Uncle Walter

Caught part of a PBS special on Walter Cronkite tonight. One of those programs that leaves you with chills--it's amazing America turned to one man for every big moment for 20 years, until he retired from the anchor chair at the age of 65 in 1981.

And not just America; the part I saw told the story of how Cronkite helped facilitate Anwar Sadat's historic trip to Jerusalem and meeting with Menachem Begin, an event that even nearly 30 years later still seems amazing.

It all, of course, makes you wonder about our journalists (and political leaders) today. I think it's safe to say there will never be another Cronkite--unless we shrink back to three channels, Americans will never all trust the same person for so much of their news for so long.

But in terms of the qualities that made Cronkite a great journalist--his exacting professionalism, his calmness, ability to put things in context on the fly and say the right things at the right time--he's merely first among equals.

Among people I watched I'd put Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel at his level. Although because I remember both working their way up neither sticks in my mind as perfectly sprung-like-Athena like Cronkite does. I'd put Dan Rather a notch below that group when it comes to anchoring ability, but above all but Ted as a reporter--I'm not sure any reporter was ever more tenacious than Dan (even Mike Wallace was only that way once a week). And Tom Brokaw doesn't really register in my mind, he was wonderfully affable but on his own path.

I would also add, though, that I think it's a lot harder being a journalist today then it was in Cronkite's day. There's just more of what we define as news--after all, the world's population has gone from 3 billion in 1960 to 6.5 billion. There's more competition, more people/bloggers playing 'gotcha', higher expectations for journalism....

But the one thing Walter had over all the others whatever their time period was people really liked him, in spite of his toughness. I'm actually having trouble thinking of a single person today who matches his mix of likeability with utmost competence.

In this day and age, we seem to get either one or the other; part of it is because everyone gets to weigh in nowadays on public figures--I mean short of anecdotal evidence we have no idea how blacks in 1963 felt about Cronkite. Part of it is we know a lot more about our public figures today than we did back then.

But I do think a big part of Walter's appeal was the way he looked. Even when he started anchoring he came across as grandfatherly. Just think of the way he took off his heavy black glasses, glanced at the clock, and then reported President Kennedy was dead; it's not a gesture anyone working today would have as part of their personhood.

So he just seemed like a revered yet sharp elder from the get-go; and either out of canniness or personality (and everyone underestimates how canny and aware he was), everything he did fed that image. And who doesn't like grandfathers, especially ones with a twinkle in their eye?

I met Cronkite once a few years ago, at a dinner where I had a chance to talk to him for a few minutes. Even though he didn't seem to be enjoying himself and was tired--I've never seen anyone swarmed like he was--and had trouble hearing--I wound up crouching next to him and speaking directly into his ear--and our conversation was totally mundane, it's not something I'll ever forget. Frankly, I was happy just being in the same room as him.

His wife Betsy, still alive at the time and pretty spry, seemed to function as his assistant and soon shuffled him out of there; leaving me thinking ah, how great would it be to download his brain!

Not to be morbid, but of people currently living he's got to be the one who'll get the biggest New York Times headline and lengthiest obituary when he dies. The only contenders I can think of are Jimmy Carter, Billy Graham, Fidel Castro, Muhammad Ali, and Elizabeth Taylor, and of those I'd say only Castro and Ali match his historical significance.

David Halberstam closed the broadcast appropriately tonight:

Walter's career curve and the curve of network television absolutely dovetailed. And, he held that position for so long under such vastly changing circumstances ... that it seemed to most people that as they got their first television set, Walter and CBS NEWS had joined their family.

Irving Haberman photo of Cronkite in 1978 via Temple University.

Whose queen's English?

One of the things about the New York Times that drives me crazy is how they, time and time again, use 'Americans' when they mean 'white Americans'. Or, even 'racist Americans.'

To wit, in an article about "sounding foreign" on television by Mireya Navarro (who really should know better), entitled
Breaking the Sound Barrier, this line:

And television executives, talent agents and linguists say that Americans are growing more accepting of diversity, even with debates over immigration raging.

Huh? So Hispanics, African and Asian Americans are now 'accepting' themselves? Wow, shouldn't that be the headline--Self-Hatred Down Among Minorities!

Sheesh... not to mention the assumption in that sentence, that it matters whether white Americans 'accept' diversity or not. Is that the gold standard now for this nation of immigrants, that whites accept/allow/tolerate their fellow Americans?

Frankly, who cares--if some white Americans don't accept diversity, increasingly, it's gonna be their problem. They'll have to gate themselves up in their little communities and hope for a quick death to escape it--and even then, they better hope they don't need a doctor on their deathbed, it just might be one of them 'foreigners.'

It's ironic that an article about speech is so tone-deaf with its own word choice. The 'American means white' trope shows up again near the end:

But speakers of accented English must still contend with the often intolerant American ear. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says the increase in the immigrant population has led to a rise in job-related accent discrimination charges filed with the agency, from 48 in 1996 to 161 last year. (Regional American accents are not federally protected, only those related to national origin.) In a study five years ago, researchers at the University of North Texas found that employers gave those with neutral speech high-profile jobs, while steering those with regional accents to jobs requiring little technical expertise or customer contact.

“An accent can signal many things — ethnic roots, regional roots,” said Roderick Hart, the dean of the College of Communications at the University of Texas at Austin. “But it can also call up a series of stereotypes. For certain parts of the country, that fast-talking Easterner is too ready to spend your money and that laconic Southerner is too willing to go back to yesteryear.”

Accent-reduction teachers say their foreign-born clients constantly complain of how they are made to feel like an “other.”

“A lot of them are tired of being asked where they’re from,” said Lisa Mojsin, the director of Accurate English, an accent-reduction school in West Los Angeles.

One of Ms. Mojsin’s students, Colette Fournier, weary of having to repeat herself, is working to reduce her French accent. “I don’t want to feel like I speak like a 6-year-old,” she said.

Another client, Guillermo Harpoutlian, who is from Argentina, deals with clients from all over the world as director of planning for a financial institution. He worries that his thick accent could torpedo his ambitions to become a chief executive.

“In a senior position you can’t have an accent,” he said. “You open your mouth and they say, ‘Oh, you have a beautiful accent.’ What they’re saying is: ‘You don’t know how to speak English.’ ”

There's a lot in there--where are you from, other, patronizing 'foreigners'--but the Times just zips past it all. Given how naval-gazing the Times usually is about things that its UWS/UES upper management deem as important(how many articles can one paper print about bagels?!), my guess is they don't see any of these issues as part of the news that's fit to print.

There are all sorts of other interesting unintended tidbits in the article:

But accents still do matter in this country. Sounding foreign can hinder careers and has led to accent-discrimination lawsuits. People with accents say they are often ridiculed or not taken seriously outside of their social circle. And in going for the largest audience possible, national broadcast networks have historically aimed for mainstream appeal, deeming even a Southern drawl taboo.

'Sounding foreign' with its perjorative trailings should be in quotation marks--otherwise, the New York Times is throwing its weight behind racists who label someone with a Spanish accent foreign, someone with a British accent charming.

Then, there's this wonderful section:

But broadcasters seem to have realized that opening up the tent to accents could attract new audiences at a time when networks are bleeding viewers.

“Each passing year there’s been more acceptance on the part of station owners to take risks and reflect the culture of a community more,” said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents radio and television networks.

Ah, Dennis (who I've run across a few times)--yes, we should give broadcasters an award, for being so 'risky' (or is that edgy?) as to put on-air people who look and sound like 21st-century America--and out of desperation no less, in a last-ditch bid to keep their 20-30% profit margins (wow, they really are ready to do anything). Bravo! And who says broadcasters are dinosaurs?!

Heck, the article goes on to point out exactly how risky it is for broadcasters to reflect their communities:

With the Census Bureau putting the foreign-born population at its highest level in recent history — 34 million people, or 12 percent of the population — demographic changes affecting the voice of television go beyond the Latino population.

Yes, it really is quite laudable that instead of television having 0% foreign people, we now will have 1 or 2%.

The article even contains this happy note:

It was only five years ago that Claudia Trejos, a Colombian sportscaster, anchored the weekend sports report at the WB Network affiliate in Los Angeles, and the complaints poured in. Viewers’ letters and voice mail messages suggested that she “go back to Mexico.” And her peers made fun of her accent on the radio and some local sports columnists wrote that she should be closed-captioned.

But Ms. Trejos, now 37 and a freelance reporter for ESPN from Miami in both English and Spanish, says she recently noticed an attitudinal turnaround. When she covered the boxing match between Fernando Vargas and Shane Mosley in Las Vegas on July 15, she ran into former colleagues who joked, “Hey, you finally learned to speak English!”

Ms. Trejos laughed. “It’s just funny, because I continue being me and I speak the same English,” she said. “The mind-set has changed. There’s an awareness that we’re not only menial workers and bus boys. We have the new owner of the Anaheim Angels,” she said, speaking of Arturo Moreno, a fourth-generation Mexican-American. “People know about reggaetón.”

Ah, a barrel of laughs--it's amazing, isn't it, that we've gone from hate mail for someone because of her national origin, to the America of today, a land where President Bush can stand in front of the NAACP and say with a straight face,

We'll work together, and as we do so, you must understand I understand that racism still lingers in America. (Applause.)

Ah, yes, racism still lingers--just like the insurgency is in its death throes in Iraq, I guess. Here and there, but you know, no biggie.

Heck, Bush even added in his speech:

I don't know if you remember, three weeks ago, I went to Memphis, Tennessee. (Applause and laughter.) A lot of people focused on the fact that my friend, the Prime Minister of Japan, was an Elvis fan, because we went to Graceland. But we also went to another stop, a stop Reverend Jesse Jackson knows all too well, a painful moment in his life and in the life of our nation, reflected in the Lorraine Motel.

The Prime Minister and I went there, which is now the National Civil Rights Museum. By the way, if you haven't been there, you ought to go. (Applause.) Among the people greeting me there was Dr. Benjamin Hooks.

Bush tries to paint it as if he's humbly painting out a quiet accomplishment that people (meaning the media) didn't focus on because they wanted to minimize his deep committment to civil rights.

But the Times noted at the time

The president made an unannounced stop at the National Civil Rights Museum, next door to the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.

The visit was so last-minute that Mr. Hooks was at a dental appointment Friday morning when he received a phone call from the White House, asking him to serve as guide."

This is actually a classic move by a white male when dealing with minorities--hey, look at where I went, for all the right reasons too I'm telling you (don't look behind the curtain!); by the way, you guys could stand to learn from me, you should go there too!

Of course, the greatest irony in all this was artfully laid out by Tony Horowitz in one of the best Op-Ed pieces I've read in the Times in recent years, entitled Immigration — and the Curse of the Black Legend.

I'm not sure anyone should be spouting off on the immigration debate until they've at least read the piece. Here's how it starts:

Coursing through the immigration debate is the unexamined faith that American history rests on English bedrock, or Plymouth Rock to be specific. Jamestown also gets a nod, particularly in the run-up to its 400th birthday, but John Smith was English, too (he even coined the name New England).

So amid the din over border control, the Senate affirms the self-evident truth that English is our national language; "It is part of our blood," Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, says. Border vigilantes call themselves Minutemen, summoning colonial Massachusetts as they apprehend Hispanics in the desert Southwest. Even undocumented immigrants invoke our Anglo founders, waving placards that read, "The Pilgrims didn't have papers."

These newcomers are well indoctrinated; four of the sample questions on our naturalization test ask about Pilgrims. Nothing in the sample exam suggests that prospective citizens need know anything that occurred on this continent before the Mayflower landed in 1620. Few Americans do, after all.

This national amnesia isn't new, but it's glaring and supremely paradoxical at a moment when politicians warn of the threat posed to our culture and identity by an invasion of immigrants from across the Mexican border. If Americans hit the books, they'd find what Al Gore would call an inconvenient truth. The early history of what is now the United States was Spanish, not English, and our denial of this heritage is rooted in age-old stereotypes that still entangle today's immigration debate.

Forget for a moment the millions of Indians who occupied this continent for 13,000 or more years before anyone else arrived, and start the clock with Europeans' presence on present-day United States soil. The first confirmed landing wasn't by Vikings, who reached Canada in about 1000, or by Columbus, who reached the Bahamas in 1492. It was by a Spaniard, Juan Ponce de León, who landed in 1513 at a lush shore he christened La Florida.

Most Americans associate the early Spanish in this hemisphere with Cortés in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. But Spaniards pioneered the present-day United States, too. Within three decades of Ponce de León's landing, the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachians, the Mississippi, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. Spanish ships sailed along the East Coast, penetrating to present-day Bangor, Me., and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon.

From 1528 to 1536, four castaways from a Spanish expedition, including a "black" Moor, journeyed all the way from Florida to the Gulf of California — 267 years before Lewis and Clark embarked on their much more renowned and far less arduous trek. In 1540, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Mexican Indians across today's Arizona-Mexico border — right by the Minutemen's inaugural post — and traveled as far as central Kansas, close to the exact geographic center of what is now the continental United States. In all, Spaniards probed half of today's lower 48 states before the first English tried to colonize, at Roanoke Island, N.C.

The Spanish didn't just explore, they settled, creating the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States at St. Augustine, Fla., in 1565. Santa Fe, N.M., also predates Plymouth: later came Spanish settlements in San Antonio, Tucson, San Diego and San Francisco. The Spanish even established a Jesuit mission in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay 37 years before the founding of Jamestown in 1607.

Two iconic American stories have Spanish antecedents, too. Almost 80 years before John Smith's alleged rescue by Pocahontas, a man by the name of Juan Ortiz told of his remarkably similar rescue from execution by an Indian girl. Spaniards also held a thanksgiving, 56 years before the Pilgrims, when they feasted near St. Augustine with Florida Indians, probably on stewed pork and garbanzo beans.

The early history of Spanish North America is well documented, as is the extensive exploration by the 16th-century French and Portuguese. So why do Americans cling to a creation myth centered on one band of late-arriving English — Pilgrims who weren't even the first English to settle New England or the first Europeans to reach Plymouth Harbor? (There was a short-lived colony in Maine and the French reached Plymouth earlier.)

The easy answer is that winners write the history and the Spanish, like the French, were ultimately losers in the contest for this continent. Also, many leading American writers and historians of the early 19th century were New Englanders who elevated the Pilgrims to mythic status (the North's victory in the Civil War provided an added excuse to diminish the Virginia story). Well into the 20th century, standard histories and school texts barely mentioned the early Spanish in North America.

And here's how the piece ends:

On talk radio and the Internet, foes of immigration echo the black legend more explicitly, typecasting Hispanics as indolent, a burden on the American taxpayer, greedy for benefits and jobs, prone to criminality and alien to our values — much like those degenerate Spaniards of the old Southwest and those gold-mad conquistadors who sought easy riches rather than honest toil. At the fringes, the vilification is baldly racist. In fact, cruelty to Indians seems to be the only transgression absent from the familiar package of Latin sins.

Also missing, of course, is a full awareness of the history of the 500-year Spanish presence in the Americas and its seesawing fortunes in the face of Anglo encroachment. "The Hispanic world did not come to the United States," Carlos Fuentes observes. "The United States came to the Hispanic world. It is perhaps an act of poetic justice that now the Hispanic world should return."

America has always been a diverse and fast-changing land, home to overlapping cultures and languages. It's an homage to our history, not a betrayal of it, to welcome the latest arrivals, just as the Indians did those tardy and uninvited Pilgrims who arrived in Plymouth not so long ago.

It's odd--we're Americans; why would some people rather be English?

Heck, then we'd have to eat all that curry....

Uncredited AP photo of Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza, Miss Puerto Rico 2006, reacting after winning the Miss Universe pageant in numerous places online. Runner-up Miss Japan totally should've won, by the way... sadly, there were no Asian American judges.

Starchy and poignant

One of my favorite tv shows was Sports Night, which was set behind the scenes at an ESPN-like cable channel in NYC. It was my first exposure to Aaron Sorkin and his brand of snappy, almost-sappy-yet-usually-just-right-writing, that at its best on Sports Night (and later the West Wing) melds the feel of reality shows with thoughtful story arcs.

Sorkin was still evolving his style, and I think West Wing was a better stage for his ability to leaven the big moments every tv show or movie depends on with the texture of interesting patter about the mundane.

But you might be surprised at how naturally and well major social issues arise and are played out within Sports Night... unless of course you're a sports fan, in which case you already know all about the sports page being a microcasm of the rest of the paper.

This particular episode--via the magic of YouTube (which already brings up 31,700 hits on Google)--has, among many things, one of my favorite lines of any tv or movie, ever. It comes near the end of the third clip.

As long as I'm recommending tv shows, if you've ever wondered what life at a big-city newspaper can be like, check out Bravo's new reality show, Tabloid Wars, which was shot last summer as they followed some New York Daily News reporters and editors around.

The News has a very particular personality, but it's a revealing look at how some top-notch journalists go about their jobs... and ought to be required viewing for conspiracy theorists and anyone else who speaks of the 'news media' as a collective.



Parts 2 and 3 of the episode, also broken up into 7-minute clips, are at this user's page

Baby Jordan

Man who resembles Jordan sues MJ, Nike for $832M

KGW: A Northeast Portland man is suing basketball superstar Michael Jordan and Nike founder Phil Knight for a combined $832 million, claiming he's tired of being mistaken for Mike.

Allen Heckard filed the suit himself, June 29th in Washington County Circuit Court. Heckard said he’s been mistaken as Michael Jordan nearly every day over the past 15 years.

“I'm constantly being accused of looking like Michael and it makes it very uncomfortable for me,” Heckard said.

Heckard is suing Jordan for defamation and permanent injury and emotional pain and suffering. He’s also suing Knight for defamation and permanent injury for promoting Jordan and making him one of the most recognized men in the world. ...

Heckard stands just over 6 feet tall. He is not 6 foot 6 inches like the real Michael Jordan.

But Heckard said many people seem to miss that. He does share a bit of resemblance to the real Michael Jordan. Heckard has a shaved head, an earring in his left ear, and is in good shape from working out, and yes, playing basketball.

“Even when I go to the gym I'm being accused of playing ball like him (Jordan)," said Heckard.

Most people would consider that a high compliment.

"Yes...don’t get me wrong it’s definitely a positive thing, because Michael, like I say is one of the best ball players that I've known to play the game. But then again, that's Michael and I'm me. So I want to be recognized as me just like Michael's being recognized as Michael."

Well, I guess Heckard won't be attending this year's Celebrity Impersonators convention.

Image of Jordan and Heckard from KGW.com

Roof meadow

A Porch and Flowering Meadow, 6 Floors Up

Anne Raver in the Times: David Puchkoff, Eileen Stukane and their daughter, Masha, were sitting on their porch, looking out over a carpet of sedums topped with tiny yellow, white and purple flowers and watching storm clouds build over the Empire State Building. ...

Mr. Puchkoff, who lives with his family on the top floor of a six-story building on Greenwich Street in the West Village, went to an architect friend, Lawrence Tobe, and told him he wanted a porch. “David wanted a folly, something to take him away from New York,” Mr. Tobe said. “I’ve done some roof terraces, but nothing that cool.” ...

This 1,200-square-foot meadow is planted with thousands of sedums. Native mostly to Europe and Asia, these fleshy plants thrive in heat and drought. (When it rains, they absorb water like a sponge).

More proof that you can find just about anything in New York, usually with a twist.

Photo of Eileen Stukane, David Puchkoff and their daughter, Masha by John Lei for the Times.

What we are

From an ex-coworker of mine now working at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a look at this odd species, bloggerus.

-54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.

-54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.

-Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%.

-76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.

-64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others.

-When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is "my life and experiences."

-Other topics ran distantly behind: 11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% focus on entertainment; 6% focus on sports; 5% focus on general news and current events; 5% focus on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith; and additional smaller groups who focus on a specific hobby, a health problem or illness, or other topics.

Although not highlighted by Pew in their executive summary, I found this interesting:

Another distinguishing characteristic is that bloggers are less likely to be white than the general internet population. Sixty percent of bloggers are white, 11% are African American, 19% are English-speaking Hispanic and 10% identify as some other race. By contrast, 74% of internet users are white, 9% are African American, 11% are English-speaking Hispanic and 6% identify as some other race.

Hmmm, some other race... well, we got Asian American, and Native American--what else is there?

Some more tidbits:

-55% of bloggers blog under a pseudonym

-59% of bloggers spend just one or two hours per week tending their blog. One in ten bloggers spend ten or more hours per week on their blog.

-52% of bloggers say they blog mostly for themselves, not for an audience. About one-third of bloggers (32%) say they blog mostly for their audience.

-The majority of bloggers cite an interest in sharing stories and expressing creativity. Just half say they are trying to influence the way other people think.

-Community-focused blogging sites LiveJournal and MySpace top the list of blogging sites used in our sample, together garnering close to a quarter (22%) of all bloggers.

I think lumping MySpace in the same category as blogs like Daily Kos is a little silly; most of what you see on MySpace is not blogging, it's rambling.

Then there are these results, which made me laugh:

-34% of bloggers consider their blog a form of journalism, and 65% of bloggers do not.

-57% of bloggers include links to original sources either “sometimes” or “often.”

-56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post either “sometimes” or “often.”

Uh... blogging is not journalism. You have no editor, no hard deadline, and usually no fact-checking. And often it's just out-and-out plagiarism.

People who have never worked as journalists have no idea how fundamental having that second person, usually your editor, is.

They assign the story and determine the original angle, watch over your shoulder during the reporting process, and once the story's filed a lot of times they go in and perform major surgery, reorganizing and often rewriting so the end product isn't just the reporter's view (which is always a little myopic and tends to be overly-sentimental), but is placed in broader context, usually tied into issues of systemic failure or societal truths.

Further, journalism does not exist without an audience. Who your audience is drives everything, from the stories you pursue to how you present them. Journalists spend quite a lot of time thinking about their responsibility to their audience; it makes you do things you otherwise would be too lazy or too timid to do.

Without that other person and an audience, blogging can't be journalism--it's just gossip at worst, self-expression at best. Which is not to say blogs don't produce valuable original content. Given that increasingly the very same sources journalists turn to often have their own blog, it's obvious that they do.

But believe it or not, journalism is not just facts about a topic, or even truth. Journalism is people working together to tell a story, in context. And the process is deliberately set up so that the reporter is just part of a team--heck, print reporters don't write the headlines, broadcast reporters don't write or deliver the anchor lead-in.

Journalists are inherently social creatures, in the sense that it's one profession that can't be practiced on a deserted island. No editor, no sources, no audience.

Not to mention no coworkers to go drinking with.

Undated photo of The Washington Post's publisher Katharine Graham, reporter Carl Bernstein, reporter Bob Woodward, managing editor Howard Simons and executive editor Ben Bradlee discussing the Post's Watergate coverage by Mark Godfrey/The Image Works.

Cease and dissent

Interesting cover from the British newspaper The Independent.

Seen via NewsDesigner.com

Touched by a pol

This is one of those times when the picture essentially is the story. The Politics of Good Touch, Bad Touch

Warren St. John in the Times: It was the neck rub heard round the world.

At the Group of 8 summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, this week, President Bush walked up behind the seated German chancellor, Angela Merkel, placed his hands upon her shoulders and gave what appeared to be a double squeeze. Ms. Merkel threw her arms into the air and seemed to grimace, and the news media and public were left to decipher the meaning of the incident. ...

In Moscow this month, President Vladimir V. Putin greeted a 5-year-old boy at the Kremlin, lifted his shirt and kissed his belly. Mr. Putin later explained the gesture as a spontaneous act of affection.

“He seemed very independent and serious,” Mr. Putin said at a news conference. “I wanted to cuddle him like a kitten.”

In Seattle in April, when a Boeing supervisor gave a cap to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, not a man often accused of being excessively touchy-feely, Mr. Hu responded by wrapping his arms around the man and giving him a full-body embrace. “My first presidential hug,” declared the stunned supervisor, a man named Paul Dernier.

ZDP photos of Bush and Merkel and RTR-Russian Television Channel/Associated Press photo of Putin via the Times.

All-American

You look at these Ansel Adams photos and you wonder what the hell were we thinking.

Born Free and Equal: Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar

In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's best-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. In "Suffering under a Great Injustice": Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar, the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress presents for the first time side-by-side digital scans of both Adams's 242 original negatives and his 209 photographic prints (with the print on the left and the negative on the right), allowing viewers to see his darkroom technique and in particular how he cropped his prints.

Adams's Manzanar work is a departure from his signature style of landscape photography. Although a majority of the photographs are portraits, the images also include views of daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities. When he offered the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams wrote, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment…All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use."

Ansel Adams photos via the Library of Congress.

YouTube years

After watching some episodes of the Wonder Years, started looking up some classic songs that have the guitar on YouTube. It's not even a definitive 'best of' YouTube list, just some great performers that caught my eye.

Wonder Years, 'The Accident'
This is the clip that inspired this post; I really liked that show, it could be a bit schlocky but was usually oh-so-accurately-bittersweet, with good writing.


Wonder Years Desi (no embed)
There's something very appealing about this guy--the glasses, the outfit, the voice, the guitar, the song. And the little flourish at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxMieQvZF-A&search=%22wonder%20years%22

With A Little Help From My Friends
Joe Cocker at Woodstock in 1969... perfectly smoky voice... were I alive then I wonder if I'd have known to go? Assuming I wasn't like in Vietnam or something.


Moon River
The performer above, folkpoet80, led me to this classic Audrey Hepburn clip--you gotta be in the right mood to watch it, otherwise it feels a little flat.


Grow Old With You
Also inspired by folkpoet80, here's Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore showing off their great chemistry.


One good-looking Jew
"Put on your yarmulke, it's time for Hanukkah!"--an incredibly young, talented Sandler; I think this has replaced the Dreidl Song as the official anthem of young American Jews.


Bob Dylan
Robert Zimmerman singing Blowin' in the Wind and Just Like a Woman as part of George Harrison and Ravi Shankar's Concert for Bangladesh 1971 humanitarian fundraiser.


Peter, Paul and Mary
A militant version of Blowin' in the Wind, from Newport in 1964. People think of them as doing children's songs; like everyone else of good conscience in the 60s they were all politics, all the time.


Dylan and Baez
The 18-year-old Irish poster described this Bob Dylan/Joan Baez clip as "Some civil rights rally, when the ship comes in and only a pawn in their game." It's actually from the March on Washington in 1963, when MLK gave his I Have a Dream speech.... Dylan and Baez look impossibly young... TV was different back then, most of the video is a long shot of the crowd around the Washington Monument.


One Headlight
Bruce Springsteen upstages Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers on this driving song.


Evangeline
Emmylou Harris and The Band from Martin Scorcese's Last Waltz; my favorite performance off that movie is actually Neil Young, followed by Neil Diamond, but neither are online (at the moment).... Clip via Last Waltz site.

Helpless
Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Crosby Stills & Nash, from 1974. Song kindof gets muddled when everyone jumps in halfway through, but the pure Young parts are great.


Sweet Caroline
Neal Diamond doing the ultimate song for a crowd to sing along to, in 1976.


Country Roads
John Denver in 1971, with is sweet voice and big glasses.


Always on My Mind
Willy Nelson in a slightly muffled undated performance (better than the version with Jon Bon Jovi.


I Got You Babe
Classic two-part harmony of Sonny and Cher; hard to believe someone wearing those pants wound up in Congress. I think he must've inspired Arnold.


The Boxer
An older Simon and Garfunkel, apparently from the 1981 Central Park concert--"after changes we are more or less the same".


Cucurrucucu Paloma
A perfectly-paced, magical performance by Caetano Veloso from Pedro Almodovar's exquisite film Talk to Her. A few months after I saw that film, I was reminded of the song by Chavel Vargas' version of Paloma Negra, in Frida.


Screen grab of Kevin and Winnie from The Wonder Years: 25 Best Moments.

Our brother

As we hit the tenth day of Israel's offensive in Lebanon, the Times' Steven Erlanger and Jad Mouawad are reporting that Israel Calls Up Reserves, a Sign of Wider Ground Raids.

A quick check of the Jerusalem Post finds this:

The IDF was gearing up for a large-scale ground incursion into Lebanon on Friday. Thousands of reservists were being mobilized to the North throughout Friday to beef up forces stationed in the area in preparation for a possible operation.

In total, three to four ground divisions will be operating along the Lebanese front.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said on Friday that the defense establishment was evaluating the size of the force needed to conduct a large-scale operation in Lebanon.

So much for this being a quick in, quick out pounding of Hezbollah. The Times article includes this ominous paragraph:

Lebanon’s defense minister, Elias Murr, said on Thursday that the Lebanese Army — which has so far remained on the sidelines — would go into battle if Israel invaded. “The Lebanese army will resist and defend the country and prove that it is an army worthy of respect,” he said.

So essentially, we're close to war; with the added element, ever-present in the Middle East, of emotion driving decisions.

Make no mistake, if Israel triggers a full war, the U.S. is going along for the ride. In many ways Israel is our 51st state--and for good reason. It's our only real ally in the Middle East, and for all the surreal situations they drag us into, if we're serious about democraticizing the world we should stand behind Israel and hold it up as a model that no matter how horrible your strategic situation, you can still be a democracy.

And that's the real problem with the situation in the Middle East. The U.S. tries to play this game where, less from geniune understanding--which always contains nuances and is hard to soundbite--and more out of domestic political considerations, our leading politicians tumble over each other to say things like Israel is 100% in the right, they can do no wrong, we stand strongly behind them.

Which is ridiculous, and patronizing, and makes us look naive and hopeless in the Arab world. Israel is not some golden nation--they make mistakes like any other, and it's no shame to point this out and second-guess, for those who are motivated by a true love for the country. Their political decision-making is just as likely to be driven by base motiviations as ours.

I do think, actually, that because of the stakes involved for them and the almost-familial size of the country in reality Israeli decisions are more carefully thought-out and nuanced than just about any other country's. But just because they're deliberate doesn't mean they're right.

Aside from those with religious ties, I think most ordinary Americans don't identify with Israel because of any sense that everything they do is correct. Heck, given our general paucity of knowledge of anything beyond our borders, we're not qualified from either an analytic or moral position to judge the 'rightness' of many of their actions.

We support Israel because they're like us--a functioning democracy that in many ways looks like and is modeled on the U.S., with a sizeable number of Americans living there and a dominant religion that we're familiar with. It's as if they're our little brother, with all the attendant emotional ties.

A little brother who had to grow up in a bad neighborhood, and hence who has an enormous chip on his shoulder, with a propensity to bristle and rightly or wrongly sees the way of the fist as the only way to get through day-to-day.

And I do think the way we look at Israel is very much is the sense of a 'little' brother. The diminution occurs in part because American Christians tend gaze at the 'Holy Land' through a haze of metaphors, with the odious Pat Robertson and his ilk all but saying that for them Israel matters only insofar as its existence and then destruction is necessary to bring about the Second Coming.

This kind of 'support' for Israel dehumanizes Israelis. And Americans who always totally and loudly support the actions of the Israeli government may be doing it out of good intentions, often driven by religious kinship, but the effect is to treat Israel as if it's one of its neighbors--a dictatorship where the government line is the only line.

I think one reason why so many American Jewish supporters of Israel are so tone-deaf and strident in their position is because they fear that unless they go to the barricades every time, Israel may be wiped out. There's the lingering memory of the 1973 surprise attack that nearly led to disaster for Israel; and behind it all, of course, the pitch-darkness of the Holocaust, which many mistakenly read as equating meekness with death (everyone wound up dead, those who 'fought back' were just tortured rather than gassed).

The pro-Israel lobby also has (realistically) feels that given the always-present undercurrent of anti-semitism in this country, they need to shout that much louder to 'get through' to and counter-balance a sleepy populace that otherwise might be fine just staying out of it and letting the parties in the Mideast fight it out for themselves.

So a lot of Americans wind up supporting Israel out of what seems sometimes like grim duty... when really, they should let themselves support Israelis out of clear-eyed love, which also happens to be much more sustainable.

Let's also have the maturity to see in Israeli society the same level of complexity and nuance that ours has, which means supporting 'Israel' can mean very different things at very different times and can't equate with just backing up whatever comes out of the prime minister's office in Tel Aviv.

It's not anti-Semitic or self-hating to say politics is driving much of the current offensive, and there are a lot of serious problems with what the Israelis are doing in Lebanon--they've killed mostly civilians so far, and are essentially lashing out at a neighbor for being too weak to control its own country, thus weakening it even more.

What Israel is calling a 'kidnapping'--of soldiers, no less!--it calls 'capturing' when it go after Palestinians, who are usually civilian. Plus it's all totally destroyed what was a promising move by the Palestinians toward long-term negotiations.

Even the right-wing Jerusalem Post has linked this soon-to-be-war to newly-elected Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's need to 'prove' his toughness to critics and supporters at home and foes abroad, made especially necessary in the eyes of some because of his lack of defense or military experience, in contrast to Israel's long tradition of warrior princes.

Let's not forget that Israel ended its previous adventures in Lebanon because public opinion turned against its version of Vietnam. There's an interesting 1991 Israeli film, Cup Final, about a reservist with tickets to the 1982 World Cup in Spain who's instead called up to duty during the war. He gets captured by the PLO, and the film follows their journey through wartime Lebanon to Beirut--it's an interesting portrait of what happens to people who, although enemies, really know each other; with an ending that few Hollywood directors would dare to make.

It is ironic that a lot of misguided Americans kept supporting that pointless war long after the Israelis who were doing the dying did. Just as many Americans support the very same settlements in Palestine that most Israelis see as sapping political payoffs to the far-right.

Indeed, Israeli left-wing director David Benchetrit's Dear Father, Quiet, We're Shooting profiles how some of even the most alpha of Israeli males, its fighter jets pilots, wound up refusing to bomb cities and civilians in Lebanon and Palestine.

But by the logic of the knee-jerk pro-Israel lobby, those soldiers are traitors just because they don't conform to the cartoon image of Mideast politics we project onto Israel. Yet it's the most patriotic who are usually the first to say hey, I love this country too much to stand by silent while it does what I see as wrong, I have a moral duty to speak up even, and sometimes especially, if by doing so I frustrate my government's actions.

Paired with our vocal vapid public support of Israel's government, the U.S. tries to pretend that we can also play the role of honest broker in the region, pushing Israel to the bargaining table after we've deemed they've fought long enough, and hashing something out that works for everyone.

Our insane close ties to what are essentially dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, our friendship with moderate Jordan, and the dictates of big oil complicate our position and 'balance' us in the sense that a news story with a rabid pro-lifer and pro-choicer is good journalism.

It's all further muddled by the Europeans, with their anti-semitic history, status as ex-colonial masters of the area, and overriding economic considerations, tilting toward the Arab states. Add in that Russia/the Soviet Union, which funneled huge amounts of aid to Syria and at one point Egypt as part of its fond hopes of world domination, historically opposes whatever the U.S. position is.

Which leaves the UN, even with all its historical baggage in the creation of Israel and present-day problems with anti-semitism, feeling like surely if any region needs it it's the Middle East, and trying to carve out an appropriate role for itself. Hence, this in the Times article:

On Thursday in New York, Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, called for an immediate ceasefire and spoke of the human suffering caused by the offensive, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes.

He proposed that Hezbollah release the two soldiers, that attacks by both sides be halted and that an international peacekeeping force be deployed. And he condemned the Israeli operation as an “excessive use of force.”

Russia, which reduced parts of Chechnya to rubble in its fight against rebels there, also sharply criticized Israel: the Russian Foreign Ministry called Israel’s actions in Lebanon “far beyond the boundaries of an antiterrorist operation” and urged a cease-fire.

At the White House, President Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow, said, “I’m not sure at this juncture we’re going to step in and put up a stop sign,” although he called on Israel to “practice restraint” and said Mr. Bush was “very much concerned” about a growing human crisis in southern Lebanon.

Yeah, as if holding up our hand would be enough to get Israel to stop. Historically, we can force Israel to do things that it doesn't want to do, but only at great political and often monetary costs.

And on the political level there are those purse strings that irrecovably tie Israel to us, and are a significant factor for why America does share in the moral responsibility for Israeli actions. The Jewish Virtual Library has these interesting facts about U.S. aid to Israel, a country of 6 million which has received more money from us since WWII than anyone else:

In 2005, Israel received $360 million in economic aid and $2.22 billion in military aid. In 2006, economic aid is scheduled to be reduced to $240 million and military aid will increase to $2.28 billion. ...

Altogether, since 1949, Israel has received nearly than $100 billion in assistance. ...

Though the totals are impressive, the value of assistance to Israel has been eroded by inflation. While aid levels remained constant in total dollars from 1987 until 1999, the real value steadily declined. On the other side of the coin, Israel does receive aid on more favorable terms than other nations.

For example, all economic aid is given directly to the Israeli government rather than allocated under a specific program. Also, starting in 1982, Israel began to receive all its economic aid in a lump sum early in the fiscal year instead of in quarterly installments as is done for other countries. Israel is not required to provide an accounting of how the funds are used.

Heck, I wonder how many states have netted $100B from the federal government in the last six decades.

But at least we get something for our aid--Israel has always been there for us, and I have no doubt that if aliens invaded earth to target only America, Israel would be the first (and maybe only) country to jump in on our side.

And to put it in comparison, a 2004 Christian Science Monitor article headlined $50 billion later, taking stock of US aid to Egypt details how much we've given to the country of 79 million:

Aid is central to Washington's relationship with Cairo. The US has provided Egypt with $1.3 billion a year in military aid since 1979, and an average of $815 million a year in economic assistance. All told, Egypt has received over $50 billion in US largesse since 1975.

Egypt is historically the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid (Iraq has temporarily pushed both Israel and Egypt down a notch), with pretty much all of it coming after the 1979 Sinai accords.

The CSM article essentially contends much of our money has been wasted in a Soviet-style economy, a claim which is echoed in a 2001 article in Egypt's respected al-Alhram paper headlined What have we done with US aid?, with the subtitle, Why has substantial US aid to Egypt failed where it has succeeded elsewhere? We have mainly ourselves to blame, writes Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed. But the issue of utter Arab dysfunction is another post.

At the end of the day, what's going on in Lebanon is not a tragedy--that pushes it from the realm of real life into the dusty bins of metaphor.

It's a horrible, man-made situation, with blood and blame on both sides, that is absolutely representative of Israel's life-long dilemma: How much provocation can it endure beset on all sides, before striking back hard, drawing the attention of the world, which tut-tuts and then at some point intervenes--only to have it all start up again as stiff-necked Israel keeps operating as if it's an oasis in a desert?

If Israel is ever to become a 'normal' nation, they need to solve this problem. The policies of the last six decades are not sustainable, even if they were desirable. Israel is a small, concentrated country that at its narrowest isn't even 10 miles across; even if it wins 99.9% of its battles, at some point--10 years, 20, 50--terrorists will obtain nuclear devices and strike.

Its only hope is to persuade its neighbors before then to live in peace. It can be done--look at the U.S. and Germany and Japan.

Maybe Israel, with our help, can set up its own Marshall Plan.

Uncredited photo of American F-16 sold to Israel via The Electronic Intifada.

Pixelism

CNN.com has a nice article about Dennis Hwang, headlined Google's unknown artist has huge following.

Yup, Hwang's the guy who creates all those variations of the Google logo that celebrate holidays or commemorates events and people. They really stand out, considering how spartan Google.com usually is.

Hwang apparently started out as intern at Google, but since Google's success owes as much to its great people as anything else, the founders quickly noticed his artistic abilities and wound up asking him to apply it to what may be the most valuable virtual real estate in the world.

How does he decide when the logo mutates?

Hwang said users e-mail from all over the world to praise the designs or petition for new ones.

Hwang said they did a logo for the Persian New Year after a huge online campaign and that the National Library Day design was very popular.

"That one was a huge hit among librarians across the whole country," he said. They even sent me library-related cool toys and hats things like that. One was even a librarian action figure with 'shushing action' so that was really funny."

He said he meets a few times a year with a small group of Google staffers to decide which events to cover.

"We talk about interesting holidays that are coming up, or various international holidays or any current events or news events that we think are cool and geeky or 'Google-y' in some sense and then we just sort of give it a go," he said.

Hwang said his favorite was the birthday series honoring Michelangelo, Picasso, Van Gogh and other famous artists.

"Having been a student of art history for a long time those are a little bit more personal," Hwang said. "Of course, trying to mimic the style of a master is always difficult and humbling, so it does take a lot more time to do those, but it's also a lot more fun."

CNN has a little photo gallery of some of his logos, but of course if you really want the goods, go to Google.

Hwang's Google logos via Google.

Here to last

What are the kids up to nowadays? At Last, a 'hip-hopapella' singing group made up of four Asian American guys, has been tearing up Regis Philbins' American-Idol wannabe America's Got Talent show.

The group's got a MySpace site where you can listen to some of their songs; or check out the video below.

Rupert Murdoch's newest acquisition, by the way, is apparently on pace to have 100 million users this fall. More astonishing fun facts, all also from MySpace Senior Vice President Shawn Gold, via Lost Remote:

-MySpace adds 2 million users each week

-10% of Google’s traffic and 40% of YouTube's traffic comes form MySpace

-Nearly 20% of all video on the Internet is watched on MySpace

There was a lot of press last week over a Hitwise report that MySpace had passed Yahoo as the top Internet site, representing 4.5% of all U.S. Internet visits.

The original blog entry actually says MySpace passed Yahoo Mail, which previously was the most-visited domain name. If you aggregate Yahoo's email, news and content pages together, it's still the most-visited family of sites (Google only has email and news), as Yahoo quickly pointed out.

I think it's irrelevant--by whatever metric, MySpace is the hottest thing out there, and it's only a matter of time before it leaves long-established names like Yahoo in the dust. (MySpace doesn't compete as directly with a quick in-and-out search engine like Google as much as it does with content-rich Yahoo, which lives and dies by how long its users stay on a Yahoo-branded site).

If kids today are essentially finding everything they're interested in on MySpace, the question is how long it'll take the big media companies to realize that it might be one of their own burying them, rather than one of the traditional new media threats.



Photo of At Last via At Last's MySpace site

America's race

Amazing Race 10 Teams Announced

IGN.com: Executive Producer Jonathan Littman, Executive Producer/Co-Creator Bertram Van Munster and host Phil Keoghan were on hand today to speak to the press, as the 12 participating teams were unveiled from The Amazing Race 10.

This season includes one of the most diverse cast ever assembled for The Amazing Race, and for a reality program in general, including an Indian-American couple, two Asian brothers, a pair of Islamic friends, and a disabled contestant. The show's creators were very proud of the cast, saying that while they always like to have a cross-section of people, they felt they really lucked out with the exciting group they got this time. ...

Littman noted that the race started harder then ever before, and that they sent the teams "head first into the toughest possible areas," instead of easing them in by sending them to easier environments, as they feel they normally do. Van Munster revealed that China, Mongolia, Vietnam and Kuwait are among the destination this season, and that the language barrier was a frequent problem for both the teams and the producers.

Name: Vipul Patel
Occupation: Sales
Age: 29
Hometown: Windermere, Fla.

Name: Arti Patel
Occupation: Nutritional Educator
Age: 26
Hometown: Windermere, Fla.

Relationship: Married

Vipul and Arti are the first Indian-American team to run the Race. Both speak several languages and are well-traveled. Vipul admits to being a bit overzealous, while Arti takes great pride in her ability to reign in his emotions and focus his strengths - a skill she will undoubtedly be forced to call upon while racing around the world.


Name: Erwin Cho
Occupation: Insurance Company Manager
Age: 32
Hometown: San Francisco, Calif

Name: Godwin Cho
Occupation: Financial Analyst
Age: 29
Hometown: San Francisco, Calif

Relationship: Brothers

These overachieving, super-competitive brothers say they are ready for the adventure of a lifetime. Godwin has grown up in the shadow of his Harvard-educated brother and is eager to show his brother and his family that he has what it takes to win The Amazing Race. This team's love for traveling the world and competing is infectious.


Name: Bilal Abdul-Mani
Occupation: Medical Supply Technician
Age: 37
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio

Name: Sa'eed Rudolph
Occupation: Power Lineman
Age: 39
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio

Relationship: Best Friends

These best friends have spent years bonding over their love of food, Browns football and their shared Islamic faith. Bilal is energetic and outgoing while Sa'eed is quiet and passive. Their vastly different temperaments will be fun to watch as they attempt to navigate over 40,000 miles in under 30 days.

Ah, my favorite show on television gets better. I'm already looking forward to hours of yelling at the tv, moments of stunned silence, lots of laughter and knowing smiles, all hopefully capped off by wild cheering.

This will be, I kid you not, be a historic moment in American television history. The ratings will be through the roof, watching the show will become the impetus for all sorts of great gatherings, and tv executives will put this together with Lost and Grey's Anatomy and conclude: Hmmm, maybe Americans want to see America on television?

Who knows, maybe it'll even push CBS to recast its new 'The Class' show, which apparently is about the class of 1906:

Lisa deMoraes' blog in the Post: "Friends" exec producer David Crane came to Summer TV Press Tour 2006 over the weekend to promote his next all-white ensemble sitcom about a bunch of people living in an urban East Coast setting - this time Philly.

It's called "The Class," it's for CBS, and it's about a group of 20-somethings who have known each other since third grade and who get together for a reunion of sorts.

"Why aren't there any people of color in this show set in 2006?" one critic wanted to know.

"It is something that is unfortunate," Crane said, putting on his Sad Face.

"It happened because when we wrote the script, we wrote it color-blind... and then we auditioned. For six months we saw just a huge range and diversity of actors and at the end of the day these were absolutely the eight actors who were absolutely right for the parts."

Wouldn't you think that, in this day and age, the TV industry talk on the West Side of Los Angeles would have labored long and hard to come up with something fresher than that old line? Crane and gang were using this one back when "Friends" debuted in the mid 90's.

We weren't the only member of the press who found it lame:

"When the word 'color-blind' casting is almost always used, is it possible that color-blind casting isn't working and you need to think about some other way? Because color-blind doesn't seem to do it," one critic cracked

"Having gotten to the end of the process, I would say 'yeah.' If we had it to do over again, I think we wouldn't. I think we would have approached the piece differently," he said, which also sounded suspiciously familiar.

"Is it possible that it has to start in the writing?" the critic continued.

"I'm absolutely agreeing with you. I think whatever we do next -- hopefully we won't have too much opportunity to, because we'll be busy doing this -- but whatever we do next, yeah, I think that is absolutely the case."

And, he promised, we'll see some actual non-white characters in future episodes of the series. Turns out, twins Kat and Lina were adopted by Korean parents, while Nicole's stepdaughter has an African-American mother.

CBS photos of the Patels, Chos and Abdul-Mani and Rudolph (does their description hint that they're in it at the end?!) by Robert Voets via IGN.com. Both articles seen first via angryasianman.com

Free pass

An article headlined O'Neil, 94, walks twice as oldest pro baseball player has an interesting reminder about how young this country is, and how it's foolish to think things like racism aren't part of our daily fabric.

AP via ESPN.com: John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil never got a free pass in life.

The grandson of a man brought to this continent as a slave, O'Neil moved to Kansas City to avoid racial persecution in the Deep South and played baseball during
an era of segregation.

Yup, his grandfather was a slave... which means there are people running around today whose grandparents were slave owners. I'm thinking if you were raised in a family of slaveowners, you're unlikely to have a progressive view on racial issues.

Even if you rebelled in your wild teenage years, your reasons for rejecting racist pablum would probably be adolescent contrariness, rather than any well-considered and thus genuine paradigm shift. (Besides which, your rebellion circa 1910 would be something along the lines of let's stop lynching them, instead of hey, everyone's just as good as I am).

This, of course, doesn't just apply to the 90-something white guy down at the retirement home--those baby boomers whose fight for civil rights in the 60s dovetailed with a desire to smoke dope, love freely and listen to the 'black Elvis' think carrying a few signs meant they'd dropped their father's racism, but in many cases they just lopped off the more embarrassing de jure aspects.

It might seem racism is so obviously wrong that all you need to do is stop doing wrong, and you're no longer racist. But actually the reason it's so pernicious is because there are often short-term benefits to being racist and it often falls into the category of the natural, and hence no-thought-required, aspect of life.

It's on the level of the subconscious; so people never change, unless their noses are rubbed in it.

Don't just take my word for it; take the Project Implicit test. Either the Race IAT; or the Arab-Muslim IAT; or the Skin-tone IAT; or the Asian IAT (which ironically, should be called Asian-American).

Everyone I know who's ever taken the test has proven to be racist, against every non-white group, at the subconscious level. I word it that way because I don't term that racism--which is behavior-based. It can be overcome, you just have to be aware of it.

For people who aren't always factoring race in, it's impossible to stop being racist. We all surround ourselves with and are reinforced by others who think like ourselves (it's all about feeling comfortable with our friends and world). It's also impossible because for someone who's racist, there's never a compelling personal reason (except when you fall in love with someone and/or have kids) to stand up and say--because it would have to be that deliberate and pro-active--I'm racist, and I'm wrong, and I need help.

Because I don't know how to stop being racist; because society makes it easy and at times seemingly-necessary to be racist; and because I don't know any black people (let alone have any black friends). [Insert other race at will; although, and this is another post, I don't think it matters when non-whites are racist against whites. You could argue non-whites ought to be racist].

It's funny how often I run into people (always white) who mention they were in the crowd when Martin Luther King made his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. An NPR story says there was that day "an unexpectedly large crowd of at least 250,000 people."

But I've never met anyone who said s/he (or their parents) was one of the 60 million Southerners in 1963--or one of the 110 million other Americans--who not only weren't at King's speech, but were openly hostile to Dr. King and his ilk, thus making his speech and life's battle necessary. Or who figured it wasn't their fight (which in political science is the same as a vote for the status quo).

What happened to all these people? Why don't we ever hear about people who atoned, did penance, for their actions in those days? We've got all these people standing up saying they're born-again Christians--who ever says they used to be racist but God spoke to them, or some other miracle occurred?

Can people really go from bombing black churches/lynching blacks/siccing police dogs on blacks/spitting in the face of blacks/watching passively on tv, to accepting blacks as their equal? What happens to people who are raised in a family like that? Or maybe all those things were done by the same elusive non-reproductive Germans who were Nazis?

Heck, it was only four decades ago that 70% of Americans ascribed one of the following qualities to blacks in response to a poll question:

What do you think are the POOREST qualities about the Negroes in the United States? (3663 answered question)
Uneducated, illiterate, ignorant, not capable of learning (15.53%), Immoral - less moral training, low morals; inmoral, general (5.95%), Criminal - steal, kill, fight (5.16%), Lazy, don't want to work, slothful, no initiative, no ambition, shiftless (18.02%), Dirty, slovenly - live in dirt, miserable housing, carelessness (11.08%), Aggressive - chip on shoulder; smart-alecky, nasty, impolite, no manners (5.38%), Don't stick togeher; don't help their own people (1.64%), Won't stay in their place -- want equality, want to eat with you, etc. (3.41%), Dependent on others - beggars. (1.83%), Pretentious, show offs (1.04%), Common-law marriages, don't marry (0.93%), Dishonest, can't be trusted (3.22%), Drink too much, always drink (1.77%), Spend money foolishly, can't save money (1.75%), Superstitious (0.33%), Same as whites, same as anybody (4.80%), Have to be judged as individuals (2.87%), No poor qualities (0.71%), Miscellaneous, others (1.28%), Don't know, no answer (29.84%)

So what happened to this apparently-silent majority, and their kids, and grandkids? Has anyone ever met anyone who said yes, I used to be racist, but nobody called it racism because it was the norm (even the Bible said so!)

But I did the following things to change my views--and you know, it took years and constant work and it was hard, because it's hard to change something you never even thought you needed to think about, it was harder than learning a new way to breath.

But I decided I couldn't just trust to my good intentions, or soak up anti-racism serum via osmosis, because all my instincts were shaped by racism and since I'm as self-defensive as anyone I needed to do something extra-ordinary to start not being racist.

And now that I'm a recovering racist, I'm more open to ideas, am not so self-righteous or condescending or sarcastic, and benefit from being able to appreciate and learn from people of other races--including people from civilizations that were laying the groundwork for ours (none of which I ever heard about as a kid, aside from paper/fireworks/egg foo young) when America was still in knee-pants.

Heck, most of the poll respondents and their kin are still alive--and they're often at the top of the organizational charts. How likely is it that they've done a 180 in their views, when human nature is such that many old people still listen only to the Glenn Miller (or Nirvana) of their youth; and we all regularly say things to our peers like wow, you're the same as you were in high school?

Then again, I guess if your grandpappy was a slave owner, maybe you think it's good enough that you're no longer upholding the family tradition of whipping people to death.

AP photo of Buck O'Neil by Chris Cummins via ESPN.com; which, incidentally, should've used the headline: O'Neil, 94, gets walked by both teams

Joining the 21st century

WNYC’s Planned Move Will Finish Its Breakup With the City

After broadcasting since 1924 from the marble-and-mosaic corridors of the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street in Manhattan, WNYC is going from drab to fab. WNYC, which has the largest audience of any public radio station in the United States, will finally sever its umbilical cord to the bureaucracy that gave it life and sheltered it so persistently. Escaping its 51,400 square feet of tired but rent-free space scattered on eight floors of the Municipal Building, the station will make a $45 million move northwest to two and a half floors of a 12-story former printing building at 160 Varick Street. ...

Glenn Collins in the Times: Nicki Newman Tanner, WNYC’s board chairwoman for the past two years, said the station and its programming strive to be “diverse in gender, ethnically and racially, given our responsibility to reflect New York as completely as we can.” Her 37-person WNYC board has 14 women, 4 African-Americans, 2 Hispanics, an Asian and a South Asian.

Huh? South Asians are Asians--that's like writing 'a European and a southern European'.

Not to mention it's probably a couple of Asian Americans who sit on WNYC's board, rather than say a Japanese and a Pakistani.

And the headline's totally misleading as well.

Photo of WNYC building from WNYC's website.

Of sheep and men

More snippets from the Times.

Running amuck
Happiness Is Three Sheep and a Dog

Laura Holson: On Sunday mornings when Steven Brill, a film director, is not on a movie set, he loads his border collie, Kep, into his car and drives 30 minutes to a private estate here overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Once there, Kep bounds out of the car into a fenced-in arena and for two 10-minute sessions herds three sheep in a circle, attentive to Mr. Brill's whistles and commands.

Mr. Brill, who directed "Mr. Deeds" and "Little Nicky," has been taking sheepherding classes with 10-year-old Kep for more than a year. "It may sound goofy, but it's a really interesting activity for me and the dog," he said. "It's a real communion between man and beast. It's therapeutic."

Besides, he joked, there is a practical side: "I don't need sheepherding to inform my work. But it helps me communicate better, and that's O.K."

Mr. Brill is one of a growing number of people in Los Angeles, including other entertainment professionals, who have been taking up sheepherding. For some, like Pat Crowley, a producer of the "Bourne" movies, it is a surer way to quiet a restless dog than an hour at the park. For others, corralling sheep can calm a dog who is fearful or bites. But for most owners sheepherding has become a way to connect with nature in a culture where palm trees, hair color and even friendships are often fake or manufactured.

Um... a bunch of people taking turns running three sheep around in circles on estate is what passes for something authentic in Hollywood?

No wonder these guys keep pumping out movies and tv shows with all-white casts; they really do live in their own world!

Playing God
Medical misstep

Randy Cohen's The Ethicist column: I'm a critical-care physician. An elderly Jehovah's Witness, unable to make decisions for himself, was admitted to my hospital with multiple organ dysfunction. A blood transfusion was indicated, but his family refused for religious reasons. One evening the on-call resident, unaware of the patient's faith, ordered a transfusion. The next morning, the ICU team noticed the blood hanging and immediately discontinued the transfusion. There were no clinical consequences. Disclosure would likely cause the family significant emotional distress. Must we tell them? -- Anonymous

You must. Is there a medical error that would not cause some emotional distress? Alas, a physician's duty to be honest is not limited to good news. It is tough for any of us to admit errors, and tough for patients and their families to forgive them. But if patients are to trust their medical teams, honesty is essential.

There are errors too trivial to mention, the medical equivalent of putting a tiny dink into a parked car: No note on the windshield required. That said, an error's significance is measured not only by its clinical consequences but also by its importance to the patient and his family. Here the family is apt to regard the matter as serious. A bioethicist friend adds, "If their beliefs were true and the patient never made it to heaven because of the blood transfusion but the rest of the family did, don't you think they would be upset?" She's right: You don't want them flinging down lightning bolts or harps or whatever it is people can do from up there

The question isn't if you should tell but how. It might help to talk to a Jehovah's Witness minister about the religious implications of an inadvertent transfusion or even to have this person join you in speaking to the family.

UPDATE: The patient subsequently died. The ICU team referred this question to the hospital's ethics board. Before getting a decision, which in any case is not binding, they decided not to tell, fearing that doing so would only add to the family's unhappiness and noting that nothing could be done now.

It's astonishing that a hospital would do this. It's one of the most patronizing, insensitive things I've ever heard of.

For all they know, Jehovah's Witness' have some sort of purifying rite that they could've held. I don't think the hospital would've decided to lie had the patient been Orthodox Jewish and they had fed him pork.

As Cohen says, there may well be hell for someone to pay in the afterlife.

Rolling up the shirtsleeves
Six Days That Shook New Jersey

David Chen and Laura Mansnerus: When the clock read 12:01 on July 1, Gov. Jon S. Corzine was at his desk at the State House, Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. was across the street having a drink at the Trenton Marriott, and New Jersey was only hours from the first government shutdown in its history.

For the next six days, and largely out of public view, the state's elected leaders boxed over Mr. Corzine's demand that the sales tax be increased to 7 percent from 6 percent to put the state on sounder financial footing.

One Assembly Democrat from South Jersey tried to remove three North Jersey colleagues from the crucial Budget Committee because they refused to align themselves with Mr. Roberts, who himself is from Camden County in the south. Caucus meetings seemed awkward as some lawmakers clustered in cliques based not on the usual factors of friendship or geography, but by their stand on the budget.

The impasse led to scenes that were bizarre even by Trenton's relaxed standards. Mr. Corzine, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs and a multimillionaire, slept in a cot in his office for three straight days, going to Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton, to shower.

And for three consecutive mornings, starting on Tuesday, Mr. Corzine demanded that legislators convene at 9 a.m. so that they could listen to him push his budget as fiscally responsible. Senate President Richard J. Codey called it "home room." ...

On Monday, Mr. Roberts issued a belligerent news release, calling for Mr. Corzine to identify the legislators who supported his proposal. A few hours later, Mr. Corzine demanded that the entire Legislature meet at 9 a.m. the next day -- known to the rest of the country as the Fourth of July.

And what better day to do the people's work, regardless of party affiliation, than the glorious Fourth.

I've always liked Corzine--he's not your typical politician, except for the fact that he's ambitious. He'll be running for president in 6 (or 10) years. I don't think he'll win though, America's not quite ready for a technocrat-in-chief; and if we were, we'd pick Michael Bloomberg's $5.1 billion over his $125 million.

All you need to know about how this former Goldman Sachs chief would run things is in this line from the follow-up Times piece, Corzine Ends 8-Day New Jersey Shutdown: “The lives of the people of New Jersey can now, at long last, begin to return to normal,” a bleary-eyed Mr. Corzine said shortly after 6 a.m. Mr. Corzine, who was wearing jeans, added that he was working on three hours of sleep.

I'd miss Jaywalk
Laugh Lines

David Letterman: Did you hear about this? North Korea might have missiles with the capabilities to reach the West Coast of the United States.

I got to thinking about it, and that's Leno's problem.

Graphic by Stuart Goldenberg in the Times.

Why we're in Babylon

The war in Iraq wasn't stupid, or irrational, or evil. It'd be a lot easier of a situation if it were--and it would let us as the American people off the hook. We could then just pin the blame on Bush.

But we can't, not if we're being honest with ourselves and with our increasingly-frustrated elected leader. It's not his fault; it really isn't. Even as we near the fifth anniversary of 9/11, we've pushed to the backs of our mind how scared most people in this country were in the days after those planes flew into our buildings.

The war in Iraq was a direct and inevitable outgrowth of who we have become as a people post-9/11. It is the ultimate manifestation of the us against them mentality that has come to define our society--the only thing that changes is the increasingly harsh definition of 'them,' on issue after disparate issue, from abortion to gay rights to economic disparity to free trade to religion to immigration.

We've in essence chosen to become a zero-sum society, suspicious of and resistant to arguments that aim for a middle ground, convinced of our ultimate righteousness despite our muddled positions. It's why liberals demonize President Bush, and why conservatives lionize him.

We're all acting like America is at the end of her rope, that the lunatic right's Armageddon is indeed nigh and we better fight for what we can get in these precious days before it all (literally) goes to hell.

But put it all aside for a minute, if you can. Take a deep breath, admit that we live in the greatest country in the history of humanity, and that there is much more good than bad in America--and that the good is growing because our society as a whole is changing, whether we like it or not and whether our 'side' will profit from it all.

Let's take a hard look at why we're in Iraq, so we can figure out what to do now. We, in this case, meaning the U.S.; in Iraq meaning occupying the country with thousands of troops; what to do now meaning how do we get out of this mess.

Are we in Iraq for oil? I don't think so; if we are, why did we so quickly hand the oil industry back to Iraqis to run? All the top decision-makers are Iraqis, many of whom have moved to quickly distance themselves from the U.S.

And as Iraq feels their way down the path to democracy they're going to go through all sorts of wild fluctation in policy. Oil markets value stability and predictability over everything else; and the big oil companies uniformly would and did prefer an Iraq run by a clearly-in-charge dictator dependent on oil revenue to fund his murderous treasury, to one run by an independent democracy for whom the dollar is not always going to be the bottom line.

Historically, when commercial interests hold sway the U.S. intervenes to throw out democracies and installs dictators and shahs so they can pump more oil for their protectors. We've never, at the behest of corporations, fought a war to give more natives more say over a country's policy.

So unless you belive that oil interests were just strong enough to drag the U.S. into a war but suddenly weren't smart or strong enough to dictate the peace, the oil for war argument is just liberal pablum.

Are we in Iraq to spread democracy there and through the Middle East? There's no way; first, explain to me how a conservative Christian would suddenly halfway through his first term decide bringing democracy to Muslims was his life's calling card, worth any amount of hatred from his brethren, and scorn from the entire world?

Besides, why didn't the administration spend more time on a post-war plan, so that other countries would have a blueprint to follow? Why did Iraq get to turn to a liberal professor to help draw up a constitution instead of the administration providing a fellow traveler?

Why haven't we in any way, shape or form tried to get the Saudis or Egyptians to start moving toward democracy? Wouldn't the examples of Algeria and Turkey, where both times the country's military took over after Islamic parties won the first-ever free and fair elections, serve as more of a cautionary tale?

Democracy wasn't mentioned in the build-up to the war in Iraq; it was a feel-good after-thought, thrown in after all else failed. Even were this our motivation, at this point it's a moot point, since nobody's going to be persuaded to go democratic based on our track record in Iraq (hey, we, too want civil war and mass bloodshed! Where do we sign up?!)

Are we in Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction? Not mainly; it seems to me that was more a stick to get us into the war, the bogeyman waved--along with are you a patriot or a terrorist-lover?--in the face of those on the fence and to try and get other nations to help foot the bill.

The argument has been made a millions time, but the essential point is by the time the war drew near the adminstration knew there were no active WMDs in Iraq, yet it didn't pause their movement toward war one bit--if anything, they rushed the war along before more people could find out what they knew. At any rate, there aren't any WMDs in Iraq today, so this also is a moot point.

Are we in Iraq because of the war on terror? I actually do think this was one of two main reasons why we invaded Iraq... but not in the way the Bush administration has tried to spin it. Iraq wasn't involved with al-Qaeda before the war; that was all rhetoric, and the Bushites know it.

The neo-conservatives and our co-opted president essentially snuck the war in Iraq past a scared and shell-shocked post-9/11 America. We feel in our gut that we failed at the time to stand up and be courageous, which is why so many are so angry now. In psychological terms we feel guilty and mad at ourselves, with a twist of Monday morning everybody hates a loser thrown in to enoble us now to displace our feelings outward toward the sitting president.

Because modern American culture has no mechanism for societal confession and penance (and because in our private lives our dominant religion has been hijacked by fanatics who have perverted Jesus' humble message into 'America right or wrong'), many of us have externalized our feelings of having been suckered, and spun them into anger at 'them,' holding them responsible for what weighs on our soul.

Which is neither right, nor productive. What the Bush adminstration did after 9/11 was to make a hard decision on behalf of a temporarily-infantilized society. They decided it's better to fight terrorists on their 'home turf'--the Middle East--then on ours--New York City.

In essence, they decided to send Americans over there to spare the terrorists the trip here. At least in the Middle East, the administration figured, we'd be able to fight them with soldiers; on the home front it would be cops and civilians.

They counted on al-Qaeda et al, like any other organization, to do the cost-benefit analysis and then travel a few dozen or hundred miles to kill highly visible Americans, instead of traveling thousands of miles past beefed-up border security to try and murder again in a strange land. They counted on al-Qaeda realizing that whatever their previous level of support in the Mideast, fighting 'infidel' warriors come to despoil their holy lands was gonna fly a lot better with public opinion than killing women and children, especially when a significant portion of those killed on 9/11 were actually Muslim (it wasn't called the World Trade Center for nothing).

Iraq was chosen by the administration because Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, it was near our bases in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, it was a flat easy terrain for our tanks and guided missiles, there was at least the possibility the enemy had WMDs but he didn't have a very good army, it didn't seem like the populace would be particularly hostile to us, and above all it was easy for terrorists to get to.

I actually don't have any problems with the underpinnings of this policy, from the point of view of the Bush administration. If you're gonna assume after 9/11 that for whatever reason there's a critical mass of Muslims who hate us and want to destroy us at all costs, it makes sense to use the best defense is a good offense strategy, and not just go after them but stick around afterwards so any future terrorist attacks will be against professionals wearing body armor.

I don't agree with any of the administration's assumptions; for one thing the war in Iraq probably created as many terrorists as it has killed. But given that it's what the administration--and lest we forget, the majority of Americans in those heady days post-9/11--thought, they actually made a logical decision.

I do wish the administration had thought fit to share their reasoning publicly, and the fact they didn't says a lot about how they view their fellow Americans, and the world. I guess it's kind of hard to stand up in front of the UN and tell the people of Iraq essentially that you are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time--that too many strategic goals are served by a war in your home, besides which, frankly we'd rather innocent Iraqi civilians die than American civilians.

It's a bit hard to say that--but if you're going to do exactly that, you ought to bear the full brunt of your decision. If the rest of the world calls you cold-hearted, Machiavellian, uncivilized, selfish, and self-righteous, you should be willing to take the justified abuse, look them square in the eye, and say you're right, but we're willing to have this on our soul.

And make no mistake--in this post-9/11 world if we held a national vote with the question, Would you rather a large number of Middle Eastern civilians and smaller number of American soldiers die, or a smaller number of American civilians die, most Americans would in the privacy of the ballot booth pull the lever to kill the foreigners and the poor troops, God bless their souls.

So let's not pretend this is an evil Republican regime dragging us kicking and screaming down the road to hell. It explains in part why Bush looks so peevish all the time--he must be dying to scream out you idiots and hypocrites, I made the hard decision because it's what all of us wanted, you're like teens who whine about animal cruelty while wolfing down hamburgers.

Aside from wanting to do what we thought would save our own skin, I do think there is a second reason why we're in Iraq--because we owed Israel.

During the first Persian Gulf War, Saddam launched missiles at and hit Israel. In an event unique in Israeli history, they didn't retaliate. This has never happened before--Israel's sine qua non is that if you hit me, I hit you back times ten.

But the U.S. was justifiably worried that the Arab members of its coalition would never fight on the same side of Israel, and so President George H. W. Bush was able to prevail on Israel to let America punish Saddam in its stead.

Problem is, even in light of Saddam having invaded and burned Kuwait we couldn't make up our mind whether he was a bigger threat or the Iranians. We didn't dare risk taking him out altogether for fear Iraq would disintegrate into civil war (hmmmm) and Iran would be left without a 'balancing' power.

So we deliberately stopped short and left Saddam in Baghdad, where until 9/11 the Israelis fretted. For logical and psychological reasons relating to the first war, and strategic reasons related to Iraq's proximity, size and unpredictability, many Israelis temporarily replaced their hatred of Iran with a fear and loathing of Saddam.

Even before Bush II took office Richard Perle and the rest of the neo-conservatives started sounding the drums about Iraq; they're part of the line of American policy which has always held that what's good for Israel is good for America. And even if it isn't... we're so big and strong that we can go out of our way a little to help our little brother, and if necessary take punishment on their behalf.

The counterbalancing wing in American foreign policy, which like liberals has had an inaccurate and limiting label--'Arabists'--pinned on them, has traditionally argued for a broader examination of American and world interest in the Middle East. They argue that as a honest broker America could more effectively promote macro goals like democracy and stability in the region, which are in our interests and, in the long run, Israel's as well.

This wing, of course, lost any power they had after 9/11. At which point the neo-cons saw a chance to push through their plan to remove Saddam as a threat to Israel primarily, and America secondarily. Those hypothetical weapons of mass destruction could've be loaded onto missiles and wiped out Tel Aviv; there was never any evidence that Saddam would suddenly turn on his old American allies.

Part of the American public's hypocrisy and ignorance is how quickly we've erased from our public discourse the fact that the only time Saddam used weapons of mass destruction against another country was when we supplied him with the latest in satellite imagery so he could drop thousands of chemical shells on Iranian troops and civilians.

The war between the two neighbors was started by Iraq, with the encouragement of the U.S. (not that Saddam needed much of a push--more important was the American assurance that they would back him militarily, which we did).

The Iraq war, in the end, is really a perfect storm for Americans. It says so much more about us as a people than we'd like to admit; even the fact that we gaze regularly on the news at the bodies of slain Iraqis but profess shock and outrage when al-Jazeera shows our dead speaks volumes about how we literally see the world.

Image from William Blake's 1808 edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost found online.