Yuldashev, the intellectual, lives in self-imposed internal
exile and writes analytical articles for Web sites that are blocked
inside Uzbekistan, his allies at the Alliance of Human Rights
Defenders (known as UzHRD) in Tashkent take a more in-thetrenches approach to their work.
Elena Urlaeva, who deals with police abuse for the UzHRD,
says she often starts her day by filing formal complaints to the
government ombudsman, state prosecutors, and members of
parliament. "I really like writing complaints," she says. She gets
calls and office visits from people who have been mistreated by
the police, and she writes between five and 15 petitions a day.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
It seems like quixotic work, but she says she occasionally gets
results. During my visit, she wins a small victory—she receives
a letter from the Uzbekistan parliament saying that a complaint
she had issued was valid, the police involved in the complaint
had broken the law, and the case was being referred to the
Tashkent city prosecutor.
It seems ironic that, given the government's reputation for acting
outside the law, the activists' main weapon is the law. "The
Uzbekistan constitution is perfect—but the police don't obey it,"
says Jahongir Shosalimov, another of the alliance's activists.
The activists, however, obey the law—as much as they can. For
example, when they protest, they have what in Russian is called
a piket rather than a miting—the former is legal as long as there
are no speakers; the latter is illegal.
Still, the activists regularly suffer police harassment.
Plainclothes agents of the National Security Service are
permanently parked outside the office, photographing everyone
who visits. Urlaeva was fired from her job as a technician at the
state TV company; she now cleans apartments for a living. She
has been declared mentally unfit and has twice been placed in
psychiatric hospitals and given psychotropic drugs against her
will.
When the law doesn't protect them, the activists say, Western
embassies do. Urlaeva has many stories of police blocking the
door of her apartment building on days when there is a piket.
When that happens, she calls the U.S. Embassy for help. On one
such occasion she was trapped in her apartment for hours, but
she called, "and as soon as the car from the U.S. Embassy pulled
up, all of the agents ran away," she says.
Most of the activists express an absolute faith in the West's—and
especially the United States'—willingness to fight for human
rights. The irony is that Uzbekistan is often used as an example
of U.S. hypocrisy on human rights: Washington made
Uzbekistan a strategic partner in the "war on terror" and rented
the Karshi-Khanabad air base while stomaching—at least until
Andijan—its terrible human rights record.
"Thanks to the U.S. air base, the Uzbekistan government
suffered our criticisms and had to close its mouth. And then
when it left, the authorities called us American spies," says the
UzHRD's Ahtam Shaymardan.
Adds Urlaeva: "We always say that our only defense is the U.S.
Embassy, and our hopes are connected with the United States.
We consider the United States to be the model of observing the
law. We have more contacts with the U.S. Embassy than with
any other embassy, and the Americans pay more attention to
human rights defenders."
20/140
Opponents of democratization in the post-Soviet world often
accuse human rights and pro-democracy groups of being a
stalking horse for an American agenda, but reliance on
American support is not something Uzbekistan's dissidents
worry about. "It's impossible to have more problems than we
have now," says Yuldashev.
After our interview, Yuldashev walks me and Marina back to the
main highway, where we catch a bus back to Tashkent. On the
way back, Marina tells me that in addition to being a journalist,
she also dabbles in fiction.
"I've started writing stories in the magic-realist style. I think
Uzbekistan is very similar to Latin America," she says.
"How?" I ask.
"A government like a dictatorship. A huge gap between the rich
and poor. Torture," she says. It's hard to argue.
She says she has read Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana
recently. She quotes one line that she liked: " 'There are two
classes of people in Cuba—those who can be tortured and those
who can't.' I hope I'm the second group. But you know, he also
said whoever can't be tortured is just killed," she says and
laughs.
dispatches
A Terror Tour of Israel
The human problem.
By Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Friday, March 14, 2008, at 7:23 AM ET
From: Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Subject: The Ultimate Mission
Posted Monday, March 10, 2008, at 1:46 PM ET
JERUSALEM—The tourists still haven't come back to Israel,
despite the aggressive rebranding campaign ("Hot Israel") and
the photo spread in Maxim magazine ("Women of the Israel
Defense Forces").
The country had even gone a year without a single suicide
bombing, but our garrulous taxi driver was complaining as he
drove us from the Ben-Gurion airport to the Sheraton hotel in
Jerusalem. "Now, it's mostly religious travelers—evangelical
Christians and religious Jews," he said.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
True to the driver's word, we arrived at the Sheraton to find the
lobby crowded with Orthodox Jews celebrating the Sabbath. We
had arrived in Israel neither as religious pilgrims nor as
traditional tourists: We had signed up for the Ultimate CounterTerrorism Mission, a weeklong journey around the country
during which we would learn about Israel's battle with terrorism.
The trip was aimed at U.S. police officers and homeland-security
professionals.
For Israel's tourism industry, the new millennium has not been
kind. In 2000—what should have been a banner year for tourism
and pilgrimages—the number of visitors to the Promised Land
plummeted. The Second Intifada kicked off after the failure of
the Oslo negotiations and former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
visit to the Temple Mount, keeping most tourists away. In an
even worse signal to visitors, Israel's minister of tourism,
Rehavam Zeevi, was shot dead by Palestinians in October 2001.
While the people with fanny packs began trickling back between
2003 and 2005, a series of suicide bombings and rocket attacks
kept most casual tourists away. Then came the 2006 war in
Lebanon, and the Israeli tourism industry tanked again.
So, what can a country do when its tourist industry is eclipsed by
terrorism? The answer, it seems, is to market terrorism to
tourists. In perhaps one of the strangest twists of Middle East
politics, terrorism is being used to lure visitors back to Israel.
Our itinerary—which promised participants such highlights as
an "observation of a security trial of Hamas terrorists" and
briefings on "the realities of Israel's policy of targeted
killings"—was not, at first glance, for the casual visitor. But in a
way, it was. Israel has a long tradition of combining tourism and
lobbying. Most famously, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon gave a helicopter tour to George W. Bush during his
1998 trip to Israel while Bush was still governor of Texas. The
two hit it off, and the visit is widely credited with reinforcing
Bush's sympathy for Israel's security situation.
Who goes on a terror tour? At the bar on the first evening at the
hotel, we sat next to George and Joan Kessel, a retired couple
from Boca Raton, Fla., who were trying—with little success—to
tell the bartender how to mix a Gibson. "We just finished a
mission at Technion University," said Joan, a stylishly dressed
woman with her silver hair cut in a modern bob. "That one was
really good."
We had never heard of the term mission, but we soon learned it
is a generic word associated with organized trips to Israel.
Typically, the trips—often aimed at Jewish Americans—are
meant to educate the visitors on some aspects of Israeli politics
or culture. In a sense, the Ultimate Counter-Terrorism Mission,
rather than an aberration, is the logical extension of what Israel
has done for decades: bring over Jewish Americans and other
potential supporters in the hopes of demonstrating how
vulnerable the country is to internal and external threats.
21/140
"We started organizing this a few years ago when tourism
dropped off," said Avi Leitner, a lawyer with Shurat HaDin
Israel Law Center, an Israeli organization that sues terrorist
organizations and countries on behalf of victims of terror
attacks. But this year's tour was different; previous trips
organized by Shurat HaDin were aimed at the regular tourist,
featuring evening cruises, cookouts, and "luxurious bus
transportation." This year's tour, organized with a Long Islandbased homeland-security firm, Shaneson Consulting Group, was
aimed primarily at law enforcement.
Our group was what could only be described as eclectic. While
police officers, for whom the tour was tailored, dominated the
group, we also had the Kessels, a homeland-security contractor,
a former dentist, a retired ophthalmologist, and two bounty
hunters. Perhaps the most famous of our tour companions was
Richard Marcinko, the pony-tailed ex-Navy SEAL turned bestselling writer who was there as part of his security business, Red
Cell International. For the next week we would travel around
Israel, including parts of the West Bank, in a massive tour bus,
with a sign clearly marked "Ultimate Counter-Terrorism
Mission" on the windshield—something that elicited more than a
few snickers from the security-conscious members of the group.
If Israel has not always been able to convince the world of its
righteousness, it has been particularly adept at marketing its
image abroad as a military powerhouse with superior
technology. Israeli armaments manufacturer Rafael likes to
advertise "60 years of experience in the war on terrorism." Even
Krav Maga, the martial arts form taught to Israeli soldiers, has
found sweeping success in the United States with aerobics buffs.
That image—partially dented by the failures of the Second
Lebanon War—was on display throughout the tour. Indeed, part
of the idea of the tour was to market Israeli hardware such as the
Corner Shot, a gun mount with a video monitor that allows
assault teams to shoot around corners. But even the souvenir
shops displayed the fetishization of the Israeli military. The
shops were filled with T-shirts featuring military slogans ("Guns
'n' Moses"; "America, don't worry—Israel is behind you"). Our
favorite souvenir was for sale at the gift shop of the Latrun
military base: an IDF doll that played "We Will Rock You."
The days were packed full of visits to military bases, security
briefings from members of Mossad and Shin Bet, and stops for
fine dining. In the evenings, we had additional lectures that gave
us a James Bond image of Israeli operations. In an evening
lecture at the hotel, Oren Ben-Lulu, a veteran of Duvdevan, an
Israeli commando unit that specializes in undercover work,
described the intricate charades these units stage to arrest their
suspects. Commandos would go into the West Bank disguised as
Palestinians, sometimes even working in drag. Ben-Lulu, who
stood more than 6 feet tall, joked that the "younger, betterlooking guys" are assigned this job. Duvdevan even employs a
well-known Israeli makeup artist to help.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Ben-Lulu, who is now an orthopedic surgeon, even recalled
some of the more comical episodes from his career, which
sounded like outtakes from La Cage aux Folles, not combat
operations in an occupied territory—for instance, snatching a
suspect at a wedding. "After the second wedding, we stopped
doing it, because it's not very nice," he said. "You are ruining
their wedding, actually."
Funerals, he said, were still fair game.
The whole point of this tour was to sell the Israeli model of
counterterrorism. But as skilled as the Israelis are at this, it's hard
to imagine U.S. troops dressing in drag to arrest terror suspects
in Iraq. Perhaps when the United States gets to that point, it'll
mean it has been there too long. Yet Israel, which finished 2007
without a single suicide bombing originating in the West Bank
(and only one from Gaza), was claiming at least partial success.
So, is it something worth emulating?
As we boarded the bus in the afternoon of our first day, Yossi
Maimon, our tour guide, made an announcement. Ninety
minutes earlier there had been a bombing in Dimona, Israel's
first suicide attack of the year.
From: Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Subject: Law & Order: IDF
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008, at 7:49 AM ET
OFER MILITARY BASE, West Bank—On the other side of the
wire-mesh fence, Palestinian men and women lined up, waiting
to attend the trials of family members. "Don't take pictures," said
Avi Leitner, one of our tour organizers, reprimanding the group.
"They're not animals."
For the average law-abiding American, knowledge of the
criminal-justice system is largely formed by television. Unless
you've got a law degree—or have been arrested—your
knowledge of Miranda rights, body-cavity searches, and court
procedures is usually drawn from episodes of The Wire or
perhaps reading news of Paris Hilton's latest arrest. But as part
of our counterterrorism tour, we were being given a step-by-step
(or bus-stop-by-bus-stop) introduction to the Israeli military
justice system.
Military courts were set up after the 1967 Six-Day War, when
Israel took control of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai
Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. The courts fall under the
military commander for the region who makes the laws, appoints
the judges, and sets up the judicial procedures.
22/140
The Ofer court, which has jurisdiction over a portion of the West
Bank, is housed within a small trailer park on a dusty military
base west of Ramallah. It's a simple setup: seven trailers, seven
courts, with Trailer 3 reserved for appeals. There is no separate
juvenile system; those under 18 are tried in the same courts as
the adults. Our tour group was ushered inside one trailer, where
a proceeding was about to get underway.
For the court workers, it must have been a strange sight: a group
of American tourists crowded inside the peanut gallery, with
Leitner providing a running translation of the court proceedings.
"He's a famous Palestinian lawyer," he whispered, pointing to
the robed defense attorney, who was running his hands over blue
prayer beads as he exchanged small talk with the judges and the
prosecutor. "He only represents terrorists."
One man's terrorist is another man's petty criminal. The first
suspect, who entered with his legs shackled, was accused of
smuggling weapons and drugs across the border from Jordan; a
second defendant, brought in a few minutes later, was accused of
keeping weapons without a permit. In fact, many of the cases
brought before the court are not terrorism-related; petty crime
and illegal border crossings (to find work in Israel) are two of
the most common offenses. That said, terrorism-related offenses
have also surged over the last seven years. Since 2000, Israel's
total prison population has ballooned to 23,776 inmates, a
growth of 248 percent.
In fact, most of what we were witnessing in court that day were
discussions over scheduling (no small matter, since the dockets
were booked up six months ahead). The proceedings had an
improvised feel, an impression aided by the ramshackle trailer
setting. On the Israeli side, everyone looked almost comically
young: The prosecutor was wearing stylish glasses and tight
pants, her dark, curly hair pulled back into a ponytail. The three
judges lined up along the back could have passed for junior
clerks in a U.S. court.
The approach to justice here is not quite Guantanamo Bay, but
neither is it Law & Order. One thing, however, is similar to the
television series: "Settle the case" is a common rejoinder in the
military courts. "A tremendously high number of cases are pleabargained," said Maj. Menachem Lieberman, a military judge at
Ofer military base.
Israel's military-court system is attacked on many grounds,
including the high rate of plea bargains (more than 95 percent)
and low rate of acquittals (fewer than 1 percent). One of the
most serious concerns is that many of the cases are built on
confessions—later retracted in court—that are given to
interrogators from Shabak (better known as Shin Bet), Israel's
domestic-security agency.
Israeli military courts, like the U.S. military, are still wrestling
with how to use information gleaned from interrogation. The
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
courtrooms are to a certain extent open—the Israeli press and
some members of the families of the accused often attend—but
the prosecution can request that the courtroom be closed and that
the transcript be sealed when a Shabak member testifies.
Lieberman, for his part, said he preferred to keep the doors open,
allowing interrogators to testify behind a curtain. "The judge
sees him, the defendant—who anyway knows what he looks
like—gets to see him," he says. "But the people in the court
itself, the bystanders, they won't see him, that's fine."
At another stop on the tour, we were introduced to Haim Ben
Ami, a former head of interrogations at Shin Bet. He strolled
across the stage like a movie director explaining a difficult scene
to his audience.
"There's no way to convince a person in an interrogation to make
a confession only with a polite way of talking," Ben Ami said
with a wave of his hands. "It should be something that forces
him to this corner. … He should suffer somehow."
The United States may now be grappling with questions of
water-boarding and enhanced interrogations, but in Israel, these
issues have been around for years. Torture is illegal in Israel, but
also like in the United States, the difference between torture,
enhanced interrogation, and run-of-the-mill interrogation is up
for debate. As Ben Ami put it, "One box is torture? One smash is
torture? Kick his balls once, it's torture? Twice, it's torture? Let's
talk about it."
Ben Ami likes stories and has a flair for drama. Asked by a
member of our tour what he would do if his own daughter's life
were at stake, he tapped his prosthetic leg, noting that he had
already been a victim of a terror attack (a grenade was thrown at
him). But Ben Ami's best stories are about times when it might
be useful to torture terrorists, like in the case of a pair of
terrorists captured while crossing into Israel to set off a bomb in
Tel Aviv. They were tortured during interrogation and gave up
information on their comrades. Then what?
"So, I made a suggestion," Ben Ami said. "After the
interrogation, we should bring these two guys back to the water,
we put their head in water—bloop, bloop, bloop!—and let them
float to Dead Sea. In the morning, two bodies in the Dead Sea, it
happens."
Ben Ami's story, it turns out, was made up, a scenario meant to
provoke discussion. Like a good TV show, it was often hard to
tell where Ben Ami's stories crossed over into fiction. In his own
version of a "ripped from the headlines" story, he recalled giving
a lecture to law students at Harvard at the invitation of wellknown professor Alan Dershowitz. He recounted to the students
Shin Bet's involvement in delivering a suspected terrorist to the
23/140
U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in 1983. The Israelis, Ben Ami said,
had knowledge of a planned attack on the United States, but they
knew no details. As Ben Ami recalled, the Israelis told the
Americans: "Take him, make an interrogation, and we wish you
success."
Except the suspect wouldn't talk. "He said: 'Look, I wish to talk,
but I'm very tired. I'd like to fall asleep for at least two hours.' "
The suspect was taken, at his request, to a nearby apartment to
sleep. The next day, the embassy was destroyed.
The story is a powerful argument in favor of torture—or at least
enhanced interrogations—except for one problem: Like Ben
Ami's other story of the drowned terrorists (and most stories
involving a "ticking time bomb"), it's apocryphal. It never
happened. Real life is never that clean-cut. Ben Ami, however,
forgot to reveal that to the Harvard law students.
Realizing his mistake later that day, Ben Ami panicked. "I called
Alan Dershowitz and said, 'It's wrong.' " As Ben Ami recalled,
Dershowitz told him not to worry: "He said, 'No, it's a good
story, leave it.' "
From: Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Subject: Won't You Not Be My Neighbor?
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2008, at 6:51 AM ET
CHECKPOINT ELIYAHU, Israel—At first glance, Checkpoint
Eliyahu looks like a tollbooth on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Westbound traffic is backed up for a few hundred yards in the
late afternoon rush; a few trucks are pulled over for spot
inspections. But look closer: The tollbooth attendants are
carrying M4 carbines, a concrete pillbox looms over the
highway, and there is no E-ZPass lane.
Call it what you want—temporary security measure, border
crossing, segregation wall—Checkpoint Eliyahu is part of the
emerging geography of Israel and the Palestinian territories. The
checkpoint, which straddles the highway between the West Bank
towns of Qalqilyah and Nablus, is the perfect vantage point for
viewing Israel's security fence, the defining feature of this new
landscape. Israel began fencing off areas of the West Bank in the
summer of 2002, claiming a legitimate defense against
infiltration by suicide bombers and other violent attacks. A visit
to the fence is now a mandatory stop on any roadside tour of the
Holy Land.
We had picked up our guide, Capt. Noa Meir, outside Qalqilyah,
the small Palestinian town at the edge of the West Bank that has
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
become one of the most dramatic examples of the wall.
Qalqilyah was not simply walled off from Israel. Because of the
location of Israeli settlements to the north and south, the
Palestinian town was quite literally fenced in. Residents of the
city, who once had extensive commerce with Israelis, aren't just
separated from Israel; they are separated from the world.
Meir, a U.S.-born Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman, escorted
our group over to the military watchtower that looms over a
section of the wall outside the town. "The people defending us
are not very happy we're here," she said. "There can be sniper
fire." She distributed copies of "Israel's Security Fence:
Defending Innocent Civilians From Terror," a brochure crowded
with statistics and talking points. ("[T]he land used in building
the security fence is seized for military purposes, not
confiscated. … [S]pecial arrangements have been made for
Palestinian farmers separated from their lands. … The security
fence, whose only function is to provide security, does not seal
off the West Bank.")
From Qalqilyah or Tulkarem, the western edge of the West
Bank, it's only about 10 miles to the Mediterranean Sea. Yet
standing within spitting distance of an Arab town—one that
elected a Hamas mayor, no less—clearly makes some members
of our tour group uncomfortable, sometimes to comedic effect.
We suddenly notice that Yossi Maimon, our tour guide and
history lecturer, had a Mini-Uzi draped behind his back. One of
the U.S. security consultants knelt nonchalantly in the dust.
("Don't want to be a sniper target," he explained to us later.) As
we walked down the road, we half-expected someone to cry out,
"Serpentine, Shel! Serpentine!"
We rode with Meir to Checkpoint Eliyahu, where donkey carts
waited in line next to passenger cars. At the checkpoint, there is
no solid concrete wall—the fence is more like a military frontier
or demilitarized zone, with a layered series of barriers that
includes a ditch to prevent vehicle crossings, tightly coiled
stacks of concertina wire, and intrusion-detection fences with
pre-tensioned wires that can detect the slightest movement.
Israeli security forces monitor the buffer zone with an array of
high-tech surveillance equipment: cameras, pressure sensors,
and thermal-imaging devices. Bedouin trackers patrol the dirt
roads adjoining the barrier, looking for errant footprints.
The portion of the fence between Qalqilyah and the Israeli town
of Kfar Saba is a concrete barrier around 28 feet high. The main
purpose, according to the Israelis, is to prevent snipers from
firing into Kfar Saba or at commuters driving Highway 6, a toll
road that runs along portions of the Green Line. While the
Israelis like to point out that the solid concrete walls form only
about 4 percent to 5 percent of the total length of the security
fence, those sections are emblematic of the Israeli government's
effort to physically separate its population from the Palestinians.
24/140
As such, these sections have become a stop on the itinerary for
peace activists and nongovernmental organizations. The wall
even lured graffiti artist Banksy, who called the security fence
"the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers."
They are also an attraction for pro-Israeli groups that want to
demonstrate to visitors what they see as the unique security
needs of the state of Israel.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the fence is that it does
not correspond strictly to the Green Line—Israel's pre-1967
border—though Israel maintains that the wall does not denote a
political settlement. While billed as a "temporary inconvenience"
and "defensive measure," the wall has become a controversial
form of eminent domain. "By taking 4 percent of the West Bank,
we protect 75 percent of Israeli settlers," Meir said.
Israel views the wall as a success. Since the construction of the
fence, the number of suicide bombings in Israel has come down
dramatically. Meir pointed to the overall 90 percent drop in
terrorist attacks since the construction of the fence and a parallel
drop in casualties as proof of success. No suicide bombings have
originated from Qalqilyah since the town was surrounded by the
fence. (Before the barrier, several suicide attacks originated
there, including a particularly deadly attack on a Tel Aviv disco
in 2001.) In 2007, not a single suicide bombing originated in the
West Bank. "We're not stopping Palestinians from coming in;
we're trying to stop terrorists from coming in," Meir said.
Success, however, becomes justification, and the law of
unintended consequences is at work for both sides. Members of
the militant Islamic group Hamas swept municipal elections in
2005. Qalqilyah elected as its mayor a member of Hamas, who
at the time was sitting in an Israeli prison. The town, which once
had extensive commerce with Israel, is now off-limits for Jewish
Israelis. The restricted access to Israel has meant lost income and
unemployment for Palestinians, and the checkpoints reinforce
for them the humiliation of occupation. The wall bottles in
Palestinians, restricts their movement, and separates farmers
from their land.
Israel's security fence may be a technical success, but building a
barrier along 2,000 miles of border is a different matter. Not
long after our trip to Israel, the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security announced approval of Project 28, a high-tech network
of towers and sensors in Arizona that forms the prototype of a
"virtual fence" that could eventually span the U.S-Mexican
border.
With U.S. politicians clamoring to seal the border with Mexico,
it's tempting for them to look at Israel's high-tech fence as a
model for border security. Not surprisingly, Israeli firms that
specialize in surveillance technology and security barriers are
racing to enter the U.S. homeland-security market. A U.S.
subsidiary of Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems is a member of
the Boeing-led team that won the U.S. border contract in
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
September 2006. Magal Security Systems, the Israeli company
that builds the Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems along
Israel's borders, opened an office near Washington in late 2006
to focus on the U.S. homeland-security market.
But the history of walls is rife with mixed results: The Great
Wall of China ultimately failed to stop foreign invaders; former
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's electronic barrier in
Vietnam could not halt Viet Cong infiltration; and the Berlin
Wall lasted only 28 years. The United States' border experiment,
as the newest entrant, has been plagued by equipment and
software glitches. Thus far, the Department of Homeland
Security's "virtual fence" spans just 28 miles.
So, do walls work? We asked this question to Asa Gil-Ad, chief
superintendent of Israel's National Police. He reminded us that
the year's reprieve against suicide bombs had coincided with a
rise in a new sort of terror attack: Qassam rockets launched from
Gaza. "They don't need to come here, to send their peoplemissiles," he told us. "They have these missiles that they fire, so
they can terrorize an entire region."
From: Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Subject: The World's Most Dangerous Bus Station
Posted Thursday, March 13, 2008, at 7:14 AM ET
JERUSALEM—"If this is such a goddamned hotspot, then I
don't like standing in the middle of the street," declared fellow
terror tourist Richard Marcinko as we lingered near the front
entrance of the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. In front of us, a
crowd of Israelis surged through the metal detectors, busily
shoving backpacks and bundles into the X-ray machines.
By Day 4 of our tour of terror, one thing was certain: Paranoia
was getting the better of us. We saw potential "hotspots"
everywhere, and the security line in front of the bus station was
now a chokepoint where we would be stranded in case of attack.
What better target than a group of foreigners traveling in a bus
prominently labeled with the sign: "THE ULTIMATE
COUNTER-TERRORISM MISSION."
Israel's mass transportation system is particularly high on the list
of places to avoid, especially after reading up on the wave of
suicide attacks aimed at buses and bus stations. It was precisely
that series of bombings that led to the opening in 2002 of
Jerusalem's new bus terminal, which was designed to incorporate
new security procedures (and accommodate increased commuter
traffic). Today, every person who enters the station must pass
25/140
through a metal detector and put their baggage through the X-ray
machine.
Well, almost everyone. A few words were exchanged between
our tour leaders and security, and our group was suddenly
herded through the checkpoint with the wave of a hand. It helps
to have a personal escort from the chief of security. Once past
the gate, we entered the cavernous shopping-mall interior, where
army conscripts on leave mingled with civilians shopping for
mobile-phone accessories and lining up for slices of pizza. Just a
few years ago, the bus attacks held Israelis in the grip of mass
anxiety, a sort of collective nightmare that has become a rich,
raw subject for everything from documentary films to graphic
novels. Today, the new bus terminal is one of the country's main
transportation hubs, and everything has a sort of eerie placidity.
We were led through the underground parking lot to the main
security command post, where a handful of guards were
monitoring a bank of TV screens. A network of 84 closed-circuit
cameras can peer into almost every corner of the bus station, but
the security professionals in our group were less than impressed:
Beyond the CCTV system, the bus station featured none of the
fancy biometric detection technology that has been developed in
Israel. The chief of security even conceded that his security
officers were not on the lookout for anything beyond "suspicious
behavior."
Still, the security measures were strict, at least compared with a
Greyhound terminal. We had more questions, but our guides
were eager to show us the next attraction. "Come on, guys!" tour
leader Yossi Maimon said. "We're going to see a bulletproof
bus."
Rows of the hulking green vehicles, which ply the more
hazardous routes to settlements in the West Bank, were lined up
in the underground parking garage. Security comes at a price. A
bulletproof bus—which features a blast-resistant hull and
ballistic glass—costs twice as much as a regular bus, more than
half a million U.S. dollars. While well-armored, they are not
invulnerable; they come equipped with GPS tracking systems
and video cameras that allow army headquarters to hear and see
inside the bus in an emergency.
To the casual observer, Israel's bus terminals have the level of
security you might find at a U.S. airport. But security at the
Jerusalem Central Bus Station was nothing compared with BenGurion International Airport, where we were also treated to a
similar behind-the-scenes tour.
Ben-Gurion is supposed to be the gold standard for airport
security. And it has an impressive track record: While there have
been terrorist attacks directed at the airport, no aircraft
originating from Ben-Gurion has been successfully hijacked.
That makes it an attractive model for U.S. airports. Airport
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
security directors from the United States have visited BenGurion to study Israeli security; Boston's Logan International
Airport even hired its former director of security.
But if Israel is the model for airline security, then what we saw
stood in surprising contrast to what is going on in U.S. airports.
The U.S. Transportation Security Agency is pouring millions
into new-fangled contraptions ranging from facial readers that
will detect "hostile intent" to shoe-bomb screening equipment.
But walking through Ben-Gurion airport, we realized that the
focus was not on the technology, per se. The system instead
relies on layers of security that begin at the outer perimeter of
the airport, which is cordoned off with the same kind of
pressure-sensitive fencing used in Israel's security barrier. All
vehicles pass through an inspection long before they approach
the terminal.
Nahum Liss, the head of security at Ben-Gurion, did not go into
great detail on what is the most controversial aspect of airport
security in Israel: ethnic profiling. Just last year, Israel did away
with tagging luggage by color, a system that was accused of
discriminating against Arabs, but Palestinians and Arab-Israelis
still frequently complain of extra screening. Liss, for his part,
claimed that profiling didn't focus exclusively on looking for
terrorists; rather, they are looking for people duped into carrying
something for a terrorist. "We can detect an attacker, we are not
afraid of that," Liss told us. "We are afraid of other passengers
who are naive or innocent. That is our big concern."
After an hourlong lecture by Liss, we were escorted into a back
area, a dismal, utilitarian room decorated with tattered old
posters, including one that read, "Have Faith in Israel." Those
selected for an additional round of screening—based on
profiling—are taken here for further questioning or body
searches. A bottle blonde wearing the uniform of the Russian
devushka (hot pants, Prada bag, and stiletto-heeled boots)
emerged from a dressing room. In fact, one of the members of
our tour group, a Japanese-American woman, had already paid a
visit to this same room; upon her arrival, security officials were
apparently suspicious of the visas for Afghanistan and Iran in
her passport and had questioned her for half an hour. So, what,
then, is the profile of a terrorist?
Halfway through our tour, we paused to take a break on the
tarmac, where we realized that we—a motley group of foreigners
with backpacks and digital equipment—had ambled through the
world's most secure airport, including off-limits areas, without
so much as a pat-down. No metal detectors, no X-rays, not even
an ID check. Sitting in clear view of airplanes waiting for
international flights, we wondered what could justify such a
breach. Was this evidence of what Liss called a "common sense"
approach to security or simply proof that no system is
completely fail-safe?
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As we walked out through the employee gate, we stopped at the
bin of confiscated items—a huge collection of nail scissors and
other forbidden objects. One of the things Liss mocked—even
though Israel complied—were demands that such seemingly
innocent items be confiscated. What is the point, Liss asked, of
taking away nail clippers from a pilot who could easily send the
plane into a suicidal plunge?
"There is no 100 percent security," he said. "If you want 100
percent security, you'll get zero percent aviation activity."
From: Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Subject: The Human Problem
Posted Friday, March 14, 2008, at 7:23 AM ET
JERUSALEM—Spending a week on a tour of terror is not
particularly relaxing. After a week listening to briefings on
terrorism, our mood had darkened. As we walked past the cafes
of Jerusalem, we found ourselves staring suspiciously at large
backpacks and at people with their hands in their pockets.
A simple stroll through Jerusalem became a constant reminder of
terrorist attacks over the years: There's the intersection of King
George Street and Jaffa Street—just a few blocks from our
hotel—where, on Aug. 19, 2001, a suicide bomber entered a
crowded Sbarro restaurant, setting off an explosion that killed 15
and wounded 130. Even small cafes now employ a security
guard to check bags and watch for suspicious behavior.
As we walked through the streets of Jerusalem on our final day,
we wondered why Israel had been so quiet over the last year.
This question went to the very heart of our counterterrorism
tour: the notion that Israel has somehow figured out how to win,
or at least hold at bay, the "war on terror." Over the course of the
week, we had heard many explanations for the lull in attacks: the
wall, the layers of security that protect key sites, and the legal
system, which allows Israel to quickly lock up suspected
terrorists.
But Roni Shaked, a former commander in Israel's Shin Bet, gave
us what he felt was the real explanation behind Israel's success.
"The main, main reason why it's quiet, I think, it's just because
of the Israeli security service," Shaked had told us on the first
day of the tour. "Because during those years, we understood how
to fight against the new kind of terrorism, how to fight against
the new phenomenon of terror, the suicide bombers who are in
Israel."
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
According to Shaked, Israel's success rests on several decades'
worth of experience infiltrating Palestinian society. Shaked even
brought with him living proof: Sami, a Palestinian collaborator
from Hebron, who had worked with Shin Bet for more than three
decades. (Even though Sami's identity is well-known in the West
Bank, we were asked to use only his first name for this article.)
It did not particularly surprise us that Israel had collaborators
(during one lecture, we were told that one-third of Palestinian
prisoners were informers). But finding one who would want to
speak to our group—whose tour guide lectured us on the "Arab
mindset," the "myth of the Palestinian people," and even the
evils of the "Arab goat"—was slightly surprising.
Still, for nearly an hour, Sami, the only Palestinian (and the only
Muslim) to speak to the group during the tour, politely answered
our questions. He said he first started working with Shin Bet
after witnessing a grenade thrown near a holy site in Hebron in
1969. He was outraged by the disregard for innocent civilians.
He eventually became a trusted agent, he recounted, even
penetrating a terrorist cell to provide intelligence to Israel.
It was also not difficult to understand why a Palestinian would
be outraged by the indiscriminate nature of terrorism or even
cooperate with the Israeli government, but Sami's story could
hardly be called typical. Even when the Israeli army accidentally
killed one of his children, Sami's allegiance remained with his
handlers. "Two weeks after what happened, Hamas sent me
people and said, 'Look what the Jewish people did to your son.
Come and work with us.' I told them that I choose my way, and
my way of life." What happened to his son, he told us, was God's
will.
After numerous death threats, Sami eventually fled with his
family from Hebron to Jerusalem. Now retired in Israel, and
with Israeli citizenship, he told us that he receives a modest
pension from the government. In the West Bank, he's a wanted
man.
Sami is one part of how Israel has fought terrorism: infiltrating
the West Bank and its terrorist organizations. But in Jerusalem,
particularly the Old City, the police have gone one step further,
creating a sort of Panopticon, where visitors and residents are
under persistent surveillance by closed-circuit cameras, military
observation posts, and police patrols. Riot police are always on
alert, and plainclothes officers patrol the maze of medieval
streets while oblivious tourists enjoy their falafel.
On our last day, our group paid a visit to Mabat 2000, a
monitoring station at police headquarters in the Old City, just
behind the Jaffa Gate. We were ushered inside the high-tech
command post, where uniformed personnel watch a bank of TV
screens and a "big board" that can zoom in on different points of
interest inside the city. More than 300 cameras are installed at
different points around the Old City in addition to sensors and
listening devices. Directional cameras can zoom in on suspicious
27/140
individuals, vehicles, or objects. Alarms and digital pings made
the place sound like a 1980s arcade.
The Old City, to state the obvious, is a high-risk area. Four
traditional communities—Muslim, Jewish, Armenian, and
Christian—are crowded within its walls. And in addition to the
profound emotional and political pull it exerts, the place is a
magnet for god-botherers and end-timers as well as tourists. The
police have a dedicated unit for the Temple Mount, where the
Second Intifada kicked off in 2000. The commander showed us
some of the surveillance tape of the uprising. As in the opening
credits to The Wire, the video concludes with a Palestinian
bashing the lens of the closed-circuit camera with a well-aimed
paving stone. Eventually, someone shimmies up the pole and
rips the battered camera loose from its housing.
It's a costly setup and one that has some obvious cracks at the
seams: It depends on people. As anyone who has seen the
Transportation Security Administration at work knows, watching
security cameras can be a stultifying job. But this is Jerusalem;
we were just a few hundred yards from the city's holiest sites,
which are supposed to be guarded by the most alert, aggressive,
and watchful security force. As we watched the commander give
his presentation, one of the young officers on duty—a draft-age
Israeli with a close-cropped haircut—quietly dozed off at his
post. Head resting on hand, he slid into his chair, oblivious to his
commanding officer standing behind him.
At first glance, Israel is the ultimate high-security state. And the
main purpose of the Ultimate Counter-Terrorism Mission was to
sell U.S. security professionals on Israeli know-how and
technology. Many of our stops and lecturers—including Sami—
make frequent appearances on itineraries for visiting
delegations. Israel boasts of its security: the fence, the seemingly
impregnable Ben-Gurion airport, and a legendary intelligence
network. But it comes at a price that Americans may not be
ready to accept: metal detectors at the entrance to shopping
malls, military courts, and conscription.
regarded as one of the highest-risk areas in the Old City. We
walked through the metal detector, manned by two boredlooking guards. We dutifully emptied our pockets and placed our
bags on the conveyor belt of the X-ray machine.
One guard chatted on the phone, the other watched impassively
as Adar, dressed in civilian clothing, walked through the detector
with her gun concealed under her jacket. The alarm didn't go off;
neither guard asked for her ID. After passing through the
checkpoint, Adar turned back around to face the guards. "Why
didn't you stop me?" she demanded, pulling out her police ID.
Adar upbraided the guards for a full minute, as they meekly
made excuses. ("Well, he's on the phone …" one protested.) As
she lectured them, we thought about all the barriers, cameras,
and sensors; we thought about the intelligence agents and
informers; and we thought about all the wizardry, gadgetry, and
gimmickry that Israel puts into stopping terrorism. Yet it could
all come down to this: two bored guards at a checkpoint.
"Why didn't it go off?" Adar demanded, pointing to the mute
detector, topped with a blinking red light.
"The alarm is broken," one guard replied sheepishly. "They
haven't fixed it yet, but we're watching the light."
dispatches
Notes on Fashion Week
What's everybody scribbling about in their notebooks?
By Josh Patner
Friday, February 8, 2008, at 6:50 PM ET
From: Josh Patner
Subject: Is This the Seedy Underbelly of New York Fashion?
In the meantime, Israel's war on terrorism is hardly peaceful.
The military recently stepped up raids on the Gaza Strip, another
spike in ongoing operations inside the Palestinian territories.
There are constant nightly incursions: a terror suspect arrested
one night, a rocket lab discovered on another. Suicide bombings
have dropped precipitously, but rockets from Gaza now rain
down on southern Israel, and, tragically, the temporary lull in
terror attacks has done nothing to solve the underlying IsraeliPalestinian conflict or the plight of Palestinians. What, then,
does Israel's fight against terrorism teach the United States?
Posted Wednesday, February 6, 2008, at 2:43 PM ET
We contemplated that question on Saturday morning when Talia
Adar, a reserve police officer, took us on a tour of the Old City
while most of our group took off for a day at the Dead Sea. After
a walk through the four ethnic quarters, we followed Adar
through the security checkpoint that leads to the Western Wall—
No free Evian (the "official water" of Mercedes-Benz Fashion
Week, a term that refers to the show held in the Bryant Park
tents) was distributed. There were no cushy banquettes like those
temporarily installed at great cost in the Chelsea galleries used
by Halston. Telfar's clothes—unisex uniforms with exaggerated
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Sunday night, while fashion's powerbrokers were on their way to
Diane von Furstenberg's post-show dinner at her Meatpacking
District headquarters, a 22-year-old designer named Telfar, who
has been in business for three years, showed his collection at St.
Mark's Church in the East Village. It was a full house. Not a
powerbroker in sight.
28/140
proportions, referencing the late-'80s avant-garde—were made
with care. The production—models with asymmetrical, neoncolored hairpieces marching through pools of light—was
impeccable. This isn't exactly the seedy underbelly of New York
Fashion Week, but when compared with the megabrands
showing in Bryant Park, it can feel that way.
Is there an independent fashion vision to be found in New York?
It's an important question. Fashion people are always looking for
new talent "discovered" far from the central action, the hand-tomouth designer who does what he can with what little he has.
These hopefuls find different fates: An early John Galliano
breakthrough show happened in a borrowed hotel particulier in
Paris. Today, he is perhaps the biggest name in that city. Miguel
Adrover thrilled New York with one of his very first shows,
which included a coat made from Quentin Crisp's mattress.
Adrover found it in the street, and now finds himself out of
business.
Telfar is not well-known by the fashion establishment, but he
does have some fashion cred, and fans at the show praised him
for offering "a ray of hope in a monotonous city" and for playing
with shape. The appeal of a show like this? "It's not about selling
clothes," one fan said. "It's a different experience."
But anti-commercial doesn't necessarily mean good. Telfar
offered a collection for 9-to-5 New Yorkers plowing through the
daily grind. A few items were intriguing. Although the fashion
outsider would roll his eyes at the thought of wearing a jersey
jumpsuit on Wall Street, especially one that could also be worn
by a woman, some of the pieces had a youthful elegance. For
people who ask, "Who would wear that?" Telfar has an easy
answer: He sells his collection to downtown groovesters at
boutiques like Pixie Market and Oak. But some of his looks
raised another, more difficult question: "Why would I buy that if
I already own it?" The less extreme pieces shown looked like
basics from American Apparel.
As the models began to trot, questions kept rising: Why do
people respond to one basic black turtleneck and not another?
How does a new name get known? How much time should a
young designer be given to find his own vocabulary or to make
something new from what has gone before him?
And, most importantly, when does "referencing" another
designer's work go too far? Here was a veritable inventory of
avant-garde clichés: The ugly-can-be-beautiful mood could be
traced to Andre Walker, a brilliant American designer who used
to show in Paris and has since consulted on Marc Jacobs'
collections. The mannish, exaggerated silhouette was Yohji
Yamamoto's. The neon hair was Rei Kawakubo's. Ragamuffin
sweaters recalled Martin Margiella. The designer's layered
references finally made sense—and gelled into something
genuinely new—in a standout draped, gray-velour sweatshirt. It
was Vionnet via Gaultier via Telfar.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Referencing, of course, is nothing new in fashion. What designer
hasn't had a go at Chanel's cardigan jacket and little black dress?
But if Telfar was going for a postmodern layering of easily
identifiable imagery, he seemed to have no new ideas or new
points to make. The retrospective might have been stronger had
it been offered up in shocking color or eco-friendly fabrics. But
Telfar was showing the same old wooly black.
Is this really New York's vanguard? Yes. And it will do in a
pinch. No one in the audience seemed to care that the designs
had all been seen before, and surely a 22-year-old designer
deserves time to grow. "He's starting with what he knows," said
Oak co-owner Louis Terline. "This is what fashion looked like
when he was a kid." The truth is, New York is lucky to have
Telfar, if only for the emotions he stirs. People want a renegade,
even one who is less than fully charged.
Question of the Day (send yours to josh.patner@gmail.com):
What would happen if a normal, everyday, noncelebrity type of
woman (who happened to have exquisite taste, btw) got a ticket
to one of the bigger designer shows, and just walked up and sat
down in the front row? What if I refused to give up my seat to
Demi, or, God forbid, Tara Reid? What would they do? Kick me
out?
The simple answer is: yes. If you sat down in a reserved seat at
the symphony or on an airplane, wouldn't you expect to be
kicked out of it? Your exquisite taste is irrelevant to a designer
hosting a fashion show. A front-row celebrity—with or without
taste—is, on the other hand, entirely relevant. She may be a
friend or client of the designer, or both. She may be the
designer's muse. But whoever she is, the one thing she is likely
to provide is free press. What will your exquisite taste provide?
While it's true that people (myself included) do occasionally
upgrade themselves to an empty front-row seat, they do so
knowing they are courting the embarrassment of being asked to
move. Noncelebrity front-row guests (press who are writing
reviews and need to see the clothes in detail, and retail
executives who are there to spend money) are there to conduct
business, so they've earned their front-row seats. Consider that
Marc Jacobs' show has only 130 front-row seats, and Michael
Kors' only 200. Then calculate that each major magazine and
retail team has about five front-row players. That's a lot of seats.
If the person "your" seat was intended for didn't boot you,
chances are the designer's PR team would.
From: Josh Patner
Subject: How Not To Bring a Label Back From the Dead
29/140
Posted Thursday, February 7, 2008, at 7:39 AM ET
What is it about the legacy of Halston that trips up every
designer who has tried to revive his name? His deceptively
simple, minimalist aesthetic might be a part of it. Working with
an absence of embellishment and a lean silhouette that rarely
varied, Halston's clothes were masterful studies in cut, color, and
texture. He could make a lavish gown using only one seam,
flatter a variety of complexions with his powdery palette, and
juxtapose airy chiffon with gutsy Ultrasuede (a signature fabric),
only to make each more beautiful. But it's not impossible to
reinvent minimalism: Raf Simons, the designer of über-clean Jil
Sander, has shown that that aesthetic can evolve, even in the
absence of a house's founding designer. Something else seems to
elude all would-be Halston resuscitators.
Marco Zanini, Donatella Versace's longtime right-hand man (he
was the chief designer for both Versace's haute couture and
ready-to-wear collections), needs to figure out what that is if he
is to move past his lackluster debut as Halston's new capo on
Monday at the Gagosian Gallery. With the backing of movie
mogul Harvey Weinstein and former Jimmy Choo owner
Tamara Mellon, Zanini is in a swell position to make magic
where others have only made a mess. Nobody remembers
Bradley Bayou's Halston (2002-2005). And though retailers say
that Randolph Duke, who had his crack at Halston's slithery,
one-shoulder dresses between 1997 and 1998, sold well, his
clothes were oversexed for a label that once only suggested what
went on behind closed doors.
Zanini's clothes were pretty enough. But, frankly, who cares?
The challenge in reviving the name of any designer who is dead
is to think hard about what that designer might do if he were
alive today. Halston had the double blessing of being talented
and being a man utterly of his time. It is designers like these who
change the way women dress. As the automobile was becoming
commonplace, Gabrielle Chanel trained her chic eye on clothing
that suggested a woman could move as quickly as a man, erasing
Paul Poiret's lampshade silhouette with her gamine little suits.
Christian Dior practically drowned his models in meters of rich
satin after the fabric rationing of World War II. We already
know Halston designed pretty clothes. What Halston really did,
however, was to assert that American fashion—simple,
convenient, elegant—had a place on the world stage at a time
when Yves Saint Laurent's French extravagance ruled the day.
Which brings us to Halston's models, the "Halstonettes." These
women—icy blond Karen Bjornson; regal, ebony-skinned
Naomi Sims—represented a mix of American faces. His clients
were the most stylish of that era: Anjelica Huston, Berry
Berenson, Liza Minnelli. Where were these strong and varied
women in Zanini's lineup? His pinheaded, young, white models
projected nothing of the strength of Halston's famous castings.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Who, exactly, is Zanini hoping to dress? Who are today's
Halstonettes? Ms. Mellon, long brown hair flowing, wearing
bold black-and-gold sunglasses and a shimmy of a jersey dress,
looked more relevant than anyone in Zanini's show.
Perhaps the problem is that Zanini, like his predecessors, has
reduced Halston to less than the sum of his parts. Halston was
not all pure palette and one-shoulder dresses. You need only see
pictures from the early shows held in his East Side townhouse,
which was decorated with batik-draped walls, orchids, and East
Indian furniture by Angelo Donghia*, to understand that. Where
were the hand-painted stripes? The incredible floral prints?
Deeper, and more stylish, thinking is needed to free this house
from legacy.
Question of the Day (send yours to josh.patner@gmail.com):
Is it really necessary to have fashion weeks in four different
cities? What are the differences between the locales?
Fashion weeks are filled with glamour and celebrities, but they
are, essentially, trade shows, opportunities for manufacturers to
present their wares to buyers. Each country that is a serious
producer of fashion has its own fashion week. Today, in addition
to New York, London, Milan, and Paris, fashion weeks are held
in Tokyo, São Paulo, and Moscow.
For a long time, the four major fashion capitals had identifiable
styles. Milan was known for streamlined clothes and industrial
might. (Giorgio Armani is an example of the first; the nowdefunct Genny Group, which produced Genny and Byblos, in
addition to other labels, is an example of the latter.) Paris
"owned" extravagant femininity (the applied decoration of
Christian Lacroix or Valentino) and the experimental (Yohji
Yamamoto, Commes des Garcons). London meant social
commentary on the one hand (Vivienne Westwood's punk) and
ladylike fashion on the other (Jean Muir). And New York was
known for sportswear (the interchangeable separates of Perry
Ellis, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan).
In the early '90s, though, designers began to be plucked from
their home countries to design big-name collections abroad.
(Oscar de la Renta, a New York designer, once also designed for
Balmain, in Paris. Gianfranco Ferre, from Milan, once designed
for the French Christian Dior. Marc Jacobs, whose own business
is based in New York, now also designs Louis Vuitton, in Paris.)
Today, when Brit Jonathan Saunders shows in New York and
American Rick Owens shows in Paris, national distinctions are
all but irrelevant, though I'd argue that, at their best, the
collections do reflect those core aesthetics.
Correction, Feb. 8, 2008: The article originally referred to
Angelo Donghia as Angela Donghia. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
30/140
From: Josh Patner
Subject: What's Everybody Scribbling About in Their Notebooks?
Posted Friday, February 8, 2008, at 6:41 PM ET
Maybe you've seen them on TV: the fashion people taking notes.
As the lights dim and the music rises, men in suits and women
dressed to the hilt grab their Smythson notebooks and start
scribbling. What, exactly, are they writing down?
Fashion is big business, and the income generated by magazine
publishers and retailers begins in those scribbles. In the midst of
the free promotions, the film crews, The Donald and The
Melania, the furs, and the attitude at New York Fashion Week,
hundreds of professionals are getting down to the business of
logging their first impressions. The rapid-fire notes fashion
people make often include adjectives describing mood or
attitude, notes on colors or fabrics appearing repeatedly from
show to show, and emerging silhouettes and proportions. These
trends—pattern-mixing, for example, or metallics—will be
discussed in fashion meetings at magazines, buying offices,
advertising agencies, and cosmetic empires. Who is the woman
of fall 2008? And how do we sell her?
But the clothes aren't the only things being studied. Everything
at a show is a signal, and everything gets written down. Even the
music, which is carefully selected to help convey the season's
mood and attitude, gets noted. At Michael Kors' Mad Men-inCamelot show, Kennedy-era styles paraded in front of a huge
projection screen with live video feed of the 200 photographers
flashing away at them. The message was: Big Time Glamour.
Zac Posen stacked gilt ballroom chairs from floor to ceiling at
the entrance to his runway. The message: Big Time Skirts. (In a
ballroom with gilt chairs, women wear big ball skirts.) If the
New York collections—and the notes fashion people were
making on them—are any indication, both will be big-time
trends this season.
Note-taking methods are as idiosyncratic as the note-takers
themselves. "I list the clothes on the left side and the accessories
on the right," says Anne Slowey, the fashion news director of
Elle and Elle Accessories. "The silhouette gets a big arrow in the
top corner." Linda Fargo, the fashion director of Bergdorf
Goodman, who is responsible for registering the trends in
advertising and in the buyers' selections, tabs her notebook into
sections. "I have different pages that I drop ideas into. I crossreference the book by designers, trends, and ideas for how to
promote them throughout the season," she says.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Harper's Bazaar Editor Glenda Bailey takes avid notes. "I'm
editing," she said, flipping through her sketches. "Choosing what
goes on the cover, what stories go in the well, and when. That's
my job. That's what I'm paid to do." Adam Glassman, the
creative director of O, The Oprah Magazine, takes notes on how
to distill esoteric trends for the masses while also looking for
more glamorous clothes for the stars to wear on the cover.
"Pattern-mixing with florals and textures," he gives as an
example, "how does the everyday woman take that information
into a department store or mall?"
While most designers produce "look books" (numbered
photographs from the runway), and everyone has access to the
complete collections on Web sites like Style.com, many fashion
people prefer to jot down what they see—and what they think of
it. "I don't work with a computer," says Grace Coddington,
Vogue's mythic creative director, who is famous for sketching
nearly every outfit that passes by her. "Taking notes is more
personal."
But not everyone is a note-taker. New York Times fashion critic
Cathy Horyn is less attached to her notes. "Sometimes I take
them, sometimes I don't," she says. "I draw little drawings, and if
I have a thought, I write it down." And some of the fashion
world's most important powerbrokers don't take notes at all.
Susan Morrison, the articles and fashion editor of the New
Yorker, watches the shows intently and lets them "marinate and
percolate" without writing anything down. Anna Wintour—
undoubtedly the most powerful person in the industry—doesn't
carry a notebook. "I have wonderful editors who have much
better memories and drawing skills than I do," she says. Kim
Hastrieter, the editor of Paper magazine, also skips the
notebook. "I don't like too much stuff," she says. "My eyes are
my notes."
Question of the Day (send yours to josh.patner@gmail.com): I
would like to know, seriously, why fashion people think that
some of these super-super-starved-looking models' bodies look
good? I get that clothes hang better on skinnier bodies, and I'm
not asking as some kind of feminist statement, or because skinny
models send a bad message or make us feel bad about ourselves.
I just seriously think that a lot of them look BAD. What gives?
I couldn't agree more with you: Nothing is less stylish, or more
inappropriate, than showing clothes on unhealthy looking
models. But I also can't help wondering if you have been looking
at the models this season. Anorexia was much in the news last
season, when the appearance of bony spines and knobby elbows
on the runways caused enough concern that Anna Wintour and
the Council of Fashion Designers of America held a press
conference to discuss initiatives to address the problem of
malnourished models.
31/140
Because of the heightened awareness this season—or perhaps
just the damaging scrutiny from the press—New York runways
have been essentially free of the offending, anorexic models.
"The CFDA sent out letters reminding designers of the issue,"
says Fern Mallis, the senior vice president of IMG, which
oversees Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. "I don't
think it looked like an anorexic season. The message got out.
Everyone thinks it's an important issue. The models' agencies are
being more careful."
I think the industry can proudly say their reaction was swift and
effective. "I've only seen one girl that I thought looked too thin,"
says Teen Vogue Editor Amy Astley. Astley pays particular
attention to the issue because of the impressionable age of her
readers. "Chanel Iman, Karlie Kloss, I know these girls," she
says. "They've been on my covers. I know their mothers. They
are healthy girls. They eat."
Anorexia isn't this season's issue. "The models are not getting
skinnier, they're getting younger," says Astley. "They are very
tall and slim, and they can maintain their model weight because
they are young. It becomes harder when they hit 22, and that's
when a lot of them stop doing shows." Karlie Kloss and Allie
Stephens, two of the hottest models, are 16 years old.*
(Underage models are accompanied by a parent at all times
when they work.) But before anyone pulls out the soapbox, it's
important to remember that fashion's obsession with youth is
nothing new. Modeling legend Carmen del'Orifice began her
career at the age of 14.
Wouldn't it be great if the fashion industry has truly left the
promotion of anorexia behind? "Every Fashion Week has its
issue," Mallis says. "This season, it's the recession."
Correction, Feb. 12, 2008: This piece originally misspelled
Karlie Kloss' name. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
dispatches
Dispatches From Fashion Week
The woman who taught Lindsay Lohan to sneer.
By Troy Patterson
Wednesday, February 7, 2007, at 7:39 PM ET
From: By Troy Patterson
Subject: Nobodies Strike a Pose
Posted Friday, February 2, 2007, at 5:16 PM ET
Week, when the practice of hanging on springs to life as a fullfledged cottage industry and the shimmering oddities of the
city's night life get thrown into high relief. Thus, the party at the
SoHo Grand on Thursday night—a gallery opening for a
photographer named Jeremy Kost—wasn't a Fashion Week thing
so much as a happening at the downtown-art-hipster fringe
thereof, just another scene at the intersection of the image
business and the Champagne industry.
The SoHo Grand is a hotel, and if you've picked up a glossy
magazine in the past five years, then you've heard of it. Pop Star
X strides into an interview, turning heads. … Action Hero Y
chews his salad with surprising humility. … The daytime decibel
levels in the lounge are conducive to audio recording, and the
place is so luxuriously bland that a celebrity profiler counts
himself lucky when Starlet Z makes a joke about a stray bread
crumb. The hard-core fashion crowd would rather be at the
Gramercy Park Hotel—or at least someplace where they don't
put a plastic band on your wrist as you enter a party, as if this
were Spring Break in Myrtle Beach.
It happens that Kost's new photographs—blown-up Polaroids
with a mythic tilt, a tawdry grace, and a Nan Goldin glow of
terminal decadence—are fun to look at. But the party was all
about the pictures being snapped within the SoHo Grand's
gallery. A dozen photographers swarmed and roamed and
clicked away. Furiously. At anybody, everybody. If the subject
was actress Mena Suvari, then so much the better. If it was some
random gallery assistant or a friend-of-a-friend or a 15-year-old,
then so what? The Web has given the street-style photo new life,
and all the new kids are adept at striking this decade's party-page
pose—chin angled coquettishly, mouth cryptic, eyes smiling
with knowingness, best foot forward.
I expressed my bewilderment at being photographed to a woman
from the New York Times: "I'm nobody." She said, "You don't
have to be anybody."
A guy came up trained his lens on the space between my chin
and sternum. Click click click. "I think he shot your scarf," said
the Timeswoman.
So, your correspondent must confess that, like a poser, he was
wearing a scarf indoors. When in Rome, right? Right? It was
really pretty harmless, considering claques of men in fur jackets,
the stray women in stockings that cost more than shoes and
shoes that cost more the month's rent.
The photographer pointed his lens at another photographer.
Click click click.
A simple plan, a velvet rope, an open bar—it doesn't take much
to throw a party in Manhattan, particularly during Fashion
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
32/140
From: Troy Patterson
Subject: Models Discuss Anorexia Over Pastry
Posted Monday, February 5, 2007, at 6:31 PM ET
Though one can feel confident that Fashion Week is the
occasion for more degenerate late-night merrymaking than your
average dental convention, it's hardly the moveable feast of
Caligulan vice that popular fantasy supposes. It wasn't, therefore,
an outright sham that today's panel discussion on eating
disorders and the garment trade—an hour-long meeting devoted
to the new health initiative of the Council of Fashion Designers
of America—began at 8 a.m. Designers, editors, and casting
agents indeed turned up early to witness, over weak coffee, one
of those pieces of theater beloved by corporate-responsibility
officers, politburo members, and their ilk since time
immemorial.
The members of the panel—a group including an M.D., a fitness
trainer, and a nutritionist—were gathered to talk about the issue
of unhealthy thinness among models. Remember, we're talking
about problems within the fashion industry here, so you might
need to recalibrate your definitions of such terms as "thin" and
"health": In a hallucination sequence in the new, compulsively
smirking Sarah Silverman Program, the Loch Ness Monster tells
Sarah that she looks so skinny that he worries she's been ill, and
she glories in the compliment. That's not the kind of health we're
talking about.
We're talking, for instance, about Ana Carolina Reston, a
Brazilian model who died of complications from anorexia last
November, and about the Association of Fashion Designers of
Spain, which has banned models with a body mass index of less
than 18. American designers have declined to follow suit,
arguing variously that BMI isn't a reliable indicator of good
eating habits and that regularly weighing the girls might itself
contribute to the psychological pressures on them. And rather
than issue any mandates, the CFDA put forward some
"guidelines" a few weeks back: Keep models under 16 off the
runway; don't let those under 18 work after midnight; don't feed
any of them alcohol at work; "raise awareness." Can't argue with
that.
But arguing about the issues in any depth was, to the occasional
frustration of even some panelists, a mere footnote to the panel.
It was a piece of theater to express Sensitivity—an Oprah-era
microdrama—and, as such, a modest success. The star was a
model, of course. Natalia Vodianova spoke of her own struggle
with eating disorders with conspicuous grace, quoting Oscar
Wilde and elsewhere saying that her attitudes about food had
been straightforward as a girl growing up Russia: "We ate to
survive." This struck one as mordant wit … and then one started
wondering what Fashion Week might have done to his irony
meter.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Soon it was question time, and an unfocused discussion unfurled
in a manner familiar to anyone who has ever turned on CSPAN2 or gone to college. A woman stood up, identified herself
as the mother of a girl who died from an eating disorder, and
sincerely lauded the CFDA for its effort. (Oddly, sadly, one
person vigorously applauded her applause.) Another woman
stood up to give the CFDA the obvious business about the halfmeasures it was taking, and the rebuttal, which said nothing, was
artfully couched. Donna Karan ventured that the bulk of the
responsibility for the problem lies with the modeling agencies.
And then it was over, and the croissants and danish had gone
mostly untouched.
"Nice turnout," said one insider to another.
"Well, it's a hot-button issue. This week."
From: Troy Patterson
Subject: The Woman Who Taught Lindsay Lohan To Sneer
Posted Wednesday, February 7, 2007, at 7:39 PM ET
"When they said there was going to be a cocktail reception, I
thought it would be around 7," a young jewelry designer said at a
strange little gathering this afternoon for Fashion Week's official
accessories exhibit. "Well, you know." It was fairly late in the
party—around 3:30 p.m.—so things were getting out of hand. A
photographer had actually hustled a cater-waiter bearing white
wine (a jejune Riesling) into a photo op, chanting anxiously,
"This is the shot. This is the shot." Another man passed some
canapés that rather too closely resembled open-faced tuna-fish
sandwiches. The editor of the luxury magazine of the Asbury
Park Press was in full and glorious schmooze.
The venue was the lobby of Fashion Week's Bryant Park tent
city, through which every attendee will pass this week, some of
them eight times a day. One loves how the lobby's multibranded
tackiness gives the whole game away. This is now MercedesBenz Fashion Week, so German cars flank the main entrance.
DHL sponsors a "pickup" center that serves coffee. Chambord
sponsors the coat check. MAC Cosmetics sponsors what appears
to be a spot where sleep-derived journalists do stuff in
Photoshop and mutter to themselves. There's an open bar that
serves only drinks with dumb names. Such are the classier
efforts.
The accessories exhibit, following in this vein, showcases
jewelry, shoes, sunglasses, and purses. There were items to
appeal to consumers of many levels of income and taste; some
things actually were quite cheap, others just looked it. Two-
33/140
hundred-dollar bags that looked like $400 bags. Peep-toe pumps
designed for Payless. Seven-hundred dollar Timexes. Also, for
some reason, vodka.
It wouldn't have been a proper sales pitch without a celebrity
attraction. This took the form of Rachel Zoe, the celebrity stylist
implicated in how Lindsay Lohan dresses and, now, handbag
designer, and Alek Wek, the Sudanese model and, now, handbag
designer. When the two posed for pictures, Zoe faintly curled
her upper lip in a way that suggested she'd also taught La Lohan
how to sneer. When asked about the rash of starlets and
socialites who launch their own lines of bags because it's the
chic thing to do, Wek, a trained painter and an earnest woman,
wouldn't take the bait: "I hope they're happy with what they're
doing." The waiter never did make it into the shot with those
two. He was passing German wine, or at least so said his T-shirt.
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soldier and Christian martyr. (They adopted Christianity under
Roman rule in the 330s.) The Arabs, Ottomans, and Persians—
who ruled over the country at various times until the Russians
took control in 1801—chose to name Sakartvelo after its beloved
patron saint, whose image dotted the art and architecture of the
region.
The American Georgia, on the other hand, was named after King
George II of England, who granted the state its charter in 1732.
The –ia suffix, meaning "state of," comes from the Greek and
was tacked onto the end of many place names via the vast
imperial and lingual legacy of the Romans. The name George
became popular in Western Europe only after the Crusades,
when knights traveling to the Holy Land came in contact with
the widespread veneration of the saint among the Eastern
Christians—in places like Georgia. (George became the patron
saint of England in the 1340s.) Meanwhile, the saint's name
derives from Greek and refers to a tiller of land. In that respect,
both Georgia and Georgia live up to their names.
We may refer to both the country and the state by the same
name, but the homonymy of Georgia and Georgia doesn't exist
in Russian. The soldiers storming the border this week might say
they were advancing into Gruzia, as opposed to the American
region—which they would pronounce as Gee-OR-gee-ah.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
explainer
Why Are Georgia and Georgia Both
Named Georgia?
Explainer thanks Sue Davis of Denison University and Svante
Cornell of Johns Hopkins University.
What the Deep South and the former USSR have in common.
By Noreen Malone
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 7:03 PM ET
explainer
The Web site of the president of Georgia was temporarily moved
to servers based in Atlanta, Georgia, over the weekend, after
what appeared to be an attack by Russian hackers. The move
was overseen by a Georgian-born executive at a technology
company based in Georgia (the state), who happened to be on
vacation in Georgia (the country) when the fighting started. Why
does a country that was formerly part of the USSR have the
same name as a state in the American Deep South?
Both got their present-day monikers from the British. The name
of the country comes from the Russian word Gruzia, which was
in turn derived from the Persian and Turkish versions of the
name George, Gorj and Gurju. It's not clear when the Brits
started using the word Georgia in place of Gruzia, but scholars
believe the switch happened sometime in the late Middle Ages.
In their native tongue, Georgians refer to themselves as the
Kartveli and to their country as Sakartvelo. But the Kartveli have
for many centuries been associated with George, the Roman
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The Afterlife for Scientologists
What will happen to Isaac Hayes' legendary soul?
By Nina Shen Rastogi
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 7:13 PM ET
Singer Isaac Hayes died on Sunday at the age of 65. Besides
being a sex symbol, a soul-music legend, and a beloved voiceover artist, Hayes was also a dedicated Scientologist. According
to his religious beliefs, what happens to Hayes now that he's
passed away?
His soul will be "born again into the flesh of another body," as
the Scientology Press Office's FAQ puts it. The actual details of
how that rebirth occurs are not fully understood by church
outsiders, but some core beliefs of Scientology are that every
human being is really an immortal spiritual being known as a
thetan and that the "meat bodies" we inhabit are merely vessels
we shed upon death. (Members of the elite church cadre known
34/140
as Sea Org, for example, sign contracts that pledge a billion
years of service throughout successive lives.)
When a body dies, its thetan forgets the details of the former life,
though painful and traumatic images known as engrams remain
rooted in its unconscious. In order to move up the path of
spiritual progression—known as the Bridge to Total Freedom—
one must eradicate these psychic scars, which cause a person to
act fearfully and irrationally. Once a Scientologist has purged
them through the counseling process known as auditing, he or
she is said to be "clear."
According to an avowed Scientology antagonist who claims, on
her Web site, to present factual information typically omitted
from church press materials, the official Scientology publication
Celebrity announced that Hayes attained "clear" status around
2002, though it is not known whether he progressed onto the
highest parts of the Bridge, the "operating thetan" levels. Details
about what happens in these advanced stages remain closely
guarded Scientology secrets, but at the very end of the process,
thetans are supposed to gain power over the physical world;
consequently, according to founder L. Ron Hubbard, they "feel
no need of bodies," ending the cycle of birth and death and
becoming pure, incorporeal souls.
If Hayes had progressed high enough on the Bridge, he might
have begun preparing for his next life in the final days of this
one. According to former Sea Org member Chuck Beatty, some
upper-level operating thetans are said to possess the ability to
choose their next set of birth parents.
In a widely reprinted 1990 Los Angeles Times article, Hubbard
was quoted (apparently from a lecture given in the 1950s)
describing how, after death, a thetan is carried to a "landing
station" on Venus, where it is "programmed with lies," put in a
capsule, and then "dumped" back on Earth, where it wanders in
search of a baby to inhabit. Yet according to Laurie Hamilton,
who says she has been a Scientologist since 1968, adherents are
"free to accept or discard" such stories so long as they embrace
the "methods and practices" of Scientology. One of the church's
official Web sites stresses that a belief in past lives is not
mandatory dogma but, rather, a personal truth that most
Scientologists come to as they go through auditing.
The Web site also stresses that Scientologists do not believe in
"reincarnation." Unlike religions such as Hinduism and
Buddhism, in which reincarnation functions as a kind of justice
system—i.e., an individual's behavior in one life determines the
caliber of the next—rebirth in Scientology is a more mechanical
process. Hubbard described it as "simply living time after time,
getting a new body, eventually losing it and getting a new one."
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Explainer thanks Chuck Beatty, Stephen Kent of the University
of Alberta, and Hugh Urban of Ohio State University. Thanks
also to reader Mark Allender for asking the question.
explainer
Why Do Fencers Shriek?
And other questions about the 2008 Olympics.
By Juliet Lapidos
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 6:34 PM ET
Ever since 1,000 performers arranged themselves into the shape
of a bird's nest during the Olympics' opening ceremony Friday,
Americans have been befuddled by the goings-on in Beijing.
With that in mind, the Explainer presents a roundup of questions
related to the Games.
What's up with Olympic fencers yelling at every hit?
Tradition. Before electronic scoring (introduced at the Olympic
level to épée in 1936, to foil in 1956, and to saber in 1988), two
judges were positioned behind each fencer and would watch the
opposite contender to see whether he'd been hit. A fencer would
often shout something after executing a hit or "touch" to
convince the judges that he'd been successful and also to
energize himself. Now the shout is purely triumphant.
Many fencers just shriek or roar after a touch, but some prefer
"et là," which means "and there" in French—the official
language for international fencing competitions.
Why do the Olympic divers shower after every plunge?
To keep warm. Diving venues are air conditioned and can feel
especially cold after a dip in the pool. Competitors shower in
warm water to keep their muscles loose and then often retire to a
hot tub. They towel off shortly before the next dive so that their
hands don't slip during tucks or other maneuvers.
Why do younger gymnasts have an advantage?
They're lighter. The best gymnasts must be short and muscular
with low body fat, which gives them a high strength-to-weight
ratio and a greater ability to lift themselves into the air. Girls
reach their ideal ratio before puberty; after that point, between
ages 14 and 18, they gain weight and have difficulty keeping up
their strength. Some coaches also believe that younger gymnasts
worry less—making them psychologically less encumbered as
well.
On Monday, former Olympic coach Bela Karolyi accused the
Chinese of fielding 12- and 14-year-old gymnasts. If true, this
wouldn't be a new practice: China's Yang Yun, for example,
confessed during an interview on government-sponsored
35/140
television that she was only 14 when she won two bronze medals
at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Where does the U.S. Olympic Committee get its prize
money?
NBC, mostly. The USOC awards $25,000 to gold medal
winners, $15,000 to silver medalists, and $10,000 to athletes
who snag a bronze. According to the organization's contract with
the International Olympic Committee, it's entitled to 12.75
percent of the revenue from U.S. broadcast rights as well as 20
percent of the revenue from global corporate sponsorship. The
USOC also gets cash from brand licensing, fundraising, and
grants.
How does a hotel get more than five stars?
Ask the Swiss. According to NBC broadcasters, the Pangu Plaza
building complex, which overlooks Beijing's Olympic Green,
contains one of the world's only "seven star" hotels. But there's
no standard international evaluation system, and hotels in most
countries max out at four or five stars. In the United Kingdom,
for example, the Royal Auto Club, the English Tourism Council,
and the Automobile Association score properties based on
housekeeping, hospitality, food, safety, and exterior appearance,
among other factors, before assigning up to five stars. The
French tourist board uses roughly the same criteria, but four stars
is the limit. In the United States, many hotel chains use Mobil
Travel Guide's five-star award certification, based on service
evaluations and unannounced facility inspections.
The Swiss inspection-and-testing company SGS recently started
offering a seven-star certificate for "extra-luxury" hotels.
Inspectors look for central location, good design, and
comfortable furniture in the communal areas, a high property
value, continuous training for personnel, luxury chauffeurs, and
butler services.
The Town House Galleria in Milan, Italy, requested, and
received, one of these certificates. Other hotels, like the Burj Al
Arab in Dubai, are said to have seven stars. In fact, that hotel
received the maximum five-star rating from the local tourism
board and in official materials characterizes itself as "5 Star
Deluxe." It's frequently referred to as having seven stars because
of a media frenzy over its services—the Burj Al Arab boasts a
fleet of white, chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces, private reception
desks on every floor, and butlers.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Raymond Laederach of SGS, David Micahnik
of the United States Fencing Coaches Association, and Virginia
Polizzi of the Town House Galleria.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
family
No One Likes a Cheater
But no one likes a stickler, either. The letter and spirit of recess law.
By Emily Bazelon
Friday, August 15, 2008, at 7:07 AM ET
One evening this spring, my family spent dinnertime dissecting
what my older son, Eli, calls his "recess problems." The specific
dilemma was whether, in a game of kickball, a kid could claim
that because he'd fallen down when one of Eli's teammates
pegged him on his way to second base, he wasn't "out." Was this
a legitimate plea for mercy? Or was it cheating, dressed up as a
sympathy bid?
By the end of the conversation, my husband and I suspected the
8-year-old version of foul play, on a small scale. The kids on the
other team had made up the "you're safe if you fall down" rule
midgame. They didn't seem inclined to apply it uniformly—no
one on Eli's team tried to invoke it, and he didn't think it would
have flown if they had. Still, we were a bit uneasy about urging
Eli on in his fight for the rule of law. He probably had justice on
his side. But the more we talked, the more he kept stressing the
letter of the law. At one point, he brought up the regulations for
Major League Baseball. These, we gently pointed out, don't
really have a place in the second-grade recess game of kickball.
No one likes a cheater, for sure. But no one likes a stickler,
either. What if your kid is the one who tends to wave the rule
book while yelling "no fair"? Teaching kids about playing games
is a subtle enterprise, when you stop to think about it. On the one
hand, the point of a game is to win it. For some kids, the
competition is itself a stumbling block—whether it's Monopoly
or kickball or soccer, they back away from contests that end with
winners and losers. These kids don't focus much on the rules;
they're not invested enough. But then there are the kids for
whom competition is an almighty thrill. They're not interested in
just hitting a tennis ball around. They want to keep score. And
once you're doing that, whatever the setting, the rules do matter.
To break or bend them is to take advantage. And so it can be
perfectly called for to object to cheating.
The problem is that the point of playing games isn't only to win,
most of the time. It's also to hang out with friends, have a good
time, while away a sunny or rainy afternoon. Viewed through
that lens, it's important to tolerate a little rule bending. Did the
dice fly off the board? OK, roll them again. Game playing takes
a lot of that kind of compromise and improvisation. We want
kids to care, sure, but not so much that they send the board
flying when there's a question about whether doubles means roll
again. It's a lot to expect for kids to master all the nuances, to
know when to let a stolen base go during a social kickball game,
and when to insist on recording the out.
36/140
Recess is a real petri dish because for the most part, at least at
Eli's school, the kids are on their own. The adults on the
playground are there to make sure no one gets his head bashed
in, not to set the kickball rules or run the game. This is the sort
of learning opportunity I know I am supposed to welcome. And I
do. But it also gives kids license to bully and manipulate one
another. Over the course of a year of second-grade recesses, a
pattern emerged. The dozen or so athletically minded boys (and
very occasional girl) would get a game of kickball or football or
wall-ball going. They'd play for a few weeks. And then the thing
would break down, because one team had mysteriously been
stacked with the good players or because no one could agree
about the rules for stealing a base. (This, I'm told by adults who
remember the game well, is a perennial kickball dilemma.) For a
few days or a week, the boys dispersed. Eli found the no-game
periods frustrating, but to me the break seemed like a way to
diffuse tension.
When the game heated up again and disputes broke out, we tried
to counsel Eli to play fairly without demanding that everyone
else play exactly to his specification of fairness. It remains a tall
order. Last week, I watched him play a summer game of
Monopoly with two friends. In a previous round, they'd agreed
that you'd get $50 if you rolled snake eyes. But in this game,
when one of the other kids rolled snake eyes, he decided it meant
you got to pick up one of each Monopoly bill ($686 in total, I
believe). Eli protested. Loudly. The other kids said that this was
the first snake-eyes roll of the game and agreed to change the
rules for everyone going forward. Eli kept protesting. I told him
to pipe down. He was right, but only sort of, and not enough to
insist. I wanted to curb his stickler impulses. After muttering
about fairness for a minute, he simmered down, and the game
kept going. An especially desirable outcome, since it was
pouring outside.
This week, Eli and his younger brother Simon are going to a
small camp in Vermont that stresses creative play. There's kick
the can and capture the flag, but the rules bend a bit for the
younger kids, and it's easier than usual for everyone to get out of
jail. The counselors play, which makes for a lot less fighting. Eli
says he prefers the argument and competition of recess or, even
better, league soccer. And I see his point and a place for that,
too. Maybe the real goal of teaching kids to play games is to
give them a chance to wrestle with their own extreme
inclinations, whether weasel-like or rigid in nature. The cheaters
have to learn to play fair, and the sticklers have to figure out
when to let a few things slide, for the sake of the game.
five-ring circus
Explainer's Olympics Roundup
Your questions about the Games, with answers from our archives.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By Derek Thompson
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 6:57 AM ET
Soaring fireworks, falling records, and cinematic ceremonies
marked the first few days of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But
what's to come? From gold-medal nibblers to the world's fastest
dopers, Slate answers the questions you never thought to ask.
Online reports have suggested that two members of China's
renowned women's gymnastics team are too young to
compete in the Olympics. China has provided records
affirming their athletes' eligibility. Can't we bypass the
paper trail and test their age biologically?
No, we'll have to rely on the records. People don't have
biological markers for precise age; there is no human equivalent
for tree rings. Gerontologists have tried to measure old age by
testing a range of age-related characteristics including hearing
loss and joint flexibility, but at best this provides only a measure
of "physiological age" instead of calendar years. Other
organizations that have to document exact age, such as Guinness
World Records, consult several different sources, such as birth
certificate, marriage certificate, and photo ID. (For more on how
to determine someone's age, read this Explainer from 2006.)
At the 2004 Athens Games, Kenyan men swept the medals in
the grueling 3,000-meter steeplechase. Kenya is expected to
continue its medal onslaught in long-distance track events in
Beijing. Why are Kenyans such successful long-distance
runners?
High altitude, running culture, and good genes. Most of Kenya's
future Olympians were raised at high altitude, where running
builds greater lung capacity as athletes grow accustomed to the
thinner air. Some Kenyan children run 10 miles a day, in the
hopes of using endurance running as a ticket out of poverty.
More obscure theories have credited cattle herding and
circumcision rituals for the Kenyans' success. (For more on why
Kenyans are faster, read this Explainer from 2003.)
Runners Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, and Tyson Gay—first,
second, and third all-time in the 100 meters—are set to race
in what should be the fastest 100-meter dash in history. The
Jamaican Bolt just set the world record in June, but many
are predicting it won't last the Olympics. Just how accurate
are the devices used to measure the fastest men on earth?
They can record to the ten-thousandth of a second. Every track
(and lane) differs in length by a tiny amount, so two runners
racing at exactly the same speed might cross the finish line with
times that differ by a fraction of a second. That's why times at
short events are measured to the thousandth of a second but
reported to the hundredth. Longer races require less precise
37/140
times. Officials can hand-time all races longer than 800 meters.
(For more on track and field record measurements, read this
Explainer from 2005.)
You've seen it a hundred times: An athlete, flush from
Olympic victory, wins the gold medal and nibbles on it like a
chew toy in front of the cameras. Why are athletes always
biting their gold medals?
Theoretically to test their purity, but probably because
everybody else is doing it. In their pure forms, gold and silver
are actually "soft" enough to make tooth marks. In principle, you
could use the "bite test" to see if a medal were pure, 24-karat
gold. Of course, the Olympic gold medal isn't pure gold anyway.
So Olympians can't really test the purity of the medal without a
lot of practice. (For more on why athletes nibble their medals,
read this Explainer from 2006.)
Beijing Olympics officials established a gender
determination lab in July to investigate whether some
suspect female athletes are actually men. Is a "gender test"
as simple as it sounds?
No. You can't tell just by looking at genitalia because a person's
anatomy might not match their chromosomes. But you can't
simply count the X chromosomes, because some women have
only one X and some biological males are XXY. Today the
International Olympic Committee relies on a panel of specialists
to account for all these ambiguities. Athletes who have
undergone sex reassignment are allowed to compete alongside
their new gender, provided they follow regulations. (For more on
gender tests at the Olympics, read this Explainer from 2006.)
Air-pollution concerns dominated the pre-Olympic news
cycle. Now the Games are under way, and the attention has
turned to Michael Phelps and the indoor swimming and
gymnastics competitions. How will air pollution affect
athletic performance during the outdoor games?
We don't know for sure, but it certainly won't help. Athletes in
competition breathe more than 20 times the amount of air
inhaled by a normal person at rest. In Beijing, that could mean a
supersized dose of ozone and fine particulates, which can reduce
the amount of oxygen that gets to the muscles. But with Beijing's
air quality yo-yoing from white-out haze to blue skies in a matter
of days, it's difficult to predict what conditions Olympians
competing outdoors will face. (For more on pollution and
athletic performance, read this Explainer from 2007.)
The head of the World Anti-Doping Agency has warned that
drug scandals in Beijing—like the medal-stripping of worldclass sprinters Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, and Tim
Montgomery—could drive away a generation of viewers
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
from the Olympics. How do you make an athlete give his
medals back?
You ask for them. When the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled
that Montgomery had cheated, the International Association of
Athletics Federations sent him a request for the medals. Revoked
Olympic medals can be reused. When the IOC strips an athlete
of her gold, it can send that same medal to the woman who had
received the silver. It's even easier to take back a medal while
the Games are still going on. A Canadian official took the gold
medal from Johnson during a late-night visit to his hotel room in
Seoul. (For more on how to take a medal from an athlete, read
this Explainer from 2005.)
For many viewers, watching the U.S. women's gymnastics
team compete Tuesday night brought to mind memories of
Kerri Strug's impressive one-ankle landing after her vault in
1996. But at least one thing isn't the same in Beijing: the
shape of the vault. Why the new equipment?
In part to facilitate more impressive acrobatic feats, and in part
to reduce injuries. The larger surface area has also made it easier
for vaulters to perform difficult maneuvers that require
handsprings on the approach. The front edge slopes downward
and is thickly padded, so an accidental run-in hopefully won't
cause broken bones. The table made its international debut at the
2001 world championships in Ghent, Belgium. (For more on the
newish vault, read this Explainer from 2004.)
During the parade of nations at the Beijing opening
ceremony, you might have caught the Hong Kong team
walking under its national flag, even though it's been a
territory of China for about a decade. Puerto Rico has its
own team, too, and its residents are all U.S. citizens. How can
territories like Puerto Rico field their own teams?
The International Olympic Committee, the governing body that
makes all decisions about the administration and operation of the
games, recognizes their National Olympic Committees. The
Olympic Charter explains that "the expression 'country' means
an independent State recognized by the international
community," and the IOC recognized Puerto Rico as such an
entity in 1948. The committee also recognized the U.S. Virgin
Islands in 1967, Guam in 1986, and American Samoa in 1987.
(For more on how a nonsovereign territory can field its own
Olympic team, read this Explainer from 2004.)
five-ring circus
You Did Not Shoot Rainbows Out of
Your Butt. Five-Tenths Deduction.
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The latest from the SlateOlympics Twitter feed.
Friday, August 15, 2008, at 7:03 AM ET
For the next two weeks, Slate's going to be Twittering like mad
about the Olympics and the surrounding hootenanny. Keep
coming back to this page to read our 20 latest tweets, which will
automatically update below. You can also follow us at
http://twitter.com/SlateOlympics, and you can read more about
our Twitter experiment here. (Note: The Internet Explorer
refresh problem has been fixed. Please refresh often to get our
latest updates!)
Latest Twitter Updates
follow me on Twitter
.
.
.
five-ring circus
The 2008 Olympics
A roundup of Slate's coverage of China and the Beijing Games.
Friday, August 15, 2008, at 7:01 AM ET
The Games
"The Olympics Sap-o-Meter: On a night of dreams, NBC saves
its syrup for Michael Phelps," by Josh Levin, Derek Thompson,
and Chris Wilson. Posted Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008.
"Dispatches From Beijing: You think NBC is bad? You haven't
seen CCTV," by June Shih. Posted Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008.
"Poor Kobe's Olympic Dream: A daily video from Slate V."
Posted Thursday, Aug. 14. 2008.
"Magnum Photos: Young Gymnasts." Posted Thursday, Aug. 14,
2008.
"The Silver Lining: The U.S. women's gymnastics team
overturned cultural cliches in the team event," by Meghan
O'Rourke. Posted Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008.
"The Olympics Sap-o-Meter: Just like Michael Phelps: another
day, another record," by Josh Levin, Derek Thompson, and Chris
Wilson. Posted Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"Human Nature: Olympic Inflation," by William Saletan. Posted
Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008.
"Explainer's Olympics Roundup: Your questions about the
Games, with answers from our archives," by Derek Thompson.
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008.
"Why Do Fencers Shriek?: And other questions about the 2008
Olympics," by Juliet Lapidos. Posted Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.
" 'Why Not Just Use Beavers?': NBC's visit to the Three Gorges
Dam, and other Olympics coverage highlights," by Troy
Patterson. Posted Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.
"Down With the Perfect 10!: A mathematician explains the
genius of the new gymnastics scoring system," by Jordan
Ellenberg. Posted Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.
"The Sap-o-Meter Widget: Embed our Olympics schmaltz
tracker on your blog, iGoogle, or Facebook page." Posted
Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.
"The Olympics Sap-o-Meter: The sap reaches a record high.
Blame mom," by Josh Levin, Derek Thompson, and Chris
Wilson. Posted Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.
" 'There's a New China Syndrome, and It's Called China Gold':
The latest from the SlateOlympics Twitter feed." Posted
Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.
"Dispatches from Beijing: An American Tourist Is Murdered,
and Conspiracy Theories Abound," by Tim Wu. Posted Monday,
Aug. 11, 2008.
"Introducing the SlateOlympics Twitter Feed: How to follow the
Beijing Games 24/7," by Josh Levin. Posted Friday, Aug. 8,
2008.
"Will Respirators Help Our Olympic Athletes?: Only if they put
them on correctly," by Jacob Leibenluft. Posted Aug. 7, 2008.
"China Goes for (All of) the Gold: Economists predict whether
the host country will rule the Beijing Olympics," by Daniel
Gross. Posted Aug. 7, 2008.
"Summer Olympics Disaster Guide: Opening Ceremony Edition:
The Olympics are all set to kick off. What could possibly go
wrong?" by Lucy Morrow Caldwell, Kara Hadge, Nayeli
Rodriguez, and Derek Thompson. Posted Thursday, Aug. 7,
2008.
Slate V: Poor Kobe's Olympic Dream
39/140
"Full Speedo Ahead: Can Michael Phelps' cutting-edge swimsuit
make me a better swimmer?" by Sara Dickerman. Posted
Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008.
"Olympic Marathon: The best books, Web sites, and video to
prepare you for the Beijing Games," by Rachael Larimore.
Posted Saturday, Aug. 2, 2008.
"Swifter, Higher, Cuddlier: Stop picking on Beijing's Olympic
mascots," by Seth Stevenson. Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008.
"Dara Torres, Demystified: Do the swimmer's 'secrets to success'
hold up?" by Amanda Schaffer. Posted Wednesday, July 16,
2008.
"Summer Olympics Disaster Guide: What could go wrong in
Beijing? Everything," by Lucy Morrow Caldwell, Kara Hadge,
Nayeli Rodriguez, and Derek Thompson. Posted Wednesday,
July 2, 2008.
"Passing on the Torch: Why are world leaders boycotting the
Beijing opening ceremony?" by Jacob Leibenluft. Posted Friday,
April 11, 2008.
"The Carbon Olympics: Keeping track of the Olympic torch's
carbon footprint—one leg at a time," by Chadwick Matlin.
Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2008.
"Boycott Beijing: The Olympics are the perfect place for a
protest," by Anne Applebaum. Posted Monday, March 24, 2008.
"Spielberg Bails on the Beijing Olympics: Will Darfur spoil
everything for China?" by Kim Masters. Posted Thursday, Feb.
5, 2008.
"The Olympics Take Beijing: The new city comes to my back
yard," by Tom Scocca. Posted Monday, Dec. 3, 2007.
The Culture
"Dispatches from Beijing: Are the media being too mean to
China?" by Tim Wu. Posted Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.
"Wineglasses Rising: China's newfound obsession with wine,"
by Mike Steinberger. Posted Friday, Aug. 8, 2008.
"Magnum Photos: Olympic Sights." Posted Friday, Aug. 8,
2008.
"The Beijing Olympics: a Visitors' Guide: What should I eat?
How much should I tip? Is that kid peeing in the street?" by Tom
Scocca. Posted Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"The Vanishing City: The life and death of Beijing's alleys," by
Rob Gifford. Posted Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008
"Let the God Games Begin: How missionaries' attempts to
evangelize at the Olympics were foiled," by Adam Minter.
Posted Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008.
"Magnum Photos: China's secret plot to look good in
photographs." Posted Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008.
"Ready, Get Self, Go!: China's younger generation discovers the
identity crisis," by Ann Hulbert. Posted Wednesday, Aug. 6,
2008.
"Beyond Wontons: A new cookbook showcases recipes from
China's ethnic minorities," by Nicholas Day. Posted Wednesday,
Aug. 6, 2008
"What's Up With Chinese Menus?: The stories behind 'chicken
without sexual life' and 'bean curd made by a pockmarked
woman,' " by Brian Palmer. Posted Monday, June 23, 2008.
"China's SAT: If the SAT lasted two days, covered everything
you'd ever studied, and decided your future," by Manuela
Zoninsein. Posted Wednesday, June 4, 2008.
"Seven Mysteries of China: Is porcelain addictive?" by
Christopher Benfey. Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2008.
"A Flipbook on China: A Magnum photo essay." Posted Friday,
March 7, 2008.
"How the Grinch Stole Chinese New Year: The government has
banned many of the traditions associated with Chinese New
Year—but the holiday may be staging a comeback," by April
Rabkin. Posted Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008.
"A Political Scientist in China: How China is like a bicycle," by
Ian Bremmer. Posted Friday, Oct. 5, 2007.
The Politics
"The Dissident Within: What a book about China's great famine
says about the country's transformation," by Anne Applebaum.
Posted Monday, Aug. 11, 2008.
"Bush Owes to China: The Olympics ad this administration
doesn't want you to see," by Bruce Reed. Posted Monday, Aug.
11, 2008.
"The Party vs. the People: What might the new populist protest
in China portend?" by Minxin Pei. Posted Tuesday, Aug. 5,
2008.
40/140
"China's Tell-Nothing Ethos: What the man on Mao's right
doesn't say," by Andrew J. Nathan. Posted Tuesday, Aug. 5,
2008.
"The Chinese Earthquake Roundup: Can grieving parents have
another child? And other questions about the tragedy," by Jacob
Leibenluft. Posted Thursday, May 15, 2008.
"Olympic Flame Out: China learns the price of a few weeks of
global attention," by Anne Applebaum. Posted Monday, April
14, 2008.
"China's Great Migration: Why would hundreds of thousands of
people risk their lives to move to America and live as illegal
aliens?" by Patrick Radden Keefe. Posted Wednesday, April 9,
2008.
"The Last Days of Cheap Chinese: Why American consumers
are about to start paying more for clothes, electronics, toys, and
just about everything else," by Alexandra Harney. Posted
Tuesday, April 8, 2008.
"Why Does China Care About Tibet?: Plus, when are monks
allowed to get violent?" by Nina Shen Rastogi. Posted Friday,
March 28, 2008.
"Live From Lhasa: Shaky cell-phone videos from Tibet foretell
doom for the Chinese empire," by Anne Applebaum. Posted
Monday, March 17, 2008.
had week-low numbers. (With Debbie Phelps mostly out of
sight, they were essentially playing a woman down.) Rescuing
the night with a Lezak-esque performance, however, dreams
tallied a record nine mentions.
Sappiest Line of the Day: "It is unbelievable for Jonathan
[Horton]. He's living a dream here."—NBC's Elfi Schlegel,
setting the scene at the men's gymnastics all-around competition.
(Emphasis on sap words is ours.)
The Sap-o-Meter Tag Cloud
adversity battled cancer
cry death determination
challenges courage
dream
emotion glory golden heart hero inspiration
journey magic memory miracle
mom
mother overcome passion proud sacrifice
spirit tragedy triumph
"Trade-Offs: Is China the key to Africa's development?" by
Eliza Barclay. Posted Thursday, March 6, 2008.
five-ring circus
For a primer on how the Sap-o-Meter works, check out our
first entry. Did we miss your favorite moment? Send your
Sappiest Line of the Day suggestions to sapometer@gmail.com.
Sap-o-Meter History
(click on any bar to read that day's entry)
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
On a night of dreams, NBC saves its syrup for Michael Phelps.
By Josh Levin, Derek Thompson, and Chris Wilson
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 4:18 PM ET
The question facing NBC last night: What should a network do
when there's no possibility of a Michael Phelps medal
ceremony? The answer: Ration your syrup! The peacock's
usually exuberant commentators, perhaps drained by
Wednesday's record-setting performance, restrained their
romanticizing last night. The resulting schmaltz score: an alltime low 27 Sap Points.
five-ring circus
Like the Olympic gymnasts in the men's all-around competition,
the Sap-o-Meter produced strong but not soaring scores. Mom
and mother mentions, which often anchor the team of sap words,
From: Tim Wu
Subject: An American Tourist Is Murdered, and Conspiracy Theories Abound
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Dispatches From Beijing
You think NBC is bad? You haven't seen CCTV.
By Tim Wu and June Shih
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 1:15 PM ET
Posted Monday, August 11, 2008, at 12:22 PM ET
41/140
What would make you stab a 62-year-old tourist to death in the
middle of the day and then leap off a 150-foot tower? That's a
question you can't help puzzling over if you're in Beijing. What
on earth was going on in the mind of Tang Yongming, the 47year-old man who stabbed two Americans and their Chinese
guide over the weekend? Todd Bachman, the father-in-law of
the U.S. men's volleyball coach, was killed in the attack.
To be sure, the most probable explanation is that Tang was
simply insane, or extremely frustrated for his own reasons, and
somehow snapped, making the whole thing what officials call an
"isolated incident." That's the official story—that Tang "was
distraught over family problems," including two divorces and a
son who was in trouble with the law. Yet the timing (the
Olympics), the victims (foreigners), and the location (the ancient
drum tower) have certainly left plenty of room for Beijing's
residents and resident foreigners to speculate that something else
was afoot. Here are the theories (from the partially grounded to
the ridiculous) that I've been hearing.
The murderer wasn't Chinese. This idea reflects on somewhat
understandable disbelief that a Chinese person would want to
ruin a time of national pride by killing a foreigner for no good
reason. When I told the owners of a store in an alley near the
drum tower about the murderer, they concluded, immediately,
"He wasn't Chinese." They suggested that he was perhaps
Malaysian, because Malaysians often look Chinese. When I
insisted he was Chinese, their theory was that he probably wasn't
Han Chinese (i.e., that he was an ethnic minority of some kind).
The Americans got involved in a Chinese fight. At a
foreigner's party, I heard it suggested that the murderer knew the
Americans' tour guide and was perhaps even a jilted lover. He
confronted her, the Americans heroically intervened to defend
their guide, and in a fit of rage, out came the knife. Afterward,
when Tang realized that he'd been possessed, so to speak, he
leapt off the tower to his death.
This explanation does make the event something like a mixture
of United Flight 93 and the climax of The Exorcist, but it doesn't
really explain why Tang was carrying a knife or what about the
Americans prompted him to use it.
An enemy of the party. A Chinese friend, last name Yang, who
did graduate studies in New York, suggested early on that the
killer could be an enemy of the Communist regime—like
someone from the Falun Gong religious movement. The idea
here is that killing a foreigner is about the best way to weaken
the party—by making it look bad during the Olympics. The
killing, therefore, would be a rather extreme form of protest.
There's no evidence, however, of any such ties. What's
interesting about this theory is the extent to which the Falun
Gong is made out to be the Knights Templar or Freemasons of
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
China—that is, an exaggerated bogeyman sometimes taken as
the source of all evil, a group vicious enough even to endanger
the good image of the Olympics. In response to my doubts, Yang
replied that the Falun Gong is capable of doing extreme things,
such as persuading beautiful young women to set themselves on
fire.
An angry migrant (non min-gong). I heard early speculation
that the killer was non min-gong—one of the generally
mistreated peasant laborers who do manual labor for very little
money. These fellows have been treated somewhat poorly as the
Olympics have arrived, along the lines of "Thanks for building
the stadiums—now get lost."
The notion that Tang was an aggrieved laborer may represent
some guilt the Chinese feel about the treatment of migrant
workers. (A Chinese acquaintance also commented, rather
unfairly, I thought, that a peasant laborer would be incapable of
even understanding the idea that murdering a foreigner would be
a way to send a message.) The idea was upended, though, when
Tang turned out not to have been a peasant at all. Nonetheless,
scaled down, the general idea that the killing was motivated by
the frustrations of contemporary life has a ring of truth.
(Another, quasi-related rumor that I heard: Tang was depressed
because he lost all his money in the stock market.)
A Neo-Boxer movement. In 1899, a secret cultlike group
known as the Righteous Harmony Society, or the Boxers, began
a campaign to purify China from all foreign influence, ultimately
murdering more than 200 foreigners and thousands more
Chinese Christians. For several months in 1900, the expats of
Beijing and Tianjin were not to be found drinking in bars—as is
today's tradition—but were holed up in fortresses holding out
against the Boxers, until a wholesale foreign invasion saved their
bacon.
The Boxers were somewhat like a Chinese Ku Klux Klan, and so
it seemed to me that a residual anti-foreigner movement might
still be around. However, no one I talked to seemed to consider
this remotely plausible. My friend Yang, for one, pooh-poohed
this idea, reminding me that "we don't hate Westerners anymore;
we hate the Japanese."
A Cultural Revolution holdout. While we're in the realm of
implausible theories, Dai, a young member of the Communist
Party whom I've befriended, speculates that—while it's highly
unlikely—Tang could have been protesting the general
abandonment of socialism over the last few decades or could
even be an extremely rare holdout from the Cultural Revolution.
While the latter seems unlikely, there are definitely those who
think China has gone too far toward capitalism, said Dai, and the
Olympics are something of a symbol of this.
A classic conspiracy. Classic conspiracy theories don't take
much skill to make up, because they aren't required to follow the
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usual rules of logic. Take, for example, this Internet idea that the
murderer was a paid CIA agent, ordered to kill Americans to
create trouble for China. Yes, that makes so much sense.
From: Tim Wu
Subject: Are the Media Being too Mean to China?
Posted Monday, August 11, 2008, at 7:59 PM ET
To say Beijing is eager to welcome foreign guests to the
Olympics may be the understatement of the century. The new
airport terminal features a welcome robot, there are "welcome
booths" on just about every downtown street, the names of the
Olympic mascots spell "Welcome to Beijing" in Chinese. If
you're not careful, you may be walking down a normal street
only to find yourself surrounded by eager volunteers clad in blue
shirts who point out everything you ever wanted to know about
Beijing and plenty more you didn't. In the Olympic Village,
where the athletes live, friends say that the enthusiasm and
attentiveness of the volunteers borders on harassment.
The enthusiasm is understandable. Everyone keeps talking about
the "100-year dream," and in a sense, Beijing has been waiting
to host this—its international coming-out—since 1842 or so.
That's the year China lost the Opium War and started a 160-yearlong search for respect. Much to the country's chagrin, it still
isn't getting any.
The Western media have arrived en masse to China's ball: lots of
senior journalists, in sloppy dress, interested either in their own
athletes or in writing their own big "China piece." (Foreign
guests are here, too, but fewer than Beijing had hoped for,
thanks in part to self-defeating visa policies.) Not surprisingly,
the stories written about China by foreign journalists are rarely
on topics China might have hoped for.
The Western press is fascinated with the two P's: pollution and
protests. For dessert, anything to do with Tibetan independence,
censorship, or foreign visitors is also welcome. Sometimes all of
these issues converge, like last Wednesday, when a gaggle of
Americans put up a "Free Tibet" banner in Tiananmen Square on
what happened to be a very smoggy day. Now that's a story.
So are the media just being a little mean to China? It does at
times feel akin to if coverage of the Atlanta Olympics were
focused on the failings of the U.S. health care system and the
plight of the American Indian. One foreign correspondent for a
major American newspaper agreed, telling me, "In Athens the
traffic jams were presented as the outgrowth of a hip
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Mediterranean lifestyle. Here they become yet another product
of state repression."
Chinese friends and strangers I've been chatting up on the street
complain that the coverage is unfair or biased. "Maybe it's just a
kind of cultural difference between Eastern and Western
peoples," said Liu Shudi, a student I talked to in a cafe in
downtown Beijing. She concedes that it's hard to get her hands
on much Western media, but what she has seen (mainly CNN)
seems "biased." "We worked so hard. Maybe we didn't do
everything right, but we really did work hard. It's unfair."
The cultural difference she's talking about is reflected in
fangwen culture, which translates as "official visit." If you've
ever done business in China, you know what fangwen is all
about—a kind of formal tour that is meant to show how great the
host's facility is, while the guest says admiring things. China was
hoping the Olympics would be a nationwide version of fangwen.
Instead, it is mostly getting fangs.
Another theme that you hear is how much "hard work," or nuli,
went into getting the city ready for the Olympics, which makes
all the criticism more painful. Here is a Chinese commenter
online reacting to the American cyclists who wore masks in the
Beijing airport: "You are guests, you come to someone's home
that has, through lots of hard work [nuli], been cleaned up, and
who welcomes you very warmly. At this time, shouldn't you
show friendliness and kindness?"
But when I ask most of my reporter friends—that is, the Western
media who live here—if the foreign press is being too mean,
they say no, that China deserves the scrutiny it is getting. As one
longtime resident said about the pollution, for instance, "China
just blew it." In his view, China is backsliding on all kinds of
promises it made, but the IOC "is down on its knees giving
China a blowjob."
A second theory put forward by reporters is that criticism of
China is simply the kind of news an American audience is
interested in—criticism sells. A third is that the whole point of
giving China the Olympics was to subject it to foreign scrutiny
that, for once, it might have to listen to. Reporter and food writer
Jen Lin-Liu, who lives in Beijing, wrote in the New York Times
that the whole project is backfiring—that "as China projects a
new air of openness and tolerance as it rolls out the welcome
mat for Olympics visitors, the government is cracking down on
citizens."
Lin-Liu is getting at the real paradox here. China's idea of what
makes for a better Olympics for foreign consumption—tightened
security and cleaning up marginal elements—is exactly what
makes Western reporters crazy. If you're showing off for the
fangwen, you want to clean things up, but the West wants to see
the dirt, not the rug it was swept under. It's the dishonesty, as
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much as the substance of what's wrong in China, that seems to
get under the skin of Western reporters.
Yet there may be something at the core of the Chinese
complaint. It's a sense that no matter what China does, it won't
really be accepted as an equal on the world stage, that it will
always be left cleaning the toilet at the OECD country club. It
might be that China is perceived as an economic and political
rival to Europe and the United States, so that the old Cold War
reporting instincts come out. But there's also the fact that China
doesn't have the manners and grace of the richer countries, even
if it has increasing economic and political clout. The question,
then, is whether the negative coverage of China is completely
rooted in substance or reflects something like class disdain for
its uncouth ways.
Beijing itself is an expression of the problem. With the exception
of a few neighborhoods, the city is dynamic, but, frankly, not
charming. It suffers from the current obsession with fazhan
("development"), which in urban-planning terms replicates the
"giant soulless block" development style of Robert Moses and
the American 1950s. Authenticity, which Western culture
valorizes, isn't something that Chinese people or planners go for
right now. There's a tendency to either modernize or tear down
old structures, instead of trying to preserve their decay in the
way Westerners like. It's all just a little too nouveau riche to get
much respect.
None of this is to trivialize the issues the media raise about
human rights abuses, censorship, or the situation in Tibet and
Xinjiang. For the most part, I happen to agree with the Western
critics. But perhaps the key is the difference, as one longtime
foreign correspondent puts it, between stories that are
appropriately negative and coverage that's just downright
cynical. There's no question that this cynicism is compounded by
China's stiffness and eagerness to please. Right now, China is an
awkward place that just wants to be loved—and that makes it
particularly easy to kick around.
From: June Shih
Subject: You think NBC is bad? You haven't seen CCTV.
Updated Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 1:15 PM ET
To say that the airwaves are saturated with Olympics coverage
here doesn't quite capture the feeling. Several of China Central
Television's channels, as well as the local Beijing and other
provincial channels, have given themselves over to 24/7
coverage of the games. Weeks before Friday's Opening
Ceremony, we'd already seen endless rebroadcasts of the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
monthslong torch relay. Watch Torchbearer 61, a pudgy local
government official, pass the torch to Torchbearer 62, a tall
gangly European man from the United Nations! See the torch in
the streets of Chengdu! And Tianjin! And in the outer Beijing
Suburbs! And in Tianjin—again!
Now that the games have actually started, a viewer can find live
broadcasts of everything from archery to volleyball all day long.
Television anchors are endlessly cuing up musical montages of
Chinese gold medal performances in weightlifting, shooting,
gymnastics, and diving. When not broadcasting events, Chinese
programmers are filling the airwaves with features such as
"Mothers Who Are Also Olympic Competitors" and "Kids Who
Have Shaved the Olympics Logo Into Their Heads." Enthusiastic
coverage is of course not unique to the Chinese—I remember
watching my share of slo-mo U.S. medalist montages set to
Whitney Houston's "One Moment in Time." But what's on
television in China right now shows what happens when you
combine tight state control with typically overwrought, patriotic
sports coverage. CCTV is like NBC on steroids … and growth
hormone, and EPO, and albuterol.
Having come to Beijing with my reporter husband (who's been
scrambling from venue to venue, pulling stories together), my
elderly, mobility-impaired parents, and a toddler who takes long
naps in the afternoons, let's just say that I've had a lot of
downtime in front of my Beijing boob tube. If you're going to
rely on CCTV to bring you your Olympics, you've got to care
about the Chinese teams. This, actually, is not a huge problem
for me. I am an American, but I've rooted for the Chinese in
Olympic sports since I was 12, when China sent its first full
team to the Los Angeles Olympics. (Please don't revoke my
citizenship.) I like to root for the underdog, and in 1984, the
Chinese were the underdog against the dominant Americans,
who racked up gold medal after gold medal in the wake of the
Soviet boycott and were breathlessly lionized for it. As a
Chinese-American kid, seeing people who looked like me win
gold was inspiring. I fell in love with Li Ning, the gymnast who
took home six medals that summer, so I was thrilled to see my
seventh-grade crush, still looking fit and adorable at 45, flying
around the circumference of the Bird's Nest to light the Olympic
cauldron last week.
The other morning, even though we had beach volleyball tickets,
the entire family decided to stay in and watch the men's
gymnastics finals. The Chinese men were heavily favored—we
didn't want to miss it. A few minutes in, we began to wish we
were watching back home. "Where are the up-close-andpersonal segments?" my sister asked. Sure, there was a bit of
commentary, but none of the polish and packaging that you'd get
from the folks at NBC. Not much history or background on the
contestants beyond where in China they were born. And
certainly no visits to hometowns and no proud, teary-eyed
parents. Sure, these stories of sacrifice, injury, and adversity are
cheesy, but they serve a necessary function, allowing you to
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identify with athletes whom you've never heard of before and
probably won't hear from again. To find out more about China's
top gymnast, Yang Wei, I had to go to the U.S. news sites for a
biography.
Instead of soft-focus profiles, what you get from CCTV is raw,
one-sided footage. Predictably, the cameras were trained
exclusively on the Chinese gymnasts. During the early rotations,
when the Chinese unexpectedly found themselves in fifth place,
CCTV broadcast little or no footage of the teams in first, second,
third, and fourth. Instead, even as the Chinese gymnasts waited
for their scores, which often took several minutes, and other
competitors were performing, the CCTV cameras stayed with
them as they sat doing nothing. To fill the air, commentators
offered thoughts such as "the team seems really tight. They
really need to open up 100 percent. If they open up 100 percent,
they will perform better." But we had no idea how well the other
teams were performing. "Let's see some Americans!" my sister
yelled.
It was frustrating. While NBC is almost always U.S.-focused,
they at least know that minutes spent focusing on an athlete
waiting for a score does not make for good TV. They know how
to tell a story, and that a competition needs competitors. That's
the problem with taking away the free market: Any selfrespecting, ratings-oriented broadcaster would have cut away to
fit in somebody else's vault.
But CCTV couldn't bear to look away from its own team
yesterday. It was a reminder that, at the end of the day, it's still a
large cog in a giant propaganda machine. NBC is patriotic
because patriotism sells; CCTV is patriotic because patriotism is
the law. Telling a story is not CCTV's priority; it's conveying the
glory of China and the Chinese regime. That's a lot less fun to
watch than a sporting event.
Frustrations aside, the propaganda machine does kick up some
more benign kitsch. My easy-listening heart warms each time I
see "Beijing Welcomes You," a seven-minute song that seems to
play on a continuous loop at certain times of the day. The video
shows 100 of Greater China's pop stars singing a slightly
saccharine, yet totally infectious, song celebrating the arrival of
the games—who wouldn't be moved by the great Jackie Chan,
standing on the Great Wall, turning to face the camera and
reaching out his arms as he belts in Mandarin, "Beijing
welcomes you. We've opened up our world to you."
five-ring circus
The Silver Lining
The U.S. women's gymnastics team overturned cultural cliches in the team
event.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By Meghan O'Rourke
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:18 PM ET
Once again, the United States women's gymnastics team has
taken the silver in the team finals at the Olympics. After falling
to Romania in Athens, the Americans this time lost out to the
Chinese, who performed with surprising joie de vivre. We've
heard a lot about the collective, hardworking ethos of Chinese
culture—which David Brooks contrasted earlier this week with
America's individualistic impulses—but the irony early on was
that it was the Chinese who seemed to be joyfully and
expressively performing while the American girls looked drawn
and anxious. There was even a dour helicopter parent thrown
into the mix, adding to the tension: Former Soviet champion
Valeri Liukin, father of superstar Nastia Liukin, an elegant
performer with all the diva potential of a Svetlana Khorkina.
When she briefly wobbled on the beam, he put his head in his
hands, as if he couldn't watch any more. Finally, an NBC
commentator said, almost chidingly, "His daughter has done a
good job."
The team final was, everyone understood, a showdown between
the Chinese and the Americans, with the Chinese team favored.
(Their routines possessed a greater level of difficulty.) For the
Americans to have a chance, the Chinese would have to falter;
that didn't quite happen. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that a kind
of subconscious anxiety about global politics inflected some of
the commentary. When it looked, for a moment, as if the
Chinese had made a crucial error, Al Trautwig said, wishfully,
"One moment they look like a world power, the next they look
so vulnerable."
The big back story this year has been a controversy over birth
certificates. Today, you have to be 16 within the calendar year to
compete in Olympic women's gymnastics, and online records
suggested that half the Chinese team was too young, according
to the New York Times. The Chinese denied the allegations and
provided passports that "proved" all the girls were of age.
Boy, did they not look it. The American girls came out onto the
floor in shiny red leotards that made them look like Las Vegas
showgirls. On average 30 pounds heavier and 3.5 inches taller
than the doll-sized Chinese gymnasts, they had the sheen of
aging starlets, imbuing the scene with a peculiar Sunset
Boulevard feel. From the start, we knew how this would end,
with the young outshining the "old." Briefly, after the Chinese
team completed its third rotation, the balance beam, it looked
like the Americans had a real shot at the gold: The Chinese team
leader, Cheng Fei, had taken a dramatic spill, earning a huge 0.8
deduction. But Alicia Sacramone, the oldest member of the
American team, misjudged her mount and, arms windmilling,
fell from the beam before she even got on it. It was as
metaphorical a fall as it was literal. In the next event, the floor
exercise, all three American competitors—Shawn Johnson,
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Liukin, and Sacramone—stepped out of bounds, as if the
equipment were taunting them: You're too big and old.
It was hard not to see the American girls' failure to stay inbounds
as a kind of Freudian slip—or Freudian step. It was as if,
worried that the Chinese might have an unfair advantage, the
Americans suddenly became aware of their growing bodies, of
the potential for harm, of how easy it is to make a mistake, of
how fast time flies and the body stiffens, even for those who can
flip through the air and perform ever more complicated release
skills on the uneven bars.
It might not be obvious why being younger would be an
advantage in a highly perfectionistic, skill-driven sport like
gymnastics. After all, the younger athletes have had less time to
refine their skills. But gymnastics in its current athleticized form
rewards lightness and a low center of gravity. Smaller girls
rotate more easily in the air. Their bodies are also less subject to
the hormonal changes that can lead to injury. And the
prepubescent tend, quite simply, to be more fearless. Romanian
Nadia Comaneci helped usher in this new era of athleticism in
1976, when, at the age of 14, she scored the first perfect 10 with
a routine on uneven bars, an apparatus on which she pioneered
difficult moves. It's no accident that Nadia was both young and
slight, or that so many of the Chinese girls today share her body
type.
Routines today derive their value not so much from artistry as
from the execution of feats of sheer difficulty; the more
challenging elements you string together, the more points you
earn. (Of course, the other big change in this Olympics is the
advent of a new scoring system, which did away with the perfect
10, and uses two measures, execution and difficulty, much the
way figure skating does.)
And yet the Americans turned in a number of beautiful
performances. It's been a long time since the United States had a
truly charismatic gymnast, and boy do we have one now in
Nastia Liukin. Where Carly Patterson performed like a Beanie
Baby on steroids—cute and springy—Liukin has the flair of a
ballerina and the elegant focus of predecessors like Comaneci.
Nastia's dad was a product of the Soviet system, and she has the
lean, angular Eastern European body type; in a sense, she's an
Americanized Khorkina. On the uneven bars, Liukin performed
a routine with a dauntingly high difficulty level and did it with
the type of apparently effortless grace that reminds me of why,
as a child, I first wanted to be a gymnast: At its best, the sport is
a triumph of the will over gravity, and of art over sheer
acrobatics. Shawn Johnson, who is petite without appearing
emaciated, danced and leapt and tumbled on the beam with a
perky pleasure. On the floor exercise, Alicia Sacramone bounced
through the air with a light celerity—until she fell on a double
Arabian front, opening up too early because she was worried she
would step out of bounds. (Later, she did, making matters
worse.) But the undoubted highlight was Liukin's uneven bars
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
performance, which received the highest score of the evening—a
16.9, nearly the highest you can receive in the post-perfect-10
era.
Meanwhile, in other news: Apparently the Romanians are so
"Westernized" that they actually "text message" between
rotations now. Tim Daggett, NBC's color commentator, noted
this development breathlessly, fingering it as the cause of the
Romanians' dramatic decline in the past four years, practically
bemoaning the passing of athletic slavery in Eastern Europe.
(Gymnastics truly can bring out the fascistic perfectionist in
anyone.) And isn't it time for NBC to rotate some fresh blood
into its pundit box? All night long, Trautwig, Daggett, and Elfi
Schlegel pronounced on the gymnasts—"This is an element she
has struggled with"—with an accuracy that was stultifying, like
going out for drinks with a friend who's always right. Without
the barroom debate, the occasional surprise, where's the fun?
Their running patter was, of course, characterized by a stalactic
accumulation of cliches ("She's like a rock"; "She delivered")
and the by-now routine appropriation of emotion. ("You gotta
wonder if she realizes what a big moment this is," they said of
one Chinese gymnast. The answer: Yes, she probably does.)
NBC also kept the finals almost exclusively focused on the
Americans and the Chinese; by my vague count, the network
showed only one Romanian and one Russian on one event each,
which only underscored the predictability of it all. The whole
evening felt like a reality show that had hardened into selfconsciousness and shtick, lacking whatever vibrancy it once
possessed.
At the end, though, the show came back to life. When
Sacramone fell on the balance beam, impairing her teammates'
chances at the gold—and then fell again in her floor exercise—
the other girls drew around her and tried to comfort her. (Not so
the women's national team coordinator, Marta Karolyi, who
barely touched Alicia after her floor routine.) With every reason
to be disappointed—or just made nervous by her fall—the girls
refused to let Sacramone beat herself up. They acted, in short,
like teammates, murmuring to her and offering hugs. And in the
last minutes of the competition, when Chinese gymnast Jiang
Yuyuan performed her floor routine, harnessing the energy in
the arena as she gleefully danced and tumbled, even the
Americans seemed drawn in; Shawn Johnson smiled and
nodded, visibly reacting with pleasure to the artistry. The
Americans all managed smiles at the end. Along the way, they
showed, perhaps, less individual joy than one might have
wished, but there in the last moments, finally, an indomitable
collective spirit was on view. In that regard, at least, they gave
the Chinese a real run for their money.
five-ring circus
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
46/140
Just like Michael Phelps: another day, another record.
By Josh Levin, Derek Thompson, and Chris Wilson
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 10:55 AM ET
On Wednesday morning in Beijing's Water Cube, it seemed that
no Olympic swimmer could touch the pool without setting a
world record. So it is with the Sap-o-Meter. For the third
consecutive night, NBC's coverage has set a new standard for
sentimentality. The record, if only for today: a whopping 42 Sap
Points.
Tuesday was a tale of two arenas for American squads. In the
Cube, Michael Phelps, freshly crowned the "greatest Olympian
of all time," added two more golds to his war chest. NBC padded
the achievement with a nostalgic chat with Mama Phelps, a
series of profiles flush with violin crescendos, and record-high
utterances of proud and overcome. In women's gymnastics,
however, the commentary was syrupy but not always sweet. The
grueling showdown between the American and Chinese teams
featured falls, slips, and rough landings, eliciting top scores for
battled (six mentions) and challenges (four).
Sappiest Line of the Day: "You done good, Mom."—NBC's
Cris Collinsworth to Michael Phelps' mother, Debbie. (Emphasis
on sap words is ours.)
The Sap-o-Meter Tag Cloud
adversity battled cancer challenges courage
cry death determination
dream
emotion glory golden heart hero inspiration
journey magic memory miracle
mother overcome passion
mom
proud sacrifice
spirit tragedy triumph
For a primer on how the Sap-o-Meter works, check out our
first entry. Did we miss your favorite moment? Send your
Sappiest Line of the Day suggestions to sapometer@gmail.com.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Sap-o-Meter History
(click on any bar to read that day's entry)
five-ring circus
"Why Not Just Use Beavers?"
NBC's visit to the Three Gorges Dam, and other Olympics coverage highlights.
By Troy Patterson
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 6:08 PM ET
As presented on NBC, the Summer Olympics are a celebration
of many worthy things—strength, agility, determination, and
Coca-Cola, just for instance, but, perhaps foremost, the diversity
of world culture. Last Friday, at the end of the NBC Nightly
News, in a weekly segment called the "Making a Difference"
report, Brian Williams assumed the honor of cranking up the
hype for the opening ceremony. With the Bird's Nest in the
background and the deep grays of the Beijing air bringing out
the coral tones in his tan, the anchor fired up a lesson in German
and Polish cuisine—that is, in the kind of cooking fat referred to
in Yiddish as schmaltz.
The subject was track-and-fielder Lopez Lomong, the Sudanese
refugee voted U.S. flag bearer—"a very symbolic choice this
year," said Williams, "part walking political statement … also a
walking symbol of the Olympic ideal." I'd thought he was a
runner, but whatever. Williams, having dignified the first great
sob story of the 29th Olympiad, then gave his colleagues in
infotainment at Access Hollywood a crack at it. That show teased
Shaun Robinson's interview with Lomong with the promise that
she would perform the rite of actual sobbing. She did so without
disrupting her mascara, which is to say that the Access
Hollywood makeup team stuck the landing.
One points this out not to trivialize a civil war but to note that
the jaw won't stop dropping at the process by which featured
athletes—the victims of politics, disease, and "personal
tragedy"—get reshaped into "very symbolic" persons. We all
should have ceased to be amazed by this 20 years ago, but NBC,
like Michael Phelps, continues to break its own world records.
Its go-to tone is in fact tone-deaf, as if, having committed itself
to exercising restraint in presenting the actual events, the
network gets carried away at the faintest whiff of human interest.
A lachrymose segment on a Polish swimmer first lamented that
she'd killed her brother in a car accident, then, in broadcasting
the crowning quote that he had possessed all the qualities she
would seek in a husband, ushered incestuous implications ickily
onto the scene. A major subplot last night involved U.S. beach
volleyball star Kerri Walsh briefly losing her wedding ring in the
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sand. How'd it feel to have it back, Kerri? "You know, Heather, I
felt like I could breathe again. …"
Bob Costas presides over all this from a room decorated in taupe
and black enamel, an unobtrusive space splitting the difference
between chic and dull, a look we'll call Michael Mann Marriott.
Mary Carrillo was in Monday night with a palate-cleansing
travel report on the many supersized things that China has to
offer—the Great Wall and the world's tallest man and so on.
Carrillo took the assignment lightly, asking, at Three Gorges
Dam, "Why not just use beavers?" But in general NBC is awed,
cowed, and, frankly, turned on by China's size. Sunday's U.S.China men's basketball game was repeatedly hyped as "the mostwatched basketball game in the history of the sport," which, if
true, meant that it was the blow-out that bored the greatest
number of eyeballs to tears, not even offering the solace of
replays of the Americans' many sparkling alley-oops.
The intro to Monday night's men's artistic gymnastics
competition kicked off with heavy percussion and moderate
Orientalism: "There are only 26 characters in the English
language to make us understand" the import of the event. Ah, so,
but the very symbolic glyphs of the indigenous people make it
clear that this was "the biggest sports event of this nation's
history." The Occidental best suited to rise to the occasion was
U.S. gymnast Justin Spring, who, with his cocky brush cut and
handsome smirk, looks like a cross between G.I. Joe and James
Dean. Before taking to the parallel bars, he rakishly blew the
surplus chalk from his hands. After, he preened, strutted, and
then pretended finally to notice the camera for the first time:
"What's up, America?" Give that man a Wheaties box.
five-ring circus
Down With the Perfect 10!
A mathematician explains the genius of the new gymnastics scoring system.
By Jordan Ellenberg
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 12:09 PM ET
Olympic gymnastics has a new scoring system, and not
everyone's happy with the departure of the famous 10-point
scale. "It's crazy, terrible, the stupidest thing that ever happened
to the sport of gymnastics," wailed excitable supercoach Bela
Karolyi in the New York Times. "How could they take away this
beautiful, this most perfect thing from us, the one thing that
separated our sport from the others?"
What exactly is Karolyi kvetching about? This year, competitors
get two scores, each from its own panel of judges. The "A" score
measures the difficulty of the routine. A relatively easy move
like a one-handed cartwheel on the balance beam adds 0.1 to
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
your A score, while bringing off the astonishing Arabian double
front layout rakes in 0.7. (And no, you can't inflate your score by
doing 10 cartwheels in a row; only the 10 most difficult elements
are counted, and repeated elements don't count at all.)
Performing two or more elements in close succession tacks on
"connection value" of up to 0.2 points per transition. The way to
max out your A score, then, is to cram the toughest possible
moves into your routine and pack them as tightly together as you
can manage.
The downside of all that: In the middle of your painstakingly
computed, ultra-difficult, absolutely seamless routine, you might
fly headfirst off the end of the beam. That's where the B panel
comes in. The B score starts at the top of the scale rather than the
bottom, and every mistake takes you further from a perfect 10.0.
The new system imposes a kind of mandatory minimum
sentencing; after years of complaints about unobjective scoring,
judges on the B panel now have less discretion about how many
points to deduct for a given miscue. The standard penalties are
also harsher than they used to be—a fall that would have cost a
half-point in Athens now means a 0.8-point deduction. That's
why American gymnast Nastia Liukin's botched dismount at the
end of Sunday's brutally difficult uneven bars routine—a routine
specifically designed by her father to ring up a massive A
score—dropped her back to fifth place, behind several less
ambitious competitors.
The final tally is the sum of the A score and B score; since the
difficulty of the current batch of Olympic routines tops out in the
7s, you can expect medal-winning scores to be somewhere in the
16s. And that's one thing opponents of the new system don't like.
"A perfect 16.9" lacks the ring of "a perfect 10."
"It's hard to understand. I don't even understand it," Mary Lou
Retton told the Times. "Back in the old days you'd know what
that means," sniffed NBC commentator Tim Daggett (himself
the recipient of a 10.0 on the high bar in the 1984 Games) after
watching China's Yibing Chen score a 16.275 on the vault.
But would you really? Under the old system, a 10.0 didn't mean
"perfection"—the score for a flawless performance was
computed by adding difficulty bonuses to a fixed "start value"
(8.4 for men, 8.8 for women) up to a maximum of 10, then
taking deductions for mistakes. An easier routine, carried out
perfectly, might get a 9.6 instead of a 10. In other words, the old
system was a lot like the new system. If anything, the new
scoring is easier to interpret: A B score of 10.0 is synonymous
with absolute perfection while the old unified score was an
impenetrable combination of pluses and minuses arrived at only
after Talmudic contemplation of the FIG's Code of Points.
But let's not focus on those details. As in most emotional
disputes about numbers, people aren't arguing about precisely
how the number is calculated but what it symbolizes. How we
measure something reflects, and eventually influences, what we
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value in it. And in that view, the new scoring system really does
represent a profound change.
Scales with a hard upper limit, like the old gymnastics scoring or
the SAT, say that what's important is the pursuit of perfection.
The goal of the SAT is to blacken the right bubble for every last
one of those inequalities and analogies, and you can do no better
than getting every one correct. Open-ended scales, like the new
gymnastics system, value innovation and the breaking of
existing barriers. You can't imagine men's weightlifting, say,
being scored on how close you came to clean-and-jerking 550
pounds, with every pound above that not counting toward your
score. That's because the goal of weightlifting isn't to approach a
predetermined ideal. The goal—primal, simple, and satisfying—
is to hoist a more awe-inspiring heap of metal above your head
than the other fellow. Or, better yet, to hoist more than any other
fellow in history.
There are some Olympic sports in which an upper limit might be
more appropriate than in gymnastics—in sprinting, for instance,
where today's fastest runners may actually be very close to the
absolute physical limits of human ability. There is some mark in
the 100-meter dash that's the equivalent of getting all the
questions right on the SAT—you just can't do any better. I asked
Peter Weyand, a professor of kinesiology at Rice and an expert
on human locomotion, how far away that ultimate limit was
from the current world record. Like a good scientist, Weyand
declined to make a precise prediction. But the scenario he
presented for serious improvement in sprinting verged on the
science-fictional, involving a drastic enhancement of the density
of type IIX muscle fibers, achieved via cloning or extremely
fortunate mutation. It doesn't seem a bad guess to say that the
sprinters in Beijing, not the gymnasts, are the ones for whom
"perfection" is an appropriate metric.
The same goes for other track-and-field events highly dependent
on sprint speed. This write-up from the American Institute of
Physics explains how to use the conservation of energy to
estimate your maximal possible pole vault from your top running
speed. If we plug the current 100-meter world record into the
formula, a vaulter who's 2 meters tall (about 6-foot-7) would
have a maximal clearance of 6.5 meters—not so far above Sergei
Bubka's world record of 6.14 meters. You want to grade pole
vaults by their nearness to 6.5 meters, with deductions for
inappropriate music or a bounce on the landing? No objection
here.
Gymnastics, by contrast, isn't constrained by simple applications
of Newtonian mechanics. Gymnasts can perform moves that no
one's carried out before—that no one ever thought of carrying
out before. Now, the sport has a scoring system that's built to
reward that. In theory, yes, there's still an upper limit. There are
only so many different possible elements in a routine and only so
many possible connections between them, and each one, at least
for now, is worth at most 0.7 points. But this new upper
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
boundary is less like a perfect SAT score than a 1.000 batting
average: a limit so far out of reach it might as well be no limit at
all.
"The new 'open-ended' scoring system was designed in part to
prevent us from outgrowing the rules," international gymnastics
judge Judy Schalk told me via e-mail. Before the new system,
just about all elite competitors performed routines difficult
enough to bring the start value up to a 10.0; sailing over that
threshold earned you no more points than barely clearing it.
With the new system, gymnasts have the incentive to keep
making their routines tougher and more complex. In every other
sport, the competitors in Beijing are superior to their
predecessors and get better scores to prove it. Why should
gymnastics be the only sport without world records?
With the new system, gymnastics comes into compliance with
the Olympic motto. That's "faster, higher, stronger," not "more
graceful, more beautiful, closer to perfect." It's no coincidence
that the Olympic sports that have historically chased the latter
ideal are the same ones in which the women's game
overshadows the men's: gymnastics and figure skating.
Figure skating ditched the perfect 6.0 after crooked judging in
the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics embarrassed the sport. The
old scoring system already had many discontents, most famously
great French champion Surya Bonaly, who showed her disdain
for the judges at the 1998 Olympics by landing a backflip on one
skate. It was illegal, it carried a mandatory deduction, and she
was the only woman in the world who could do it.
If the judging controversy in figure skating is any guide, don't
expect gymnastics to enjoy a smooth transition into the new era.
Some people think skating's new system has bastardized the
sport, forcing all competitors to adopt the same intricate and
high-scoring combinations of moves, tougher without being
better. "A triple Axel with two fingers into the skater's nose
would definitely be more difficult than the usual triple Axel, but
could we consider that an improvement?" asked former Olympic
judge Sofia Banchetti Garbato in an open letter to the
International Skating Union president. (Note: The triple nasal
axel is not currently an ISU-sanctioned element.) On the other
hand, the second-place finisher in this year's men's world
championship complained that the new system didn't offer
enough points for difficult jumps, thus encouraging skaters to
turn in perfect but less demanding programs.
The new gymnastics system is substantially simpler than the one
figure skating adopted, and the effect is likely to be clearer:
more difficult routines, more athleticism, less focus on beauty
and presentation. Dance elements count for much less,
spectacular flips and dismounts for much more. "The artistic
value is further repressed in the quest for more difficulty," says
Schalk.
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And that's for the best. Right now, gymnastics fans look back to
the flawless performances of Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou
Retton and say, "How can gymnastics survive without the
perfect 10?" But the next generation of fans, watching their
heroes smash one another's records with ever more spectacular
physical feats, are more likely to ask a different question: "How
did gymnastics survive without the golden 17?"
five-ring circus
The Sap-o-Meter Widget
Embed our Olympics schmaltz tracker on your blog, iGoogle, or Facebook
page.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 12:08 PM ET
Every four years, we tune in to the Olympics to watch
swimming, running, and jumping. Instead, NBC deluges us with
tales of heartache, triumph, and redemption. For all these years,
we've accepted our fate silently—there's never been a way to
figure out precisely how saccharine NBC's coverage really is.
Until now. Welcome to Slate's Olympics Sap-o-Meter!
On Monday, we published our first Sap-o-Meter entry and
marveled as NBC piled up an impressive 29 Sap Points. Can't
wait to find out tomorrow's score? Click the "get & share" button
on the widget above and select the type of site where you want
to embed the widget. (There's a shortcut for Facebook users
here.)
If you watch enough NBC, you know that there's a flag-waving
mom behind every extraordinary achievement. Well, supporting
last night's record-breaking performance were a remarkable 13
mothers—that is, 13 mentions of the words mom or mother.
NBC also continued to dream big, with a robust six mentions for
the second consecutive night.
Sappiest Line of the Day: "Back home in Colorado, a dad who
was once champion of the Soviet Union sits alone and smiles
with pride. His son Sasha has come through."—NBC
commentator Al Trautwig, after American gymnast Sasha
Artemev's bronze-clinching pommel horse routine. (Emphasis on
sap words is ours.)
The Sap-o-Meter Tag Cloud
adversity battled cancer challenges death
dream emotion
inspiration journey magic
glory golden heart
mom
mother
overcome proud sacrifice spirit
We'll update the widget each morning with the latest Sap Score
as well as NBC's Sappiest Line of the Day. Clicking on
"Olympics Sap-o-Meter" will take you to that day's article.
For a primer on how the Sap-o-Meter works, check out our
first entry. Did we miss your favorite moment? Send your
Sappiest Line of the Day suggestions to sapometer@gmail.com.
Got a suggestion for our Sappiest Line of the Day? Please send
to sapometer@gmail.com.
Sap-o-Meter History
(click on any bar to read that day's entry)
five-ring circus
five-ring circus
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
The sap reaches a record high. Blame mom.
Finally, a scientific way to measure the sappiness of NBC's Olympics coverage.
By Josh Levin, Derek Thompson, and Chris Wilson
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 10:50 AM ET
By Josh Levin, Derek Thompson, and Chris Wilson
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 12:08 PM ET
NBC's coverage of the United States' improbable bronze medal
in men's gymnastics didn't end until early Tuesday morning.
Undaunted, the Sap-o-Meter stayed up late churning the treacle,
and it's got a new record to show for it: an inspirational 38 Sap
Points.
We all know that, come Olympics time, NBC goes way
overboard with the heartwarming tales of diseases conquered,
hardship overcome, and human spirits uplifted. Yet there's never
been a tool to determine, scientifically, just how saccharine
NBC's coverage really is. Until now. Welcome to Slate's
Olympics Sap-o-Meter!
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
50/140
Here's how it works. After slogging through Olympic broadcasts
of yore, we drew up a list of 33 syrupy words that NBC has
chronically overused: adversity, battled, cancer, challenges,
courage, cry, death, dedication, determination, dream, emotion,
glory, golden, hardship, heart, hero, inspiration, inspire,
journey, magic, memory, miracle, mom, mother, Olympic-sized,
overcome, passion, proud, sacrifice, spirit, tears, tragedy,
triumph. While these 33 words are by no means an unabridged
collection of schmaltzy nouns, adjectives, and verbs, they're a
good sampling of NBC's bathos. Think of them as the Dow
Jones of sap.
Each night, the Sap-o-Meter will power up as NBC's prime-time
Olympics coverage commences. Whenever one of our magic
words gets uttered, it will record a single Sap Point. (For
example, the following hypothetical declaration would earn an
impressive three Sap Points: "Lopez Lomong's journey to
America is an Olympic-sized inspiration.") At the end of the
evening, we'll add up the Sap Points and report the total Sap-oMeter score, which you'll find in the snazzy animated graphic
you see at the top of the screen. (Note: Since we're working from
closed-caption data, which contains misspellings and
occasionally misses words, we are unlikely to catch absolutely
everything. We've also yet to develop technology that
automatically detects sappy violin music. We hope to roll out
that feature in time for the 2012 Games.)
But wait, there's more. The daily Sap-o-Meter page will also
include a tag cloud in which our 33 cloying words grow larger
each time they're said by Bob Costas and Co. Take a peek at the
cloud every morning and try to guess the winner of the
inspirational, magical, triumphant title of Sappiest Word of the
2008 Olympic Games. (Mouse over each word in the cloud to
see how many times it's been used so far.)
We'll also be choosing the Sappiest Line of the Day, a subjective
take on the night's most wince-inducing moment. That's where
you come in: The Sap-o-Meter can count words, but only you
can help us identify when NBC has reached the pinnacle of
treacle. Please send your Sappiest Line of the Day suggestions to
sapometer@gmail.com; e-mail may be quoted by name unless
the writer stipulates otherwise. And if you happen to know the
approximate time your favorite line appeared on the air, it will
be a lot easier to track down.
Now, on to the inaugural Sap-o-Meter tally. Last night, Michael
Phelps, Jason Lezak, and their teammates in the 4x100-meter
freestyle relay delivered a stunning last-second victory over the
trash-talking French team. NBC's instant declaration: Last
night's team effort was "one of the most incredible team efforts
we've ever seen!" That gosh-wow performance sealed a sicklysweet evening of sentimentality for NBC. The result: an
impressive 29 on the Sap-o-Meter.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Just as in a historic relay performance, every word must pull its
weight to get a world-record Sap-o-Meter score. Dream soared
with six mentions. Mom—the star of those heartstring-tugging
Olympic profiles—clocked in with an impressive five. And
overcome, heart, and emotion were key contributors to the Sapo-Meter's first official run with three mentions apiece.
Sappiest Line of the Day: "Behind the smiles, they'll never be
able to explain the sacrifices made, or adversities overcome."—
NBC commentator Al Trautwig, narrating a profile of the
American women's gymnastics team. (Emphasis on sap words is
ours.)
The Sap-o-Meter Tag Cloud
adversity battled challenges death
dream emotion heart
inspiration
mom overcome
proud sacrifice
Did we miss your favorite moment? Send your Sappiest Line of
the Day suggestions to sapometer@gmail.com.
Sap-o-Meter History
(click on any bar to read that day's entry)
foreigners
Al-Qaida at 20
Is Osama Bin Laden's movement destined to fail?
By Daniel Byman
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 7:08 AM ET
From: Daniel Byman
Subject: From Obscurity to Infamy
Posted Monday, August 11, 2008, at 6:52 AM ET
Aug. 11 marks a birthday few Americans will celebrate: the
founding of al-Qaida. Twenty years ago today, Osama Bin
Laden and a small band of like-minded brothers sat down to
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reorient the international jihadist movement that, in their eyes at
least, had just scored a brilliant success by ousting the Soviet
leviathan from Afghanistan. Yet dissension was high. For some,
the fight was over: Godless Communists were fleeing Muslim
lands, and the brothers in arms could now go home. Others
wanted to redeem Palestine and fight Israel. Still others sought
to overthrow secular Muslim regimes and replace them with
Islamic governments. Bin Laden and his followers wanted to
unify this community and maintain a coherent military force that
would wage jihad around the world.
Today, Bin Laden may well be reflecting on his accomplishments
over the last 20 years and the challenges that lie ahead. For
while his small band has succeeded brilliantly in many ways, the
savage violence that has marked its rise has also limited its
success.
Today's article examines Osama Bin Laden's impressive
successes; tomorrow Byman assesses Bin Laden's failures and
explains why his movement may fail and fragment in the years to
come.
It is hard to dispute al-Qaida's operational successes. On Aug. 7,
1998, just short of 10 years after its founding, the organization
launched two near-simultaneous bombings on the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people,
among them 12 Americans. Three years later, on Sept. 11, the
organization showed itself to be exponentially more dangerous,
killing almost three times as many Americans in one day as had
been killed in all international terrorist attacks to that day. Since
9/11, nothing the organization has done has matched that level of
carnage, but it remains the premier terrorist threat to the United
States.
Al-Qaida has also funded, trained, and otherwise backed local
jihadist insurgents and would-be insurgents in Afghanistan,
Bosnia, Chechnya, Egypt, Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines,
Uzbekistan, and elsewhere. Although these activities received
less attention than spectacular acts of terrorism, they are often
far bloodier, contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands as
civil war and strife consume these countries. In addition, in
several notable cases, the violence has posed a political danger,
threatening to topple or undermine governments.
Credit for these bloody successes must be given to Osama Bin
Laden's leadership. In contrast to many terrorist leaders, he is not
megalomaniacal. Like a good executive, he has empowered a
wide range of junior leaders. When local fighters do well, he
supports them as comrades in the cause rather than as potential
rivals. He and his organization have trained thousands of
militants and indoctrinated even more, even though they allow
only a select few to join al-Qaida itself. The result is a broad
cadre of committed and skilled fighters tied to al-Qaida in a
multitude of ways and supportive of the broader cause Bin
Laden champions.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Ironically, U.S. counterterrorism successes reveal the depth of
Bin Laden's organization. Do a Google search for "al-Qaida's
number three," and it reveals some good news: We got him. He
was Mohammed Atef, killed during Operation Enduring
Freedom in Afghanistan. Then he was Abu Zubaydah and then
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, both of whom were captured in
Pakistan. Then he was Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was also
captured in Pakistan, and then Abu Hamza Rabia, killed in 2006.
These deaths and arrests can correctly be seen as a series of
impressive achievements by U.S. military and intelligence
officials. But it is an even more impressive accomplishment for
Bin Laden: All active terrorist groups lose leaders, but only a
select few can repeatedly lose senior leaders and survive. And as
the plot to bomb 10 planes over the Atlantic that was disrupted
on Aug. 10, 2006, showed, al-Qaida's ambitions remained vast
and its capabilities considerable.
One of the reasons for al-Qaida's success is that Bin Laden has
found supportive patrons and carved out niches in which to
operate freely. Hassan al-Turabi's Sudan was the first regime to
back Bin Laden, and when Turabi turned his back on al-Qaida in
1996, Bin Laden quickly found a new patron in Afghanistan. In
Afghanistan before 9/11, the ruling Taliban allowed Bin Laden
and his supporters to organize, recruit, train, plan, and even relax
while they built a small army.
When the Taliban fell from power in late 2001, it looked like alQaida would forever be on the run. Perhaps Bin Laden's biggest
accomplishment in recent years is the reconstitution of a
sanctuary in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. AlQaida is more harried in Pakistan today than it was when the
Taliban was its host, but it is rapidly re-establishing its
sanctuary. Large swaths of Pakistan are no-go areas for the
Pakistani army, and recent news reports indicate that Pakistan,
not Iraq, is now the destination of choice for would-be jihadists.
Many of the post-9/11 terrorist attacks that have plagued
Western Europe appear to have been organized from Pakistan.
Perhaps the biggest problem Bin Laden confronted in the
organization's early years had nothing to do with operations.
Few Muslims shared his belief that the United States was the
source of the Muslim world's problems and that jihad was the
answer. Even most self-identified jihadists rejected this idea. No
one liked the United States, but for them, local governments in
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and so on were the most immediate
oppressors, and if they could pick an external enemy, Israel
would head the list. Not until around 1994 did Bin Laden
himself begin to fixate on the United States as his primary target.
Successful terrorist attacks in the '90s and on 9/11 cemented the
organization's reputation for derring-do, but the 2003 U.S.
invasion and occupation of Iraq was a key factor in helping
vindicate Bin Laden's narrative. Before the war, some, including
many extremists, believed he had overreached himself on 9/11
and had squandered the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan by taking
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on the United States so directly. For these Muslims, even such a
spectacular operation as 9/11 was a poor trade-off for the loss of
a true Islamic government. In addition, even puritanical Muslims
whose worldview Bin Laden claimed to share criticized his
demand for jihad, believing that his arguments had little merit
and that he did not have the credentials to issue the call. The Iraq
war "proved" to most Muslims (and many non-Muslims around
the world) that the United States was an aggressive power bent
on dominating the Islamic world. What's more, having a large
Christian power militarily invade and occupy the heart of the
Islamic world would indeed qualify for jihad, according to
religious scholars who not only were unsympathetic to Bin
Laden, but whose salaries were often paid by pro-U.S.
governments.
Perhaps this shift in narrative is Bin Laden's biggest success.
Powerful jihadist cadres from Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere
now focus as much activity on Americans and other Westerners
as on their local problems. In making this shift, they are playing
to a sympathetic public. Popular opinion of the United States in
the Muslim world, even though slightly recovered since its nadir
at the beginning of the Iraq war, is abysmal.
Al-Qaida's media operations both reflect and drive this success.
Even before he founded al-Qaida, Bin Laden believed that
propaganda and proselytizing were vital. In the years before
9/11, he occasionally gave interviews, and al-Qaida videotaped
operations and statements by would-be martyrs for future use.
Since 9/11, al-Qaida's information operations have exploded in
scope. A new statement from Osama Bin Laden or Ayman alZawahiri hardly merits attention in most newspapers today, in
contrast to the days after 9/11 when every word was parsed for
its political and operational significance. However, al-Qaida has
made good use of the Internet to bypass Western media and
reach key audiences directly.
Al-Qaida has used its media operations to impress a key
audience: young Muslim males. Jihad is cool. In contrast to
many other political organizations, to say nothing of feckless
Arab leaders, al-Qaida acts and sacrifices—at times
successfully—in the name of Islam. This may at times horrify
moderate Muslims, but they wouldn't join the fight anyway.
Even as al-Qaida and its allies have suffered reverses in several
key countries in recent years, they have expanded operations
elsewhere. In Western Europe, the Muslim population is
increasingly radicalized, with young men in particular finding
Bin Laden's message attractive. Afghanistan, for several years
touted as a major U.S. success in the war against al-Qaida, faces
an insurgency that controls parts of the country and is steadily
gaining strength. Most worrisome, Pakistan itself is under siege.
Every few months, it seems that the Pakistani army is shut out of
a new part of Pakistan, and areas like Swat—once a peaceful
tourist destination—are now hotbeds for the insurgency.
Pakistan has a large, powerful army; nuclear weapons; and an
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
ongoing border dispute with India. Unrest there is perhaps more
terrifying than in any other country in the world.
Finally, it is hard to talk about al-Qaida's strength without
juxtaposing it with several problematic U.S. policies. The bad
news is that Washington still remains confused in much of its
approach toward counterterrorism. Homeland security in
particular suffers, not because of a lack of money or effort, but
because there is still confusion about how to defend the U.S.
homeland best and how to prioritize and rationalize programs.
More troubling, some of the measures the United States has used
to fight terrorism have backfired. Highly publicized abuses of
prisoners in Abu Ghraib and, to a lesser extent, Guantanamo
have tarnished the United States' good name. To its credit, the
Bush administration has repeatedly tried to reach out to
moderate Muslims at home and abroad, but statements by some
U.S. evangelists like Pat Robertson declaring Muslims to be
"satanic"—and pictures that show such preachers shaking hands
with U.S. officials—undo the administration's good efforts. The
United States has also had to cozy up to scuzzy regimes in the
Middle East—fighting terrorists requires daily coordination of
security services, but in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and
other U.S. regional allies, the security services imprison and
harass not only terrorists, but also human rights campaigners and
democracy advocates.
None of these blunders is fatal, but all give Bin Laden
opportunities to exploit.
From: Daniel Byman
Subject: Is the Movement Destined To Fail?
Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 7:08 AM ET
On Aug. 11, 1988, al-Qaida was founded. Yesterday, Daniel
Byman examined Osama Bin Laden's impressive successes;
today he explains why Bin Laden's movement may fail and
fragment in the years to come.
Even as he gloats over al-Qaida's many successes in the past 20
years, Osama Bin Laden may feel a sense of foreboding. For
even as al-Qaida has gone from an obscure organization with a
few dozen adherents to a global brand with name recognition
most corporations would envy, it faces challenges on almost
every front.
Al-Qaida's appeal, while far stronger than in 1988, is less
compelling to many Muslims than it was during the early days of
the Iraq war. In the last few years, the organization has suffered
withering criticism from once-supportive preachers and
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theologians in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. Lawrence
Wright reports that "radical Islam is confronting a rebellion
within its ranks, one that Zawahiri and the leaders of Al Qaeda
are poorly equipped to respond to." Most prominently, the
theologian known as Dr. Fadl has excoriated al-Qaida for what
he feels are a host of practical and ideological errors. Fadl once
led Egyptian Islamic Jihad (many members of that organization
are now part of al-Qaida), and jihadists often used his writings to
justify their mayhem. Salman al-Auda has also condemned alQaida. Al-Auda is a Saudi sheikh who gained wide popularity
for his criticism of the Saudi royal family's ties to the United
States. Bin Laden himself even lauded him. These preachers'
rejection of al-Qaida and its violence, particularly its murder of
innocents, was a body blow. Al-Qaida's leaders correctly point
out that Fadl is in jail and al-Auda is on the Saudi payroll, but
the credibility of these voices—and the fact that they are not
alone—makes them hard to ignore.
Priorities also divide the movement. For some, the key struggle
is against Israel or moderate Arab governments in the Middle
East while for other jihadists, the Iraq war has heightened
sectarian tensions and made Shiite Muslims the main enemy. To
cite one example, for many years Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who
eventually led al-Qaida in Iraq, had refused to join al-Qaida
because he wanted to struggle against the Hashemites in Jordan
and the Shiites in Iraq rather than fight America. One of the
movement's strengths is that it has encompassed a wide range of
grievances, but that strength can easily prove a weakness if the
movement splits over what to do next.
The movement also risks dividing itself over the question of
taqfir: declaring another Muslim to be a legitimate target for
violence because he is an apostate. All extreme movements hate
the smallest deviation from the supposed true faith. (Think, for
example, of Stalin's paranoia about Trotsky.) Some jihadists take
the view that you are either with them or against them—a failure
to join the fight makes you an apostate and thus deserving of
violence. In Algeria in the 1990s and in Iraq after the movement
appeared ascendant in 2005, the jihad turned on itself and began
to slaughter individuals within the Sunni Muslim community
whom jihadists felt were insufficiently pious. In both cases,
public opinion decisively turned against them.
Al-Qaida's strength in finding supportive governments or
carving out niches in which to act is matched by the transient
nature of these havens. The influence of Sudan's Hasan al-Turabi
steadily declined in the late 1990s, and since then he has been in
and out of jail. Sudan today is a military dictatorship, not an
Islamic state. The blow in Afghanistan was even more severe, as
Bin Laden had proclaimed Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, to
be the true commander of the faithful. It was al-Qaida's attack on
9/11, however, that led to Omar's overthrow. Puritanical
Muslims who believed that Afghanistan was the first true
Islamist state were livid.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Nor has jihad flowered in the many places where it appeared to
be taking root after 1988. Looking around the world in 1995, Bin
Laden must have felt optimistic. Jihadists had fought in Bosnia,
and jihadist insurgencies appeared to be gaining momentum in
Chechnya, Egypt, and Algeria. In 2004, Bin Laden probably had
hopes for fighters, in addition to those in Iraq, in Indonesia and
Saudi Arabia. Although terrorist groups remain active in all
these countries, they are no longer linked to broader militant
movements that threaten to topple the government or destabilize
the country. Al-Qaida and its allies can still kill, but the scope of
their violence has shrunk, and the regimes are safe. Indeed, the
jihadists' bloody tactics and attempts to impose rigorous Islamic
law in the fiefdoms they temporarily carved out drove local
Muslims into the arms of area governments, no matter how
brutal, corrupt, and repressive.
The losses in Iraq since 2006 are a particular setback for the
movement. Bin Laden made Iraq a poster child of jihad and for
years delighted in bleeding the United States as his movement
there became more powerful. In the last two years, however,
U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies have dealt a series of hard,
perhaps even mortal, blows to al-Qaida of Iraq. Its fighters are
wiped out or dispirited, and its desire to use Iraq as a base for
expanding influence elsewhere in the region, a nightmare that
appeared to be beginning when Iraq-based operatives carried out
devastating 2005 hotel bombings in Jordan, appears unlikely to
materialize anytime soon.
Also devastating to al-Qaida is the global manhunt for its leaders
and supporters. Pakistan is a safe haven, and there are other
pockets, including parts of Yemen, where the organization
enjoys considerable impunity. Yet a global operation like the
9/11 plot, which involved members in Afghanistan and Pakistan
but also in Germany, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and other locales,
would be exceptionally risky today since the intelligence
services in all these places are far more focused on disrupting alQaida than they were before September 2001. The daily arrests
and setbacks these services inflict on al-Qaida rarely make
headlines, but they are perhaps the most important success in the
U.S. war on terrorism.
To understand the scope of al-Qaida's problems, it is useful to
contrast it with truly successful terrorist groups like Hamas and
Hezbollah. Hamas governs Gaza, even if the world refuses to
recognize this for diplomatic reasons, and Hezbollah is the
strongest actor in Lebanon, where it enjoys a veto over
government policy. Al-Qaida controls only remote parts of the
Muslim world, such as tribal areas in Pakistan, and even there it
relies heavily on local warlords. Hezbollah and Hamas have vast
social networks while al-Qaida's influence is expressed almost
entirely through violence. Political necessity and social networks
hem in Hamas and Hezbollah and make them less operationally
agile—but both organizations gladly sacrificed such flexibility in
their quest for power. Al-Qaida, in contrast, can sow unrest, but
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the harvest it reaps does not advance its ultimate goals and often
backfires.
Declaring whether al-Qaida is "winning" or "losing" depends on
the criteria used for judgment. In the past 20 years, Bin Laden
has built a formidable terrorist machine that remains capable of
launching lethal attacks around the world and disrupting life in
several vital countries, particularly Pakistan. Yet at the same
time, the movement is bedeviled by internal divisions and has
repeatedly found that its more ambitious goals of seizing power
and establishing an Islamic state have been set back.
Osama Bin Laden can look back at the past 20 years with pride,
but also with trepidation. He has not lost, but his track record so
far suggests that more substantial victories are likely to remain
elusive.
Daniel Byman is a visiting researcher at the Institute for
National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. He is also an associate
professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the
Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.
foreigners
The Dissident Within
What a book about China's great famine says about the country's
transformation.
By Anne Applebaum
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 7:52 PM ET
Cymbals clashed; a giant scroll unfurled. There were fireworks,
kites, ancient soldiers marching in formation, modern dancers
bending their bodies into impossible shapes, astronauts, puppets,
little children, multiple high-tech gizmos. The Olympic opening
ceremony showed you China as China wants you to see it.
But for a deeper understanding of how far China has come—and
of how odd its transformation continues to be—switch off the
Olympics. Instead, spend a few minutes contemplating the
existence of a new book, Tombstone. It is the first proper history
of China's great famine, a catastrophe partly engineered by the
Chinese Communist Party and its first leader, Mao Zedong.
"It is a tombstone for my father who died of hunger in 1959, for
the 36 million Chinese who also died of hunger, for the system
that caused their death, and perhaps for myself for writing this
book," writes the author, Yang Jisheng, in the opening
paragraph.
Tombstone has not been translated. Nevertheless, rumors of its
contents and short excerpts are already ricocheting around the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
world. (I first learned of it in California, from an excited
Australian historian.) Based on a decade's worth of interviews,
and unprecedented access to documents and statistics,
Tombstone—in two volumes and 1,100 pages—establishes
beyond any doubt that China's misguided charge toward
industrialization—Mao's "Great Leap Forward"—was an utter
disaster.
A combination of criminally bad policies (farmers were forced
to make steel instead of growing crops; peasants were forced
into unproductive communes) and official cruelty (China was
grimly exporting grain at the time) created, between 1959 and
1961, one of the worst famines in recorded history. "I went to
one village and saw 100 corpses," one witness told Yang. "Then
another village and another 100 corpses. No one paid attention to
them. People said that dogs were eating the bodies. Not true, I
said. The dogs had long ago been eaten by the people."
So thorough is his documentation, apparently, that some are
already calling Yang "China's Solzhenitsyn," in honor of the
Russian dissident who probably did the most to expose the
crimes of Stalin—and who died last week. But the comparison is
not quite right. Yang is not a dissident, but a longtime
Communist Party member. For more than three decades, he was
a reporter for Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. As a
result, he had privileged access to party documents, which no
one else has ever had before.
More to the point, he is not an outsider: On the contrary, he, his
book, and the story of the famine itself have a strange, hard-todefine status in China. Though the book is banned on the
mainland, it was published in Hong Kong, where it sold out
immediately. At the same time, while the famine officially
doesn't exist—Chinese history textbooks speak of "three years of
natural disasters," not of a mass artificial famine caused by
Chairman Mao—many people clearly remember it well, fully
understand Mao's role in what happened, and are willing to
discuss it openly.
Like the Communist legacy itself, the famine exists in a kind of
limbo: undiscussed, unacknowledged, yet a vivid part of popular
memory. Because China is no longer a totalitarian country,
merely an authoritarian one, a journalist like Yang could spend
10 years working on the history of the famine, openly soliciting
interviews and documents. But because the Chinese Communist
Party neither openly embraces nor openly rejects the legacy of
Mao—his name was not mentioned during the Olympics
opening ceremony—there is no public discussion or debate.
It's not hard to understand why not. If the Chinese Communist
Party were to present an honest version of its own past, its own
legitimacy might also come into question. Why, exactly, does a
party with a history drenched in blood and suffering enjoy a
monopoly on political power in China? Why does a nominally
Marxist party, one whose economic theories proved utterly
55/140
bankrupt in the past, still preside over an explosively capitalist
society? Because there aren't any good answers to those
questions, it's in the Chinese leadership's interest to make sure
they don't get asked.
gearbox
Shrimp My Ride
The Smart Fortwo is cute—but not so practical.
By Seth Stevenson
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
In some ways, Daimler could not have picked a better moment
to introduce its Smart car to America. The Smart Fortwo—a
Lilliputian, sub-sub-subcompact that fits two adults and almost
nothing else—made its debut on these shores in January, and
since then, gas prices and demand for small cars have
skyrocketed in tandem. American auto-buyers seem to be
saying: Shrimp my ride.
Smart recently let me borrow a Fortwo for a couple of days. I
took long drives on the city streets and surrounding highways of
Washington, D.C. I went on errands, picked up friends, and
parallel-parked in the eensiest spaces I could find. I had a blast
with this little imp, and I even wished I could have kept it
longer. In the end, however, I can't imagine buying one. Nor can
I envision it catching on with the American public.
Which is really no knock on the car's design. Performancewise,
this thing's a small wonder. At only 70 horsepower—a degree of
engine muscle more commonly found in the outboard motor of a
small watercraft—you might expect the Fortwo to putter along
like a sluggish moped. Instead (thanks no doubt to its feathery
weight), it leaps forward from a standing start and offers some
decent thrills getting from 0 to 45 mph. The secret is in the
transmission: According to Smart, the Fortwo's first gear is
tuned a bit more aggressively than on Smart's European models,
allowing the car to "better demonstrate its spirited nature when
pulling away at traffic lights."
The Fortwo model I tried featured Smart's "automated manual
transmission." This is a sort of hybrid of a stick shift and an
automatic. If you wish, the car can do all the shifting for you. Or
you can choose to change gears on your own, not with a clutch
but with paddles mounted on either side of the steering wheel.
This semimanual option bestows a greater measure of control
and allows for a slightly sportier shifting pattern. But it's also a
tease: If you redline the tachometer in low gear for more than a
few seconds, the car will seize back its authority and upshift
without asking. (Which may be for the best. At 6,500 rpm, the
motor begins to sound like a Cuisinart chopping a crunchy
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
clump of walnuts.) Likewise, the car's computer will disallow
any manual shifting—up or down—that it deems illogical.
You sit way up high in the Fortwo, and you'll find yourself
looking down on the drivers of sedans and hatchbacks. This
makes it easy to forget you're in a vehicle approximately half
their length. Your reminder comes on the turns: 1) As you swing
around, you notice there's no hood out in front of you, leading
the way, and 2) the turning radius is so tight that you can bang a
smooth U-eey on a narrow street—a maneuver that would
occasion a five-point turn in many larger cars.
If there's a drawback to the Fortwo's ride, it's the bumpy
suspension. You can feel every jolt—to the point that you'll start
grimacing in anticipation of the potholes up ahead. Perhaps this
is a consequence of the car's small wheelbase. Or it may be part
of the trade-off involved in engineering the Fortwo's responsive
steering. (With its teeny footprint, zippy handling, and quick
acceleration, the Fortwo may be the greatest car ever for
slaloming recklessly between the cement pillars of an empty
underground parking garage. I'm just guessing.)
Everyone asks about highway driving. "Weren't you terrified to
go over 50? And all those 18-wheelers ... Yikes!" I ventured out
on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway one sunny afternoon to
see what would happen, and it turned out the Fortwo acquitted
itself like an itty-bitty champ. I gunned it up to 75 mph, and at
no time did I feel like various parts might start flying off the
chassis. (Not the case with several other cars I've driven.) It felt
pretty solid on the road, save for a few moments when it got hit
by heavy winds. (The disproportionate height of the car makes it
prone to sudden—but small—sideways shudders when a gust
catches its broadside just right.) Another weakness: high-speed
passing. The Fortwo has trouble going quickly from 45 to 65
mph, making it difficult to put long trucks in your rearview
mirror.
And speaking of those trucks: What about safety? This is an
understandably sensitive topic for Smart. The press materials
stress that the Fortwo is "one of the safest cars in the super-mini
segment"—which, now that I read it again, doesn't sound
especially reassuring. The Fortwo meets all safety regulations
and comes standard with front and side airbags. You're wellprotected in the event of a one-car accident, a rollover, or a
collision with another small car at moderate speeds. But crikey,
beware those SUVs. At 1,800 pounds—little more than half the
weight of a Camry—the Fortwo is less than one-third as heavy
as an empty Cadillac Escalade. Simple physics tells us a head-on
rendezvous is unlikely to go well for the underdog.
My biggest disappointment with the Fortwo is its gas mileage.
It's very good, but I'd expected a car this light to post even more
eye-popping numbers. At 33 miles per gallon in the city, and 41
mpg on the highway, its fuel efficiency isn't dramatically better
56/140
than that of a Honda Fit (28 city/34 highway)—a car with far
more engine power and interior capacity.
Which highlights the major issue here: While novel and fun,
ultimately the Fortwo is just too impractical to recommend over,
say, the Fit. Because of its diminutive size, the Fortwo can't
really be used like a regular car. Yes, it fits two average-size
adults very comfortably, with good leg room. But anything more
is beyond its capacity. When I drove around with a slightly
beefy friend of mine sitting in the passenger seat, the Fortwo felt
claustrophobic—and this 6-foot-2 pal was bumping up against
the sunroof. There's no back seat at all, so forget about squeezing
in a third person (even a kid). You can cram a few bags of
groceries into the barely there trunk or perhaps a couple of gym
bags. But you'll never get a large suitcase in there. And going
camping is out of the question.
If the Fortwo cost $8,000 and got 50 mpg, it would be a terrific
option as a second car. But at $13,590 for a middle-of-the-road
model, it's no cheaper than the Fit (which I previously reviewed
and loved), and it's far less car for the money. As I see it, there
are only two reasons to buy a Fortwo.
The first is if you want an easier time finding parking. The
Fortwo fits in half a space, and those leftover scraps of room on
city blocks suddenly turn into viable parking opportunities. This
is a godsend in crowded urban areas.
The other reason to buy a Fortwo is if you enjoy being stared at.
I personally haven't been ogled this much on the road since I
toured a friend's neighborhood in his restored Model T. People
pointed at the Fortwo as I went by—smiling, waving, giving me
the thumbs-up. At stop lights, drivers next to me would roll
down their windows and ask, "What kind of car is that?" When I
pulled up next to a corner filled with teen girls, one laughed and
shouted, "It looks like a shopping cart!"
The prospect of this sort of attention, I suspect, is what's driving
the Fortwo's sales. Smart's press materials compare owning a
Fortwo to owning an iPod or an iPhone, and it's easy to see why:
All three are high-design, overpriced objects of shimmery desire.
Remember, the original Smart car was actually the product of a
partnership between Mercedes-Benz and the inventor of the
Swatch watch. Which makes a lot of sense—because the Fortwo
is not so much a car as a trendy gadget.
green room
Paparazzi in the Woods
Hidden surveillance cameras are making the wilderness less wild.
By Etienne Benson
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 4:17 PM ET
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Next time you go for a hike, keep an eye out for the hidden
cameras. The first sign that you're under surveillance might be a
plastic or metal case, about the size of a hefty hardcover book,
strapped to a tree and painted to blend into the bark. If you're
listening carefully, you might even hear the click of the shutter
or the whirr of the film advancing.
The cameras are not meant for you, and you'll probably have to
get off the trail—at least, off human trails—to find them. They
are designed to capture images of wild animals, and in recent
years their use by hunters and wildlife biologists has been
increasing exponentially. According to one study, there has been
a 50 percent increase in the number of scientific papers
involving data from camera traps every year for the past decade;
at any given time, there may be about 10,000 deployed in
research projects. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Exact
figures are hard to come by, but industry sources say that as
many as 300,000 are sold every year, mostly to hunters.
In fact, camera traps are so useful for science, fund-raising, and
conservation that few researchers or conservationists have
paused to consider the unintended side effects of this massive
deployment. The cameras may be hurting the animals they're
used to study—and they may be affecting humans, too.
Hidden cameras can produce spectacular images: Mountain
beavers trundle shyly on the way to a stream, playful foxes
scamper along a fallen log, snow leopards prowl in the middle of
the night*, and all of it gets recorded without the presence of
single human being. Traps are often set up along a game trail or
near a watering hole; every animal that trips the infrared beam
gets caught on film, to be categorized and counted by
researchers when the film is collected weeks or months later.
(Hunters use them to study the habits of their favorite prey or to
keep track of which bucks are growing the biggest racks of
antlers.)
In recent years, camera traps have helped prove that India's tiger
populations were declining far faster than the government would
admit. They've produced the first-ever photographs of certain
rare and elusive species, such as the Bornean rhino, and
tantalizing glimpses of as-yet unidentified species. Indeed, the
images they capture are perfect for the media-friendly science of
organizations such as the National Geographic Society and the
World Wildlife Fund, which have been among the traps' biggest
promoters.
That the traps have some kind of impact on the animals is
obvious from the images themselves, which often show animals
startled by, fleeing from, investigating, or even attacking the
traps. This sequence of photos, for example, shows a bear
investigating a trap belonging to retired Smithsonian biologist
Chris Wemmer, who keeps a blog about his camera-trapping
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activities in Northern California. The same bear destroyed
another of Wemmer's cameras a few days later. WWF has posted
footage of a rare Javan rhino attacking a video camera trap (see
embedded video), as well as photographs of a tiger destroying a
camera trap in Sumatra.
It's hard to know whether these animals were angry or simply
curious; most researchers believe it's the latter. What's
undeniable is that they were, in one way or another, provoked. If
such provocation were consistent and widespread—and the
increasing popularity of camera traps means that it is rapidly
becoming both—it could lead endangered animals to waste
energy or avoid fruitful areas for foraging or hunting. Camera
trappers acknowledge that animals react to the traps, but they're
skeptical that the effect is significant compared with the stress
provoked by lightning storms, predator attacks, or other human
activities. Unfortunately, no one has systematically studied the
impact of camera traps on wildlife.
The good news is that many of the most obtrusive aspects of
camera trapping are already being addressed. The mechanical
whirr and click of first-generation traps hasn't been entirely
eliminated, but the latest models are much quieter. Infrared
cameras are reducing the need for night-time flashes. Longerlived batteries and larger memory cards in digital cameras can
reduce the frequency with which researchers have to visit each
trap. And when visits are required, practices such as wearing
gloves to avoid leaving a scent on the camera can minimize the
impact of the disturbance.
There is one impact, however, that no amount of technical
refinement will be able to change: that of surveillance itself. The
spread of camera traps also affects the humans who share
landscapes with the animals being studied. In some cases, this is
undoubtedly a good thing: Camera traps in one of Nepal's
national parks recently caught a party of tiger poachers on film.
The potential impact on hikers and campers is less clearly
positive. National parks and wilderness areas have long been
valued in part because they provide opportunities for solitude,
self-reliance, and a temporary escape from the everyday
pressures of modern life. Can such values survive in a
"wilderness" blanketed with surveillance devices?
Today's wilderness advocates aren't tackling that question, but
it's one that has a venerable history within the wilderness
movement. In the 1960s, Adolph Murie, a wildlife biologist and
wilderness activist, mounted a campaign against the use of
wildlife radio tags and collars in national parks and wilderness
areas. Murie had no problem with wildlife tagging per se—he
had tagged hundreds of animals for his own research—but he
saw parks and wilderness areas as places with a special cultural
mission, one that was threatened by the unrestrained use of
modern technology. People visited wilderness areas because
they wanted to experience the natural world on its own terms—
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
not to encounter radio-collared animals and the scientists who
managed them.
Murie's was one of the first of a series of protests against handson, high-tech research methods. Those protests, which reached
their peak of intensity during the 1970s and early 1980s, spurred
the development of less invasive techniques such as camera
trapping. But by the mid-1980s, the environmental movement
had changed. The cultural and experiential concerns that had
motivated Murie were overshadowed by a new focus on
biodiversity and quantitative science. The possibility that there
might be too much research—that the costs of knowledge might
outweigh the benefits—became virtually unthinkable.
Camera traps are a good thing. They have already enriched our
understanding of the species with which we share the planet and
cause less disturbance than many other research methods. Used
thoughtfully, they can give us a deep sense of connection to
nature, not just the kind of alienation that Murie feared. And
along with other surveillance technologies, from high-resolution
satellite imaging to miniature radio tags, they will be crucial
tools for preserving what's left of the world's biodiversity. We
live in a thoroughly humanized world, and the networks of
environmental surveillance with which we are quilting the planet
will help keep it habitable—or at least let us know how quickly
it's going to hell.
Still, as we expand the culture of surveillance into nature's last
redoubts, it might be worth keeping some of Murie's concerns in
mind: namely, that the means we use to promote biodiversity can
undermine our purposes and that a technology that's right for one
place isn't necessarily right for all places. Wilderness activists of
the last century believed it was crucial to maintain a few places
where one could hike for days without encountering cars or
roads. This wasn't because they hated automobiles—after all, it
was cars that made wilderness areas widely accessible for the
first time—but because they believed that certain valuable
experiences could be had only in their absence. Wilderness
activists of this century would do well to consider whether it's
worth having a few places where you'll never find a surveillance
camera strapped to a nearby tree.
Correction, Aug. 14: This article originally depicted a snow
leopard prowling "through the jungle." Snow leopards, of
course, do not live in the jungle. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
hot document
How To Picket Tropic Thunder
Groups representing the mentally disabled organize a nationwide protest.
By Bonnie Goldstein
58/140
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 2:10 PM ET
From: Bonnie Goldstein
Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:59 PM ET
From: Bonnie Goldstein
Everyone thought the lightning rod in Tropic Thunder would be
Robert Downey Jr.'s comic turn in blackface. Instead, the
American Association of People With Disabilities, the National
Down Syndrome Congress, the Arc, Best Buddies, and a few
other groups are up in arms over the film's perceived disrespect
toward the mentally retarded. The coalition has put together an
11-page action kit (excerpts below and on the following five
pages) urging supporters to "actively picket" movie theaters
"with signs of protest urging patrons not to attend" in a
nationwide "Rally for Respect," Aug. 13 through 17.
Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:59 PM ET
From: Bonnie Goldstein
In the comedy, Ben Stiller (who also directed and co-authored
the script) plays a movie action star named Tugg Speedman who
(taking a leaf from Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Sir John Mills,
and Cliff Robertson) tries to win an Oscar by playing a mentally
disabled character in a movie called Simple Jack. This gives rise
in Tropic Thunder to various jokes, including a review that
declares Speedman's "one of the most retarded performances in
cinema history" (Page 6).
The Rally for Respect action kit contains a basic checklist
(designate "one person to organize efforts"; produce "flyers and
posters for distribution") to help supporters achieve "coordinated
and organized action" (Page 4). Group chapters are advised how
to identify venues screening the film ("you can find that
information by going to http://fandango.com and typing in your
zip code"), and it's suggested that mentally disabled people
acting as "self advocates" be "present to meet and greet theater
patrons." The words retard, idiot, imbecile, and moron are
condemned as "hate speech …. on par with the N-word" (Page
3). The action kit also provides "talking points" for selfadvocates ("as a person with an intellectual disability I have
been affected by use of the R-word and other hate speech"; Page
5).
Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:59 PM ET
From: Bonnie Goldstein
Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:59 PM ET
From: Bonnie Goldstein
Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:59 PM ET
The protest has already affected the film's publicity campaign. A
mock trailer for Simple Jack with the tag line "Once upon a time
… there was a retard" has been removed from the Internet and,
though Paramount apparently won't edit offensive references
from the film, the studio issued a statement that it "in no way
meant to disparage or harm the image of individuals with
disabilities."
Got a Hot Document? Send it to documents@slate.com.
Please indicate whether you wish to remain anonymous.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
From: Bonnie Goldstein
Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:59 PM ET
59/140
walking around in my new, better body. My old body was
depressingly tubelike: 35 inches, 28 inches, 37½ inches.
human guinea pig
Spandex Fantasy
I have a lifetime's worth of flab. Can I turn it into muscle in four months?
By Emily Yoffe
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 1:13 PM ET
There are all kinds of vanity, and one of them is not wanting to
know. This is the type that has kept me from looking at my
backside in a three-way mirror for years to avoid finding out if,
in the words of Elmore Leonard, it looks like it has been strafed
with buckshot. But then a Slate colleague offered this challenge
for my next Human Guinea Pig: to see if I could get in shape for
the summer. Usually in Human Guinea Pig, I do outlandish
things—like make my singing debut or become a paparazzo. But
maybe trying to firm up, the kind of firm in which my skin
becomes like human spandex, was the most outlandish
experiment of all.
Sure, I belong to a gym; according to an industry trade
association, about 40 million Americans belong to a health club
of some kind. Considering how Americans look, obviously
many of us use this membership as I have, paying the monthly
fee as a kind of offering to the gods of fitness. But now I needed
to go to the gym and do something strenuous while I was there.
Lacking a superego of my own, this would require the external
motivation only a personal trainer could provide.
Slate V: The Human Guinea Pig: Mercy
I have always felt sorry for personal trainers. What an awful way
to earn a living, I thought, spending your days trying to carve
muscles out of butterscotch pudding. (And occasionally having
to hook up with wealthy, disturbed clients such as Heather
Mills.) I also wondered why the clients, who must be able to
function independently in the rest of their lives if they could
afford a personal trainer, needed to pay a small fortune to get
someone to tell them to squat.
But now here I was being assessed by my new trainer, Mercy
"No Mercy" Gonzalez, 41, a champion Ecuadorian body builder
and mother of a 2-year-old. Mercy's body has the sleek
smoothness of a Brancusi. She's been sculpting it for 15 years
and is able to lift 200 pounds. She started our session with both
the dreaded tape measure and by pinching my flab with calipers.
"We're figuring out the measurements of your old body," she
explained. I liked the optimism behind that statement. I was just
temporarily stuck in this decaying thing, and soon I would be
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Then she put me through a basic workout. It was clear that what
I considered a workout was a lip-synced version of what Mercy
had in mind. She said machines had their place, but to really get
in shape I needed to enter the sanctum of the free weights. She
stuck 7.5 pound weights in my hands and had me do a series of
chest and shoulder presses. Then lats, sit-ups, and dips. Within a
few minutes, I was dripping and huffing.
Next up, legs. My grandparents used to love to recall how cute
my pulkes once were; I was about 2 years old at the time. In the
decades since, I have adopted the Hillary Clinton approach to
thighs—keep them hidden in pants. But now Mercy forced me to
do an endless series of squats. And if I hadn't been paying her
$55 to supervise me for a half- hour ($80 for an hour), I never
would have done one.
We agreed to meet twice a week and that I would work out on
my own three other days. She said seriously remodeling my
body would take a year, but I would see significant results after
about 4 months. Results were immediate in my case. The next
day, I woke up with a throbbing in my right scapula—my old
routine may not have been doing any good, but at least it didn't
cause any pain. This put me off embarking on my new program,
and though I kept meeting with Mercy, for the first three weeks I
rarely got to the gym on my own. Mercy was getting frustrated,
"If you don't do it, we can't make a miracle here," she said,
adding what has been a lifetime consensus about me, "You have
potential, but you need to work harder."
I like having a body; it's a convenient way of getting myself
from place to place. But there always seemed to be more things
to do in life—doing nothing being among the appealing
options—than trying to perfect it. Perfection was never going to
happen, but at the end of this experiment I didn't want to end up
being the same flabby tube that I started as, so I committed
myself to try.
Exercise is supposed to improve your mood, but I found myself
getting more depressed the more often I did it. I used to feel so
good when I entered the threshold of the gym. Just arriving
meant I had done something—and so what if my workout was a
desultory slouch around the machines? Now I had to follow
Mercy's program and actually make a serious effort, and I hated
it. Whenever I would meet with her, I thought about how useful
it would be to give her $55 to forget about my body and shape
up other parts of my life. She could stand over my desk and say,
"Type faster" or hover at my bedside and scold, "Time to turn
out the light." Sometimes, sweating and aching, I longed for the
neurotic's approach to personal training: I would pay her to listen
to me talk about why I was so resistant to resistance training.
60/140
I admired the inventiveness of people who designed exercise
devices. Mercy had me step into a circle of tubing, which came
with strips of Velcro to wrap around my ankles. This contraption
restricted my ability to move my legs more than a few inches
apart, and Mercy made me walk, crablike, up and down the gym.
It was like a combination thigh slimmer and chastity belt. One
night, I saw a trainer put a client on the slant board, then make
him do sit-ups while holding about 50 pounds of chain mail. If
Torquemada were alive today, he wouldn't be a torturer, he'd be
a trainer.
There was proof it was working one night at the gym when
someone tried to pick me up—the first time this has happened
since well before the end of the 20th century. As I did some
stretches, a man who had seemed to be staring while I hoisted
my weights came over and said, "You do quite a workout!" then
creepily asked me to repeat some of my stretches. When I got
home, I told my husband what happened, but after he asked me
to describe the man, he said he would remain unconcerned about
any potential suitors who were over the age of 75.
I often went to the gym at off hours—10 p.m. during the week, 7
p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, times that appeal to social
misfits. Now that I was a regular, I began to see regulars, and
though I never interacted with them, I felt part of a community
of familiar strangers and gave many nicknames. There was the
Shvitzer, the man who sweated copiously and never wiped off
the equipment; Dr. Nipples, the guy with the artificially orange
hair and skin who wore very skimpy shirts; and Seething Man,
who didn't work out much but walked the periphery of the gym
floor muttering curses at unseen enemies.
While a lot of women went to the gym, few had the kind of
buffness I was seeking. I had noticed a petite redhead who was
always there before I came and was still there as I left, and I
finally approached her to discuss her muscles. Fanny Barrett is a
Frenchwoman who works for the World Bank, and although she
wouldn't give her age, she has two grown children. She has been
seriously lifting weights for almost 20 years, and her arms are so
toned that sometimes in the summer she keeps her jacket on to
avoid questions and stares. Following her around one night, I
realized why I will never really be in shape. For me, a complete
workout was a hard 45 minutes. Fanny works out 5 days a week
for about 2 hours at a time. She weighs 110 pounds, and I
watched as she bench-pressed 100 pounds. I was microwaving,
when what it really took was hours of basting.
Then one night, after six weeks of serious effort, I was pulling
down on a triceps machine when I caught sight of my upper arm
in the mirror and saw a long, diagonal bruise running across it. I
didn't remember hurting myself, so I examined my arm and
realized I wasn't seeing a bruise, but a shadow cast by my
deltoid—my first "cut." Later that week, my husband came into
the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth and said, "Hey, look
at your arm! You've actually got some muscles—for the first
time in your life."
The rest of my body was lagging behind my arms, but something
was definitely happening. My skin was starting to feel more
snug around my bones, like a leather jacket left out in the rain,
and I liked the tighter fit. But there were other side effects of my
new routine. Around month four, getting in shape reminded me
of pregnancy: the feeling of my body changing in peculiar ways;
the sudden, ravenous hunger that I couldn't help but sate; the
upward creeping of the number on the scale. I started out at
about 123 pounds, but now I weighed 127.4 pounds. This was
the most I had weighed in years, and since I wasn't pregnant, the
trajectory was alarming. My husband said it was because muscle
weighs more than fat. That's true, and that's why incredibly fit
Olympic shot-putters could be considered overweight according
to their body mass index. But in Ultimate Fitness, science writer
Gina Kolata explains that the average person who starts working
out is not putting on enough muscle to explain a weight gain.
Mercy was not concerned that I was having trouble zipping my
pants. She was excited that she was able to press ever-heavier
weights into my hands. "It's working," she said. "With my
clients, it's rare that I say to do it and they do it."
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Finally, it was time for Mercy to compare my before and after. I
was still a tube: My measurements didn't really change. But
where the calipers had pinched 10 millimeters of fat on my arm,
now there were 8; my stomach went from 13 to 10 millimeters;
and my thighs from 18 to 11. (I found this change in my pulkes
hard to believe.) I started out being able to do five push-ups,
now I did 20; I went from 15 dips to 22; I could do a chest press
with only 7.5 pound weights, now I was using 20 pounders.
I never got in bathing-suit shape (unless the suit is the Speedo
LZR Racer)—the blubber content of my stomach could be used
to prove that humans once shared a common ancestor with
cetaceans, and I still avoid three-way mirrors. But sometimes
when I'm brushing my teeth, I'll flex my arm and thrill that it
almost looks scary.
human nature
Olympic Inflation
Discounting Olympic records for technological enhancement.
By William Saletan
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 7:46 AM ET
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human nature
Ghosts in the Machine
Do remote-control war pilots get combat stress?
By William Saletan
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 7:53 AM ET
Is it easier to kill people far away, through a video screen, than
to kill them up close?
Three weeks ago, I raised that question about a system for
controlling unmanned military aircraft. The system, made by
Raytheon, looks and feels like a video game but operates real
drones. From a console in the United States, you hunt and kill
people in Iraq or Afghanistan. Will the drone pilots of
tomorrow—kids who have grown up on PlayStations—feel the
mortal gravity of what they're doing? Have we made killing too
easy?
No, says a new report from the Associated Press. The story,
published in newspapers across the country, is headlined,
"Remote-control warriors suffer war stress." It begins: "The Air
National Guardsmen who operate Predator drones over Iraq via
remote control, launching deadly missile attacks from the safety
of Southern California 7,000 miles away, are suffering some of
the same psychological stresses as their comrades on the
battlefield."
How could drone piloting cause the same stress as being in
combat? The AP reporter, Scott Lindlaw, offers several reasons.
One is that drone pilots work longer shifts and tours than pilots
in the war zone. Another is the daily "whiplash transition"
between being a console killer and being a soccer dad. "They're
putting a missile down somebody's chimney and taking out bad
guys, and the next thing they're taking their wife out to dinner,
their kids to school," says an Air Force officer.
A third reason is that unmanned aircraft, unlike manned ones,
are often assigned to remain over the target and assess the
damage. "When you come in at 500-600 mph, drop a 500-pound
bomb and then fly away, you don't see what happens," a wing
commander explains. But when you fire a drone missile, "you
watch it all the way to impact." Furthermore, Lindlaw notes, the
video in a drone console, unlike the view from a traditional
plane, shows the resulting fatalities "in high-resolution detail."
These are all intriguing factors. They might well explain why
drone pilots suffer the same stress as battlefield combatants—or
even more. But despite these factors, Lindlaw's evidence
indicates that, in fact, drone pilots don't suffer the same degree
of stress.
To the military's credit, Lindlaw finds that bases in four states
have brought in chaplains to counsel drone pilots. One has even
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"enlisted the services of psychologists and psychiatrists to help
ease the mental strain." The only thing in short supply seems to
be the mental strain itself. "In interviews with five of the dozens
of pilots and sensor operators at the various bases, none said
they had been particularly troubled by their mission," Lindlaw
reports.
"Col. Gregg Davies, commander of the 214th Reconnaissance
Group in Tucson, Ariz., said he knows of no member of his team
who has experienced any trauma from launching a Predator
attack," Lindlaw writes. The only quantifiable impact he can find
comes from Col. Chris Chambliss, a commander at Creech Air
Force Base in Nevada: "On four or five occasions, [drone]
sensor operators have sought out a chaplain or supervisor after
an attack, Chambliss said. He emphasized that the number of
such cases is very small compared to the number of people
involved in Predator operations."
Compare this weak, absent, or asymptomatic evidence to the
data on post-traumatic stress disorder among Air Force
personnel overall. Last year, 871 airmen were diagnosed with
PTSD. And that's the lowest score among the armed services.
Eighteen to 30 percent of all military personnel are estimated to
have developed symptoms of PTSD or depression.
The AP story is notable for documenting the very existence of
mental stress among drone pilots. It shows that operating a real
hunter, killer, or spy aircraft from the faraway safety of a gamestyle console affects some operators in a way that video games
don't. But it doesn't show that firing a missile from a console
feels like being there—or that it haunts the triggerman the same
way. Indeed, the paucity of evidence—despite the brutal work
shifts, the superior video quality, and the additional burden of
watching the target take the hit—suggests that it feels quite
different.
My guess is that the difference lies in the remaining factor cited
in the story: the "whiplash transition" between the physical
world of your family and the virtual world of your faraway
drone. Living in the console for a full work shift, with your
country's missions, assets, and personnel at stake, is more
intense than playing Halo. Walking out of the room and trying to
resume your physical life is disorienting. But these factors can't
match the stress of physical presence in combat. The point of the
drone, after all, is to insulate you.
Lindlaw's reporting doesn't settle the question either way. But
he's on the right track. The armed forces should monitor drone
operators systematically and track the effects of living in this
whiplash world, where you kill on a video screen and then go
home to your spouse and kids. Human nature has never been
tested in such alternating semi-virtual reality. We may well
discover that it combines the worst of all three worlds: the stress
of missions, the desensitization of video gaming, and the
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whiplash of transitioning between physical and synthetic
environments.
The wing leaders who supervise drone operations regard mission
stress as the main hazard. They worry about sensor operators,
who guide the missiles to their targets and are often, as Lindlaw
points out, "on their first assignment and just 18 or 19 years old."
They fear that the on-screen killing will rattle these kids. Maybe
they're right. My fear is that it won't.
jurisprudence
C.S.Oy
Forensic science is badly in need of reform. Here are some suggestions.
By Radley Balko and Roger Koppl
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 12:43 PM ET
Last week, the state of Mississippi terminated its 20-year
relationship with medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne. Hayne
has come under fire from fellow medical examiners, criminal
justice groups like the Innocence Project, and one of the authors
of this article for his impossible workload, sloppy procedures,
and questionable court testimony. In the early 1990s, Hayne and
his frequent collaborator, now-disgraced forensic odontologist
Dr. Michael West, helped secure murder convictions for
Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both later proven innocent
through DNA testing. The two were released from prison earlier
this year.
Mississippi is hardly alone when it comes to bad forensic
science. It now appears that Washington, D.C., may have to retry
Angela O'Brien for the 2000 killing of her 2-year-old
goddaughter, Brianna Blackmond, after revelations that the
prosecution's star forensic witness, a physicist named Saami
Shaibani, lied about his credentials in a Wisconsin murder case.
These are only the most recent and dramatic examples of
forensics fraud to make the headlines. Over the years, there have
been plenty of other hucksters and charlatans happy to take
advantage of the ignorance of juries, prosecutors, judges, and
defense attorneys in very complicated and difficult-tounderstand disciplines.
But the charlatans are only half the story. Courts have also
missed plenty of mistakes from well-intentioned, conscientious
scientists, too. In fact, these may be even more common—and
harder to catch. Studies show that crime lab fiber, paint, and
body fluid analyses, for example, may consistently have error
rates of 10 percent or higher. The error rate in fingerprint
analysis is possibly between 1 percent and 4 percent. And bite
mark evidence is notoriously unreliable though still widely used.
The Chicago Tribune reported in July that L. Thomas Johnson—
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
one of forensic odontology's pioneers—has been attempting to
use statistical models to shore up the reliability of this
discredited field. But Johnson's efforts have been hampered by
new DNA testing in a 1984 murder, which concluded that the
man convicted of the crime was not the source of saliva found
on the victim's sweater. Johnson testified for the prosecution in
that case.
The use of forensic science in criminal trials is critically
important. But reforms of the system are also desperately
needed. It's not enough to weed out the incompetent scientists.
We need to begin to monitor even the good ones. One major
barrier to improving forensic evidence in criminal trials is that in
most jurisdictions, the state has a monopoly on experts. Crime
lab analysts and medical examiners (and to a lesser extent DNA
technicians) typically work for the government and are generally
seen as part of the prosecution's "team," much like the police and
investigators. Yes, science is science, and it would be nice to
believe that scientists will always get at the truth no matter
whom they report to. But studies have consistently shown that
even conscientious scientists can be affected by cognitive bias.
A scientist whose job performance is evaluated by a senior
official in the district attorney or state attorney general's office
may feel subtle pressure to return results that produce
convictions. In cases in which district attorneys' offices contract
work out to private labs, the labs may feel pressure—even if it's
not explicit (though sometimes it is)—to produce favorable
results in order to continue the relationship.
Cognitive bias can be even subtler. For some experts, merely
knowing the details of a crime or discussing it with police or
prosecutors beforehand can introduce significant bias to a lab
technician's analysis.
A research team led by Seton Hall law professor Michael
Risinger published a study in the January 2002 California Law
Review identifying five stages of scientific analysis in which bias
can affect even the most professional expert's opinion. The study
was careful to note that these biases were unintentional and not
the result of outright fraud. But according to the study, cognitive
bias can factor into the ways in which a scientist observes the
initial data, records that data, and makes calculations and also
how he remembers and reinterprets his notes when preparing for
trial—a problem that looms larger as time elapses between the
lab work and trial testimony.
Most jurors aren't aware of any of these biases; in fact, most give
enormous weight to expert witnesses. Even out-and-out frauds
like West and Shaibani can persuade jurors if they're presented
in court as reputable experts, appear likeable, and can testify
with conviction. A study of the first 86 DNA exonerations
garnered by the Innocence Project estimated that faulty forensic
science played a role in more than 50 percent of the wrongful
convictions. While it's obviously not possible to completely
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eradicate bias and scientific error from the courtroom, a few
simple and relatively inexpensive reforms could go a long way
toward reducing it. Here are a few more recommendations:
Forensic counsel for the indigent. In many jurisdictions,
indigent defendants aren't given access to their own forensic
experts. As a result, the only expert witnesses are often testifying
for the prosecution—experts that come prepackaged with the
inherent biases noted above. This undermines the whole
adversarial basis of our criminal justice system. Indigent
defendants should be given vouchers to hire their own experts,
who can review the forensic analysis and conclusions of each
prosecution expert.
Expert independence. Crime labs, DNA labs, and medical
examiners shouldn't serve under the same bureaucracy as district
attorneys and police agencies. If these experts must work for the
government, they should report to an independent state agency,
if not the courts themselves. There should be a wall of separation
between analysis and interpretation. Thus, an independent
medical examiner would, for instance, perform and videotape
the actual procedure in an autopsy. The prosecution and defense
would then each bring in their own experts to interpret the
results in court. When the same expert performs both the
analysis and interpretation, defense experts are often at a
disadvantage, having to rely on the notes and photos of the same
expert whose testimony they're disputing.
Rivalrous redudancy. Whether the state uses its own labs or
contracts out to private labs, evidence should periodically and
systematically be sent out to yet another competing lab for
verification. The state's labs should be made aware that their
work will occasionally be checked but not told when. In addition
to helping discover errors that might otherwise go undetected,
the introduction of competition to government labs would all but
remove any subconscious incentive to appease police and
prosecutors and would strengthen the incentive for a more
objective analysis.
Statistical analysis. The results from forensic labs should be
regularly analyzed for statistical anomalies. Labs producing
unusually high match rates should throw up red flags for further
examination. For example, in 2004 Houston medical examiner
Patricia Moore was found to have diagnosed shaken-baby
syndrome in infant autopsies at a rate several times higher than
the national average. This led to an investigation—and the
reopening of several convictions that had relied on Moore's
testimony.
Mask the evidence. A 2006 U.K. study by researchers at the
University of Southampton found that the error rate of
fingerprint analysts doubled when they were first told the
circumstances of the case they were working on. Crime lab
technicians and medical examiners should never be permitted to
consult with police or prosecutors before performing their
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
analysis. A dramatic child murder case, for example, may induce
a greater subconscious bias to find a match than a burglary case.
To the extent that it's possible, evidence should be stripped of all
context before being sent to the lab. Ideally, state or city officials
might hire a neutral "evidence shepherd," whose job would be to
deliver crime-scene evidence to the labs and oversee the process
of periodically sending evidence to secondary labs for
verification.
These proposed reforms would go a long way toward correcting
the problems of bias and improper incentives in the forensics
system. They're also relatively inexpensive—particularly when
compared with the cost of a wrongful conviction. (In the Brooks
and Brewer exonerations noted above, the state of Mississippi
paid for both the prosecution and defense in two high-profile
murder trials, three decades of unnecessary incarceration, several
rounds of appeals, and will likely have to pay each man millions
of dollars in compensation.)
The continuing stories of forensics error and wrongful
convictions are troubling but not all that surprising. Our criminal
justice system is centuries old. It just hasn't adapted well to the
dramatic advances in science and technology over the past 30
years. But as forensic evidence becomes more and more
important in securing convictions, the need for monitoring and
oversight grows exponentially. Every other scientific field
properly requires peer review, statistical analysis, and
redundancy to ensure quality and accuracy. It's past time we
applied the same quality-control measures to criminal forensics,
particularly given the fundamental nature of what's at stake.
map the candidates
He's Not Skiing
McCain is in Colorado for a speech at the Aspen Institute.
By E.J. Kalafarski and Chadwick Matlin
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 1:20 PM ET
medical examiner
Organ Failure
Doing battle with the National Kidney Foundation.
By Sally Satel
Friday, August 15, 2008, at 7:06 AM ET
Early this summer, the American Medical Association voted to
lobby Congress to permit the study of financial incentives for
organ donation. With nearly 100,000 people on the national
transplant list and 18 dying every day for want of an organ, the
AMA resolution to address the organ shortage could not be more
timely.
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And yet the National Kidney Foundation, the nation's largest
advocacy group for people with kidney disease, won't be a
reliable ally. The NKF, which has a $32 million annual budget
and is to kidney disease what the American Lung Association is
to asthma, says it laments that thousands "die while waiting for
that 'Gift of Life.' " But instead of locking arms with the AMA,
the kidney foundation is poised to sabotage the association's
efforts—in keeping with its recent practice of blocking any
attempt to explore the possibility of compensating organ donors.
Why the stubborn opposition?
When I spoke with Dolph Chianchiano, senior vice president for
health policy and research at the NKF, he told me that
"compensating donors would cheapen the gift" and lead to fewer
people donating overall. As a kidney recipient, I find this hard to
fathom. When I was facing years on dialysis, any healthy
kidney, paid for or not, would have been precious to me. What
about would-be donors? Won't some be more likely to donate
their kidneys, or the organs of their family members, because of
the prospect of a financial reward? And if others don't benefit in
this way themselves, will they really be dissuaded because other
people somewhere in the country accepted a form of payment?
When asked in a 2005 Gallup poll commissioned by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services whether "payments"
would affect their willingness to give a family member's organs,
19 percent answered "more likely," while 9 percent said "less
likely." That margin favors donation. Young people were
especially receptive. One-third of 18-to-34-year-olds said the
offer of incentives would make them "more likely" to give a
family member's organs, compared with 7 percent who said "less
likely."
There's additional evidence that the NKF is wrong here. Paying
for other products of the body, such as sperm, ova, and wombs
(as in maternal surrogacy) is accepted and has not created
shortages. When someone donates his or her body to science,
medical schools and tissue processing companies cover the costs
of cremation or the burial costs of the entire donated body after
dissection or experimental use.
The NKF also makes the standard argument that compensation
for organs "could propel other countries to sanction an unethical
and unjust standard of immense proportions, one in which the
wealthy readily obtain organs from the poor." But India,
Pakistan, China, the Philippines, Colombia, and other countries
already harbor flourishing underground markets. Compensating
donors in America won't spur more wealthy patients to travel
abroad for organs. It's more likely to show other governments
how to conduct a safe and transparent system of exchange under
the rule of law. In the end, more people will receive transplants
in their home country.
In the end, of course, the effect of compensation on organ supply
is a question that only pilot projects can answer. This is what the
NKF is trying to suppress. And yet the foundation once
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
understood the need to experiment. In 1993, the NKF endorsed
payment of burial expenses for deceased organ donors, a plan
passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature. The foundation also
supported a House bill in 1999 that would have granted a
$10,000 life insurance policy to families with benefits payable
upon transplantation of the deceased's organs. At the time, the
chairman of NKF's Office of Scientific and Public Policy
testified, "We would support at least a pilot study on financial
incentives."
It is unclear why the NKF has become less tolerant of incentives
as the organ shortage grows more critical with time. But
whatever the reason, it forcefully obstructed efforts at reform in
2003—the last time Congress debated bold incentives. That
year, House legislation called for noncash rewards, specifying
life insurance policies or annuities to the families of the
deceased, not an unfettered free market. But the NKF denounced
the proposal, railing against "global economists who would
import a poor person into this country" to sell an organ. The bill
died in committee, partly because of the NKF's efforts. On the
Senate side in 2003, the NKF used its clout to kill a provision to
study incentives. Afterward, the NKF boasted on its Web site
that "a successful advocacy effort by NKF resulted in the
removal of the provision." Imagine the American Cancer Society
bragging about having derailed an experimental project that
might help breast cancer patients—especially when other
respected groups were in favor of the measure.
I have long been mystified by the NKF's stalwart opposition to
pilot studies. I was spurred to write now about my puzzlement
by a recent encounter with the long arm of the foundation. At the
end of July, I was invited to speak about the case for donor
compensation at a regional transplant conference. Three days
later, I was disinvited. Apparently, my chagrined host had not
vetted the topic with the local NKF chapter, which was cosponsoring the event. "I regret that I am having to withdraw my
invitation," he wrote me. The co-sponsoring NKF affiliate, he
continued, "was very much concerned about repercussions from
the New York office, which they think would view the talk as a
repudiation of the party line." The NKF similarly tried to
stifle a debate on organ incentives at the American Enterprise
Institute in 2006.
To be fair, the NKF does some good. It holds scores of
fundraising charity events. It offers the public free screening for
kidney disease and makes research grants to scientists. The NKF
vigorously lobbies Medicare for better reimbursement rates for
dialysis care, and, for better or worse (as some nephrologists will
tell you), the foundation's guidelines for dialysis set the standard
of care for the 380,000 U.S. patients who receive that treatment.
Congress listens to the NKF because it is a major force within
the transplant community. But the foundation's recalcitrance on
financial incentives for organ donors is hurting the very
constituency it purports to serve. Last year, 4,000 dialysis
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patients died because they could not survive the wait for an
organ. When Congress returns in the fall, the AMA will begin its
push for demonstration projects on incentives. The NKF will
have a chance to return to its earlier common-sense philosophy
about rewarding organ donors. Unless it grasps the opportunity,
the foundation should not call itself a true advocate for kidney
patients.
medical examiner
Alternative Universe
The homeopathic crowd meets academic medicine.
By Kent Sepkowitz
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 12:36 PM ET
Few things rankle doctors more than alternative (aka
complementary, integrative, holistic, homeopathic, naturopathic)
medicine. First came the misery inflicted by the ever-expanding
celebrity of practitioners like Andrew Weil and Gary Null (and,
for a while, even Radovan Karadzic). And now there is the
arrival at the NIH feeding trough of the alternative medicine
crowd, angling for a mouthful of the same research dollars that
currently fund investigations like "the structural basis for
translation termination on the 70S ribosome."
same amount that efforts to combat stroke, improve food safety,
and further develop gene therapy each receive. A Brit, lamenting
a similar resource shift in his country, has equated this to
murder, writing that had money "spent on refurbishing the Royal
Homeopathic hospital" been used instead for effective though
expensive drugs to treat breast cancer, hundreds of lives a year
would be saved.
Who should prevail in this struggle between naturalistic healers
and ass-kickers with syringes full of chemotherapy? In a sense,
neither side. Both have much to offer and plenty to be
embarrassed about. To date, neither has established an allencompassing operation so wondrous that it should demand
monogamy from patients. So far, though, the problem with
pairing the two disciplines at your corner medical center is that it
mostly serves to diminish each: The West looks spent and
flabby, a bully gone to seed, while the East seems like a kid with
a new car and no clue how to drive.
The enforcers of the Western orthodoxy are the preening
evidenced-based medicine crowd, those notorious killjoys who
operate on the almost amusing premise that every square inch of
medicine is built upon reason, the product of a rationally ordered
stainless-steel world. If no evidence, they insist, then no truth.
And if no truth, get thee out of my medical center. They briskly
have swept away the entire alternative field, viewing chelation,
St. John's wort, and music therapy, for example, as
interchangeably absurd.
Though initially caught flat-footed, academic medicine rallied,
as it always does when big bucks are on offer. After decades of
belittling the alternative folk as a bunch of snake-oil salesmen
and sleazeballs, academic medical centers suddenly realized
that—guess what—they were big fans of the approach all along.
Yale University is one of the latest brand-name institutions to go
through the change. Last year, it joined 40 other medical schools
in the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative
Medicine, and began the awkward dance that has characterized
such mergers.
But to consider the issue more closely, we have to define
alternative medicine with greater care. A 2004 government
report divided the field into four big pieces: 1) biologically
based practices, including herbs, special diets, and
megavitamins; 2) energy medicine, which embraces the concept
of magnetic fields; 3) manipulative and body-based practices
such as massage and yoga; and 4) mind-body medicine,
including prayer and meditation.
Viewed one way, the migration of alternative medicine to the
academic mainstream is a fine example of the might of popular
will. After all, a 2004 survey revealed that 36 percent of adults
in the United States have used alternative medicine at one time
or another. If megavitamins and prayer are included, the
proportion rises to 62 percent.
Costly attempts to demonstrate efficacy, paid for with taxpayer
dollars, have been launched in each of the four areas. To date, as
recently detailed, the results have been awful. Take the example
of echinacea, an herb used by 40 percent of all natural product
gobblers, who take it to ameliorate the symptoms of the common
cold. Echinacea was rushed into numerous clinical trials. The
result: The research shows that it doesn't work. Or even sort of
work.
A darker view, though, is held by hard-core old-schoolers. Some
of their objections are hyperventilation: They massage people!
To make theme feel better! More seriously, they cast the
encroachment of alternative medicine onto academic turf as a
threat to American health because it's diverting money for
research and care from traditional approaches. For the last six
years, alternative medicine has received about 1 percent of the
$28 billion annual NIH budget, or $300 million a year. That's the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Rather than admit that they're discouraged or embarrassed by
this cold, hard evidence, the alterna-crowd has claimed (OK,
whined) that academic-type studies by definition are stacked
against them. They consider the bedrock of Western medicine—
the randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial—
too hard-edged and difficult to implement, just the sort of cruelhearted gaming of people and disease that so characterizes most
things Western. With echinacea and other botanicals, they make
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the additional complaint that the various trials used the wrong
preparation of the magic herb. This problem is indeed critical
and slows the pace of assessing various alternative remedies.
Unlike standard pharmaceuticals, the production of which is
fiercely regulated (another example of the sharp-elbowed West),
production of echinacea and its cousins is more laid back. This
helps the producer who can sell his wares with little interference,
but it's a bit of a nightmare when it comes to mounting a costly
clinical trial. If one guy's preparation does or doesn't work, does
that mean another echinacea will or won't work, too? The
looseness of the alternative approach is part of its appeal—but
also hinders it from finding sure footing in the academic realm.
At the same time, to dismiss alternative medicine too quickly is
to miss a central question: What is the role of health care? Is the
enterprise aimed only at preventing and treating illness, or
should it also try to make us feel better? Treating an illness
Western-style can mean chopping off a leg, giving
chemotherapy, hooking someone up to dialysis. All of this is
done to score the touchdown of American medicine: extension
of survival by a week, a month, a year, anything. No doctor
wants a patient to suffer, but in the Western view the long-term
goal of survival comes first. The focus of many Eastern
approaches, on the other hand, is on feeling better now rather
than lasting longer. And this is something altogether different.
The two goals—treatment and prevention on the one hand and
making patients feel better on the other—really are often at odds.
And in the future, they surely will diverge further as Western
medicine becomes even more technologically sophisticated. A
treatment with stem-cell or gene therapy isn't going to be like
drinking a glass of orange juice in the morning. The disruption
and discomfort the therapies likely will inflict may make today's
medicine seem mild. The best response to the über-tech may be
an equal and opposite move toward the more benign alternative
realm.
Alternative medicine needs money and many years to find its
way, and despite the early setbacks for echinacea and other
treatments, it would be a mistake to call off the federal
investment. Such an absolutist stance ignores the observations of
thousands of people over thousands of years as well as the true
pace of medical progress, which is at best herky-jerky and
aimless. That's not to say that alternative medicine is the equal of
Western medicine, or will prove to be, many millions of research
funds later. As Steve Jobs discovered, a special organic diet will
not cure pancreatic cancer, whereas a six-hour surgery might. As
brutal as Western medicine is, it remains a wonder of the
modern world. So let's hope that the two sides can find room for
each other: The West needs the East's soothing calm to round out
its prickliness, while the East needs the West's thuggish urge to
push ahead and prove results. I think that's called yin and yang.
movies
There's Something About Robert
Downey Jr.
Watch him play a white guy playing a black guy in Tropic Thunder.
By Dana Stevens
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 2:10 PM ET
If you go see Tropic Thunder this weekend, don't be late. The
four fake ads that open the movie are perhaps the apex of its
considerable comic invention. After a sleazy pitch for an energy
drink called Alpa Chino's Booty Sweat, we're treated, or
subjected, to trailers for three abysmal-looking upcoming
movies titled Scorcher VI: Global Meltdown, The Fatties: Fart
2, and Satan's Alley (that last being a kind of medieval remake of
Brokeback Mountain, in which closeted monks played by Robert
Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire furtively fondle each other's
rosaries).
These trailers are not only uproarious in their own right; they
serve as nifty exposition tools for Ben Stiller (directing for the
first time since the 2001 Zoolander), who can now plunge us
into his deranged universe without needing to provide back
stories for the four main characters. We learn that Alpa Chino
(Brandon T. Jackson), purveyor of Booty Sweat, is a rapper
trying to break into acting. Tugg Speedman (Stiller), aka the
Scorcher, is a fading action star hoping to move into serious
roles. The flatulent star of the Fatties franchise, Jeff Portnoy
(Jack Black), is also in quest of acting cred, though his heroin
habit stands in his way. And Kirk Lazarus (Downey Jr.) is an
Australian method actor who submerges himself in his
characters to a disturbing degree.
As the real movie (or is it?) opens, these four Hollywood brats
find themselves in a Southeast Asian jungle, shooting a war epic
under the direction of Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), who,
in turn, is subject to the whims of tyrannical studio head Les
Grossman (Tom Cruise, oh my God, Tom Cruise—but more on
that later). The project is quickly going south—four days into
shooting, report the tabloids, it's already a month behind
schedule—and Grossman is threatening to shut the whole thing
down. In a desperate meeting with Four Leaf Tayback (Nick
Nolte), the Vietnam vet whose memoir inspired the film,
Cockburn agrees to try shooting "guerilla-style": He'll strand his
actors in the jungle with hidden cameras, terrify them with faked
explosions (rigged by the movie's tech guru, Cody, played
brilliantly by Danny McBride), and film them as they make their
way back to civilization without cell phones, assistants,
masseuses, or other perks of the trade.
In addition to the fake perils Cody has set out for them, the
actors fall prey to some real ones: A local drug gang led by a
teenage warlord (Brandon Soo Hoo) mistakes the Americans for
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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DEA agents and starts hunting them through the jungle.
Internecine struggle begins among the team of thespians as the
credulous Speedman insists this is all part of the filmmakers'
plan while the marginally smarter Lazarus tries to lead the group
to safety.
When the gong sounded, I was alone in the stone tower—
A bristle of wings in the ivy, dry-necked mortar in the walls.
Did I mention that Downey's character is in blackface this entire
time? Well, not exactly blackface; with DeNiro-like intensity,
Lazarus has undergone a surgical skin-darkening procedure to
prepare himself for the plum role of an African-American
soldier. The fact that his fellow cast member, Jackson's Alpa
Chino, is an actual black man in a much smaller role bothers
Lazarus not at all. In one of the movie's funniest scenes, he
enfolds the younger actor in a brotherly embrace while intoning
a speech about race relations that begins, "Over 400 years ago
…" and culminates in a solemn recitation of the lyrics from The
Jeffersons' theme song. Anyone walking into Tropic Thunder
looking to be offended by Downey's minstrel turn will soon find
that the movie is two steps ahead. His role is no one-note, let'sshock-the-audience race joke—it's a densely layered little study
of American racial anxiety. In an ongoing gag, Lazarus never
breaks character; even when his life is in peril, he maintains his
soul-brother voice and tone of mau-mauing self-pity. Obsessed
with authenticity, he's the biggest phony there is.
************Come back to your simple
Robert Downey Jr. knocking a role like this out of the park is no
surprise. But who could have foreseen Tom Cruise nearly
stealing the movie in a fat suit, a prosthetic nose, a skinhead wig,
and an Austin Powers-style mat of chest fur? Cruise is always at
his best when he's skewering some unpleasant aspect of his own
persona; thus, the crazed motivational speaker he played in
Magnolia was a career high point, and the supremely crude Les
Grossman is another. Maybe as the head of United Artists,
Cruise really does spew vicious obscenities on the phone and
engage in triumphant hip-hop dances in an underground bunker
of an office. At any rate, never has a role so cannily taken
advantage of Cruise's compact, thumblike body shape—that is,
his physical resemblance to a penis. As Les Grossman, he's a
literal and figurative dick, and it's the role of a lifetime.
I sat like a monk at prayer. Wind whistled through the cracks
And I heard you call me:
************Table, your garden of burgundy lilies, that chair
in the corner
************Where you can see chickadees on the feeder
chased off
************By squirrels. We can give you solitude. Soup. We
can bring
************The moon to you by cutting a branch from the
sycamore.
************We hurt you because we are human. We couldn't
************Hear your voice in a hurricane's silence.
Then I called to you:
************You haven't wronged me. I've needed to live as I
have,
************With suppose as the friend I turn to.
************I haven't loved you deeply enough. The
mockingbird
************In the ivy could not steal my song otherwise.
The bird left me. The gong was gone. I opened my door to the
wild stairs.
politics
Slate V: Why Blackface?
82 Days and Counting
Why campaigns feel like they never have enough time.
By John Dickerson
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 6:49 PM ET
poem
"A Bristle of Wings in the Ivy"
By Teresa Cader
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 6:54 AM ET
Listen to Teresa Cader read .
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Barack Obama is on vacation in Hawaii, but there is no rest at
his Chicago headquarters. The 3,300-square-foot office is
teeming with humans. The first thing I notice when I walk in is
the body heat. In the vast bullpen of desks and cubicles, the
Obama staff types stare into laptops and pace—sometimes in
flip-flops—while talking on cell phones. You think you're
walking down a hallway, but then, watch out, someone might be
sitting where you were about to plant your foot, grabbing an
extra inch of space. Open laptops line desks like they're on
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showroom display. Office chairs crowd so close to one another
that their casters kiss (as would their occupants, if they were to
turn their heads). Pictures, maps, and hand-drawn signs clot the
walls, making the place look like a huge ransom note.
One small piece of paper tacked between two doors reads, "82
Days to go." In campaign time, this means that when you're
sleep-deprived and crazed, the race feels like it's never going to
end—but the rest of the time it feels like you'll never accomplish
everything you need to. The pace of a hyper-fast news cycle
means that the back-and-forth between opponents that used to
take up a week can now be dispatched with in an afternoon. But
the most significant parts of campaigning are still tied to the
moon and sun. The candidate can be in only one place at a time.
Door knocking, perhaps the most valuable way to mobilize
voters, cannot be done via e-mail blast. These physical
limitations mean that as the campaigns head for their
conventions, the calendar, in fact, is much tighter than the two
and a half months remaining might make it seem.
The most precious days for a campaign are those on which the
candidate's time and attention are free and the news has left open
a window for projecting a specific message into voters' ears. If a
candidate can push the same message over several of these days
consecutively, there's a much better chance it will stick. A threeday Obama bus tour through rural areas has the potential to show
that the candidate connects with people outside his urban base.
John McCain could spend the same amount of time visiting
kitchen tables to push the message that he really understands
people's economic woes.
But already in this election, the speedy and unpredictable news
coverage has made it harder than ever to devote a few days to a
single subject. The news blows the principals off-course (or in
McCain's case, he does it himself). It's about to get worse. As
soon as each candidate picks a running mate, the whirlwind
frenzy will double. There will be four people who can make
campaign news rather than just two. This increases the chances
that a campaign's plans for the day will get hijacked.
The 82 days left on the calendar are also packed with
compulsory exercises. The three weeks after this one go to vice
presidential selection and the rollout of the dream team,
followed by the political conventions. For a brief interlude
during that period, each campaign will get the best days it can
imagine—the clear skies of massive press coverage with very
little filter. The rest of the time will be hard to control. The
candidates won't want to make news that contradicts what's
going on at their own party conventions. For the candidate
whose convention week it is not (McCain in the last week of
August, Obama in the first week of September), the news cycle
becomes hard to break into.
immediately they'll observe a truce on and around Sept. 11. Two
weeks after that, the debates start. There are three presidential
debates and one vice presidential debate, scheduled for the
second half of September and the first part of October. Each one
requires prep time. On the day of the debate, the candidates don't
campaign. For at least a day or two afterward, they have to
address the fallout. Remember how many days were eaten up
during the Democratic primary talking about driver's licenses for
illegal aliens?
Once the debates are over, it's mid-October. That leaves roughly
three weeks before voting, right? Not if you live in important
states like Colorado, Virginia, and Ohio, just some of the 31
states that allow voters to cast early ballots. Early voting by mail
in Ohio, in particular, may allow the candidates to take
advantage of thousands of first-time voters more than a month
before official Election Day. Thus the first votes of the 2008
election will be cast only 40 days from now.
Adding to the urgency is the potentially larger number of states
that could be up for grabs. There's no better way to own a state
media market for a period of time than to put a candidate in that
state. If there were only 10 battlegrounds, it would be difficult to
map out a schedule for maximum impact. Barack Obama's
campaign says he's trying to compete in twice that many states.
That might be spin to throw off the McCain campaign, or it
might be a more realistic reading of a strong Democratic year.
We'll know for sure how serious Obama is about his strategy as
time dwindles, because with each day, the candidate's time gets
more precious. If the Obama campaign doesn't put Obama in
North Carolina and Georgia, we'll know they aren't really
banking on strong showings there.
As time grows short, campaigns will show that they can move
quickly and nimbly. The mass of staffers in Obama's Chicago
headquarters and their counterparts at McCain's headquarters in
Alexandria, Va., can design a three-day bus tour almost
overnight, renting buses, finding venues, filling them with
people, arranging local media interviews, and orchestrating
logistics for all the traveling press and campaign bodies. They
can adapt back at home as well. In Chicago, the Obama
campaign staff has spilled over onto a new floor to make more
space. If only they could find a way to make more time.
politics
The Lives of Barack Obama
An interactive timeline by Slate.
By Christopher Beam and Chris Wilson
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 5:22 PM ET
By the second week of September, the conventions will be over
and the campaigns can engage in earnest. But then almost
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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There are at least two versions of Barack Obama's life: There's
his version—the story he tells in his speeches, op-eds, and
books. Then there's the media's version—news articles, columns,
and investigative pieces about him as he rose to prominence and
since his presidential campaign began. We can learn a lot by
comparing the two.
To that end, Slate has compiled Obama's speeches, his writings,
contemporary news accounts of his life, and recent retrospective
articles to show how Obama's life looks different depending on
who's looking.
Everyone agrees on the basic facts of Obama's biography. But
not everyone emphasizes the same points. In his speeches,
Obama talks about his Chicago organizing days much more than
his two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He mentions
growing up in Hawaii more than he discusses his childhood in
Indonesia. Some of that is just good storytelling. But some of it
is deliberately curatorial. Obama visited his grandparents' home
in Kansas during the campaign, for example, but friends from
Harvard were discouraged from talking to the press. Despite his
accomplishments at Harvard, Obama doesn't mention them once
in the speeches archived on his Web site (although they are
featured in his online biography). Likewise, the campaign rarely
discusses his time working at a law firm in Chicago before
entering the Illinois Senate.
The timeline below lets you examine Obama's life through
various lenses. Click the tab along the top that says "Speeches"
and you'll see how often he talks about each period of his life,
with links to the speeches themselves. Click the
"Autobiography" tab to see how much he writes about each era
in his books. Click on "Recent News" to see how often
newspapers and magazines dedicate to those periods. Or click
"Contemporary News" to see how much coverage he got at the
time. (Here's our methodology.)
We intend this to be an evolving tool. If we missed any major
feature stories about Obama in Jakarta, for example, send them
along. If you think there's a better way to measure the
campaign's emphasis on different parts of his life, let us know.
We'll update it as needed and see if the shape of Obama's life
changes between now and November, and beyond.
sidebar
Return to article
Methodology
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
First, we divided Obama's life by geographical location and
major turning points in his career—the Hawaii years, the early
Chicago years, his time as an Illinois state senator, and so forth.
In some cases we had to fudge it—for example, his monthlong
trip to Kenya in 1988, to which Obama devotes a full third of his
first memoir, looks like a year on the timeline. In examining
Obama's own writings, we looked at how many pages he
devoted in his two books—Dreams From My Father and The
Audacity of Hope—to each period of his life. We also examined
his speeches, counting the number of times since 2002 he has
publicly discussed these periods. To measure contemporary
news coverage, we searched Nexis for mentions of "Barack
Obama." (The Honolulu Advertiser really dropped the ball on
the story of the century, "Barack Obama Is Born.") To measure
retrospective news coverage, we compiled all the recent
investigative pieces from major news sources we could find.
This last method is fairly subjective, so if there's anything big we
missed, let us know. (Some articles cover more than one period
of his life.)
press box
Conventional Nonsense
Making the case for a press boycott of the national political conventions.
By Jack Shafer
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 6:57 PM ET
With just one exception over the last three decades, the two
major parties have known the identity of their likely presidential
candidate weeks or even months before gaveling their national
political conventions open. For that reason, one way to improve
coverage of the four-day, quadrennial conventions of
Republicans and Democrats would be for the TV networks to
assign sportscasters like Bob Costas, Joe Morgan, and John
Madden instead of political journalists to report on the
gatherings. They know how to make a game with a foregone
conclusion seem entertaining.
A still better way to improve convention coverage would be to
withdraw all reporters and force the curious to rely on a C-SPAN
feed: Unless a brokered convention threatens to break out, these
political gatherings tend to produce very little real news. Yet the
networks, the newspapers, the magazines, and the Web sites
continue to insist on sending battalions of reporters to sift for
itsy specks of information. According to Forbes, 15,000 pressies
are expected to attend each of the conventions. Slate, I'm
embarrassed to admit, is sending a team of eight to Denver and
six to St. Paul. Attention! Don Graham! We're spending your
cash like it's Zimbabwean bank notes!
While your average political reporter doesn't think the
conventions are a waste of time and resources, he's likely to
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agree that nothing very newsworthy actually happens at them.
Oh, he may filibuster about how a looming platform battle
promises to produce fissures in the party. But if you observe that
platforms are written to be ignored by the candidate, he'll drop
his point. Or he may argue that meeting all the important
politicos up close at the convention will produce future news
dividends. But he'll pout if you ask him whether the intimacy
justifies the expense, which can easily exceed $3,000 per
reporter for a bare-bones visit. (A single seat in the designated
workspace area at a convention can cost more than $1,000, and
an Internet connection is $850. Snacks purchased at the
convention make ballpark food look affordable.)
Maureen Dowd to write about the pitiful political performances.
But such a gimmick is hard to sustain. Knowing that the
networks need a spectacle like the one staged at the opening of
the Beijing Olympics to draw viewers, Barack Obama has
scheduled a speech to the Democratic faithful at the 70,000-pluscapacity Invesco Field.
I'll bet that all the fireworks will be faked.
******
As a last resort, he'll talk up the importance of covering vital
speeches such as the ones given by Ann Richards*, Ted
Kennedy, Pat Buchanan, and Barack Obama at previous
conventions. This year, his eyes might glow with visions of a
Clinton-Obama feud. When he stoops that low, you'll know
you've won the debate.
I'd rather watch 24 hours of C-SPAN transmissions of hearings
before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry than five minutes of either convention. My favorite CSpan show is Prime Minister's Questions. What's yours? Send
program suggestions to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may
be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a
future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise.
Disclosure: Andrew Ferguson is a friend. Permanent disclosure:
Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
As if on a mission to make the conventions even less
substantive, the presumptive presidential candidates have taken
to announcing their running mates before the party convenes.
Party officials similarly do their best to vet convention speeches
and speakers to make absolute certain that nobody says anything
provocative. I'm convinced that the main reason the Democrats
aren't giving John Edwards podium time this go-round is
because voters finally want to hear him talk.
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time
Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of
errors in this specific column, type the word conventions in the
subject head of an e-mail message and send it to
slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
Why do the parties throw their meaningless conventions? As
Andrew Ferguson wrote in the Weekly Standard four years ago,
the no-news extravaganza of a convention is excellent news for
them. But what excuse do thousands of reporters have for
attending? According to Ferguson, in the weeks leading up to the
conventions, the press traditionally complains about the "empty
ritual" of the "infomercial" that the parties have
"choreographed." But that's just for show. They fight their
colleagues for the honor to attend because a political convention
is a gas to cover. It's like a vacation, only no spouses! There's
free food, plenty of booze, nice hotels, lots of pals in the press
and politics dishing gossip, and the assignment is easy to report.
Ferguson concludes that political conventions exist only to make
the second convention—the "journalists' convention"—possible.
"The parasite has consumed the host," he wrote.
sidebar
If the political press corps were honest, they'd start every
convention story with the finding that nothing important
happened that day and that your attention is not needed. Or
they'd go searching toilet stalls for somebody with a wide stance.
Instead, they satisfy themselves by being the co-producers of a
bad reality-TV show about the coronation of a man who would
be king.
At past conventions, the New York Times capitalized on the faux
drama by teaming reformed theater critic Frank Rich and
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Correction, Aug. 14, 2008: This article originally misidentified
Ann Richards as Ann Richardson. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
Return to article
The Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan contest in 1976 was a cliffhanger, but it was decided in Ford's favor on a first ballot.
reading list
To Your Health
The best books, articles, and Web sites about the health care policy debate.
By Timothy Noah
Saturday, August 9, 2008, at 6:44 AM ET
Sometime in the next four years, the health care delivery system
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in the United States is going to change. That's a given because
the current patchwork—costly and unreliable private health
insurance, overcrowded and underfunded hospital emergency
rooms, technophilic and procedure-incentivized physicians—is
coming apart at the seams. Whatever solution the 44th president
and the 111th Congress enact may or may not prove adequate.
But rest assured they'll change something.
What that means for you, reader, is you need to set aside a little
time between now and Nov. 4 to catch up on the American
health care policy debate (assuming you haven't already done
so). Your future health may depend on it.
The pithiest overview of the problem is an essay that Paul
Krugman, the Princeton economist and New York Times
columnist, wrote in collaboration with his wife, Robin Wells, for
the New York Review of Books in 2006, titled "The Health Care
Crisis and What To Do About It." Krugman and Wells write in
the spirit of economists seeking the most rational and costeffective solution (as opposed to the most politically salable
one). Their conclusion—which I find bulletproof—is that the
federal government, which already provides taxpayer-funded
health insurance to the elderly, the destitute, and, increasingly, to
minors, should extend health-care coverage to everyone.
My only complaint about Krugman and Wells is that they give
short shrift to the question of cost containment, which will
remain a challenge even (perhaps especially) if the government
provides health care coverage to all. To fill this gap, read
"Options for Slowing the Growth of Health Care Costs," an
article by James J. Mongan, Timothy G. Ferris, and Thomas H.
Lee, reprinted from the April 3 issue of the New England
Journal of Medicine (which does an excellent job covering the
health care policy debate). Mongan, Ferris, and Lee evaluate the
various cost-savings proposals currently under discussion from
the standpoint of inherent practicality and political achievability.
Got a little time to surf the Internet? Then check out the Web site
for Health Care for America NOW!, a coalition of labor unions
and other liberal groups lobbying for universal health care. Of
particular interest here is the "insurance nightmares" blog, which
links to a recent news story about a Tampa Bay, Fla., teenager
whose health insurer refused to pay for … brain surgery. (They
finally relented under pressure.) Check out the Web site for the
insurer-funded Campaign for an American Solution to learn why
brain surgery is actually a foolish indulgence. (OK, it doesn't
actually say that.) The health care proposals of Barack Obama
and John McCain present the most challenging reading on this
list because they're written with politics rather than clarity in
mind. To avoid getting conned, I'd advise you to read my
"Health Care Primary" analyses (here and here) first.
health insurance coverage require (and, for the most part,
receive) no exaggeration at all. Supplement your DVD rental
with "Health Care for All," a listening tour of other countries'
collectivized health care systems from National Public Radio.
It's more reliable than Moore's (though similarly favorable).
The single best book I've encountered about the centurylong
evolution of the American health care crisis is Sick: The Untold
Story of America's Health Care Crisis—and the People Who Pay
the Price by Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at the New Republic.
A wonkier overview can be found in Healthcare, Guaranteed by
Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of
Health (and brother of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel). I'm not
entirely persuaded by Brother Zeke's proposed solution of
government-funded private insurance vouchers, but his
criticisms of direct government health insurance can't be
ignored. Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better
Than Yours, by Phillip Longman, makes the counterintuitive but
wholly persuasive case that the Veterans Administration, in spite
of its recent difficulties serving Iraq war veterans, provides an
extremely successful model for socialized medicine. (Full
disclosure: I wrote the introduction.) Overtreated: Why Too
Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, by Shannon
Brownlee, explains why those patients who do have access to
treatment receive it to excess, to the detriment of their own
health. Brownlee and Longman are both fellows at the New
America Foundation. A principal reason for overtreatment is that
doctors are usually unsalaried professionals who get paid based
on the number of procedures they perform and tests they order
up. Arnold Relman, a former editor of the New England Journal
of Medicine, explores this problem (and more generally how
health care has been corrupted by increasing commercialization)
in A Second Opinion: Rescuing America's Health Care. In The
Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care, David
Gratzer makes the conservative case for a free-market solution to
the health care mess. He's lucid—but wrong.
The political lessons of Hillary Clinton's failed 1994 health care
plan are documented comprehensively in The System: The
American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point, a 684-page
narrative by the Washington Post's Haynes Johnson and David
Broder. Theda Skocpol, a Harvard sociologist, provides a more
analytic and svelte (240-page) account in Boomerang: Health
Care Reform and the Turn Against Government. In general,
though, the demise of Hillarycare has been overstudied in
Washington. Both the politics and the problem itself have
changed a lot since then.
If all this reading gives you a headache, take two aspirin, and I'll
call you in the morning.
Insurance horror stories abound in Michael Moore's 2007
documentary, Sicko. Moore is sometimes accused of
exaggerating for effect, but his gothic tales of patients denied
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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shopping
Easy on the Eyes
Each pair of goggles could score a possible 35 points, with either
5 or 10 points assigned for the following categories:
The best—and best-looking—swim goggles.
By Juliet Lapidos
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
There's nothing quite like the Olympics to make me feel guilty
about my slothful lifestyle. Most weekends I while away the
hours on my couch, watching movies, reading magazines, and
musing idly about going to the gym. My routine is pretty much
the same when the Olympics are on, only it feels more shameful.
Everywhere I look, I see pictures of toned athletes straining and
sweating, and anytime I turn on the television, there's an
inspirational montage telling me that Olympians aren't so
different from you and me. They're just more motivated.
This year, to cut down on Olympics-induced self-pity, I decided
to take up swimming. More precisely, I decided that at some
point in the future I would take up swimming. First I'd need a
good pair of goggles—the item, I've always thought, that divides
the lappers from the splashers (and that would prevent me from
using the lame "I'd swim for exercise, if only my darned eyes
weren't so sensitive to chlorine" excuse). Not content to settle for
any old pair, I pledged to find the best goggles out there.
Methodology
To get a sense of the marketplace, I started by calling up twotime Olympic gold medalist Lindsay Mintenko, who's now the
managing director for the U.S. swim team. I asked her how I
should go about testing prospective models and which brand she
preferred. She advised that in addition to swimming laps, I
should practice diving to make sure the goggles fit snuggly. She
also told me she was partial to Swedish goggles: Manufactured
by the swim gear and pool equipment company Malmsten, these
have no seal of any kind around the eyecups and require
assembly, allowing for maximal customization.
The Swedes sounded like they had a good product, but I wasn't
sure I was ready for an assembly-required model, so I decided to
try out several other styles as well. I ordered six pairs, persuaded
two friends to join me at a public pool one hot Saturday
afternoon, and jotted down our first impressions. That was Stage
1. Stage 2 involved a more rigorous Sunday alone at the same
pool, swimming laps, attempting underwater flips, and jumping
in and out of the water (more cannonball than dive, but I don't
believe this sacrificed the rigor of the fit test). I gave each pair a
solid 45 minutes of individual attention. For the third and final
stage, I strapped on a different pair of goggles each day after
coming home from work. Then I cleaned my room, cooked
dinner, or performed some other ordinary task. As my roommate
can attest, I looked ridiculous, but this was a quick way to
determine if a pair produced the dreaded raccoon-eye effect.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Ease of Use (5 possible points)
Manufacturers recommend that swimmers adjust goggles before
entering the pool. This should be simple to do. Ideally, you
should able to tweak the head strap quickly when you're already
in the water as well.
Comfort (10 possible points)
Is the suction so strong you get a headache? Is the nosepiece so
rough you chafe between the eyes? And once you're back on dry
land, do you have dramatic, circular marks around your eyes?
Visibility (10 possible points)
A goggle's telos is to keep water out of your eyes. Any pair that
can't do that has no business being strapped to your face. I
subtracted major points for leakage and for fog.
Aesthetics (5 possible points)
Unlike their landlubber cousin, sunglasses, goggles aren't
fashion accessories. But if I have to wear them in public, I'd
prefer not to encourage mockery. From plastic masks that look
more like laboratory safety gear to sleek, strapless goggles that
adhere to your eye sockets, the pairs I tried varied in size and
attractiveness. I subtracted style points for cheap-looking, flimsy
plastic straps, and I added points for flair, like mirrored lenses
that keep out sunlight and create an aura of aquatic mystery.
Value (5 possible points)
If you leave your goggles behind at the pool, you should be able
to afford a replacement without having to sell your Dara Torres
autograph on eBay. That said, it's worth shelling out a few extra
bucks for a really great pair. So I used a pretty standard
consumer equation: my personal sense of satisfaction divided by
price.
The results, listed from kiddie pool to Olympic class:
Barracuda Standard Goggle, $29.95
Barracuda frames are designed to match the contours of your eye
sockets so that suction isn't necessary. This was the most
comfortable pair I tried—no headaches from excess suction, no
chafing from hard plastic (Barracudas have spongy foam pads
around the eyepieces), and no raccoon eyes after my dry-land
test. They're also rather classy—their circular rather than slanted
lenses give them a Yellow Submarine-era John Lennon vibe.
Alas, they fell short in every other category. Adjusting the head
strap is easy enough—just pull a rubber cord through plastic
clips—but the nose bridge was a nightmare. If there's a gap
between the foam cups and your nose, you need to remove the
bridge with a tiny hex key (which comes with the goggles) and
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then trim it with a scissor. At first I didn't realize there was a
gap, so I jumped into the pool and immediately suffered leakage.
Seeing as I regularly misplace far more vital objects, like my
wallet, I wasn't surprised to find that I'd left the hex key on my
desk. So I had to postpone my tests. I returned the next morning
having trimmed the bridge, but by the end of my 45-minute trial,
I noticed leakage yet again. It's possible I needed to trim the
nosepiece even more, but I suspect that water was seeping in
between the eyecups and the foam (they're held together with
glue). Either way, 30 bucks is way too steep given the labor
required to make these goggles work.
Ease of Use: 1
Comfort: 10
Visibility: 1
Aesthetics: 4
Value: 1
Total: 17
Finis Jet Stream Goggle, $24.99
These mask-style goggles, which hug your cheekbones on the
bottom and fit over your eyebrows, are intended for recreational
swimmers, since their large size causes drag. I wasn't out to
break any world records, so this prospect didn't bother me. I was
bothered, however, by the fact that my two friends thought I
looked like I was getting ready to titrate some HCl instead of
jump in the pool. These are some very goofy-looking goggles. I
also developed a headache within the first 10 minutes. The Finis
Jet Streams rely on suction so strong I felt like my eyes were
popping out.
Another problem: During my Saturday quick trial, I didn't detect
any visibility problems, but on Sunday after some underwater
flips, the goggles fogged up a tad. The only real point in favor of
the Jet Streams is that they're extremely easy to adjust. No
screws or scissors here, no nosepiece in need of trimming—just
a head strap with a simple clasp that you can tighten or loosen
with one hand.
Ease of Use: 5
Comfort: 2
Visibility: 7
Aesthetics: 1
Value: 2
Total: 17
Nike Swift Strapless Goggle, $25 (plus additional adhesive
pads)
If you're after a futuristic "I'm not from around here" look, you
might like these goggles, which have no head strap or nose
bridge. Then how do they stay on, you ask? Why, they stick to
your eye sockets with double-sided medical adhesive, of course!
The Nikes get points for aesthetics—and for visibility: I
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
experienced no leakage or fog. While I was in the pool, they
were pretty cozy, and I liked the fact that I could wear them
without a swim cap, since there's no strap to get knotted in my
hair.
The problem with these goggles is that they're a little frightening
to take off. When I ordered my pair from Swim-Shop.com, I got
a rather foreboding e-mail: "None of us here have ever used
them, so we are not able to tell you personally whether or not
they hurt to remove." As it turned out, the removal process didn't
hurt much. And it's no big deal that I lost a couple of eyebrow
hairs—I suppose I saved myself a trip to the esthetician.
Afterward, however, I had a pretty dramatic red rim around my
eyes, and my skin became a little irritated. And while $25 isn't
all that much for a pair of goggles, they come with only 20
single-use adhesive pads. After that, you have to start ordering
packs of 25, which, at $20 a pop, really adds up.
Ease of Use: 4
Comfort: 4
Visibility: 10
Aesthetics: 5
Value: 2
Total: 25
Swedish Goggles, $5.00
When these goggles, which came so highly recommended by
Lindsay Mintenko, arrived in the mail, I felt daunted. I received
a little plastic bag with two hard-plastic eyecups, a latex cord, a
small plastic tube, a bit of string, and no instructions. Confused,
I looked online for guidance and happened upon a wikiHow
page outlining a five-step assembly process. The existence of
this page speaks to the fact that Swedish goggles aren't
especially user-friendly.
After about 10 minutes of wiki-assisted fiddling, I had the
goggles in one piece and strapped them on. I was worried that I'd
have the Barracuda experience all over again, since the Swedish
goggles employ no suction of any kind (or foam, for that matter).
But I was pleasantly surprised to find that these goggles worked
as advertised. The little plastic cups were so perfectly fitted to
the contours of my face that I experienced no leakage or
fogging. After a while, though, the hard plastic felt rough against
the corners of my eyes. Also, aestheticswise, this pair is tough to
put a number on—some people may like their extreme
simplicity; others may think they look as cheap as they are.
Ease of Use: 2
Comfort: 7
Visibility: 10
Aesthetics: 3
Value: 5
Total: 27
74/140
slate v
Tyr Nest Pro Goggle, $20.00
Designed specifically for the 2008 Olympics, these goggles have
a gridlike pattern around the eyepieces meant to evoke the bird'snest architectural design of the main Beijing stadium. This detail
makes for a great conversation piece and deserves a few
aesthetic points, although the material looks and feels cheap.
These were the most "yeah, but …" pair I tried. Yeah, they keep
out water and fog, but the suction is a little strong, causing mild
discomfort. There's no assembly required, but once in the pool
the strap has a tendency to get stuck in the clip, making on-head
adjustment a bit tough. They're not expensive, like the Nike
Strapless goggles, but they're hardly a steal. All in all, a good
basic pair that should do the trick for recreational swimmers.
Ease of Use: 4
Comfort: 7
Visibility: 10
Aesthetics: 3
Value: 3
Total: 27
Poor Kobe's Olympic Dream
A daily video from Slate V.
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 10:25 AM ET
slate v
Damned Spot: Obama Is Rubber,
McCain Is Glue
A daily video from Slate V.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 11:44 AM ET
slate v
Why Blackface?
A daily video from Slate V.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 10:40 AM ET
slate v
Speedo Speed Socket, $24.99
This pair is roughly like the Swedish goggles in that the eyecups
are exceptionally well-designed to match the bone structure of
the socket and it's possible to custom-fit the nosepiece. But
they're better for nonprofessional swimmers, because the soft
eyepieces rest more comfortably against the skin than the hardplastic Swedes, and because they're much easier to customize.
Speedo sends along three ready-made nosepieces, each slightly
different in size, and it couldn't be easier to clip them on and off.
Dear Prudence: My BFF Won't Let Me
Date!
A daily video from Slate V.
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 12:57 PM ET
technology
An Army of Ones and Zeroes
My friends and I agreed that the Speed Sockets look sleek and
professional. And for just $5 more you can get a pair with
mirrored lenses, which keep out sunlight and give your face a
certain T-1000, liquid metal je ne sais quoi. Because the suction
isn't too aggressive, I didn't experience any pain, and the raccoon
effect was minimal. These goggles deserve high marks in every
category. In fact, I liked them so much that maybe—maybe—I'll
dispense with televised sports this August and hit the pool for
some laps.
Ease of Use: 5
Comfort: 9
Visibility: 10
Aesthetics: 5
Value: 5
Total: 34
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar.
By Evgeny Morozov
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 5:31 PM ET
As Russian and Georgian troops fight on the ground, there's a
parallel war happening in cyberspace. In recent weeks, Georgia's
government Web sites have been besieged by denial-of-service
attacks and acts of vandalism. Just like in traditional warfare,
there's a lot of confusion about what's going on in this
technological battle—nobody seems to know whether this is a
centralized Russian attack, the work of a loose band of hackers,
or something else. Having read so many contradicting accounts,
I knew that the only reliable way to find out what was really
happening was to enlist in the Russian digital army myself.
Don't get me wrong: My geopolitical sympathies, if anything, lie
with Moscow's counterparts. Nor do I see myself as an Internetsavvy Rambo character. I had a much simpler research
objective: to test how much damage someone like me, who is
quite aloof from the Kremlin physically and politically, could
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inflict upon Georgia's Web infrastructure, acting entirely on my
own and using only a laptop and an Internet connection. If I
succeeded, that would somewhat contradict the widely shared
assumption—at least in most of the Western media—that the
Kremlin is managing this cyberwarfare in a centralized fashion.
My mission, if successful, would show that the field is open to
anyone with a grudge against Georgia, regardless of their exact
relationship with state authorities.
Not knowing exactly how to sign up for a cyberwar, I started
with an extensive survey of the Russian blogosphere. My first
anonymous mentor, as I learned from this blog post, became
frustrated with the complexity of other cyberwarfare techniques
used in this campaign and developed a simpler and lighter "for
dummies" alternative. All I needed to do was to save a copy of a
certain Web page to my hard drive and then open it in my
browser. I was warned that the page wouldn't work with Internet
Explorer but did well with Firefox and Opera. (Get with the
program, Microsoft!) Once accessed, the page would load
thumbnailed versions of a dozen key Georgian Web sites in a
single window. All I had to do was set the page to automatically
update every three to five seconds. Voilà: My browser was now
sending thousands of queries to the most important Georgian
sites, helping to overload them, and it had taken me only two to
three minutes to set up.
But now I knew that there must be other more sophisticated
options out there. After some more investigation, I unearthed
two alternatives, one creative and one emotional.
The creative option was to write my own simple program.
Although my experience with software development is
nonexistent, the instructions looked manageable. All I had to do
was create a blank text file, copy and paste the URLs of any
Web sites that I wanted to attack, specify how many times these
sites should be pinged, and copy and paste a few lines of code
from the original instructions. The last bit was to rename it with
a .BAT extension, instantly converting it into a file that
Windows recognizes as an executable program.
My e-Molotov cocktail was ready to go. I just had to doubleclick the file, and all those sites that I listed would be inundated
with requests. The original blog post also encouraged me to run
my program at certain times of the day to coincide with attacks
launched by others, thus multiplying their effectiveness.
So far, it looked as if my experiment was succeeding. In less
than half an hour, I already had two options that could
potentially cause some damage, if I hadn't stopped after the first
few seconds of testing. What I found missing in my first two
trials, though, was a sense of priorities. If I were truly interested
in destabilizing the Georgian sites, how would I know whether
to focus on the Ministry of Transportation or the Supreme
Court? What if other volunteers like me were attacking one but
not the other? Were my resources more vital on other e-fronts?
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Faced with these dilemmas, I turned to the site StopGeorgia for
help. This was the emotional option. Branding itself as a site by
and for the "Russian hack underground," StopGeorgia declared
that it wouldn't tolerate "aggression against Russia in
cyberspace." In addition to this militaristic rhetoric, the site
offered a very convenient list of targets—Web sites that either
belonged to Georgian government agencies or to potential
friends of the country (including those of the U.K. and U.S.
embassies in Tbilisi). This list included plus and minus signs to
indicate whether the sites were still accessible from Russia and,
for some reason, Lithuania. The sites with the plus signs were,
logically, the primary target; there was no point in attacking the
sites that were already down.
The administrators of StopGeorgia did not stop there; they also
offered visitors a virtual present. The treat was a software utility
called DoSHTTP, which the site encouraged all readers to
download. DoSHTTP's creators bill it as a program to "test" the
so-called "denial-of-service attacks" that have become
synonymous with modern cyberwarfare. But if you believe the
rhetoric on StopGeorgia, its capabilities extend far beyond mere
testing—the site encouraged all visitors to use the program to
launch attacks, not test them.
After making sure that I wasn't downloading a virus, I installed
DoSHTTP and started playing around with it. Along with
offering customizable options to advanced users, there was also
a nice option for beginners like me. After entering a URL, I
could initiate an attack by clicking something that said "Start
Flood." A flood did follow—war at the touch of a button.
In less than an hour, I had become an Internet soldier. I didn't
receive any calls from Kremlin operatives; nor did I have to buy
a Web server or modify my computer in any significant way. If
what I was doing was cyberwarfare, I have some concerns about
the number of child soldiers who may just find it too fun and
accessible to resist.
My experiment also might shed some light on why the recent
cyberwar has been so hard to pin down and why no group in
particular has claimed responsibility. Paranoid that the Kremlin's
hand is everywhere, we risk underestimating the great patriotic
rage of many ordinary Russians, who, having been fed too much
government propaganda in the last few days, are convinced that
they need to crash Georgian Web sites. Many Russians
undoubtedly went online to learn how to make mischief, as I did.
Within an hour, they, too, could become cyberwarriors.
technology
The Google Black Hole
Sergey and Larry just bought my company. Uh oh.
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By Farhad Manjoo
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 5:12 PM ET
Late last month, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported that
Google was in the final stages of negotiations to purchase Digg,
the popular user-vote-counting news site. A few days later,
Arrington, citing unnamed sources, posted an update: For
unknown reasons, Google had walked away from the deal.
Digg's dalliance with Google wasn't much of a surprise—just
about every major tech company has flirted with buying Digg in
the last few years—but to some of the company's fans, the deal's
breakdown represented a real blow. "Google is really the only
company I can think of that could actually improve Digg," went
one much-dugg comment.
The comment is revealing—among techies, selling to Google
has never been considered selling out. In Silicon Valley, Google
is seen as an entrepreneurs' paradise, and not just because of the
free food and fancy toilets. With its flat organization chart and
the freedom employees get to work on creative side projects,
Google is said to run much like a start-up: a company that heaps
money and engineering resources on restless innovators who
want to create the next big thing.
On the other hand, may I present Jaiku. Google purchased the
"micro-blogging" company last year—think of it as a rival to
Twitter—and then promptly closed it down to new users. Or
look at JotSpot, a start-up that built a wiki collaboration tool for
office workers. Google bought it in October 2006. Sixteen
months later, it relaunched a radically different version of the
service, Google Sites, to much criticism from longtime JotSpot
users, who felt abandoned and betrayed.
Jaiku and JotSpot are examples of a phenomenon I call the
Google black hole. Despite Google's reputation for fostering new
companies, many services that nestle into Mountain View's
welcoming bosom are never heard from again. The pattern:
Company gets bought out. Users rejoice. Company lies fallow
for months. Users grow impatient. Company's employees get
farmed out to other Google projects. Company lies fallow for
more months. Users get even more impatient ...
Consider the fate of Dodgeball, an innovative mobile service
that was a predecessor to Twitter, Jaiku, and the many "locationaware" apps that now clog up the iPhone. The company, which
launched in 2003, enabled people to send texts indicating where
they were hanging out. In response, you'd get texts telling you
which of your friends (or friends of friends) were nearby. In
2005, Dodgeball's creators, Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert,
had just finished up grad school at NYU and were looking for
investors in their service, which had become popular among
techies in Manhattan. Of all the prospective offers they heard,
Google's seemed to come with the fewest strings. Google paid
Dodgeball a small outlay of cash and stock—the exact terms
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
weren't disclosed—and Crowley and Rainert moved into
Google's New York office.
Immediately, Dodgeball's founders saw that their corporate
overlords didn't want much to do with the acquisition. It took six
months for Google to assign a single software engineer to
Dodgeball. After a while, execs began pushing Crowley and
Rainert to work on other things. The founders started to believe
that Google had bought Dodgeball simply to acquire their savvy
in the mobile social-networking business, not for the service
they'd built. The pair quit Google in April 2007. The Dodgeball
site is still alive, but no one runs it.
In many ways, Google's Dodgeball acquisition was atypical. It
was among the first after Google went public, and Crowley
stressed to me that the amount of money that changed hands was
very, very small. (Google declined to comment on Dodgeball.)
But some aspects of the story seem applicable to other Google
purchases. One difficulty Dodgeball faced was technical: It took
time to move Dodgeball's relatively simple codebase onto
Google's complex internal infrastructure—and after the
transition, much of the system's code became too complicated
for Dodgeball's founders to understand. Moreover, there were
bureaucratic hurdles. As a start-up, Dodgeball had grown used to
adding new features every week; under Google, the founders
were told to get approval from layers of managers (though the
Dodgeball crew began sneaking in small feature changes without
alerting higher-ups).
Technical problems appear to be hampering other recent
acquisitions. Last October, when Jaiku announced that it had
been purchased by Google, the company's founders said that
they would close the site to new users "for the time being" in
order to work with Google's engineers. Three months later, new
sign-ups were still down, and Jaiku offered another update on its
blog: "To be honest, a lot of our time in the early going was
spent on getting to know Google," wrote co-founder Jyri
Engeström. In April, Jaiku said again that its troubles were
almost over. And then in May, after users complained that Jaiku
was slow, Engeström promised, once more, that the service
would ride high. "We feel the short term pain, too," he wrote.
"Thanks for sticking with us!" Now, 10 months after the
acquisition, Jaiku still remains closed to new users. In that time,
both Twitter (which is hampered by its own legendary tech
problems) and FriendFeed, another here's-what-I'm-doing startup, have been signing up new people. Both, incidentally, were
founded by former Googlers.
A Google spokesman assured me that Jaiku's delays had nothing
to do with the merger; he suggested that they were the normal
troubles faced by any company trying to build a popular service.
In an interview, David Lawee, the Google vice president in
charge of acquisitions, outlined the rigorous steps Google takes
after it buys companies. All prospective deals are approved by
Google's executive management team, and every merger is
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assigned an executive "sponsor" who marshals the resources—
engineering, PR, sales, etc.—necessary to get the new company
running within the Google infrastructure.
technology
The Death of Planned Obsolescence
Why today's gadgets keep getting better. (At least until the battery dies.)
While Lawee acknowledged that it takes work to move a new
company onto Google's systems, he said that Google is "pretty
accurate" at predicting how difficult that technical transition will
be. Usually, Lawee said, the move takes three to six months, and
its benefits are significant: YouTube, one of Google's largest
acquisitions, now slurps up 13 hours of video every minute, a
scale that it would have had a tough time achieving on its own.
Lawee also pushed back against the idea of a Google black
hole—even if the public doesn't immediately see the results, the
companies that Google acquires change the firm in big ways, he
argued. Early in 2006, Google bought Measure Map, a muchbeloved tool for bloggers to check traffic on their sites; the
service has been closed to new users ever since. But Google
didn't buy Measure Map for Measure Map, Lawee said. It
bought the company so it could add its features to another
Google traffic program, Google Analytics—"and we did that."
Google had similar shape-shifting intentions for JotSpot, a
company Lawee characterized as being "midway through a
pretty exciting development plan." JotSpot's users might not like
changes to the service, he said, but behind the scenes, JotSpot's
employees are hard at work throughout Google.
Considering Google's history, Digg fans should probably be
celebrating rather than lamenting the company's nonacquisition.
Diggers who were excited about a potential Diggoogle argued
that such an arrangement would be preferable to Digg under
Microsoft or another tech giant. But there's little reason to
believe that would be the case. TechCrunch's Arrington reported
that Google wanted to integrate Digg into Google News—not an
indication that the Big G would have let Digg be Digg.
It's important to note that acquisition hiccups aren't unique to
Google: In general, merging a start-up with a big company
creates more problems than it solves. I called up Jason Fried, the
head of 37 Signals, a successful Web company that makes
software for small businesses and that has been adamant about
staying independent. "You take great talents and you put them in
this big company and they get drowned out by all this policy
stuff," Fried argues. "Putting a small company in a big company
kills what was good about the small company."
Is that what's happening to Jaiku? Is it working on a supersecret
social site that'll blow away its competitors—or has it been left
to wither? And what about GrandCentral, that great telephone
company start-up Google bought a year ago—why is it still
closed to new users? Nobody really knows. For now, all of those
details are stuck inside the black hole.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By Farhad Manjoo
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 3:28 PM ET
In 2005, a Southern California start-up named Sonos put out a
multiroom digital music system, a gadget that sounds
straightforward but was actually ahead of its time. Back then,
music had already gone digital, but most digital players were
meant to be used on the go, not at home. If the iPod is the
modern version of the Walkman, Sonos is the reincarnation of
the home stereo. It uses wireless networks to string together
small "ZonePlayers," stand-alone devices that pipe stereo-quality
sound to different rooms in your house. You control the Sonos
through a Wi-Fi remote that sports a big LCD screen and an
iPod-like scroll wheel. Together, the system's components add
up to something transformative: Sonos frees your songs from
tinny computer speakers, bringing music to far-flung corners of
your McMansion.
But that was three years ago—an eternity in the gadget world.
Last week, Sonos offered its first major hardware overhaul since
the product's debut (the company decreased the size and
increased the networking capabilities of its ZonePlayers). What's
remarkable, though, is that while its hardware has barely
changed in three years, the Sonos system has improved
tremendously since it went on sale. In 2006, the company issued
a software update to every Sonos sold—suddenly, the system
could play audiobooks. A few months after that, another update
allowed Sonos players to hook into the Rhapsody online music
service, which meant that for $13 a month, people could now
listen to millions of tracks that they didn't own. Later, Sonos
added Napster, Pandora, and Sirius, plus a slew of free Internet
radio stations. Last year, the company improved its controller's
user interface, adding a function that lets you search your tunes
from the device—another feature that every Sonos owner got
through a software update.
The Sonos isn't cheap—you'll pay $999 for a basic two-room
plan, and each additional room will set you back $350 to $500,
depending on your hardware needs (the company describes its
customer base as "affluent"). But its high price is tempered by a
feature that, until recently, was unheard-of in the consumer
electronics market: A Sonos you buy today will get better as it
ages. Through software updates, people who bought the very
first Sonos system enjoy pretty much the same functionality that
they'd find on a Sonos made two months ago. The company even
extends its special offers to its existing customers—last week,
both new and current users got a $200 coupon to purchase music
from various online services.
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Sonos' approach signals a larger shift in the gadget industry, a
business that has long titillated its customers with short-lived
thrills—what gadget-lovers derisively call "planned
obsolescence." It used to be that a gadget worked the best on the
day you bought it; every day afterward, it would fall deeper
under the shadow of something newer and more fantastic. But
because music players, cell phones, cameras, GPS navigators,
video game consoles, and nearly everything else now runs on
Internet-updatable software, our gadgets' functions are no longer
static. It's still true that a gizmo you buy today will eventually be
superseded by something that comes along later. But just like
Meryl Streep, your devices will now dazzle you as they age.
They'll gain new functions and become easier to use, giving you
fewer reasons to jump to whatever hot new thing is just hitting
the market.
To appreciate how amazing this is, imagine if the same rules
held sway in the car industry. Five years after you bought it, you
could take your beater to the shop, and after a quick patch it'd be
blessed with electronic stability control, a more fuel-efficient
engine, and a radio that received satellite broadcasts.
That sort of metamorphosis is now routine in the consumer
electronics business. When Microsoft released the Zune music
player late in 2006, critics panned its poor song-beaming
feature—you could send tracks to other Zunes, but the music
would self-destruct after three days. A year later, Microsoft
released a slate of new Zunes. The players featured a more
intuitive user interface, and Microsoft dropped the time limit on
beamed songs. But here's the kicker: People who'd bought the
original Zune also got the new features. A similar thing
happened when Apple revamped its original, lame Apple TV
set-top box with a less-lame version a few months later.
Overnight, a software update gave old Apple TVs the power to
buy movies directly from the couch, a feature that had been left
out of the first version.
The decline of planned obsolescence is a special boon for startup companies that aim to break into the market with an entirely
new kind of product. A couple of weeks ago, I raved about the
Dash GPS navigator, which uses an Internet connection to
produce "crowd-sourced" traffic forecasts along your drive.
According to the forums on the company's site, there's a lot
about the Dash device that people don't like, in particular that its
interface is a bit homely, and its traffic detection fails on some
roads. But Dash has made its flexibility a key part of its sales
pitch: If you're on the fence about the device—if it lacks certain
capabilities that you wish it had—the company points out that
you won't miss anything by buying now. Your device will
eventually get any new functions that are rolled out in new
versions.
Of course, there are some features that you can't get through
software updates. Because our gadgets are now much like
computers, the specs that matter are the same ones we pay
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
attention to when buying PCs—disk space, processor speed, and
networking capabilities. For instance, you can expect all future
iPods to carry more disk capacity than the one you own today. In
the same way, next-generation video game systems will run on
much faster processors than are found in today's consoles, and
the cell phones of tomorrow will surely include faster wireless
Internet speeds than cell phones of today. And one more thing:
Eventually the battery in your current phone or PDA or music
player will die, and if your device is made by Apple, replacing
the battery will be enough of a pain to prompt you to buy
something new.
Still, it's surprising how many features can be added to a device
without upgrading its hardware. Last month, Apple released the
3G iPhone, which includes faster Internet access than its
predecessor, plus GPS access. People who bought the first
iPhone can't get those benefits, but they did get what's arguably
the best thing in the new iPhone—a software update that allows
the device to run third-party applications.
One of these apps magically turns your iPhone into a remote
control for iTunes on your computer. I couldn't help thinking of
that app as I played around with the fantastic Sonos unit that the
company sent me two weeks ago. I fell for the Sonos instantly—
the ability to call up any song in any room of your house is hard
not to love. But as I played around with the device, I kept
thinking of new features I'd like. I want the Sonos to be able to
play NPR's Web streams (which can be paused, unlike the
Sonos' Internet radio version of NPR). I'd like the Sonos to act
like a DVR, recording certain radio stations at certain times.
Mainly, though, I want to be able to control the Sonos through
my iPhone, which is much smaller and lighter than the device's
own remote.
In an interview, Phil Abram, the company's COO, wouldn't tell
me the specific features the Sonos plans to add to its units. But
lots of people are asking for an iPhone interface. If the company
wants to make its customers happy, it will build one soon—and
when that does happen, people who own today's model won't be
left out in the cold.
the browser
Going Dark
Spying on other people's computers.
By Michael Agger
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 12:21 PM ET
The good ol' Internet: always coming up with new solutions to
old problems. Modern man suspects wife is up to something.
Modern man installs PC Pandora, a spyware application that
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records keystrokes, takes surreptitious screen shots, and
monitors chat sessions—all for the low, low price of $49.95.
Success! Modern man writes a congratulatory note to the
company, which it posts on its "testimonials" page:
My wife of 25 years came out of the blue after
Christmas this past year and requested a
divorce without much explanation. I was
devastated, so I purchased your product. It
only took two days to find out she has been
living a dark secret life for several years as a
submissive love slave to a dominant male
partner in the BDSM world meeting him at
least once a month. She was blown out of the
water when I told her everything I knew about
her lifestyle even down to the name and email
address of the person she is involved with.
Answered all my questions. She has no clue
and thinks I spent $$$$$$ on a private
investigator.
Despite modern man's feelings of triumph, it's hard to see any
winners there. It's easier than ever to spy on our spouses, coworkers, boyfriends, and roommates. But does this make us
happier and wiser or just more neurotic and creepy? The lesson
of every surveillance movie, from The Conversation to The
Lives of Others, is that listening in corrupts your peace of mind
and destroys your emotional intuition.
Explore the world of commercial "spy" software and you
quickly discover three main battlegrounds: girlfriends/wives vs.
boyfriends/husbands, employers vs. employees, and parents vs.
teenagers. You also read some of the most twisted moral logic
ever committed to screen.
When the PC Pandora site opens, for example, a trim lady in a
pink shirt pops up and cheerfully declares: "At this very
moment, there are over 50,000 pedophiles on the Internet trying
to take advantage of our children." Well then, I better install a
program that records everything my kids do online and then
spend my afternoons scanning the logs! In the eyes of these
monitoring-software companies, MySpace is the devil's
playground. The promotional copy often gives the impression
that setting up a page on MySpace is but the merest pretext to an
after-school Roman orgy. The message: If you don't know what
"LMIRL" or "NIFOC" or "POS" means, you might as well drop
your daughter off at a truck stop right now. (That's "let's meet in
real life," "naked in front of the computer," and "parent over
shoulder.")
It's also worth noting how these sites stress their excellent phone
support—the software packages are being pitched predominately
to the technically clueless. If Mom and Dad did know how to use
a computer, they could easily find a recent study by the
University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Research Center, "Online 'Predators' and Their Victims: Myths,
Realities and Implications for Prevention." Or, quicker yet, they
could read an excellent summary of the study by Benjamin
Radford at LiveScience. As he explains, the biggest threat to
kids is still their parents, the Internet has not increased the
amount of sexual abuse of children, and most Web predators
rarely use deception as "most victims are well aware that the
person they are communicating with online is an adult interested
in sex." Monitor your kids if you want, but recognize that you
are spying on them, not protecting them from a new strain of
evildoers.
The Pandora software is aptly named. It evokes both the dubious
idea that the computer is a Pandora's box which holds all of our
secrets, and the obvious end result of any snooping: Once this
stuff gets out, you wish it could be put back in. The snooper also
faces the unavoidable dilemma that any information that he or
she finds out almost certainly won't be worse than the breach of
trust of installing monitoring software. That's why these
applications sell themselves under the guise of "protecting your
family" rather than "seeing what YouTube videos your husband
watches." We all deserve to have a public self and a backstage
self, even if that backstage self has a plushie fetish.
The office landscape is more clear-cut: Bosses want employees
to "be productive"; employees want to look at ESPN.com on
occasion. Or, perhaps, pornography. It's not so much that
everyone is looking at porn. It's that the people who look at porn
tend to look at a lot of it. A commenter on Slashdot proposes a
vivid solution for his own workplace:
I stopped "special" surfing at the office when I
put a linux box on a hub between the network
internet router and the switches. I simply
sniffed all traffic for image files and displayed
it on a 42" LCD out in the sales area. Images
were displayed of what people were surfing. I
also attached the ip address of the user to the
image. It stopped inappropriate internet surfing
in that office in 3 days. When everyone can
see what you are doing, you get back to real
work.
Good point, but it gets tricky when you try to decide what
constitutes "getting back to real work." Some argue that a little
personal surfing at work actually makes employees more
productive. Software "solutions" like BeAware (Corporate
Edition) and the creepy Spector360 ("Who is arriving to work
late and leaving early? Who takes long lunch breaks?") seem
pitched to the David Brents of the world. The makers of the
Spector360 will tell you that their product will "significantly
reduce the amount of goofing off that has grown common in
most workplaces (one hour per day per employee, on average)."
What they won't tell you is that you're a jerk. If your employees
are watching "Funny Cats 3" all day long, the problem isn't
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unfiltered access to the Internet. The problem is that your
workplace is boring, and probably very sad.
Which brings us to boyfriends, girlfriends, significant others,
etc. The monitoring-software sites know that a jealous lover is a
moth to their flame. They try to give your motive a scientific,
fact-finding air, offering such tips as PC Pandora's "29 Signs
Your Partner May Be Cheating." (My favorite: "You might find
that they are suddenly grooming themselves more diligently.")
The testimonials include those who are happy to have found out
the truth, like our BDSM friend, and the FAQs float the sketchy
idea that even a "hidden secret" can destroy a relationship, so it's
better to install the software and get confirmation. Nice try.
The spying dynamic on the battlegrounds of love hasn't changed
since Shakespeare: so tempting, so ruinous. This fellow, who
posted on the Experience Project, speaks for all of his brethren:
I have developed an extremely unhealthy habit
in my relationship with my fiance[e].
Unbeknownst to her, I have installed onto our
computer a key logging spy software which let
me see all her activities and passwords. Since
then, I have read all of her accounts: my space,
face book, gmail, everything. ... I hate myself
because I have read very candid and personal
letters and correspondence between her and
her ex lovers. Logically, I know that they have
nothing to do with me b/c she didn't even
know me then, but I still find myself
incredibly jealous. I hate myself for lying to
her like this. I have even found nude photos of
her that she sent to her ex. ... I didn't lie to her
in the beginning of our relationship, but now I
feel more and more obsessed and it's awful!
One way out might be to confess and turn this all into a
screenplay, but that's been done before.
In the end, the safest and best sort of spying seems to be of the
Socratic variety: Know thyself. I've let Last.fm monitor my
music-listening habits, and now it gives eerily good
recommendations. Google eavesdrops on my computer so that it
can personalize my search results, track my Web history, and
rearrange my furniture sometimes. I've also fired up the Firefox
extension MeeTimer, which records the amount of time I spend
procrastinating on particular sites. (Damn you, Desktop Tower
Defense!) The results of my personal espionage? Probably the
same as yours: No man is a hero to his valet, or to his computer.
the chat room
After the Affair
Melinda Henneberger takes readers' questions about the John Edwards sex
scandal.
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 4:49 PM ET
Slate "XX Factor" blogger Melinda Henneberger was online on
Washingtonpost.com to chat with readers about the John
Edwards sex scandal. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.
Time and Resources: I somewhat understand the angst about
news channels/papers not reporting the Edwards story, but it is
mitigated by two things. Firstly, he isn't that important. Yeah, he
might have been on the cabinet, but even without the reporting
that seemed less likely, so if he is just some random politician
without an office, why should the public care?
Secondly, it was an affair. He didn't embezzle; he didn't take
money from corporations to vote a certain way; he isn't working
with Putin to overthrow some former Soviet republic. Yes, he
lied—multiple times—but as I am not voting for him for
anything, it isn't all that important. More reporting should be
done on Sen. Stevens, not on John Edwards.
Melinda Henneberger: I think that's how a lot of us felt, too,
that particularly at a time when resources across the industry are
being slashed to the bone, this didn't seem like a high priority. I
still think that's true—but I also think John Edwards should have
known the story would come out and spared his family and his
party the embarrassment—and potentially, the loss of the White
House.
_______________________
Brooklyn, N.Y.: How do you think this—as well as other
infidelities committed by politicians—influences the role of
political spouse? Despite repeated sexual scandals by politicians,
why do you think the image of a supportive political spouse,
such as a traditional first lady, continues to be viewed as
necessary?
Melinda Henneberger: We in the public really seem to require
that tableau that includes a demure wife in chunky pearls, who
loves those jokes no matter how many times she's heard them. In
fact, we go crazy when a political spouse strays at all from the
script—as for instance when Teresa Heinz Kerry dared to
mention her first husband, or when Michelle Obama committed
the sin of joking about even something as trivial as her husband's
failure to put the butter up after breakfast. We made such a fuss
in both of those cases that the obvious message to spouses was:
For heaven's sake, lie to us!
_______________________
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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Washington: What part of this story is the worst? Cheating on
your dying wife, while making your marriage to said dying wife
a talking point? Betraying the trust on anyone who donated to or
volunteered for your campaign? Denying your children any
semblance of a normal family life for the remaining months of
their mom's life for a goal you had to know you would get blown
away from? Ugh.
Melinda Henneberger: Yes, ugh. But since there's nothing I
can do about his decisions, what I'm thinking about are my own
choices: When I sat down with Elizabeth and talked to John on
the phone for the piece I wrote about them as a couple, should I
have asked about the rumors? Was I wrong not to? I drove down
to their home in North Carolina, and thought about it and argued
with myself all the way there, but kept coming back to: For
what? So I can torment a woman with cancer? And, if I had it to
do over, I still wouldn't.
_______________________
Portland, Ore.: Okay, I don't believe Edwards is telling the
truth about when he says told Elizabeth. I think he was caught in
and around April 2007, based on information from articles
online. That was during the election. Do you believe Elizabeth
Edwards fell on her sword and lied about the timeframe when
she found out? Looking at her videos when they announced, I
just can't believe she knew before then. Are you planning to
investigate his truthfulness at all?
Melinda Henneberger: To me, watching him on Nightline, he
looked like a guy who knew the other shoe was gonna hit him on
the noggin' any minute. His credibility is shot, and hers too, and
that's unbelievably sad.
_______________________
Silver Spring, Md.: I strongly resent the idea that "everyone"
knew about this affair but nobody reported on it or even
bothered to investigate it. Too much work, I guess. Is the
newsroom more pleased that this unsavory story was broken by
the Enquirer, or that Edwards's campaign faded, so that there
was no pressure to break the story? Also, was the fact that this
story was lurking have anything to do with the
underperformance of the Edwards campaign?
Melinda Henneberger: It's not that simple; the only way these
stories ever come out is that either the ex-lover steps to the mic,
or tabloids spend months and a lot of money following people,
paying for info, bribing hotel employees, etc. At a time when we
cannot even act as the watchdogs we are supposed to be because
thousands of journalists are losing their jobs as left and right
cheer, what I resent is the idea that following John Edwards
around should have been Job One; not even close!
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
_______________________
Washington: It seems to me that politicians run on their overall
record. I mean really, what does McCain's having been a
prisoner of war say about his knowledge and skill as a leader?
It's about his personal character. So how does a politician's lying
about an affair differ from them lying about their military
record? How does Edwards little peccadillo differ from Bush
41's? The press there was that it was only rumor, but then they
didn't track it down.
Melinda Henneberger: As I've said before, my old theory was
that there were fewer Republican sex scandals because they
treated their exes better. But if you look back at Washington sex
scandals, the only one I can even ever remember anyone in the
non-tabloid media breaking was the Gary Hart story, and that
only happened because he double-dared reporters to follow him
around. Character issues are important, but we act like sexual
fidelity is the only character issue that counts.
_______________________
El Segundo, Calif.: Edwards ran on honesty and family values.
How can the national political media not vet him properly if he's
running for president? Seems like he got a free pass to me. How
can we take Edwards or the national media seriously again?
Melinda Henneberger: Are you suggesting that if we put a 24/7
tail on all candidates, if we paid sources and chased people into
hotel bathrooms in the middle of the night, then you would take
us more seriously? And look at what happened to the New York
Times when they ran a story that touched on rumors about a
lobbyist John McCain may have been involved with; they had
three of their best reporters on that story for months, and yet
their efforts were so widely criticized that it worked to the
McCain campaign's advantage.
_______________________
Boston: Why would you treat a candidate's wife who has cancer
differently than one who doesn't have it? The comment makes it
clear the Edwards family received special treatment from the
media, which is clearly wrong. That's what bothers me most
about this story. I especially am appalled by the New York
Times, which ran a front-page story on McCain's alleged affair
with a lobbyist that had not one shred of evidence ... and still
ignored the Edwards story. To be clear, it's not that I necessarily
agree with the media delving into candidates' sex lives, but if
you're going to do it to one you have to do it to all ... whether or
not their spouse suffers from cancer or another tragedy.
Melinda Henneberger: Nope, not true. I talked to Cindy
McCain recently and didn't ask her, either—even though, given
that it was on the front page of the NYT, I certainly could have.
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And it isn't as though people in public life are going to respond
honestly to such a question anyway. Again, these stories are out
there because money has changed hands and people were
followed for months. If that's your priority, then the National
Enquirer is your news outlet.
_______________________
_______________________
Melinda Henneberger: Thank you so much!
Washington: I say this as an Obama supporter, but why did the
New York Times ignore this story while it ran with a fairly sleazy
and, presumably, untrue-in-its-innuendo story about John
McCain several months ago? I can't understand how they can
justify the differences, particularly when this Edwards news was
under the radar at approximately the same time they came out
with their McCain story.
_______________________
Melinda Henneberger: I have no idea what they had, but it
didn't seem like the story started as hey, let's run down all the
sex rumors. It seemed to have been something they ran across
while running down a perfectly legit story about whether
McCain, who is running against the influence of lobbyists, is
himself linked to lobbyists. I'm sure they would have been a lot
more comfortable if they'd found he was good friends with a
lobbyist named Victor Iseman instead.
Philadelphia: Hello, just wanted to say thanks. I've enjoyed
reading your recent posts, and love the XX Factor in general. It's
the only blog I read—I wish I could join in!
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Melinda, you've hit many nails on the head
here. Thank you! But wait, don't you think Elizabeth didn't tell
him not to run was because she didn't know about Wily Rielle
yet? No self-respecting narcissist would spoil his fun if he didn't
have to, would he, especially when there was no danger of being
found out? It was, after all, before those "miserable tabloids"
started writing their "lies"....
A serious (well, semi-serious) question, too: What do you think
are the implications of Hunter refusing to let the kid be tested?
She wants to stay the center of attention, and if it's proven not to
be Edwards's then who cares? She and Edwards made a pact that
he'd say "sure I'll take it" and she'd say "no way Jose" and
therefore no one would ever know? What do you think? (Not
that it matters, as you point out, of course.)
_______________________
Washington: I vote for no coverage of politicians' sex lives. I
don't care who is doing what—if it isn't illegal, don't report it.
That's my new standard and I urge the mainstream media to
adopt it.
Melinda Henneberger: Not only would I second that, but I
think most reporters would. We are not trying to out certain
people and protect others based on party or personal affinity; on
the contrary, unless it becomes impossible to ignore, either
through a lawsuit, like the one Paula Jones filed, or a press
conference, like the one Gennifer Flowers held, that is pretty
much what happens.
Melinda Henneberger: I'm not sure we'll ever know what
Elizabeth knew and when she knew it, but I have the unhappy
feeling she still doesn't know everything.
_______________________
Washington: What do you make of Elizabeth's statement that
her relapse has made all this easier? I just don't understand that...
Melinda Henneberger: Maybe that everything, even this, is less
important than the bigger picture; does an affair negate 31 years?
No, thankfully.
_______________________
_______________________
Washington: In 2007 rumor around DC was that Edwards
wasn't so hot on running, and that it was Elizabeth who
convinced (pushed?) him to do it. I'm not clear on the timeline,
but I do wonder whether on some (hidden) level this could have
been an attempt on his part to sabotage a campaign he never
really wanted to run. The theory gives Elizabeth more
culpability in what happened, and the story becomes a little less
one-sided—as these affairs rarely are. What do you think?
St. Louis: Seriously, John Edwards is no longer relevant as he is
not running for anything. If the media is going to talk about
"affairs," shouldn't you discuss John McCain's affair, given that
he is the presumptive Republican presidential candidate?
Melinda Henneberger: Or, God willing, we could say gosh,
this was so much fun, let's never do it again...
_______________________
Melinda Henneberger: No, he very much wanted to run, and
she very much wanted him to.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Minneapolis: You debated with yourself about whether it was
right for you to ask about the rumors when interviewing Mrs.
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Edwards and are glad that you did not. Would it have been better
for her if you did? Is the way this has come out been any better?
I guess the confusion that some may have in the press's role is
that every night on the TV you have pundits arguing minute,
piddly details, and yet something this large falls off the screen. I
think that is where the disconnect comes from.
from war as permanently disabled heroes. At least he didn't
divorce her or flaunt his dalliances. His biggest error was to
deny the child ahead of a paternity test.
Melinda Henneberger: Elizabeth Edwards is a damn smart
woman, and I guess part of my calculus was that she was not
going to tell me anyway. In Candidate Spousery 101 they teach
you this line: We don't talk about that! The American people
care about ISSUES!
_______________________
Melinda Henneberger: You came to the wrong well with this
one; Elizabeth as tyrant I am not buying.
Melinda Henneberger: Thanks for joining the conversation.
_______________________
Austin, Texas: Before this story broke, I thought it was
interesting how many people were arguing that the reason people
like Larry Craig deserved outing was because he had somehow
worked to make life more difficult for homosexuals, so it was
right to highlight his personal life. Setting aside the fact that
Edwards tended to put his marriage front and center, as an
attorney general or a poverty czar, Edwards almost certainly
would have worked to make life more difficult for deadbeat
dads. Did people (including journalists) lack the imagination to
see that particular kind of hypocrisy?
Melinda Henneberger: Honestly, I guess I think we are all
hypocrites about this stuff to some degree. We all but make them
lie, we demand the mythic storyline, then off with their heads if
they don't live up to it. There has got to be a better way!
the chat room
What's So Funny?
Dana Stevens addresses the touchy questions of sensitivity and humor
surrounding Tropic Thunder.
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 2:45 PM ET
Slate movie critic Dana Stevens was online at Washingtpost.com
to take readers' questions and comments about the potentially
offensive elements of Tropic Thunder, such as blackface and
"retard" jokes. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.
Dana Stevens: Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic,
logging on to discuss Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder and topics
related thereto. Anybody out there?
_______________________
_______________________
West Virginia: The overwhelming emotion I have about this
story is sadness. He's not a candidate anymore, so I hate to see
his family dragged into this. I even feel sad for John, who
probably doesn't deserve it. He's probably had lots of women
throwing themselves at him, and he's only human. Even good
marriages have their stresses, and who's to judge ... but that's the
world we live in today. And for people to judge Elizabeth too ...
only they know what goes on in their marriage, and we have to
respect it. I understand why the media had to report this story, I
just wish they didn't feel they had to.
Melinda Henneberger: Me, too, West Virginia!
_______________________
Washington: His wife is dying of a illness that he did not cause
or desire. Do dying people have greater rights than others? Is the
tyranny of the terminally ill a form of power abuse that we
tolerate? If her cancer makes his wife exceptionally miserable to
be around, then why must Edwards be held to some standard of
sainthood? Women traditionally have divorced men who return
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
St. Mary's City, Md.: While I haven't seen Tropic Thunder, I
know that Ben Stiller tends to push satire to absurdist extremes.
When I first heard about the controversy, I suspected right away
that the real target of Stiller's "retard" language was, in Ann
Hornaday's words, "overweening, ambitious actors who take
roles as physically and mentally challenged characters because
they're proven Oscar-bait."
So do the protesters not understand that they are not Stiller's
target? Do they understand the satire, but worry that moviegoers
will not? If it's the latter, they may have a point, given that
Archie Bunker became a hero to reactionaries who didn't
understand that their attitudes were being condemned. Or are the
protesters simply reacting emotionally to the words used
regardless of the context? Perhaps instead of condemning Stiller,
the protesters should instead condemn the moviemakers who
exploit disabilities for sentimentality while pretending to
promote awareness about them.
Dana Stevens: There are a couple of points I want to address in
your question. The first is that, like many of the groups
protesting against it, you haven't yet seen the movie—perfectly
understandable as it only opened yesterday. You hold the view
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that the movie's use of what advocacy groups are calling "the Rword" isn't targeting people with disabilities; they hold the view
that it is. But if the discussion is to go forward, shouldn't
everyone at least be willing to see the movie with an open mind
toward the other side?
You also say, rightly I think, that words, even potentially
explosive words, can't be understood out of the context in which
they occur. Satire is a notoriously difficult thing to police.
_______________________
Kansas City, Mo.: Do you find that there is any kind of a
generational divide in the use of "retard" as an insult? I have
noticed that kids/teens/twentysomethings seem to use it less than
older people, although younger people use "gay" in its place—
"that's so gay" instead of "that's retarded."
Dana Stevens: I don't know how they're being used by kids
now, but unfortunately both these insults sound pretty timeless
to me. I remember both of them being tossed around in my
1970s-era schoolyard. And both terms—which function by
implying that the object of your scorn is as lowly as someone
belonging to one of these categories—are demeaning and hateful
things that kids should be taught not to say. But for what it's
worth, the movie isn't using the word "retarded" as a simple
schoolyard taunt—it's putting it in the mouths of characters who
are self-absorbed and despicable to a comic degree. Which is
where we get into the question of context again.
_______________________
Clinton, Md.: Aside from being offensive, it seems to me that
jokes about mental disability or jokes that rely on blackface are
just unoriginal. Why aren't filmmakers willing to try harder than
that? Is it because they know they don't have to?
Dana Stevens: There are a lot of things you could say about
Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of a white man playing a black
man in this movie, but "unoriginal" is hardly one of them. On the
contrary, I thought the movie took a lot of chances in its
willingness to tread into the minefield-ridden territory of race
relations and the appropriation of black culture by the white
mainstream (which happens not only in Hollywood but in the
music industry—look at Elvis.)
The "Simple Jack" question (for the uninitiated, that's the name
of a mentally disabled character Ben Stiller plays in a movie
within the movie) is a bit more complicated. Apparently the
marketers of the movie were very aware of potential offense to
black audiences but failed to anticipate the outcry from the
disability community. One thing they have now done is pull
some material, like a fake trailer for the movie "Simple Jack,"
from their website. I wasn't personally offended by the Simple
Jack subplot—Hollywood's penchant for sentimentalizing the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
mentally disabled seems more condescending to me—but I can
see how the trailer on its own could be offensive.
_______________________
Boycott: Do you think that this effort "boycott the film" will
backfire and give it more publicity? I agree that the language
should not be used in advertising, but boycotts? I'm not so sure.
Dana Stevens: There's no question that the net result of the calls
for boycotts will get more people interested in the movie (as
happened with The Passion of the Christ a few years ago). It's
the old "no such thing as bad publicity" effect. I'm all for voting
with your feet—if a movie offends you, by all means don't see it,
and stand outside it waving a sign—but this notion of banning
individual words or types of representation, along with the legal
concept of "hate speech," worries me a little. The line between
hate speech and free speech can get pretty thin.
_______________________
Laurel, Md.: I'm a black women who's really not into comedies,
but Robert Downey Jr.'s character is the only reason I wanted to
see Tropic Thunder in the first place. I can tell he's being
genuine. If he was on some Soul Man-type crap then I'd
probably be mad, but he actually looks like a black man. The
sneak preview I saw was hilarious, and I'm far from offended.
Dana Stevens: Downey's remarkable performance is at the heart
of what makes this particular aspect of the movie work so well
(leaving Simple Jack and his problems aside for the moment). It
is, quite literally, soulful, and lovingly indebted to black actors
of the past (like Richard Roundtree of the Shaft movies) without
being a minstrel-style race caricature. This isn't just due to
Downey, but to the way his part's been written—it's complexly
satirical, not just "Ha ha, look at the dude in blackface."
I'm following up your question with one from another black
viewer who was annoyed by the movie, or at least the idea of it:
_______________________
Durham, N.C.: I still don't get it. I understand that Robert
Downey Jr. is excellent (I have thought so, for a long time). I
don't understand in what universe Ben Stiller thought this was
okay. After all is said and done, both Stiller and Downey will
continue to have "white male privilege." In the mean time, I
have paid them $10 to insult me. As a critique of the industry,
the wound is too close. There is a frenzy about Mad Men, when
The Wire has been overlooked for years. I hope that Stiller goes
out of his way to have a true relationship with black audiences
(as well as other folks he has offended). No matter what his
intention? This isn't cool. Stiller has not advanced the
conversation.
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Dana Stevens: This opens up a really touchy question about
representation in the entertainment industry: Do white
filmmakers have any right to explore issues of race in their work
(in any way other than earnestly plodding drama calculated to
offend no one)? Spike Lee used blackface as a form of social
commentary in his film Bamboozled; is Ben Stiller out of bounds
if he does the same? I'd argue that muzzling discourse on race
based on who's doing the talking doesn't advance the
conversation, either. Before you decide Tropic Thunder is
insulting you, see the movie. (If you really can't bring yourself to
enrich Ben Stiller, pay for another movie at the multiplex and
sneak in! Not that I'm encouraging such behavior.)
And while it's true, and depressing, The Wire was unfairly
overlooked by the Emmy awards, it was almost universally
adored by the critical establishment—here at Slate we all but
built a Wire shrine.
_______________________
Pittsburgh: As someone who has a person with a mental
disability in the family, I took no offense to the use of "retard" in
the movie. It's all about context, and anyone with a scintilla of
intelligence should be able discern the true target of Stiller's
script was Hollywood. I am aware that a certain portion of the
audience will find humor in this segment for the wrong reasons.
Should Stiller have "dumbed-down" this part of the movie
because a few idiots will find humor in the use of the word
alone? Should Les Grossman's part have been toned down
because it plays on stereotypical moviemakers? No. It's a movie,
and those who cannot discern Stiller's true targets shouldn't be
allowed to censor him.
Dana Stevens: It's good to hear that not everyone with a
personal relationship to someone with a mental disability is
automatically offended by the movie. In her review in the New
York Times, Manohla Dargis points out that the Les Grossman
character that Tom Cruise plays, a grotesque caricature of a
vulgar Jewish movie mogul, is arguably the most offensive thing
in the movie, amounting to a kind of "Jewface." Maybe it's
because Stiller himself is Jewish, or maybe it's just that Tom
Cruise was so unexpectedly hilarious in that role, but that one
rolled right off my back.
_______________________
Dana Stevens: Wow, I've gone overtime on this chat because
there were so many good questions to answer. Sorry I couldn't
get to them all. But before you all go forth to continue this
conversation in real life, give the movie a chance, if only for
Downey's performance alone.
All best,
Dana
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
the green lantern
What's the Deal With Offshore Drilling?
Will it do any good at all?
By Jacob Leibenluft
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 6:56 AM ET
John McCain is talking a lot about opening up new areas to
offshore drilling, and now Barack Obama appears willing to
consider the idea, too. A government report supposedly
found that drilling won't lower gas prices, but I've also heard
that the report was flawed. What's the deal with offshore
drilling?
Three months is a long time during a presidential campaign.
Back in early June, neither candidate supported any additional
offshore drilling. Now, the Outer Continental Shelf has become
Topic A in the presidential race.
To understand what drilling on the OCS might yield, start with
the report you heard about, a 2007 study by the federal agency
assigned to compile statistics about the nation's oil usage, the
Energy Information Administration. That report appears to
deflate most of the arguments for drilling in the areas currently
under a federal moratorium—mostly off the coasts of California
and Florida. Doing so would increase oil production only by
200,000 barrels of oil a day, or just about 1 percent of the
country's daily consumption. Furthermore, that level of
production won't kick in until 2017 and will never have any
impact on oil prices.
In response, drilling advocates have pointed out a number of
potential flaws with the EIA estimate. The report assumes that
oil companies can't even start exploring the out-of-bounds
territory for four years; if Congress did, indeed, remove its
existing moratorium and states like California and Florida went
along, the timeline might be pushed up earlier. In addition, the
EIA based its projections on how much oil it would be profitable
to drill for when prices were closer to $50 a barrel. Now that
crude goes for about $115, energy companies would have the
incentive to extract more of that offshore oil.
These criticisms are valid. But from the perspective of lowering
gas prices, they don't really matter. Even the most optimistic
estimates about offshore drilling—the exact ones pushed by its
strongest proponents—promise no relief at the pump now and
only a small impact later.
Start with the timeline: The EIA assumes that the current
moratorium will remain in place until 2012, when the off-limits
areas would finally be open for leasing. Then it would take
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another five years for the oil companies to find the best drilling
sites and start up their commercial wells. We're likely to have
that five-year gap before real production begins no matter when
the moratorium ends—particularly since there is a major
shortage in the number of rigs available for drilling. In other
words, we could all agree on the merits of offshore drilling
tomorrow and it probably wouldn't increase the supply of oil
until 2013 at the earliest.
Now, let's imagine that higher oil prices make it profitable to
drill more intensively offshore. These graphs (PDF) suggest that
very high prices would effectively double the amount of
"economically recoverable" oil offshore, as compared with what
would be recoverable at $50 a barrel. That would give us
400,000 barrels a day. The most optimistic case for offshore
drilling, from an oil industry group (PDF), predicts an eventual
output of 1 million barrels a day.
Even that high estimate probably won't have much of an effect
on gas prices. Oil is traded on a global market, and adding 1
million barrels per day would increase global production by
slightly more than 1 percent. A standard model of oil markets
suggests the 1 percent change would reduce gas prices by about
3 percent over the long term—assuming that OPEC or other oil
producers don't cut their own supply in order to maximize
profits. (For similar reasons, the EIA predicts (PDF) opening up
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would lower oil prices by
about $1.44 a barrel in the best-case scenario.)
What about the environmental impact? One major concern is
aesthetic—voters (and the tourism industry in states like Florida)
just don't want oil rigs sullying their coastline. Offshore oil
production also produces its share of greenhouse gas emissions
and air pollution and poses a hazard to seabirds. And while large
spills may be rare, platforms do release "produced formation
water" and drilling mud, among other materials, that might be
toxic to marine life. (And no, the Lantern is not convinced that
this is all OK because the platforms attract their own fish.) Still,
producing oil is a dirty business regardless of where it happens,
and it's worth noting that more oil spills into the water from
transporting the stuff than drilling it.
The bigger danger from the push for drilling—or more exactly,
the arguments used on its behalf—may be how it affects our own
behavior. If we pretend that offshore drilling is a fail-safe means
of lowering oil prices (or even a likely means), we may hold on
to rosy and unreasonable expectations for future gas prices. (In
this respect, the Lantern thinks Obama has been more honest
than McCain.) That will in turn change the calculations we make
when it comes to long-term decisions like whether to shell out
extra cash for a more fuel-efficient car or a home with access to
mass transit. As long as we're counting on gas prices to go down,
those green lifestyle choices won't seem as attractive. We may
well be surprised once again that we're paying so much at the
pump, without having done anything about it.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at
night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com, and check this
space every Tuesday.
the has-been
Bush Owes to China
The Olympics ad this administration doesn't want you to see.
By Bruce Reed
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 10:19 AM ET
Monday, August 11, 2008
It's Your Money: Over the next two weeks, the
Obama and McCain campaigns will spend an
impressive $11 million to advertise during the
Olympics. Obama's first ad, "Hands," outlines his
plan for a green economy. McCain's attacks Obama
on taxes. Both ads reflect the campaigns'
respective game plans, although Obama's fits in
much better with the upbeat not-the-triumph-butthe-struggle spirit of the games that surround it.
If I had a few million to help NBC fill the time
between tape delays, I might go after a topic that
is on most American viewers' minds during these
games and that seems destined to weigh heavily
on the next president: China.
When the 2008 campaign started a few lifetimes
ago, this election appeared to be all about China—
or, at least, about the long-term competitive
challenge that the emerging economic superpowers
of China and India pose to the American way of
life. But a host of urgent short-term economic
problems have pushed our long-term economic
challenges aside. For the moment, falling housing
prices, rising gas prices, and soaring credit-card
debts have made us more concerned about the
threat the American way of life poses to the
American way of life.
But if our next president ever gets done cleaning
up after our current one, he'll confront China's
growing shadow on issue after issue. While the
United States can make an enormous difference by
finally doing its part on climate change, the
Chinese have already passed us as the largest
producer of greenhouse gases, and our ability and
willingness to make progress will depend in part on
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theirs. Meanwhile, China's rising demand for oil to
fuel its relentless economic growth will continue to
cost us at the pump.
What's an Olympics without a little national pride?
And with any luck, NBC might refuse to run it. …
10:30 A.M. (link)
When the next president decides what to do about
education reform in the United States, China
should be on his mind. The Chinese education
system churns out 5 million college graduates a
year, while we still paper over our high-school
dropout rate and look away as half a million of the
young people we send to college every year never
finish.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Perhaps most urgently, the next president will have to admit
what George W. Bush would not—that if we don't
put our fiscal house in order, China will foreclose
on it. As Obama has pointed out, "It's very hard to tell
your banker that he's wrong." This year's federal budget deficit
will be a record $500 billion, not counting wars and
economic bailouts. One of history's headlines on
this administration will be, "Bush Owes to China."
Since the primaries, Romney has steadily gained
ground in the VP sweepstakes through hard work
and a disciplined message: He'll help on the
economy, he grew up in the swing state of
Michigan, and he makes his current home in the
right wing of the Republican Party. He seems at
ease with the unattractive chores of being the vicepresidential nominee: raising money, playing the
attack dog, telling the base what it wants to hear.
The rise of China is the story of this Olympics and
threatens to be the story of the next presidency.
So it's only fitting to give viewers a sense of what's
at stake.
My dream ad would show the robot Wall-E
methodically stacking pressed blocks of discarded
dollar bills to form giant structures, which turn out
to be the Bird's Nest stadium, the Water Cube
aquatic center, and the CCTV tower. The script
would go something like this:
"Sponsor" (60 seconds)
Trader Mitt: As if John McCain didn't have enough
reason to keep quoting JFK's line that life isn't fair,
consider this: According to the political futures
markets, Mitt Romney now has a better chance of
being McCain's running mate than McCain has of
winning.
On paper, Romney's VP bid looks as picture perfect
as his presidential campaign once did. Yet even as
Mitt watchers revel in the current boomlet, we
can't help wondering whether this Romneymania
will last.
With that in mind, Romneystas everywhere need to
start making new and urgent arguments on his
behalf:

Voiceover: "Ever wonder what Washington has
done with your tax dollars? This Olympics is your
chance to find out. For the last 8 years, the Bush
administration has been paying China billions of
dollars in interest on the trillions it borrowed for
tax breaks, pork, and special privileges you never
got. That money helped create thousands of
businesses and millions of jobs—in China. So as
you enjoy the games, keep an eye on your tax
dollars at work. The way our economy's going, it's
tough to pay your bills. But take heart: You already
paid China's."
Tagline: "America's Taxpayers. Proud Sponsors of
the Beijing Olympics."
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

The French Are Coming!: Romney was
widely mocked last fall when he warned that
France posed a clear and present danger to
the American way of life. But after watching
French President Nicolas Sarkozy embrace
Barack Obama in Paris last week,
conservatives may finally warm to Mitt's
"First, Not France" slogan after all. Romney
has impeccable credentials as a
Francophobe; Sarkozy would never dream
of saying of him, "If he is chosen, then
France will be delighted." In a few short
hours in Paris, Obama claimed the president
as a convert. Romney spent two whole
years in France and converted no one
whatsoever.
Leave 'Em Laughing as You Go: One of
McCain's heroes, Mo Udall, loved to tell the
story of primary voters who heard him say,
88/140

"I'm Mo Udall and I'm running for
president," and responded, "We were just
laughing about that this morning." Poor Mo
wouldn't know what to make of this
campaign. Two months into the general
election, nobody's laughing about anything.
No one much wants to joke about Obama or
McCain. If Romney were the VP, pundits
across the spectrum would exult that at last
they had someone fun to mess with. He's a
good sport and a happy square, with a track
record of supplying ample new material.
WALL-E's World: Mitt Romney's Web site
is a shadow of its former self—no Five
Brothers blog, no ad contests, no
animatronic Mitt messages for your
voicemail. Yet like WALL-E's stash of
charming knickknacks, the few surviving
objects on Planet Romney carry greater
meaning. For example, a striking photo
highlights a strength few politicians reveal:
Unlike McCain, Mitt Romney was born to
read a teleprompter. In the official
campaign photo of him rehearsing his
concession speech, Mitt is barely visible. All
the focus is on the words in big type to be
loaded on the prompter.
McCain doesn't much like giving speeches and
treats teleprompters accordingly. But you can see
how a campaign that has struggled to follow a
script might be tempted by the first completely
programmable running mate. In 2000, McCain
often joked that he was Luke Skywalker. This time,
Romney could be his C3PO. ... 12:47 p.m. (link)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Make My Day: What a difference a month makes.
At its June meeting, the D.C. City Council debated
Mayor Adrian Fenty's emergency legislation to ban
sparklers. After the Supreme Court struck down
the city's gun ban, the Council spent last week's
July meeting debating emergency legislation to let
residents own handguns. Here in the District, we
couldn't shoot off firecrackers over the Fourth
because they're too dangerous, but we can now
keep a loaded pistol by our bedside, ready to shoot
down prowlers in self-defense.
Like most D.C. residents, I have no plans to
stockpile guns in the wake of the Supreme Court
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
decision. But if the city wants to take away my
sparklers, they'll have to pry them from my cold,
dead, slightly charred hands.
When I was growing up, the rights to keep and
bear firearms and fireworks went hand in hand. My
grandmother used a revolver to shoot garter
snakes in her garden. Well into her eighties,
however, her greatest pleasure in life was to spend
the Fourth setting off massive strings of
firecrackers, 200 at a time. When she came to
visit, she'd step off the airplane with a suitcase full
of firecrackers purchased on an Indian reservation.
As soon as we got home, she'd light the fuse with
her cigarette, then squeal with delight as serial
explosions made the gravel in our driveway dance.
In recent years, firearm regulation and firework
regulation have gone their separate ways. The
National Rifle Association has successfully opposed
most gun laws, even ones aimed primarily at
criminals. Armed with Justice Scalia's maddeningly
unhelpful ruling on the D.C. ban, the NRA already
has begun to target the rest.
By contrast, although fireworks aren't nearly as
deadly as guns, the government treats them like
what they are – a widely popular, sometimes
dangerous American tradition. The federal
government long ago banned once-commonplace
explosives like cherry bombs. Most states – even
the libertarian bastion of Idaho – have banned or
restricted the use of firecrackers. According to the
website AmericanPyro, five states, including Iowa
and Illinois, permit only sparklers and snakes. Five
others, including New York and Massachusetts,
allow no consumer fireworks whatsoever. In general,
states insist that fireworks must be "safe and sane"
– a balance that has been all but impossible to
strike with firearms.
Thanks to the enduring power of pyromania, sales
haven't suffered. Since 1976, fireworks
consumption has increased ten-fold, while
fireworks-related injuries have dropped. Fireworks
manufacturers can take heart in knowing that this
year's survivors are next year's customers.
Because there is no Second Amendment right to
keep and bear sparklers, fireworks law is a
straightforward balancing test – between the
89/140
individual right to burn a hole in the back porch
and the mutual responsibility not to burn entire
communities to the ground, the personal freedom
to pyromaniacal self-expression and the personal
responsibility not to harm oneself and others.
These days, the fireworks industry has more to
fear from climate change than from the authorities.
This summer, the threat of wildfires led Arnold
Schwarzenegger to ask Californians to boycott
fireworks. Drought forced John McCain to forego
fireworks at his annual Independence Day
barbecue in Arizona.
The trouble with the Supreme Court ruling in the
Heller case is not that it interprets the Second
Amendment as an individual right. The Second
Amendment is the constitutional equivalent of the
grammatical paradox Eats Shoots & Leaves, but
whatever the Founders meant by its muddy
wording and punctuation, most Americans now
take it for granted. The real problem with the
Court's decision is that the balancing test for gun
rights and responsibilities is even less clear than
before. Scalia's opinion devotes 30 pages to a
grammatical history of the Second Amendment and
a single sentence to how the courts should apply it
to most other gun laws already on the books.
Alongside such vast imprecision, the Court went
out of its way to strike down the requirement for
trigger locks – an extraordinarily modest attempt
to balance freedom and safety. Trigger locks can
help prevent gun accidents and keep guns out of
the hands of children. Far from impeding selfdefense, new trigger locks can be unlocked with a
fingerprint or a special ring on the gun owner's
finger. That means today's gun owner can arm
himself to shoot an intruder in an instant –
compared to the 30 seconds or more it took to load
a pistol or musket in the 18th Century.
Over the long term, it's not clear how much of a
boon the Heller decision will be for gun rights
advocates. In winning the case, the gun lobby lost
its most potent argument – the threat that at any
moment, the government will knock on the door
and take your guns away. With that bogeyman out
of the way, the case for common-sense gun safety
measures is stronger than ever. Perhaps now the gun
debate will revolve around more practical and less
incendiary issues, like what can be done to reduce
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
illegal gun trafficking and trace guns used in
crimes.
If it's any small consolation, the real winners in
Heller may turn out to be the sparkler lobby. If
cities have trouble banning handguns, they will be
hard-pressed to take away sparklers. Of course, as
with guns, the threat to sparklers may well have
been exaggerated. The D.C. Council rejected Mayor
Fenty's sparkler ban by a vote of 11-2, as members
nostalgically recalled playing with them in their
youth. Councilman and former mayor Marion Barry
voted no "with a bang." As Barry knows, there are
worse things in life to light than a sparkler. ... 9:51
A.M. (link)
Friday, June 6, 2008
The Fight of Her Life: Ten years ago, at a White
House farewell for a favorite staff member, Hillary
Clinton described the two kinds of people in the
world: born optimists like her husband who see the
glass as half-full, and born realists like herself who
can see the glass is half-empty.
As she ends her campaign and throws her support
behind Barack Obama's remarkable quest, Hillary
could be forgiven for seeing her glass as, quite
literally, half-empty. The two candidates traded
primary after primary down the stretch, two titans
matching each other vote for vote. In the closest
race in the modern era, she and Obama split the
Democratic wishbone nearly right down the middle,
but she's not the one who got her wish.
Yet for Hillary and the 18 million of us who
supported her, there is no shame in one historic
campaign coming up just short against another.
History is a great deal wiser than Chris Matthews,
and will be kinder, too. The 2008 contest has been
one for the ages, and the annals will show that
Hillary Clinton has gained far more than she lost.
The Obama-Clinton match will go down as the
longest, closest, most exciting, most exhausting
ever. Obama ran an inspired campaign and seized
the moment. Clinton came close, and by putting up
a tough fight now, helped fortify him for the fight
ahead.
90/140
Our campaign made plenty of mistakes, none of
which has gone unreported. But Hillary is right not
to dwell on "woulda, coulda, shoulda." From New
Hampshire to South Dakota, the race she ran
earned its own place in the history books.
While the way we elect presidents leaves a lot to
be desired, it has one redeeming virtue, as the
greatest means ever invented to test what those
who seek the job are made of. In our lifetimes,
we'll be hard-pressed to find a candidate made of
tougher stuff than Hillary Clinton. Most candidates
leave a race diminished by it. Hillary is like
tempered steel: the more intense the heat, the
tougher she gets.
And has any candidate had to face fiercer, more
sustained heat? As a frontrunner, she expected a
tough ride, and as Hillary Clinton, she was
accustomed to it. But if she was used to the
scrutiny, she could not have anticipated – and did
not deserve – the transparent hostility behind it. In
much the same way the right wing came unglued
when her husband refused to die in the '90s, the
media lost its bearings when she defied and
survived them. Slate at least held off on its
noxious Hillary Deathwatch until March; most of
the press corps began a breathless Clinton
Deathwatch last Thanksgiving. The question that
turned her campaign around in New Hampshire –
"How do you do it?" – brought Hillary to tears out
of sheer gratitude that someone out there had
noticed.
For a few searing days in New Hampshire, we
watched her stare into the abyss. Any other
candidate forced to read her own obituary so often
would have come to believe it. But as she went on
to demonstrate throughout this campaign, Hillary
had faith that there is life after political death, and
the wherewithal to prove it.
In New Hampshire, she discarded the frontrunner
mantle and found her voice. For a race that was
largely won or lost in Iowa, the discovery came a
few days too late. But the grit Clinton showed with
her back to the wall all those months will make her
a force with a following for years to come.
The chief hurdle for Clinton's presidential bid
wasn't whether she could do the job; Democrats
never doubted she would make a good president.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Ironically, the biggest question she faced for much
of the race is one she answered clearly by the time
she left it: whether America was ready for a
woman president. No one asks that question any
longer. For all the sexism she encountered as the
first woman with a serious shot at the White
House, voters themselves made clear they were
ready. The longer the race went on, the more
formidable she looked in the general election. In
this week's CBS News poll, she was beating John
McCain by nine points, even as she was losing the
Democratic nomination.
Last year, the press and other campaigns insisted
that Clinton was too polarizing and that half the
country was united against her. Now, a woman
who was supposed to be one of the most polarizing
figures in America leaves the race with handsome
leads over McCain in places like North Carolina, a
state her husband never carried.
When her campaign started, aides often described
Hillary as the least known, least understood
famous person in America. During this campaign, it
became clear that in certain quarters she's the
most deliberately misunderstood person as well.
The recent RFK flap was yet another attempt to
suggest that her every miscue was part of some
diabolical master plan.
Yet while talking heads imagined the evils of Hillary
Clinton, voters finally came to know and
understand her. They saw someone who knew
what they were going through, who would stick
with them, fight for them, and get back up when
she got knocked down. The phony, consultantdriven shadow boxing of the last few years has
dulled Democrats to the party's historic mission –
to defend the values and stand up for the interests
of ordinary people who are doing all they can just
to get ahead. For those voters, Hillary Clinton was
the champion they've been looking for, a fighter
they can count on, win or lose, not to let them
down.
That's a fight she'll never quit. Like the woman in
New Hampshire, we still wonder how Hillary does
it, but this time, the tears are on us. As we wish
her well, our hopes are high, our hearts are full –
and if our glass is empty, it was worth every drop.
... 11:58 P.M. (link)
91/140
Friday, May 30, 2008
The Adventures of Bobble-Foot: For enough
money, any McClellan or Stephanopoulos in
Washington will write a kiss-and-tell book these
days. But the memoir Larry Craig just announced
he's writing could launch a whole new genre:
don't-kiss, don't-tell.
Craig revealed his plans on Boise television during
Tuesday's coverage of the Senate primary to
choose his potential successors. For the senator, if
not his viewers, it was a poignant moment, one
last point of no return in a three-decade-long
political career.
With a touch of empathy, the local reporter told
Craig, "You're looking forward now to a much
different life for yourself." Alas, the life Craig
described isn't much different from any other
retiring pol's, nor does he sound like he's looking
forward to it. He hinted that he is entertaining a
number of lobbying offers. Because of ethics rules,
he explains, "There are some one-way
conversations going on, 'cause I've said I can't
talk, but I certainly can listen." Perhaps they can
figure out some kind of code.

These are heady times for the Idaho senator. Last
Sunday, on National Tap Dance Day, the first-place
St. Paul Saints, a minor league baseball team,
drew their biggest crowd of the year with a special
promotion in Craig's honor: a bobble-foot doll
commemorating the bathroom stall at MinneapolisSt.Paul airport. The team website reported, "Saints
Have Toe-Tapping Good Time, Win 9-3."
The bobble-foot promotion gave Craig a way to
test his market value even beyond the lobbying
and book worlds. Scores of Craig bobble-feet are
now available on eBay, selling for upwards of $75
apiece. You'd better hurry: Like successful appeals
of uncoerced confessions, supplies are limited.

The upcoming memoir may be the last we ever
hear from the man, so it's worth asking: What kind
of book will Larry Craig write? Consider the
possibilities:

The Broken Branch: Left to his own devices
(never a good idea), Craig seems likely to
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

write an insiders' version of the woe-isgridlock lament popularized most recently
by political scientists Norm Ornstein and
Tom Mann. "The thing that's important for
someone with my experience to talk about
is the state of politics in Washington," Craig
said Tuesday. "It's created what I call a
extremely dysfunctional, hyperpartisan
Senate. We're getting little to nothing
done." Craig cites immigration and energy
policy. As his agent and editor will surely
tell him, this sober approach is not the way
for Craig to put his best foot forward. No
one wants to read the case for decisive
action written by a man who claimed his
innocence after pleading guilty and
remained in office after promising to quit.
Then again, Craig might not be a household
word if he had listened to the advice of
Ornstein and Mann, who urged members to
bring their families to live with them in
Washington.
The Packwood Diaries: With slight
modifications, Craig has modeled his entire
Senate career after his friend, former
Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood. Craig sobbed on
the Senate floor the day Packwood resigned.
Packwood dug in his heels and remained in
office for three years after his sex scandal
became public. Craig has done the same,
and is only leaving because his term is up.
Considering how much Packwood served as
his role model, it's possible that Craig tried
to emulate another part of the Oregonian's
legacy: the Packwood diaries. Packwood
kept a meticulous journal of all his exploits,
with an eye to history and none on the
lookout for satire or federal prosecution. We
can only hope Craig has done the same.
What Happened: Every publisher is looking
for the next Scott McClellan, who told lies
for a living but was scared straight after his
escape. Craig could play this role with
gusto. The pitch: It wasn't his idea to stand
up in front of the press time after time and
insist he wasn't gay. Karl Rove made him do
it, in a deliberate cover-up to protect the
Republican brand – and he'll never forgive
Rove for it.
If I Did It: O.J. Simpson never got to keep a
dime of his controversial book, If I Did It:
Confessions of the Killer. Craig, on the other
92/140
hand, could hypothesize all the way to the
bank. Senators love to write loosely
autobiographical fiction. Gary Hart and Bill
Cohen wrote The Double Man about a
politician who wanted to be president.
Barbara Boxer wrote A Time to Run about a
woman who becomes a liberal senator from
California. Craig could write a great book
about an imaginary conservative senator
who happens to be gay. His hypothetical
musings would wow the critics and sell like
crazy. Besides, what does Craig have to
lose? Hinting he did it would be no more an
admission of guilt than the misdemeanor
plea he was just kidding us about last June.
... 8:48 P.M. (link)
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Mr. Romney's Neighborhoods: Mitt Romney has
a new motto: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. In
the past two months, he has transformed himself
from John McCain's sharpest critic to one of his
most active surrogates. For more than a year,
Romney traveled the country talking up his
chances of becoming president. Now he coyly
downplays any chance of gaining the vicepresidential nod.
On Saturday, we learned of another surprising
reversal. In mid-May, the state Supreme Court
voted to allow same-sex marriage in California.
This weekend, news leaked that Romney has
decided to buy a house there. With property in
Massachusetts and California as well as New
Hampshire and Utah, the crusader who once
warned his son that Democrats would usher in
same-sex marriage now owns homes in two of the
eight jurisdictions on earth that allow it.
Diane Bell of the San Diego Union-Tribune—who
began her column Saturday with the immortal
words "Mitt Romney is in escrow"—sparked a rush
of rumors by asking: "Could Romney be planning
to establish residency in California with an eye on
the governor's seat? Gov. Schwarzenegger is
forced out by term limits in 2010. Stay tuned ..."
If Romney wanted to buy into a slumping market,
his timing couldn't be better. San Diego real estate
prices are down 18 percent from a year ago,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
making even La Jolla beachfront a bargain. When
Schwarzenegger's term runs out, the California
Republican Party will likewise be the political
equivalent of a vacant lot.
Romney's staff quickly shot down any Golden State
ambitions. A spokesman told the Associated Press,
"Governor Romney has been looking at property on
the West Coast because he has family in California,
and because his wife, Ann, spends a good deal of
time there riding horses." The AP noted that son
Matt lives in San Diego, "while son Josh lives in
Salt Lake City." That's 750 miles away—less than a
month's ride on horseback!
Romney spent the weekend at John McCain's
Western getaway with other vice-presidential
hopefuls. The La Jolla purchase gives him one
more advantage over the rest of the field: He now
brings the most undisclosed secure locations.
This isn't the first time homeownership has
emerged as an important theme for Romney. When
he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, he
had to amend his tax returns, which showed he
had actually been a resident of Utah. His
presidential bid made much of his vacation home
on Lake Winnipesaukee, but a second home in New
Hampshire wasn't enough to save him after he lost
the first caucus in Iowa. If Romney had bought a
summer place in Cedar Rapids instead, he might be
the presumptive nominee today. Then he could
have been the one to invite prospective running
mates to spend Memorial Day weekend at his
home, wherever that might be.
Last week, Mitt launched a new campaign vehicle,
Free and Strong America PAC, which is backing
candidates like … John McCain. He even has his
own blog. While it's a far cry from the Five
Brothers Blog, the Mitt blog brings welcome news
of how they're doing. Ben is expecting his first
child, Craig his second, Josh his fourth. Matt had
his fourth a few months ago. Clearly, the Romney
boys have put their blogging days behind them.
Remarkably, the Romney plan seems to be
working. While housing prices plunge, Mitt vicepresidential futures are soaring. On Tuesday,
Romney stock hit its highest price on Intrade in six
weeks, moving into first place ahead of Minnesota
Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
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Why the rebound? One of Romney's greatest
weaknesses may also be his greatest strength:
He's always making up for his last mistake. When
Politico asked leading Republicans how to save
their party, Romney had the best answer: new
ideas, a better agenda, and "a very clear set of
principles."
The GOP is in trouble if Mitt Romney is its go-to
guy for principle. But if a house on your block is for
sale, you have to admit: He'd make a great
neighbor. ... 9:53 a.m. (link)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
On the Rocks: After years of comparing
illegitimacy rates around the world—which were
low in Italy, moderate in Germany, and
astronomical in the United States—Sen. Pat
Moynihan used to joke that out-of-wedlock birth
rates increase in direct proportion to distance from
the Vatican. Now another member of the New York
delegation has gone out of his way to confirm
Moynihan's theory. Vito Fossella Jr.'s office is a
long way from Rome.
Moynihan offered an even more prescient
explanation of Fossella's behavior in his famous
essay "Defining Deviancy Down." Citing a
sociologist's rationalization that "the number of
deviant offenders a community can afford to
recognize is likely to remain stable over time,"
Moynihan feared a vicious cycle of what another
New Yorker, Fred Siegel, dubbed "moral
deregulation": The more people bend the rules, the
further some will go in bending them.
Human weakness may be a renewable resource,
but public attention is not—so, no matter how
many cads live in the tri-state area, only the most
shameless can make the front page of the tabloids.
According to the tabloids, Rep. Fossella's troubles
began in December 2002, when he fell for Air Force
legislative liaison Laura Fay on a junket to Malta.
The Daily News marvels that their union could take
root on such rocky soil: "Malta is not an obvious
place for a love affair to flourish. Not unlike Staten
Island, it tends to be a conservative place."
Of course, in those days, so was the House of
Representatives. Speaker Dennis Hastert himself
led that congressional delegation to Malta. The
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
following summer, Hastert took Fossella and Fay
along on another European junket. One person on
the trip told the Daily News that the affair became
an open secret in Spain, somewhere near the
Alhambra. The newspaper claims that "word about
the affair spread, and Republican officials soon
became concerned, fearing it would be exposed,
sources said." The tabloid implies that the Air Force
dropped Fay as a legislative liaison because she
was a little too good at it.
Obviously, Vito Fossella's personal life is not Dennis
Hastert's fault. Perhaps the speaker had his nose in
a guidebook or was rereading Washington Irving's
classic Tales of the Alhambra. (Unexplored tabloid
angle: The namesake for Irving's most famous
character, Ichabod Crane, is buried on Staten
Island—just like Fossella's political career.)
Moreover, once you've accepted the ethics of
congressional leaders and Pentagon staffers taking
taxpayer-funded fact-finding missions to the tourist
capitals of Europe, you don't have to be above the
legal blood alcohol limit to have trouble seeing any
bright lines.
Still, the leadership's avoidance and denial in this
case is eerily similar to the last great House
Republican sex scandal, involving former Florida
Rep. Mark Foley. A House ethics committee
investigation determined that Hastert's chief of
staff, Scott Palmer, learned of Foley's page
problem in 2002 or 2003, the same period as
Fossella's budding romance. The House leadership
did nothing about it. As the ethics committee
report declared, "A pattern of conduct was
exhibited among many individuals to remain
willfully ignorant."
In time, those years may be remembered as the
Era of Willful Ignorance. Mark Foley was busy
IMing House pages. Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed
were busy e-mailing each other. Tom DeLay was
busy hounding the FAA to track down Texas
Democratic legislators who had flown to Oklahoma.
Today's New York Post reports that Scott Palmer,
the Hastert aide, knew about the Fossella-Fay
problem, too. He did something but not about the
wayward congressman. Instead, Palmer called the
Pentagon and reported Fay for unprofessional
behavior. "I lost confidence in her and I'm not
going to kid you," Palmer told the Post. "I was also
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concerned with this other relationship thing. It
didn't look like it should."
Five years later, Republicans no doubt wish their
leaders had lost confidence in Fossella after the
Alhambra instead of waiting for the mistress, love
child, and DUI. But as Pat Moynihan warned,
there's a limit to the number of ethically deviant
members any community can afford to recognize
at one time. … 10:52 a.m. (link)
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Three's Company: For Democrats who still can't
decide between Clinton and Obama, a third
candidate has put his name on the ballot in the
Idaho primary later this month. Keith Russell Judd
is pro-choice, opposes No Child Left Behind, wants
to end the war in Iraq, and once bowled a 300
game. There's just one catch: he's an inmate at a
federal prison in Beaumont, Texas, and won't get
out until 2013.
Two decades ago, Idaho nearly re-elected a
congressman who was on his way to prison. So
perhaps it was only a matter of time before
someone already in prison would see Idaho as a
springboard to the White House.
Asked how a federal prisoner could qualify for the
ballot, Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa told the
press, "We got conned." The state recently
eliminated the requirement for candidates to
gather signatures; now they just need to fill out a
form and pay a $1,000 fee. According to the
Spokane Spokesman-Review, Keith Judd sent
forms and checks to 14 states, but only Idaho put
his name on the ballot.
Judd isn't the only out-of-state candidate on the
primary ballot. Hal Styles Jr. of Desert Hot Springs,
California, who has never been to Idaho, is seeking
the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. For all
the heartache and suffering that Larry Craig has
caused the state, his arrest and subsequent
humiliation have done wonders for candidate
recruitment. Far from frightening people away,
Craig has lowered the bar so much that even
hardened criminals think they could win there.
Judd's 35-year membership in the NRA might give
him an edge with some Idaho voters. But the road
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
from Beaumont to Denver is a tough one. Idaho
already selected its delegates in caucuses on Super
Tuesday. The May 27 primary is just a beauty
contest, and Judd seems to be going for the Willie
Nelson look.
Even in a year when come-from-behind victories
have become the norm, a come-from-behind-bars
campaign requires exceptional resourcefulness.
Judd used a Texas newspaper tip line as the phone
number for his campaign office, and an IRS line in
Ohio as the number for his campaign coordinator.
He paid the $1,000 with a U.S. Treasury check
drawn on his prison account.
Although no one has contributed to his campaign,
Judd diligently files a handwritten FEC report every
quarter. The FEC database shows Judd for
President with $532,837 in total receipts, $11,285
in total expenditures, and an impressive $387,561
in cash on hand. With more than half a million in
receipts, Judd's reported total exceeds that of Mike
Gravel, who is practically a household name. The
Huckabee and Giuliani campaigns would have done
anything to match Judd's figure for cash-on-hand.
Running for president isn't a habit Judd picked up
in prison, where he has spent the past decade
since being convicted of making threats at the
University of New Mexico. He has been running for
office his whole life. He ran for mayor of
Albuquerque in the early '90s, and tried to run for
governor. He sought the presidency in 1996, 2000,
and 2004 – when he won 3 write-in votes. He has
filed more than 70 FEC reports going all the way
back to 1995.
Judd has shown the same persistence in the
courts, firing off appeals at a faster clip than Larry
Craig. In 1999, after receiving a dozen frivolous
cert petitions from Judd, the U.S. Supreme Court
barred him from filing any more non-criminal
claims unless he paid the required fees. In 2005,
the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals prepared an order
noting that Judd had filed "at least 70 frivolous,
duplicative and repetitive actions in this Court." By
the time the order was issued, that number had
reached 82.
Idaho has a long history of embracing maverick
long shots, and Judd's iconoclastic background and
platform won't hurt. He passes the Mickey Kaus
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test on welfare reform but not immigration. He
favors eliminating all federal taxes so "the
government can operate on its own self produced
money." He wants to require gun licensing but let
people carry concealed weapons. He says his
national security views are "classified," but his Iraq
position is "withdraw ASAP and forget it."
Judd plays the bass and bongos, belongs to the
ACLU and the NRA, and admires JFK and Nixon. His
nicknames are "Mr. President" and "Dark Priest,"
and his favorite athlete is a professional bowler.
Bowling is hardly the rage in Idaho: In a fitting
tribute to Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's famous
theory of social alienation, my hometown turned
the bowling alley into a self-storage complex. Still,
Judd's rivals can only envy his claim to have once
bowled a perfect game.
Idaho pundits, who've had their fill of national
attention, cringe over Judd's candidacy. "Jailbird
Makes Us Look Silly," wrote the Ketchum Idaho
Mountain Express. Others around the country note
the irony that a felon can run but can't vote. The
Illinois State University student newspaper, the
Daily Vidette, defended Judd's right to run, but
warned voters and party leaders not to support
him: "All superdelegates should save their
endorsements for candidates with a real shot."
At one particularly low moment of the 1988
campaign, a news crew tracked down Willie Horton
and found out that if he weren't behind bars, he
would vote for Dukakis. Give Keith Judd credit for
passing up the chance to endorse Obama or
Clinton, and running against them instead. ...
12:28 a.m. (link)
Monday, April 21, 2008
Running With the Big Dogs: While Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama deflected Charlie Gibson's
question about running together, last week was a
big one for Democrats' other dream ticket: any
Republican pairing that includes Mitt Romney. With
a well-received cameo at a national press dinner
and nods from Great Mentioners like George H.W.
Bush and Karl Rove, Mitt is back—and campaigning
hard for the No. 2 slot.
When John McCain wrapped up the Republican
nomination back in February, the odds against
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
picking Romney looked long indeed. The two spent
the entire primary season at each others' throats.
Romney trashed McCain over "amnesty" for illegal
immigrants; McCain joked that Romney's many
flip-flops proved he really was "the candidate of
change." Even Rudy Giuliani, not known for making
peace, chimed in from Florida that McCain and
Romney were "getting kind of nasty," implying that
they needed to come chill with him at the beach.
Sure enough, after a little time off, Romney felt
better—good enough to begin his vice-presidential
audition. He went on Fox to say, "There really are
no hard feelings." He interrupted his vacation in
Utah to host a fundraiser for McCain. After months
of dismissing McCain as a Washington insider,
Romney flip-flopped and praised him as a longtime
congressional champion of Reaganism. Lest anyone
fail to notice, Romney confessed that he would be
honored to be McCain's running mate, and
practiced ripping into the potential Democratic
nominees: "When it comes to national security,
John McCain is the big dog, and they are the
Chihuahuas."
Of course, any big dog should think twice before
agreeing to a long journey with Mitt Romney. The
past would not be easy for McCain, Romney, and
their staffs and families to overcome. Before New
Hampshire, McCain's alter ego, Mark Salter, called
Romney "a small-varmint gun totin,' civil rights
marching, NRA-endorsed fantasy candidate." After
the primaries were over, Josh Romney suggested
that the Five Brothers wouldn't be gassing up the
Mittmobile for McCain anytime soon: "It's one thing
to campaign for my dad, someone whose principles
I line up with almost entirely," he told the Deseret
News. "I can't say the same thing for Sen.
McCain."
For Mitt Romney, that won't be a problem: Any
grudge would vanish the instant McCain named
him as his running mate. And by the Republican
convention in September, Romney's principles will
be due for their six-month realignment.
The more difficult question is, What's in it for
McCain? Actually, Romney brings more to the
ticket than you might think. As in any partnership,
the key to happiness between running mates is a
healthy division of labor. When Bill Clinton and Al
Gore teamed up in 1992, Clinton had spent most of
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his career on the economy, education, health care,
and other domestic issues; Gore was an expert on
national security, the environment, and
technology. Even the Bush-Cheney pairing made
some sense: Bush cared only about squandering
the surplus, privatizing Social Security, and
running the economy into the ground; Cheney was
more interested in hoarding executive power,
helping narrow interests, and tarnishing America's
image in the world.
So, McCain and Romney are off to a good start:
They come from different backgrounds and share
no common interests. McCain, a soldier turned
senator, prefers national security above all else. As
a former businessman and governor, Romney
rarely brings up foreign policy—for reasons that
sometimes become apparent when he does so. In
his concession speech, Romney said he was
dropping out to give McCain a united front against
Obama, Clinton, and Bin Laden. "In this time of
war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of
aiding a surrender to terror," he said. "We cannot
allow the next president of the United States to
retreat in the face of evil extremism!!"
For the general election, the McCain campaign
must decide what to do with conservative positions
it took to win the Republican primaries. Here again,
Romney is a godsend: a vice-presidential candidate
who'll flip-flop so the nominee doesn't have to. No
one can match Romney's experience at changing
positions: He has been on both sides of abortion,
talked out of both sides of his mouth on same-sex
marriage, and been for and against his own health
care plan. It's a market-based approach to
principle—just the glue Republicans need to
expand their coalition. Moderates might assume
Romney was only pretending to be conservative,
and conservatives will thank him for trying.
Straight talk is all well and good for presidential
candidates. But as Dick Cheney demonstrated, the
job of a Republican vice-presidential candidate is
quite the opposite—keeping a straight face while
saying things that couldn't possibly be true. Take
the economy, for example. McCain gets visibly
uncomfortable whenever he ventures beyond fiscal
conservatism. Romney is more flexible. In an
interview with National Journal last week, he had
no trouble contending that corporate tax cuts help
the middle class. He spent the primaries warning
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
that the United States was on a slippery slope to
becoming the next France. Now he's perfectly
happy to argue that we have to cut corporate taxes
to keep companies from moving to France.
In his surprise appearance at the Radio &
Television Correspondents dinner in Washington
last week, Romney showed another virtue that
makes him perfect for the role—a vice-presidential
temperament. With his "Top 10 Reasons for
Dropping Out," he proved that he is ready to poke
fun at himself on Day 1.
A vice president needs to be good at selfdeprecation, yet not so skilled that he outshines
the boss. By that standard, Romney's audition was
perfect: He chose good material ("There weren't as
many Osmonds as I had thought"; "As a lifelong
hunter, I didn't want to miss the start of varmint
season") and delivered it just awkwardly enough to
leave the audience wondering whether to laugh or
feel slightly uncomfortable.
After watching him up close in the primaries, Team
McCain no doubt harbors real reservations about
Romney. Some conservatives distrust him so
much, they're running full-page ads that say, "NO
Mitt." A Google search of John McCain, Mitt
Romney, and food taster produces more than 100
entries.
But looking ahead to a tense fall campaign, McCain
should put those concerns aside and listen to
voices from across the spectrum. This could be the
issue that unites the country across party lines.
Democrats like a little fun at Mitt Romney's
expense. The McCain camp does, too—perhaps
more so. And after last week, we know that—ever
the good sport—even Romney's all for it. ... 2:14
p.m. (link)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Twist and Shout: When the news broke last
August that Larry Craig had been arrested in a
restroom sex sting, he had a ready answer: The
Idaho Statesman made him do it. He claimed that
the Statesman's monthslong investigation into
whether he was gay made him panic and plead
guilty. Otherwise, he said, he feared that what
happened in Minneapolis might not stay in
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Minneapolis, and the Statesman would make sure
the voters of Idaho found out.
which might have staved off the Statesman
investigation before it got started.
Craig's jihad against the Statesman didn't go over
too well in Idaho, where people are more likely to
read the newspaper in the restroom than worry
about it afterward. On Monday, the Statesman was
named a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in
Breaking News Reporting for what the committee
called "its tenacious coverage of the twists and
turns in the scandal involving the state's senator,
Larry Craig."
Craig's latest revelation undermines his defense in
another way as well. If he is telling the truth that
he had made up his mind not to run before his
arrest, that would be the best explanation yet for
why he risked putting himself in a position to get
arrested. Eliot Spitzer's re-election prospects
plunged long before he got caught, too.
The story took yet another strange twist and turn
this week. For the past six months, the entire
political world has been wondering why Craig
promised to resign when the scandal broke, then
changed his mind a few days later. In a rare
interview Wednesday with the congressional
newspaper the Hill, Craig finally found someone to
blame for staying in the Senate: The people of
Idaho made him do it.
According to the Hill, Craig said "support from
Idahoans convinced him to reverse his pledge to
resign last year." This was news to most Idaho
voters, who have viewed the whole affair with
shock, outrage, embarrassment, and dismay. But
Craig didn't stop there. The Hill reports that he also
said his decision not to run for re-election "predated the controversy."
Last fall, Craig stunned Idahoans by insisting he
was not gay, not guilty, and not leaving. Now he
says it's our fault he never left, he was leaving
anyway, and if he's not running, it's not because
we don't believe him when he says he's not guilty
and not gay.
Unfortunately, Craig's latest explanation casts
some doubt on the excuse he gave last fall. If he
had already decided long ago that he wasn't
running for re-election, he had less reason to panic
over his arrest, and much less to fear from voters
finding out about it back home. In September, he
made it sound as if he pled guilty to a crime he
didn't commit to avoid a political firestorm back
home. If politics were of no concern, he had every
reason to fight the charges in court. For that
matter, if he was so sure he wouldn't run again, he
could have announced his decision early last year,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Nothing can fully explain why public figures like
Craig and Spitzer would flagrantly risk arrest. But
we can rule out political suicide if they'd already
decided their political careers were over. ... 3:55
p.m. (link)
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
B.Looper: Learned reader Kyle Sammin recalls
that Idaho's Marvin "Pro-Life" Richardson has
nothing on 1998 Tennessee State Senate candidate
Byron "Low-Tax" Looper. Besides changing his
name, Looper also murdered his opponent. Under
Tennessee law, the names of dead candidates are
removed from the ballot. So even though he was
quickly charged with homicide, Looper nearly ran
unopposed. The victim's widow won a last-minute
write-in campaign. Looper was sentenced to life in
prison.
Bloopers: The Pittsburgh Pirates are now the most
mediocre first-place team in baseball history. In
their season opener Monday night against Atlanta,
the Bucs provided plenty of evidence that this year
will turn out like the last 15. They blew a five-run
lead in the ninth by walking four batters and
booting an easy fly ball. Pirate players said they'd
never seen anything like it, not even in Little
League. For an inning, it looked like the team had
gone on strike to demand more money.
But to every Buc fan's surprise, the Pirates won,
anyway—12-11 in 12 innings—and with no game
Tuesday, Pittsburgh has been above .500 for two
glorious days. New General Manager Neal
Huntington e-mailed me on Monday to promise
that the team's new regime is determined to build
an organization that will make the people of
Pittsburgh proud again. That might take a while.
For now, we're content to make the people of
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Atlanta feel really embarrassed. ... 1:35 p.m.
(link)
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Danger Is My Middle Name: Outgoing Senator
Larry Craig can take consolation in one thing: out
in Idaho, everyone wants his seat. Fourteen
candidates have filed to run for the Senate,
including eight Republicans, two Democrats, two
Independents, and a Libertarian. Hal Styles Jr. of
Desert Hot Springs, California, entered the
Republican primary, even though he has never
been to Idaho. "I know I'll love it because, clean
air, clean water and many, many, many
mountains," he says. "My heart, my mind, my
body, my soul, my thoughts are in this to win."
The general election will likely be a rematch between former
Democratic congressman Larry LaRocco and Republican Lt.
Gov. (and former governor) Jim Risch. If Idahoans find those
two insufficiently embarrassing, however, a number of fringe
candidates have lined up to take Craig's place. According to CQ,
one Independent, Rex Rammel, is a former elk rancher who is
angry that Risch ordered state wildlife officials to shoot some of
his elk that got away. The Libertarian, Kent A. Marmon, is
running against "the ever-expanding Socialist agenda" he claims
is being pushed by Democratic congressmen like John Dingell.
But by far the most creative third-party candidate is Marvin
Richardson, an organic strawberry farmer who went to court to
change his name to "Pro-Life." Two years ago, he made that his
middle name and tried to run for governor as Marvin "Pro-Life"
Richardson. State election officials ruled that middle names
couldn't be used to make a political statement on the ballot. As
plain old Marvin Richardson, he won just 1.6% of the vote.
Now that "Pro-Life" is his full name, the state had to let him run
that way on the ballot. He told the Idaho Press-Tribune that with
the name change, he should win 5%. He plans to run for office
every two years for as long as he lives: "If I save one baby's life,
it will be worth it."
As the Press-Tribune points out, Pro-Life is not a single-issue
candidate, but has a comprehensive platform. In addition to
abortion, he opposes "homosexuality, adultery, and fornication."
He wants the pro-life movement to refer to abortion as "murder,"
although he has not yet insisted pro-choice candidates change
their name to that.
Idaho Republicans and anti-abortion activists don't share ProLife's enthusiasm. They worry that conservative voters will
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
check the box next to both Pro-Life and the Republican
candidate, thereby spoiling their ballots. So last week, the Idaho
Secretary of State persuaded both houses of the legislature to
pass emergency legislation to clarify that "voters are casting a
vote for a person and not a political proposition." Under the
legislation, candidates who appear to have changed their names
to "convey a political message" will be outed on the ballot as "a
person, formerly known as …." The Prince Bill will go to the
governor for signature this week.
According to the Associated Press, Pro-Life accuses legislators
of "trying to legislate intelligence"—a charge not often hurled at
the Idaho legislature. "The people that vote for me are more
intelligent than to have something defined in legislation like
this," he says.
Of course, Idahoans who really want to make a political
statement will still be able to outsmart the Prince Bill. Nothing
in the legislation prohibits Idaho parents who feel strongly about
issues from naming their children Pro-Life or Pro-Gun at birth.
For that matter, Marvin Richardson has changed his name so
many times that if he changes it again, the ballot might have to
describe him as "a person formerly known as 'Pro-Life.'" Or he
could just change his name to Mitt Romney.
On the other hand, Republicans and Democrats alike can breathe
a sign of relief over another unintended effect: the new law foils
Larry Craig's best strategy for a comeback. Before the law, Craig
could have changed his name to "Not Gay" and won in a
landslide. "A person formerly known as Not Gay" is more like it.
... 5:27 p.m. (link)
Friday, Mar. 28, 2008
We Are Family: Midway through the run-up to the
next primary, the presidential campaigns are
searching for fresh ways to reach the voters of
Pennsylvania. My grandparents left Pittsburgh
more than 80 years ago, so my Pennsylvania roots
are distant. But I still think I can speak for at least
half the state in suggesting one bold proposal we
long for every April: a plan to rescue one of the
most mediocre teams in baseball history, the
Pittsburgh Pirates.
Granted, the nation faces more urgent crises. But
in hard times, people often look to sports for
solace. To blue-collar workers in taverns across
western Pennsylvania, watching the Pirates lose
night after night is as predictably grim as the Bush
economy. The lowly Bucs are the reigning
disappointment in the world of sport—with a
batting average that seems pegged to the dollar
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and prospects of victory in line with the war in
Iraq.
The Pittsburgh franchise hasn't finished above .500
since 1992. If, as universally predicted, the Pirates
turn in their 16th consecutive losing season this
year, they will tie the all-time frustration record for
professional sport set by the Philadelphia Phillies in
the 1930s and '40s.
Pittsburgh is still a proud, vibrant city, which has
rebounded handsomely from losses far more
consequential than the Pirates'. The once-proud
Pirates, by contrast, show plenty of rust but no
signs of recovery. In 1992, the team was an inning
away from the World Series, when the Atlanta
Braves scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth
to steal Game 7 of the National League
Championship Series. The Braves soon moved to
the NL East en route to winning 14 consecutive
division titles, the longest in sports history. The
Pirates moved from the East to the Central and
began their soon-to-be-record-setting plunge in
the opposite direction.
On Monday, the Pirates return to Atlanta for
Opening Day against the Braves. Baseball analysts
no longer give a reason in predicting another lastplace Bucco finish. This year, the Washington Post
didn't even bother to come up with a new joke.
Last season's Post preview said:
Blech. This Pirates team is so
mediocre, so uninteresting, so
destined for last place, we don't
know if we can squeeze another
sentence out of it for this capsule
we're being paid to write. But
here's one. … The Pirates haven't
had a winning season since
1992, and that streak will
continue this year. That's still not
long enough? Well, here's
another line! Hey—two sentences
in one line! Make that three! And
here's another! See how easy
that is?
This year, the same Post analyst wrote:
Okay, folks, here's the deal: We
need to fill precisely 4.22
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
column-inches of type with
information about the faceless,
tasteless Pirates, and as usual
we're not sure we can do it. But
guess what? We're already at .95
inches, and we're just getting
started! Wait—make that 1.19
inches. ... Should they finish
below .500 again (and let's be
honest, how can they not?), they
will tie the Phillies of 1933-48 for
the most consecutive losing
seasons. (By the way, that's 3.53
inches, and we haven't even had
to mention new manager John
Russell, Capps's promise as a
closer or the vast potential of the
Snell-Gorzelanny duo.) There:
4.22 inches. Piece of cake."
So now the Pirates even hold the record for
consecutive seasons as victims of the same bad
joke.
Pittsburgh faces all the challenges of a smallmarket team. Moreover, as David Maraniss pointed
out in his lyrical biography, Clemente, the first love
for Pittsburgh fans has long been football, not
baseball. These days, no one can blame them.
Seven years ago, in a desperate bid to revive the
Pirates' fortunes, the city built PNC Park, a
gorgeous field with the most spectacular view in
baseball. From behind home plate, you can look
out on the entire expanse of American economic
history—from the Allegheny River to 1920s-era
steel suspension bridges to gleaming glass
skyscrapers.
The result? As Pittsburgh writer Don Spagnolo
noted last year in "79 Reasons Why It's Hard To Be
a Pirates Fan," Pittsburgh now has "the best
stadium in the country, soiled by the worst team."
(The Onion once suggested, "PNC Park Threatens
To Leave Pittsburgh Unless Better Team Is Built.")
Spagnolo notes that the city already set some kind
of record by hosting baseball's All-Star game in
1994 and 2006 without a single winning season in
between.
Although the Pirates' best player, Jason Bay, is
from Canada, if Pittsburgh fans have suffered
100/140
because of trade, the blame belongs not to NAFTA
but to an inept front office. Jason Schmidt, now
one of the top 100 strikeout aces in history, was
traded to the Giants. Another, Tim Wakefield, left
for the Red Sox. Franchise player Aramis Ramirez
was dealt to the Cubs. When owners sell off
members of a winning team, it's called a fire sale.
The Pirates have been more like a yard sale. In
2003, when the Cubs nearly made the Series, the
Pirates supplied one-third of their starting lineup.
never let you down, the Pittsburgh Pirates could be
your team, too. ... 12:06 p.m. (link)
In the early '80s, an angry fan famously threw a
battery at Pirate outfielder Dave Parker. Last June,
fans registered their frustration in a more
constructive way. To protest more than a decade of
ownership mismanagement, they launched a Web
site, IrateFans.com, and organized a "Fans for
Change" walkout after the third inning of a home
game. Unfortunately, only a few hundred fans who
left their seats actually left the game; most just
got up to get beer.
Conservative blogger Michael Medved of Townhall
offers a long list of reasons why Craig doesn't need
to go as urgently as Spitzer did. He finds Craig less
hypocritical ("trolling for sex in a men's room,
doesn't logically require that you support gay
marriage"), much easier to pity, and "pathetic and
vulnerable" in a way Spitzer is not. Liberal blogger
Anonymous Is a Woman counters that while Craig
and Louisiana Sen. David Vitter remain in office, at
least Spitzer resigned.
This year, fans are still for change but highly
skeptical. In an online interview, the new team
president admitted, "The Pirates are not in a
rebuilding mode. We're in a building mode." One
fan asked bitterly, "How many home runs will the
'change in atmosphere' hit this season?"
Warning, much political baggage may look alike.
So, party labels aside, who's the bigger hypocrite?
Certainly, a politician caught red-handed
committing the very crimes he used to prosecute
can make a strong case for himself. In his
resignation speech, Spitzer admitted as much:
"Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I
believe correctly, that people, regardless of their
position or power, take responsibility for their
conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself."
I've been a Pirate fan for four decades—the first
glorious, the second dreary, the last two a long
march from despair to downright humiliation. In
more promising times, my wife proposed to me at
Three Rivers Stadium, where we returned for our
honeymoon. On the bright side, the 2001 implosion
of Three Rivers enabled me to find two red plastic
stadium seats as an anniversary present on eBay.
Our children live for baseball but laugh at our
Pirate caps—and, at ages 12 and 14, haven't been
alive to see a winning Pirate season. Yet like so
many in western Pennsylvania, I've been a Pirate
fan too long to be retrained to root for somebody
else.
After 15 years, we Bucs fans aren't asking for
miracles. We just want what came so easily to the
pre-2004 Red Sox, the post-1908 Cubs, and the
other great losing teams of all time: sympathy.
Those other teams are no longer reliable: The Red
Sox have become a dynasty; 2008 really could be
the Cubs' year. If you want a lovable loser that will
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Thursday, Mar. 13, 2008
Craigenfreude: In a new high for the partisan
divide, a mini-debate has broken out in far-flung
corners of the blogosphere on the urgent question:
Who's the bigger hypocrite, Larry Craig or Eliot
Spitzer?
Moreover, for all the conservative complaints about
media bias, the circumstances of Spitzer's fall from
grace ensure that tales of his hypocrisy will
reverberate louder and longer than Craig's. Already
a media star in the media capital of the world, he
managed to destroy his career with a flair even a
tabloid editor couldn't have imagined. Every detail
of his case is more titillating than Craig's—call girls
with MySpace pages and stories to tell, not a lone
cop who won't talk to the press; hotel suites
instead of bathroom stalls; bank rolls instead of
toilet rolls; wide angles instead of wide stances; a
club for emperors, not Red Carpet.
Spitzer flew much closer to the sun than Craig, so
his sudden plunge is the far greater political
tragedy. No matter how far his dive, Craig couldn't
make that kind of splash. You'll never see the
headline "Craig Resigns" splashed across six
101/140
columns of the New York Times. Of course, since
he refuses to resign, you won't see it in the Idaho
Statesman, either.
Yet out of stubborn home-state chauvinism, if
nothing else, we Idahoans still marvel at the level
of hypocrisy our boy has achieved, even without all
the wealth, fame, and privilege that a rich New
Yorker was handed on a silver platter. Many
Easterners think it's easy for an Idahoan to be
embarrassing—that just being from Boise means
you're halfway there.
We disagree. Craig didn't grow up in the center of
attention, surrounded by money, glamour, and all
the accouterments of hypocrisy. He grew up in the
middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains.
When he got arrested, he didn't have paid help to
bring him down. No Mann Act for our guy: He
carried his own bags and did his own travel.
Larry Craig is a self-made hypocrite. He achieved
his humiliation the old-fashioned way: He earned
it.
Unlike Spitzer, who folded his cards without a fight,
Craig upped the ante by privately admitting guilt,
then publicly denying it. His lawyers filed yet
another appellate brief this week, insisting that the
prosecution is wrong to accuse him of making a
"prehensile stare."
While it's admittedly a low standard, Craig may
have had his least-awful week since his scandal
broke in August. A Minnesota jury acquitted a man
who was arrested by the same airport sting
operation. Craig didn't finish last in the Senate
power rankings by Congress.org. Thanks to
Spitzer, Craig can now tell folks back home that
whatever they think of what he did, at least they
don't have to be embarrassed by how much he
spent. In fact, he is probably feeling some
Craigenfreude—taking pleasure in someone else's
troubles because those troubles leave people a
little less time to take pleasure in your own.
Like misery, hypocrisy loves company—which, for
both Spitzer and Craig, turned out to be the
problem. But Spitzer was right to step down, and
Craig should long ago have done the same. Politics
is a tragic place to chase your demons. ... 5:30
p.m. (link)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Wednesday, Mar. 5, 2008
All the Way: As death-defying Clinton comebacks
go, the primaries in Ohio and Texas were very
nearly not heart-stopping enough. On Monday,
public polls started predicting a Clinton rebound,
threatening to spoil the key to any wild ride:
surprise. Luckily, the early exit polls on Tuesday
evening showed Obama with narrow leads in both
do-or-die states, giving those of us in Clinton World
who live for such moments a few more hours to
stare into the abyss.
Now that the race is once again up for grabs, much
of the political establishment is dreading the
seven-week slog to the next big primary in
Pennsylvania. Many journalists had wanted to go
home and put off seeing Scranton until The Office
returns on April 10. Some Democrats in
Washington were in a rush to find out the winner
so they could decide who they've been for all
along.
As a Clintonite, I'm delighted that the show will go
on. But even if I were on the sidelines, my reaction
would have been the same. No matter which team
you're rooting for, you've got to admit: We will
never see another contest like this one, and the
political junkie in all of us hopes it will never end.
It looks like we could get our wish—so we might as
well rejoice and be glad in it. A long, exciting race
for the nomination will be good for the Democratic
Party, good for the eventual nominee, and the ride
of a lifetime for every true political fan.
For the party, the benefits are obvious: By making
this contest go the distance, the voters have done
what party leaders wanted to do all along. This
cycle, the Democratic National Committee was
desperate to avoid the front-loaded calendar that
backfired last time. As David Greenberg points out,
the 2004 race was over by the first week of
March—and promptly handed Republicans a full
eight months to destroy our nominee. This time,
the DNC begged states to back-load the calendar,
even offering bonus delegates for moving primaries
to late spring. Two dozen states flocked to Super
Tuesday anyway.
Happily, voters took matters into their own hands
and gave the spring states more clout than party
102/140
leaders ever could have hoped for. Last fall, NPR
ran a whimsical story about the plight of South
Dakota voters, whose June 3 contest is the last
primary (along with Montana) on the calendar.
Now restaurateurs, innkeepers, and vendors from
Pierre to Rapid City look forward to that primary as
Christmas in June.
But the national party, state parties, and Sioux
Falls cafes aren't the only ones who'll benefit.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the biggest
beneficiaries of a protracted battle for the
nomination are the two contestants themselves.
Primaries are designed to be a warm-up for the
general election, and a few more months of spring
training will only improve their swings for the fall.
summer. They didn't sign on to spend the spring in
Scranton and Sioux Falls. But, like the rest of us,
they wouldn't miss this amazing stretch of history
for anything. ... 11:59 p.m. (link)
Monday, Feb. 25, 2008
Hope Springs Eternal: With this weekend's
victory in Puerto Rico and even more resounding
triumph over the New York Times, John McCain
moved within 200 delegates of mathematically
clinching the Republican nomination. Mike
Huckabee is having a good time playing out the
string, but the rest of us have been forced to get
on with our lives and accept that it's just not the
same without Mitt.
And let's face it: These two candidates know how
to put on a show. Both are raising astonishing
sums of money and attracting swarms of voters to
the polls. Over the past month, their three headto-head debates have drawn the largest audiences
in cable television history. The second half of last
week's MSNBC debate was the most watched show
on any channel, with nearly 8 million viewers. An
astonishing 4 million people tuned in to watch
MSNBC's post-debate analysis, an experience so
excruciating that it's as if every person in the Bay
Area picked the same night to jump off the Golden
Gate Bridge.
But soft! What light through yonder window
breaks? Out in Salt Lake City, in an interview with
the Deseret Morning News, Josh Romney leaves
open the possibility that his father might get back
in the race:
The permanent campaign turns out to be the best
reality show ever invented. Any contest that can
sustain that kind of excitement is like the World
Series of poker: The value of the pot goes up with
each hand, and whoever wins it won't be the least
bit sorry that both sides went all-in.
That's not much of an opening and no doubt more
of one than he intended. But from mountain to
prairie, the groundswell is spreading.
Endorsements are flooding in from conservative
bloggers like this one:
No matter how it turns out, all of us who love
politics have to pinch ourselves that we're alive to
see a race that future generations will only read
about. Most campaigns, even winning ones, only
seem historic in retrospect. This time, we already
know it's one for the ages; we just don't know
how, when, or whether it's going to end.
Even journalists who dread spending the next
seven weeks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike have to
shake their heads in wonderment. In the lede of
their lead story in Wednesday's Washington Post,
Dan Balz and Jon Cohen referred to "the
remarkable contest" that could stretch on till
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Josh Romney called speculation
that his father could be back in
the race as either a vice
presidential candidate or even at
the top of the ticket as the GOP's
presidential candidate "possible.
Unlikely, but possible."
Mitt Romney was not my first
choice for a presidential
candidate, but he came third
after Duncan Hunter and Fred
Thompson. … I would love to see
Mitt reenter the race.
Even if re-entry is too much to hope for, Josh hints
that another Romney comeback may be in the
works. He says he has been approached about
running for Congress in Utah's 2nd District.
That, too, may be an unlikely trial balloon. Josh is
just 32, has three young children, and would face a
Democratic incumbent, Rep. Jim Matheson, who is
103/140
one of the most popular politicians in the state.
Matheson's father was a governor, too. But unlike
Mitt Romney, Scott Matheson was governor of
Utah.
If Mitt Romney has his eye on the No. 2 spot, Josh
didn't do him any favors. "It's one thing to
campaign for my dad, someone whose principles I
line up with almost entirely," he told the Morning
News. "I can't say the same thing for Sen.
McCain."
Even so, Romney watchers can only take heart that
after a year on the campaign trail, Josh has
bounced back so quickly. "I was not that upset," he
says of his father's defeat. "I didn't cry or
anything."
In his year on the stump, Josh came across as the
most down-to-earth of the Romney boys. He
visited all 99 of Iowa's counties in the campaign
Winnebago, the Mitt Mobile. He joked about his
father's faults, such as "he has way too much
energy." He let a Fox newswoman interview him in
the master bedroom of the Mitt Mobile. (He showed
her the air fresheners.) He blogged about the
moose, salmon, and whale he ate while
campaigning in Alaska—but when the feast was
over, he delivered the Super Tuesday state for his
dad.
As Jonathan Martin of Politico reported last
summer, Josh was campaigning with his parents at
the Fourth of July parade in Clear Lake, Iowa,
when the Romneys ran into the Clintons. After Mitt
told the Clintons how many counties Josh had
visited, Hillary said, "You've got this built-in
campaign team with your sons." Mitt replied, to
Ann's apparent dismay, "If we had known, we
would've had more."
We'll never know whether that could have made
the difference. For now, we'll have to settle for the
unlikely but possible hope that Mitt will come back
to take another bow. ... 4:13 p.m. (link)
Monday, Feb. 11, 2008
Face Time: When Ralph Reed showed up at a
Romney fundraiser last May, Mitt thought he was
Gary Bauer – perpetuating the tiresome stereotype
that like some Reeds, all Christian conservatives
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
look alike. Now, in Mitt's hour of need, Ralph is
returning the favor. According to the Washington
Times, he and 50 other right-wing leaders met with
Romney on Thursday "to discuss the former
Massachusetts governor becoming the face of
conservatism."
Nothing against Romney, who surely would have
been a better president than he let on. But if he
were "the face of conservatism," he'd be planning
his acceptance speech, not interviewing with Ralph
Reed and friends for the next time around.
Conservatives could not have imagined it would
end this way: the movement that produced Ollie
North, Alan Keyes, and ardent armies of true
believers, now mulling over an arranged marriage
of convenience with a Harvard man who converted
for the occasion. George Will must be reaching for
his Yeats: "Was it for this … that all that blood was
shed?"
For more than a year, Republican presidential
candidates tried to win the Reagan Primary. Their
final tableau came at a debate in the Gipper's
library, with his airplane as a backdrop and his
widow in the front row. It was bad enough to see
them reach back 20 years to find a conservative
president they could believe in, but this might be
worse: Now Romney's competing to claim he's the
biggest conservative loser since Reagan. If McCain
comes up short like Gerald Ford, Mitt wants to
launch a comeback like it's 1976.
Even conservative leaders can't hide their
astonishment over finding themselves in this
position. "If someone had suggested a year ago
and a half ago that we would be welcoming Mitt
Romney as a potential leader of the conservative
movement, no one would have believed it,"
American Conservative Union chairman David
Keene reportedly told the group. "But over the last
year and a half, he has convinced us he is one of
us and walks with us."
Conservative activist Jay Sekulow told the
Washington Times that Romney is a "turnaround
specialist" who can revive conservatism's fortunes.
But presumably, Romney's number-crunching skills
are the last thing the movement needs: there are
no voters left to fire.
104/140
To be sure, Mitt was with conservatives when the
music stopped. Right-wing activists who voted in
the CPAC straw poll narrowly supported him over
McCain, 35% to 34%. By comparison, they favored
getting out of the United Nations by 57% to 42%
and opposed a foreign policy based on spreading
democracy by 82% to 15%. Small-government
conservatism trounced social conservatism 59% to
22%, with only 16% for national-security
conservatism.
As voters reminded him more Tuesdays than not,
Mitt Romney is not quite Ronald Reagan. He
doesn't have an issue like the Panama Canal. Far
from taking the race down to the wire, he'll end up
third. While he's a good communicator, many
voters looking for the face of conservatism couldn't
see past what one analyst in the Deseret News
described as the "CEO robot from Jupiter.'"
If anything, Romney was born to be the face of the
Ford wing of the Republican Party – an economic
conservative with only a passing interest in the
other two legs of Reagan's conservative stool. Like
Ford, Mitt won the Michigan primary. He won all
the places he calls home, and it's not his fault his
father wasn't governor of more states.
Romney does have one advantage. With a
conservative president nearing historic lows in the
polls and a presumptive nominee more intent on
leading the country, heading the conservative
movement might be like running the 2002
Olympics – a job nobody else wants.
Paul Erickson, the Romney strategist who
organized the conservative powwow, called
McCain's nomination "an existential crisis for the
Republican Party," and held out Mitt as a possible
Messiah: "You could tell everybody at the table
sitting with Romney was asking himself: 'Is he the
one?'"
Romney has demonstrated many strengths over
the years, but impersonating a diehard
conservative and leading a confused movement out
of the wilderness aren't foremost among them. It
might be time for the right to take up another
existential question: If conservatism needs Mitt
Romney and Ralph Reed to make a comeback, is
there enough face left to save? ... 3:37 p.m. (link)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008
Romney, We Hardly Knew Ye: When Mitt
Romney launched his campaign last year, he struck
many Republicans as the perfect candidate. He was
a businessman with a Midas touch, an optimist with
a charmed life and family, a governor who had
slain the Democratic dragon in the blue state
Republicans love to hate. In a race against national
heroes like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, he
started out as a dark horse, but to handicappers,
he was a dark horse with great teeth.
When Democrats looked at Romney, we also saw
the perfect candidate—for us to run against. The
best presidential candidates have the ability to
change people's minds. Mitt Romney never got that
far because he never failed to change his own mind
first.
So when Romney gamely suspended his campaign
this afternoon, there was heartfelt sadness on both
sides of the aisle. Democrats are sorry to lose an
adversary whose ideological marathon vividly
illustrated the vast distance a man must travel to
reach the right wing of the Republican Party.
Romney fans lose a candidate who just three
months ago led the polls in Iowa and New
Hampshire and was the smart pick to win the
nomination.
With a formidable nominee in John McCain, the
GOP won't be sorry. But Romney's farewell at the
Conservative Political Action Committee meeting
shows how far the once-mighty right wing has
fallen. In an introduction laced with barbs in
McCain's direction, Laura Ingraham's description of
Mitt as "a conservative's conservative" said all
there is to say about Romney's campaign and the
state of the conservative movement. If their last,
best hope is a guy who only signed up two years
ago and could hardly convince them he belonged,
the movement is in even worse shape than it
looks.
Had Romney run on his real strength—as an
intelligent, pragmatic, and competent manager—
his road to the nomination might have gone the
way of Rudy Giuliani's. Yet ironically, his eagerness
to preach the conservative gospel brought on his
demise. Romney pandered with conviction. He
even tried to make it a virtue, defending his
105/140
conversion on abortion by telling audiences that he
would never apologize for being a latecomer to the
cause of standing up for human life. Conservatives
thanked him for trying but preferred the genuine
article. In Iowa, Romney came in second to a true
believer, and New Hampshire doesn't have enough
diehards to put him over the top.
Romney's best week came in Michigan, when a
sinking economy gave him a chance to talk about
the one subject where his party credentials were in
order. In Michigan, Romney sounded like a 21stcentury version of the business Republicans who
dominated that state in the '50s and '60s—proud,
decent, organization men like Gerald Ford and
George Romney. As he sold his plan to turn the
Michigan economy around, Mitt seemed as
surprised as the voters by how much better he
could be when he genuinely cared about the
subject.
By then, however, he had been too many things to
too many people for too long. McCain was
authentic, Huckabee was conservative, and
Romney couldn't convince enough voters he was
either one.
Good sport to the end, Romney went down
pandering. His swansong at CPAC touched all the
right's hot buttons. He blamed out-of-wedlock
births on government programs, attacks on
religion, and "tolerance for pornography." He got
his biggest applause for attacking the welfare
state, declaring dependency a culture-killing poison
that is "death to initiative."
Even in defeat, he gave glimpses of the Mitt we'll
miss—the lovably square, Father Knows Best figure
with the impossibly wholesome family and perfect
life. He talked about taking "a weed-whacker to
regulations." He warned that we might soon
become "the France of the 21st century." He
pointed out that he had won nearly as many states
as McCain, but joked awkwardly with the
ultraconservative audience that he lost "because
size does matter."
He didn't say whether we'll have the Romneys to
kick around anymore. But with the family fortune
largely intact and five sons to carry on the torch,
we can keep hope alive. In the Salt Lake City paper
this morning, a leading political scientist predicted
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
that if Democrats win the White House in 2008,
Romney "would automatically be a frontrunner for
2012."
It's hard to imagine a more perfect outcome. For
now, sadness reigns. As the Five Brothers might
say, somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere
children shout; but there is no joy in Mittville—Guy
Smiley has dropped out. ... 5:42 p.m. (link)
Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008
Mittmentum: With John McCain on cruise control
toward the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney
finds himself in a desperate quest to rally true
believers – a role for which his even temper and
uneven record leave him spectacularly unsuited.
Romney knows how to tell the party faithful
everything they want to hear. But it's not easy for
a man who prides himself on his optimism, polish,
and good fortune to stir anger and mutiny in the
conservative base. Only a pitchfork rebellion can
stop McCain now, and Luddites won't man the
ramparts because they like your PowerPoint.
So far, the Republican base seems neither shaken
nor stirred. McCain has a commanding 2-1 margin
in national polls, and leads Romney most
everywhere except California, where Mitt hopes for
an upset tonight. Professional troublemakers like
Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are up in arms,
trying to persuade their followers that McCain is
somehow Hillary by other means. On Monday,
Limbaugh did his best imitation of Romney's stump
speech, dubbing Mitt the only candidate who
stands for all three legs of the conservative stool.
Strange bedfellows indeed: Rush-Romney is like a
hot-blooded android – the first DittoheadConehead pairing in galactic history.
On Saturday, Mitt Romney wandered to the back of
his campaign plane and told the press, "These
droids aren't the droids you're looking for." Oddly
enough, that's exactly the reaction most
Republicans have had to his campaign.
But in the home stretch, Romney has energized
one key part of his base: his own family.
Yesterday, the Romney boys set a campaign record
by putting up six posts on the Five Brothers blog –
matching their high from when they launched last
106/140
April. Mitt may be down, but the Five Brothers are
back.
The past month has been grim for the happy-golucky Romney boys. They sometimes went days
between posts. When they did post, it was often
from states they had just campaigned in and lost.
Bright spots were hard to come by. After South
Carolina, Tagg found a "Romney girl" video, set to
the tune of "1985," in which a smiling young
Alabaman named Danielle sang of Mitt as the next
Reagan. One commenter recommended raising $3
million to run the clip as a Super Bowl ad; another
asked Danielle out on behalf of his own five sons. A
few days later, Matt put up a clip of a computerized
prank call to his dad, pretending to be Arnold
Schwarzenegger – prompting a priceless exchange
between robo-candidate and Terminator. Then the
real Arnold spoiled the joke by endorsing the real
McCain.
In the run-up to Super Tuesday, however, a spring
is back in the Five Brothers' step. On Sunday, Josh
wrote a post about his campaign trip to Alaska.
Richard Nixon may have lost in 1960 because his
pledge to campaign in all 50 states forced him to
spend the last weekend in Alaska. That didn't stop
Josh Romney, who posted a gorgeous photo of
Mount McKinley and a snapshot of some Romney
supporters shivering somewhere outside Fairbanks,
where the high was 13 below. He wrote, "I
sampled all of the Alaskan classics: moose, salmon
and whale. Oh so good." Eating whale would
certainly be red meat for a liberal crowd, but
conservatives loved it too. "Moose is good stuff,"
one fan wrote. Another supporter mentioned
friends who've gone on missions abroad and "talk
about eating dog, horse, cow stomach, bugs."
Rush, take note: McCain was ordering room service
at the Hanoi Hilton while Mitt was keeping the faith
by choking down tripe in Paris.
The rest of the family sounds like it's on the trail of
big game as well. Ben Romney, the least prolific of
the Five Brothers, didn't post from Thanksgiving
through the South Carolina primary. Yesterday, he
posted twice in one day – with a link to Limbaugh
and a helpful guide to tonight's results, noting that
in the past week members of the Romney family
have campaigned in 17 of 21 states up for grabs
on Super Tuesday. Now we can scientifically
measure the Romney effect, by comparing the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
results in those 17 states with the four states
(Idaho, Montana, Connecticut, Arizona) no Romney
visited. After Huckabee's victory in West Virginia,
the early score is 1-0 in favor of no Romneys.
Tagg, the team captain, also posted twice, urging
the faithful to "Keep Fighting," and touting Mitt's
evangelical appeal: "The Base Is Beginning to
Rally." Back in June, Tagg joked with readers about
who would win a family farting contest. Now he's
quoting evangelical Christian ministers. The
brothers are so focused on the race, they haven't
even mentioned their beloved Patriots' loss,
although there has been no word from young
Craig, the one they tease as a Tom Brady
lookalike.
Of course, if the Republican race ends tonight, the
inheritance Mitt has told the boys not to count on
will be safe at last. By all accounts, they couldn't
care less. They seem to share Tagg's easy-comeeasy-go view that no matter what happens, this
will have been the best trip the family has ever
taken, and this time no dogs were harmed along
the way (just moose, salmon, and whale).
At the moment, the Five Brothers must feel the
same nostalgia to keep going that the rest of us
will feel for their antics when they're gone. Back
when the campaign began, Tagg joked that they
would love their father win or lose, although he
might become something of a national
laughingstock in the meantime. Mitt did his part,
but whatever happens tonight, he can be proud the
firewall he cares most about – his family – has held
up its end of the bargain. ... 6:15 p.m. (link)
the undercover economist
The Wisdom of Crowds?
A single economic forecast is usually wrong. But groups of economic forecasts
are often just as mistaken. Why?
By Tim Harford
Saturday, August 9, 2008, at 6:44 AM ET
When people discover that I am an economist, they rarely ask
me for my views on subjects that economists know a bit about—
such as how to respond to climate change or pay less at a
supermarket. Instead, they ask me what will happen to the
economy.
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Why is it that people won't take "I don't really know" for an
answer? People often chuckle about the forecasting skills of
economists, but after the snickers die down, they keep
demanding more forecasts. Is there any reason to believe that
economists can deliver?
One answer can be gleaned from previous forecasts. Back in
1995, economist and Financial Times columnist John Kay
examined the record of 34 British forecasters from 1987 to 1994,
and he concluded that they were birds of a feather. They tended
to make similar forecasts, and then the economy disobligingly
did something else, with economic growth usually falling
outside the range of all 34 forecasters.
Perhaps forecasting technology has moved on since then, or the
British economy is unusually unpredictable? To find out, I
repeated John's exercise with forecasts for economic growth for
the United Kingdom, United States, and Eurozone over the years
2002-08, diligently collected at the end of each previous year by
Consensus Economics.
The results are an eerie echo of John Kay's: For 2004, for
example, 20 out of 21 nongovernmental forecasts made in
December 2003 were too pessimistic about economic growth in
the United Kingdom. The Pollyannas of the U.K. treasury were
more optimistic than almost any commercial forecaster and
closer getting their forecast right. So, one might suspect that
systematic pessimism is to blame.
But, no, in 2005, the economy grew more slowly than 19 out of
21 forecasters had expected at the end of the previous year. The
Pollyannas of the U.K. treasury were yet again more optimistic
than anyone and thus more wrong than anyone. A year later, all
but one of the forecasters were too pessimistic again. Yet at the
end of 2001, three-quarters of the forecasters were too optimistic
about 2002.
2003 is an interesting anomaly: the one year for which the
average U.K. forecast turned out to be close to reality but also
the year where the spread between highest and lowest forecast
was widest. The rare occasion that the forecasters couldn't agree
happened to be the occasion on which they were (on average)
right.
Recent U.S. forecasters have done a little better: The spread of
forecasts is tighter, and the outcome sometimes falls within that
spread. Still, five out of six were too pessimistic about 2003,
almost everyone was too pessimistic about 2002, three-quarters
were too optimistic about 2005, and nearly nine-tenths too
optimistic about 2006. Perversely, the best quantitative end-ofyear forecasts were made in December 2006, despite the fact that
the credit crunch materialized eight months later to the surprise
of almost everybody.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
In the Eurozone, forecasting over the past few years has been so
wayward that it is kindest to say no more.
The new data seem to confirm Kay's original finding that
economic forecasters all tend to be wrong in the same way.
Their incentives to flock together are obvious enough.
What is less clear is why the flight of the flock is so often
thought to augur much—but then, some astrologers are also
profitably employed.
The curious thing is that forecasters often have something useful
to say, but it is rarely conveyed in the numerical forecast itself
on which so much attention is lavished. For instance, in
December 2006, forecasters were warning of the risks of an oil
price spike, a sharp rise in the cost of credit, and a dollar crash.
The quantitative forecasts are usually wrong and not terribly
helpful when right, but forecasters do say things worth hearing,
if only you can work out when to listen.
today's business press
Inflation Nation
Friday, August 15, 2008, at 5:23 AM ET
today's business press
Greenspan Bites Back
By Matthew Yeomans
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 6:11 AM ET
The Wall Street Journal leads its business coverage with candid
insight from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
He foresees better news for the housing market: Home prices
"are likely to start to stabilize or touch bottom sometime in the
first half of 2009." But he is scathing in his view of how the
Bush administration has handled the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac
mortgage mess. While bristling at criticism that he contributed to
the nation's woes (he points out that world markets pushed
interest rates down), Greenspan directs most of his ire at the
"Here's the keys to the bank" mortgage rescue plan brokered by
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
"They should have wiped out the shareholders, nationalized the
institutions with legislation that they are to be reconstituted—
with necessary taxpayer support to make them financially
viable—as five or 10 individual privately held units" that could
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then be auctioned off, Greenspan tells the Journal. His sharp
words come as CNN Money reports nearly 25 percent of all
homes sold nationwide during the last 12 months fetched less
than the sellers originally paid for them and as the New York
Times documents the continued decline in retail sales, "despite
the booster shot of billions of dollars from the government's tax
stimulus program."
The NYT keeps its focus on the failing SUV beat this morning
with news that Chrysler will spend $1.8 billion to convert a
Detroit plant from producing Jeep Grand Cherokees to "more
fuel-efficient, car-based crossovers." Speaking of off-loading
underperforming models, could the Russians be about to grab
control of Hummer? Reuters reports that GM has had
"preliminary contact with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska" on a
possible sale of its muscular SUV range. That surely would dent
the Hummer's patriotic purchasing power. Fortune says GM
(which has lost $51 billion over the last three years) might not be
in the mess it is now if CEO Rick Wagoner hadn't scuttled an
alliance with Renault-Nissan back in 2006. It writes that
according to a "confidential analysis prepared for the deal that
was obtained by Fortune, the tie-up could have produced as
much as $10 billion in operating earnings per year for GM by
2011."
Both the Financial Times and NYT give ink to Genentech's
initial rejection of the unsolicited $43.7 billion takeover bid by
Swiss majority owner Roche while noting that the California
biotechnology wiz is playing hard to get. "Genentech said that a
special committee of directors had found that Roche's offer of
$89 a share 'substantially undervalues the company,' " writes the
NYT. Roche's three biggest-selling drugs—the cancer medicines
Rituxan, Herceptin, and Avastin—are produced by Genentech,
and while the two connected companies once had been seen to
complement each other, their businesses "have started to
overlap—and at points, compete—more significantly in recent
years," writes the FT. With Roche expected to sweeten the deal,
a merger could open the floodgates for consolidation in the Big
Pharma world between other major players like Eli Lily, Bayer,
and Johnson & Johnson and their smaller, cooler biotech
partners.
So far today only the FT reports that JP Morgan and Morgan
Stanley are close to a settlement with U.S. regulators that would
involve buying back "billions of dollars worth of auction rate
securities [ARS] from investors." JP Morgan's clients hold about
$5 billion in ARS, while Morgan Stanley has intimated that it is
willing to buy back about $4.5 billion. With Citigroup and UBS
recently agreeing to buy back more than $26 billion in ARS and
pay fines of $250 million, based on the general accusations that
banks misrepresented these securities as liquid assets, these
latest pending settlements underscore the banking industry's
"desire to draw a line under a controversy that has sparked
dozens of state and federal investigations and numerous lawsuits
by regulators and investors," writes the FT.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Finally, with both the WSJ and NYT reporting that Paula Wagner
could be about to quit as chief executive of United Artists,
perhaps she might consider a career in a new growth
entertainment industry for women—the Internet? A NYT
advertising story cites statistics showing that "sites aimed
primarily at women, from 'mommy blogs' to makeup and fashion
sites, grew 35 percent last year—faster than every other category
on the Web except politics." Funding, acquisitions, and ad
revenue is following the female online crowd. And with
Comcast recently coughing up $125 million to purchase Daily
Candy, what might a Hollywood mogul achieve?
today's business press
Banky Panky
By Matthew Yeomans
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 6:06 AM ET
As if Swiss bank UBS wasn't having a bad enough month, along
comes the Financial Times with an exclusive report alleging
senior execs "knew some of their bankers had acted in a way that
meant they risked breaching American securities laws at least a
year before the U.S. inquiries began." At issue are claims that
UBS bankers advised U.S. clients on investing in securities
without obtaining the necessary legal registration, part of a
larger probe into whether UBS promoted tax evasion for wealthy
American clients. In a 2006 letter written by UBS general
counsel (and now chairman) Peter Kurer to the banker at the
heart of the U.S. investigation, Kurer admitted "he had received
information from a whistleblower, who had drawn attention to
the problems the bank faced because of the inadequate securities
registration," writes the FT.
Life isn't much sweeter for compatriot bank Credit Suisse. It is
close to agreeing to a $9.6 million settlement with the United
Kingdom's financial watchdog after a trading scandal that
prompted the bank to take a $2.7 billion write-down earlier this
year. Makes you nostalgic for the days when Swiss banks were
the models of discretion, no?
Still, on the other side of the pond, macroeconomic seers are
digesting the latest inflation figures from the United Kingdom
that show consumer prices rose 4.4 percent from a year earlier,
up from 3.8 percent in June. The spike marks a 16-year high,
twice the inflation target set by the British government. Things
are likely to get worse as the Bank of England is set to predict
inflation could touch 5 percent soon. Oil, of course, has been
driving consumer prices higher and finally those high prices
have begun to hit home. U.S. demand for oil fell 800,000 barrels
per day for the first six months of this year, according to the
Energy Information Administration. That's the "sharpest drop in
26 years, compared to a year before," the BBC reports.
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Crude prices at $113 a barrel would have buoyed investors were
it not for more misery in the financial sector. JPMorgan shares
fell 9.5 percent Tuesday, while Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
and Wachovia Corp. fell about 12 percent on concerns expressed
by JPMorgan that the U.S. housing crisis is going to get worse.
The growing numbers of foreclosed homes are forcing banks to
take drastic action, "shedding them at increasingly steep losses
[and] potentially adding to the banking industry's red ink this
year," notes the Wall Street Journal. Exacerbating the
banking/mortgage/credit crisis is a breakdown in confidence in
the market for securitization, "a crucial artery of modern money
management," as the New York Times puts it. Demonized for
seducing the banks by reducing the risk in the subprime market,
securitization nevertheless remains a crucial tool of funding
debt. Now, however, bond investors who have been spooked out
of the mortgage market also "are becoming wary of credit card
debts and auto loans," writes the NYT.
News from commodity country next. The Department of
Agriculture is forecasting the second-highest corn yield on
record, says the NYT. U.S. farmers will produce 12.3 billion
bushels this year, about 600 million bushels more than were
expected earlier in the summer. The prospect of a corn blight
and potential prices of $9 a bushel had pitted ethanol fuel
interests against big livestock producers and "would probably
have been ruinous to livestock producers and ethanol plants
alike," writes the NYT. Yesterday's figures offer stability to the
corn market. "We dodged a bullet," says one grain analyst.
Cotton traders think they've been shot in the back, however. A
March price spike has many old-school traders blaming "billions
of dollars in new bets by big institutional investors for distorting
prices [with] some cry[ing] market manipulation," writes the
WSJ. Now the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is
conducting an investigation into whether cotton prices were
"artificially inflated" by neophyte speculators and whether that
injection of investment caused the traditional cotton merchants
to make irrational risky bets themselves.
Finally, we know it's August, but is it really necessary for the
NYT to write yet another "SUVs aren't selling" story? Wasn't it
just five days ago that a Times editorial opined on the "thousands
of secondhand S.U.V.s [that] sit unwanted and ignored in car
dealerships across the land"? And wasn't it just two weeks ago
that the same paper warned readers that the "fact is that not
many people want your big vehicle right now"? Is it any wonder
the Big Three are pulling their advertising?
today's business press
Andrew Cuomo, Market Savior
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By James Ledbetter
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 4:32 AM ET
If you didn't know better, you might reasonably conclude that
the top financial regulator in the United States is Andrew
Cuomo. The hard-working New York State attorney general has
been engaged for weeks in hardball negotiations with major
banks—including UBS, Wachovia, Citigroup, and Merrill
Lynch—successfully forcing them to buy back billions of
auction-rate securities, on the basis that those instruments were
misleadingly sold to investors. And if Cuomo doesn't like a
bank's terms, he throws them right back, as the Financial Times
reports today; Cuomo rejected Morgan Stanley's $4.5 billion
offer as "too little, too late."
New Yorkers who remember the gubernatorial career of
Andrew's father, Mario, will have little trouble imagining the
family gift for tough negotiations. And given how swiftly the
banks seem to be getting in line, there seems to be no question
that Cuomo has the authority and jurisdiction to take on global
financial firms. But isn't protecting investors from alleged Wall
Street fraud also a duty of the U.S. government—namely, the
Securities and Exchange Commission?
Yes, allows the Wall Street Journal's Heidi Moore: The SEC
played a role in these deals, but "Cuomo won the headlines and
took on the mantle of Savior of the Little Guy just as his
predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, fell into disgrace and the SEC itself is
begging for its life from a newly powerful Federal Reserve."
Perhaps this is lame-duckery from outgoing SEC head
Christopher Cox, but it may have lasting damage, notes Moore:
"Considering how embattled the regulator is right now in both
finances and reputation, count failing to get out ahead of this
auction-rate securities raid as a missed opportunity for getting
some credit for fighting for Main Street."
Is Great Britain being squeezed by a punishing bout of inflation?
That may depend on which paper you read. "Inflation set to hit 5
percent as goods prices surge," warns today's London Times
headline. "Official figures confirmed that prices for U.K.manufactured products last month rose by 10.2 percent from a
year earlier, marking their fastest annual pace of increase since
1986," reports the paper. That sounds bad, but somehow the WSJ
isn't alarmed. Under the headline "U.K. Data Show Signs
Inflation Is Easing," the WSJ argues that the 10.2 percent figure
"was lower than expected," although it fails to indicate who was
doing the expecting.
It looks as if two more Southern California banks may be
teetering on the financial edge. Downey Financial Corp and
Vineyard National Bancorp "may not have enough capital to
continue operations amid a surge in depositor withdrawals,"
Bloomberg reports. Downey, based in Newport Beach, was
heavily involved in option-adjustable-rate mortgages, which
make payments balloon over time and look increasingly risky.
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The company lost its CEO last month, and has seen its stock
shrivel from $63 a share last fall to under $2 a share on Monday.
Downey has had to rely on loans from the federal government,
and now Marketwatch reports that regulators are restricting
aspects of Downey's business, including limits on dividends and
new borrowing.
We've not heard the last of the international hacking ring that
prosecutors fingered last week for stealing tens of millions of
credit and debit card identities. A front-page New York Times
story this morning serves up chilling details from the case,
notably the fact that the government's chief cooperating
informant, Albert Gonzalez, was apparently profiting from
illegal activity while seeming to help the government shut it
down. It also notes the use of "sniffer programs" that can extract
credit-card data from retailer networks even using remote access.
The tools of identity theft have become so sophisticated and
widespread, according to the Los Angeles Times, that the crime
has become a major focus for street gangs like the Crips and the
Mexican Mafia.
What will be the hot-selling business book this fall? Our money
is on the 976-page authorized biography of Warren Buffett (or,
as USA Today spells it, "Buffet"), titled The Snowball, according
to Reuters. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway may be having a tough
year, with two consecutive quarters of dropping profits. But the
book, written by former insurance analyst Alice Schroeder, will
focus on the long term. Its title apparently comes from a Forrest
Gump-like Buffett quip: "Life is like a snowball. The really
important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill."
today's business press
China Beats the United States
By Matthew Yeomans
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 6:07 AM ET
China's productivity might have shrunk a bit, what with having
to close down all those factories to reduce Olympic smog, but
it's a only a minor blip. As the Financial Times reports, China
will overtake the U.S. next year as the world's largest producer
of manufactured goods. That's four years earlier than expected,
and it comes on the back of the severely weakening economy.
But U.S. companies shouldn't be unduly worried, says John
Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers,
who says that "it promises both political stability for the world's
largest country and continuing opportunities for the U.S. to
export to, and invest in, the world's fastest-growing economy."
Back at the Olympics, NBC is beating back the Internet hordes
with phenomenal TV viewing figures. "More viewers tuned in to
watch the first two prime-time Olympics telecasts than any
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Summer Games in a decade," writes the Wall Street Journal. It
helps that NBC cast a protection order around its time-delayed
TV footage, playing what the New York Times called "digital
whack-a-mole" to "regulate leaks on the Web and shut down
unauthorized video" of live coverage.
This current triumph over the burgeoning power of the Internet
could be short-lived if a NYT story on Google's ambitions is to
be believed. The Times writes that content may yet be king for
Google—even though the company spent years stressing that,
unlike Yahoo, it had no designs to be a media company. With
content-creation vehicles like Blogger, Orkut, and YouTube
already under harness, Google's launch of Knol, a Wikipedialike reference tool that's a vehicle for ads—and that just happens
to perform very well in Google's search listings—has media
companies with an online advertising inventory worried.
That's when they're not worrying about Detroit. "In the first
quarter alone, the auto industry spent $414 million less on
advertising than in last year's first quarter," according to another
NYT report. Then there's the airlines. CNN Money reports that
cash-strapped airlines are working overtime to lure advertisers
onboard to target a "captive audience" with product placements
on everything from tray tables to boarding passes to, yes, even
airsick bags.
Staying in the air for the moment, American Airlines, British
Airways, and Spanish carrier Iberia are to ask the U.S.
government for permission to collaborate more closely on transAtlantic flights, says the WSJ. In the face of skyrocketing fuel
costs, this move would grant the three antitrust immunity,
allowing them to "cooperate internationally on pricing,
scheduling and marketing in ways normally deemed collusive
and illegal." Don't tell Richard Branson. The chairman of Virgin
Atlantic already is hopping mad over American and British
Airways' planned merger. He has written to presidential
contenders Barack Obama and John McCain warning that the
merger "would damage transatlantic competition and mean
customers lost out," the BBC reports.
Even though the global retail outlook looks particularly
cloudy—in the United Kingdom, big chains are losing out to
Internet-savvy independents, while in the United States, new
bankruptcy rules are hampering financially strapped retailers'
ability to reorganize—some major traders are looking to the sky
for sanctuary. The NYT reports how chains like "Wal-Mart
Stores, Kohl's, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed
solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a
large scale." It's part of a growing trend as companies seek to
bolster their green credentials "by cutting back on their use of
electricity from coal." But while big retail is fast becoming a
renewable energy leader, this new innovation and
implementation could be threatened by the failure so far of
Congress to renew the federal tax credit for renewable energy.
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Finally today: Apple CEO Steve Jobs is one happy man, now
that iPhone users have downloaded more than 60 million "apps"
from the iTunes store. While many of these mini-programs are
free, Apple still has managed to make an average of $1 million a
day in applications for a total of about $30 million in sales over
the past month. But at least one app has not been well-received.
When German developer Armin Heinrich produced the "I Am
Rich" download (it cost $1,000 and displayed nothing more than
a ruby image on the phone), he saw his creation as a parody of
the iPhone craze. The eight people who bought it sight unseen
were less impressed, and Heinrich has been "bombarded with email and phone messages, 'many of them insulting,' " the NYT
writes.
today's papers
The Caucasus Bog
By Ryan Grim
Friday, August 15, 2008, at 6:09 AM ET
The New York and Los Angeles Times lead with, and the
Washington Post fronts, the ongoing war between Russia and
Georgia and its impact on Russia-U.S. relations. The Wall Street
Journal tops its world-wide newsbox with the conflict, giving its
lead space to the worsening global economy. The Washington
Post leads with, and all but USA Today front, the anticipated
resignation of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Facing
formal impeachment charges Monday, Washington's friend in
Islamabad is plotting an exit strategy, aides told reporters across
the globe. USA Today leads with an "egregious loophole" that
allows big donors to fund the parties' political conventions,
complete with a list of the most generous, and fronts a huge
photo of Michael Phelps, who won his sixth gold early this
morning.
USAT fronts a scoop on Iraqi elections, quoting Iraq's top voting
regulator, who decries voter-intimidation tactics by the Shiite
majority that include raiding voting registration centers. The
head of a group of former insurgents who took part in the Sunni
Awakening—credited with a significant chunk of the downturn
of violence—says that the government fears losing power
through the ballot box.
The papers focus on the impact of the Russian-Georgian conflict
on U.S.-Russia relations, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates
saying the latter's behavior "called into question the entire
premise" of the relationship. The U.S. and Poland hastily signed
an agreement to base missiles in Poland, a move that Russia
strongly objects to, the threat of which may have contributed to
its decision to invade Georgia. The U.S. denied that the
announced agreement had anything to do with the ongoing
conflict and said that the missiles were only meant to defend
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
against "rogue" countries—by which it apparently doesn't mean
to include Russia.
Musharraf, reports the Post, hoped until recently that the military
would back his continuation in power, but military leaders told
him privately they wouldn't get involved, and his political
support continued to erode. Bush officials tell the Post that even
Vice President Cheney, a principal backer of Musharraf, has
conceded it's time for him to go, leaving one of the few
undecided voices in the White House belonging to President
Bush, who values Musharraf as an ally. "The vast majority of the
U.S. government has moved beyond their original attachment to
Musharraf," one official says.
The Journal sounds pessimistic, reporting up high that, with
news that the euro zone's economy retracted this past quarter,
"four of the world's five biggest economies—the U.S., the euro
zone, Japan and the U.K.—are now flirting with recession."
(Hint: The fifth is hosting the Olympics.)
The downturn isn't all bad for the United States, whose dollar is
strengthened as the other economies sag, reports the Journal.
But that strength, along with the ailing overseas economies, hits
the United States in its one remaining bright side: exports. TP
loves obscure stats that give a snapshot of a world trend, and the
Journal obliges, offering up the Baltic Dry Index, which is a
measure of demand for shipping services. It has fallen 37 percent
since hitting a record high on May 20.
Meanwhile, consumer-price inflation at home jumped to its
highest level in 17 years, 5.6 percent. Throw out food and oil
price increases—good luck with that in reality—and it's 2.5
percent. And the stimulus checks have been spent, as consumer
spending dipped in July. In a letter to clients, JPMorgan blames
the U.S. economy for dragging the world down with it.
If all the numbers don't bring it home, the Journal makes sure
the real-world impact is clear. "Cains Beer Co., Liverpool,
England, has seen revenues at the 100 pubs it owns suffer as
consumers cut spending. The cost of making beer at the 150year-old brewer increased as the price of hops shot up. It also
faced a 40% increase in the cost of aluminum for beer cans over
the past year or so," it notes. Because of the credit crunch, no
banks would extend loans to the brewer, and it's now liquidating
its nonliquid assets to pay off debts.
The Journal fronts a pushback against Russian charges that it
invaded Georgia in response to "genocide," essentially calling
the claim untrue.
Speculator speculation increased, reported on the WSJ's page C1,
on word that commercial speculators' role in the oil market was
bigger than previously thought—accounting for 49 percent of
the trading rather than 38 percent, as the futures-trading
112/140
regulator had previously said. The revision is fuel on a firey
debate within the agency regarding speculators' responsibility for
the upturn in price and the regulators' responsibility to lasso such
trading. The piece is accompanied by a graphic showing
speculative bets doubling over the past year.
The Washington Post goes inside with a story on China's empty
"protest pens"—designated areas, perhaps modeled after the U.S.
versions that now accompany political conventions—where
dissent is officially tolerated. U.S. activists have given them the
Orwellian name "freedom cages." In China, though, the
government doesn't seem quite ready to allow such symbolic
demonstrations, even fenced in: No one has showed up to the
cages, and Post reporters have been unable to find many wouldbe demonstrators who had the stones to apply for permits to
protest.
The Post fronts a look at how some young evangelical Christians
are facing doubts, not about God but about the GOP. The paper
sites a Pew survey showing that young evangelicals now identify
more closely with Democrats and independents than with
Republicans, a sharp difference from 2001.
"When you look at the political party that has traditionally
championed poverty, social justice and care for the least of
these, it's not been the Republican Party," one 25-year-old
evangelical told the Post. He said the Obama campaign reached
out to him personally when he earlier called on evangelicals to
acknowledge the reality of climate change, but he said that he
hasn't decided how to vote yet.
The U.S. won gold and silver in the women's gymnastics allaround finals, as Western reporters continued to uncover
evidence of the underage status of several allegedly 16-year-old
athletes. It's tougher to scrub those Internets than you might
think, China.
today's papers
Midnight Plane to Georgia
By Daniel Politi
Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 6:35 AM ET
The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Wall Street
Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with President Bush
announcing that U.S. military ships and planes would be sent to
Georgia to help deliver humanitarian aid to the war-torn country.
Bush also announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
would travel to Georgia and "convey America's unwavering
support for Georgia's democratic government." The moves came
as Bush criticized Russia for failing to abide by the cease-fire
agreement and continuing its military campaign into Georgia,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
where it has taken control of the city of Gori. "Russia must keep
its word and act to end this crisis," Bush said.
The Washington Post leads with news that Mark Warner, the
former governor of Virginia, will deliver the keynote address at
the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The paper sees
this as a sign that the current governor, Timothy Kaine, is
unlikely to be selected as Barack Obama's running mate because
it would mean that two Virginians would have prime-time
speaking slots on two successive days. USA Today leads with the
head of the House Homeland Security Committee saying that a
program designed to find problems in the airport screening
process is "a waste of money" because undercover agents fail to
record why they were allowed to go through with forbidden
items. The Transportation Security Administration disputes the
assessment and says the tests have resulted in new technology
and the implementation of better screening practices.
Bush's words in the Rose Garden amounted to the strongest
warning to Russia that its actions could have consequences, and
many saw it as an answer to conservative critics who say the
administration's initial response was lukewarm at best. The LAT
notes that many within the administration "were dismayed" that
Bush first sent only a mid-level State Department official to
Georgia because "Russia watches such signals closely." Before
touching down in Tbilisi, Rice will travel to France and meet
with President Nicolas Sarkozy to lend a hand to the
negotiations between Russia and Georgia. The WP notes inside
that Bush's mix of "strong rhetoric with modest action," along
with his administration's failure to outline what would be the
consequences for Russia if it doesn't stop its campaign,
highlights just how few options the United States has to deal
with the current conflict.
The NYT points out that although Georgia's president at first said
the announcement meant that U.S. troops would help protect the
country's airports and ports, the Pentagon quickly said that was
not the case. Military officials have taken pains to emphasize
that the U.S. service members would be there only to oversee the
delivery of aid. But a Pentagon official tells the NYT their goals
are more than altruistic, as the relief effort is meant "to show to
Russia that we can come to the aid of a European ally, and that
we can do it at will, whenever and wherever we want."
Cold War imagery was everywhere yesterday, as U.S. and
Georgian officials repeatedly mentioned the 1968 invasion of
Czechoslovakia. ("This is not 1968 … where Russia can invade
its neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get
away with it," Rice said. "Things have changed.") Even if the
American service members will only be helping to deliver
humanitarian aid, it still means that it will "put U.S. and Russian
military forces in close proximity amid an ongoing conflict,"
notes the WSJ, which specifies that this is "a rare event even in
the decades when the U.S. faced off against the Soviet Union
around the world."
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The LAT and WSJ both front separate dispatches from Gori,
where Georgians said that bandits and militias from South
Ossetia entered the city with Russian troops and proceeded to
roam the streets, loot homes, and rob anyone who crossed their
path. No one is clear on what Russia's goal was with the
incursion into Gori, but like so much of this conflict, some think
it was all symbolic. "Wednesday may have been one last swipe
of humiliation for a defeated Georgia, a final reminder of
Russia's military superiority," says the LAT. The WP also notes
that Human Rights Watch says "numerous houses" in ethnic
Georgian villages in South Ossetia were looted and burnt down.
The NYT's dispatch from Gori focuses on the Russian soldiers
who had a "strong sense of satisfaction" yesterday after easily
occupying the city. Russia's military suffered much humiliation
after the Soviet Union collapsed, but the conflict in Georgia
"seems to have restored a sense of confidence among its
officers."
League lawyer who sees himself as someone who can unite
members of different parties.
The NYT's Andrew Kramer received a copy of the six-point
cease-fire deal that Sarkozy negotiated with the Russians that
included handwritten changes that the Georgians had asked for
but did not receive (available here). The NYT says that the deal
not only failed to stop the Russian troops but, in fact, "also
allowed Russia to claim that it could push deeper into Georgia as
part of so-called additional security measures it was granted in
the agreement." When negotiating with Sarkozy, Russia
demanded that a point be included to grant the country's military
the right to act as peacekeepers even outside the separatist
regions until a system of international monitors could be
implemented. Georgia wanted a clear timeline to establish when
these "peacekeeping" operations would end, but Russia refused.
In the WP's op-ed page, Saakashvili writes that the events of the
last few days showed that the "Russian leadership cannot be
trusted" and "[o]nly Western peacekeepers can end the war."
After Russia invaded with such strong force, Georgia's
government tried to negotiate a deal with Moscow, but Russian
officials ignored their pleas for a cease-fire. "I have staked my
country's fate on the West's rhetoric about democracy and
liberty," writes Saakashvili. "We cannot allow Georgia to
become the first victim of a new world order as imagined by
Moscow."
The WP's Charles Krauthammer writes that Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin's "real objective" in the conflict "is the
Finlandization of Georgia" by replacing the current president
with "a Russian puppet." Krauthammer argues that one point that
has been ignored about the cease-fire deal is that it leaves most
of the important decisions for the future and would require
negotiations between Russia and Georgia. The problem is that
Russia refuses to talk to Saakashvili, which means that "regime
change becomes the first requirement" before any progress can
be achieved.
Speaking of Putin, the WP notes inside that the conflict with
Georgia has made it clear who is really in charge of the Russian
government. Although this was widely known before, "the
events of the past five days wiped away any pretense that
President Dmitry Medvedev runs the country."
Even as the WP says that Kaine's chances of being selected as
Obama's vice president appeared to dim, the NYT goes inside
with a profile of the Virginia governor and says the campaign is
eyeing him as a potential choice for the No. 2 slot. The NYT and
WP note that the problem with Kaine is that he seems to mirror
Obama too much, since he's an inexperienced, charismatic, Ivy
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The LAT fronts word that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might
give in to pressure from fellow Democrats and put forward
legislation that would allow new offshore drilling as part of a
broader energy package. Pelosi has long opposed offshore
drilling, but several Democrats who face a steep battle for reelection in November have been asking her to reconsider and
allow the issue to come up for a vote. One measure currently
under consideration would allow states to decide whether they
want drilling off their coasts while also keeping the ban in place
for the Pacific Coast. But this offshore drilling measure would
likely be included only if some Democratic priorities, such as a
repeal of tax breaks for oil companies, are also added to the mix,
which makes it less likely that Republicans would support the
legislation.
John McCain writes an opinion piece for the WSJ titled "We Are
All Georgians," in which he advocates for the creation of an
international peacekeeping force in the separatist regions. But it's
difficult to get past the first sentence: "For anyone who thought
that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the
last week must have come as a startling wake-up call."
today's papers
Message Received
By Daniel Politi
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 7:04 AM ET
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and
the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox all lead with
Georgia and Russia agreeing to a provisional cease-fire after five
days of war in which Moscow successfully reasserted its power
over the region. "The aggressor has been punished," Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev said. After French President
Nicolas Sarkozy secured Medvedev's signature in the cease-fire
agreement, Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, announced
he accepted the general terms of the plan. But it's still far from
clear whether the fighting has actually stopped. The WP goes
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high with claims that Russia continued its bombing campaign
even after Saakashvili made his announcement.
USA Today leads with word that the Transportation Security
Administration had been collecting the information of
passengers who showed up at airport checkpoints without
identification and adding them to a database of people who
violated security laws. At first, the head of TSA justified the
program saying that potential terrorists might be trying to figure
out security weaknesses at certain airports. The program began
in late June and apparently stopped yesterday after USAT
inquired about it.
Early-morning wire stories report that, at least for now, the
fighting in Georgia continues. The head of the country's national
security council said that about 50 Russian tanks entered the
Georgian city of Gori this morning. Still, the papers say that by
merely accepting the cease-fire deal Russia appears to be
stopping short of a full-on invasion of Georgia to overthrow
Saakashvili's government. Even if Moscow doesn't manage to
get rid of a neighboring leader it clearly despises, "Russia has
achieved its goals," says the NYT. The LAT agrees and says that
according to most analysts, the peace proposal "left no doubt that
Russia won the military conflict of the last several days."
Under the agreement, troops from both countries are supposed to
return to their prewar positions, but the WSJ notes there were
hints in South Ossetia yesterday that the Russian army "isn't
leaving soon." And the peace plan leaves open the question of
what will happen with the separatist regions of South Ossetia
and Abkhazia. The LAT says that after all is said and done, it is
likely that Georgia will end up giving up its claims to the two
regions. But diplomats aren't thinking that far ahead for now and
are trying to get the fighting to stop first so that detailed
negotiations can follow.
While Georgia has often been cast in the last few days as the
poor victim of Russian aggression, some of the papers say that
Western officials are placing some blame on Georgia's leaders
for launching a military operation in South Ossetia without
weighing the consequences. Russian officials say Georgian
troops killed 2,000 people, a figure that no one can confirm and
analysts believe has been inflated to support Moscow's
contention that Saakashvili is guilty of war crimes.
The WSJ takes a look at some of the long-term repercussions of
the conflict and notes it has created a significant setback to
Western efforts to create new routes for oil and gas that bypass
Russian control. The WP says that while Russia denies it tried to
hit an oil pipeline that crosses Georgia, "craters were visible
around the pipeline." Georgian officials say their country has
suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. And even
after all the damage has been repaired, "the brief war has dented
Georgia's reputation as a secure energy corridor," says the WSJ.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
In a separate Page One piece, the LAT says that it "took just five
days of war to deal a shattering blow to Georgia's collective
psyche." Georgians were just starting to let go of the idea that
they were under constant threat from their northern neighbor,
and many thought their newly formed friendship with the United
States would help them in a time of crisis. Instead, "they found
themselves alone—and facing Moscow's wrath." At times, it
seemed as though Moscow was just showing off its military
might by, for example, quickly overtaking towns in Georgia and
then leaving. (On Monday, Slate's Fred Kaplan said it's
"infuriating" that the Bush administration convinced Georgia
that "if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans
would bail them out.")
As much as Georgians might have a new sense of vulnerability,
many believe that Russia's response to Georgia's military
operation was just an excuse to send a message. "I think this was
aimed much more to the West, more to Ukraine, Central Asia
and the other Caucasus states," a Russia analyst tells the LAT.
Case in point, the WSJ reports that the Polish prime minister said
yesterday that his country would need more security guarantees
from the United States if it's going to risk angering Russia by
hosting a U.S. missile-defense shield.
Besides the obvious geopolitical implications of the GeorgiaRussia conflict, the NYT notes another reason why the war has
been historic: "[I]t was the first time a known cyberattack had
coincided with a shooting war." Georgia's Internet infrastructure
began to suffer attacks as early as July 20, and that may have
been a mere "dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the
shooting started." Experts say this trend will continue if for no
other reason than it's an extremely cheap way to disrupt a
country. Of course, the Russian government denies that it was
behind the cyberattacks.
Everyone mentions news that superstar swimmer Michael Phelps
continues on track to break the record for most gold medals in
the history of the Olympics—"two more races, two more gold
medals, two more world records, cue the yawns," summarizes
the WP. In his short life, Phelps has now won a total of 11 gold
medals, which is already a record.
Meanwhile, NBC has been profiting handsomely from Phelps'
success. Predictions that NBC's nearly $1 billion gamble to air
the games wouldn't pay off have so far been proved wrong as the
Beijing Olympics have had the best numbers for any summer
games since Atlanta in 1996, notes the LAT on Page One. The
LAT adds that although many worried the ubiquity of online
video would turn people away from the NBC coverage, it seems
the constant online presence of the games only helps feed the
Olympics addiction. The WSJ isn't as optimistic and notes that
the remaining 12 days of the Olympics "will reveal how much of
this initial success has to do with 1) Michael Phelps; and 2)
Michael Phelps broadcast live." Swimming will be over next
week, when attention will switch to track and field, where the
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athletes aren't as well-known and the events won't be broadcast
live.
In the run-up to the Olympics, there was lots of talk about how
China wanted to put its best face forward for the games. Turns
out that was literally true. The NYT fronts, and everyone
mentions, the revelation that the girl who supposedly sang "Ode
to the Motherland" during the opening ceremonies was actually
lip-synching, and the voice heard around the world belonged to
another girl who was deemed not cute enough for the cameras.
"We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance," a
musical director for the opening ceremony said. "The audience
will understand that it's in the national interest."
today's papers
Russian Roulette
By Ben Whitford
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 6:12 AM ET
All the papers lead with the continuing crisis in the Caucasus,
where Russia yesterday stepped up its advance into Georgian
territory, opening a second front in the four-day-old war. The
Washington Post reports that Russian tank columns left
separatist-controlled strongholds and crossed into undisputed
Georgian territory, seizing a town and a military base in the west
of Georgia and advancing on the central town of Gori. USA
Today reports that the country's president, Mikheil Saakashvili,
called for immediate international intervention "to prevent the
fall of Georgia."
The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both focus on
European and American efforts to adjust to "a new geopolitical
game," presenting Moscow's aggression as a bid to turn back the
clock to a time when Russia's regional hegemony went
unchallenged. In a conference call, a senior U.S. government
official explicitly compared the conflict to Soviet-era invasions
of Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia. The Los Angeles Times
reports that President Bush gave an unusually blunt address in
the Rose Garden, demanding that Russia halt its "dramatic and
brutal" invasion; he did not, however, offer any indication of
what action he would take if Moscow did not comply.
Russia's first military forays into Georgia proper marked a major
escalation of the regional conflict, forcing Georgian troops to
retreat toward the country's capital, Tbilisi, and prompting
thousands of residents to flee their homes. According to
Georgian sources, by late last night invading troops had come
within 40 miles of Tbilisi. Russian officials denied the reports,
and it remained unclear whether Moscow would withdraw or
press on and seek to depose Georgia's elected leaders.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Moscow's aggression highlighted splits in the international
community: The WSJ reports that the United Nations failed to
agree on a draft resolution calling for a cease-fire, while several
European nations expressed only muted criticism of Russia's
actions. President Bush, by contrast, issued a robust statement
branding the invasion "unacceptable in the 21st century"; still, as
the LAT points out, the U.S. has ruled out direct military
intervention and is highly unlikely to push for economic
sanctions.
Both the NYT and the WSJ front pieces eyeing Vladimir Putin's
role in the crisis. The former Russian president still appears to be
pulling the strings in the Kremlin: On the eve of the conflict he
met with President Bush in Beijing while his successor,
President Dmitri Medvedev, took a holiday cruise along the
Volga River. It's tempting, therefore, to view the conflict solely
in terms of Putin's personal psychodrama: a reassertion of
Russian power in a bid to heal old and humiliating wounds. The
WSJ's editorial board goes further, arguing that Putin, drunk on
oil wealth, now harbors Napoleonic ambitions for dominance
across Eurasia.
Writing in the Post, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev
mounts a spirited defense of Russia's actions: "The Georgian
military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with
multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas," he
writes. "Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression
against 'small, defenseless Georgia' is not just hypocritical but
shows a lack of humanity."
It's true, of course, that Georgia is far from blameless. The NYT
profiles the country's "headstrong and reckless" president, while
the LAT argues that the war is in part the product of Saakashvili's
failure to weigh the cost of thumbing his nose at his northern
neighbor. That reflects poorly on the Bush administration, notes
the WSJ: President Bush apparently gave Saakashvili unrealistic
expectations about the support he could expect from the West,
and State Department officials failed to convince the Georgian
leader to show restraint.
Back home, John McCain is trying to milk the Georgian conflict:
The GOP nominee has long advocated a hard-line approach to
Moscow and continued to talk tough yesterday. Conservative
pundit Jonah Goldberg, writing for the LAT, argues that Obama
was caught off-balance by the crisis; in fact, the NYT notes, the
Obama and McCain camps remain on virtually the same page,
with both candidates calling for the U.N. to order a cease-fire
and for an international peacekeeping force to be sent to the
disputed region.
Elsewhere, the Post off-leads with word that the Bush
administration is planning an overhaul of the Endangered
Species Act that would allow federal agencies to decide
unilaterally whether or not government actions would harm
vulnerable species. The move, reported inside by the other
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papers, would effectively scrap the independent scientific
reviews that have been an integral part of the Act for more than
three decades.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe appears to be edging
toward a power-sharing deal with opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangerai, two months after government-sponsored violence
ended any hope of free and fair elections. Details remain hazy,
but the WSJ reports that Mugabe said only "little hurdles"
remained. Any deal would be a coup for South African premier
Thabo Mbeki, who has been mediating between the two sides.
A day after winning Olympic gold in the 4x100-meter freestyle
relay—thanks to a "swim for the ages" from teammate Jason
Lezak—Michael Phelps shaved almost a second off his own
200-meter freestyle world record en route to his third gold of the
Games. With swimming records tumbling across the board, the
NYT ponders the ways in which technological advances—
streamlined body-suits, less wave-prone pools, nonskid starting
blocks—are changing the nature of competitive swimming.
Some things will never change, though: The LAT reports that
Phelps' celebratory dancing, of which we'll likely be seeing
plenty more over the next few days, appears to be genetically
hardwired, bearing a remarkable similarity to victory displays
seen in chimps and gorillas.
war stories
Lonely Night in Georgia
The Bush administration's feckless response to the Russian invasion.
By Fred Kaplan
Monday, August 11, 2008, at 5:47 PM ET
It is impossible to think about the Russian assault on Georgia
without feeling like a heartless bastard or a romantic fool.
Should we just let Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev roll
their tanks into Tbilisi in recognition of Moscow's sphere of
influence—and let a fledgling democracy die? Or should we
rally sanctions, send arms, and mobilize troops—none of which
is likely to have any effect? Is there some third way, involving a
level of diplomatic shrewdness that the Bush administration has
rarely mustered and, in this case, might not have the legitimacy
to pursue?
Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the
Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil
Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to
apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as
a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and
weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit
by and see another border state (and former province of the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that
Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how
firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke
an outburst?
It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many
Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers,
and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to
their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did
everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When
Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo's independence from Serbia,
Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian
secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant
Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those
regions—for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia—with
an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment.
Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons,
training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians
believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the
Americans would bail them out.
Bush pressed the other NATO powers to place Georgia's
application for membership on the fast track. The Europeans
rejected the idea, understanding the geo-strategic implications of
pushing NATO's boundaries right up to Russia's border. If the
Europeans had let Bush have his way, we would now be
obligated by treaty to send troops in Georgia's defense. That is to
say, we would now be in a shooting war with the Russians.
Those who might oppose entering such a war would be accused
of "weakening our credibility" and "destroying the unity of the
Western alliance."
This is where the heartless bastard part of the argument comes
in: Is Georgia's continued control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
really worth war with Russia? Is its continued independence
from Moscow's domination, if it comes to that, worth our going
to war?
At this point, the neocons would enter the debate—in fact some,
like Robert Kagan, already have—by invoking the West's
appeasement of Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938.
("A quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we
know nothing," is how Neville Chamberlain famously, and
catastrophically, brushed away the aggression.)
A few counterquestions for those who rise to compare every
nasty leader to Hitler and every act of aggression to the onset of
World War III: Do you really believe that Russia's move against
Georgia is not an assertion of control over "the near abroad" (as
the Russians call their border regions), but rather the first step of
a campaign to restore the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe and,
from there, bring back the Cold War's Continental standoff? If
so—if this really is the start of a new war of civilizations—why
aren't you devoting every waking hour to pressing for the revival
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of military conscription, for a war surtax to triple the military
budget, and—here's a twist—for getting out of Iraq in order to
send a few divisions right away to fight in the larger battle? If
not, what exactly are you proposing?
The same question can be asked of the Bush administration.
Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly called Saakashvili on
Sunday to assure him that "Russian aggression must not go
unanswered." We should all be interested to know what answer
he is preparing or whether he was just dangling the Georgians on
another few inches of string. The U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Security Council, "This is
completely unacceptable and crosses a line." Talk like that
demands action. What's the plan, and how does he hope to get
the Security Council—on which Russia has veto power—to
approve it?
Regardless of which side started this conflict, and quite apart
from its tangled roots (read this and this, for starters), the crisis
holds a few clear lessons for the next American president.
First, security commitments are serious things; don't make them
unless you have the support, desire, and means to follow
through.
Second, Russia is ruled by some nasty people these days, but
they are not Hitler or Stalin, and they can't be expected to
tolerate direct challenges from their border any more than an
American president could from, say, Cuba. (This is not to draw
any moral equations, only to point out basic facts.)
Third, the sad truth is that—in part because the Cold War is
over, in part because skyrocketing oil prices have engorged the
Russians' coffers—we have very little leverage over what the
Russians do, at least in what they see as their own security
sphere. And our top officials only announce this fact loud and
clear when they issue ultimatums that go ignored without
consequences.
In the short term, if an independent Georgia is worth saving, the
Russians need some assurances—for instance, a pledge that
Georgia won't be admitted into NATO or the European Union—
in exchange for keeping the country and its elected government
intact. (Those who consider this "appeasement" are invited to
submit other ideas that don't lead either to Georgia's utter
dismantlement or to a major war.)
If a newly expansive Russia is worth worrying about (and maybe
it is), then it's time to bring back Washington-Moscow
summitry. Relations have soured so intensely in recent years and
over such peripheral issues (such as basing a useless missiledefense system in the Czech Republic) that a new president—not
just his secretary of state, but the president himself—could do
worse than sit down with Medvedev and/or Putin, if just to lay
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
out issues of agreement and disagreement and then go from
there. It's staggering that no such talks have taken place so far
this century.
In the long term, the best way to take Russia down a notch
(along with Iran, Venezuela, and other hostile powers
overflowing with oil money) is to pursue policies and fund
technologies that slash the demand for oil. The Georgia crisis
should make clear, if it isn't already, that this is a matter of hardheaded national security.
well-traveled
Eco-Touring in Honduras
What can we learn from the mysterious collapse of the Mayan civilization?
By Elisabeth Eaves
Friday, June 6, 2008, at 10:27 AM ET
From: Elisabeth Eaves
Subject: Island Dreams
Posted Monday, June 2, 2008, at 1:52 PM ET
Colonia Balfate and Colonia Policarpo Galindo are not in the
guidebooks, and for good reason. They are conjoined
shantytowns that spill upward along two steep tropical gullies
into the green jungle above. A few of the 2,300 residents have
homes made of cinder block or cement, but the rest make do
with scavenged wood planks, corrugated tin, or sheets of plastic.
Tawny dirt roads, raw as open wounds and lined with garbage,
climb sharply from the entrance to the settlement. Water
delivery to the community is sporadic, residents lack a sewage
system or a health clinic, and neighbors complain that the
colonias are crime-ridden. In March, the owner of a nearby
botanical garden called them "a haven for thieves and robbers"
in the local press after two hikers were robbed on his grounds.
Balfate and Policarpo Galindo are among the faces of modern
tourism. These fast-growing slums are located not on the
outskirts of some Third World city but on a resort-dotted island
in the Caribbean—one peddling sun, sea, and piña colada
dreams to a richer, colder world. Here on Roatán, one of the Bay
Islands of Honduras, direct flights from the United States are on
the rise, a new ferryboat speeds crossings to the mainland, and
cruise-ship traffic is ramping up. A terminal slated to open in
2009 will be able to handle 7,000 cruise-ship passengers a day.
Cement trucks, feeding a construction boom in new hotels,
rumble along the two-lane jungle road that serves as the island's
main thoroughfare. As tourism grows, though, the island is
killing off the flora and fauna that lured the foreigners in the first
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place while failing to enrich many Hondurans. From cruise
shipper to backpacker, every traveler who sets foot on the island,
including me, is contributing to this process.
I came to Honduras hoping to unravel some of the effects of
travel—because I travel and don't intend to stop and because, as
a child of my time, I'm cursed with the burden of knowing I live
in a planet-sized web of cause and effect. I can't abstain from
this web anymore than a butterfly can refrain from moving its
wings, but I feel drawn, nevertheless, to follow a few of its
strands.
We hear a lot about eco-tourism these days, a term rendered
nearly meaningless by travel-industry hype, but which the
International Ecotourism Society defines as "responsible travel
to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the
welfare of local peoples." That's the kind of definition that begs
more questions: Improves how much? Which local people? But
it's safe to say that the businesses and well-meaning
organizations promoting eco-tourism agree on one thing: If
developing countries conserve their natural areas, revenue from
tourism can make up for foregone income from other uses of the
same land, such as logging, fishing, and farming. That income,
in turn, will reinforce the will to conserve.
Often, though, this theory isn't borne out in real life. Consider
Ecuador's Galápagos Islands, long the poster child for eco-travel,
now turning into an eco-disaster. Between 1999 and 2005, the
islands' GDP grew by a stunning 78 percent, two-thirds of which
was due to tourism, according to a new study by J. Edward
Taylor of the University of California, Davis. But individual
welfare barely improved. GDP per head grew by a paltry 1.8
percent in the same period because the islands' population—
drawn by the business engine of eco-tourism—grew by 60
percent. That ballooning population is taking an ever-higher toll
on the fragile ecosystem.
In addition to being endowed with fertile jungle and turquoise
sea, Honduras is a good testing ground for eco-tourism's central
proposition. It's poor. It wants tourism, or indeed anything that
will supplement an economy based on remittance payments,
maquiladoras, and fruit. There appears to be an official will to
conserve: The government has designated, at least on paper, 107
protected areas in which hunting and development are either
limited or banned outright. Together, they make up an
impressive 24 percent of Honduran territory and are home to
endangered creatures, like the howler monkey and the manatee,
and spectacular ones, like the scarlet macaw. My plan was to
visit several of the national parks, meeting up with my parents
along the way and ending our trip at the ancient Mayan ruins of
Copán.
On a map published by the government-affiliated Honduras
Institute of Tourism, nearly the entire 80-square-mile island of
Roatán is part of a national marine park. But a staffer at a local
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
conservation organization told me that while that was the plan, it
wasn't actually the case. At the moment, only eight miles of
shoreline, stretching little more than a mile out to sea, are
officially protected.
Diving in that area earlier in the day, I had seen a hawksbill
turtle, two and a half feet long, beating its flippers as it glided by
like a prehistoric shadow. The hawksbill—locally called carey—
is critically endangered, still hunted for its dark-and-light
patterned shell. Some locals make jewelry out of it—a barefoot
man had already tried to sell me a carey necklace on the beach.
"One of the sad side effects of the tourism and cruise-ship
industry is that it has generated a lot of illegal activity," said
James Foley, director of research and development for Roatán
Marine Park, which maintains a tiny beachfront office in the
village of West End.
The colonias, a handful of which are scattered around the island,
are another disturbing side effect.
"See those houses?" Rosa Danelia Hendrix asked me, gesturing
to some 15 shacks scattered high on the hills, the latest
expansions to Balfate and Policarpo Galindo. We were standing
in the yard of the three-room yellow schoolhouse where she is
principal.
"Three months ago, they weren't there. They don't have septic
tanks. When the rains come, the waste will run down the hill and
cause diseases," she said. The human waste, garbage, and
sediment from the torn-up jungle also wash into the sea and onto
nearby coral reefs, which are inside the supposed eight-mile
protected area and which are home to hawksbills, bottlenose
dolphins, and myriad fish. The sediment reduces the amount of
sunlight that reaches the coral, killing it, which, in turn, slowly
kills the fish that live there.
The residents of the colonias come to the island from mainland
Honduras because the tourism boom shimmers with the illusion
of plentiful, well-paid jobs. "The island dream," mainlanders call
it. "They confront reality when they realize they don't speak
English, or don't have construction skills, and they can't get good
jobs," Hendrix said.
To leave the colonias, I hopped in a minibus, and in 10 minutes I
was back in West End, which is far from swanky but still a
world away. It was my own island dream: a single dirt road
running along a palm-fringed waterfront, lined with low-key
restaurants, hotels, and dive shops. I stepped into an open-air
beach bar called Sundowners and ordered a piña colada, and in
no time the man on the next stool was telling me he hadn't paid
federal taxes since 1967. The bar filled up, and as the sun moved
closer to the sea, everyone turned to watch. It slipped over the
edge of the earth, streaks of orange and pink filled the sky, and
the black silhouette of a cruise ship sailed across the horizon.
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From: Elisabeth Eaves
Subject: Beware, Shark
Posted Tuesday, June 3, 2008, at 7:14 AM ET
Not so much swimming as hovering, I slipped into the school of
sharks. There were 18 of them, some as long as 8 feet. "These
are big girls," the dive master had warned us; many were
pregnant and thicker than usual. They swam above, below, and
around me, so close I could have reached out and touched them.
The dive master had advised us not to, a warning that had struck
me as bizarre. I mean, really. What idiot would do such a thing?
But now I saw the problem. These Caribbean reef sharks had
skin like velvet, dark and rich in the shadows, shiny and pale
when it caught the light. They shimmered hypnotically as they
moved. I noticed scars, dark healed gashes on their sides and
around their jaws, telling stories I couldn't read—of feeding
frenzies, mating rituals, and fishermen. I wanted to touch. The
sharks, meanwhile, seemed to register me as an uninteresting
object. They came disquietingly close but always turned away
from me at the last second. As they swerved, I found myself
wishing one would shimmy along my body as she did, gliding in
tandem with me for a few moments.
The sharks gave me butterflies, but the truth was that I was
probably more of a danger to them than they were to me. For
one thing, I was with 14 other humans, some of them fatter and
slower than me, giving the sharks considerable choice should
they choose to nibble. For another, as sharks go, the Caribbean
reef shark is not especially threatening. Just four species of the
410 or so known to science account for most shark attacks on
humans, and this wasn't one of them.
The sharks, on the other hand, would have had a lot to worry
about had they been half as anxiety-prone as humans. Our group
was shark baiting, one of the most controversial eco-tourism
practices in the Caribbean. Sharks, being wild animals, are
difficult to procure on command. So many of the hundreds of
shark-dive operators around the world tempt the animals with
food. At Waihuka Diving, Roatán's sole shark operation, the
dive master took a plastic bucket with holes punctured in the lid
and filled it with a small amount of chopped-up fish. The dive
master planted the bucket in the sand 20 feet from the coral wall
where we kneeled, and the sweet smell of fish guts lured the
sharks to school right in front of us. They kept schooling as, at
the dive master's signal, we moved into the fray. My excitement
was pure, more real and visceral than I had expected. And,
fortunately, immune to the presence of other humans and the
artificiality of the setup.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Which brings me back to the bait. In 2001, Florida banned shark
feeding in its waters, a move hailed by public-safety officials but
also by conservationists. Feeding sharks lowers their natural fear
of humans, which makes them easier prey for fishermen. And
repeatedly luring them to the same spot makes them easy for
fishermen to find.
This is a problem, because more than 100 million sharks are
killed by humans every year. Several species are critically
endangered, and some have gone extinct within specific regions.
Sharks are frequently killed as collateral damage—for instance,
by tuna boats in the Pacific. (Your dolphin-safe tuna is not
necessarily shark-safe.) Sharks are also a direct target of
fishermen, especially for their fins, with escalating demand for
shark-fin soup in China and Taiwan. The fins are so valuable
that fishermen often cut them off and throw the shark back into
the ocean, where it bleeds and sinks to its death.
We humans returned to our places in front of the coral wall, and
the dive master, wearing a chain-mail gauntlet, ripped the lid off
the bucket of chopped fish. The effect was instantaneous. These
lazily graceful creatures were suddenly bullets of muscle. In a
matter of seconds they became a writhing, food-focused mass. A
single thrash by a single shark looked powerful enough to knock
me out.
As the melee ended, the sharks dispersed, trolling the area in
wider and wider curves until a few disappeared into the blue.
The divers reluctantly began to swim up the anchor line. At 15
feet below the surface, I paused and hung onto the line, floating
like a windsock in the current while the nitrogen left my body.
For a few minutes, I was able to watch the sharks from above,
now just gray silhouettes but still recognizable by the S-curve of
their swim.
A fisherman on Roatán can get about $40 for one of these
sharks, or $720 for 18. Waihuka gets about $80 per diver, so
$960 on this 12-customer dive. They can charge $960 for those
same sharks again and again, and the sharks don't have to die:
The resource is renewable. Assuming similar overhead (a boat,
an outboard engine, gasoline), shark-watching is more profitable
for the locals than shark-fishing, and it conserves nature rather
than decimating it.
Doesn't that make shark diving a good thing? The rosy view of
eco-tourism would say we should exploit shark viewing to stop
shark fishing. Hire the fishermen as dive masters, and you've got
a win-win-win for locals, tourists, and sharks. Shark-watch
businesses further argue that the more people have happy
encounters with the animal, the more public support there will be
for researching and protecting it. (The whale-watching industry
plausibly advances a similar argument.)
Unfortunately, ecology is a little more complicated. The day
before my dive, I had asked James Foley of Roatán Marine Park
120/140
what he thought about shark baiting. "If you feed sharks, you're
interfering with their natural feeding cycle," he said. Since
they're the top predators, that messes with the entire food chain.
If they eat less of their usual prey, the prey population balloons
and eats more of the creatures below it, and so on and so forth.
"It sends shock waves through the whole ecosystem," Foley said.
Masses of data and very sophisticated computing are required to
get an idea of the ultimate impact, but the point is this: Feed wild
beasts with utmost caution, not because of some selfish concern
over getting your hand bitten off, but for their sake.
Even knowing what Foley had told me about the food chain, I
wanted, post-dive, to side with proponents of shark diving, the
ones who say that such cara-a-cara encounters will teach man to
love the beast. After I surfaced, and for some time afterward, I
would close my eyes and try to re-imagine myself back down to
the reef, envisioning their skin and their scars and re-tasting the
frisson. Not many experiences in adult life make me want to do
that.
From: Elisabeth Eaves
Subject: Signs of Civilization
Posted Wednesday, June 4, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
Parks, reserves, and wildlife refuges dot the northern coast of
Honduras like a string of emeralds, starting in the west at the
Barras del Rio Motagua National Park, tucked away on the
Guatemalan border, and reaching the vast expanse of the Rio
Plátano Biosphere Reserve in the east. The reserve cuts off the
easternmost province of Gracias a Dios from the rest of the
country and is covered with the largest remaining expanse of
virgin tropical jungle in Central America.
I approached the north coast of mainland Honduras by ferryboat
from Roatán, thinking of two antecedents: Christopher
Columbus, who was real, and Allie Fox, who was not. Columbus
passed this way by ship in 1502 and claimed the shore for Spain.
The existing human residents, the Tolupan, Pech, and Tawahka,
lived in hidden jungle settlements, so Columbus would have
seen an unbroken wall of green rising from the sandy beach up
to the 8,000-foot peak of Pico Bonito. As my ferryboat
approached, the peak loomed over the coast, first hazy in the
bright morning sun, then greener as we got closer to the shore.
As the wilderness has become a place that humans visit by
choice rather than necessity, the "leave no trace" credo has
evolved into a mantra for outdoor enthusiasts. In my case, it's
been ingrained since grade-school day hikes. So it's odd to think
just how new this philosophy is to Western thinking. Columbus,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
I'm guessing, would have considered the idea of leaving no trace
incomprehensible. Every Spanish name, every cathedral, every
empty silver mine in Central America is testament to the belief
that the bigger the trace, the better. Or consider the Babylonians,
the Romans, the Mayans—the entire history of civilization is
one of bending the earth to the needs and wants of humans.
Today, we might worship at the altar of low-impact living, but
I'll wager that our brains have not yet adapted. On a purely
psychological level, impact is good. Who wants to be forgotten?
We have families, make art, and build McMansions precisely so
that we leave a trace.
Allie Fox and his family also approached the north coast by ship
in The Mosquito Coast, a novel by Paul Theroux, who seems to
have chosen the region as a metaphor for the opposite of
civilization. Fox wants to escape a corrupt and materialistic
modern United States, and he has notions that the Mosquito
Coast savages, as he sees them, are a purer version of mankind.
But once in the jungle, he is desperate to civilize it. He plants
neat rows of beans and builds a giant ice machine.
My parents met me at the ferry terminal with Mark, a guide from
a local company that specializes in aventuras ecológicas. The
outfit is called Garífuna Tours, after an African-Indian ethnic
group that lives along the north coast. This was supposed to be a
group tour, but we were the only customers. We felt a bit
decadent.
We drove through the modern, low-rise city of La Ceiba, which,
despite its banks and restaurants and grid-patterned streets,
looked bleached and weathered, as though it were still trying to
assert itself against nature. The impact of humans on the north
coast accelerated considerably after 1502, culminating in today's
cultural peak, which comes complete with Dunkin' Donuts and
KFC. Mark whisked us west of the city, turned off the paved
road, and drove through a field of pineapples. A mechanical
conveyor with a green-painted metal boom sat idle in the field.
The low, spiky pineapple plants grew right up to the edge of
Pico Bonito National Park, 414 square miles of mountain and
jungle encompassing Pico Bonito itself, the jutting peak I had
seen from the sea. Entering the jungle was like stepping into a
yawning palace, one made of ceiba and mahogany and rosewood
trees, lit only by a few sunbeams that penetrated a latticework
high above. Up there—30 or 40 yards up in the trees—existed a
whole world of insects and animals that never deigned to touch
the ground. The trail began to climb, and small unseen creatures
rustled and were gone before I could get a look. When we came
upon a termite nest, Mark urged me to eat one of the insects, and
when I refused, he told me that at least I knew now that they
were edible, in case I got lost in the forest.* We passed a sign
that banned venturing off-trail into the pathless woods beyond.
Mark said a group of Spaniards had recently headed that-a-way,
gotten lost for six days, and had to be rescued.
121/140
In an hour, we arrived at a waterfall. A foamy white feather
spewed out of the jungle, down vine-covered rock, and eddied
and churned its way to the deep, calm pool that spread out at our
feet.
Outside the air-conditioned rooms, the heat had been constant
since I arrived in Honduras. It was the kind that pressed on your
body like a physical force, barely lessened by an evening breeze
or a dip in the bath-water sea. During our short jungle climb, it
seemed to have grown even thicker. Now here was a chance to
be cool. I dove under the water and felt the blood rush to the
surface of my skin.
As I was drying off, a troop of teenagers from the town of Tela
arrived at the fall. They were on a Sunday hike with a lone
American friend, a redheaded Peace Corps volunteer from
Texas. Honduras is host to 192 volunteers—the Peace Corps'
second-largest deployment in the world (only Ukraine has
more)—who are scattered around the country on their vague but
benign mission to be of use. Jonathan was at the end of his twoyear tour, which he had spent advising the Tela mayor's office
on business development. "The Peace Corps has been in
Honduras for 40 years," he told us. "So you might well ask, just
how much good are we doing?"
Perhaps not much. But the urge to leave a trace is irrepressible.
Correction, June 10, 2008: This piece originally and incorrectly
referred to termites as ants. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
From: Elisabeth Eaves
Subject: Pineapple Fields Forever
Posted Thursday, June 5, 2008, at 10:55 AM ET
American short-story writer O. Henry, exiled to Honduras in the
1890s, coined a term to describe the country that was so
perfectly evocative of colonial horrors, bad government, tropical
weather, ripe fruit, and lush bougainvillea vines creeping up the
patio railing that it's in wide circulation more than a century
later. The term was banana republic. That piece of poetry
conjures an entire period of history. For the first half of the 20 th
century, large swaths of Honduras were more or less run by the
Standard Fruit Co. (now Dole) and the United Fruit Co. (now
Chiquita). They bribed the politicians and summoned the U.S.
military when things got out of hand. They built and owned the
railways, which tended to run from the fields to the ports but not
to anywhere useful to Hondurans, such as the capital.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Of course, the country has come a long way since then. Or has
it? During my visit, Honduras This Week ran the front-page
headline "President Zelaya Addresses Melon Crisis." The
photographic evidence showed the mustachioed president sitting
at his desk, Honduran flag visible to one side, biting into a juicy
cantaloupe. The power of big fruit has diminished in recent
decades, but pineapples, bananas, and melons are still export
staples. A relatively minor U.S. Food and Drug Administration
warning—that melons from a particular Honduran farm might
contain salmonella—can become a flash point for a fragile
economy.
Now a lot of people are hitching hopes for Honduras' economy
to tourism. Plans for at least two new resorts are under way on
the north coast, one of them adjacent to a national park. Signs in
the protected areas I visited bore the logos of donor
organizations—USAID, WWF, the Honduras-Canada Fund for
Environmental Management. Even the Peace Corps was
onboard. Since running into Jonathan at the waterfall, I had met
a second Peace Corps volunteer, Nicole, who was visiting the
Cuero y Salado wildlife reserve with her father. Nicole was
stationed in the south, in a small town in the department of
Valle. I asked her what went on there, economically speaking.
She furrowed her brow and thought for a minute. Finally, she
said that there were a lot of armed security guards. She was
working with a women's cooperative, trying to come up with
things its members could sell to foreigners. They made attractive
pottery, but it didn't ship well. Nicole had hit upon the idea of
making small, bright-colored purses woven from old potato-chip
bags, an item she had seen for sale in other parts of Central
America. There were no tourists where she lived to buy such
things, but she thought that maybe the townsfolk could lure
travelers from the Pan-American Highway, which passed
nearby.
Tourism was clearly a popular cause, but was it smart? Does it
make sense, in the long term, to sell natural charms that will be
steadily worn down by the buyers? A city can renew itself with
man-made attractions. I wasn't sure that jungles and coral reefs
had that kind of staying power.
On our last day on the coast, I floated facedown in the
Caribbean, toting up my sins. I had flown in an airplane, taken
taxis instead of buses, requested air conditioning, run the air
conditioning even after I realized I couldn't shut one of my
windows, and bought small plastic bottles of water. That was all
before sundown on my first day. Subsequently, I had
participated in the feeding of wild animals, been driven around
in gasoline-powered cars and boats, eaten conch (I didn't know it
was threatened), and—this one hadn't even occurred to me until I
read it in a guidebook—worn sunscreen and DEET-laden bug
repellent while swimming above the delicate corals. But I had no
idea how to weigh all that against whatever minuscule economic
benefit I might have been bringing to Honduras.
122/140
We were in Cayos Cochinos Marine National Park, a collection
of cays northeast of La Ceiba. That morning, snorkeling off a
deserted cay, I had seen parrotfish, jacks, schools of blue tang,
and one fat, lazy barracuda, motionless except for its snapping
jaw. The reef life was more vivid and abundant than anything I
had seen off Roatán, probably because of all the diving and
development there.
"Let the movie go," we said in chorus, my mother and I now
joining Gustavo. He was our portly, scholarly guide to the
ancient Mayan city of Copán, an urban center of 24,000 people
during its heyday, which was sometime between A.D. 400 and
800. He carried a stick with a bird feather attached to one end to
point out archeological details, and he had the slightly aggrieved
air of a man who had to be patient a lot.
Now I was floating off Cayo Chachauate, a coral cay just a few
hundred feet long that was home to a Garífuna village of about
30 families. The Garífuna, who descend from escaped slaves and
Carib Indians, lived on the island of St. Vincent until 1797,
when the British deported the entire population to Honduras,
where they established fishing villages. Chachauate's wooden
huts were strung out along the sand just yards above the highwater mark. An assortment of canoes, makeshift sailboats, and
outboards sat on the beach. The big news in the village was that
it had recently acquired a diesel generator, which ran every
evening from 6 to 8. Any villager who invested in his own
power line was free to share. Until the generator, only one
ambitious family had had electricity, provided by a solar panel
on their roof.
Gustavo was unhappy with Mel Gibson and, in particular, with
what he referred to as "that stupid movie," Apocalypto. In case
you missed it, the 2006 film was a revisionist and gruesomely
violent retelling of history. No surprise there, but this movie
happened to be set among the ancient Maya. There were
beheadings, impalings, and human sacrifices performed by drugaddled priests. Not that the real Mayans didn't perform the odd
human sacrifice. But Gustavo was at pains to contextualize.
I watched a purple fan coral sway with the movement of the tide.
The sea stretched away turquoise in three directions and grew
pale where it rose up to the beach. Up there, a woman in a hut
was making me fried chicken for lunch. I swam in closer to
shore, gliding over sea grass and rippled sand. I saw a few tiny
fish and a corroded soda can. And then I saw the bearded face of
José Trinidad Cabañas, a long-ago president of Honduras. He
was decorating a 10-lempira bill, which lay flat and motionless
on the sand. Struck by this oddity, I dove for the bottom, but
when I picked up the money, it felt so slippery and fragile that I
thought it would disintegrate in my hand, so I let it flutter back
down to the seabed again.
From: Elisabeth Eaves
Subject: Mel Gibson and the Demise of Civilization
Posted Friday, June 6, 2008, at 10:27 AM ET
"Forget about the movie," Gustavo told Denise.
She ignored him.
"They took the heart out, and it was still beating," she said. "And
they held it up like this!" She raised one pale, triumphant arm
above her head.
At the entrance to Copán, my parents and I had teamed up with
Diane and Denise, two middle-aged women from New York
City, both with strong Brooklyn accents. Denise, who had short
black hair and wore bright red lipstick, was a Gibson fan. To
Gustavo's consternation, she kept asking where the sacrifices
were performed.
And now, finally, we were in the middle of the Grand Plaza,
once quite a hub, open to all members of the ancient Copán
public and used for both commerce and worship. There was a
small pyramid at the center of the plaza, and steles scattered
around, each one intricately carved in honor of one king or
another. And there, right in front of us, was a large stone object
made for the express purpose of sacrificing humans.
It was dome-shaped, about 4 feet wide and 3 feet tall, with a
depression hollowed out of the top just big enough to cup a
human head. Two channels ran down the sides to drain the blood
away. Gustavo grabbed my arm and told me to lean backward
over the dome with my head in the depression—kind of comfy,
if you must be sacrificed—and made as though to cut off my
head with his feather-stick. That was when Denise got excited
and started recounting the Apocalypto sacrifice scene, thrusting
her hand into the air as though holding a beating heart. "And the
people were still alive!" she said.
She reluctantly followed as the rest of us moved away across the
plaza to the city's ball court. Relief-carved macaw heads
decorated the walls. Mayan ball courts, it turns out, were not for
playing ball in the Western sense of a game, as an earlier
generation of archeologists believed. "The idea of the ball
ceremony was not to please a human audience, but to please the
gods," Gustavo explained. Performed correctly, the ball "game,"
conducted by specially trained young men, was believed to make
the sun and moon come up on time.
Today, though much of ancient Copán still lies buried, you can
wander among its carvings and pyramids, tombs and temples,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
123/140
halls of government and homes, visualizing the bright-colored
stucco that once adorned them. Until the 19 th century, however,
they were completely invisible. Some time in the 800s, the
civilization of the Classic Maya period began a collapse so
complete that by the time the Spaniards began to arrive, there
was no trace of it. Descendants of the ancient Maya scattered
and survived, but the great painted cities, with their pyramids
and temples, were gone, swallowed whole by the jungle. The last
date found on a Mayan monument corresponds to the year 909,
as though time just stopped one day.
Archeologists still debate what happened. It's clear, though, that
environmental degradation played a role in the collapse. In the
Copán valley in particular, studies show that as the population
grew, the people stripped the hillsides of trees. Major soil
erosion preceded the city's downfall. Copán also suffered
droughts, which may have been partly brought on by the
deforestation. The Mayans cut down the trees to plant corn, and
for firewood to burn limestone, a key ingredient in their bright
pigments. Why didn't they pull themselves out of this ecological
tailspin? Presumably they could see the trees disappearing and
the mud running down the hills. In Collapse: How Societies
Choose To Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond suggests that the
elites who might have led the way out of this mess had insulated
themselves from the problems of the people. So as the poor
began to suffer—infant mortality was probably 50 percent
toward the end—the kings kept demanding tribute.
We stood in front of the hieroglyphic stairway, an inscription
covering 72 steps that make up one face of the acropolis. It's the
longest hieroglyphic inscription found in the Americas, and no
one has completely deciphered it. Archeologists know that it
tells a history of ancient Copán and that it was created by a ruler
named Smoke Shell in 753, when the city was already in decline.
When the staircase is eventually decoded, maybe Smoke Shell
will have something more to tell us about his doomed
metropolis.
In the meantime, Honduras is still being deforested. Central
America has lost more than 70 percent of its forest cover since
1960, mostly to make way for cattle ranches, sugar-cane fields,
and coffee plantations. Between 1990 and 2005, Honduras lost
10,567 square miles of forest—an area about the size of
Massachusetts. But that's just another scary environmental
statistic. Taken together, all the bad news is enough to make you
turn to irrational beliefs about planetary control. Or to mindless
entertainment.
Gustavo began to tell us the story of the Mayan codices,
manuscripts that could help decode the hieroglyphics. Denise cut
in.
"Did they sacrifice people up there?"
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Gustavo sighed. "Yes, and then they let the head roll down the
steps and gave it to the victim's son," he said. "Too much Mel
Gibson for you."
well-traveled
Baseball, Dominican-Style
Smoking cigars with a major league MVP.
By Bryan Curtis
Friday, May 9, 2008, at 6:45 AM ET
From: Bryan Curtis
Subject: Baseball, Dominican-Style.
Posted Monday, May 5, 2008, at 1:56 PM ET
Late last summer, when the steroid scandals got to be too much
for me, I went to the Dominican Republic. My ostensible
purpose was baseball tourism, but this was not one of those trips
on which you sun yourself in the bleachers and think happy
thoughts about your father; or pester your favorite shortstop for
an autograph; or see baseball the way "it's meant to be played,"
as if such a method existed. No, a trip to the Dominican
Republic offered a chance to catch a glimpse of the
sociopolitical landscape suggested by David Ortiz's home-run
swing, Pedro Martinez's fastball, and Vladimir Guerrero's
hypnotically twirling bat. It was a chance to see how a Third
World country supports a First World sports league.
If you've been scoring at home, you know that the Dominican
Republic—the D.R.—has become the chief foreign source of
major league talent, placing nearly 500 players at last count. The
players are scouted, trained, and educated at the so-called
Dominican baseball academies, outposts owned and operated by
major league teams. We wanted to see what those academies
were like and how baseball dreams were playing out.
My team: Megan Hustad, my stateside companion, and Alberto
Pozo, a Puerto Rican who has set up shop in Santo Domingo, the
capital. Pozo was an apprentice TV producer, local fixer, and a
fierce Yankees partisan, though you wouldn't have known it
from the Red Sox cap that was always on his head. ("I lost a
bet," he explained.) The three of us had started in the Zona
Colonial, the crumbling, centuries-old center of Santo Domingo,
with Pozo at the wheel of my rental car. After weaving through
the traffic jams that clog the newer, shinier parts of town, we had
emerged in the slums on the city's north side. A few feet from
the car, there were lean-tos full of chickens, goats, and a teeming
array of food vendors; ramshackle auto repair shops; and
unlicensed "sports books," where the poorest of the poor bet on
124/140
everything from Major League Baseball to cockfights.
Everything and everybody seemed to be kicking up dust.
Whenever the car slowed to a stop, it was approached by
hawkers on bikes selling knockoff sunglasses, guayaba ice pops,
or fresh fruit.
After a few wrong turns on unpaved roads, we reached the
Philadelphia Phillies' academy around late morning. The
academy's buildings sat next to a hillside in a remote stretch of
farmland and owed something to Spanish mission architecture.
According to the academy's administrator, Elvis Fernandez, the
Phillies chose this spot because it is several tape-measure home
runs away from girls, shopping malls, and other vices that might
tempt a prized 16-year-old prospect. The only thing to do here is
play baseball, which the Phillies recruits do morning and night,
with an Eastern bloc-style regimentation. Some days will feature
a full practice in the morning, a game against another team's
academy in the afternoon, followed by post-game hitting and
fielding drills before the players return to their bunks for the
night.
My team arrived in the middle of a game between the Phillies
and the academy squad of the Los Angeles Angels. Habituated
as I was to the scowling, thick-legged men of the majors, it is
hard to convey just how striking these young Dominicans were:
tall with dark, sun-walloped skin; lean muscles; and a youthful
spring in their steps. Even their postures seemed optimistic. I
was standing along the first-base line watching the Phillies'
starter, a kid named Carpio, who had a live fastball and a
tendency to get wild. Carpio got bailed out by a few slick
defensive plays in the early innings, but by the fourth, his eyes
were fixated on the pitcher's rubber, and he looked like he'd
rather be somewhere else.
With Carpio in a jam, we ventured from the field to the
academy's main building, where the players slept, ate, and
studied. The first room Fernandez showed us was a classroom.
As he explained it, the academies' educational programs are
mostly limited to a smattering of religious study, American law
(it doesn't matter that you met her at a 21-and-over club—she
could be lying about her age), and the teaching of baseballic
terminology like "hit and run" and "cut-off man." ("Those are
the first words we teach them," Fernandez said.) The basics
established, the academy moves on to the interrogations the
Dominican player is bound to encounter from coaches: What's
your name? What position do you play? How old are you? (A
loaded question, given the long history of fudging Dominican
birth certificates.)
"We teach them that American time is not Dominican time,"
Fernandez told me. Another lesson: The sexual mores of the
D.R.—such as aggressively staring down an attractive woman
on the street—will not fly in the States.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The Phillies run the academy like a military school, and no one
minded saying so. The team enforces a strict 8 p.m. curfew and a
10 p.m. bedtime. The players, who have received signing
bonuses ranging from a few thousand dollars to a few hundred
thousand dollars, are not allowed to keep cars; if they want to
visit the nearest shopping mall, they must take the rickety local
bus. They "eat, sleep, and play baseball," Fernandez said, the
reliable sports cliché having real meaning for once. For many of
the players, the Phillies academy is the first place they've
encountered a well-balanced meal; like hungry teenage boys
everywhere, they inevitably want more.
The players' sleeping quarters were fittingly monastic. They
slept eight to a room in bunk beds, and I noticed a few of the
boys had pulled their mattresses onto the floor because of the
sweltering heat. The rooms had the sad monotone of summercamp barracks and buzzed with tropical insects. We saw some
small televisions propped up on plastic chairs but no other signs
of affluence.
It is the kind of place that reeks of long odds. One scout
estimated that for every 100 prospects signed and enrolled in the
Phillies academy, only three or four will make the major
leagues. And given Dominican baseball fever—"Every father
wants his son to be a ballplayer," I was told again and again—it
is safe to assume that for those 100 signees, there are many
thousands more outside the academy looking in.
With nothing left to see in the dorms, we marched through a
dimly lit and spectacularly cluttered locker room and then
stepped back outside into the glaring Caribbean sun. We could
still hear metal bats striking the ball in the distance, and the
occasional muffled cheer. A flock of tiny black birds swooped
overhead, darting over and under the laundry lines. Fernandez
couldn't identify them. "They're always here," he shrugged.
From: Bryan Curtis
Subject: The Great Rivals
Posted Tuesday, May 6, 2008, at 7:43 AM ET
If the goal of every young ballplayer in the Dominican Republic
is one day to make the major leagues, the secondary goal is to
spend the winter in the thrall of one's countrymen. Just as the
U.S. World Series ends in October, the Dominican Winter
League begins. It is a kind of postseason victory lap, a chance
for the player to reconnect with his native country. It is in the
winter league that one finds the familiar tropes of Dominican
baseball: the highly knowledgeable, and therefore raucous, fans;
merengue music wafting from the bleachers; and intranational
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rivalries that put our minor domestic disputes, like Yankees vs.
Red Sox, to shame.
The main Dominican rivalry these days is between the Licey
Tigers—whom we'll think of as the "Yankees" in our gringo
shorthand—and the Águilas Cibaeñas—whom we'll think of as
the "Red Sox." When we arrived in the D.R., the two teams had
won every Dominican league championship since 1995—Licey
last in 2005-06, Águilas most recently in 2006-07. Both had a
total of 19 championships. Each club suspected the other was
inferior on the diamond and otherwise.
A few notes about the Dominican Winter League: We're not
talking about amateurs here. If you are a Dominican wishing to
join the winter league, you first have to play your way to the
United States and then spend at least two years in the American
minor leagues. At that point, your name can appear on a drafteligible list for the six Dominican teams. (The others are
Escogido, Estrellas, Gigantes, and La Romana.) Being drafted
by a Dominican club instantly transforms you into a beloved
local fixture, and players can be enticed to return to their
Dominican club until they reach what in baseball counts as
extreme old age. Luis Polonia, who is 44 and whose major
league career ended back in 2000, still plays some designated
hitter for his Dominican team, Águilas. The Águilas general
manager, Winston Llenas, told me that he believes Polonia
practiced with Babe Ruth, but he still signs him every year.
Licey (pronounced LEE-say) plays in the Estadio Quisqueya, a
park that has the look of a giant concrete conch shell. Of the
D.R.'s two great rivals, Licey is the older and (as its partisans
constantly remind you) grander of the ballclubs. We were shown
into the office of the owner, Jose Manuel "Pepe" Bustos, who
went to the immensely unnecessary trouble of assembling the
entire Licey front office for my interrogation. Clearly
unprepared for my arrival, they sat rigidly in their seats and
faced me as though I were a government tax auditor.
The Licey brain trust consists of Bustos; Jose Bustos Jr., his son
and the team's general manager; and Miguel Guerra, the team's
accountant. What, I asked, separated Licey from the other winter
league clubs?
"We treat the players in a way they like to be treated," Jose
Bustos said, "because we don't have the money to pay them what
they get paid in the major leagues." (A Dominican Winter
League salary amounts to a small honorarium, especially for
players like Vladimir Guerrero.)
"We're just one big family," Guerra added.
"We call [the players] every week," Bustos Jr. said. "They need
something, they call us. Their wives feel good when they're
here."
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
This might sound like so much sports happy talk, but, in fact,
Guerrero, the Los Angeles Angels slugger, played for Licey in
the winter of 2004—even though he'd just won the majors' Most
Valuable Player award. There's another reason for the friendly
atmosphere: Major league players often come here and find their
natural positions occupied, and they have to be talked into a
switch. Carlos Peña, a first baseman who hit 46 home runs and
121 RBI in 2007 for Tampa Bay, couldn't find a position with
Licey the previous winter and spent a lot of time on the Tigers
bench.
I told the Licey brain trust that I would be visiting the Águilas
clubhouse the next day, and they looked at me with
astonishment. The whole interview seemed to go rapidly
downhill. Answers became clipped, and pauses gained
pregnancy. Pozo, my translator, later explained that my
statement was an unfortunate faux pas and had rendered me
suspect in their eyes. For I was no longer a foreign journalist
come to honor the glories of Licey, the greatest team in
Dominican history; I was, annoyingly, insisting on talking to
"both sides." Adios.
Águilas (AH-gee-las) is headquartered in the D.R.'s secondlargest city, Santiago, whose natural insecurity is reflected in the
civic motto: "Santiago is Santiago." My team started the twohour drive north from Santo Domingo under threatening clouds.
Santo Domingo's gantlet of bodegas and cell-phone stores gave
way to a winding highway lined with hills of thick, verdant
forest. It is hard to do justice to the vastness, the greenness of the
view—let alone the looming feeling of rural poverty,
Dominican-style. Every couple of miles, we'd zoom by a clutch
of lean-tos with corrugated scrap-metal roofs, built on the sides
of the hills. The huts were staggered horizontally, like terraces
jutting off the side of an apartment building. If you squinted, you
could see a few faces and loose chickens; skinny babies in
dingy, loose-fitting hand-me-downs; animal carcasses for sale.
The only sign of modernity is the condition of the highway—
surprisingly smooth—and the Brugal Rum-sponsored road signs
that announce every town.
Pozo zipped past what little traffic we encountered with the deft
hand of someone who had been driving, he estimated, since he
was 9. We traveled fast—70, 80 miles per hour—but the traffic
slowed as we made our way into Santiago. The Águilas team
offices are in a little bandbox of an estadio with palm trees
pointing upward near the foul poles. We were greeted by
Winston Llenas, the general manager and a fine ballplayer in his
own right—he played six seasons with the California Angels in
the 1970s. ("I did some damage," he assured me.) Whereas the
Liceños had comported themselves as polite technocrats,
Winston was expansive, bordering on clownish—a Dominican
Charlie O. Finley. Broad-shouldered, with a mane of salt-andpepper hair and a prominent nose, he commanded me to sit in
front of his enormous desk and shouted, "The buck stops here,"
as he pounded it with mock fury.
126/140
As Llenas seemed to have a sense of humor, I took a calculated
risk and mentioned visiting the rivals down south. "Licey—since
you mentioned the Licey club—it's also a club with a lot of
tradition," Llenas said tactfully. "It's the oldest club in the
Dominican Republic, actually. They're celebrating their 100 th
anniversary this year. Of course, we're going to ruin their
celebration."
If Águilas had an advantage, Llenas explained, it was its rabid
fan base. Cibaeñas like to think that they make up for what they
lack in Santo Domingo-style cosmopolitanism with energy and
passion—which, at the ballpark, means they are louder and more
demanding. Even Licey die-hards can be made to admit that
Águilas has the superior crowd. "It's crazy, man," Llenas said
when I asked about the scene in the stands. "It's fun. It's noisy.
It's music, it's yelling … it's loud … it's unbelievable."
"You can expect anything to happen in the stands," said Santana
Martinez, an Águilas play-by-play announcer, who had joined
us.
"It's [like] going to the Bronx Zoo or something," Llenas replied.
"Fortunately, you don't have too many fights."
which we could glimpse Estadio Cibao in a moment of rare, offseason repose. Just then the clouds made good on their promise,
and rain came pouring down in sheets.
From: Bryan Curtis
Subject: A Tripleheader With Juan Marichal
Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2008, at 6:53 AM ET
Juan Marichal is the first baseball player from the Dominican
Republic to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which
makes him the country's baseball patron saint. He lives in Santo
Domingo in a sprawling house surrounded by trees and high
stucco walls. Like many of the capital city's prominent
residences, Marichal's place is guarded by a man in camouflage
fatigues who sits in a plastic lawn chair with a machine gun
across his lap. One afternoon we were ushered inside the front
gate, waved past the watchful eyes of the guard, and shown into
Marichal's den. Marichal, who is never late, appeared promptly
at 4 p.m., shook our hands, and motioned for us to arrange
ourselves on three generously proportioned leather sofas.
"No, no fights."
There is little rest for the caretaker of a Dominican Winter
League roster. For a time, the major leagues were happy to have
players, Dominican- or American-born, spend their winter in the
Caribbean. (Everyone from Bob Gibson to Orel Hershiser did a
winter tour in the D.R.) These days, the American ballclubs
prefer to keep prized prospects in "instructional" leagues back in
the States. Even the established Dominican stars, like Miguel
Tejada and Melky Cabrera, are often barred from playing a full
season in the D.R. due to the "extreme fatigue" (the majors'
regrettable phrase) brought on by too many regular-season
pitches or at-bats. Thus, a Dominican Winter League team must
shuffle players in and out, often with top stars dropping out at
the last moment. "Plan A?" Llenas said. "Forget Plan A!"
Before the 2007-08 season, Águilas had never managed to
surpass Licey in total championships, giving the team a Red
Sox-like inferiority complex that occasionally bordered on
paranoia. "I don't want to tell you all of our secrets," Llenas said.
Even so, Llenas let on that he planned to give up home-run
hitting to win with pitching and defense. On opening day, the
Águilas pitcher would be Jose Lima, a rotund Santiago native
who is familiarly known as "Lima Time" and pitched parts of 13
seasons in the majors. (Indeed, a few months after I left, Águilas
would win the league title, while Licey settled for second.)
Llenas took us down the hall, up the stairs, through an Águilasmascot-festooned conference room, and into the VIP box, from
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Marichal is 70 years old and has salt-and-pepper hair and a smile
as wide as a National League strike zone. He told us his life
story in three acts. It is a well-rehearsed story, probably
delivered many times to different people, but it might be the best
encapsulation of how a Dominican baseball player can really
make it big.
Laguna Verde: Marichal grew up in Laguna Verde, a small
town in the remote regions near the Haitian border. The locals
were mostly farmers, growing rice and bananas and yucca.
When Marichal was 16 years old, dictator Rafael Trujillo ruled
the Dominican Republic, and American-owned United Fruit Co.
was Laguna Verde's primary employer.
Marichal was pitching for a team sponsored by the Granada
Fruit Co., a subsidiary of United Fruit. He was a side-armed
pitcher with a fastball that moved in toward the batter and a
curveball that started in the middle of the plate and then broke to
the outside. One Sunday afternoon, Marichal was set to pitch
against the Dominican air force, a team that was the bauble of
Ramfis Trujillo, the dictator's son. Marichal won the game 2-1. It
was such a masterful outing that the next morning, a uniformed
lieutenant approached Marichal and handed him a telegram that
demanded, by order of Trujillo, that he enlist in the air force.
Marichal was floored. He retreated to his mother's house in a
panic. His mother read the telegram and started pacing
nervously. At 4 o'clock that afternoon, with mom still pacing, the
air force lieutenant reappeared with a second telegram. "Son,
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you can't say no to these people," Marichal's mother said.
Marichal enlisted in the Dominican air force. He figured that he
could play baseball and learn to fly fighter planes, which he'd
always dreamed of doing.
Ramfis Trujillo was what you could safely call megalomaniacal,
but he took a keen interest in his young conscript's baseball
career. Whenever Marichal was scheduled to pitch, Trujillo
would come to the base—an arrival heralded by the sounding of
a thunderous horn—and take his seat behind home plate. From
the mound, Marichal would find himself staring at Trujillo more
than his catcher. "He was one of the two handsomest men I ever
saw in my life," Marichal says. "The other was Elvis Presley."
As a member of the Dominican air force, Marichal got the
uniform and the mandatory crew cut. But when he inquired
about flying planes, his commanders told him to never mind all
that. He should stick to pitching.
Michigan City: Marichal's first stop in American minor league
baseball was a brief tenure with a team called the Michigan City
White Caps. Marichal got to Michigan City, Ind., by riding in
the back of a Greyhound bus from Florida, where the San
Francisco Giants held their training camp. Before he left the
Dominican Republic, no one had told Marichal about American
segregation laws, and he doesn't think he would have understood
the concept if they had tried. By this point, Latin Americans had
been trickling into the major leagues for more than 50 years,
long preceding Jackie Robinson. Many, like Marichal, were
neither white nor black, so they fell into a murky third
category—"nonwhite," which was effectively black. In a small,
segregated town like Michigan City, Marichal saw his white
teammates only on the field and in the clubhouse. After the
game, Marichal would retire with the black players to boarding
houses around town. Marichal didn't speak much English, so
when he went to one of the town's black-owned restaurants, he
would examine other diners' plates until he saw something he
liked, and he would point at it.
As Marichal's pitching garnered him a bit of celebrity around
town, one restaurant began to offer him a free fried chicken for
every game he won. During the 1957 season, his first in the
United States, Marichal wound up winning 21 games and
another two in the playoffs, for a grand total of 23 chickens.
San Francisco: Marichal's arrival in San Francisco, in 1960,
was the capstone of the Giants' great Caribbean recruiting spree.
The team had signed Dominican brothers Felipe and Matty Alou
and Puerto Rican Orlando "Baby Bull" Cepeda. But, for all their
internationalism, the Giants retained a manager named Alvin
Dark, a cuss from Comanche, Okla., who was nicknamed "The
Swamp Fox." As Marichal recalls, Dark once told the team's
Latin players that they were never to utter a word in Spanish, not
even with each other.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Between 1963 and 1966, Marichal won 93 games and struck out
916 batters, which put him on the rarefied plane of great
National League pitchers like Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.
Marichal was an aggressive bench jockey, riding teammates and
opponents, and he tended to wear an unnverving smile on the
mound. "The thing I hate about that s.o.b.," one player told Time
magazine, "is that it all seems so easy for him. It's one thing to
go hitless against a pitcher like Sandy Koufax or Don Drysdale
or Jim Maloney; at least you can look out there and see the cords
standing out on his neck. ... Marichal—he just stands there
laughing at you."
A typically Marichalian outing was the game on July 2, 1963,
that he pitched against Warren Spahn. The two Hall of Fame
pitchers were standing at different ends of the rubber—at 26,
Marichal had a live arm and a devastating curveball, while
Spahn, 42, was running on fumes. On this day, the pitchers
found themselves in a game of one-upmanship: Neither gave up
a run through nine innings. At the top of the 10 th, Marichal went
up to his manager and said, "Mr. Dark, the weather's nice, I feel
strong, please let me stay a few more innings." Dark said that
would be OK, and Marichal threw five more shutout innings. At
the end of the 14th inning, Dark tried to bench Marichal, but
Marichal pointed at Spahn—who was also still in the game and
also hadn't given up any runs—and said, "That man is 42 years
old. I'm only 26. Until that man leaves the mound, nobody's
going to take me out of this game!"
Dark was perturbed by Marichal's cheek, but he let Marichal go
out and pitch the top of the 15th inning. Marichal got three quick
outs. Then Spahn went out and pitched the bottom of the 15 th,
and he also got three quick outs. At the top of the 16 th, Marichal
could see that Dark was no longer amenable to his suggestion; a
Giants relief pitcher was already trotting out of the bullpen.
Before the reliever could reach the infield, Marichal grabbed his
glove, raced onto the mound, and started throwing warm-up
pitches. Marichal got three more outs in the top of the 16 th
inning.
All this really happened. What comes next is how Marichal tells
the story, and, given his extravagantly charmed life, it's quite
likely that it might have happened.
Marichal says he met Willie Mays on the way into the dugout
and told him, "Willie, I don't want to pitch anymore!" Mays said
he would take care of it. Mays hit a home run and won the game.
Sitting in his den now, Marichal has a way of letting his
trademark grin serve as the punctuation mark for each anecdote.
He took us around the room and pointed at pictures. On all four
walls were photos of Marichal with Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton,
Muhammad Ali, and numerous others, including his five striking
daughters and one handsome son. A uniformed maid entered the
room and served us coffee and tall goblets of ice water.
128/140
Marichal cautioned us not to drink our coffee while standing up.
"In the Dominican Republic, that's bad luck," he said. He had a
certain authority on the subject of good fortune.
From: Bryan Curtis
Subject: The Mountain of Dreams
Posted Thursday, May 8, 2008, at 10:35 AM ET
The kid who was driving the scooter took his eyes off the
heavily potholed road and said, "Bryan, how do you say in your
language—muerto?" I was perched on the seat behind him, my
hands clutching at his ribs as we weaved between cars, blew
through traffic lights, and kicked up dust from the dirt road. I
had been thinking muerto a lot over the last 10 minutes, but how
did this guy know that?
I was riding with a motoconcho, one of the brigade of helmetless
scooter drivers who provide a kind of unlicensed limousine
service in the Dominican Republic. Since few Dominicans own
cars, hitching a ride with a motoconcho, which typically costs a
few pesos, is both a necessity and something of an art form.
Men, women, and preteen schoolchildren in their blue-and-khaki
uniforms line up along the side of the roads, waiting for a
scooter to buzz by. You could be in Santo Domingo sprawl or
deep in the countryside. If you wait long enough, you will see a
motoconcho.
My team had come (by car) from Santo Domingo to the city of
San Cristóbal in search of a baseball academy called Loma del
Sueño—the Mountain of Dreams. San Cristóbal is one of the
Dominican Republic's most fertile baseball towns, and as we
cruised the sandy main drag, we saw the visage of Raúl
Mondesí, the former major league slugger, on a billboard
endorsing one of the candidates in the country's May 2008
presidential elections. Our directions ended in the center of
town, so we pulled up next to a motoconcho who was relaxing
under a shade tree. Oye! The motoconcho seemed to know the
way to Loma del Sueño, but he kept the directions vague:
"Derecho" was all he would say—straight ahead. He was
angling to show us the way himself, for a small fee. So in an
attempt to get my money's worth, I exited the car and cautiously
assembled myself on the back of the scooter. My translator,
Alberto Pozo, who would trail the motoconcho in our car, told
me that if I felt uncomfortable, I should attempt to exit the bike
in a graceful fashion.
Riding with the motoconcho is not unlike taking a turn on those
mechanical bulls they have at high-end country-western bars.
You must lean into the turns and lift your derriere off the seat
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
about a half-second in advance of every pothole. We finally
found a smooth road near an old cemetery. "Muerto," the driver
repeated, grinning and pointing at the tombstones. I smiled
weakly. We took a left, and we found ourselves under a canopy
of lush foliage. Then we were going uphill. The scooter
shuddered during the climb, and the motoconcho kept up a long,
half-decipherable patter about the high price of gas and the poor
condition of the bike. (New York taxi drivers have never done a
better job setting up a tip.) Then the road flattened out, we sped
across a bridge, and on the top of the mountain, with all the
majesty of a hard-to-reach Buddhist monastery, was Loma del
Sueño. The Mountain of Dreams.
If the Phillies' academy was a summer-camp-style barracks, then
Loma del Sueño looked like a tourist resort. As we passed
through the gated entrance, we could see that baseball diamonds
had been carved directly onto the mountaintop. The fields were
back-dropped on all sides by a valley of bright green trees that
stretched into the horizon. To venture a metaphor I have never
seen on the sports page, it was a bit like playing baseball on
Machu Picchu. Loma del Sueño is the brainchild of José Rijo,
who won the Most Valuable Player award in the 1990 World
Series and also happens to be Juan Marichal's former son-in-law.
As he suffered through a string of arm injuries that would
ultimately end his playing career in 2002, Rijo decided to return
to his native country and create a piece of the baseball
infrastructure. Rijo's brother had suggested the mountaintop. The
ball fields, housing complex, and executive offices now serve as
baseball academies for the Washington Nationals, San Diego
Padres, and Detroit Tigers. A playoff game between the
Nationals' academy and the visiting Los Angeles Angels had
already gotten under way by the time we arrived, and we found
Rijo, a rotund, serene presence, relaxing in the shade of an
umbrella on the first-base line, a cigar sticking out of his mouth.
Loma del Sueño was very much a local affair. A crowd of
maybe 100 had made its way up the mountain, probably via
motoconcho or on foot, and was chattering excitedly along the
chain-link fences that surrounded the main field. There was a
spontaneous energy you rarely experience amid all the canned
stadium rock at a major league ballpark. Here, one
twentysomething fan made his way through the crowd with a
snake draped over his shoulders. Small boys of assorted sizes,
some lovingly attended to and others blissfully free of parental
supervision, scampered around. Two young women came
dressed and accessorized as if for a night at one of San
Cristóbal's finer discothèques. A banged-up 10-gallon water
cooler was hauled out to make sure everyone stayed hydrated
under the 88-degree sun. When the hometown Nationals took the
field, they were serenaded by a three-piece pep band—complete
with horn section—that had set up shop near Rijo. The Nationals
team broke out in a spasmodic dance and then ran to their
positions.
129/140
The young players headquartered at Loma del Sueño were
experiencing the kind of luxury accommodations normally
available only to turistas. They lived in a five-story pink stucco
palace, which Rijo, who was concentrating on the game,
dispatched us to in his golf cart. The student players' rooms were
not unlike those you'd find at any Dominican beach hotel, with
wrought-iron headboards and coordinating dressers. Each had a
private balcony that overlooked the valley below. "Some kids
are very poor here," Rijo told me later. "They don't know how to
handle themselves. They do so much damage to the air
conditioners, the TVs." An assistant took us up to peek into
Rijo's own penthouse apartment, which he had called Suite 27,
after his uniform number. It was decorated with African and
aboriginal art, flat-screen TVs, embroidered silk pillows, white
linen sofas, and top-shelf liquor like Grey Goose vodka and
Johnnie Walker Gold whiskey. I could imagine that in the mind
of a young, ambitious southpaw, it was a dreamlike vision of the
spoils of baseball success.
When we returned to the ball field, Rijo got us chairs and
ordered his staff to bring pitchers of passion-fruit juice with ice,
along with platters of crackers, cheese cubes, and cantaloupe. He
was still engrossed in the game, but he took a moment to make a
few remarks over the din of the band. "They've got the Field of
Dreams, I've got the Mountain of Dreams," Rijo said. "If you
build it, they will come."
Rijo lives at Loma del Sueño pretty much full-time. He pitches
batting practice and helps maintain the fields. He preaches about
discipline, bringing in police officers to warn the players about
the crime and drugs they're sure to encounter in the United
States. "The other day, they announced a hurricane," he said. "I
told the kids to go home. They said, 'No, no. If we stay here, we
know we're going to eat for sure.' So I told them to stay here."
Rijo also pointed out something I hadn't thought much about:
The academies are such a booming industry in the Dominican
Republic that they produce a number of jobs for locals. "This
town is so poor, it needs so much help, I figured this was the
best way for me to give back something," Rijo said. Loma del
Sueño requires a small army of scouts and groundskeepers and
cooks and motoconchos and maids, who enter the ballplayers'
rooms with the weariness of a mother entering her 16-year-old
son's. It is one thing to think about Major League Baseball
sending its agents to the Third World to pluck out young
shortstops and leave everyone else to fend for themselves. It's
another to think of Dominican baseball, at its core, as a local
industry.
That is what surprised me most about our tour of Dominican
baseball, this forceful assertion of Dominican-ness. Whereas
once the baseball industry may have had the whiff of
neocolonialism, it seems to have assumed a homegrown air. A
Dominican buscón brings the young ballplayer to the attention of
the academy. A major league team pays a signing bonus to the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
player's family (with the buscón taking his cut). During his three
years at the academy, the player trains with Dominican coaches,
is tended to by a Dominican staff, and, in the case of Loma del
Sueño, is mentored by a Dominican baseball star who has
already made the journey to the big leagues. An academy
director like Rjio is ultimately working at the pleasure of the
American baseball clubs, of course. But it's Dominicans who run
the place, rather than American outsiders—there's no reason for
the teams to do much more than sign the checks.
As we got up to leave, Rijo turned to me. "Do you smoke
cigars?" he asked. "Well, I have a cigar bar in Santo Domingo.
I'll be there from 8 until midnight tonight. You should come by."
From: Bryan Curtis
Subject: Jose Rijo Unplugged
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008, at 6:45 AM ET
When Jose Rijo, Dominican baseball eminence and MVP of the
1990 World Series, invited me to join him at his cigar bar in
Santo Domingo, I quickly agreed. Here was a chance to witness
a retired baseball player living in the afterglow of his career and
also to pretend, as best I could, that I belonged at the table.
First, we had a farewell dinner with Alberto Pozo, our fixer.
Alberto had promised us a final meal of authentic Dominican
food—comida típica—which we had been eating, between
sandwiches and Pollos Victorina fried chicken, for most of the
trip. Alberto decided on El Conuco, a touristy joint with an
extensive buffet and live dancing. We sat at a table close to
speakers blaring bachata music, and as the house dancers
clapped and twirled in front of us, I picked at a bowl of
sancocho, a stew made with seven meats. That conversation was
all but impossible wasn't as awkward as it might have been.
After dozens of hours in the car with Alberto—and a few with
his 6-year-old daughter, Paula—to call him a "fixer" would do
him little justice. He was a friend and fount of boundless
optimism—his answer to my entreaties for more bureaucrats or
baseball players was always "No problem." Alberto has an
entrepreneur's zeal, and if anyone can make "baseball tourism"
into a Dominican industry, it is he.
Rijo's cigar bar was a few blocks down the road, tucked into one
of the giant, neon-lit casinos that line the Malecón on Santo
Domingo's waterfront. We rolled up around 9 and spotted the
pitcher wearing a lime-green shirt and sitting at an outdoor table
with about half a dozen friends. When Rijo saw us approaching,
he made a few sharp movements with his hands, and we
suddenly found ourselves propelled into seats. Spanish-language
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torch songs were wafting through the windows of Rijo's white
Lexus SC430 convertible, which was neatly parked next to the
table. Slowly, as I acclimated myself to the surroundings,
something else became apparent: The great Rijo and his friends
were not merely listening to Spanish torch songs, they were
singing them, in unison—a sing-along that, after pausing a few
seconds for our arrival and drink orders, resumed in its fullthroated glory. It was the kind of karaoke performance you do
not normally encounter on Old Timers' Day.
for my companion Megan Hustad; she was duly chastised every
time she allowed it to go out.
Alas, thanks to a new anti-crime ordinance, the bars in Santo
Domingo shut down at midnight, so a few members peeled off
and the rest made motions to take the party inside the casino.
Just then, Otero turned to us and said, "Now, I sing for you in
English. My English is not good."
"But it is good!" Rijo interjected.
The lead singer was a Rijo confidant, Ramón Antonio Otero, a
pudgy, middle-aged man who later told me, "My name is artist."
As he tackled songs like "Que Se Mueran de Enviada" and
"Esclavo y Amo," Otero sung in an exaggerated mock-opera
style: chest pushed out, palms fluttering against pectorals, lower
jaw tucked into his clavicle. A few times, I saw Rijo push
buttons on his cell phone and hold it up for Otero to sing into the
receiver. When I finally asked Rijo whom he was calling, he said
it was his wife's answering machine—he was leaving her a
serenade.
The scene was fitting, because as a pitcher Rijo had always been
something of an exotic. The San Cristóbal native made his major
league debut at 18, in 1984, and by 26 he was on pace to become
a Dominican legend on the order of Juan Marichal and Osvaldo
Virgil. "I became a king," as Rijo once put it. Injuries cost him a
chance to be a transcendent pitcher—he endured five surgeries
on his right elbow alone—and he dropped out of the game in
1995. But after a grueling rehabilitation, he was able to claw his
way back into the majors, and in 2002, nearly seven years after
he'd started his last game, he pitched the Reds past the Cubs. In
retirement, Rijo has become rounder and more kinglike, with
courtiers inside and outside the game.
Between songs, Rijo introduced the gallery that had arranged
itself around him. It was a group of regulars that had come to
enjoy Rijo's halo of celebrity, snifters of Jameson, and topquality cigars. One gray-suited gentleman who stopped by to pay
his respects was, someone leaned in to whisper, "in the
government." A tall, comically good-looking man in a tight pink
polo shirt turned out to be the engineer who designed and was
supervising construction of the D.R.'s first subway system, the
earthworks for which we had seen earlier in the trip. Linen
jackets were held rakishly over shoulders, and every other
minute a joke would be made at somebody's expense, bringing
the table's ever-simmering laughter to a burst. A couple of young
women had taken over a table a few yards away and were
making expectant eyes at our group, but this was plainly a boys'
night out—an evening of bawdy jokes and gleeful showmanship.
I could understand only half of what was said—most of the
performance was en español—but it was one of those rare
occasions in adult life where you find yourself giggling along
like a confused toddler and yet feel no shame. The sole
allowance for feminine delicacy was the smaller, vanillaflavored cigar one member of the entourage deemed appropriate
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Attempting to prove his friend right, Otero gamely started in on
"My Way." Rijo joined him for the chorus and softly shook a
pair of maracas. It was at this point that I entered a state of
delirious happiness I have rarely experienced since childhood. I
was in the company of a pitcher whose baseball cards I had
collected, whom I had once watched win two World Series
games on television. He was handing me drinks. And cigars. He
was performing a song. With maracas. It was a rather grandiose
end to our baseball tour, a symbol, I guess, of the extravagant
lifestyle that awaits in the major leagues. For the triumphant
final verse—"For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself,
then he has naught"—Rijo sung harmony, and he and Otero
finished the song on their feet. There was a light smattering of
applause, a few cat calls.
At one point, Rijo excused himself to take a phone call from Jim
Bowden, the general manager of the Washington Nationals, who
wanted to talk with Rijo about Dominican prospects. "Bowden
told me, 'I need you here,' " Rijo told me later, shaking his head.
"I said, 'I'm having too good a time!' "
well-traveled
The Mecca of the Mouse
Worshipping at the church of Disney.
By Seth Stevenson
Friday, March 28, 2008, at 11:39 AM ET
From: Seth Stevenson
Subject: The Wide World of Disney World
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008, at 7:17 AM ET
Soon after checking in to my hotel room, I discover a mouse in
the bathroom. Three mice, in fact. One is imprinted on the bar of
soap. One peers out from the shampoo label. And a third, on
closer inspection, is a washcloth—ingeniously folded by hotel
staff to create two protruding, terrycloth ears.
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I'm growing used to these rodentophilic touches. Earlier today,
as I drove into the enormous Walt Disney nation-state here in
Florida, I noticed a tall electrical stanchion topped with a pair of
Mickey ears. Soon after, I spotted a water tower with the ears
painted in black. When it comes to branding, Disney's aim is
total immersion.
Which is good, because that's my aim, too. I'm here to envelop
myself in the Disney World experience. I've obtained lodging
deep within the compound, at a Disney-owned resort. I've
bought a $280 multiday pass, granting access to more Disney
attractions than any person could reasonably endure. For the
next five days, I plan not to stray beyond the borders of the
Disney empire. (Don't worry, that still leaves me 47 square
miles, an area roughly twice the size of Manhattan, in which to
roam.)
When I enter Spaceship Earth, I board a ride tracing the history
of communication—from the first written symbols to the advent
of the personal computer. It's low season now, so there's a
mercifully short wait for the ride. That's the good news. The bad
news is that once the ride is under way, I discover that it's a
vague, aimless snooze. Toward the end of it, we pass what I
believe to be an animatronic Steve Jobs. He's pneumatically
gesturing inside a replica of a 1970s California garage.
When the ride is over, we spill into an area called
"Innoventions." It's sponsored by a company called Underwriters
Laboratories, which specializes in product-safety compliance.
Among the fun activities here for kids: Try to make a vacuum
overheat! Also: See if you can fray the cord of an iron! (I'm not
kidding about this. There are 9-year-old boys with furrowed
brows attempting to cause product failures.)
Why on earth would I, a childless adult, visit Disney World by
myself? Basically, to figure out what the hell's going on in this
place. Because America has clearly decided it's hallowed
ground.
Several other exhibit halls surround Spaceship Earth. According
to my guidebook, they feature "subjects such as agriculture,
automotive safety, and geography." Well gosh, that's what being
a kid is all about!
More than 100,000 people visit Disney World every day. I went
when I was a kid. Nearly all my friends went. A few went more
than once. Heck, I know Jews who weren't bar mitzvahed but did
go to Epcot.
Inside a pavilion labeled "The Land," I find myself being
lectured on sustainable development. The lecture is delivered by
the animated warthog from The Lion King. I can overhear the
nice mom behind me trying to distract her whimpering toddler.
"Look honey," she says, reading from her Epcot brochure, "the
next ride is a 'voyage through amazing greenhouses and a fish
farm!' " The kid cries louder.
Somehow, this cluster of amusement parks has grown into a rite
of American childhood. Kids are born with homing beacons set
for Orlando. Meanwhile, parents—despite the hefty costs—often
seem just as eager or more so to make the pilgrimage.
My question is: What exactly are we worshipping at this mecca?
Day 1: Epcot
I drive the three minutes from my hotel and ditch my rental car
in the lot. After swiping my pass-card and getting my fingerprint
scanned (a new security measure), I enter through Epcot's gates.
Once inside, I'm immediately jaw-dropped by the looming mass
of Spaceship Earth.
It's tough to ignore—being a 16-million-pound, 180-foot-high
disco ball. One of Walt Disney's personal rules for theme-park
design involved a concept he curiously termed the wienie. A
wienie is a show-stopping structure that anchors the park. It is
meant be iconic and captivating, so that it lodges in your visual
memory forever.
Spaceship Earth is perhaps the wieniest of all wienies. And it
announces right off the bat that Epcot will not be your standard
kiddie fun park. Over at the Magic Kingdom, the wienie is the
fairy-tale Cinderella Castle. Here, it's a geodesic sphere inspired
by the theories of R. Buckminster Fuller.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Though I was only 8, I still remember the day Epcot opened in
1982. The TV networks treated the event as news, airing live
coverage. Every kid in my third-grade class was desperate to see
this wondrous new place.
Once the fanfare faded, though, we began to sense that Epcot
was a slightly odd duck. Disney had purposefully designed it to
appeal more to young adults than to their offspring. It was bound
to disappoint all but the nerdiest of children. It had been the
largest private construction project in all of American history—
requiring three years and $1 billion to complete—and in the end,
it was essentially a tarted-up trade expo.
A perusal of Disney history suggests that Epcot was in some
ways the brainchild of the man himself. What Walt envisioned
was an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow—a
real town, serving as a laboratory for cutting-edge ideas about
urban planning. But after Walt died in 1966, his dream was
gradually perverted into the theme park we see today.
Sponsors were called in to defray the huge costs, and in return,
Epcot's "Future World" exhibits became an ode to giant
corporations. The automotive safety ride is brought to you by
General Motors. The agricultural science ride is compliments of
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Nestlé. In his tome Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and
America (the title refers to the fake leaves on a Disney "tree"),
mildly paranoid anthropologist Stephen M. Fjellman writes that
Epcot's attractions are meant to "convince us to put our lives—
and our descendants' lives—into the hands of transnational
corporate planners and the technological systems they wish to
control."
When I leave the Future World area, I walk around the Epcot
lagoon to the other half of the park. Here I enter the "World
Showcase." It consists of 11 separate pavilions, each dedicated
to a different nation.
I like the idea of the World Showcase. And some of the
architecture—the faux Paris street scene, for example—displays
an astounding talent for mimicry. But if you've ever actually
been outside America, this nod to the rest of the world is mostly
just insulting.
Half the pavilions have no cultural content at all. The Morocco
complex is just souvenir stores selling carpets and fezzes. The
ride meant to encapsulate Mexico is a collection of slapstick
Donald Duck skits. (Donald loses his bathing suit while
parasailing in Acapulco, Donald flirts with some caliente
señoritas, etc.) I guess none of this should surprise me. Lots of
tourists view travel abroad as basically a chance to shop for
regionally themed trinkets.
By the early evening, it's getting dark, and both kids and adults
are getting crankier. A lot of strollers get wheeled into corners as
moms whisper-shout, "Settle down, Hunter" and "You stop that
right now, Madison." I'm also noticing a lot more people buying
the $8.50 margaritas available next to the Mexico pavilion.
I take this as my cue and head back to the parking lot.
Tomorrow's another day—and another theme park.
From: Seth Stevenson
Subject: Disney's Hollywood Studios
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008, at 7:36 AM ET
The keynote attraction of Disney's Hollywood Studios, listed
first on the park brochure, is something they call the Great
Movie Ride. This ride purports to trace the history of American
cinema. "Travel through classic film scenes and Hollywood
moments," the pamphlet promises.
Eager to see what sort of curatorial stamp the Disney imagineers
might put on this topic, I line up, wait my turn, and hop aboard a
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
conveyor pod. Soon, I'm rolling along past various iconic movie
stuff. There's Jimmy Cagney cracking wise. There's Humphrey
Bogart wooing Ingrid Bergman. And oh, look, it's Sigourney
Weaver battling an alien. (To my great disappointment, we at no
point pass Debbie doing Dallas.)
There are two big problems with this ride (besides there being no
Debbie). First, as best I can tell, the kids sitting all around me
have no idea who any of these actors are. Never seen any of
these movies. They perk up solely at references to films that
were released after 2005.
Second, these aren't video clips we're watching: Those famous
scenes are being performed by animatronic robots. They have
waxy faces and whirring pneumatic limbs. Frankly, they're
weird. And they, too, leave the kids completely cold.
I'm sure "audio-animatronic" creatures were nifty when Disney
pioneered them in the 1960s. They became possible after
Wernher von Braun lent his pal Walt Disney some magnetic
computer tape—the same kind that was used by NASA to
synchronize its launches. (Pause to contemplate: Wernher von
freaking Braun! He gave the world not only the V-2 rocket and
the Saturn V superbooster, but also the means to create an
android Sigourney Weaver. Perhaps the greatest innovation of
all!)
In 1964, an animatronic Abe Lincoln wowed the crowds at the
New York World's Fair. People were convinced he was a live
actor. Impressive achievement. Four decades later, though, who's
impressed when a mannequin blinks and raises its eyebrows?
Sadly for Disney, many well-known rides throughout all the
parks—even the famed Pirates of the Caribbean—still rely on
animatronics as a central selling point. I'm guessing that within a
decade all these robot performers will get phased out. Robot
Humphrey and Robot Sigourney will get powered down one
final time, then tossed on a pile in some dark, archival closet. A
few classics—maybe android Abe—will be left out on display to
appease the nostalgists.
However dated, it's still very Disney—this notion that the
ultimate entertainment is to watch a machine impersonate a
human. It hints at Disney's core philosophy. If I had to choose a
single word to describe the Disney theme parks, that word would
be inorganic. Or, as a cultural studies post-doc might put it:
"Blah blah simulacra blah blah Baudrillard." As has been noted
in many a dissertation, we visit Disney World to savor the
meticulous construction—physical, mythical, and emotional—of
a universe that's completely fake and soulless.
But oh, how beautifully soulless it is. Upon leaving the Great
Movie Ride, I walk down a facsimile of Sunset Boulevard. Here,
I notice the asphalt under my feet has rubbed away in spots,
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revealing the old streetcar tracks beneath. Of course, there never
was a streetcar. And its tracks were never paved over to make
way for the automobile age. And that pavement was never
subsequently eaten away by the ravages of time. In fact, this
entire fake history came into being all at once, fully formed,
plopped on top of some Florida scrub land. As famed
Baudrillard scholar Michael Eisner announced at the opening of
the park in 1989: "Welcome to the Hollywood that never was
and always will be."
I think it's these interstitial moments—the seamlessness and the
attention to detail—that really stun Disney visitors and stay with
them long after they've left. The rides are great, sure, but every
amusement park has rides. Disney creates fully realized
narratives.
Consider the Tower of Terror, located at the end of Sunset
Boulevard. It's just a classic drop tower, where the goal is to
send your stomach up into your sinuses. A regular amusement
park would put you in a windowed gondola, crank it up high,
and drop it. But here the complicated back story is that we're
visiting a haunted, 1930s-era Hollywood hotel. The hotel lobby
contains accurate period furnishings—battered velvet chairs,
musty lampshades.
As I wait in line, shuffling forward, I eavesdrop on the couple
behind me. The woman (I've gathered she's from a showbusiness background) is marveling at Disney's set design. "Look
at the distressing on all the surfaces," she says with real
admiration. "That's not easy to do. You can't just let the set hang
around and age for 50 years." She's right: The place is yellowed,
stained, and cobwebbed to a perfect patina. You'd never guess
the whole thing was built in 1994.
After passing through the lobby, we're shown an expensively
produced film about the hotel's haunted past. Then "bellhops" in
Barton Fink-ish costumes lead us to our seats. And then, at last,
the actual ride happens. It's about 45 seconds of screaming our
tonsils out as we plummet down an elevator shaft. All that effort
and ingenuity wrapped around such a simple thrill. But this is
precisely what draws folks all the way to Disney World instead
of to their local Six Flags.
When the ride's done, I go back outside and watch people
strolling down Hollywood Boulevard. It turns out that the most
far-fetched fantasy in Disney World isn't the magic spells, the
haunted buildings, or the talking animals. It's the fact that there
aren't any cars.
For the mostly suburban Americans visiting here, this whole
pedestrianism concept is at once liberating and bewildering.
People don't seem ready for it. On the one hand, they adore
walking with their children in a totally safe environment (one
that's outside and is not explicitly a shopping mall). On the other
hand, they're getting extremely winded.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
It's pretty far to walk the whole park. "Slow down! Stop walking
so fast," I hear over and over—sometimes from fat adults, other
times from their chubby children. They sweat through oversize
T-shirts. They breathe heavily with every step. Their plump
calves go pink in the sunshine, contrasting with their bright
white sneakers and socks. Self-propulsion appears to be a wholly
unfamiliar challenge.
Still, the rewards for their efforts are many. Around any given
corner there might lurk Power Rangers, mugging for
photographs. Sometimes a troupe of fresh-faced teens will
suddenly materialize and perform dance numbers from High
School Musical. Later, you can buy a multipack of High School
Musical socks at one of the sidewalk souvenir stores. (OK, I
actually bought some of these socks. They were for my 26-yearold sister. We share a refined sense of humor.)
As the afternoon wanes, and I grow tired of the masses, I duck
into the least-attended attraction I can find. It's called "Walt
Disney: One Man's Dream." Inside, there's a small museum
dedicated to Walt's life and a theater screening a short
biographical film. There are about 12 people in the auditorium
when the film begins. One family leaves halfway through
because their toddler is cranky.
Poor Walt, I think to myself. One day you're chilling with
Wernher von Braun, inventing lifelike robots. The next day
you're just some dude who drew a mouse.
(Hey, let this be a lesson to you, High School Musical brats.
There will come a time when no one will be buying your
licensed hosiery anymore. Who will sing and dance with you
then? Allow me to answer: You will sing and dance alone.)
From: Seth Stevenson
Subject: Disney's Animal Kingdom
Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008, at 8:05 AM ET
The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Animal Kingdom
reveals that the imagineers deliberately left the parking lots out
in front of this Disney-style zoo as bleak and barren as they
could. A wasteland, with no strips of grass to interrupt the
endless asphalt slab. They wanted to heighten the contrast we
feel when entering into the lush, wooded Animal Kingdom park.
The scheme "ensures that the immersion into nature ... will be
very impactful."
My first thought upon reading this was: Screw you, imagineers!
Parking lots suck enough as it is. You're saying you made yours
134/140
even more depressing than necessary, just so you could
showcase some cutesy landscaping idea? Go imaginuck
yourselves!
Once I'd gotten this indignation out of my system, my second
thought was: Gosh, they sure do put a lot of thought into this
stuff. Leafing through these behind-the-scenes books (I also
have The Imagineering Field Guide to Epcot) brings to light, yet
again, the insane attention to detail you find at every Disney
property.
For instance, once you've made that transition from the parking
lot, through the gates into the Animal Kingdom entrance area,
the imagineers' next goal is to carefully orchestrate your first
glimpse of the massive Tree of Life. (It's one of this park's two
wienies—the other being a replica Mount Everest.) Various
inclines, berms, and hollows have been arranged so that you're
forced to ascend a small rise before suddenly stumbling onto a
gorgeous, unimpeded view of the tree. (The tree itself is an
impressive feat of engineering. And is, of course, totally fake.)
I've been curious to see how this obsessive nano-focus would be
reconciled with the challenges of a zoo. Live animals seem
decidedly un-Disney, as they can't be compelled to perform a
repeated, synchronized sequence. (Unlike an animatronic robot.
Or a low-wage employee.) With the animals' free will involved,
it's impossible to ensure that every guest will receive the same,
focus-group-approved experience. This sort of thing makes the
imagineers extremely uncomfortable.
Their response was to make the animals into a sideshow. In
many cases, you don't even get to watch the animals from a
static viewing point, as you would at a regular zoo. Instead,
there's a "ride" with a silly narrative structure (about, for
instance, chasing poachers), during which you get quick, oblique
glimpses of the animals as you speed by. The true stars of
Animal Kingdom aren't the lions, apes, and elephants. The stars
are the precision-crafted environments you walk through.
Here, come with me as we visit the delightful little village of
Harambe. Harambe is the perfect East African port town of your
mind's eye. When you first come upon it, it's hard not to feel
you've been teleported to Kenya.
All the signs are in the right typeface. The buildings are lovingly
dilapidated. The paint-color choices are perfect. (The imagineers
say they took paint chip samples on research trips and did
surface rubbings to get the building textures right.)
Having traveled to Africa myself, I can tell you that Harambe
gets only two minor details wrong. The first is that Africa has
many more flies than this. And the second is that Africa has
black people.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Given the otherwise remarkable accuracy of Harambe's set
design, I'm sort of surprised that Disney didn't manufacture
15,000 animatronic Africans. OK, so they did import a few
actual, nonrobot Africans to work the snack stands. Jambo! But
perhaps the bigger issue is: Where are the black tourists visiting
the park? I've seen maybe two black families all day. As in the
rest of Disney World, there are literally more French people here
than African-Americans.
Another population dynamic I've noticed: the dearth of children
at this supposed family destination. I've seen lots of adult
couples with no kids in tow. Even when there's a token toddler
present, there are often six or seven grown-ups attached to it. I'm
beginning to suspect it's the adults who really want to be here,
while the kids are just serving as fig leaves.
This theory is bolstered by a scene I witness while waiting in
line for food. An elderly, gray-bearded gent is in front of me,
trying to buy a soda, when all of a sudden he's interrupted by his
twentysomething daughter, who is scurrying toward us.
"Daaaaaad! She's not tall enough to go on the ride!" whines the
woman, gesturing with a pout at the tiny girl clinging to her
thigh. "So now I can't go! And you wandered off!" The man says
nothing. "Take her hand," the woman demands. The poor old
fellow is mortified by this behavior (and is in the middle of his
beverage transaction, to boot). But he silently takes his
granddaughter's hand so his horrid daughter can go enjoy her
fricking roller coaster.
Admittedly, Disney has some pretty great roller coasters.
Toward the end of the day, I walk over to Anandapur (a fake
Himalayan village, complete with Tibetan-style prayer flags)
and board the Expedition Everest ride. I'm seated in a rickety rail
car, which creaks up to the top of the 200-foot mountain before
swooping, banking, and dropping at insane speeds. Everyone
screams together. It's a group outpouring of white-knuckle
terror. When the ride's over and I disembark, I find I've broken
out in a light sweat. My dazed fellow riders look at each other in
total awe: Can you believe what we just went through?
The same thing happens on the nearby Kali River Rapids ride.
There are seven other people on my raft, and as we float down
the rushing river, I can feel us starting to gel into a team. We
shout warnings to each other when the white water rages ahead.
("Look out, here it comes!") We catch each others' eyes and can't
help but smile. The little girl sitting next to me cackles every
time we get hit with a splash. She's shouting, "I'm soaked!" with
a big, adorable grin.
If I've found one redeeming feature of the Disney World
experience, it's the community spirit that's fostered when
strangers all join together for a primal shriek of fear—or joy.
135/140
From: Seth Stevenson
Subject: Celebration and Downtown Disney
Posted Thursday, March 27, 2008, at 7:44 AM ET
I've spent three straight days inside the Disney World fortress.
The incessant magicalness is starting to wear on me. I'm feeling
a need to escape Big Rodent's clutchy claws. At the same time, I
don't want to risk too much corruption from outside influences.
I'd rather not stray too far—geographically or spiritually. The
perfect compromise: a visit to Celebration.
This insta-town was conceived by Disney, built on Disneyowned land, and initially managed by Disney executives (though
the company has shed much of its involvement over time). And
it's only a few miles from my hotel. I make the short drive, park
my car downtown, and hop out for a look.
I've long been a fan of planned communities. I once lobbied my
editor at Newsweek to let me write a story about Co-op City—
those ugly brick apartment towers in the Bronx, N.Y., next to I95. My resulting (very short) article included a quote terming
Co-op City's architecture "a disgrace to humanity." The piece
also noted that Co-op City had been constructed on the rubble of
an abandoned theme park. The park was called Freedomland,
and it was the creation of a former Walt Disney associate.
Celebration, though it wasn't built until the 1990s, was in some
ways the creation of Walt himself. Walt's original plan for his
Florida swampland was to create a brand-new living town—the
true Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
Celebration is the belated (and mangled) realization of that
dream.
Walt had envisioned a high-tech, sci-fi city, in appearance not
unlike Epcot's Future World area (monorails whizzing by and
whatnot). That's not how things turned out. Celebration is
instead backward looking, with neotraditional, faux-prewar
houses. Its old-timey, Norman Rockwell vibe is less Future
World and more Main Street U.S.A.
Celebration's planners were proponents of New Urbanism (in
itself a somewhat nostalgic credo, what with its emphasis on
marginalizing the automobile). The town's layout is pedestrianfriendly, the retail and restaurant district is a short stroll from
many houses, and all the car garages are hidden in rear alleys not
visible from the street. Sure enough, within moments of my
arrival, I find myself smack in the middle of a New
Urbanist/Rockwellian moment: children walking home from
school together as a friendly crossing guard holds up his stop
sign.
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The thing is, I can't help but wonder if these kids might be
animatronic. Everything looks waaaaay too perfect. The town
famously has a strict rulebook legislating things such as yard
upkeep, what color your curtains can be, and what kind of
furniture (if any) you can put on your porch. This results in a
place so scrubbed of individuality that the houses seem to resent
their human residents.
All the streets here have the same power-washed gleam as the
streets in the Disney theme parks. The neighborhoods have the
same built-all-at-once aesthetic. I actually like some of the
downtown buildings designed by shnazzy architects. (Favorites
include the toylike post office by Michael Graves and the retro
cinema by Cesar Pelli—though I feel Philip Johnson's town hall
with its forest of pillars is a facile, unfunny joke.) But having
spent the last few days surrounded by maddeningly perfect
Disney habitats, I'm now getting the sinking sense that I haven't
escaped the Mouse at all.
Celebration forces upon you the same seamless, manufactured
experience you get when you walk through the "villages" of
Harambe and Anandapur. The inhabitants of Celebration are
essentially living inside a theme park. (We might call it Suburb
Land.) Each night when the park shuts down, they're still inside
the gates.
In the evening, I decide to check out downtown Disney, back
inside the fortress. It's basically a very high-end strip mall—with
a Planet Hollywood instead of an Applebee's, and a Virgin
Megastore instead of a Hot Topic. I grab dinner at Bongos
Cuban Café (celebrity owner: Gloria Estefan) and then stroll
over to Pleasure Island as it gets dark.
Pleasure Island is where adults on vacation at Disney go at night
to escape their children. Also here: businesspeople stuck in
Orlando for conferences and locals who treat this as their regular
hangout. (Pleasure Island doesn't require a Disney Pass.) There's
a club for every taste, from the disco lounge (8-Trax) to the hiphop spot (BET Soundstage) to the mainstream, top-40 dancehall
(Motion).
A single cover charge gets you in to all the clubs, all night. So
people bounce back and forth among the venues. This creates the
sort of nightlife melting pot that you rarely, if ever, find in the
real world. Because it's Disney, and we all feel safe and
emboldened, no one's afraid to venture into what might be
perceived as alien territory.
Nerdy white people stride confidently into the "black" club.
Older couples wade onto dance floors packed with
whippersnappers. Gay dudes sashay through the redneck-y rock
club. (When I say that, I'm not trying to play on a stereotype. I
literally watched three gay men prance about and do ballet
jumps while the house band played Lynyrd Skynyrd. These guys
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were egging each other on, trying to get a rise out of the crowd,
but none of the lumpy heteros seemed to pay any mind.)
I find the whole scene oddly hopeful—at first. If people can all
get along together here, maybe we can bring that tolerance back
home with us. As the night wears on, though, different groups
begin to self-segregate.
Early in the evening, for instance, I had a drink at a club called
Mannequins. It had a mixed crowd: moms and dads in dorky
khakis, some college-age kids getting blitzed, and one pair of
gay guys dancing up a storm under the disco ball. I was
heartened by the diversity. But it didn't last.
When I popped back a few hours later, I ordered a drink and
scanned the room again. It appeared the demographics had
undergone a radical shift. Now there were 150 men positively
swarming the rotating dance floor. They were accompanied by
about three women. And I couldn't help but notice that these
men, as a group, seemed extraordinarily handsome, trim, and
well-dressed.
Ohhhhhhhhhh. I suppose that name should have been a clue,
now that I think about it.
Anyway, it's all good in the Disney 'hood. When we envision a
"magic kingdom," we, each of us, have our own ideas.
From: Seth Stevenson
Subject: The Magic Kingdom
Posted Friday, March 28, 2008, at 11:39 AM ET
Inside every Disney theme park, you'll find at least one booth—
often more than one—stocked with information about Disney
Vacation Club Resorts. A nice man or woman will hand you a
brochure, offer to take you on a tour of model rooms, and talk
you through a few different time-share options. Apparently, it's a
terrific deal if you want to bring your family back to Disney
World every year.
Query: Why would anyone want to go to Disney World every
year? You can pretty much see the whole thing in a week. OK,
fine, kids might like it enough to go back again—once, or maybe
twice. But this time share makes financial sense only if you
return about seven times.
Holy frack! I'd go mental if I had to spend seven precious
vacations trapped inside the Disney universe. But let's put my
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
personal feelings aside. Let's say you're a parent. Mightn't it be
better to broaden your children's horizons just a tad? Like,
maybe visit Canada—instead of just the Canada pavilion in
Epcot?
According to Disney, there are more than 100,000 member
families in the Vacation Club. These people have handed over
all their foreseeable leisure time to the Walt Disney Co. It's an
astonishing decision, no? And it's surely less about a destination
than an ideology. We'll call it Disneyism. These families aren't
choosing a vacation so much as a religion.
Walt Disney, the man, is a singular character in American
history. He gets his start as an animator, then becomes a movie
mogul, an amusement park baron, and eventually a
mythmaker—a sort of unprecedented high priest of American
childhood. By the mid-1960s, with his techno-utopian plans for
the living city of Epcot, Walt had even turned into (in the words
of anthropologist Stephen M. Fjellman) "a social planner and
futurist philosopher."
It's these later incarnations of Walt that really fascinate me. The
guy is sculpting the toddler id while also designing a domed
metropolis with a monorail. How did this happen? A man who
got famous drawing a cartoon mouse was now going to solve all
America's urban problems?
It's hard to think of a comparable career arc. But as a parallel,
evil-twin figure, consider Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
He was born 10 years after Walt, also in heartland America. His
career likewise took off on the strength of mass-market
entertainments (in Hubbard's case, sci-fi). And then
midcentury—during that Atomic Age moment when everything
somehow seemed possible—he turned his attention to a grand,
ego-gratifying social project of dubious utility.
Who knows what ambitions might have bubbled up in Walt if
he'd lived past 1966. But I think one way to look at his life is as
L. Ron Hubbard gone good. This is a long way of saying:
Disney isn't just a media outfit with some theme parks. It's a
worldview—sprung from the head of a lone, imaginative man.
And ultimately, for the people who come back to Orlando year
after year, it's a church.
On my last day here, I visit the Magic Kingdom—the original
and still best-attended of the Disney World parks. After walking
down Main Street U.S.A. (a fake, turn-of-the-century boulevard
lined with yet more Disney souvenir stores), I come upon the
famous Cinderella castle. Fairy-tale spires everywhere. It's so
gleaming, it looks like they repaint it every night. (Over the last
several years, furthering my Disney-as-religion theory, the castle
has become a prime location for wedding ceremonies. Up to five
weddings per day are held on Disney World's grounds. Mickey
and other characters will even attend your wedding reception.
For a fee.)
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As I get closer to the castle, I see the familiar Disney apostles
(Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy) performing musical numbers
on a stage, enthralling a large crowd. The lyrics to their songs
shuffle around a few key words—dreams, magic, imagination,
wonder—and weave them into some upbeat string arrangements.
Hymns for the Disneyist congregation.
Many of the little girls watching this are wearing princess
dresses (bought at those souvenir stores). For years, Disney must
have sought a boys' version of the princess obsession, and it
seems they've finally found it—thanks to the blockbuster Pirates
of the Caribbean films. Lots of little dudes are running around in
pirate costumes, waving plastic swords.
Designed for the UNICEF pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair, it
shows us children of many cultures all living in harmony. (A
color-saturated, Pop Art harmony.) It's an unassailable message,
and there's also something comforting in the ride's retro
simplicity. Our open-top boat floats along, and I love the gentle
bump and redirect when it hits an underwater guide rail. I even
have a soft spot for the music. (Though I prefer to reimagine it
as a slow, melancholy ballad.)
As I leave the park, I decide that after all my cranky
complaining, I'm glad my week came to an end this way. "It's a
Small World" makes for a nice, pleasant memory to finish on.
I'm feeling positive about Disney again. And then there's an
incident on the parking tram.
Disney has increasingly managed to find characters to leverage
for each different demographic group. Tinkerbell, from Peter
Pan, has been rebranded as the slightly saucier "Tink" and now
graces T-shirts targeted at your tween daughter. Meanwhile,
your death-metal son will be drawn to the skull-and-bones
imagery of The Nightmare Before Christmas franchise.
I'm seated on the tram, ready to ride back out to the parking lot
where my rental car's waiting. The driver has already blown the
horn and announced that no more boarding will be allowed.
Suddenly, I notice a woman 20 yards away, running toward us.
Even adults wear Disney gear here. There are moms in Mickey
ears and dads with giant sorcerer hats. This is a safe place for
everyone to act like a kid, and I'll admit there's a certain
sweetness about that.
The driver spots her too. The tram is in motion now, and he
screams over the loudspeaker: "Ma'am! Stand back! There is no
more boarding!" But the woman can see that there's no real
danger here—the vehicle is moving at, like, 3 miles an hour—
and fer crissakes she doesn't want to wait 15 minutes for another
tram if she doesn't have to.
I'm not a fan of the gender dynamic implicit in the
princess/pirate split. (Visiting Mickey and Minnie's side-by-side
houses does little to reassure me on this score. Mickey's house
has a nonfunctioning kitchen and is full of sports equipment,
while Minnie has a to-do list on her wall with the entries "Bake a
cake for Mickey" and "Make a box lunch for Mickey.") Still, my
heart melts when I see a little girl wearing a princess dress while
sitting in her wheelchair, beaming ear to ear as her even beamier
parents take pictures.
I can understand why families love Disney World. And there's
nothing wrong with making kids happy. I just think we'd all be
better off if we didn't indoctrinate our kids in the Disneyist
dogma.
After spending the past five days here, I've come to the
conclusion that Disney World teaches kids three things: 1) a
meaningless, bubble-headed utopianism, 2) a grasping, whining
consumerism, and 3) a preference for soulless facsimiles of
culture and architecture instead of for the real thing. I suppose it
also teaches them that monorails are cool. So there's that.
I end my day with the "It's a Small World" ride. Yes, it's a prime
example of bubble-headed utopianism. Yes, it features
animatronics, which are dated and lame. And yes, that song just
never ends. No matter: The ride somehow manages to charm me
anyway.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The driver keeps shouting. The other passengers are tut-tutting at
this rule-breaker. The tram keeps rolling. The woman is getting
nearer.
As I watch all this, I start to think about the totalitarian
seamlessness of Disney. The berms that hide the loading docks
and the Dumpsters. The fireworks that go off every night at
precisely 9 p.m. The impeccably G-rated entertainment. The
synchronized rides. The power-washed streets.
"Ma'am!" the driver yells again, with real exasperation. She's
just a few strides away, with her eyes on that slow-moving prize.
"Ma'am, there is no more boarding at this time!"
I can't help but break into a satisfied grin as the woman hops up
on the running board and takes a seat.
xx factor xxtra
Unnecessarily Evil
Reclaiming the morality of abortion and the overdue change to the Democratic
platform.
By Linda Hirshman
Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at 6:20 PM ET
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The Democratic Party platform of 2008 finally dropped its old
abortion language ("safe, legal and rare"), which had asked that
women not have abortions unless they absolutely must. The
2008 platform, just announced, says instead, "The Democratic
Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a
woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of
ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or
undermine that right." Should a woman desire to bear her child,
the Dems advocate prenatal care, income support, and adoption
programs to help her there, too. But in the world of the new
Democratic platform, it's the woman's decision to make.
In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled by a margin of 7-2 in Roe v.
Wade that women—not their husbands, their doctors, or their
legislatures—must be the ones to decide whether to bear or
beget a child. Edward Lazarus, who clerked for the author of that
opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun, called the decision "the
Emancipation Proclamation for American women." But if Roe
was Emancipation, the past three decades have felt like the Jim
Crow South. Unable to repeal the decision itself, opponents
made abortion as illegitimate as possible. The Hyde Amendment
pulled Medicaid financing for the poorest and most desperate
women. In 1992, the Clinton campaign reframed abortion as an
unpleasant last resort. Last term, the Supreme Court finally
broke, affirming the criminalization of certain late-term
abortions. And Democratic candidate Barack Obama, in The
Audacity of Hope, compared women's regrets over their past
abortions to white people's regrets about past bigotry. This
Clintonian compromise—that abortion was a necessary moral
evil—had become the most progressives could hope for.
With the release of the new platform, and so long as the Obama
campaign doesn't cast the platform into purgatory and pick an
anti-abortion candidate—like Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine—for
vice president, the emancipation of women may once again
become a legitimate political position. It is time to revive the
moral argument for protecting a woman's right to choose:
Abortion is about the value of women's lives.
Liberals have never won anything by reframing moral questions
as pragmatic ones; they end up looking shifty and evasive.
Whatever else it has been doing, the Supreme Court has always
framed its decisions about the legality of abortion in moral
terms. The decision in Roe to protect women's reproductive
choices grew out of earlier cases protecting ordinary means of
birth control as a matter of "privacy." It was only over the course
of its long philosophical evolution on abortion that the court
silently changed the meaning of privacy from the morally neutral
secrecy to autonomy, a moral claim for the individual's right to
shape her own life.
When, in 1986, Justice Byron White attempted to argue that
disputed questions of abortion were best resolved by referring
these questions to the states, Justice John Paul Stevens insisted
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
that the only proper decision-maker in such a crucial matter was
the mother. Similarly, in their landmark 1992 abortion decision
in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor,
Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter agreed that "at the heart of
liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of
meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
The gay-rights movement best illuminates the need to emphasize
the role of morality in politics. In 1986, the Supreme Court
decided Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding the constitutionality of
criminal penalties for gay sodomy. Choice, said the five-justice
majority, although available for a wide range of decisions
(including abortion), was not available for conduct we consider
really, really icky. (They didn't say that explicitly; they put the
words in the mouth of the "Judeo-Christian" tradition and let the
priests say it for them.) Just as Bowers was decided, however,
the AIDS epidemic motivated and enabled gay people to tell the
world why their behavior was moral. As gay men began to die,
they and their loved ones began to write about their
relationships, their shared homes, and their desire—going back
to Homer—to bury those they loved. At the same time, lesbians,
who had been fighting for their children after divorces and for
the families they were creating with donor insemination—
publicly told the story of their own moral commitments.
By the time the Supreme Court faced the previously sinful gay
litigants again in Lawrence v. Texas, 17 years later, the decision
went the other way. It is impossible to read the two opinions and
ignore the change in moral climate that produced the legal shift.
And although recent polling fails to reveal a majority supporting
gay marriage, the numbers have been steadily improving.
After 30 years of ghastly representations of abortion by the right
and weak-kneed defenses by the left, one would expect public
support for abortion to have plummeted. Although most polling
experts contend that American beliefs about abortion have been
roughly stable, the deeper picture is ominous. About 20 percent
of those polled believe abortion should never be allowed, and
about 20 percent think it should always be allowed. About 60
percent think it should be allowed under certain limited
circumstances.
If you unpack that crucial 60 percent, however, even these
"centrists" only firmly support abortion in cases in which there is
rape, incest, or a threat to the mother's life or health. Just over
half of them support abortion in the case of physical or mental
defects in the prospective baby. And when asked whether a
woman should abort if she or her family could not afford to raise
the child, the support for abortion drops to 35 percent.
This polling data represents the price of progressives' refusal to
make the moral argument. Women bear the overwhelming
majority of child-rearing responsibility in this society. Yet barely
more than half of the moderate centrists would allow them to
decide whether to abort—even in face of a physical or mental
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defect in the prospective child. Women, whose economic
prospects plummet with the birth of a child, now face 65 percent
majorities who would support criminalizing their decision to
abort because they are too poor for parenthood. Guttmacher
Institute abortion numbers reveal that these same poor women
are disproportionately black and Hispanic. It is fair to conclude
that a lot of abortions, regardless of race, are about women
seeking the flourishing life prospects that our current moralityfree discourse completely conceals.
In the 30-some years since Roe v. Wade, somewhere between 18
million and 30 million American women—15 percent to 20
percent of the female American population—have terminated
their pregnancies. More than 10 years ago, a movement I'll call
the Post-Abortion Syndrome movement began to shift the
argument against abortion to the harm done to women. Not
surprisingly, in a population of many millions, the PAS
movement found a few thousand women who signed affidavits
about their regrets at having had abortions.
thinkers conclude, must always be a mistake, the product of
incomplete information or logic, and, in time, must produce
regret, depression, and loss of self-esteem.
The wrong question will always lead to the wrong answer. Not
coincidentally, the founding text of the Post-Abortion Syndrome
movement is called "Making Abortion Rare." The Democratic
platform of 2008 offers an opportunity to put an end to this selfdestructive cycle of Safe, Legal, and Rare, otherwise known as
regret, depression, and self-denigration. In its place, it can finally
argue for the value of women's lives. Above rubies sounds about
right to me.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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Last year, in Gonzalez v. Carhart, the Supreme Court, for the
first time, upheld the constitutionality of a federal law
criminalizing a type of abortion. In his opinion for the court,
Justice Kennedy wrote that "Respect for human life finds an
ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her
child ... it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women
come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once
created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can
follow." In Kennedy's view it was best to spare women such
regrets. Indeed it was better still not to allow doctors to perform
these procedures at all.
Others have dissected Justice Kennedy's bizarre logic in detail.
But what most have missed is that his opinion in Carhart rested
on the assumption, ceded so long ago by liberals, that abortions
are a necessary evil. There is no serious scientific evidence for
any of the justice's findings that a remotely cognizable
percentage of the 18 million to 30 million living American
abortion recipients have suffered regret, severe depression, and
loss of esteem. The American Psychiatric Association has
directly refuted any such claim time and again. Why, then, did
Justice Kennedy feel so comfortable—indeed, "unexceptionable"
—in asserting it? Why, more interestingly, did the Democratic
candidate for president similarly invoke the image of the
"middle-aged feminist who regrets her abortion" in The Audacity
of Hope?
Because they suspect abortion is morally wrong. In the absence
of a robust description of the value of women's lives—their
ability to develop their capacities through education, to use them
to achieve economic independence and political citizenship, to
take on only the relationships they can manage—there is no
moral argument for their "choice" to have an abortion. Set
against the sound of nothing, the smallest moral claim of the
potential human life looms large. Such an immoral act, moral
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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