Disneyland Paris: the happiest place in northern Europe

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While in France, we spent an afternoon in Disneyland Paris.

 

 

In a word: it’s lovely. The castle in the middle of the park is a sweet delicate French castle with slender turrets, Sleeping Beauty’s castle, “le Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant”:

 

 

 

 

We were there in early October, and the park was decorated for Halloween. Europeans don’t quite understand the American concept of Halloween yet; they understand ghosts and pumpkins and such, but aren’t quite what they have to do with anything. Disneyland Paris was calling it “Helloween,” which would be a little spicy for an American Disneyland. But there were pumpkins everywhere!

 

 

Disneyland Paris has the Haunted Mansion, and the Tower of Terror, and the Thunder Mountain Railroad. The lines (in October, anyway) were very short; we never had more than a five-minute wait for any ride. We were surrounded with mostly Spanish and German tourists, and a few Brits; not many French, really. (A colleague of mine, who actually studied the business model of EuroDisney, told me that the Disney folk at first expected the local French population to flock there, and were sorely disappointed to find out that this wasn’t the case. Now they market to the rest of Europe, and they’re doing just fine.)

 

 

Disneyland Paris is small, compared to Orlando. One advantage to being smaller, by the way, is that kids don’t get as tired, and parents don’t get as worn out. Is there a lesson here for American theme parks? Too late. They’re already too big.

 

 

There are Disneylands everywhere now. Japan and China have their own versions. And Orlando keeps evolving: there’s a New Fantasyland now, with a Beast’s Castle / restaurant, and a Little Mermaid ride, and (forthcoming) a Seven Dwarves ride.

 

 

And there’s that little old park in Anaheim too, I suppose.

 

 

Whatever it’s called.  

 

 

I forget.

 

 

 

 

The Confederate States of America: an update

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The other day I wrote about Steven Spielberg’s new movie about Abraham Lincoln. The movie ends, not with Lincoln’s assassination, but with the Second Inaugural, a beautiful speech in which Lincoln declared that the rebellious South was not an enemy, but a friend. Lincoln faced the prospect of “reconstructing” a bitter, defeated, impoverished South; it would have been difficult in any case, but Lincoln was a good man for working out difficult issues. It’s commonly thought that, if Lincoln had lived, Reconstruction would have been different: it would have been calmer and less acrimonious.

 

 

But we know what happened, and we know the aftermath. Lincoln was killed, and Reconstruction was led by Radical Republicans, who were further angered by Lincoln’s death. They wanted to punish the South, and they did.

 

 

And the South simmered in its bitterness and anger for decades.

 

 

Here’s the South that defied Lincoln (Union in blue, Dixie in Red):

 

 

And here’s the 2012 electoral map:

 

 

 

 

And here, just for the sake of comparison, is a map of poverty in the USA:

 

 

Here’s a map showing English literacy (remember that the western states and New York have large immigrant populations):

 

 

 

 

And finally, for shits and giggles, here’s a map showing how people feel about religion:

 

 

The Confederacy never died. It’s still with us.

 

 

It's a state of mind.

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Food

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I adore food. I like looking at it, and making it, and thinking about it, and reading about it. Sometimes I even like to eat it.

 

 

I’m not alone in this. Do a Google search for restaurants in your immediate vicinity. Go to your nearest bookstore (which is probably Amazon.com, I know, brick-and-mortar bookstores are a thing of the past) and check out the variety of cookbooks. My local newspaper has a food section on Wednesdays; does yours? I’ll bet it does.

 

 

We’re animals. We need to eat. We have romanticized this primal desire into something aesthetic, I suppose. If you starved me for a couple of days, I would gladly eat raw frogs and shoe leather and tell you that they were delicious. As it is, in our modern affluent world, I am choosy, and prefer fried scallops and whole-wheat pasta.

 

 

This bothers me sometimes. I was first brought up short against this by our pal, Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing, in her science-fiction novel “Re Colonized Planet 9: Shikasta.” In a footnote, she has her narrator – an enlightened alien from the Canopean Empire – say this: “Earth people are obsessed with food. They even write books about it.”

 

 

I’d never thought about this before. We don’t write books about how we breathe, or how much we enjoy sunlight. But we write books about food.

 

 

Food is a subtle pleasure. It can be sustenance, or it can be ecstasy. It can be a heavy blast of fat and carbs and flavors, like a Big Mac, or a blast of heat from a Mexican entrée, or a savory mix of flavors like paella. It can be sweet and bitter like chocolate. It can be hauntingly flavorful, like parmesan cheese or Portobello mushrooms (both of which belong to the umami flavor family).

 

 

We spend a good deal of our time eating. Some of us (including yours truly) spend a good deal of time cooking, or reading about cooking, or thinking about cooking.

 

 

A couple of questions: Are we doing the right thing? Are we spending our time wisely?

 

 

Another question: What’s for dinner?

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Movie review: "Lincoln"

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This past weekend Partner and I saw Spielberg’s new movie, “Lincoln.” It’s very good – but then it’s bound to be: not only is it directed by Spielberg, it’s based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about the Lincoln administration, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, writer of “Angels in America.”  The action covers the first few months of 1865: the Civil War, while still horribly bloody, is winding down, and the North is on the verge of winning. Lincoln is faced with a choice: accept the South’s peace overtures and allow them back into the Union as if nothing has happened, or ensure that the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery is passed first. If he doesn’t do the latter, the old South will insist on its slave-holding ways. If he refuses to talk peace with the South’s representatives, Congress will accuse him of holding the country hostage on behalf of the Abolitionist movement.

 

 

If this sounds dull, it’s not. Like all of Spielberg’s best movies, it seesaws between tension and calm. Its best scenes capture both: Lincoln’s ride through the battlefield after the battle of Petersburg, as he surveys the mounds of dead bodies, is captured in ominous silence.

 

 

The cast is terrific, led by Daniel Day-Lewis as a gritty folksy Lincoln, half Andy Griffith, half John the Baptist, pacing inexorably (and knowingly) toward his own death, and Sally Field as a plump frantic Mary Todd Lincoln, smarter and more subtle than any other portrayal of Mary I’ve ever seen. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives us a young haunted Robert Lincoln; Tommy Lee Jones is Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican eager to eviscerate the rebellious South; David Strathairn is a lean acute William Seward; James Cusack is a plump mustached “lobbyist” hired by Seward (and indirectly by Lincoln) to bring the House of Representatives around to Lincoln’s point of view.

 

 

The movie depicts the reelection of a popular president who is, nonetheless, abhorred by a significant chunk of the populace. This president is trying to put through a significant piece of legislation – not because it’s popular, but because it’s the right thing to do, and because if he doesn’t, he will have accomplished nothing to solve the country’s real problems. This president also faces an angry and contentious congress.

 

 

Sound familiar?

 

 

Go see this movie. It will give you something to think about.

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Travel tips from yours truly

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Don’t you hate people who try to give you travel advice? I know I do.

 

 

Here’s some travel advice:

 

 

-          Make sure your electricals are in good order before you leave. I was startled to discover that my iPad was perfectly happy with French-style 220-volt current. I still, however, needed a plug adapter, since every country in the friggin’ world uses a differently-shaped plug. A company called Walkabout provides a very nice transformer / plug kit for a reasonable price.

-          Use the Internet. We did everything online: hotels, dinner reservations, the works. Once there, I discovered that everyone has either a website or – better yet – an app. (The Paris Metro system, for example, sells an adorable app on iTunes for ninety-nine cents; it shows you the whole system, finds you on GPS, and helps you get to the station of your choice.)

-          Look for bargains. Partner found a five-day Paris Visite card, which saved us lots of money; there’s also a Paris Museum Pass (the museums aren’t terribly expensive, but if you go to more than two or three, those admission prices start to mount up).

-          Take the train as much as you can. I always marvel at the European train system; it’s easy, it’s inexpensive, and it’s comfortable.

-          Make sure you set aside some time to relax. We didn’t relax enough, and ended up exhausted much of the time. Plan a down day here and there.

-          Don’t get trapped into eating tourist food. If (like us) you stay in a touristy neighborhood, you can be sure you’re paying a premium for your steak and frites. Explore the side streets instead. Bakeries sell nice sandwiches and pastry; little groceries are everywhere, once you know where to look. We were paying an average of $2 for a small bottle of water at first; then I discovered that I could buy a two-liter bottle in a grocery for $1 or less.

-          Use Skype. Before leaving, I purchased a real phone number from Skype (three months for thirty bucks); it even had a Rhode Island area code. We were able to call back and forth from France to the USA for approximately two cents a minute, using my iPad. And it even had voice mail! (No camera necessary, by the way; Skype works just fine with audio only.)

 

 

And now you know everything you need to know.

 

 

All together now:

 

 

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For Sunday: Pink wants you to "Try"

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Partner brought my attention to Pink’s performance of her song “Try” on the American Music Awards last week. I wish I could show you a video of that performance, done live in front of an audience, but none was available for embedding.

 

 

This, however, is Pink’s music video of the same song, which reproduces the onstage dance almost move by move.

 

 

Tough girls: represent!

 

 

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Networking

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Not long ago I received an email entitled “The ABC Insider,” with news and views about ABC's programming season. I glanced through their schedule, and their ads, and their promos, and I found myself thinking: Yeah, it looks like ABC.

 

 

And then I stopped and wondered: what did I mean by that?

 

 

When I was a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s, we pretty much subsisted on programming from the Big Three: ABC, CBS, and NBC.  Somehow, each network managed to have a personality (we call it “branding” nowadays). I never really thought about it at the time, but I think about it now, and it was real then, and it's real now.

 

 

I managed to put myself into a kind of memory trance to dredge up recollections of programs I watched in those days, and I tried also to remember what network they were on. It was surprisingly easy. (I went through later, using that new invention “The Internet,” to verify my recollections, and I was right in every instance.)  I then looked for a thread that ran through the programming in each network's case, and in each case I didn't have to look very hard.

 

 

NBC was in those days the sophisticated network: “Laugh-In.” “The Tonight Show.” Later, “Julia” (“brought to you with pride . . . by Jello”). NBC was urban in a kind of wink-wink Playboy Club way, or in a dignified dinner-party way. It was For Grownups, or For Those Who Wanted To Believe They Were Grownups. 

 

 

CBS churned out variety shows: Red Skelton, Gary Moore, Carol Burnett, Jackie Gleason. They were the home of all those hick comedies like “Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres” and “Petticoat Junction.” And, of course, they were the home of Lucille Ball. CBS was almost vaudeville. I remember when I went to college in Spokane in 1974, the local CBS affiliate's office still had the old mid-60s network slogan on its facade, “The Stars' Address.” CBS was all about personalities: familiar names, proven talent. And not just Entertainment, but Family Entertainment. No grin-grin wink-wink here; everything was broad and obvious. This was the network that churned out “Hee Haw” a few years later.

 

 

ABC was all over the map. “Hollywood Palace.”  “Peyton Place.”  “Garrison's Gorillas.”  “Alias Smith and Jones.”  “Batman.”  “Bewitched.”  “That Girl.”  With very few exceptions, they were half-hour shows, brittle and jokey, or broad and soapy. ABC was almost the 1960s equivalent of the Fox Network. Most of all, ABC skewed young: bright new faces, chirpy comedies.

 

 

All these decades later, it continues. I look at a show like “The Ghost Whisperer,” earnest and cute and mock-dramatic, and I think: yeah, CBS. And I look at something kooky and snapping-fingers hip like “Lost,” and I think: yeah, probably ABC.

 

 

But now there's a channel for everything. (I have a fond memory of the episode of “Married with Children” when they first got cable: “What's this?” “The Japanese Channel.” Click. “What's this?” “The Stained Glass Network.”) But a network/channel like that isn't really the same thing. It's like a store that sells only Scotch Tape. The three big networks in the 1960s were like full-range department stores, each with a slightly different feel: upscale, midrange, family-friendly, bargain-basement.

 

 

(But the deepest mystery of all is this: what in the world is going on inside the brain of a fifty-five-year-old man who has to concentrate hard to remember today's date, but who can still remember what network “Garrison's Gorillas” was on, forty-five years later?)

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Morning TV

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On “30 Rock” a few seasons ago, Tracy Morgan came charging in and asked Tina Fey: “Liz Lemon, who's crazier: me or Ann Curry?”

 

 

 

Well, Ann Curry is gone now, crazy or not. She giggled a little too much, and she was definitely a lightweight. But she was definitely a morning-show person, god bless her, no matter how crazy she might have been.

 

 

Morning-show people always seem to become part of the family.  While I'm in the bathroom on weekday mornings, getting ready for work, I can hear Partner laughing at George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts and Sam Champion on “Good Morning America” in the bedroom.

 

 

Before George, of course, there was big ugly/handsome Chris Cuomo (brother of the current Governor of New York), who mostly seemed to enjoy getting into ticklefights with Sam Champion. 

 

 

Then there was the gorgeous CBS weekend host Chris Wragge, big and blond, like your handsome athletic cousin. He actually hosted the CBS weekday morning show for a while, but left this past January. He won’t be soon forgotten hereabouts.

 

 

Even the local hosts are interesting.  Partner and I used to enjoy the oddball pairing of Mark Zinni and Michelle Muscatello on Providence's Channel 12: they were always making each other laugh, and often came within inches of saying inappropriate things, which was exhilarating.  Michelle is still with us in Providence, but Mark is back in Cleveland, his home town.  I miss him.

 

 

Then there was the monstrous Vince DeMentri, who used to be the local Fox morning host.  He was big and blocky and handsome, but he gave off a kind of DANGER signal, like the abusive husband in a Lifetime movie.  The show had a meek little co-host named Sean Tempesta, who seemed to make Vince furious; after a while, Vince wouldn't even share the set with Tempesta. 

 

 

Then, suddenly, DeMentri disappeared.  I did a little research – wonderful place for research, the Internet! - and found that Vince had been a very bad boy in Pennsylvania before coming to Providence; he'd had an affair with another anchor, started doing stupid things (he hid her blow-dryer!), etc.  After he left Providence he went to New York City, where a few years ago he slapped the Bahamian ambassador’s driver for getting in his way.  Vince was acquitted, but lost his job in NYC. God knows where he is now.

 

 

I love morning television.  It's like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going to get.

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For Thanksgiving 2012: Adam Sandler sings “The Thanksgiving Song”

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This is an old favorite. I think he sings it differently every time; I don’t remember the part about his brother and the baby oil. Also, the annotator here misspelled “Cheryl Tiegs.”

 

But who cares?

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

 

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Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov: a cautionary tale

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Once upon a time there was a Russian scientist named Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov.

 

 

He was a botanist and geneticist in the Mendelian days before the discovery of DNA, in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

 

Vavilov wanted desperately to be non-political, because he perceived – accurately – that to be political was to be vulnerable, in those early days of the United Soviet Socialist Republics.

 

 

He did remarkable work. He established beyond much doubt that the origin of the apple tree was in Kazakhstan, and he did much other excellent work.

 

 

But Stalin preferred the work of a man named Lysenko.

 

 

Lysenko wasn’t much of a scientist, but he knew how to use politicians to advance his own career. He came up with odd theories, but when challenged, he said his challengers were “armed with foreign ideas.” He claimed Mendelian theory was bunk. On what basis? Well, none, except that Uncle Joe Stalin was his buddy.

 

 

Vavilov ended up in prison. Under torture, he told his wardens what they wanted to hear: he was an enemy of the state. He ended up dying of dysentery in a prison camp in 1943.

 

 

If you are a Republican, you may hear this story as a defense of the brave scientists who have attacked climate change and shale oil and conservation. You probably see those defiant scientists who argue against the rest as Vavilov.

 

 

For me, and for Democrats in general I think, Vavilov is something else. He is Science personified. He is the method by which we try to discover what’s going on in nature. He is not political. He tells the truth, whatever it turns out to be, and whether or not it supports our political viewpoints.

 

 

What’s the end of the story?

 

 

Well, the whole Lysenko thing cost the USSR much time and trouble, since they were out of touch with the rest of the world’s scientific research.

 

 

Now, I ask you: is an American population, brought up on creationism and intelligent design, ready to do scientific work in the world community?

 

 

You tell me.

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The 2016 Presidential election

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With what joy did I greet the day after the Presidential election! No more shrill television advertisements telling me that this candidate was a criminal and that candidate was a liar!

 

 

There was a very cute Facebook meme circulating that day and the next: a picture of a box full of kittens, with the caption: “Okay, Facebook! The election’s over! Time to get out the pictures of cute kittens!”

 

 

But it wasn’t more than a few days until we were told that Marco Rubio was visiting Iowa (for a friend’s birthday, naturally).

 

 

And Chris Matthews was talking about Hillary Clinton, and how she’s going to spend the next few years preparing for the 2016 election.

 

 

And then there was Fox News, which immediately began talking about the 2016 GOP hopefuls. (Stephen Colbert, drinking a cup of chamomile tea, did a wonderful spit-take over this, but I can’t find a clip of it.)

 

 

Well, who do you think (apart from Marco Rubio) would make a good GOP candidate?

 

 

Hmm. Someone tough-talking. Maybe a Northeasterner, which would (hopefully) screw up the Democratic lock on New England and the Northeast. Someone nationally known.

 

 

Who but New Jersey governor Chris Christie?

 

 

Yeah, I know. He doesn’t scare me much either. He’s a local flavor: he plays well in the Northeast, but maybe not so much in the South and West. He’s too noisy and angry, which aren’t really presidential traits.

 

 

But he would love love LOVE to be President.

 

 

Last week, when Hostess went out of business, he was asked about this. He blustered about it endlessly. Imagine, he said, what Saturday Night Live would make of it! Imagine how many laughs they’d get out of the fat Governor of New Jersey making comments about Cupcakes and Ding Dongs!

 

 

“You know,” Partner said prophetically, “he went on too long about it. He wants SNL to do something about it.”

 

 

And was Partner right?

 

 

In a big way. 

 

 

Not only did Christie get mentioned on SNL, he appeared on SNL. (I wish I could show you the clip, but NBC is very proprietary. Follow this link to Hulu, and you’ll get there.)

 

 

Christie was very cute: funny and natural (more natural than some of their recent guests and hosts).

 

 

If I were a Republican, and the 2016 Presidential election were today, I’d vote for him.

 

 

But – geez – a lot of things can happen in four years.

 

 

So let’s just wait a bit, and enjoy our Facebook kittens and our cup of chamomile tea, shall we, kids?

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Movie review: "Skyfall"

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Partner and I saw the latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” yesterday. I wasn’t expecting much, frankly. The Financial Times review a week or two ago described Daniel Craig as “looking more than ever like a garden gnome who, having overdone it a little in the 1990s, spent the following decade in the gym by way of compensation.”

 

 

I’m pleased to tell you that it’s actually a pretty good movie.

 

 

Every actor who’s been lucky enough to play James Bond has done something different with the role. Sean Connery, the original, set the pace: serious but wryly funny, very physical, very sexy, heartlessly deadly when necessary. Roger Moore was Bond-the-playboy, and very much Austin Powers’s granddaddy. The others – Lazenby, Brosnan, Dalton – came and went without much impact.

 

 

Daniel Craig, in this (his third) Bond movie, gives us Bond-as-Batman: haunted by the death of his parents, noble, humorless, murderous.

 

 

Also, he has dreamy blue eyes, and a body like a Greek god.

 

 

I’m sorry: what were we talking about?

 

 

I can’t tell you much about the movie without spoiling it for you. I will say that Judi Dench is back as M, cold and bitchy as ever, and strangely compelling. We have Naomie Harris as Bond’s, um, assistant, and Ben Whishaw as a cocky young Q. We have Ralph Fiennes as a Ministry bureaucrat who turns out to be something more.

 

 

Also, we have Javier Bardem as the villain.

 

 

You know how you think of some James Bond movies in shorthand? “Diamonds Are Forever” is “the one in Las Vegas.” “Goldfinger” is “the one where they try to get Fort Knox.” Well, this one will be “the one where Javier Bardem played that blond madman.” (Seriously, what is it about Javier Bardem’s hair? He’s a very handsome man, but just give him a strange haircut and/or a dye job, and he’s the Antichrist.)

 

 

Javier doesn’t appear in the movie until about halfway through, and he’s very nasty and very memorable. He rolls his eyes and giggles unbearably. He’s sexually ambiguous in a very stickily insane way. You spend the last half of the movie wishing that James Bond would just show up and kill him as brutally as possible.

 

 

And do you get your wish?

 

 

I won’t tell you.

 

 

The first James Bond picture, “Dr. No,” came out fifty years ago, in 1962. We know the James Bond clichés by heart by now, and many of them are here: the Aston-Martin, the shaken martini. Craig even says the obligatory line: “Bond. James Bond.” It makes you feel at home; it makes you realize that, whatever else happens, James is gonna come through, guns blazing, in the final reel. But this movie also acknowledges that time is passing: Bond is getting old, and M is getting old.

 

 

But maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as Bond can kill everybody he needs to kill.

 

 

I can’t neglect mentioning the remarkable cinematography, nor Sam Mendes’s direction. Whole scenes are amazing: a dreamlike night scene in Shanghai, full of windows and reflected light; a nightmare struggle in Macao with Komodo dragons looking on.

 

 

I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would, as you can probably tell. It was too long, and too noisy, and too violent, naturally. But it was funny and compelling too, and very well-acted.

 

 

Go see it, kids.

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For Sunday: Tom Petty tells you to "Don't Come Around Here No More"

 

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This beautiful video is a nightmarish take on “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

 

 

 

And the song’s not bad either.

 

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

 

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The 2012 Presidential election: why the Republicans lost

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Sometimes, when good things happen – as with the reelection of Barack Obama – I begin to reassure himself that things in general are getting better.

 

 

And, I suppose, they are.

 

 

But some things don’t change.

 

 

I had hoped that the GOP would understand, after four years, that Obama is not a fluke or a trickster. I had hoped they would stop pretending that he was the lovechild of Kwame Nkrumah and Lenin. I had hoped also that they would acknowledge that, Obama having won both the Electoral College and the popular vote, that he definitely possesses a mandate from the American people.

 

 

I was wrong.

 

 

Their party line, after two weeks, is still crystallizing. Given that they can’t admit that they were well and fairly beaten at the polls, they have come up with some (moderately ridiculous, and mutually contradictory) reasons for their loss.

 

 

(Naturally they didn’t lose because of their message, or their candidate, or their poor organization, or their alienation of large chunks of the electorate.)

 

 

Here are some of their rationalizations:

 

 

1)    We were outnumbered! (This is from Rush Limbaugh. I let this one speak for itself. Imagine being outnumbered in a democracy!)

2)    Voter fraud was rampant! (See this ridiculous Wisconsin senator’s statement that, if voter ID were universal, we wouldn’t have any more of these silly Democratic victories.)

3)    Obama voters were bribed with “gifts”! (Romney himself said this recently.)

4)    Poor beautiful Paul Ryan – he of the big luminous eyes – recently commented that he and Mitt lost because of the “urban vote.” What do you think that means? Why, minorities, of course. Minority voters kept Obama in, and Romney out, of the White House. How uppity of them!

 

 

I recently found a wonderful graphic showing minority representation in the House and Senate (including women, who are certainly not a minority of the US population). Here it is:

 

 

 

 

Please examine it and tell me how many Republicans you find.

 

 

Now tell me what conclusions you draw.

 

 

Here’s to another combative – but, I hope, constructive – four years.

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The French stereotype

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What do Americans look like? Well, apart from the Hispanics and blacks and Asians who make up 50% or more of our population, we look like – well, we’re all over the map. Look at me: I’m Italian / Polish / Dutch / English, with graying hair and blue eyes; some days I look like a Calvinist cleric, and other days I look like a doughy Polack.

 

 

And what do the French look like?

 

 

This should be easier. Most of them are descended from two thousand years of local stock. They’re –

 

 

Well, they’re all over the map too.

 

 

The classical authors, including Julius Caesar, couldn’t agree on what the Gauls looked like. Some said they were tall and fair; others said they were short and dark. Everyone agreed that the later invaders, like the Normans, were big and blond. The Germanic tribes were blond, almost certainly (maybe they were the ones Caesar was describing).

 

 

Mostly the people I saw in France were short and dark, and very lean. Young people were mostly very skinny; older people seem to get (at most) a little stocky, but not grossly so (nowhere near American obesity). We ran into a few tall/fair individuals, but mostly in Normandy, where the Vikings came ashore a thousand years ago.

 

 

When I was living in North Africa, I got used to being the tallest person in the room (I’m a gigantic five-foot-ten). It was pretty much the same in France, with very few exceptions.

 

 

What are we supposed to look like? And where did any of us come from in the first place?

 

 

Beginnings are mysterious; origins are obscure.

 

 

Who can say?

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The conservative entertainment complex

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We like to be reassured that our beliefs are valid.  We gravitate to the news sources we prefer: the networks, MSNBC, Fox.

 

 

But sometimes we go too far.

 

 

A few weeks before the election, I saw a commercial for Bing Elections 2012, a Microsoft site enabling users to tailor the news to their own political beliefs.

 

 

Do you see anything wrong with this?

 

 

Opinion is opinion, and facts are facts. I belong to my own little group, and I believe what I believe; I groan when I read David Brooks and I giggle when I read Gail Collins.

 

 

But that’s not news. That’s opinion.

 

 

The idea that news – journalism – can be “tailored” to suit one’s political beliefs – well, that’s just repugnant.

 

 

Except that a good chunk of the electorate eats it up like ice cream, which creates all kinds of problems.

 

 

David Frum, late last week, spoke of the “conservative entertainment complex.” I knew immediately what he was talking about: the huge ungainly conglomeration of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, that feeds on itself and reassures itself that it’s absolutely correct. It's the conservative equivalent of that (imaginary) construct Sarah Palin herself named "the lamestream media."

 

 

It’s not just opinion. It’s “news.” It’s Bristol Palin on “Dancing with the Stars.” It’s radio screamers like Rush and his local followers (Rhode Island and Massachusetts have their share of these, which I’m sure are mild compared to those in other parts of the USA.)  It’s Ann Coulter, the right-wing Lisa Lampanelli.

 

 

They all reassure one another (and themselves) that they’re right, and that they represent America. Not just part of America, mind you, but the whole thing. Anything that isn’t part of their world (the Conservative Entertainment Complex – let’s just call it the CEC from here on) is alien, non-American, un-American.

 

 

This leads to problems.

 

 

Here are a few:

 

 

-          Public polling in October and early November showed clearly that Barack Obama had a significant lead in swing states. No! the CEC shrieked. Impossible! And they created their own “polls,” which showed Romney in the lead. People who should have known better – Karl Rove, even Romney himself – believed those fake polls. And – guess what? – the fake “polls” were utterly wrong.

-          (Side question: why would the GOP want to lie to itself? I know that, as an Obama voter, the mere suggestion that he was behind in any state (not just my own) made me more determined to go vote for him. The GOP really shot itself in the foot with this one.)

-          It’s not just political theory that the CEC simplifies, it’s everything. Do scientists support global climate change? Then let’s vilify and ridicule scientists. Did Obama get Osama Bin Laden? Well, we didn’t want Osama that badly in the first place.

-          Do you see a black man outside a Pennsylvania polling place? According to Fox News, he’s a threat, a menace.

-          Are Hispanics a threat to America, or valuable potential Republican voters? Hmm. Not sure. Let’s talk about Hispanics  as if they’re unwelcome and highly suspicious, and then see how they vote. They’re Catholics, so they’ll vote Republican. Right?

 

 

 

And here’s another thing: studies have actually shown that liberals are more willing to explore other points of view. Conservatives are more likely to ignore opposing beliefs. Ergo: they know less about what’s going on in the world.

 

 

I read the Financial Times almost every day. It’s the British/international version of the Wall Street Journal, except it’s far more free-wheeling. I read conservative and liberal editorials every day. Also I read journalism that’s very unbiased.

 

 

It refreshes me.

 

 

Kids: read everything. Watch everything.

 

 

Don’t let the CEC (or its liberal equivalent) tell you what to think.

 

 

Think for yourselves.

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The American Christian politician

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Todd Akin, last week, made his concession speech in the name of God. I think his point was that God is allowing America to become more and more sinful, so that he (God, not Todd Akin) can destroy it with impunity, a la Sodom and Gomorrah.

 

 

I picked up a local Christian newspaper last week, just to catch up on the Good News Today. I used to enjoy these papers: they have cute features, like Bible riddles (Who’s the shortest man in the Old Testament? Bildad the Shuhite!) and little homilies about grace and forgiveness.

 

 

But this little newspaper was full of vitriol. Mostly it was about abortion and gay marriage. These are the two worst things happening in the United States, in case you’re wondering.

 

 

Do you remember Jesus, in the New Testament, doing anything or saying anything about either of these issues? He did not. He fed people, and healed people. But apparently health care and world hunger are not important issues for modern fundamentalists.

 

 

I am so sorry that, for so many modern Christians, “social issues” consist of abortion and gay marriage. Why don’t they address health care, and hunger, and housing, and poverty? Their Saviour addressed all those things.

 

 

I don’t believe that Jesus was the son of God. But Jesus the man, as depicted in the Gospels, had a lot of good ideas. 

 

 

Such as: Don’t worry so much about how sinful your neighbor is.

 

 

Just make sure he’s fed and housed and warm.

 

 

Let the rest take care of itself.

 

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The 2012 Presidential election: a corporate viewpoint

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Lots of stuff has happened since last week’s election – almost more than I can keep track of. But here are two wonderful stories:

 

 

The day after Barack Obama won his re-election bid, the chief executive of Murray Energy, Robert E. Murray, gathered his staff and began to read a prayer. He asked God to forgive America for its choice of president, and he prayed for “guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise.” He closed with a heartfelt “amen.”

 

Then he fired 156 people.

 

Murray explained that the layoffs were inevitable in light of Obama’s re-election. He’s not the only coal baron to cite the president as the cause of the industry’s supposed death knell. CONSOL Energy Inc. President Nicholas Deluliis blamed Obama for 145 planned layoffs, while Alpha Natural Resources CEO Kevin Crutchfield cited the Obama-created “regulatory environment” as the basis for 1,200 job cuts this fall. (See the full story on Slate.)

 

 

 

Isn’t that nice?

 

 

Here’s another story:

 

 

Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter, who previously said that President Obama’s health care program would force the company to raise the price of pizza, now says the health care law could cause franchises to slice full-time employees’ hours.

Schnatter, who supported Republican Mitt Romney, made the comments Wednesday night to students at Edison State College in Naples, Fla., where Schnatter has a vacation home.

The Anchorage resident’s initial comment came in August when hetold stock analysts during a conference call that the cost of the Affordable Care Act will lead the company to raise its prices 11 to 14 cents per pizza. (From the Louisville Courier-Journal.)

 

 

Some thoughts:

 

 

-      I’m sorry to get all Marxist on you, but I need to remind you that owners will always exploit workers, and owners will always howl when government tries to make them treat workers better. This is why regulation is necessary.

-      Unions are vital to uphold the interests of labor. This ain’t just my philosophy – it’s in my bones. My mother (who grew up in a coal-mining area near Seattle) told me that, when she was a little girl, she used to go down to the mines during strikes and throw lumps of coal at the scabs.

-      Is Schnatter serious? Fourteen cents a pizza? That’s horrendous. Imagine! Just to make sure his employees have health care!

-      The coal industry is horribly corrupt as it is. It’s sweetly evil to see that the coal CEO quoted in the first piece began with a prayer for the salvation of America. I imagine a lot of his employees are praying for something quite different.

 

 

Now the good news: a majority of American voters backed Obama. Republicans are losing seats – not enough to make a huge difference, but the tide is turning.

 

 

So remember not to buy Papa John’s pizza.

 

 

(Not that you would anyway. It tastes like cardboard with pepperoni on top.)

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Voting cute

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There is an old truism that the handsomer presidential candidate usually wins. Sometimes it’s true: Warren Harding was very distinguished-looking, and Kennedy was certainly better-looking than Nixon.

 

 

I voted for Barack Obama last week (of course I did!), but I have to admit, to my shame, that I don’t think he was the handsomer of the two candidates. Mitt Romney, for all his wishy-washy political loathsomeness, is very good-looking, and Paul Ryan is perfectly dreamy.

 

 

Somehow, however, I managed to vote with my brain, not my hormones.

 

 

Does this really work? One wonders whether McCain’s advisors thought Sarah Palin added sex appeal to the campaign. (I honestly wonder if Romney’s advisors thought the same about Ryan.) John Kerry (who’s merely acceptable-looking) chose the soap-opera handsome John Edwards as VP in 2004. (It was only later that we discovered what a scuzzball Edwards really was. OMG! Fox News was actually right about something!) Clinton was certainly a more attractive man than either George H. W. Bush or Bob Dole.

 

 

And so on, and so on.

 

 

Does it really make a difference?

 

 

Sometimes.

 

 

In 1972 I managed to get my mother to register to vote, so that she could vote for George McGovern. (Dad registered too, and I’m certain he voted for Nixon, not that it did the country much good.) Mom got a little nostalgic. “This is only the second time I’ve voted,” she told me. “The first time was in 1948, and I voted for Tom Dewey, because he was so cute. I loved his mustache.”

 

 

So there you have it.

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For Sunday: "archy at the tomb of napoleon," by Don Marquis

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The first time I went to Paris was in March 1984. I was hopping from the USA to Morocco and had only about six hours to waste, so I raced into the city from the airport, had a cup of coffee and a brioche, and visited the Hotel des Invalides, which houses the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

 

 

Why? Because Archy the Cockroach went there back in the 1920s and wrote a whopping good poem about it.

 

 

 

Partner and I visited the Invalides again in October. Napoleon is still there, in his gigantic stone tomb that looks like a cross between an overstuffed sofa and an enormous old-fashioned radio. And, like Archy, we left feeling “solemn but likewise uplifted.”

 

 

 

Herewith: “archy at the tomb of napoleon,” by Don Marquis.

 

 

 

paris france

i went over to

the hotel des invalides

today and gazed on

the sarcophagus of the

great napoleon

and the thought came

to me as i looked

down indeed it

is true napoleon

that the best goods

come in the smallest

packages here are

you napoleon with

your glorious course

run and here is

archy just in the

prime of his career

with his greatest

triumphs still before

him neither one of us

had a happy youth

neither one of us

was welcomed socially at

the beginning of his

career neither one of

us was considered much

to look at

and in ten thousand years from

now perhaps what you said and did

napoleon will be

confused with what

archy said and did

and perhaps the burial

place of neither will be

known napoleon looking

down upon you

I wish to ask you now

frankly as one famous

person to another

has it been worth

all the energy

that we expended all the

toil and trouble and

turmoil that it cost us

if you had your life

to live over

again bonaparte would

you pursue the star

of ambition

i tell you frankly

bonaparte that i myself

would choose the

humbler part

i would put the temptation

of greatness aside

and remain an ordinary

cockroach simple

and obscure but alas

there is a destiny that

pushes one forward

no matter how hard

one may try to resist it

i do not need to

tell you about that

bonaparte you know as

much about it as i do

yes looking at it in

the broader way neither

one of us has been to blame

for what he has done

neither for his great

successes nor his great mistakes

both of us napoleon

were impelled by some

mighty force external to

ourselves we are both to

be judged as great forces of

nature as tools in the

hand of fate rather than as

individuals who willed to

do what we have done

we must be forgiven

napoleon

you and i

when we have been

different from the common

run of creatures

i forgive you as i know

that you would forgive

me could you speak to me

and if you and i

napoleon forgive and

understand each other

what matters it if all

the world else find

things in both of us that

they find it hard

to forgive and understand

we have been

what we have been

napoleon and let them laugh that off

well after an hour or so of

meditation there i left

actually feeling that i

had been in communion

with that great spirit and

that for once in my

life i had understood and been

understood

and i went away feeling

solemn but likewise

uplifted mehitabel the

cat is missing

archy

 

Chapter books and picture books

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Last summer, my assistant Ezra said: “Are you going to the bookstore at lunch today? Because I want to go with you.”

 

 

“Why?” I said. “You want a book? I can pick it up for you.”

 

 

“No,” he said with certainty. “It’s the new Game of Thrones book. It’s the first one in six years. I want to buy it myself.”

 

 

So we went to the (now defunct) Borders Bookstore, and I turned him loose.

 

 

He was immensely happy, and I left him alone with his prize. I wandered off to the “graphic novel” section, and browsed for a few minutes, and rejoined him shortly with a big black-and-white Superman anthology. “What’s that?” he said suspiciously.

 

 

“It’s an anthology of some comic books from my childhood,” I said happily.

 

 

He looked down on me (seriously: he was at least five inches taller than me) with disdain.

 

 

He was buying a chapter book and I was buying a picture book.

 

 

Well, so what? I love my picture books. Some of them remind me of my childhood, which is reason enough. Some are artistic / beautiful, which is reason enough again. Some are profound and moving (like “Maus”). Some are just for fun, like my comic anthologies, or my volumes of Lynda Barry and George Herriman and Edward Gorey.

 

 

To quote Charles Dodgson (from - surprise! - a chapter book!):

 

 

 “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'”

 

 

Amen, sister.

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Election 2012 post-mortem: people who want stuff

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The Republicans, over the past few days, have been trying to figure out why they didn’t win the Presidency on Tuesday. More than that: they actually lost ground (especially in the Senate). The House of Representatives still has a Republican majority, but at least ten of the vicious Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010 got unseated.

 

 

Why did they lose?

 

 

Well, as a Democrat/Socialist, I know why they lost. But I was curious to see what they themselves thought.

 

 

Here’s a selection of theories:

 

-         Voter fraud. (We all know that Democrats excel at voter fraud!) This one was probably best brought forward by Donald Trump, who recommended that Romney voters march on Washington.

-         Fuzzy math. (Did you see the Wall Street Journal red/blue map? It shows vast swaths of red through Wyoming and Oklahoma and Texas, and tiny blue segments in NYC and Boston and Seattle. The clear implication: How can so much of the country have gone Republican, and still have lost? Apparently there are a lot of people who don’t understand math, or how voting works. We don’t vote by square mileage, as Stephen Colbert wisely pointed out.)

-         Voter intimidation. (Fox News, on election night, featured a suspicious-looking black man outside a Pennsylvania polling place, holding the door for people. A Black Panther! A terrorist!)

-         Bad polling. (Nate Silver, who appears to have perfected the art of probabilistic polling, was attacked during the pre-campaign months – Joe Scarborough called him a “joke,” and some other GOP hack called him “effeminate.” And yet he called the election with great precision. As Colbert said: “Math has a liberal bias.”)

 

 

But, most viscerally at all, let’s listen to Bill O’Reilly for a moment:

 

 

“We’re changing demographically. We’re changing our attitudes. We’re becoming more like Western Europe … and I’m not going to generalize about any ethnic group, it’s a mentality that pervades across society … some people are saying, ‘I don’t want to do it, but I want them to do it for me.

“Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff.

“You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?

“The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore.”

 

 

We are no longer all white. We are no longer all men, or all straight, or non-Hispanic.

 

 

I think that’s right, actually.

 

 

And do we want stuff?

 

 

You bet we do.

 

 

We want rights. Gay people want the right to get married. Hispanic people want the right not to be treated as second-class citizens. Black people want the right not to be treated the way Trayvon Martin was treated.

 

 

We all want stuff.

 

 

We just don’t want the stuff that Bill O’Reilly says (or thinks) we want.

 

 

We’re not Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens.” We don’t want money. We want rights. We want respect.

 

 

Does the GOP understand this? Most of all, do they understand it deeply enough to change their attitudes, and their party’s attitudes, for the next election?

 

 

We’ll see.

 

 

(Somehow, however, I doubt it.)

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