Russia?

The Guggenheim's Russia! exhibit was, on the whole, a disappointment for me. It takes up the entire five floors of spiral exhibit space--and yet I only saw a few works that I really liked.

One of them was the Barge Haulers; as I was speculating to a friend about why the painting seemed familiar, a woman next to us said it was probably because it was 'very famous,' that every Russian knows it.

I can see why; it's not only powerful, but also metaphorical--Russia has always seen way more than its share of suffering, yet somehow it always goes on. Usually at great cost to its stolid people, forced to do things people in other countries would quail at (or have done by machines). And there are always more people, as the boy in the middle seems to represent.

I also liked the almost photo-realistic Quiet Dwelling--just something about the trees, the reflection in the water, and the spires pointing out. Russian civilization among the brutal wilderness, holding out from the successive wave of murderous invaders.

And that was about it. Oddly enough, despite all the press about this exhibit puffing its comprehensiveness and significance, I feel like I've seen better examples of Russian art just by happenstance, mixed in among permanent collections.

Maybe one problem was because the exhibit had to represent historical eras, a lot of the works were included on their merits as good examples of their time period or a particular artistic movement.

Unfortunately, for a lot of their history it seemed like Russian art was behind and just aping continental Europe. Likewise, the icons didn't wow me, perhaps because I've seen the 'originals' from Byzantium.

Ilya Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870–73. Oil on canvas, 131.4 x 280.7 cm. Photo: © State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, via Guggenheim website.

Isaak Levitan, Quiet Dwelling [aka Quiet Abode], 1890. Oil on canvas, 87.5 x 108 cm. Photo: © The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, via Guggenheim website.

Running Windows

Microsoft Shuts Blog's Site After Complaints by Beijing

New York Times: Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.

The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America's biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China's booming Internet marketplace.

Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like "democracy" and "human rights" from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must "comply with global and local laws."

"This is a complex and difficult issue," said Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle. "We think it's better to be there with our services than not be there."

The site pulled down was a popular one created by Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name, An Ti. Mr. Zhao, 30, also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.

The blog was removed last week from a Microsoft service called MSN Spaces after the blog discussed the firing of the independent-minded editor of The Beijing News, which prompted 100 journalists at the paper to go on strike Dec. 29. It was an unusual show of solidarity for a Chinese news organization in an industry that has complied with tight restrictions on what can be published.

Ugh, as if we needed another reason to hate Microsoft.

It's really gutless for a billion-dollar company to shrug its shoulders and say well, what can you do. They should just be honest--we'll pour millions into fighting software piracy in China because it's costing us money; we won't fight censorship because to do so would cost us money.

It's quite shameless; Bill Gates and his company owe everything they have to being from America. But when it comes to sticking up for American values abroad, they turn traitor.

And that's what it is. We're not talking about an American company complying with local laws or customs outof a desire to respect their host country, or as a result of a careful balancing act. There's no inherent 'good' reason to help enforce Chinese censorship--no countervailing value on the other side.

Microsoft's spokesperson says it's better to be in China than not. I doubt the Chinese could afford to throw Microsoft out, so it's a red herring to say those are the stakes.

In this day and age, software is like gunpowder--writing software with built-in censorship on spec for the old generals in Beijing is no different than running guns for some banana republic dictatorship.

Microsoft's already a collaborater at best; by helping the government keep the lid on self-expression in China, it may wind up one day with blood on its hands.

And if what happens to some Chinese guy doesn't matter to you, it can be put in terms even the most xenophobic among us can understand.

As the Times reports: Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, wrote on her blog, referring to Microsoft and other technology companies: "Can we be sure they won't do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an overzealous government agency in our own country?"

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

Quotation by Rev. Martin Niemoller is one of various versions found in various places on the Internet, see here for a discussion of the quote.

AFP Photo of Bill Gates in Beijing in 2003 via CNN story.

Climbing out of the dark hole

I don't know what to make of the West Virginia coal mining disaster.

You could go after Wilbur Ross, the billionnaire who recently bought the Sago mine that has been described as the most dangerous in America--with ABC News citing 16 major safety violations, a dozen orders of partial shutdowns from the government, 20 roof collapses...

You could blame the Bush administration, whose cozy relationship with mine owners allows all involved to wink at safety violations; in the words of the man who until recently was responsible for training mine inspectors: "The inspectors have been forbidden from being as aggressive as they need to be.... They can't go ahead and close the mine and use the authority that they have to do the job that they've been charged to do."

You could blast Ross's on-the-spot management team, for their role in the safety violations, for the slipshod way they allowed rumors of 12 miners being found alive to slip out to desperate family members, for the hours they waited before correcting the false jubilation.

You could slam the news media for playing its increasingly commonplace role of cheerleaders--for the way reporters exulted along with the family members when the claims of a miracle came in, instead of doing the hard job of asking pointed questions; for acting, to borrow Maureen Dowd's withering dressing-down of Judy Miller, as stenographers instead of journalists in passing on rumor and feel-good wish fulfillment without qualifiers, both on-the-air and in cold print.

You could take the chance to slap at the Christian right and its corrosive me-centered faith and resultant attaching the word 'miracle' to everything as an in-your-face assertion of their position as God's chosen people... for if it was a miracle when 12 were thought saved, what is it when 11 turn up dead--a punishment?

But you know, I think that ultimately, the families who lost their loved ones in this disaster have had enough thrown on them the last few days without having to also see their personal tragedy turned into talking points for everyone's favorite stalking horse. That is not to say let's just chalk this up as an act of nature and go on--it was a man-made tragedy, and lessons need to be drawn and people fired if not indicted.

But for now, what's foremost in my thoughts are the people in that part of West Virginia. The miners and their families seem like such decent, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people--unassuming, almost preternaturally good and honest and emotionally vulnerable. Their anger at being 'lied to,' at whooping and hollering for hours when their men were dead, at celebrating in church when they should have been mourning, had the hard edge of a people jerked around once too much.

You forget that people like that not only exist, but may even be the majority in this great country--people who drive hours to go down into a dark, hellish hole for 15 hours a day to put food on the table for their families, people who at the end of the day reserve whatever time and energy they have with their kids and loved ones, people who aren't always trying to work every angle and claw and scratch their way to the top, people who aren't any good at spin and pinning the blame, people who suffer great pain and hurt and don't allow each other to give up, people who staring death in the face hold fast to their faith in God and write notes telling their family not to worry.

As far as I can tell, all the people of Sago mine want right now is their men back. Barring that, for the next few days I'm not sure there's anything the rest of us can say or do to offer them true comfort.

Expect say we're sorry, and we grieve with you.

Photo: Daniele Bennett becomes emotional while speaking to the media after learning her father was one of the coal miners that was killed in the Sago Mine in Tallmansville, West Virginia. Photo and caption by Getty Images/AFP/Mark Wilson.

They like us! They really like us!

A non-profit named Terror Free Tomorrow has recently made news with its release of "the first poll in Pakistan since the earthquake of October 8, 2005", undertaken by the Pakistan branch of ACNielsen.

The group says its poll, which surveyed 1,450 Pakistani adults--with a margin of error of "2.6%", found:

-73% of Pakistanis surveyed in November 2005 now believe suicide terrorist attacks are never justified, up from 46% just last May.

-Support for Osama Bin Laden has declined significantly (51% favorable in May 2005 to just
33% in November), while those who oppose him rose over the same period from 23% to
41%.

-US favorability among Pakistanis has doubled from 23% in May to more than 46% now,
while the percentage of Pakistanis with very unfavorable views declined from 48% to 28%.

-For the first time since 9/11, more Pakistanis are now favorable to the United States than
unfavorable.

-78% of Pakistanis have a more favorable opinion of the United States because of the
American response to the earthquake, with the strongest support among those under 35.

-79% of those with confidence in Bin Laden now have a more favorable view of the US
because of American earthquake aid.

-81% said that earthquake relief was important for them in forming their overall opinion of
the United States.

-The United States fared better in Pakistani public opinion than both other Western countries
and radical Islamist groups

-While opinion of the United States itself improved significantly, this did not translate into
increased support for US-led efforts to fight terrorism. Tellingly, those who oppose US
efforts against terrorism grew, from 52% in May to 64% now.

Wow--a lot of interesting data there. For some reason, I feel like taking it all with a grain of salt; am reminded of the old sporting dictum, that coaches/quarterbacks always get too much credit when the team wins, too much blame when the team loses.

Likewise, I never thought most Pakistanis hated the U.S. after our 'response' to 9/11, anymore than I think that $156 million in earthquake relief will make a Pakistani Muslim who hates the U.S. for its decades-long destructive meddling in the governance of his country love us.

And if it did--we shouldn't want that kind of support. Checkbook diplomacy is easy-come, easy-go; simply providing aid isn't what will change hearts and minds, it's getting Pakistanis to understand that the aid stems from values consistent with a compassionate people that will make a difference.

Besides which, does the rah-rah Terror Free Tomorrow group really want to make U.S. foreign aid the foundation of our argument to other nations that they shouldn't hate us? Because if so, they'll have to explain why as a percentage of our economy, U.S. foreign aid ranks near last among developed nations.

So maybe it's the Norwegians whom the Pakistanis really love?

Deep in the heart of Texas

I gotta tell you, in all my years of watching college football, I don't remember ever seeing a performance like Vince Young's in tonight's national championship game, leading #2 Texas to a 41-38 victory over #1, undefeated in 34 games 2-time defending national champ USC.

The numbers--30 of 40 passing for 267 yards, an unbelievable 10 for 200 rushing for 3 TDs, including the game winner on 4th down with 19 seconds left--tell part of the story.

But you had to see it with your own eyes--how he ran through USC tacklers time and time again, even when everyone in the stadium knew he was going to run. How he calmly directed his team from behind time-after-time, eventually outlasting USC's historic offensive juggernaut of a 3,000 yard QB, two 1,000 yard RBs, and two 1,000 WRs. How he just put his team on his shoulders and willed them to victory.

What a game; both teams made eye-popping plays one after the other. In the end Young was just playing on an entirely different level.

Lion in winter

Like many people, I always assumed the first line of Ariel Sharon's obituary would center around his responsibility in the massacre of civilians at a Palestinian refugee camp in 1982; and his deliberately provocative visit to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem that many say was one of the sparks for the Palestinian intifada.

One an act of criminality; the other cynical political calculation of the worst kind.

But in 2001 Israeli voters elected 'Arik' prime minister--and everything changed. It didn't happen all of a sudden, but over the past five years, Sharon, much like Yitzhak Rabin before him, has gone from a tough, brutal general to a statesman.

I count Rabin as one of the great leaders of our time; his 1995 assassination was a tragedy from which the Middle East has only recently begun to recover. Sharon isn't at his level, but his recent pullout from Gaza, and his plans for pullbacks in the West Bank, boded well for his continued development. As did his formation of his own party, freeing him from the Likkud party's historic burden of hawkishness.

And now... it's a Shakespearean tragedy, Israel's two recent great leaders cut down as they appeared on the verge of historic, irreversible change.

But I have faith in Israelis. Surrounded by hostile neighbors, they nevertheless continue to try--there are a lot of things wrong with their policies, but underlying the nation, like ours, is the premium they place on debate. Ideas matter, and can make a difference on the ground.

Israelis keep hoping against hope that their worst fears won't be realized, that they too can one day be a normal nation like any other. They could crush all of their adversaries... but instead, they talk and shout everything out. And their leaders evolve, when blessed with time; even someone who spent his entire career about as right-wing as you can get has the space to change his policies, to open his eyes and shift his entire political philosophy.

Sharon is still fighting for his life Wednesday night; unlikely as it might seem, millions of Palestinians are praying for him tonight, along with their Israeli brothers. But ultimately, it seems like it will be a losing battle, among the few this warrior has failed to win.

Will the torch now pass to Shimon Peres, Israel's perennial bridesmaid? Or will Benjamin Netanyahu surprise us all, like Sharon did once upon a time.

Graphic image from BBC's Israel's Generals documentary.

Slouching toward Gomorrah

Throughout a City, Lessons of the Fall

Dana Milbank in the Washington Post: [Jack] Abramoff had a lunchtime appointment ... at the federal courthouse. There, in black raincoat and fedora, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax offenses that could cost him $25 million and put him behind bars for at a least a decade.

"I just want to say words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for all my actions and mistakes," Abramoff, slouched over the defense table, said quickly and softly into the microphone. "For all of my remaining days, I will feel tremendous sadness and regret for my conduct and for what I have done. I only hope that I can merit forgiveness from the Almighty and from those I have wronged or caused to suffer."

Abramoff cut a wretched figure as he shuffled into the courtroom of Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle. The once-athletic lobbyist was slouching, his newly overweight frame wrapped in a double-breasted suit. His hand shook when he took his oath. After his plea, he closed his eyes and looked as if he were going to cry. He accepted soothing pats on the back from his lawyer. He clasped his hands together and rubbed fingers as if attempting to thumb-wrestle himself. Only the cufflinks and sharp blue tie hinted at the vast wealth and power Abramoff had amassed.

And so, the Gingrich revolution comes to an end.

11 years after their startling takeover of the House, the Republicans have dragged political corruption to new lows. All the lofty rhetoric of Newt et al's Contract with America, and even its concrete achievements, have been laid low by that oldest of all evils, corruption.

In this case, it wasn't power that corrupted; it was engrained arrogance, a the rules don't apply to us and nobody cares anyway attitude that may slide when the good times are rolling but always gets slapped down in the end.

Oh well; happy 2006 Jack Abramoff. We look forward to hearing more from you.

Photo by Gerald Herbert for the Associated Press, via the Washington Post.

Asleep at the gates

Publishers toss Booker winners into the reject pile

The Times of London: They can’t judge a book without its cover. Publishers and agents have rejected two Booker prize-winning novels submitted as works by aspiring authors.

One of the books considered unworthy by the publishing industry was by V S Naipaul, one of Britain’s greatest living writers, who won the Nobel prize for literature.

The exercise by The Sunday Times draws attention to concerns that the industry has become incapable of spotting genuine literary talent.... The rejections for Middleton’s book came from major publishing houses such as Bloomsbury and Time Warner as well as well-known agents such as Christopher Little, who discovered J K Rowling.... Critics say the publishing industry has become obsessed with celebrity authors and “bright marketable young things” at the expense of serious writers.

Wow; and yet, not surprising. I think it's funny how the Times had to detail who Naipaul is.

I've only read Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur, about an overly-educated man in Trinidad-Tobago who makes something of himself. I really enjoyed it, thought it was bitingly funny and conveyed well both TT and, ironically enough, how a little knowledge can go a long way in our undereducated world.

In a lot of areas, it seems there are no standards anymore, and things are no longer properly judged on their merits. Some thoughts on why:

-As big corporations gobble everything up, everything becomes homogenized and safe. Nobody is willing or able to ditch the company line and go with their gut, so we get a bunchof slush pile readers at publishing houses unable to go beyond the vapid and formulaic.

-The standards at all the broadcast networks have slipped so much that we're regularly exposed to unwitting mediocrity--bad writing and illogical stories dominate our comedies, dramas and most damning of all our journalism. Fed tripe, is it any wonder that we're unable to discern pearls?

-It's interesting, I think people in general are more arrogant now. They're pandered to by advertising and personal technology, and everyone belives they're deservedly the man. But when you go strutting around, it's hard to pay attention to--and respect--your surroundings, and learn. Paradoxically, people who deep down know they're hollow have this surface arrogance but lack the real confidence that comes from actual competence.

-In our lowbrow culture, who reads anymore? How many people actually have a liberal education, learning for the sake of learning rather than to make more money? And who has the patience to develop good taste? Much easier to be as crass as popular culture has become, to go with the flow and skim through life.

-Closely linked to all this is how celebrities and the wealthy have hijacked everything around us. Even the gatekeepers get overwhelmed by the tidal wave of spin and hype; awed and bullied by star power and money, they find it easier to say no to a seeming nobody than to a celebrity who comes pushing their latest 'book.'

Things will be okay, though. The Web, like no other medium, both rewards competence and punishes idiot gatekeepers. And it has an insatiable appetite for good content--most of it consisting of the written word.

Even if we're still waiting for www.vsnaipaul.com.

Cover image of V.S. Naipaul's In a Free State via A Novel Idea website.

White mountain, blue sky

This is a photo taken in December of 2005 at Mt. Deokyu in Muju, North Jeolla Province. Snow flowers blossom on the winter trees. Above the snow flowers, the sky seems transparent rather than blue.

Post title, caption and photo by Seo Jong Gyu, from Oh My News International's first "Korea Geographic" slideshow.

Those damn numbers

Surprise -- Europeans Approve of Immigrants, Study Says

New America Media: Editor's Note: The notion that anti-immigrant sentiments are rapidly spreading in Europe due to the massive influx of workers and refugees from Africa and the Middle East may be false, if a new study is to be believed.

Among all Europeans, the French have the most positive view of immigration and minorities. Huge majorities of Germans and Italians would give immigrants, legal and illegal, free access to their health care systems. Americans are the most trusted foreigners in Europe.

These startling findings emerged in a study done by a prestigious Italian university just months before riots in France's suburbs left officials pondering what to do with the country's restive non-white minorities and immigrants.

The Fifth Report on Immigration and Citizenship in Europe was prepared between June and September by the University of Urbino, one of Europe's oldest higher education institutions, and by Fondazione Nord Est, an Italian foundation focusing on social policy, economics and immigration.

"The research results seem to contradict the current debate on immigration in Europe, particularly after the recent events in France," says Ilvo Diamanti, lead investigator for the University of Urbino. "It's even more surprising considering that the lowest degree of anti-immigrant alarm was found in the metropolitan area of Paris."

This study flies in the face of everything I've read and believe about the attitude of Europeans towards immigrants.

I wonder if I drilled down what I'd find in the numbers themselves--the article, after all, says: Italy's urban centers with more than 500,000 residents, less than 30 percent of the population view immigration negatively. In Germany the percentage rises to 32 percent while in France it drops below 13 percent.

That's good news? Only one-third of the population views immigration negatively? What if you took out immigrants themselves from the poll sample?!

I half-want to go look up Gallup polls from the 50s asking white Southerners what they think of blacks, which I think is a comparable era to Europe today when it comes to race relations. My guess is you might have large numbers telling pollsters they think negros are great, they should be treated equally and well--while they went on using firehoses, dogs and bullets on them in the streets. And keeping them out of their country clubs.

Or, alternately, you could have large numbers of Northeners and enlightened Southerners having positive views of negros, while a relatively smaller number of Southerners continue enforcing Jim Crow. But in which case, a headline of U.S. Approves of Negroes headline in the 1950s would need a subhead of U.S. Also OK With Segregation.

Given that, believe it or not, there is a website, Gallup Brain, that allows you to research old polls; it's interesting to compare some numbers:

-2005: 71.7% of French citizens perceive immigration as a positive social and economic phenomenon
-1962: 69% of Americans think Negroes in their community are treated very or fairly well

-2005: 82.1% believe that immigrants who pay taxes should be allowed to vote in local elections
-1965: 76% of Americans would support making sure negroes are allowed to vote in local elections

So it is possible to have seemingly-rosy numbers even while your society at-large is actively repressing a minority group. I wouldn't dismiss the Europe study, but it should be kept in perspective.

On a related note, it's depressing to read through Gallup polls and be reminded of how easily prejudiced most Americans were, even after the civil rights movement forced the country to examine itself:

Question qn27 (The Gallup Poll #658) 5/1/1962-5/1/1962
What do you think are the BEST qualities about the Negroes in the United States? (3664 answered question)
In music (7.34%), In athletics (5.27%), Humble, respect white people, stay in their place (2.32%), Loyal, faithful, dependable (3.66%), Well-behaved, polite, agreeable (3.14%), Kind, gentle (1.09%), Honest, sincere (3.49%), Patient (1.88%), Hard working, want to get ahead (14.98%), Religious, devout in religion (3.63%), Sense of humor - humorous (0.57%), Happy, good natured, pleasant, nice, good (8.68%), Charitable, will help you, compassionate (1.50%), Good servants, cooks (1.15%), Intelligent, quick learners (2.13%), Stick together, help each other (1.42%), Just same as whites, as anybody else (9.14%), Work cheaply; will do dirty, menial work (1.61%), Have to be judged as individuals (6.58%), No good qualities, can't think of any (2.48%), Miscellaneous, others (0.71%), Don't know, no answer (34.74%)

Question qn28 (The Gallup Poll #658) 5/1/1962-5/1/1962

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%)

Given that many of those poll respondents and their peers are still alive, anyone who believe there isn't meaningful racism in America today is whistling past the graveyard.

And anyone who doesn't believe that Europe--which has never gone through the searing yet ultimately cleansing civil rights battles America has seen over the last five decades--isn't even more racist is ignorant. No pain, no gain; Europe has spent its last five decades with its head in the sand, except when it lifts up to lecture America about its "race problem."

But it's important to keep in mind at some point it may not matter what Europeans today think of immigrants. Like the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the facts are on the ground already.

Short of another Holocaust, Europe not only needs but is going to get more of its immigrants; unless white Europeans wanna turn every day into a pitched street battle, they'll eventually come around.

Riots that force the topic into public discourse--and interracial dating!--will see to that.

After all, in 1957 Gallup asked, "Do you think the day will ever come in the South when whites and Negroes will be going to the same schools, eating in the same restaurants, and generally sharing the same public accommodations?"

Yes (54.17%), No (30.12%), Don't Know (13.49%), No Code or No Data (2.22%)

Just six years later, the same question got this response:

Yes (82.62%), No (12.85%), No Opinion (4.53%)

The original Europe report, in Italian, is available via Fondazione Nord Est's website. To view Gallup's polls relating to race, type 'Negro' into the search engine at http://brain.gallup.com (registration required--but worth it!)

Iconic AP File Photo by Bill Hudson taken between May 2 and 3, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama as Police Chief “Bull” Connor used dogs on a crowd of peaceful young people.

King of the hill

Mmmm....

Photo of offerings at Egg Custard Cafe by Tien Mao, from his blog.

Waking up to a new world

The first babies born in New York City in 2006--both at 1 second after midnight--are 'Zahi' Saher and Vicky Tang.

Appropriate for a metropolitan area that's now nearly 40% foreign-born; take into account the kids of immigrants, and it's again a city where the immigrant experience is the norm.

Not that you'd know it from reading most media coverage in the area--where to take just one example the word 'exotic' regularly makes its appearance, always in relation to non-white people and cultures.

Photo by Charles Eckert for Newsday; more cute photos here.

Not gone in 30 seconds

Is it possible that the most powerful communicators in human history have gone from working on epic poetry to plays to novels to movies to :30 second tv commercials?

I feel like I now regularly see commercials that I really like, to the point I'll stick around to watch it (whether it gets me to buy the product is incidental).

I wonder if we're living in some sortof golden age of commercials, the last days of an art form that's being strangled by Tivo and the end of a mass audience.

Here are some of my favorite tv commercials from this year:

-Snickers "Bald': Starts with a bald guy wearing the 'wig' made out of Snickers bars sitting in his car crying while thinking of his day, while Make Your Own Kind of Music by Bobby Sherman plays in the background. It's an odd concept, but it's well-done, from starting the commercial with the guy just sitting there quietly crying to the quaver in his voice when he responds to his office mates. BBDO New York

-Nextel 'Dance Party': Three (diverse!) coworkers are dancing in an office to Salt N' Pepa's Push It when their boss walks and demands some answers. The expressions on the faces of the two dancers and their moves are hilarious, as is the dead-pan look on the guy just sitting there holding the boombox and watching.

-T-Mobile 'Caffeinated Cheerleader': An arena of white-coated scientists study a teen cheerleader as she talks a mile-a-minute on her phone. Her voice is funny and she says these totally real-sounding yet random things, I particularly like the chewwwing gum and whole she was like whatever, I was like whatever part at the end.

I think commercials really started getting better after Nike was able to license the Beatles' Revolution for their AirMax shoe--after that, it was okay for all these reputable musicians to let commercials in the U.S. use their music, which add so much to a commercial's appeal.

(Incidentally, it's interesting that big Hollywood stars never used to do commercials here, only in Japan--as if what happens in Japan, stays in Japan. But as the article mentions, now the Japanese, like other Asians, are starting to prefer their own in commercials... wonder if someday historians will look back on this as one of the early signs of Asia's rise).

Frame grab of Nextel commercial from Adweek.

A good soul, passing through

He Loves New York, and It Loves Him Right Back

The Times: Yuki Endo was just 10 years old when the city first took hold of him. His life in New York might have been a lonely one after his mother moved him here from Japan in early 1996. He was born with a rare chromosome disorder that left him disabled and makes it hard for him to speak clearly.

But in the decade since, the city has nurtured Yuki in small, graceful ways and become his best friend. Through a quirky combination of luck and his own bottomless curiosity, he has formed a kind of extended family out of the firefighters, doormen, security guards, teachers, librarians and shopkeepers he meets on his daily explorations.

He is a landlocked Huckleberry Finn, restlessly caught up with the mystery and minutiae of New York, at least until 7 p.m., when his mother wants him home. He writes poetry about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and memorizes train conductors' announcements. He entertains firefighters by singing to them in their firehouses, unaccompanied by music, because he likes to. His first home is an Upper East Side apartment; his second is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has spent so many afternoons inside the Met that the security guards call out his name when they see him. He tells them what subway lines to avoid because of weekend service changes, which he monitors religiously.

"I want to make sure they won't be late to the museum," explained Yuki, now 20.

This is definitely one of my favorite New York Times articles of 2005. It's got all the hallmarks of what makes the paper great--it's interestingly well-written, it looks at something seemingly small slant, it makes you sad/happy, you appreciate it in different ways depending on whether you live in New York (wow, I never knew) or not (boy, what a city), there's no sense of strings being pulled, you've never seen it anywhere else before, you wonder how the Times found this guy, you forward it to your friends, you find yourself giving it a new headline, you shake your head after reading it and want to go back and read all the back issues of the newspaper you've missed.

And who knows, maybe Endo will one day write for the Times, just as he's written for Wordsmiths: An Anthology of Writing by Teens on the Web.

Don't give up!
When you come to something difficult
Never give up
Just do it or just skip and come back when you have time

Photo of Endo Yuki by Robert Caplin for the New York Times.

When pigs develop wings

You can slap some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

Just because you start calling Christianity 'Intelligent Design' doesn't make it a suitable reference for a science class.

If you read the judge's opinion in the celebrated Dover case (ok, the excerpt that appeared in the Times), all Christians have done is taken the textbooks that have been sitting in the basement since the Supreme Court ruled you can't teach creationism as science, and replaced the word 'creationism' with the phrase 'intelligent design'.

Don't let the weasel phrase ID fool you--just substitute the word Christianity whenever you hear it. None of these textbooks or Christians are saying let's tell kids in a biology class to check out how Muslims believe the world started, when you push kids toward ID textbooks you're pushing Christianity.

The judge's point is there is no such thing as a scientific theory called 'Intelligent Design'.

ID is Christianity... which is a religion. Its precepts depend on faith, not replicable laboratory experiments.

So you can't answer whether a religion is 'good science', as entirely separate fields the standards by which you would judge one doesn't apply to the other. It'd make as much sense to ask whether science is 'good religion.'

That's why you study one in a religion class, the other in a science class.

I actually have no problem if someone wants the Bible to inform their science class, to inform their economics class, to inform their math class. That's what Catholic schools do.

I obviously have a problem when it's my taxpayer dollars in a public school that's going to evangelize for Christianity.

Let's be clear: To require teachers to tell kids in a science classroom to check out a textbook on ID for an alternate to Darwin is to force public school teachers to evangelize for Christianity.

To suggest ID as an alternate to Darwin is like suggesting loaves and fishes as an alternative to Adam Smith in an economics class.

It's a silly game to say jeez, evolution used to be thought wrong, just like people are saying I.D. is wrong; so let's expose kids to both and see what turns out to be right. There are lots of theories that people think are wrong--we don't teach any of them in a science class.

The whole point of developing a school curriculum is not to say this is everything that anyone thinks about anything. From a logistics and standpoint, schools teach what the most expert current view of each subject matter is--if there is strong debate, then you teach what the most current views are.

There is no debate in this case. 99.9% of biologists think Darwin is the explanation for how life as we know it came to be. Sure, the .1% of biologists who believe Christianity explains life could be right--just like the .1% of scientists who believe horoscopes foretell the future could be right. If we open the door to Christianity in science classes, it would only be fair to teach horoscopes too.

The judge's point is Christianity's proper place in a public school is among its peers in a religion class, not shoulder to shoulder with Darwin in a science class.

Gary Larson's "Great moments in evolution" cartoon from Oxford's Astrophysics department website.

Race runs through it

I was skeptical at first, reading Jimmy Breslin's take on the New York transit strike, Race underlies transit strike.

But, as usual, Jimmy was right.

A day later, we read in the Times: Race Bubbles to the Surface in Standoff

The standoff between the Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, tense and perilous, was already taking a harsh physical and economic toll on New Yorkers.

But now, as representatives of a mostly nonwhite work force trade recriminations publicly with white leaders in government and at the transportation authority, the potentially volatile issue of race, with all its emotional consequences, is bubbling to the surface.

The examples are both blatant and subtle, some open to interpretation, some openly hostile. Regarding the latter sort, the union - representing workers who are largely minority - shut down a Web log where the public could comment on the strike after it became so clogged with messages comparing the workers to monkeys and calling them "you people." (Seventy percent of the employees of New York City Transit are black, Latino or Asian-American.)

And what may have begun inadvertently, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Tuesday that union leaders had "thuggishly turned their backs on New York City," took on a life of its own yesterday as minority leaders and union members attacked the mayor's conduct as objectionable, or worse. "There has been some offensive and insulting language used," said Roger Toussaint, the union leader. "This is regrettable and it is certainly unbecoming for the mayor of the city of New York to be using this type of language."

But others were more extreme in their response. Leroy Bright, 56, a black bus operator who is also a union organizer, saw racial coding in Mr. Bloomberg's choice of words. "The word thug is usually attributed to people of color whenever something negative takes place," he said, adding that the language was "unnecessarily hostile."

...

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who called an evening news conference to blast Mr. Bloomberg, said in an interview: "How did we become thugs? Because we strike over a pension?"

...

Ed Skyler, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, dismissed those comments, saying, "It's despicable for anyone to inject race into this situation.".

Inject race into the situation? It's already there, Ed. Like most white Americans, Ed seems to think racism only exists when a white guy says it does.

It's bad enough the MTA and Mayor Bloomberg are using the kind of language that usually precedes the Bush administration sending troops to take out some foreign leader. But to then turn around and tell us it's just rain you're feeling?

Come on--people feel what they feel, you can say that's not what was meant, but you can't say you aren't allowed to feel that way.

Unfortunately, I think it's indicative of the way the city is treating the Transit Workers Union, almost as chattel. Listen carefully to the language that's being used--there's a tone of how dare you, if you know what's good for you boy, you'll take what we give you, say thank you, and go back to work.

But the people of New York--a city that is rapidly approaching majority minority status--feel through it and still support the workers. Those who can afford the strike least, those who don't have the money for cab rides and trade hours waiting in the cold for the chance to get to work, are the ones who are telling the workers to fight the fight, brother.

Tell the MTA that when they announce a $1 billion surplus and blow it all on 'holiday farecards' to try and buy the public's support right before they sit down at the table and tell the union to tighten their belts, it's insulting at best, downright despicable at worst.

Tell blue-stockinged MTA Chair Peter Kalikow when he deigns to come down from their Park Avenue offices only an hour before the deadline to negotiate, they shouldn't be surprised if talks go nowhere.

And keep up the fight for benefits that allow blue collar workers to live a middle class existence in New York City.

Photo of Transit Workers Union president Roger Touissant by Stephen Chernin/ Getty Images.

Woman of mass destruction II?

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

New York Times: Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

It's an absolutely astonishing article, and it's already showing once again the impact of an unfettered Times. As the Washington Post noted in its article on the Senate's rebuke to Bush on the Patriot Act,

In today's Senate debate, several lawmakers cited a New York Times report disclosing that Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying.

The vote was essentially 53-46 to cut off debate; Republicans needed just 7 mores votes to prevail, how many of these were swayed by the Times piece to not change their vote?

But a few paragraphs in the article is this disclosure:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

A year! The article is about twice the length of normal Times pieces, and obviously touches upon a sensitive subject. But the Times should disclose how much of it was established by the year's worth of extra reporting--a time period during which perhaps thousands of Americans were spyed upon via quite possibly illegal means.

This was not coincidentally a time period during which the Times was preoccupied with its own Judy Miller. As the New Yorker's media critic Ken Auletta noted in an online interview and a lengthy profile of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Judy's self-inflicted saga colored everything in the newsroom, and was close to the heart and constantly on the mind of the publisher.

Was the Times constrained by its concern for Miller? Was it not as aggressive pursuing a sensitive investigation of the administration at a time when one of its reporters was languishing in jail, a confinement that was directly tied to the paper's relationship with the administration? Were people at the Times a little gunshy over Judy's high-profile investigative screw-up?

Because it doesn't seem like taking a year to do 'additional reporting' matches the urgency of the subject matter. This was--and is--an ongoing rank violation of all that this country holds dear. The Times obviously needed to get it right; but I'd rather have a shorter article as soon as possible that gets this out in the open, than something that's been getting worked over for a year. Journalists need to be responsible, but I trust the Times reporters who had an article ready to go a year ago.

Maybe, like Bill Clinton being held hostage in his second term by Monica Lewinsky, internal Times management was hobbled by Judy Miller for the past year--the Auletta piece certainly shows she took up an inordinate amount of the time and energy of the paper's top brass.

If her situation even partially contributed to a delay in publishing this article, it's not just the Times that's suffered from Miss Run Amok, it's possibly thousands of Americans.

Maybe we can get Maureen Dowd to do some digging.

Postscript: President Bush said at a news conference on Monday: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is discussing the enemy."

Is he kidding?

Lions, witches and wardrobes--oh my!

Disney's take on the classic C.S. Lewis work The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe isn't bad, actually. It's not that good--but the special effects, cinematography, and above all Lucy's character as played by newcomer Georgie Henley will keep your interest.

The problems with the film have less to do with Disney, and more to do with two factors beyond its immediate control: the books themselves, and our society today.

First and foremost, the Narnia series consists of seven uneven books. The LWW, although the first written (in 1950) actually comes second in Narnia time, The Magician's Nephew (1955) being a prequel that explains how Narnia and the wardrobe came to be created.

I probably liked MN the best, and LWW second, but all the books suffer from the unfortunate fact the Lewis was a clunky writer and often winds up 'cheating' by just inserting or asserting things.

Rereading them last year, I was struck at how limited Lewis seemed. The writing was often flat, sentences didn't flow, tart asides seemed the work of a cranky old man, and the story just didn't seem all that compelling.

It's tricky writing fantasy, even trickier when you take on the constraint of writing it for children. You need to create a believable, rich world populated with interesting characters tied together by an imaginative plot wrapped up with interior logic. So when John Doe does thing Z or says statement Y, it flows and seems inevitable, so that you don't see the strings dangling at the behest of the author's wand.

The master of this was Tolkien; anyone who's read the Hobbit/Fellowship books can't wait to reread them and yet is always wistful about not being able to rediscover them for the first time each time. Lewis is no Tolkien; Narnia is to Middle Earth as Aesop is to the Bible.

In my opinion Lewis is not even a Philip Pullman, whose His Dark Materials trilogy (the first book of which is the only children's book to ever win the prestigious British Whitbread Prize, placing Pullman in the company of Ted Hughes and Kazuo Ishiguro) is referred to by some as the anti-Narnia.

Maybe I'm expecting too much out of Lewis--after all, I remember being delighted with Narnia the first time I read through the series as a kid. It could be the books just aren't for adults.

Certainly the racism and sexism aren't for (most) adults. Don't get me wrong--I like Lewis as an author; Out of the Silent Planet is quite interesting, Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity are thought-provoking, and I'm definitely giving my kids Narnia.

But the racism is in the books like the N-word is in Huck Finn. Read the series and you'll find yourself cringing time and again. Lewis, after all, is a product of his times (and religion). I'd typify his as quietly seeping racism and sexism. It doesn't rush out at you and Lewis probably wasn't conscious of it, but it's always there, like the old man on the porch who good-naturedly tries to pat the head of his "Oriental" neighbor's kids while praising their work ethic.

The Horse and His Boy in particular really plays up the white people are the natural leaders over the swarthy masses aspect, but it's a foundational theme of every book.

The racism leaps out at you in a visual manner in the Disney film--four white children fall into a world and instantly are accepted as the natural leaders (think for a moment--if four black kids took over running a war with no previous training, don't you think the audience would've groaned a little at such PC-filmmaking?!), battling a White Queen (read race traitor) with her general (big black bull) leading an army of mostly swarthy and non-white foes (there's even a fleeting scene in the movie with evil Chinese-looking archers).

It'd be odd, actually, if Lewis were anything but racist and imperial--everything in Narnia is discernably from his post-WWII British perspective, when having been devastated and reeling from the loss of their sun-never-sets empire English authors churned out fantasy like never before, all emphasizing plucky yet cool white characters coming into their natural due after trials and tribulations against the forces of darkness. Ah, the poor British, rarely in the course of human events have so many lost so much so quickly!

But bad as the racism is, the sexism is what really rankles. Few people, after all, are holding up Narnia as a paragon for relations between whites and non-whites; but people are pushing it onto little girls everywhere hoping they'll model Lucy and Susan (wonder what they'd think of Polly or Aravis or Jill....)

Yet rereading the series as an adult, I thought Lewis definitely sexist, if not misogynistic. Philip Pullman wrote a much-celebrated (but short) essay that mentions this.

Most obvious is the White Queen as the serpent cum Eve cum women, a trope that appears literally in the Magician's Nephew but is always there elsewhere. Part of her sin is she dares usurp the natural order of things, trying to take over in a world where she does not belong after having literally destroyed her own world.

Thematically and literally, in the end Lewis' women are all subordinate to his male characters. The ultimate authority is always male, and there are many scenes in his series where the male character--Aslan, Peter, and others--is paid homage to in a way that emphasizes their manliness.

In the movie, for example, Peter forces Edmund to wear a girl's coat at one point, during the period in which Peter's asserting who's in charge. (Incidentally, how odd is it that the children spend much of their time in Narnia wearing fur coats while talking to beavers and other animals)

Lucy is the pluckiest of Lewis' females, but it's important to realize she's a young girl and hence not for real. She doesn't count ultimately, and indeed it's been suggested Lewis liked his women to stay child-like.

While Susan, who is womanly and could be on an equal footing with Peter, is consistently portrayed as shrewish and at the end of the series is singled out for punishment.

Like the Christian church, ultimately Lewis's women are all under the male's rule like children/parents, and submit to the natural authority of the male. Again, he was merely a product of his times--I'm not condemning him or saying not to read him. Let's just not close our eyes (or misread) and hold him up as some visionary.

Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker touches on some of these points about the underlying power dynamics of Narnia; he brings up another interesting point that gets at how Narnia isn't really a shill for Christianity, unless you're Christian the way Jerry Falwell is:

Yet a central point of the Gospel story is that Jesus is not the lion of the faith but the lamb of God, while his other symbolic animal is, specifically, the lowly and bedraggled donkey. The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side.

If we had, say, a donkey, a seemingly uninspiring animal from an obscure corner of Narnia, raised as an uncouth and low-caste beast of burden, rallying the mice and rats and weasels and vultures and all the other unclean animals, and then being killed by the lions in as humiliating a manner as possible—a donkey who reëmerges, to the shock even of his disciples and devotees, as the king of all creation—now, that would be a Christian allegory.

A powerful lion, starting life at the top of the food chain, adored by all his subjects and filled with temporal power, killed by a despised evil witch for his power and then reborn to rule, is a Mithraic, not a Christian, myth.

Whatever happened to the meekness and not lording it over others that seems so much a part of Jesus's teachings?!

Like the lion vs. the donkey, given the priviledged position white Christian males occupy in our society it's difficult to buy into the right's view of a religion under siege. And it's even harder to believe Jesus, were he to reappear, would gather Christians as his bretheren. Christ was always for the powerless--camel/needle's eye is the heart of his teachings; he'd be apalled by Falwell and his ilk, no matter how many times they whisper his name at night.

Gopnick's article also discusses how Lewis came to Christianity as simply the culmination of his lifetime interest in myth. It's an important point, because evangelicals are trying to reinvent Narnia as Christian allegory, much as they've tried to recast the Constitution as a Christian document (somewhere the founding fathers are rolling their eyes in their graves).

And indeed it seems to me the poor misreading of literature that Marxist scholars pushed in the 70s has given way to the poverty of evangelicals trying to suck the marrow out of every act of creation by anyone who happens to be a Christian.

Did C.S. Lewis Create Narnia as an Allegory? has an interesting take on this; I would add that to see Narnia, or Tolkien's works, as Christian allegory is to demean and sadly miss the entire point of what they believed and created.

Drafting it as allegory means you're saying the true heart of the work is in what it says about Christianity. But both authors strongly believed creating a world for its own sake was their highest purpose, and would be horrified and saddened by those who parsed their works, sifting out 'mere story elements' while looking for the Christian bits.

In Lewis' case especially, he wrote Narnia as children's stories--they were informed by his experience as a Christian, but in a way perhaps unimaginable to evangelical Christians today, the relationship of an Anglican and his faith was comparable to the relationship of a veteran to the war in which he fought.

It's a major, perhaps the major, experience in shaping who you are and what you believe and will permeate what you write. But it is still an experience mediated by you the person. It is not all-pervading, it is not your soul--otherwise, you suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome... or pre-rapture stress syndrome.

For both Lewis and Tolkien WWI and WWII, their love of mythology, and the effects of academia were as important in shaping their writing as their Christian background. You may as well read Narnia as a WWII allegory (well, the White Queen is a Nazi, Aslan the Americans...), which would likewise sap some of its life away and serve as blinkers on your understanding of the work.

It's not surprising to me that evangelical Christians are trying to claim Narnia for their own. It's just another dying gasp of this most-fearful segment of society, along with the putting the Christ back in Christmas hoopla, the puffing of Mel Gibson's wretched and anti-Semitic Passion, claiming credit for Bush's re-election, and pretending that Christianity is under siege.

It's not surprising that Lewis's mild racism and sexism feels familiar to the religious right, acquainted as it is with much uglier manifestations of two sins that apparently were left off their God's tablets.

But you know, Narnia is no Earth, and England circa WWII is not America today. Those days are over.

Frame grab from Disney's Narnia from unidentified website.

Not black and white

There's a lot being made of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the Blood and Crips gang who by the time you read this will have been executed in California after his last-minute bids for clemency were turned down by Governor Schwarzenegger and then by the Supreme Court.

I had no real opinion on this case--oddly enough the latest cause celebre of a bunch of Hollywood stars doesn't stir me much--until I saw this headline: Chinese Voices Absent in Tookie Verdict.

Hmmm, odd. At first I thought the article was about how every group in California seems to have an opinion one way or another about Tookie, but Chinese Americans, true to their don't rock the boat nature, were just going about their daily business.

And the article is sort of about that. It's weird; in all the coverage I've read about this case, I'd just assumed the victims were members of other gangs--I'd seen nothing that led me to think otherwise.

But....

Williams was convicted for the slaying of Yen-I Yang, his wife Tsai-Shai Yang, and daughter Yee-Chen Lin during a robbery at the hotel that the family owned in Los Angeles.

Hmmm. The article continues:

According to a Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily report on Dec 11, Yen-I Yang, a former middle school English teacher, immigrated from Taiwan to the United States in 1970 after he retired. The Yangs invested their money in a motel in south Los Angeles called Brookhaven. Mr. Chen, a friend of the Yang family, told the Sing Tao Daily that customers at the motel only stayed for one or two hours at a time, creating a quick flow of clients and a large cash reserve that attracted robbers.

On the morning of March 11, 1979, Williams allegedly broke down the door into the motel, shooting Tsai-Shai Yang, who was sitting at the front desk. Williams then shot and killed Yen-I Yang, who was sitting on a couch nearby and his daughter, Lin, who came into the room. Williams then took $100 from the cash register and fled. Yang’s son, Robert Yang, was in an adjacent room, heard the commotion and found his father, mother, and sister, who were all shot at close range.

Chen, who had been with Robert Yang after the murder, said that Robert Yang found his sister shot in the face and his father shot in the abdomen, his organs exposed. Chen said that it was a sight that still haunts Robert Yang. Although many groups, including celebrities, have come out in support of Williams, Chen said that court documents showed Williams bragged about the murders to friends, saying that he “blew away three Buddhaheads.” When he heard about the support for Williams’s clemency, his first reaction was, “Mr. Yang and his family are truly unfortunate.”

There's a lot more in the article about the Chinese-American community's reasons for staying silent, but that's grist for another day's post on how different immigrant groups define being American.

I now have an opinion on Tookie Williams: I don't give a damn what happens to him.

I generally don't support the death penalty, for the usual myriad of reasons. On those grounds, I think Tookie should rot in jail for the rest of his life.

But to hear his supporters, keeping this murderer in jail not only is the worst form of injustice, but as an apology from society he should also get the Nobel Peace Prize upon release.

Oh? I've seen no evidence this man is innocent of the crime he's imprisoned for. You can lead a model life after you're sent to prison, but let's not demean the memory of the victims by lying about the person responsible for the heinous crime that ended their lives.

No matter how much good you do or change you undergo, there are some things so horrific that they cannot be forgiven no matter what. I'd say the cold-blooded murders of four people falls in that category, especially if you never apologize or show any sort of remorse.

Telling others not to kill carries with it an arrogant holier-than-thou feel when you don't begin the conversation by saying I should know, I killed myself.

Governor Schwarzenegger's statement turning down clemency had this interesting detail:

After Williams was arrested for these crimes, and while he was awaiting trial, he conspired to escape from custody by blowing up a jail transportation bus and killing the deputies guarding the bus. There are detailed escape plans in Williams’ own handwriting. Williams never executed this plan, but his co-conspirator implicated Williams in the scheme. The fact that Williams conspired to murder several others to effectuate his escape from jail while awaiting his murder trial isconsistent with guilt, not innocence.

It's also telling that the L.A. Times article says:

Despite persistent pleas for mercy from around the globe, the governor said Williams was unworthy of clemency because he had not admitted his brutal shotgun murders of four people during two robberies 26 years ago.

Clemency, I'd think, starts at home, from the heart of the man requesting it, and requires honesty above all--it cannot be gainsayed by lobbyists on your behalf.

Tookie maintains he's innocent, so I can see how it'd be hard for him to ask forgiveness for his crime. But as far as I can tell he's playing us for a fool when this co-founder of the Crips says he didn't kill these people. I have no problem with others arguing otherwise, but I'd say you better be damn sure about his innocence, and devote your energy to first establishing that case above all, before you go parading in the streets and let loose cries of racism.

It's bizarre that the L.A. Times, in its lengthy article, leads with the case's "racial overtones and compelling theme" yet does not once mention the ethnicity of his victims, nor his racist braggadocio. Any coverage of racial overtones has been dominated by African-American voices--whether that of Williams, or his celebrity and political supporters, or as on ABC's Nightline tonight the voices of family members who lost loved ones to gangs. [The African-American community, like any other group of Americans, isn't of one mind about Tookie--many of them know all too well about Tookie's legacy, in the form of the Crips gang.]

It's troubling to me that the racial overtone of the deaths of three Asian Americans is not part of the discussion around the Tookie case (everything else seems to be). I can't imagine what it was like in 1979, where maybe a generation of Americans who went through Vietnam were desensitized to the point that killing Asians abroad and Asian Americans at home seemed somewhat no big deal.

But I know that at this moment in New York, the New York Times can write about a spate of Chinese deliverymen murders:

The authorities say that two 16-year-old boys decided to set up the deliveryman, that they stabbed him and beat him with a baseball bat for fear that he could identify them, that they wheeled his body out in a shopping cart before shoving it into his car, that they dumped his body in a pond about three miles away and that from this endeavor they realized about $50.

The boys were charged with murder, and the news media briefly revisited one of this city's continuing narratives, the victimizing of Asian food deliverymen. John C. Liu, a city councilman from Queens, who is Asian-American, called for a one-day moratorium on such deliveries, and suggested that while picking up their food, customers get to know the people on the counter's other side.

People needed to be reminded "that there are human lives and human faces behind the preparation and delivery of their food," Mr. Liu said this week. The reminder was necessary, he added, because he detects a racist component to the beating and killing of deliverymen - men like Mr. Chen.

"It's as though we're not American," Mr. Liu said, his voice rising in anger. "We're not human, even. We're not real people."

I think the fact that none of Tookie's victims were white, and specifically, that three of them were Asian American, is what allows this debate to exist.

I think most people would agree there is no way if Tookie killed four white people he'd have lived this long--he'd have been strung up, or executed by the state, long ago, and there would be no room made for any other view.

If all his victims were black, I don't think you'd see Hollywood's brightest out there excusing black-on-black crime.

But because three of his victims were Asian Americans, and it's easy for our society to see Asian Americans as part of the furniture, and the Asian American community seems to be sitting this one out, there was a vacuum created.

And into this vacuum rushed a lot of no doubt well-meaning people, but ones with their own agenda, an agenda that is served by the invisibility of his victims (just try finding a photo of any of the three dead Asian Americans).

In some ways I feel bad for Stanley Williams. We're all in part the product of our environment--he must have had a pretty bad upbringing to turn out the way he did.

But let's not lose sight of personal responsibility, and the importance of truth. You can dress it up six ways to sundown, but a man who murdered four people in cold blood, tried to murder his way out before his trial, and refuses to admit to any of it, has forefeit his right to complain about how society decides to deal with him.

Of his own choice, he's laid his neck down on the chopping block, and shouldn't be surprised if the executioner's axe comes down. It's a choice his victims never had.

If you have the stomach for it, photos of what Tookie did to his victims are at this site.

A museum grows in Manhattan

So I have a traditional list of the best museums I've been to:
-British Museum in London, gives you a good sense of all the things this little island nation has done, both positive--spectacular reading room--and negative--stolen, poorly-displayed Elgin Marbles.

-Imperial War Museum in London, possibly the protypical only-the-British museum--only people with an almost pathological sense of superiority could spend their free time cheerily visiting a recreated WWI trench, sitting through a simulated a WWII blitz, and climbing over a dowdy British-made Mark V tank in order to snap photos of an immense German Panzer.

-Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, a brand-new, huge collection smack in the middle of downtown that somehows smacks of authenticity.

-National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, it's essentially thousands of years of China's cultural treasures, stolen away just ahead of the Communist's victory--unbelievably, the intricately carved ivory and beautiful jade jewelry all survived the long trip unscathed.

-Freer and Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., a world-class Asian art collection coupled with unparalleled arts and cultural programming, staffed by some of the nicest people around.

-Noguchi Museum of New York, dedicated to sculptures and other works of Isamu Noguchi, a Japanese American who seemingly existed out of time.

-The Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth is worth going to just for its Louis Kahn-designed building (fitting that it's the most prominent photo on the website).

-The Terra Museum in Chicago is my favorite small museum--it's tucked into a modest building right along the Magnificent Mile's shops, and is a wonderfully calm place to find some unexpected gems.

-The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the best museum I've ever gone to.

So now I've got to add a 10th museum to the list: The Rubin Museum of Art, dedicated to the art of the Himalayas.

It's located in Chelsea, near Loehmann's, in a building that was the original Barneys department store. Two of the amazingly friendly and knowledgeable gallery guides told us Donald Rubin, the museum's founder along with his wife Shelley, was looking for a site to open his museum in, happened along, went in, liked the building, and bought it.

It's that kind of a place--the collection is essentially whatever caught the Shelleys' eyes, the descriptions on the walls are refreshingly straightforward (WHAT is Himalayan art; WHERE does it come from; WHY does it look this way; HOW is it made), the staff walks around and talks to you, the space is airy and simply-designed, and there's even an area where you can write and submit your own exhibit captions.

And because the museum, organized around its geographic idea, is inherently multi-cultural and multi-media, you leave feeling as if you've really gotten a thorough education about the art of the region and the cultural and religious beliefs of its Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and Bon adherents.

Bon? Even one of the Rubin curators said she'd never heard of this faith before coming to the museum. It seems to have hundreds of thousands of practioners today, mainly living in Tibet--but its roots may stretch back thousands--5,000?!--years, and who knows, like Sanskrit gave birth to many of the world's languages, maybe Bon is one of our uber-faiths.

The Bon Foundation says:

The ancient roots of Bon religion derive from a profound respect for nature and emphasize the healing of physical and environmental as well as spiritual afflictions.

As Indian Buddhism was being established in Tibet, many native Bon elements were incorporated into the incoming religion, resulting in a distinct religion known today as Tibetan Buddhism.

In turn, Buddhist influences are abundantly evident in Bon religion as it currently exists. The two religions are distinct in many ways but share a strong and identical commitment to bringing an end to all suffering.

Although they trace their origins to ancient times, Bonpo practice a living doctrine dedicated to perpetuating the teachings of their founder Tonpa Shenrab, who occupies a preeminent position in Bon culture similar to that of Sakyamuni in Buddhism. Tonpa Shenrab's teachings are collectively known as Yungdrung Bon or the "tradition of Eternal Wisdom" and include the Nine Ways of Bon that outline the laws of cause and effect on the path to spiritual liberation.

Image from Rubin's 'The Demonic Divine in the Himalayan Art' exhibit.