The War in One Minute
The violence in Iraq is not a civil war. It is a proxy war in which Iran and Saudi Arabia/Eygpt are wrestling for control of the Persian Gulf and the hearts and minds of the region’s Muslims.
I never thought I’d say it, but in this war, the Saudis are our friends.
A quick and dirty timeline:
• 1979 -- Establishment of Islamic Republic in Iran is a big win for the Shia and big loss for Sunnis in a zero-sum game for Muslim preeminence.
• 1980/now – Wahhabi/Salafist Sunnis step up mosque construction program and propagation of the faith to counter Shia ascendancy.
• 1979/89 -- Saudi royal family attempts to curry favor with United States and kill off pesky Wahhabi/Salafist extremists by encouraging holy war against Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
• 1980s/2000s – Sunnis and Shia mount history’s most violent PR campaign to win hearts and minds throughout the Middle East. Sunni Hamas blows up Israeli civilians. Shi’ite Hezbollah blows up Israeli children and U.S. Marines.
• 1982 – Iraqi socialist dictator, Saddam Hussein, invades Persia in ongoing bid for pan-Arab leadership. Iran “wins.”
• 1990 – Iraqi socialist dictator, Saddam Hussein, invades Kuwait and threatens Saudi Arabia in ongoing bid for pan-Arab leadership. All Muslims agree Saddam is a nuisance.
• 2002 – Sunni Taliban defeated in weeks by U.S. forces. Sectarian government in Kabul relieves pressure on Shia Iran.
• 2003 – Iraqi socialist dictator, Saddam Hussein’s regime defeated by U.S. forces in days. Sectarian government in Baghdad relieves additional pressure on Shia Iran.
• 2004/now – Shia Iran encourages instability in Iraq to tie down the United States and establish Shia client state. Shia Hezbollah attacks Israel to solidify leadership for rivalry to liberate al Quds. Hamas and Fatah, backed by Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively, extend the proxy war to the West Bank and Gaza and fight each other to the death.
• 2005 – Iran reveals nuclear weapons development program. Targets include: Israel, Saudi Arabia, the rest of the world in that order.
• 2006 – Iranian agents, on orders of apocalyptic Iranian President Mahmoud Armoredinnerjacket, destroy the Al Askari mosque in Samarra, Iraq and successfully convince Iraqi Shia that they are Shia first and Iraqi Arabs second. Hilarity ensues. BTW, the adjacent shrine to the Twelfth or "Hidden" Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, is undamaged.
The score thus far: The Shia 600, Sunnis 1 and the Shia have the Big Mo.
Today, Shia radicals in Tehran, in the Maliki government in Baghdad, and in the Democratic Party of the United States all favor the removal of the last obstacle to Shia domination in the region: U.S. forces.
Our evil friends the Saudis, the closest thing we have to real friends in the “international community” Israel, and a few remaining stalwarts in the Republic Party of the United States, are all determined to stop the Shia momentum once and for all.
The focus of this rivalry is now in Lebanon and Iraq generally, and the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad specifically.
Predictions: The Maliki government will not cooperate with the suppression of Muqtar al Sadr’s Iran proxy force, the Mahdi Army. The United States will find credible evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraqi instability in a bid to reawaken Iraqi nationalism against Persian interference and as a pretext for military action that reveals the fecklessness (and weakness) of the Islamic Republic.
This action could include the cut off of refined gasoline to Iran and the capture of the Straits of Hormuz to secure world oil shipments. This will be supported by the Russians, Chinese, Saudis, French, and just about every other critic of projecting American power, (except for the Democrats who, along with the other perennial losers in foreign affairs, the Palestinians, will elevate their outrage one more to 11). Such action plays to strengths as the U.S. military is far better at capturing and securing geographic targets than it is at patrolling civilian neighborhoods.
And all the while, the Saudis will continue to flood the market will crude and drive the price if oil lower so as to starve the Iranians of revenue while keeping the global economy humming. (Isn't it odd that the price of oil has dropped by a third while the instability in the region as increased?)
Taken together, these actions will:
• Refocus the military mission on military goals rather than political ones
• Give Iranians a reason reject unpopular the Islamic regime
• Create the necessary “birth myth” that will allow an Iraqi nation to emerge
• Suggest that violence is not the least effective means of achieving political goals.
Fasten your seatbelts, it's about to get bumpy.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
The Last Zeppelinist
Joe Lust, the last American trained to operate and maintain a dirigible aircraft has died at age 94. Most experts agree that this brings an end to the Zeppelin Age, at least in the United States.
There was a time in the early 20th century when zeppelins were the rivals of fixed wing aircraft for mastery of the skies. Airships attacked London during the Great War and great gas lozenges gently floated across oceans with ease while airplanes struggled and too often crashed into the seas.
Compared to flimsy airplanes, zeppelins were the safe way to travel.
The handful of passengers journeyed through the air in an enclosure protruding from the underside of a colossal bag of explosive hydrogen gas held rigid within a metal skeleton.
Separated from the millions of cubic feet of inflammable gas, passengers were free to smoke and chefs prepared lavish meals with open flames in the kitchen. Crew members maintained the dozen of so internal combustion engines attached to the sides of the airship.
Even though a carelessly tossed match would have been enough to ignite the craft and doom all aboard in what would have been a detonation equal in splendor and magnificence to a nuclear explosion, restricting cigarette smoking seemed to be an overreaction to the danger. And in fact, while nearly all zeppelins succumbed to catastrophic accidents of one sort or another, none were destroyed by cigarettes.
Accounts written by zeppelin passengers describe sensations that few of today’s air travelers can imagine today. As they silently drifted over the landscape at low altitude, passengers could lean from the open windows and hear the barking of dogs and the mutterings of farmers below suddenly turning to terrified screams as the immense, and immensely volatile, gas bag eclipsed the sun and glided past in cataclysmic majesty on its way to Berlin or Rio de Janiero.
Zeppelins were the embodiment of modernism and to prove it, go to the top of the Empire State Building. The apex of the building was envisioned as a mooring mast for globe-girdling zeppelins.
The idea was that passengers would conveniently arrive in Midtown Manhattan and disembark from an open stairway in the nose of the airship. Pausing in the ferocious winds on the stairway between the small door opening into the cramped space at the top of the building and the vast airship swollen with highly explosive gas, (as I mentioned earlier), arriving passengers would be able to enjoy dizzying views of New York City 1,200 feet below.
An entirely acceptable level of risk at the time.
Mr. Lust must have felt on the cusp of a dazzling future when he began his education in zeppelin technology. The fact that he was recovering from an automobile accident on the day he was scheduled to ship off on the fatal final voyage of the USS Akron accounts, in part, for his longevity. The United States dirigible program collapsed shortly after (even though it relied on strategic reserves of helium rather than hydrogen gas) and in two more years, the catastrophic detonation of The Hindenburg (gaz) marked a suitably spectacular end to the dreams of those who saw the future of air travel as big, slow, and lighter than air.
With the death of Lust, the U.S. military now finds itself without any trained zeppelin professionals for the first time in nearly a century. This is a major setback for those at the Pentagon who envisioned a reconstituted zeppelin attack capability.
That it happened on Bush’s watch goes without saying.
Joe Lust, the last American trained to operate and maintain a dirigible aircraft has died at age 94. Most experts agree that this brings an end to the Zeppelin Age, at least in the United States.There was a time in the early 20th century when zeppelins were the rivals of fixed wing aircraft for mastery of the skies. Airships attacked London during the Great War and great gas lozenges gently floated across oceans with ease while airplanes struggled and too often crashed into the seas.
Compared to flimsy airplanes, zeppelins were the safe way to travel.
The handful of passengers journeyed through the air in an enclosure protruding from the underside of a colossal bag of explosive hydrogen gas held rigid within a metal skeleton.
Separated from the millions of cubic feet of inflammable gas, passengers were free to smoke and chefs prepared lavish meals with open flames in the kitchen. Crew members maintained the dozen of so internal combustion engines attached to the sides of the airship.Even though a carelessly tossed match would have been enough to ignite the craft and doom all aboard in what would have been a detonation equal in splendor and magnificence to a nuclear explosion, restricting cigarette smoking seemed to be an overreaction to the danger. And in fact, while nearly all zeppelins succumbed to catastrophic accidents of one sort or another, none were destroyed by cigarettes.
Accounts written by zeppelin passengers describe sensations that few of today’s air travelers can imagine today. As they silently drifted over the landscape at low altitude, passengers could lean from the open windows and hear the barking of dogs and the mutterings of farmers below suddenly turning to terrified screams as the immense, and immensely volatile, gas bag eclipsed the sun and glided past in cataclysmic majesty on its way to Berlin or Rio de Janiero.
Zeppelins were the embodiment of modernism and to prove it, go to the top of the Empire State Building. The apex of the building was envisioned as a mooring mast for globe-girdling zeppelins.
The idea was that passengers would conveniently arrive in Midtown Manhattan and disembark from an open stairway in the nose of the airship. Pausing in the ferocious winds on the stairway between the small door opening into the cramped space at the top of the building and the vast airship swollen with highly explosive gas, (as I mentioned earlier), arriving passengers would be able to enjoy dizzying views of New York City 1,200 feet below.An entirely acceptable level of risk at the time.
Mr. Lust must have felt on the cusp of a dazzling future when he began his education in zeppelin technology. The fact that he was recovering from an automobile accident on the day he was scheduled to ship off on the fatal final voyage of the USS Akron accounts, in part, for his longevity. The United States dirigible program collapsed shortly after (even though it relied on strategic reserves of helium rather than hydrogen gas) and in two more years, the catastrophic detonation of The Hindenburg (gaz) marked a suitably spectacular end to the dreams of those who saw the future of air travel as big, slow, and lighter than air.
With the death of Lust, the U.S. military now finds itself without any trained zeppelin professionals for the first time in nearly a century. This is a major setback for those at the Pentagon who envisioned a reconstituted zeppelin attack capability.
That it happened on Bush’s watch goes without saying.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Chavez Comes Clean
Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s beloved would-be dictator of the proletariat, has taken a daring step back to the early 20th century by declaring his intention to nationalize key industries and muzzle opposition media outlets.
Little noted in the mainstream press is that he also declared himself a “Communist.”
Older folks may remember that communists were quite common in the last century. Sort of like fascists but with the best of intentions. The track record of communism is pretty dismal: millions dead, entire nations impoverished for generations, 7 hour speeches, ZIL limousines, drab clothing, awful music.
You might wonder why anyone would want to sign up for another dose of that. I can see what’s in it for Chavez. Unlimited power and wealth, the opportunity to pal around with Fidel and Noam Chomsky, the chance to design your own military uniform, standing ovations at the UN General Assembly.
But what about the people how have to support this guy for the next 35 years until he’s safely sealed in a glass mausoleum? I suspect they’ll continue on their dreary way and provide interesting backdrops for European tourists, or form long lines at the borders.
Venezuela will be a difficult country to wall off from the outside world. Long porous borders much unlike Cuba or North Korea. But there’s a prole ally to the West, Avo Morales of Bolivia, the man who’s done more to boost sweater sales than anyone since Bill Cosby. Expansion is clearly the way to go. Plus Chavez could link up with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and forge an Axis of Avo with Bolivia.
Sad times for our good neighbors to the South unless the clear-thinkers in Caracas, La Paz and Managua take matters into their own hands and turn the budding thug-ocracies in their midst into leftist martyrs like Allende.
That seems that’s the only way to make lasting progress in South America.
Until then, prepare for a whole lot more of this buffoon on your last remaining TV channel, comrades:
Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s beloved would-be dictator of the proletariat, has taken a daring step back to the early 20th century by declaring his intention to nationalize key industries and muzzle opposition media outlets.
Little noted in the mainstream press is that he also declared himself a “Communist.”
Older folks may remember that communists were quite common in the last century. Sort of like fascists but with the best of intentions. The track record of communism is pretty dismal: millions dead, entire nations impoverished for generations, 7 hour speeches, ZIL limousines, drab clothing, awful music.
You might wonder why anyone would want to sign up for another dose of that. I can see what’s in it for Chavez. Unlimited power and wealth, the opportunity to pal around with Fidel and Noam Chomsky, the chance to design your own military uniform, standing ovations at the UN General Assembly.
But what about the people how have to support this guy for the next 35 years until he’s safely sealed in a glass mausoleum? I suspect they’ll continue on their dreary way and provide interesting backdrops for European tourists, or form long lines at the borders.
Venezuela will be a difficult country to wall off from the outside world. Long porous borders much unlike Cuba or North Korea. But there’s a prole ally to the West, Avo Morales of Bolivia, the man who’s done more to boost sweater sales than anyone since Bill Cosby. Expansion is clearly the way to go. Plus Chavez could link up with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and forge an Axis of Avo with Bolivia.
Sad times for our good neighbors to the South unless the clear-thinkers in Caracas, La Paz and Managua take matters into their own hands and turn the budding thug-ocracies in their midst into leftist martyrs like Allende.
That seems that’s the only way to make lasting progress in South America.
Until then, prepare for a whole lot more of this buffoon on your last remaining TV channel, comrades:
Monday, January 08, 2007
Boston Shitty Hall
Good news for humanity. The mayor of Boston wants to sell City Hall and build a new one elsewhere, preferably with a view of the harbor. Hopefully, this drives a stake through the heart of one of the ugliest buildings ever conceived by man.
Boston’s City Hall is a concrete bunker guarding a windswept brick plaza envisioned and constructed back in the sixties as a near perfect expression of that era’s homage to expert wisdom.
Experts say this is a significant architectural creation. The AIA gave it its highest honor in 1969. In 1976, some other panel of experts supposedly called it one of the most beautiful buildings of the 20th Century which says a lot about the vileness of that century and the tastelessness of the emperor’s clothiers. The mutants and ordinary Joes who make up the general public hated this building instantly.
And how could you not hate it? For Bostonians, it replaced the perfectly appropriate City Hall on School Street.
The old City Hall is a dignified and proud building of human scale that invites people to enter, to admire, and use it. It speaks a boastful language we all understand but no longer dare to speak.
The old City Hall was the stage on which gothic political drama played out in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s where cigar smoking swells tended to a machine that churned out patronage and revenge.
Perhaps in response to this riff raff, Boston’s elite chose a replacement that was a temple of technocracy . . . a machine for breaking the spirits of living things.
The new Boston City Hall features cold, dank corridors of rough concrete. At the center of the building is an atrium open to the elements which, in Boston, tend to be cold and wet for most of the year. It‘s notable that the city budget director filed a disability claim after slipping on ice inside the building. The place is literally the DMV, animal control, and city morgue all wrapped up in one demoralizing package.
I guess it’s appropriate that Boston’s Old City Hall is now a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse because the current one looks like a slaughterhouse.
The vast plaza outside the Boston Shitty Hall was created by the awesomely overrated I.M. Pei as a place for what experts at the time called “the masses.” These were sort of like people except that they only existed in large anonymous groups. Individually, they didn’t exist at all. They certainly didn’t have opinions that amounted to anything. These “people” are often represented as stick figures on architectural renderings. To architects, of course, those are not renderings but actual likenesses.
The plaza is as inviting as a free fire zone. Crossing it is an odyssey of angst. In winter it is a frozen steppe. In summer, a scorched wasteland. It’s justly reviled as one of ">the most disappointing places in America . . . and that’s saying something.
How could such a dismal failure ever come into being in the first place? You’d think alarm bells would have sounded immediately. The winners of the architectural competition to build a new City Hall -- Gerhard M. Kallmann, Noel M. McKinnell, and Edward F. Knowles -- were three professors who had never built a building before.
And why build with poured concrete, a material that’s clammy to the touch, discolors in contact with moisture and cannot be modified with anything less than jack hammers and dynamite?
And ultimately, why tear the heart out of a great city and replace it with a structure that has as much in common with Boston’s history or vernacular style as does Tiananmen Square's Great Hall of the People?
Because Kallmann, McKinnell and Knowles were experts, that’s why.
And if you doubt their qualifications, be assured that these guys speak fluent expertise. Here’s how they describe their sinister creation:
“The facades achieve their coherence by means of an elemental composition of aedicular motifs with emphatic hoods at the ceremonial level.”
Look at this picture and dare to find the coherence:
The architects are basically saying, “Who are you going to believe? Us, or your own lying eyes?”
“The use of an inventive technology and the allusion to historic precedent in the siting as well as the compositional scheme of the building result in a density of image, which is both modern and timeless in nature.”
Boston City Hall is about as timeless as a Peter Max poster. It practically screams out Dick Cavett! Wide neckties! Urban renewal! Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming! This may be the least timeless building in America . . . and thank God for that.
Those who idealize the Sixties as a time of peace and love tend to overlook the technocratic barbarity that gave the Age of Aquarius its characteristic soul-crushing zest-appeal!
This was the age of expertise. Experts like Robert McNamara told us we were winning in Vietnam, Experts at RAND told us that poverty could be defeated. Experts like George Kennan told us that communism could be contained. Experts like Werner Von Braun told us that space was conquerable. There was a program for every problem and progress was measured in cold facts: body counts, case loads, megatons, and rocket thrust.
By the logic of the Sixties, there was no higher ideal than honesty and no greater evil than hypocrisy. This ideal appealed to clinical researcher and hippie alike. On the intellectual side, facts don’t lie. On the visceral side, if it feels good, do it.
But dogmatic authenticity led people to build with unadorned concrete and believe it’s beautiful. Honesty can be brutal and that’s exactly what the age of expertise led to.
As expertise hardened into dogma, that dismal decade offered us such cultural advances as no fault divorce, Gent magazine, Mutual Assured Destruction, and a style of architecture that vastly exceeded anything the Nazis could conceive of to render cold-hearted inhumanity into structural design.
The aptly named Brutalist school of architecture was all the rage in the Summer of Love and you can see where its concrete fist has obliterated whole neighborhoods in London, Philadelphia, and New York. Here’s a very brief Hall of Shame:
Yale School of Architecture, New Haven
Salk Institute, La Jolla, California
The Royal Theatre, London
The Ford Foundation Headquarters, New York
(actually, this is a machine gun emplacement)
A far more comprehensive (and dispiriting) collection can be found here.
Sophisticates will say the term “brutal” in the architectural sense comes from the French "beton brut" which describes the beauty of raw concrete. But don’t be fooled. Brutality is what it’s all about.
In the 1960s and 70s, the enlightened experts built municipal buildings, schools, libraries, arts centers, and even public playgrounds in the style of Nazi pillboxes on the coast of Normandy. It’s either ironic that Brutalism prospered through government building projects -- because these buildings have never been popular with the public -- or it’s indicative of the public sector’s utter contempt for democracy.
But I think it shows how a perfectly good idea – to seek beauty in utility – can be so clearly and thoroughly corrupted once reason and debate gives way to creed. By the mid-1970s, to criticize Brutalism was to reveal yourself as an artless rube.
This is a common theme in cultural history characterized by crashing waves of creativity that wash away the old dogma and gradually recede to leave a new layer of dogma that seems orderly and stable until the next wave sweeps in. In architecture the layers tend to pile up like silt making a walk down an avenue like Broadway the architectural equivalent of a geology field trip down from the Kaibab Plains to the Colorado River a thousand feet below.
The difference between Bauhaus and Brutalism is that the latter make no pretense whatsoever to humanity. It was utilitarianism followed to an extreme so absurd that even its utility is denied.
Another truly remarkable accomplishment of beton brut architecture is that it manages to offend so many senses. Sure, it’s ugly to look at, but its hard rough surfaces are also unpleasant to the touch and they reflect sounds that are hard of the ears. Raw concrete also seems to have the same effect on vagrants that fire hydrants have on dogs . . . it is an irresistible invitation to urinate. So, Brutalism is unique in architecture for being the only style with its own smell. It may very well have a distinctively offensive taste but there are limits to my research.
The news of the impending sale and inevitable deconstruction of Boston City Hall is part of the long overdue revolt of the masses. Boston’s blighted City Hall and Government Plaza may give way to something even more awful, but we’re ready to take that chance.
It’s remarkable that the revolt has taken so long to gather steam but it couldn’t be more welcome. In New York, Marcel Breuer’s hideous Whitney Museum on Madison Ave. is about to be abandoned (my prediction) now that the Whitney has decided to build its annex downtown.
Another notable Breuer pile in New Haven has been converted into an Ikea billboard. And now one of the few examples of a Brutalist private home is being torn down in Westport, Connecticut as you read this.
That one, built by the Brutal master Paul Rudolph for a Holocaust survivor, has caused the usual indignation and disapproval from intelligentsia types but ultimately, Brutalism’s durable building materials are the most formidable obstacles to their own destruction.
Rudolph and his brutally honest beton brut.
There are still those entranced by the sirens of expertise. But even those acolytes have to admit that Brutalism is difficult to appreciate without years of intense indoctrination. Just as Mark Twain once said that Wagner’s music was better than it sounded, Brutalism’s defenders are left with one last argument, that these buildings are better than they look.
Don’t get me wrong, destroying the old style is not the same as liberating minds from dogma. There’s always a new canon waiting to take the old one’s place. Today’s faith seems to be a return to the purity of Modernism – an intellectual gymnastic move that requires you to refer to a historical precedent that was based on breaking historical precedent. But at least Lever House and The Seagram Building are beautiful and uplifting in their ways.
And a return to beauty is always a welcome development.
Good news for humanity. The mayor of Boston wants to sell City Hall and build a new one elsewhere, preferably with a view of the harbor. Hopefully, this drives a stake through the heart of one of the ugliest buildings ever conceived by man.
Boston’s City Hall is a concrete bunker guarding a windswept brick plaza envisioned and constructed back in the sixties as a near perfect expression of that era’s homage to expert wisdom.
Experts say this is a significant architectural creation. The AIA gave it its highest honor in 1969. In 1976, some other panel of experts supposedly called it one of the most beautiful buildings of the 20th Century which says a lot about the vileness of that century and the tastelessness of the emperor’s clothiers. The mutants and ordinary Joes who make up the general public hated this building instantly.And how could you not hate it? For Bostonians, it replaced the perfectly appropriate City Hall on School Street.
The old City Hall is a dignified and proud building of human scale that invites people to enter, to admire, and use it. It speaks a boastful language we all understand but no longer dare to speak.The old City Hall was the stage on which gothic political drama played out in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s where cigar smoking swells tended to a machine that churned out patronage and revenge.
Perhaps in response to this riff raff, Boston’s elite chose a replacement that was a temple of technocracy . . . a machine for breaking the spirits of living things.
The new Boston City Hall features cold, dank corridors of rough concrete. At the center of the building is an atrium open to the elements which, in Boston, tend to be cold and wet for most of the year. It‘s notable that the city budget director filed a disability claim after slipping on ice inside the building. The place is literally the DMV, animal control, and city morgue all wrapped up in one demoralizing package.
I guess it’s appropriate that Boston’s Old City Hall is now a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse because the current one looks like a slaughterhouse.
The vast plaza outside the Boston Shitty Hall was created by the awesomely overrated I.M. Pei as a place for what experts at the time called “the masses.” These were sort of like people except that they only existed in large anonymous groups. Individually, they didn’t exist at all. They certainly didn’t have opinions that amounted to anything. These “people” are often represented as stick figures on architectural renderings. To architects, of course, those are not renderings but actual likenesses.
The plaza is as inviting as a free fire zone. Crossing it is an odyssey of angst. In winter it is a frozen steppe. In summer, a scorched wasteland. It’s justly reviled as one of ">the most disappointing places in America . . . and that’s saying something.
How could such a dismal failure ever come into being in the first place? You’d think alarm bells would have sounded immediately. The winners of the architectural competition to build a new City Hall -- Gerhard M. Kallmann, Noel M. McKinnell, and Edward F. Knowles -- were three professors who had never built a building before.
And why build with poured concrete, a material that’s clammy to the touch, discolors in contact with moisture and cannot be modified with anything less than jack hammers and dynamite?
And ultimately, why tear the heart out of a great city and replace it with a structure that has as much in common with Boston’s history or vernacular style as does Tiananmen Square's Great Hall of the People?
Because Kallmann, McKinnell and Knowles were experts, that’s why.
And if you doubt their qualifications, be assured that these guys speak fluent expertise. Here’s how they describe their sinister creation:
“The facades achieve their coherence by means of an elemental composition of aedicular motifs with emphatic hoods at the ceremonial level.”
Look at this picture and dare to find the coherence:
The architects are basically saying, “Who are you going to believe? Us, or your own lying eyes?”
“The use of an inventive technology and the allusion to historic precedent in the siting as well as the compositional scheme of the building result in a density of image, which is both modern and timeless in nature.”
Boston City Hall is about as timeless as a Peter Max poster. It practically screams out Dick Cavett! Wide neckties! Urban renewal! Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming! This may be the least timeless building in America . . . and thank God for that.
Those who idealize the Sixties as a time of peace and love tend to overlook the technocratic barbarity that gave the Age of Aquarius its characteristic soul-crushing zest-appeal!
This was the age of expertise. Experts like Robert McNamara told us we were winning in Vietnam, Experts at RAND told us that poverty could be defeated. Experts like George Kennan told us that communism could be contained. Experts like Werner Von Braun told us that space was conquerable. There was a program for every problem and progress was measured in cold facts: body counts, case loads, megatons, and rocket thrust.
By the logic of the Sixties, there was no higher ideal than honesty and no greater evil than hypocrisy. This ideal appealed to clinical researcher and hippie alike. On the intellectual side, facts don’t lie. On the visceral side, if it feels good, do it.
But dogmatic authenticity led people to build with unadorned concrete and believe it’s beautiful. Honesty can be brutal and that’s exactly what the age of expertise led to.
As expertise hardened into dogma, that dismal decade offered us such cultural advances as no fault divorce, Gent magazine, Mutual Assured Destruction, and a style of architecture that vastly exceeded anything the Nazis could conceive of to render cold-hearted inhumanity into structural design.
The aptly named Brutalist school of architecture was all the rage in the Summer of Love and you can see where its concrete fist has obliterated whole neighborhoods in London, Philadelphia, and New York. Here’s a very brief Hall of Shame:
Yale School of Architecture, New Haven
Salk Institute, La Jolla, California
The Royal Theatre, London
The Ford Foundation Headquarters, New York
(actually, this is a machine gun emplacement)
A far more comprehensive (and dispiriting) collection can be found here.
Sophisticates will say the term “brutal” in the architectural sense comes from the French "beton brut" which describes the beauty of raw concrete. But don’t be fooled. Brutality is what it’s all about.
In the 1960s and 70s, the enlightened experts built municipal buildings, schools, libraries, arts centers, and even public playgrounds in the style of Nazi pillboxes on the coast of Normandy. It’s either ironic that Brutalism prospered through government building projects -- because these buildings have never been popular with the public -- or it’s indicative of the public sector’s utter contempt for democracy.
But I think it shows how a perfectly good idea – to seek beauty in utility – can be so clearly and thoroughly corrupted once reason and debate gives way to creed. By the mid-1970s, to criticize Brutalism was to reveal yourself as an artless rube.
This is a common theme in cultural history characterized by crashing waves of creativity that wash away the old dogma and gradually recede to leave a new layer of dogma that seems orderly and stable until the next wave sweeps in. In architecture the layers tend to pile up like silt making a walk down an avenue like Broadway the architectural equivalent of a geology field trip down from the Kaibab Plains to the Colorado River a thousand feet below.
The difference between Bauhaus and Brutalism is that the latter make no pretense whatsoever to humanity. It was utilitarianism followed to an extreme so absurd that even its utility is denied.
Another truly remarkable accomplishment of beton brut architecture is that it manages to offend so many senses. Sure, it’s ugly to look at, but its hard rough surfaces are also unpleasant to the touch and they reflect sounds that are hard of the ears. Raw concrete also seems to have the same effect on vagrants that fire hydrants have on dogs . . . it is an irresistible invitation to urinate. So, Brutalism is unique in architecture for being the only style with its own smell. It may very well have a distinctively offensive taste but there are limits to my research.
The news of the impending sale and inevitable deconstruction of Boston City Hall is part of the long overdue revolt of the masses. Boston’s blighted City Hall and Government Plaza may give way to something even more awful, but we’re ready to take that chance.
It’s remarkable that the revolt has taken so long to gather steam but it couldn’t be more welcome. In New York, Marcel Breuer’s hideous Whitney Museum on Madison Ave. is about to be abandoned (my prediction) now that the Whitney has decided to build its annex downtown.
Another notable Breuer pile in New Haven has been converted into an Ikea billboard. And now one of the few examples of a Brutalist private home is being torn down in Westport, Connecticut as you read this.
That one, built by the Brutal master Paul Rudolph for a Holocaust survivor, has caused the usual indignation and disapproval from intelligentsia types but ultimately, Brutalism’s durable building materials are the most formidable obstacles to their own destruction.
Rudolph and his brutally honest beton brut.
There are still those entranced by the sirens of expertise. But even those acolytes have to admit that Brutalism is difficult to appreciate without years of intense indoctrination. Just as Mark Twain once said that Wagner’s music was better than it sounded, Brutalism’s defenders are left with one last argument, that these buildings are better than they look.
Don’t get me wrong, destroying the old style is not the same as liberating minds from dogma. There’s always a new canon waiting to take the old one’s place. Today’s faith seems to be a return to the purity of Modernism – an intellectual gymnastic move that requires you to refer to a historical precedent that was based on breaking historical precedent. But at least Lever House and The Seagram Building are beautiful and uplifting in their ways.
And a return to beauty is always a welcome development.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Japan: A Beacon of Hope
You've got to admire a country that can bounce back from two nuclear attacks and within a few generations are churning out quality television programing such as this:
Keep in mind, these guys believed their leader was divine and they killed about couple of thousand Americans with organized suicide attacks 60 years ago. Today, they're a democracy (imposed through military force by the way) and pioneers in robotics and Hello Kitty technology.
If they can come this far, there's still hope that my kids will be spending Spring Break at MeccaDisney when they grow up.
You've got to admire a country that can bounce back from two nuclear attacks and within a few generations are churning out quality television programing such as this:
Keep in mind, these guys believed their leader was divine and they killed about couple of thousand Americans with organized suicide attacks 60 years ago. Today, they're a democracy (imposed through military force by the way) and pioneers in robotics and Hello Kitty technology.
If they can come this far, there's still hope that my kids will be spending Spring Break at MeccaDisney when they grow up.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The Times Policy on Iraq
A typical Sunday morning in November. Up at a civilized hour. A mug of coffee and a crackling fire to warm me in my favorite chair as I survey the raw autumn day out my picture window and review the events of the week with the Sunday New York Times while Bunny Berrigan gently tickles the ivories in the background.
Actually it’s more like lock myself in the bathroom to escape the howls of children and/or dog and read whatever soggy section of the Times that hasn’t been chewed up or spat upon by beast or infant . . . or both!
So it was with excitement that I read the lead editorial in the Times . . . the one that promised at last to reveal the official policy of the Enlightened with regard to Iraq. After years of criticism of Chimpy McHitlerburton and his evil croneys, the Times is finally putting its cards on the table.
Let’s see what we have here:
“Unless America’s exit plans are coupled with a more serious effort to build up
Iraq’s security forces and mediate its sectarian divisions, a phased withdrawal
will only hasten Iraq’s descent into civil war.”
Umm, where have I heard that before? Why yes, it’s the policy of the United States of America. President Bush has on a number of occasions expressed U.S. policy in Iraq as building up Iraqi security forces, mediating Sunni, Shiite and Kurd divisions, and then withdrawing forces. And he’s been downright vocal about the foolishness of cutting and running before the mission is complete.
“We also fear that Iraqis will have no interest in anything but retribution,
until they see that security and rebuilding are possible.”
Wait a second. This too is American policy, is it not? Establish order and rebuild the nation while giving citizens a stake in the future. Didn’t we depose a ruthless dictator at one point, restore electrical power and oil production and then offering ordinary Iraqis a chance to vote for the first time in generations? I’m pretty sure that is in fact the mission defined.
“For that reason we have suggested one last push to stabilize Baghdad. That
would require at least a temporary increase in American and Iraqi troops on
Baghdad streets."
Hey, that’s the Bush policy too. Use armed soldiers, lots of them, to impose peace on the capital and then expand the zone of stability outward. That’s a great idea. Some might even say bold and visionary. The Times policy on Iraq is the Bush policy on Iraq except without all the self determination nonsense.
So what exactly was the fundamental difference of opinion with Bush on Iraq? I mean, he’s the worst president in human history, right? How many forests has the Times clear cut to inform us that Bush is wrong on a molecular level?
And yet, I can’t see any daylight between the Bush policy and the Times policy. What’s with that?
And what if the “Times” policy succeeds; what would be the result? A peaceful, multiethnic democracy taking root in the heart of the medieval Islamist fascist bone yard posing no threat to the United States and serving as a beacon of hope to a region mired in gloom.
But wait, isn’t that . . . no, it couldn’t be . . . didn’t he once say . . . I’m sure this can’t be true . . . but, could it be . . . that Bush is right??!!
Now you tell us!
Lies, And the Lying Liars Who Lie About Them
If Bush lied about the threat of Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons development programs – cloyingly known as WMDs – then what’s the deal with these guys? Are they lying too? Are they lying now? Could it be that partisan advantage crept into their calculations at some point?
Of course, you can’t trust the images you're seeing or the sounds coming from the speakers' mouths because the video was produced by the Republicans and the remarks are surely taken completely out of context.
Or perhaps the truth is that the Hussein dynasty maintained the will and the means to resume its WMD program as soon as it had finished undermining the UN sanctions in place to curtail such programs.
In fact, The New York Times mistakenly verified this alternative reality earlier this month with a breathless account of how the Bushitler regime incompetently posted Iraqi nuclear weapons plans on the internet for all to see.
Not that they had such plans, mind you.
If Bush lied about the threat of Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons development programs – cloyingly known as WMDs – then what’s the deal with these guys? Are they lying too? Are they lying now? Could it be that partisan advantage crept into their calculations at some point?
Of course, you can’t trust the images you're seeing or the sounds coming from the speakers' mouths because the video was produced by the Republicans and the remarks are surely taken completely out of context.
Or perhaps the truth is that the Hussein dynasty maintained the will and the means to resume its WMD program as soon as it had finished undermining the UN sanctions in place to curtail such programs.
In fact, The New York Times mistakenly verified this alternative reality earlier this month with a breathless account of how the Bushitler regime incompetently posted Iraqi nuclear weapons plans on the internet for all to see.
Not that they had such plans, mind you.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Islamofacsists Celebrate Democrat Win
Khamenei calls elections a victory for Iran -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.
Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.
"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.
"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
The Democrats wrested control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans in this week's mid-term elections, partly because of voter concern over the war in Iraq.
Khamenei, a senior cleric in power since 1989, has the last word on matters of state in Iran's complex system of Islamic rule, while the government, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in charge of day-to-day decision making.
"The result of this election indicates that the majority of American people are dissatisfied and are fed up with the policies of the American administration," the IRNA state news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Khamenei said military maneuvers in the Gulf this week in which Iranian forces tested new missile systems showed Iran was ready to face any threat.
But, he said: "With the scandalous defeat of America's policies in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, America's threats are empty threats on an international scale."
Khamenei condemned Israel for its artillery attack on Wednesday in Gaza which killed 18 civilians, and also the "silence" of Western nations over "this great oppression."
"The daily crimes by the savage Zionists in Gaza once more prove that holding talks with this occupying regime is of no use."
Khamenei calls elections a victory for Iran -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.
Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.
"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.
"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
The Democrats wrested control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans in this week's mid-term elections, partly because of voter concern over the war in Iraq.
Khamenei, a senior cleric in power since 1989, has the last word on matters of state in Iran's complex system of Islamic rule, while the government, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in charge of day-to-day decision making.
"The result of this election indicates that the majority of American people are dissatisfied and are fed up with the policies of the American administration," the IRNA state news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Khamenei said military maneuvers in the Gulf this week in which Iranian forces tested new missile systems showed Iran was ready to face any threat.
But, he said: "With the scandalous defeat of America's policies in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, America's threats are empty threats on an international scale."
Khamenei condemned Israel for its artillery attack on Wednesday in Gaza which killed 18 civilians, and also the "silence" of Western nations over "this great oppression."
"The daily crimes by the savage Zionists in Gaza once more prove that holding talks with this occupying regime is of no use."
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Here’s My Prediction
President Bush will announce that Donald Rumsfeld is resigning because of ill health. In his place, and in the spirit of bipartisanship, the President appoints newly re-elected Joe Lieberman (I) to be the new Secretary of Defense.
Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell (R) then gets to appoint someone to fill out Lieberman’s term.
Defeated Congresswoman Nancy Johnson (R) happens to be available or Bill Nickerson, the long-serving and enormously popular State Senator from Ned Lamont’s hometown, Greenwich. Oh, and Nickerson is an (R) too, by the way.
Since the Democrats lost the Lieberman seat this year to Lieberman, they can’t exactly call foul. And Lieberman owes the Democrats a bit of payback for their betrayal of him. The Republicans get an extra Senator and the Democrats get rid of Rumsfeld.
Everyone happy, yes?
UPDATE: Good prediction. Just wrong.
President Bush will announce that Donald Rumsfeld is resigning because of ill health. In his place, and in the spirit of bipartisanship, the President appoints newly re-elected Joe Lieberman (I) to be the new Secretary of Defense.
Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell (R) then gets to appoint someone to fill out Lieberman’s term.Defeated Congresswoman Nancy Johnson (R) happens to be available or Bill Nickerson, the long-serving and enormously popular State Senator from Ned Lamont’s hometown, Greenwich. Oh, and Nickerson is an (R) too, by the way.
Since the Democrats lost the Lieberman seat this year to Lieberman, they can’t exactly call foul. And Lieberman owes the Democrats a bit of payback for their betrayal of him. The Republicans get an extra Senator and the Democrats get rid of Rumsfeld.
Everyone happy, yes?
UPDATE: Good prediction. Just wrong.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
It Ain't Over 'Till the Fat Head Speaks
With the election only a week away, the only excitement left is wondering how the Democrats will blow it this time. Well, let's take it from the legendary "fast closer" himself:
Of course, they support the troops. And don't you dare question his patriotism!
Kerry now says that he wasn't saying soldiers were poorly educated rubes, but that he"botched" a joke.
This is plausible to me. I can't imagine Kerry delivering anything close to an unbotched joke. This is a guy so crushingly humorless that he holds a press conference to explain a joke . . . and I still don't get it.
It's been a while since I was lectured to by the pompous billionaire. As usual, it's all Kerry bluster about fighting, and the crazyness of opponents, and "real men" all from a coiffed asshole who is the only politician so elitist that he actually looks like an ivory tower.
Is this an actual issue or a distraction? Well, it brings up the contempt of the Left for the military (60% of the troops vote Republican), the derangement of Bush hatred that makes otherwise normal people behave as barking moonbats, and the harshness of political discourse.
But it's also a wonderful reminder that we came really close to electing this guy and the world is better for his defeat.
With the election only a week away, the only excitement left is wondering how the Democrats will blow it this time. Well, let's take it from the legendary "fast closer" himself:
Of course, they support the troops. And don't you dare question his patriotism!
Kerry now says that he wasn't saying soldiers were poorly educated rubes, but that he"botched" a joke.
This is plausible to me. I can't imagine Kerry delivering anything close to an unbotched joke. This is a guy so crushingly humorless that he holds a press conference to explain a joke . . . and I still don't get it.
It's been a while since I was lectured to by the pompous billionaire. As usual, it's all Kerry bluster about fighting, and the crazyness of opponents, and "real men" all from a coiffed asshole who is the only politician so elitist that he actually looks like an ivory tower.
Is this an actual issue or a distraction? Well, it brings up the contempt of the Left for the military (60% of the troops vote Republican), the derangement of Bush hatred that makes otherwise normal people behave as barking moonbats, and the harshness of political discourse.
But it's also a wonderful reminder that we came really close to electing this guy and the world is better for his defeat.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Another Black and White Political Issue
I love the last two weeks before an election because that’s the time when all reason and civility breaks down and humanity with all its flaws exposes itself to unsuspecting voters and frightened children.
The ads get edgier and the accusations get cruder. This ad aimed against senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. is getting a spike of attention today:
The “progressive” response to this is that all those funny vignettes may or may not be accurate depictions of the Democrat’s positions, but they are all just a set up for a blatantly racist appeal to fear. You see, the white woman at the end is suggesting a mixing of the races, as Ford is African-American.
Miscegenation, to the progressive mind, is a hot button issue with the Neanderthals south of the Mason-Dixon Line. That must be why Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly, Alan Keyes and Tiger Woods are so reviled among southern conservatives. (Hint: They're lionized, not reviled)
Or perhaps this is another case of what psychologists call “projection” whereby your own deepest shame is projected onto your opponents.
After all, it’s the progressive types who slyly suggest that Thomas, Connerly, and even Tiger are less authentically black than other non-white-spoused African-Americans.
I’m no pop-psyche major but, if Harold Ford does get elected the junior Senator from Tennessee, I would advise him to watch his back. If he legislates as conservatively as he has campaigned, it will be the very same people who are outraged now whispering about his “authenticity” later when he breaks with the progressive orthodoxy.
I love the last two weeks before an election because that’s the time when all reason and civility breaks down and humanity with all its flaws exposes itself to unsuspecting voters and frightened children.
The ads get edgier and the accusations get cruder. This ad aimed against senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. is getting a spike of attention today:
The “progressive” response to this is that all those funny vignettes may or may not be accurate depictions of the Democrat’s positions, but they are all just a set up for a blatantly racist appeal to fear. You see, the white woman at the end is suggesting a mixing of the races, as Ford is African-American.
Miscegenation, to the progressive mind, is a hot button issue with the Neanderthals south of the Mason-Dixon Line. That must be why Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly, Alan Keyes and Tiger Woods are so reviled among southern conservatives. (Hint: They're lionized, not reviled)
Or perhaps this is another case of what psychologists call “projection” whereby your own deepest shame is projected onto your opponents.
After all, it’s the progressive types who slyly suggest that Thomas, Connerly, and even Tiger are less authentically black than other non-white-spoused African-Americans.
I’m no pop-psyche major but, if Harold Ford does get elected the junior Senator from Tennessee, I would advise him to watch his back. If he legislates as conservatively as he has campaigned, it will be the very same people who are outraged now whispering about his “authenticity” later when he breaks with the progressive orthodoxy.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Where Have All the Artists Gone?
I expect that artists like to consider themselves free thinkers unrestricted by society’s latent hypocrisy and pressure to conform. Yet, in New York City -- the most provincial community in the United States -- artists are trampling each other to add their unique hollering to the echo chamber that passes for political theatre in the Naked City.
In the two weeks preceding Election Day, New York first-nighters can choose from a selection of cutting-edge theatrical commentary that ranges from liberal-progressive to progressive-liberal and everything in between. It’s an immovable feast!
How do freethinking New York artists hate Bush? Let me count the ways:
At the Actor’s Playhouse in Greenwich Village you can catch “Bush Wars,” a scathing indictment of George W. Bush and American foreign policy.
Or how about heading over to the East Village to see “Dumya’s Rapture,” a scathing indictment of George W. Bush and American domestic policy.
Too subtle and nuanced for you? Then boogie on up to West 72nd Street and the Triad Theater to see less telling titles that appear to promise a reassuring evening of BushHate® but I’m not going to waste my time finding out for sure.
What exactly goes through the minds of the fragile individualists who go to these plays, much less the obedient rebels who stage them? Fortunately, I have no idea. But challenging conventional wisdom seems to be the least of these mavericks’ considerations.
I mean, if I was a playwright, just how tired would the “Bush is dumb” storyline appear to be? Would I want to invest more than an afternoon’s effort in committing my take to paper? Would anyone in the audience be able to muster a moment’s worth of suspense about the direction of this play?
Clearly, the purpose of these theatrical productions, and most art that deals with politics nowadays, is not to speak truth to power but to recite comforting affirmations to the true believers.
Not only is that boring, but it’s an enormous lost opportunity.
How difficult would it be for a perceptive artist to take a truly unorthodox and dissenting position on Bush et al? After all, what would any self-respecting artist rather be, the courageous lancer of boils or the boil itself?
You’d almost think that New York’s latter day satirists are afraid to break from the herd.
I’m no artist myself but I would guess that the art world is a pretty small and land-locked society populated by insecure poseurs who crave the affirmation of their peers. In other words, they’re just like everyone else . . . uniquely so.
In retrospect, the “conformist” 1950s look like a rich broth of courage and creativity. Think of the breadth of artistic expression – jazz, abstract expressionism, international style, beat poets – all contributing the esthetic backdrop to the stirrings of the civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements and joining in the political discourse on the role of government, the meaning of freedom, the existential threat of nuclear war.
Here's a taste of what we're missing:
We have little of that excitement and originality today. In fact, originality seems to have been patented in the 1960s and none are allowed to infringe upon it now.
Rock and Roll? What could it possibly mean now that it surrounds us like water in an aquarium? When was the last time some kid experienced the clandestine pleasure of finding a distant AM station playing forbidden music? The only possible equivalent would be a teenager listening to a Christian pop station in his parents’ Tribeca loft.
Jazz? A seedy neighborhood long since gentrified by the Sting corporation.
Graphic art? Years of abuse and overuse has blunted its ability to shock and challenge.
Architecture? After completing the Luftwaffe’s unfinished work, what could modern architecture possibly have to offer except for the same mindless conformity that modernism was meant to confront?
Poetry? Sophomoric boasting set to rhyme.
Here's a typically safe pose:
Today we don’t have artistic courage; we have fear. Not fear of censorship from an imperial government . . . if only. That’s the straw man today’s artists fight in bitter hand to hay combat every day. Real censorship occurs when an artist contemplates a critique of medieval, misogynist Islamofascism and hesitates because of his fear of physical pain.
The censorship the BushHaters fear is in the form of exclusion . . . exclusion from their friends and fellow "artists." That's a very real fear.
Mounting an off-Broadway play insulting George W. Bush is the opposite of courageous. It’s undemanding and crushingly dull.
Yet there are words that long to be written, images that yearn to be shown, and beliefs that struggle to be understood.
Where are all the artists when you need them?
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Hearts Club
It’s been said that all politics is local. The 60’s generation took it a bit farther and claimed that politics is personal. Now it’s getting intimate.
According to an ad in the in the New York Times this morning, Cindy Sheehan is speaking tonight about war atrocities and there will be a “singles reception” afterwards where you can presumably get progressive if you know what I mean.
Political activism, particularly on the Left, is a popular means for expressing one’s identity as much as it is a way to influence political decisions. But what fascinates me are those who really don’t understand the issues all that well and don’t expect to influence politics at all.
They’re attracted to the affirmation that they are “doing the right thing” by being against war, against environmental catastrophe, against torture, starvation, nuclear disaster, death, disease, mean people.
Anger is kind of a rush and politics is one of the few socially acceptable channels for getting barking mad.
Being in favor of something is . . . well, that’s a little more difficult.
Anyone who has worked on a real political campaign knows that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people and the rest are hangers-on who are there for the camaraderie, the songs, the excitement and the chance to meet other lonely people like themselves. They don’t care about winning an election or changing the world. They just want to be loved.
This is politics as therapy and having been on both sides of the divide, I can tell you, Republicans are in it to change the world, and get laid if there’s time. For Democrats, it’s exactly the opposite.
Case in point? Come to the 92nd Street Y tonight and hear an activist. Or if you prefer, save 25 bucks and just check out the action.
It’s been said that all politics is local. The 60’s generation took it a bit farther and claimed that politics is personal. Now it’s getting intimate.
According to an ad in the in the New York Times this morning, Cindy Sheehan is speaking tonight about war atrocities and there will be a “singles reception” afterwards where you can presumably get progressive if you know what I mean.Political activism, particularly on the Left, is a popular means for expressing one’s identity as much as it is a way to influence political decisions. But what fascinates me are those who really don’t understand the issues all that well and don’t expect to influence politics at all.
They’re attracted to the affirmation that they are “doing the right thing” by being against war, against environmental catastrophe, against torture, starvation, nuclear disaster, death, disease, mean people.
Anger is kind of a rush and politics is one of the few socially acceptable channels for getting barking mad.
Being in favor of something is . . . well, that’s a little more difficult.
Anyone who has worked on a real political campaign knows that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people and the rest are hangers-on who are there for the camaraderie, the songs, the excitement and the chance to meet other lonely people like themselves. They don’t care about winning an election or changing the world. They just want to be loved.
This is politics as therapy and having been on both sides of the divide, I can tell you, Republicans are in it to change the world, and get laid if there’s time. For Democrats, it’s exactly the opposite.
Case in point? Come to the 92nd Street Y tonight and hear an activist. Or if you prefer, save 25 bucks and just check out the action.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Allah's Greatest Hits (Part 1)
Here's the transcript from the Flight 93 voice recorder on September 11, 2001.
The words in parentheses are translated from Arabic. It's unclear, of course, who was speaking Arabic. I certainly wouldn't want to be judgmental.
What's also odd is that this incident seems to have taken place before Chimpy McHitlerburton's illegal, misleading, worse invasion ever of the peace loving Middle East. Strange.
09:35:33 — No, no, no. Unintelligible.
09:35:35 — Down in the airport.
09:35:39 — Down, down.
09:35:40 — I don’t want to die.
09:35:41 — No, no. Down, down.
09:35:42 — I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
09:35:44 — No, no. Down, down, down, down, down, down.
09:35:47 — No, no, please.
09:35:57 — No.
09:37:06 — (That’s it. Go back.)
09:37:06 — (That’s it.) Sit down.
09:37:36 —(Everthing is fine. I finished.)
09:38:36 — (Yes.)
09:39:11 — Ah. Here’s the captain. I would like to tell you all to remain seated. We have a bomb aboard, and we are going back to the airport, and we have our demands. So, please remain quiet.
[ ... ]
09:45:19 — (How about we let them in? We let the guys in now.)
09:45:23 — (OK.)
09:45:24 — (Should we let the guys in?)
09:45:25 — (Inform them, and tell him to talk to the pilot. Bring the pilot back.)
09:45:57 — (In the name of Allah. In the name of Allah. I bear witness that there is no other God, but Allah.)
09:47:31 — Unintelligible.
09:47:40 — (Allah knows.)
09:48:15 — Unintelligible.
09:48:38 — Set course.
[ ... ]
09:53:20 — (The best thing: The guys will go in, lift up the) ... Unintelligible ... (and they put the axe into it. So, everyone will be scared.)
09:53:27 — (Yes.)
09:53:28 — (The axe.)
[ ... ]
09:58:44 — (Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh the most gracious.)
09:58:47 — Ugh. Ugh.
09:58:52 — Stay back.
09:58:55 — In the cockpit.
09:58:57 — In the cockpit.
09:58:57 — (They want to get in here. Hold, hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold).
09:59:04 — Hold the door.
09:59:09 — Stop him.
09:59:11 — Sit down.
09:59:13 — Sit down.
09:59:15 — Sit down.
09:59:16 — Unintelligible.
09:59:17 — (What?)
09:59:18 — (There are some guys. All those guys.)
09:59:20 — Lets get them.
[ ... ]
10:00:07 — (Is that it? Shall we finish it off?)
10:00:08 — (No. Not yet.)
10:00:09 — (When they all come, we finish it off.)
10:00:11 — (There is nothing.)
10:00:13 — Unintelligible.
10:00:14 — Ahh.
10:00:15 — I’m injured.
10:00:16 — Unintelligible.
10:00:21 — Ahh.
10:00:22 — (Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh gracious.)
10:00:25 — In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die.
10:00:29 — (Up, down. Up, down, in the) cockpit.
10:00:33 — (The) cockpit.
10:00:37 — (Up, down. Saeed, up, down.)
10:00:42 — Roll it.
10:00:55 — Unintelligible.
10:00:59 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
10:01:01 — Unintelligible.
10:01:08 — (Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?)
10:01:09 — (Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.)
10:01:10 — Unintelligible.
10:01:11 — (Saeed.)
10:01:12 — ... engine ...
10:01:13 — Unintelligible.
10:01:16 — (Cut off the oxygen.)
10:01:18 — (Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen.)
10:01:34 — Unintelligible.
10:01:37 — Unintelligible.
10:01:41 — (Up, down. Up, down.)
10:01:41 — (What?)
10:01:42 — (Up, down.)
10:01:42 — Ahh.
10:01:53 — Ahh.
10:01:54 — Unintelligible.
10:01:55 — Ahh.
10:01:59 — Shut them off.
10:02:03 — Shut them off.
10:02:14 — Go.
10:02:14 — Go.
10:02:15 — Move.
10:02:16 — Move.
10:02:17 — Turn it up.
10:02:18 — (Down, down.)
10:02:23 — (Pull it down. Pull it down.)
10:02:25 — Down. Push, push, push, push, push.
10:02:33 — (Hey. Hey. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:35 — (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:37 — (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:40 — Unintelligible.
10:03:02 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:03 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:04 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:06 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:06 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:07 — No.
10:03:09 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:09 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
Here's the transcript from the Flight 93 voice recorder on September 11, 2001.
The words in parentheses are translated from Arabic. It's unclear, of course, who was speaking Arabic. I certainly wouldn't want to be judgmental.
What's also odd is that this incident seems to have taken place before Chimpy McHitlerburton's illegal, misleading, worse invasion ever of the peace loving Middle East. Strange.
09:35:33 — No, no, no. Unintelligible.
09:35:35 — Down in the airport.
09:35:39 — Down, down.
09:35:40 — I don’t want to die.
09:35:41 — No, no. Down, down.
09:35:42 — I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
09:35:44 — No, no. Down, down, down, down, down, down.
09:35:47 — No, no, please.
09:35:57 — No.
09:37:06 — (That’s it. Go back.)
09:37:06 — (That’s it.) Sit down.
09:37:36 —(Everthing is fine. I finished.)
09:38:36 — (Yes.)
09:39:11 — Ah. Here’s the captain. I would like to tell you all to remain seated. We have a bomb aboard, and we are going back to the airport, and we have our demands. So, please remain quiet.
[ ... ]
09:45:19 — (How about we let them in? We let the guys in now.)
09:45:23 — (OK.)
09:45:24 — (Should we let the guys in?)
09:45:25 — (Inform them, and tell him to talk to the pilot. Bring the pilot back.)
09:45:57 — (In the name of Allah. In the name of Allah. I bear witness that there is no other God, but Allah.)
09:47:31 — Unintelligible.
09:47:40 — (Allah knows.)
09:48:15 — Unintelligible.
09:48:38 — Set course.
[ ... ]
09:53:20 — (The best thing: The guys will go in, lift up the) ... Unintelligible ... (and they put the axe into it. So, everyone will be scared.)
09:53:27 — (Yes.)
09:53:28 — (The axe.)
[ ... ]
09:58:44 — (Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh the most gracious.)
09:58:47 — Ugh. Ugh.
09:58:52 — Stay back.
09:58:55 — In the cockpit.
09:58:57 — In the cockpit.
09:58:57 — (They want to get in here. Hold, hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold).
09:59:04 — Hold the door.
09:59:09 — Stop him.
09:59:11 — Sit down.
09:59:13 — Sit down.
09:59:15 — Sit down.
09:59:16 — Unintelligible.
09:59:17 — (What?)
09:59:18 — (There are some guys. All those guys.)
09:59:20 — Lets get them.
[ ... ]
10:00:07 — (Is that it? Shall we finish it off?)
10:00:08 — (No. Not yet.)
10:00:09 — (When they all come, we finish it off.)
10:00:11 — (There is nothing.)
10:00:13 — Unintelligible.
10:00:14 — Ahh.
10:00:15 — I’m injured.
10:00:16 — Unintelligible.
10:00:21 — Ahh.
10:00:22 — (Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh gracious.)
10:00:25 — In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die.
10:00:29 — (Up, down. Up, down, in the) cockpit.
10:00:33 — (The) cockpit.
10:00:37 — (Up, down. Saeed, up, down.)
10:00:42 — Roll it.
10:00:55 — Unintelligible.
10:00:59 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
10:01:01 — Unintelligible.
10:01:08 — (Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?)
10:01:09 — (Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.)
10:01:10 — Unintelligible.
10:01:11 — (Saeed.)
10:01:12 — ... engine ...
10:01:13 — Unintelligible.
10:01:16 — (Cut off the oxygen.)
10:01:18 — (Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen.)
10:01:34 — Unintelligible.
10:01:37 — Unintelligible.
10:01:41 — (Up, down. Up, down.)
10:01:41 — (What?)
10:01:42 — (Up, down.)
10:01:42 — Ahh.
10:01:53 — Ahh.
10:01:54 — Unintelligible.
10:01:55 — Ahh.
10:01:59 — Shut them off.
10:02:03 — Shut them off.
10:02:14 — Go.
10:02:14 — Go.
10:02:15 — Move.
10:02:16 — Move.
10:02:17 — Turn it up.
10:02:18 — (Down, down.)
10:02:23 — (Pull it down. Pull it down.)
10:02:25 — Down. Push, push, push, push, push.
10:02:33 — (Hey. Hey. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:35 — (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:37 — (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:40 — Unintelligible.
10:03:02 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:03 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:04 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:06 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:06 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:07 — No.
10:03:09 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:09 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
What's in a Name?
According to the Social Security administration, Jacob is the single most popular name for boys born this decade in the United States. An improvement over Dylan I suppose.
Conspiracy theorists will no doubt wonder what the chances are that the 885th most popular name is Fidel and the 883rd is Kennedy.
Coincidence? Maybe.
But then look at name number 887: Oswaldo!
Run your finger down to 908 if you want a real shocker: Jakobe.
Sure that could be a variation on Jacob but I'm thinking it could easily be pronounced "JackRuby." And what kind of Grassy Knoll fanatic would name their child Jakrube? An exaggeration I'll admit, but still, who would do such a thing?
The list only goes to 1,000 so there's no telling how popular "Giancana" is.
According to the Social Security administration, Jacob is the single most popular name for boys born this decade in the United States. An improvement over Dylan I suppose.
Conspiracy theorists will no doubt wonder what the chances are that the 885th most popular name is Fidel and the 883rd is Kennedy.
Coincidence? Maybe.
But then look at name number 887: Oswaldo!
Run your finger down to 908 if you want a real shocker: Jakobe.
Sure that could be a variation on Jacob but I'm thinking it could easily be pronounced "JackRuby." And what kind of Grassy Knoll fanatic would name their child Jakrube? An exaggeration I'll admit, but still, who would do such a thing?
The list only goes to 1,000 so there's no telling how popular "Giancana" is.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Judge For Yourself
The issue here is not so much freedom of speech as much as it is can the threat of violence insulate a radical political movement from criticism.
There is no moral equivalence. There's not even esthetic equivalance. The Danish cartoons are easy to look at and clever in their way.
The virulently anti-Semitic cartoons that regularly run in the state-run media in Arab regimes such as Qatar are the sort of thing you might have seen in Der Strumer, ca. 1936.
This episode should alert observers over the age of 50 that a radical change has taken place in Europe and the Arab worlds. Before World War II, Cairo was a cosmopolitan and multiethnic world capital while cities like Berlin and Nuremberg were stridently xenophobic police states.
Is the Arab world convulsed by the the presence of Israel? If so it doesn't quite explain the closing of minds on an institutional level.
For example, Egypt once had a thriving Arabic-language motion picture industry that served audiences throughout the entire region. Today, movies are illegal in places like Saudi Arabia . . . no movies have been shown there publically since the 1970s.
Whether it is becoming more repressive in response to external developments (such as Israel) or internal ones (such as the spread of Wahabbism) or a combination of the two, one conclusion should be clear: The Islamic world is headed in an unhealthy direction.
This is a challenging concept for some people to accept especially if one cannot imagine the world beyond one's own parochial backyard. As one well-meaning commenter on TPMcafe writes:
Without Rush or Bush or some other political Polaris to guide them, some folks are totally disoriended. They have no idea what they truly believe. The deafening silence of "moderate" Muslims in this and nearly all discussions about Islam may mean that such moderates either don't exist or fear for their lives if they articulate their moderation.
The TPMcafe guy concludes with a call for understanding:
This is a great idea but probably not for the reasons the writer thinks it is. I mean, what if the other side has already made up its mind about you?
How much understanding of Judeo-Christian values can there be in a part of the world where the practice or Christianity and Judeism is against the law? How much respect for Western culture, fears, and values can we expect from a political movement that defines itself in direct opposition to Western culture?
How much room for negotoation and compromise is available with a competing system that does not recognize peaceful co-existance as an ideal?
The information you need to make a judgement is available for you to see. The real challenge seems to be in making any judgement at all.
The issue here is not so much freedom of speech as much as it is can the threat of violence insulate a radical political movement from criticism.
There is no moral equivalence. There's not even esthetic equivalance. The Danish cartoons are easy to look at and clever in their way.The virulently anti-Semitic cartoons that regularly run in the state-run media in Arab regimes such as Qatar are the sort of thing you might have seen in Der Strumer, ca. 1936.
This episode should alert observers over the age of 50 that a radical change has taken place in Europe and the Arab worlds. Before World War II, Cairo was a cosmopolitan and multiethnic world capital while cities like Berlin and Nuremberg were stridently xenophobic police states.
Is the Arab world convulsed by the the presence of Israel? If so it doesn't quite explain the closing of minds on an institutional level.
For example, Egypt once had a thriving Arabic-language motion picture industry that served audiences throughout the entire region. Today, movies are illegal in places like Saudi Arabia . . . no movies have been shown there publically since the 1970s.
Whether it is becoming more repressive in response to external developments (such as Israel) or internal ones (such as the spread of Wahabbism) or a combination of the two, one conclusion should be clear: The Islamic world is headed in an unhealthy direction.
This is a challenging concept for some people to accept especially if one cannot imagine the world beyond one's own parochial backyard. As one well-meaning commenter on TPMcafe writes:
This is an interesting conflict. As a secularist who believes in free speech, I think the Muslim world is over-reacting. However, I also sense growing racism against Muslims and wonder if the reaction we are seeing among Muslims is in some ways similar to the reaction we see among African-Americans when someone like Rush Limbaugh says that Donovan McNabb wouldn't be regarded as good if he weren't black. If this is the case, asking moderate Muslims to come to the defense of the cartoons might be like asking moderate African- Americans to come to the defense of Rush.
Without Rush or Bush or some other political Polaris to guide them, some folks are totally disoriended. They have no idea what they truly believe. The deafening silence of "moderate" Muslims in this and nearly all discussions about Islam may mean that such moderates either don't exist or fear for their lives if they articulate their moderation.
The TPMcafe guy concludes with a call for understanding:
It just seems like this is a situation that should be used to encourage cross-cultural dialogue and hopefully some mutual understanding and respect for each side's culture, fears, and values. What we don't need is more polarization (which seems to be where we're headed).
This is a great idea but probably not for the reasons the writer thinks it is. I mean, what if the other side has already made up its mind about you?
How much understanding of Judeo-Christian values can there be in a part of the world where the practice or Christianity and Judeism is against the law? How much respect for Western culture, fears, and values can we expect from a political movement that defines itself in direct opposition to Western culture?
How much room for negotoation and compromise is available with a competing system that does not recognize peaceful co-existance as an ideal?
The information you need to make a judgement is available for you to see. The real challenge seems to be in making any judgement at all.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Lenge Leve Danmark!
Here are the latest pictures from the small but spirited rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across Second Avenue from the Danish Consulate.
After milling about for a while speakers emerged to spontaneously bear witness . . . or something like that.
Like most quasi-political gatherings, the crowd was a mixture of noble souls and the possibly unhinged. Most people registered their solidarity in silence, some exchanged e-mail addresses, all nodded in agreement that the threat of physical violence, not consideration of some cultural sensitivity, is what keeps more news outlets from addressing the issue of Islamofascism.
At one point a trucker on Second Avenue signalled his support with a blast from his air horn.
Little Denmark seems an odd rallying point for passionate people but as I believe Stephen Stills of CSN&Y once sang, "The ones you never notice are the ones you've got to watch" although I suspect he wasn't talking about small, beleagured, liberal democracies enduring the fabricated and focused theocratic hatred of the global jihadist movement.
Thanks for whoever brought the Havarti.
More words and pictures over at Atlas Shrugs, and The Infidel Alliance.
Here are the latest pictures from the small but spirited rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across Second Avenue from the Danish Consulate.
After milling about for a while speakers emerged to spontaneously bear witness . . . or something like that.
Like most quasi-political gatherings, the crowd was a mixture of noble souls and the possibly unhinged. Most people registered their solidarity in silence, some exchanged e-mail addresses, all nodded in agreement that the threat of physical violence, not consideration of some cultural sensitivity, is what keeps more news outlets from addressing the issue of Islamofascism.
At one point a trucker on Second Avenue signalled his support with a blast from his air horn.
Little Denmark seems an odd rallying point for passionate people but as I believe Stephen Stills of CSN&Y once sang, "The ones you never notice are the ones you've got to watch" although I suspect he wasn't talking about small, beleagured, liberal democracies enduring the fabricated and focused theocratic hatred of the global jihadist movement.
Thanks for whoever brought the Havarti.
More words and pictures over at Atlas Shrugs, and The Infidel Alliance.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
A Wordless Fisking
To the Editor:
Re "Bush Gives Plan for Iraq Victory and Withdrawal" (front page, Dec. 1):
Once again, this time before a United States Naval Academy audience, President Bush tried to trick the American people into supporting his ill-conceived and unnecessary war in Iraq.
He and his administration at first said the Saddam Hussein regime had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but that was false.
They said Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda, but that was false.
They said our troops would be greeted with flowers and affection, but that was false.
They said the Iraq mission was accomplished, but that was false.
With more than 2,000 of our fellow citizens now dead in Iraq and the majority of Americans rejecting his war, the president offers a rehash of his argument for war.
After all those falsehoods and miscalculations, why should we believe him now? I certainly don't.
George F. Nelson
New York, Dec. 1, 2005
To the Editor:
Re "Bush Gives Plan for Iraq Victory and Withdrawal" (front page, Dec. 1):
Once again, this time before a United States Naval Academy audience, President Bush tried to trick the American people into supporting his ill-conceived and unnecessary war in Iraq.
He and his administration at first said the Saddam Hussein regime had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but that was false.
They said Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda, but that was false.
They said our troops would be greeted with flowers and affection, but that was false.
They said the Iraq mission was accomplished, but that was false.
With more than 2,000 of our fellow citizens now dead in Iraq and the majority of Americans rejecting his war, the president offers a rehash of his argument for war.
After all those falsehoods and miscalculations, why should we believe him now? I certainly don't.
George F. Nelson
New York, Dec. 1, 2005
Monday, August 01, 2005
suspect_oval_203
To Profile or Not to Profile?
The British Transport Police say they are not going to waste time searching “old white ladies” on the London tube. Here in the New York metropolitan area, we still haven’t come to grips with that sort of austere truth.
I’ve seen plenty of white women and middle-aged business executives getting shaken down on the platform at Grand Central in the past two weeks. Mind you , they’re headed OUT of New York City at that point. At least we can be reasonably sure that any suicide attacks against the Greenwich train station by fanatic seersucker-clad private equity dealers have been thwarted.
Many of those inconvenienced could take solace today in The New York Times letters page where indignation against transit searches and the inevitability of ethnic profiling is running high.
Nathaniel Falda, a lawyer of some sort in Brooklyn, makes what must seem to him to be the most convincing case against stopping young male Arabs with heavy backpacks on the Times Square shuttle . . . it’s unconstitutional!
“The Fourth Amendment guarantees that people will be safe from “unreasonable searches and seizures” barring a show of probable cause.
Of course, providing for a common defense is right up there in the first line of the Constitution. It’s not some secondary amendment they tacked on afterwards.
It seems to me that searching the purses of elderly white women from Connecticut in the wake of deadly suicide attacks carried out by eight young Middle Eastern men with rucksacks is by definition “unreasonable.” Far more reasonable would be the immediate frisking of anyone who looked even vaguely like this guy:
Jeremy Ginges, a “social psychologist in the Roots of Terror Initiative at the University of Michigan” adds his clever observation:
Using rigid profiles based on ethnicity, gender and age may give terrorist groups an opportunity to bypass security by selecting attackers who do not fit the profile and are thus overlooked by security forces.”
Of course, there is no need to select any other sort of attacker than dark-skinned Sunni Muslim fanatics because right now we aren’t going to stop anyone fitting that particular profile.
Ginges is certainly right, rigid profiles are easily evaded. But no one is recommending rigid profiles. Just the opposite, in fact. Mindlessly searching every tenth person regardless of whenthe4r they are schoolchildren or pregnant women is both rigid and ineffective.
Phil Hall of Fairfield, Connecticut chimes in with a helpful reminder:
Let’s not forget that there were Muslim victims on 9/11 and in the London attacks.
I’m all for that if Phil Hall agrees to not forget that every single one of the attackers on 9/11 and in London were Middle Eastern men between the ages of 19 and 30 who subscribed to an extremist strain of Islam. In fact, he might want to give some thought to why so many of the victims of such similar looking Muslim extremists are themselves Muslim? I mean, if American hegemony is to blame for the seething rage in the Arab world, why are the seethers killing so many Arabs?
While Phil Hill wrestles with that conundrum, far from Fairfield and Ann Arbor there are real people riding real subways and trains everyday in real crowded cities like New York. What do those people think of ethnic profiling? Down on the IRT it was all wide-eyed suspicion the day after the second London attack. It’s not a great time to be a swarthy straphanger with a backpack these days.
My sense is that most people riding mass transit today are practicing their own ethnic profiling without regard to the Fourth Amendment. I might even go so far as to say that even young male swarthies would be relieved if they knew that everyone who looked like them were being searched.
After all, we’re a community, right? If you’re asked to sacrifice for the safety and welfare of the greater whole, it’s an honor not a humiliation.
The rest of us in the suburbs can enjoy the luxury of burying our heads ostrich style.
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