I Like Ike, Not Gehry

Suppose you were on a commission to build a memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and you had to select an architect to design it.  What sort of qualities would you look for? 

You might start with Eisenhower himself.  Ike was a pretty normal guy considering he commanded the biggest amphibious invasion in history, was president of an Ivy League university, and served two terms as an enormously popular POTUS. 

Unpretentious. Middle American. Common man.

Actually, it’s easier to say what he’s not.

Not trendy. Not intellectual. Not ostentatious.

So, to honor a down-to-earth man’s man whose name is synonymous with 1950s suburban conformity you would naturally choose Frank Gehry as your architect, right?

Well, I can see the conformity part.  I mean, once you’ve seen Bilbao you’ve seen the Disney and every other titanium coprolite Gehry has ever or will ever conceive of.

You can be sure the Gehry Memorial will say more about Gehry than about Eisenhower.  It can be counted on to challenge conventional notions, break with tradition, and annoy the unsophisticated in exactly the way Ike didn’t.

“He wasn’t blustery and didn’t make big pronouncements. I feel a sense of kinship with how he did what he did,” says Gehry with characteristic humility.  What Ike did was defeat fascism.  What has Gehry ever done to warrant any sort of kinship with Eisenhower?  

Gehry’s sort of disposable, transient, situational morality is the polar opposite of what Eisenhower represents.  But instead of being memorialized with a recognizably heroic structure that will stand the test of time, Ike is getting a website.

According to Architectural Record, “visitors will probably learn more about the subject of the memorial from specially created Web video and audio files—a clip of an old Eisenhower speech, perhaps—beamed to a handheld device like, say, an iPhone. Under the competition’s guidelines, Gehry must design this electronic element, too.”

That’s just great.  How long before that feature is obsolete?  A year?  Six weeks?

And what will the design look like?  Don’t know.  The memorial commission isn’t releasing the design to the public.  They won’t release the runner-up designs from Krueck & Sexton, Rogers Marvel Architects, or PWP Landscape Architecture, either.  

That’s not the sort of behavior of a patron confident of the popularity of its decision.  

Norman Foster May or May Not Vandalize The New York Public Library

Among the few clearly positive consequences of The Great Rebalancing going on now in financial markets is the extinguishment of Norman Foster’s plans to deface The New York Public Library first announced just as the economic avalanche was beginning in October. The timing suggests a divine consciousness at work.

It’s the greatest project ever!” The New York Times reported the starchitect saying after the “trustees” of the library awarded him the $250 million project to update the pretty much already perfect building.

“We had to have someone as good as Carrere & Hastings,” said Paul LeClerc, the president of the library without a trace of bitter irony. “We had to create a second masterpiece.” 

(picture credit: TS Carlisle)

This sort of nonsense is so common in architecture that it barely even registers on the bullshit detector anymore. 

 There is no need to “update” what is already considered a masterpiece. I suspect that if I proposed to pay Kayne West a couple of million bucks to write an extra verse that would permanently be inserted into middle of John Lennon’s “Imagine” these same trustees would be utterly outraged.

Fortunately the disfigurement will have to wait. 

A big chunk of the $250m was supposed to come from the sale of the Donnell branch of the library, an unassuming and friendly modernist that sits empty across the street from the Museum of Modern Art now that its buyer has bailed. The Donnell seems to have died for our sins.

Back in October, Sir Foster blathered on about how he was drawing inspiration from the local library in a suburb of Manchester that he visited as an insufferable teenager.

Here is the library. 

Seems rather pleasant and scaled for ordinary human beings.

Of course, what the library looked like was not the source of Foster’s inspiration. “If it hadn’t been for that library,

 I probably wouldn’t have gone to university,” says the most self important architect on the planet. “I discovered a whole world of literature and also a world of architecture, like the original books of Corbusier.”

I’m as adamantly opposed to book burning as George Orwell but I would make an exception for the “works” of Corbu. The world would be a better place if his contributions to the catalog of human knowledge were simply deleted.

What are the chances that Foster’s new masterpiece resembles anything like the modest library he claims as his inspiration? Slim to absolutely nil. About the same probability that his update will inspire anyone as much as the brand manager of Windex.

The Times reports that the trustees considered more traditional architects but in the end chose to commission "a distinctive piece of contemporary architecture.” According to the library’s chairwoman, Catie Marron, “one has to embrace one’s time.”

But why? Why can’t we embrace our times by embracing the beautiful works of art that preceded us instead of disfiguring them? Because our times are selfish and myopic, that’s why.

The presumption is that the Carrere & Hastings building belongs to another age and we need a structure that reflects contemporary society. Actually, the Library exists now, in our age. It functions spectacularly well, now, in our times.

Any Fosteresque alteration would indeed embrace our times in all its banality, mediocrity, transience, conceit and most of all its presumption that any architect alive today could match what Carrere & Hastings created a century ago.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, the Times’ current arbiter of taste approves of this latest attack on the Beaux Arts legacy, particularly the potential for “delicious tension that could be created between old and new.”

Funny how no such tension was desirable when Paul Rudolph’s high rise bunker at Yale was renovated and added to recently. “The Gwathmey design is intentionally restrained and recessive,” says Ada Louise Huxtable the fictional architecture critic at The Wall Street Journal.   But that’s another story.

Says Ouroussoff, who occupies the Muschamp Chair for Advanced Elitist Studies at NYT:

"Some believe that the only way to show respect for an old building is to dress
it up in a cute period style.”

Don’t worry. Our ubermensch narrator is not one of those people.

Even though at 98 years the Library is not an old building by historical standards. Also, the building is a masterpiece even though it is dressed up with anthemion, triglyphs, and colossal Corinthian columns – the style of a period that predates the Library by 2000 years. In fact, it is the timelessness of this style that makes faithful consistency with it the only way to show it respect.

“This approach trivializes history by blurring the distinction between old and
new.”

Actually, just the opposite. Attaching something “new,” meaning developed in the last six months, onto something “old,” which in this case means developed over the four millennia of western civilization, is an act of vandalism not trivialization.

“The result is watered-down history – or worse, kitch.”

And frankly, what could possibly be worse than that?

Yet, a Norman Foster prosthesis on The New York Public Library would equate a passing fashion with the grandeur of history and be nothing more than adding chrome tailfins on a timeless structure.

“In choosing Mr. Foster the library is signaling confidence in the ethos of our
own era while nodding to a distinct past.”

Adding Hannah Montana stickers to the works of Leonardo would also signal confidence in the ethos of our era. 

I, for one, have no confidence at all in the ethos of our era. Leaving to the future a decrepit Norman Foster doodad would only prove to our grandchildren not only how small-minded and incompetent we were but also how we brimmed with self-esteem.  I can think of more useful things to bequeath.

Ironically, the shameful ethos of our era ultimately will make Foster’s plans unrenderable. There’s no money left, and now that the trustees of the library have lost the $59 million they were counting on to jumpstart the project, the hole just got a lot bigger.  

Big enough, with any hope, to swallow the entire scheme. And maybe in the aftermath some time to allow and new ethos for a new era to emerge.

Mob Mentality

Does anyone doubt that after 8 years of stoking blind hatred of George W. Bush that that indiscriminate hatred is now seeking new outlets?  

The mob will soon tire of hating Rush, and the Mormons, and AIG executives and will eventually turn against anyone it deems un-American or privileged or just different.  

This, of course, is the flip side of "progressive" politics.  Because progress is a subjective concept, its ideology is situational and inherently unstable.  Depending on the situation, anything can be either heretical or the God's honest truth.   

This sort of thing never ends well.  Just ask Robespierre.  

Rush vs the MSM

The Pew Research Center released a survey that has been reported as showing Rush Limbaugh’s audience limited to a narrow overwhelmingly male wingnut cohort. As is often the case, the survey offers up some interesting findings that don’t quite conform to the conventional wisdom it was meant to support.

In this case it appears to show that Dittoheads are among the most informed of news consumers . . . more aware of current events than Jim Lehrer NewsHour watchers, Daily Show enthusiasts, CSPAN drones, BBC snobs and just about anyone else except for readers of The Atlantic.

Granted, the measure of “informed” is a bit dodgy. If you can name the Secretary of State, the majority party in Congress, and Her Majesty’s Prime Minister, you’re officially “highly informed.”

Rush Limbaugh listeners were able to name all three correctly 36% of the time, which sadly, is far better than most new consumers including highly self-esteemed CNBC viewers (17%).

What about CBS News, the Tiffany Network, home of the legendary Edward R. Murrow, (peace be upon him)? Their audience scores on par with AccessHollywood viewers (10%) and below the erudite cognoscenti at the Weather Channel (11%), and far below the abysmal national average of 18%.

What does this tell us?

Well, the fact that the headline from Pew reads, “Limbaugh Holds onto his Niche: Conservative Males,” and not, “In a Nation of Idiots, Conservatives Are King,” leads me to believe that Pew is so unnerved by this admittedly flawed survey finding that they would rather whistle past what they think is a graveyard full of the barely restrainable undead rather than report something counterintuitive and interesting.

Wouldn’t want to take Limbaugh seriously, would we?

(Rush Limbaugh and some uninformed, parochial, white male listeners)

Everyone Hates Carter

I never knew just how much the Clintons can't stand Jimmy Carter until I saw the full clip from the inauguration coverage (in the original Italian).  

Watch how Bubba and GHWB hug and kiss each other like true friends . . . then Carter shows up like a foul smelling crazy uncle to ruin the party around minute 1:25.  

The Bushes are civil but look at Bill and Hill.  They hate him!

Look at Hillary's expression.  You know she just can't wait for that first call to the State Dept. from the doddering old friend of Arafat, Kim il Jong, Brehznev and any other enemy of the state he can score an appointment with.  

Fortunately, Jimmah hates them right back and shuffles along on his way somewhere else.    

Yup, there goes America's favorite ex-president.

Gingerbread McMansion

I was going to tear down my modest old split level gingerbread house and build this monstrosity in its place but I couldn’t get the financing.

Williams-Sonoma is striking just the wrong chord this holiday season by offering an eatable metaphor for the financial crisis. I’m going to let mine sit vacant for a few months then I’ll burn it down.

The gingerbread McMansion retails for $250 which I would say is a bit steep for baked good. I think we can be pretty confident that this item will be a recognizable artifact of the antebellum period just as glittery winged rollerskates might symbolize the excesses of the disco era.

I hereby add the Williams-Sonoma Gingerbread McMansion to my “Oracles of the Apocalypse” collection.

The Art of Speech



(via hugh atkin)

If I Ran the Railroad

I’ve been riding a commuter train into New York City for more than a decade and have had plenty of time to consider the draconian improvements I would make if I had the dictatorial power necessary to change anything on MetroNorth.

First of all, the rolling stock is not just old, it’s huge. The carriages ride about six feet off the ground atop enormous steel wheels and the whole thing is pulled or pushed by a gigantic diesel engine designed for cross-country trips in the 1960s. My commuter train could easily withstand years of service on the trans-Siberian Railway. Stopping and starting that train every few minutes is a groaning, straining, gargantuan waste of energy.

Rather than big, slow, and infrequent trains, the model should be lighter, faster, and more frequent just as they are in parts of Europe.

Second of all, there should be service. My train if filled each morning with some of the highest paid symbol manipulators in the world. For an hour plus we’re a totally captive audience. Surely you could sell us something valuable. How difficult would it be to have a cart with newspapers, high-priced coffee, and freshly baked breakfasty items roll down the aisle in exchange for some disposable income? Inconceivably difficult apparently.

The notion of a captive demographic is totally lost on whomever or whatever runs the railway. The only advertising in the cars is an occasional cardboard poster for some TV show on the WB. Where the hell is Chris Whittle when we need him?

Imagine flat screen TVs in each seat back with free programming interspersed with highly targeted ads. Get Bloomberg to invest in it and a passive seat would become a profit center.

And this leads to the third improvement, intelligence. Instead of buying a paper ticket from a machine or a conductor carrying fists of cash and some antique hole puncher, how about a smart card that you swipe at your seat. Your monthly fare recalculates depending on how many trips you take. Perhaps the fare changes depending in the seat you take; less for the middle, and nothing if you stand.

You could even profile ridership patterns electronically rather than by having teams of slack jawed unionized drones counting passengers by hand as they crowd off the platform.

The smart card could be used for all services aboard the train including coffee in the morning, a stiff drink in the evening, a PPV movie on the way home, parking at the station. And all these transactions could be captured, analyzed, and used to improve service. Make money. Improve service. Totally foreign concepts at the moment.

The fourth, pride and expertise, costs nothing. On two occasions on a recent Amtrak trip to Philadelphia, passengers asked elementary questions which stumped the conductors. The first question was about arrival time. The conductor did not know when the train was scheduled to arrive. I knew and I don’t even work on the train for a living. The other question was about destination. The conductor drove the passenger to aneurysmic panic by claiming that the train did not stop in Stamford. Only after the intervention of other passengers did the conductor correct himself. Jeez, this is your job, man. Get the basics right at least. A little pride in a job well done might make your day more satisfying.

I suspect a Swiss train conductor earning a comparable salary would know a great deal more about railways than his American counterparts – but that’s an entirely another story.

My solution short of armed direct action? Maintain public control of the track and infrastructure and allow any private company to run rolling stock on them for a profit. Frankly, if you can run a profitable railway in the Northeastern Corridor, you just aren’t trying.

Until then, here is some lovely transit pornography from Newlands & Company:

The Door to Hell

While drilling for natural gas in Uzbekistan, geologists discovered an enormous cavern. The cavern was filled with poisonous gas and someone had the great idea to throw a match in there to burn off some of the fumes.

That was in 1973. It’s still burning.


(Via English Russia, your one source for all things miasmal)

Things to Like About Europe

Aside from an unreasonable fear of wind, Europeans are generally indifferent to the litigious possibilities of minor accidents and are not afraid of singing while walking on dangerous rain-slick mansard roofs high above the city.

See here as Francoise Hardy violates what would be dozens of American construction, public safety, and child labor codes as she nonchalantly lip syncs her 1963 pop hit, "Une Fille Comme Tant d'Autres" which she clearly is not.



I love the dreary weather. The post-war neon. The utter disregard for personal injury. I can almost smell the diesel fumes and potatoes boiling.

That's the Europe I love.

Hunting Japanese For Research Purposes Only

A couple of Antediluvian television comedians recently tried to provoke a diplomatic incident with the Japanese ambassador to Australia regarding some obscure fishing dispute.

Fortunately, these days the Japanese are more interested in slaughtering whales than disrespectful foreign barbarians such as the mocking Aussies shown here.

A bit over the line, no?



(via JapanProbe)

David Cameron Shows Why He Is the Master of small tv

Here is yet another update from WebCameron. Yes it's a formula but it's remarkably hard to do convincingly unless you recognize who your audience is and what they want to hear.



Cameron is masterful at this. He gives you the context, a sense of place, a behind the scenes look, and he reiterates his main points all in about four minutes. There's a lot of information here. Not just words. In fact, the words are the least of it.

And just to show you how execution makes all the difference, Ken Livingstone takes a starkly mediocre pass at the same simple communication approach. Same camera, same desktop editing package. One sucks. One doesn't.




Anything similar hapening back in God's Country? No, but for a variety of reasons. Obama can't do this. He's overexposed as it is. Hillary wouldn't dare. Too many variables. McCain though . . . McCain could pull it off. Imagine McCain vblogging from the Middle East this week. Bypassing the MSM and talking directly into the camera.

Trouble is, he probably won't do it. This as close as he's gotten so far, and he's not even the star of it:

It's Not Easy Being Galloway

George Galloway who was a paid apologist for the Saddam Hussein thugocracy in Iraq is now a paid apologist for the medieval misogynist theocracy in Iran.

Trouble is, defending the mullahs requires a kind of ideological gymnastics that even a progressive anti-imperialist like Galloway is incapable of pulling off convincingly.

Watch now as Galloway appears to be calling for the deportation of a gay Iranian living in Britain even though the deportee's boyfriend back home, Mehdi Kazemi, was recently hung -- but not for being gay, mind you. No, that would be anti-Iranian propaganda.

And yet, he's also not for deporting him because he'd be hung anyway and Galloway is against capital punishment.



So let me get this straight. The enemy of my enemy is my friend even if that makes me friends with the enemy of my friends?

Stroppy Bird has a rather clear-eyed view of all this nonsense and has been a voice in the wilderness about Mehdi Kazemi.

Hillary in the House

This may be the most powerful political video I've ever seen. Unfortunately for Clinton, it's provocative and convincing in exactly the opposite way as it was intended.



"We need a woman to clean it up." Are you sure that's want you want to say?

Hulu Is Here




I like the ability to find obscure clips. The commercials, not so much.

Things You Might Not Think Are Safe

Client 9: “I’d like you to handcuff me to the bed and tie a plastic bag over my head. Then just as I’m about to climax I want you to sell naked puts against the spot price of oil.”

Kristen: “Listen, dude, you really want the sex?”

Where’s the Beef?

The most notable thing about Hillary Clinton’s appearance last night? Bill Clinton’s disappearance.

Bubba was no where to be found at Hillary’s moment of victory. And that got me thinking. Who else is conspicuously absent from HillaryWorld 2008?

Haven’t seen a lot of Al Gore, that’s for sure. And whatever happened to James Carville? Not here.

But certainly the biggest absences have to be those loveable knuckleheads Roger Clinton . . .

. . . and Huge Rodham.

The first brothers are still alive I’m sure but they’re being kept in a safe undisclosed location until November.

My guess? They’re sedated and straightjacketed deep within the newly opened Arctic Seed Vault in remotest Norway.

BTW, here's a little stroll down the old memory hole:

Not Over Yet

Hillary is not going to give up. Anything less than an Obama landslide in Texas and Ohio will once again be presented as proof of a Clinton miracle. No matter what happens on Tuesday, Hillary will spin it as a win.

Why? Because the Clintons didn’t come this far to cash in their chips. The Clinton legacy is riding in this.

Plus, they know that Obamamania is made of the same ephemera as Deanmania and Hartmania. It’s taking longer to deflate this time around but it’s going to collapse eventually and Hillary want to be there when it does.

A partisan groundhog will observe this environment and prepare for six more weeks of bitter combat between Obama and Clinton including fights over arcane election rules, Michigan and Florida delegates, and opaque backroom dealing.

If Clinton emerges victorious after all that, a certain number of Democrats – including a heck of a lot of African-Americans – will be too bruised and disappointed to vote for the Return of the Clintons. And being the weaker candidate to begin with, Hillary will lose in November to McCain.

Longer term, you might even pinpoint the beginning of the long awaited black disillusionment with the Democrats to around 11pm ET on Tuesday, March 4, when Hillary delivers the Comeback Cackle. After all the euphoria, it’s going to be very hard to explain to Obama supporters that Hillary somehow won this fair and square.

I don’t think that’s the best outcome for the country and I would hope that Hillary was driven by something other than self-regard and naked ambition, but these are politicians we’re talking about. Hard to underestimate their motives.

Anyway, you heard it here first. And if in fact she does concede defeat, you never read this.

It's the Authenticity, Stupid

The Obama story has been fascinating to watch unfold.

Remember, Hillary Clinton was supposed to be the unstoppable force, the inevitable candidate of the Democrats. Obama was the alternative, anyone-but-Hillary candidate. He was the candidate you supported if you didn’t like Hillary and although the party leaders were for her, lots of ordinary people don’t like Hillary. Bill they like but Hillary is not Bill. So Obama started with some powerful support just because he wasn’t her.

Obama is best known for having given a great speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 about there being one America – not a collection of factions and ethnicities. (It’s ironic that Bill Clinton was given the same sort of opportunity at the 1988 convention and was booed off the stage for talking too long – yet won the presidency four years later.)



Obama has delivered essentially the same speech about one America ever since and people love it because although he is vague, Obama seems to be promising a post-racial, post-partisan era. I can’t speak for all Americans but for me this is an extremely attractive promise after so many years of blind hatred of Bush, Clinton, Reagan, etc. And while race is endlessly talked about in the U.S. it’s never a productive debate. The divisions by race and by political party are now so deep that it’s easy to imagine two or more Americas separate and bitterly antagonistic. So when a black Democrat says we should be “one America,” that’s an exciting and refreshing change.

As for some background, everyone here remembers Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech when he said “I have a dream”, but few people could tell you what exactly his dream was even though he defined it clearly in the very next lines. “I have a dream that my daughters will live in a country where they are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of the character.” I think people want race and color to be inconsequential. Yet in the past 30 years, race has become the most important thing and that’s a denial of the civil rights movement’s goal of a “color-blind” society. Ironically, the people who have the most to gain from this emphasis on skin color are black politicians, such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and hundreds more around the country.

Here’s Charles Barron of New York one of the most divisive politicians in the country:



These leaders, who are almost exclusively Democrat, have appealed to ethnic loyalty to keep themselves secure in their small districts. Few have attempted to appeal to a broader group of voters which is why there are very few black senators (senators are elected by an entire state of millions not just a district of 30,000 people). At the same time the Democrats need the vote of every African-American just to be competitive. In 2000, Al Gore got 95% of black votes and he still lost. To get 95% of any large and dissimilar group of voters spread across a continent you basically need to cultivate resentment and fear of the other party. So there has been a poisonous cycle of division, distrust, and race fixation at work that is very different than Dr. King’s dream.

Obama seems to be saying that by voting for him you will be voting for an end to that cycle.

On the cynical side, Obama needs to say this in order to not be seen as “the black candidate” which would limit his appeal to African-American voters who are only about 10% of the total. Even more troubling, his post-racial message is essentially an appeal to vote for him because of his skin color rather than his character.

But what makes this more palatable is that he radiates an enormous sense of character.

Much is made of his big speeches in huge arenas but his real strength is in small and unscripted moments. He answers questions and responds to situations with grace and intelligence. He is never flustered. He never loses his cool. And even when he disagrees with you, he pays respect to your views. This is the polar opposite of Hillary who is strident, combative, and heavily scripted by her consultants. My favorite line of hers is “We need sound solutions not sound bites,” which is itself a sound bite.

If Obama wins the nomination, he’ll face John McCain who is similarly cool and appealing in a non-partisan way. Clearly voters want candidates who are authentic and unscripted. It will make for a very refreshing campaign.



Obama’s vulnerability is that up until now he has made himself a blank wall on which you can project anything you like. If he wins the next state primaries on Tuesday, he will have defeated Hillary and will be nominated at the party convention in July. Between now and then it will be very difficult to maintain the same level of enthusiasm that he enjoys now. Of course, Hillary could refuse to quit and the then the convention would be an ugly fight where race will surely become an issue.

I’ve read about the enthusiasm for Obama in Germany and elsewhere and I think it is easy to say that this is a superficial understanding of the man. But as much as we like to think that national elections are about issues and policies, voters have no way of knowing what actual policies any new administration will successfully pursue. Therefore, what these elections come down to are the “superficial” qualities.

I actually don’t think style and eloquence are entirely superficial. The way a candidate answers unanticipated questions and expresses ideas is important. People communicate in many non-verbal ways and Obama is like Kennedy in the graceful way he communicates non-verbally. George W. Bush, (who I still support even though I may be the only one left), has never been able to articulate his ideas verbally or non-verbally and this has been his undoing.

My prediction, Obama wins the nomination but loses against McCain because the he’s just too inexperienced. Sure, Hillary tried to tag him with this charge but Hillary's experience is roughly the same as Lady Bird Johnson's. McCain, by contrast, has spent twice as much time in a Vietcong prison camp as Obama has spent in the Senate.

Obama will have to articulate and defend positions and policies that differ markedly from McCain's. He'll probably pivot to the right, but that will alarm the lefties who have bet the farm on Obama and will be the first to pop the mania bubble once they realize they're about to be betrayed yet again.

BTW, I'm always wrong.

Baby It's Still Cold Outside

In case you're worried about melting ice caps, torrid tenperatures and dire global warming forecasts.

Relax.

The Canadian Ice Service (where i get all my Canadian ice data) says that the feared ice melt has reversed. In fact, the ice is 10cm thicker this year than last.

For those who prefer more tangible evidence, here's what Newfoundland looked like last week from an inbound European jetliner:



Photo via Virtual Memoirist.