There's an interesting profile of Condé Nast's Si Newhouse by Richard Perez-Pena in the Times that reminds you at its best journalism is all about giving you entree into worlds and people you otherwise would not encounter, to your loss.
Mr. Newhouse goes to work daily in chinos and an old sweatshirt — a small, quiet grandfather, a man of plain looks, heading an empire that revolves around images of beauty and youth. Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue, refers, laughingly, to “his unique sense of style.” ...
“He runs his business more like an old-fashioned proprietor, according to his interests, his tastes, like Henry Luce or Hearst did,” says Reed Phillips III, managing partner of DeSilva+Phillips, an investment banking boutique.
When asked what motivates Mr. Newhouse, people who know him rarely mention power or money. They talk about his devotion to his work, his penchant for arriving at the office before dawn, his intense interest in design details and his curiosity about Hollywood, politics and art.
In discussing people or things, “Si uses the word ‘attractive’ the way other people might use the word ‘spiritual,’ ” says a former senior executive who requested anonymity because he didn’t want Mr. Newhouse to consider him disloyal. “It means to him a sort of roundedness and depth.” ...
His greatest passion is movies — the only topic besides his magazines, his colleagues say, that can make him almost chatty. He recently sent a DVD of the film noir classic “D.O.A.” to some of his editors, eager to discuss it afterward. Graydon Carter, editor in chief of Vanity Fair, says his annual Hollywood issue was the chairman’s idea.
Mr. Newhouse follows politics but, unlike so many media moguls, has no interest in having a political voice. In fact, people who have worked closely with him for years say they have no real idea what his political views are.
He is so shy that several years ago, when the company opened its Frank Gehry-designed cafeteria, a chic forest of undulating glass and titanium panels, he initially wandered about with his lunch tray, reluctant to impose on other diners — or, some employees speculated, he was just unwilling to endure small talk. After a while, it was decided that the table to the right of the registers would henceforth be his.
I think unless Hillary Clinton blows out Barack Obama in Super Tuesday's delegate race, Obama will have a clear path to the Democratic nomination.
With 22 states voting Tuesday, there are a bunch of voters who will be casting their ballots without any real exposure to the candidates; in such cases, name recognition--and plain old inertia--will help Clinton a lot.
In order of definitiveness, I think Obama will win Illinois, Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota and Georgia for sure--the Times reports Clinton's not even advertising in any of these states.
I think Clinton will win New York (home state), New Jersey (near-home state), Arkansas (home state), and Tennessee (big lead in polls) for sure.
I think Obama will win a lot of states that are currently either tied, or leaning Clinton: Connecticut (late endorsements will help), Alabama (African Americans), Idaho (see below), Kansas (mom's home state plus governor's endorsement), and Massachusetts (Clinton's had a big lead, but I think Kennedy endorsement will be enough).
I think Clinton will win Arizona (older voters, Latinos), Missouri (it's a weird state, she's been up in all the polls), and Oklahoma (no diversity).
I have no opinion on Delaware, New Mexico, North Dakota, or Utah--haven't seen any data, not sure which way they'll go.
I'm also not sure about California, which is obviously the most important Super Tuesday contest; you could argue the winner of this primary is the front-runner the rest of the way.
The L.A. Times endorsement and Oprah will help Obama, but Clinton had a big lead, and the Latino voters of course. It all depends on what happens the next few days; I think it'll be that close.
But after Tuesday, the electoral calendar opens up. Contests are well-spaced, with plenty of time for the candidates to concentrate on states and for voters to really listen to Obama and Clinton.
Here's the first part of the calendar, and my predictions (I'm struck at how Obama-friendly this list is):
-Saturday, 2/9: Washington/Obama (progressive, young, liberal state), Louisiana/Obama (African-American voters), Nebraska/Obama (His mom's from Kansas)
-Sunday, 2/10: Maine/No opinion
-Tuesday, 2/12: DC/Obama, Virginia/Obama, Maryland/Obama (African-American vote, progressive young voters)
-Tuesday, 2/19: Wisconsin/Obama (progressive young voters), Hawaii (home state)
After that, there's two weeks (!) until Texas and Ohio vote (along with Rhode Island and Vermont).
You give Obama two full weeks to concentrate on a state, and you get a 20% margin of victory like in South Carolina.
Hillary's only hope is some sort of momentum post-Super Tuesday, adn the Latino-vote thing. On the latter, it's a weird for her camp to hang its strategy on--it's not like there's any strong reason for Latino's to support the Clintons. It's more a level of discomfort with an African-American politician, but that's something which is likely to dissipate with time and exposure.
I think the calendar and the dwindling Latino thing is what all the veteran politicians, editorial boards, and unions who have started to endorse Obama are looking at.
Politicians and journalists and union leaders are people too; so it could just be everyone's seeing the merits of Obama's message, tapping into the mix of intellect and emotion that the giant crowds at all his events feel.
But these professional operatives didn't get where they are just by riding emotion. They're taking a cold, hard look at the remaining states, and realizing that if Clinton doesn't knock him out Tuesday, the rest of the race plays to Obama's strengths.
Who knows--maybe Obama will even win a majority of delegates on Tuesday, even without the giants of NY/NJ/CA. In which case it'll definitely be curtains for Clinton.
Even Barack Obama was surprised by the Idaho crowd.
“They told me there weren’t any Democrats in Idaho — that’s what they told me,” he said. “But I didn’t believe them.”
About 13,000 Idahoans crammed Taco Bell Arena to see and hear the Democratic presidential candidate this morning — and organizers said many more people were turned away at the door.
“I can’t believe it — can you believe it?” Obama said. “It’s unbelievable. … What a remarkable crowd.” ...
Marsha Meredith, who recently moved to Idaho from California, was visibly moved.
"There are tears in my eyes," she said. "I've been waiting so many years for this. I haven't been involved in politics before, but everything he said about teachers, about schools, about the economy — look at me, I'm crying."
Earlier, former Gov. Cecil Andrus introduced “the man I think should be and will be the next president of the United States.”
“I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen a lot of political candidates come and go,” Andrus said. But he said that not since John F. Kennedy had he seen someone with the ability to “bring together, to excite and to inspire the people of America like Barack Obama."
"He is the custodian of the hope and the dream of millions and millions of Americans.”
Really, his campaign just needs to buy air time to run clips from his speeches....
Just look at what's going on with Obama's Yes We Can music video that's just been released--the YouTube clip I watched had 311 views--with 100 comments, 267 favorited, and 385 ratings (4 stars).
I've never seen that before--it's pretty amazing that 1 out of every 3 person who watched it made a comment, and that almost everyone made it a favorite. Maybe almost as startling as seeing long YouTube clips of Obama's speeches hitting a million views.
In further testimony to Obama's YouTube popularity, it cracks me up that famous YouTube clips that have nothing to do with Obama--like Britney Fan Crying, and Laughing Baby--throw Obama's name into their keywords.
The music video's below; it's pretty effective. Watch it back-to-back with his actual South Carolina speech; the brilliant anti-Clinton/1984 Apple ad; and, of course, a couple of the Obama Girl vids.
The always-interesting Times magazine had a memorable piece last Sunday on Anna Netrebko, the incandescent--to quote the Metropolitant Opera's website--Russian star who it calls A New Kind of Diva.
She strikes me as the kind of person you find in all kinds of fields, people who are driven to succeed by their force of personality, and who are often smarter than people think.
Some telling details from Charles McGrath's piece:
Anna Netrebko is a gifted opera singer who at 36 has already mastered many of the roles — Mimi, Violetta, Lucia, Manon — that used to go to the queenly, temperamental sopranos of the old school, with their furs, their atomizers, their entourages. She is also a media-savvy entertainer from the new school, with the knockout looks, the fans, the celebrity of a pop star. Her “Traviata” at Salzburg two years ago was such a hot ticket that scalpers were reportedly charging $7,000 a seat, and her records regularly top the charts in Europe. In the summer of 2006 she was part of a concert in Berlin that filled a stadium.
Netrebko, whose appearance at the Metropolitan Opera on Dec. 15 in Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” will be broadcast live in movie theaters around the world, has a captivating voice that is both high and deep, lustrous and velvety, and she is one of that growing breed of opera singers who can actually act. She is sometimes compared with Natalie Dessay, the French singer whose face has been on posters all over New York this fall, advertising her mad scene in the Met’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” and who may in fact be technically superior. But Netrebko is the larger presence. She has an earthiness and impishness — a daredeviltry — that may prevent her from ever attaining the kind of rarefied, disembodied sainthood that has been awarded, for example, to the American sopranos Renée Fleming and Dawn Upshaw but that also makes her more fun to watch. ...
It is not true, for example, that she had an affair with Robbie Williams and bore his love child. On the other hand, the reports that she loves to party and to shop and can swear like a trooper in five or six languages are probably not inaccurate.
Netrebko is more of a homebody than she is sometimes given credit for. She spent her 36th birthday, in September, in her apartment in New York cooking dinner for her publicist and his girlfriend. But she is also a serious clotheshorse. In August, when I had lunch with her in Vienna, where she also has an apartment, she turned up wearing purple pumps (which matched her eye shadow), a bright orange duster and the shortest miniskirt I’ve seen anywhere except on Carnaby Street in 1969. The face of her wristwatch was encrusted with what must have been diamonds, because you’d be embarrassed to have rhinestones that big.
“I’m so fat,” she said as she sat down. She explained that she had just come back from a few days’ rest in Italy. “My crazy friends,” she said, “They don’t think about nothing but food, food, food.” (Netrebko, who is a very quick study when it comes to languages, used to speak English with a noticeable Russian accent, but it’s almost gone now, her Russianness apparent only in certain vowels and infrequent lapses into Russian syntax.) ...
Netrebko, for her part, is looking forward to the 2012 production of “Manon.” This is an opera she loves (with reason, her detractors say: it’s about a materialistic airhead), and she delighted in a production that Vincent Paterson created for her in Los Angeles. It was set in Paris in the 1950s and showed Manon evolving from a Leslie Caron character to one modeled on Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. In one scene she even did a pole dance. “This production was so good,” she said, “because it understands that ‘Manon’ is not a deep story. She’s not a deep character. So it has to be funny, silly, charming, erotical — not dark. She’s not evil. She’s like, I screw up my life, but, well, too bad!” ...
“Look, I am normal,” Netrebko told me last summer. “Normal, normal, normal!” And she is, though at the animated, high-energy end of normality. She laughs easily and gestures broadly, waving her arms, rolling her eyes, sticking out her tongue. When a man suddenly materialized at our restaurant table bearing not one but five copies of her “Figaro” CD, which needed to be autographed on the spot, she sweetly complied and went out of her way to chat with him a bit. When I was trying to discuss her Carnegie Hall concert this past May with the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and compliment the fine points of her performance of the Letter Scene from “Eugene Onegin,” she found it necessary to explain that I didn’t know what I was talking about. She did so gently, however, and added, “You are very nice.”
I mean, what a great quote--you get an exact sense of her. And not just her; as McGrath notes:
Netrebko’s friend and mentor, Renata Scotto, herself a diva in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, says that an important clue to Netrebko’s nature is her Russianness. “She’s very humble, very truthful,” she remarked of Netrebko. “And I think a lot of Russians are like this. She’s full of the joy of life and also a very hard worker.”
Netrebko concedes that there may be something to this, but also says that another Russian trait, which she clearly does not share, is melancholy, passivity and being unable to decide what you want from life. A phrase she uses a lot is “I try” or “I will try,” and you get the sense that she is very much the stage manager of her own story. ...
At the time, to make some pocket money and for the chance to watch rehearsals, Netrebko was also washing floors at the Mariinsky Theater, St. Petersburg’s famous opera and ballet house, and this has given rise to a myth that is the Russian version of “La Cenerentola,” the Cinderella opera, with Valéry Gergiev, general and artistic director of the Mariinsky, swooping in and rescuing her from the mop and bucket. In fact, by the time she auditioned for Gergiev she had already retired from scrubbing and had even won the Glinka, perhaps Russia’s most famous vocal competition.
Anyone who'd take a job washing floors to watch rehearsals isn't any kind of diva, I'd say.
Uncredited, as far as I can tell, photo of Netrbko via an Italian blog.
They don't make newspaper columnists like Jimmy Breslin anymore, and we're all the poorer for it. From a column purportedly about Mitt Romney is this gem about Rudolph Giuliani:
I today direct you to how religion overwhelmed this Giuliani, who always has been a little man in search of a balcony. Each time he inspected a height he stood there and rehearsed for the moment when the whole nation would look at him in fear and awe. Then he paused to scowl at the West Side of Manhattan, with its grubby liberals who say that he was the worst mayor we've had. Then came the attack on the World Trade Center and Giuliani ran right up the street from the smoke and into a television studio. There he remained for day after day until the cameras made him America's Mayor.
But really, Breslin's sketch of him atop a balcony really captures it all; the arrogance, the righteousness, the terrible isolation, the fascism, the evocation of Mussolini and (Eva) Peron, the stature--even the Italianness.
Uncredited photo of Giuliani in various places online.
Gilbert Arenas is the king of all blogging. Mark Cuban needs to start taking lessons from him.
There Are No Such Thing as Shark Attacks
I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there. There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.
I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.
We’re humans. We live on land.
Sharks live in water.
So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.
A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.
When I see on the news where it’s like, “There have been 10 shark attacks,” I’m like, “Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.”
And, from an earlier post:
I know I said was was afraid of the stingrays and sharks, but I actually got into the water with sharks on my vacation. I was swimming every morning with them. They were little 3-foot long sharks called blackheads. The locals said nobody has ever been bitten by a shark, there haven’t been any shark attacks, you know they’re not aggressive sharks.
So I was like, “All right, let me go in and give it a try.” But that was after I’d seen little kids in there swimming already, then I knew I could go in. I wasn’t going to be the first one in, that’s for sure.
More of my Gilbert posts here (although really, his posts are much more entertaining).
Uncredited image of Arenas from Detroit Bad Boys blog, who got it from who knows where.
So the Times has gotten ahold of some letters Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote to a friend while she was in college, and set Mark Leibovich to analyze them.
It's an exceedingly odd and cringe-inducing article--there's no awareness of how weird it is to parse the words of a college freshman, no sense of embarassment, no acknowledgement of invading her privacy (it's her letters, made public by the person she wrote to), no caveats--just straight-forward literary analysis, as if they were going over the text of her latest stump speech.
Which, come to think of it, I've never seen the Times do.
More than anything it's pathetic; there are insights in there, much like any biography would benefit from such primary source material--but the difference is the letters section would be placed in context within a long biography, whereas here we have a front page Times article making much out of her scribblings 40 years ago.
If they're going to go that route, they need to analyze the friend Hillary sent the letters to, what he was like, what the nature of their friendship was (reading between the lines he seemed to like her more than a friend, she not at all). These weren't meant for public consumption, so whatever peek of intimacy the Times gleans from them should be offset by an understanding that they were tailored words.
But none of that's there; the words are quoted at face value, as if they speak for themselves.
I conclude the guy Hillary wrote to was a bit of a prat--there's no acknowledgement by him or the Times that what he's doing, in releasing her side of a two-way conversation, isn't right.
He's even quoted as saying:
Mr. Peavoy’s letters to Ms. Rodham are lost to posterity, unless she happened to keep them, which he doubts. He said he wished he had kept copies himself. “They are windows into a time and a place and a journey of self-discovery,” he said in an interview. “This was what college students did before Facebook.”
Oh yes, what a loss that we weren't able to read your words too, John Peavoy.
At least wait until she's dead; apparently he missed the day at school where they taught manners and how to be a gentleman.
And thank you for placing this within a wider cultural context--of course that's why you made the letters available and the Times printed them, it's almost your duty in this Facebook age to remind us all of that archaic form of communication you used to utilize.
If you wind up reading the article, you're struck by how the Times tries to torture conclusions out of her words; it's quite sad, actually--and of course, Clinton comes across all the better for it.
This is why a lot of good and qualified people refuse to run for office; who wants stuff like this considered fair game?
There's gotta be room for people to form themselves without thinking it could all be dredged up years later--and in this particular case, the Times should really question dealing with the kind of person who lets you read another person's private letters without their consent.
The Times may argue it's an unvarnished, unspun look into the life of a famously tightly-controlled politician.
Odd; that's what the tabloids say about their ambush snapshots of celebrities.
There's a lengthy, interesting interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn (yes, he's still alive!) in Der Spiegel; reading it--a German publication talking to a Russian about totalitarianism and its enduring stain--made me think how truly foreign the experiences of a Europe that grew up either directly under or in the shadow of first Nazism and then Communism can be to us.
His political views aren't what I expected, based on what I remember from reading the Gulag Archipelago and what I'd assume the leading anti-Communist dissident (along with Natan Sharansky) would think about post-Communist Russia.
His take on Vladimir Putin was particularly surprising:
Vladimir Putin -- yes, he was an officer of the intelligence services, but he was not a KGB investigator, nor was he the head of a camp in the gulag. As for service in foreign intelligence, that is not a negative in any country -- sometimes it even draws praise. George Bush Sr. was not much criticized for being the ex-head of the CIA, for example. ...
SPIEGEL: How do you assess the period of Putin's governance in comparison with his predecessors Yeltsin and Gorbachev?
Solzhenitsyn: Gorbachev's administration was amazingly politically naïve, inexperienced and irresponsible towards the country. It was not governance but a thoughtless renunciation of power. The admiration of the West in return only strengthened his conviction that his approach was right. But let us be clear that it was Gorbachev, and not Yeltsin, as is now widely being claimed, who first gave freedom of speech and movement to the citizens of our country.
Yeltsin's period was characterized by a no less irresponsible attitude to people's lives, but in other ways. In his haste to have private rather than state ownership as quickly as possible, Yeltsin started a mass, multi-billion-dollar fire sale of the national patrimony. Wanting to gain the support of regional leaders, Yeltsin called directly for separatism and passed laws that encouraged and empowered the collapse of the Russian state. This, of course, deprived Russia of its historical role for which it had worked so hard, and lowered its standing in the international community. All this met with even more hearty Western applause.
Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.
He's nuts! Gorbachev didn't renounce power--he renounced a sham by which the USSR, by starving its people via a permanent war-time footing, put forth the ultimate Potemkin village for seven decades.
It was a farce that could not last in the Information Age, that managed to hang on only when the state had a shot at controlling all lies and truths.
And Putin hasn't revived anything--it's been the monstrous jump in the price of oil that's dragged the Russian economy back from collapse; all Putin's done is set up a cult of personality dictatorship under the guise of nationalism.
I guess what we forget is that Solzhenitsyn was so anti-Communist in part because they enslaved what he saw as the greatest of all nations, of all people. For him, Russia's natural place is in front, which to me is ridiculous.
Aside from the steroid-like 'power' that the Communists projected, Russia after the devastating Mongol invasions of the 13th century has always been at least decades behind the West. Their tiny intellectual class has been fiercely productive, but the vast majority of the country has always been a brutish wasteland.
Look at the astonishing rates of alcoholism in Russia; and how it's about the only industrialized country that's suffered a decrease in life expectancy, currently standing at 59 years for males and 72 years for females.
That, and a startling decline in its birth rate (forcing the government to try bribing women to have kids), adds up to a place that, if you took away their nuclear weapons, would be the definition of a Third World country.
But Solzhenitsyn being so Russian there is also this:
SPIEGEL: Your recent two-volume work "200 Years Together" was an attempt to overcome a taboo against discussing the common history of Russians and Jews. These two volumes have provoked mainly perplexity in the West. You say the Jews are the leading force of global capital and they are among the foremost destroyers of the bourgeoisie. Are we to conclude from your rich array of sources that the Jews carry more responsibility than others for the failed Soviet experiment?
Solzhenitsyn: I avoid exactly that which your question implies: I do not call for any sort of scorekeeping or comparisons between the moral responsibility of one people or another; moreover, I completely exclude the notion of responsibility of one nation towards another. All I am calling for is self-reflection.
You can get the answer to your question from the book itself: "Every people must answer morally for all of its past -- including that past which is shameful. Answer by what means? By attempting to comprehend: How could such a thing have been allowed? Where in all this is our error? And could it happen again? It is in that spirit, specifically, that it would behoove the Jewish people to answer, both for the revolutionary cutthroats and the ranks willing to serve them. Not to answer before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God. Just as we Russians must answer -- for the pogroms, for those merciless arsonist peasants, for those crazed revolutionary soldiers, for those savage sailors."
And then, there's this example of myopia:
SPIEGEL: But Russia often finds itself alone. Recently relations between Russia and the West have gotten somewhat colder (more...), and this includes Russian-European relations. What is the reason? What are the West's difficulties in understanding modern Russia?
Solzhenitsyn: I can name many reasons, but the most interesting ones are psychological, i.e. the clash of illusory hopes against reality. This happened both in Russia and in West. When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.
This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia. It's fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply and indelibly shocked by those bombings. The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.
So, the perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.
At the same time the West was enjoying its victory after the exhausting Cold War, and observing the 15-year-long anarchy under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In this context it was easy to get accustomed to the idea that Russia had become almost a Third World country and would remain so forever. When Russia started to regain some of its strength as an economy and as a state, the West's reaction -- perhaps a subconscious one, based on erstwhile fears -- was panic.
Anyone who calls the bombing of Serbia--a last-ditch and successful effort to stop ethnic cleansing via the slaughter of civilians by Slobodan Milosovic and his ilk--"cruel" is living in a fantasy world borne of some pretty deep-seated prejudices, perpetuated by delusions of grandeur and the daily slap of shame from reality.
That's really the legacy of the Communists--via the shortcut of five-year plans built on the hidden muscle of slave labor camps, they perpetuated a psychological fraud on the Russian people in making them think they had caught up with the West and could take their "rightful" place.
But what they've left behind is a deluded populace that not only can't catch up to Europe--but is in the process of being passed by Asia.
Which more than anything lends a sense of sadness to Solzhenitsyn's archaic beliefs, anchored in the false memories that Communism must have instilled even as he fought it:
But did not Russia clearly and unambiguously stretch its helping hand to the West after 9/11? Only a psychological shortcoming, or else a disastrous shortsightedness, can explain the West's irrational refusal of this hand. No sooner did the USA accept Russia's critically important aid in Afghanistan than it immediately started making newer and newer demands. As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.
Isn't it a luxury for the West to be pushing Russia aside now, especially in the face of new threats? In my last Western interview before I returned to Russia (for Forbes magazine in April 1994) I said: "If we look far into the future, one can see a time in the 21st century when both Europe and the USA will be in dire need of Russia as an ally."
Ah, yes, Russia as an ally against Islamic fundamentalism--why no mention of Chechnya in your interview, Alexander Isayevich?
Friends like that we don't need.
Jurij Filistow photo of Solzhenitsyn in Der Spiegel
One the putative subject; another the astonishing human; and third the step closer to humans feeling like second class citizens on our own world.
Oh well; at least we'll always have each other to jump over.
Checkers has been solved.
A computer program named Chinook vanquished its human competitors at tournaments more than a decade ago. But now, in an article published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science, the scientists at the University of Alberta who developed the program report that they have rigorously proved that Chinook, in a slightly improved version, cannot ever lose. Any opponent, human or computer, no matter how skilled, can at best achieve a draw. ...
The earlier incarnation of Chinook, relying on artificial intelligence techniques and the combined computing power of many computers, placed second in the 1990 United States championship behind Marion Tinsley, the world champion, who had won every tournament he had played in since 1950.
That achievement should have earned Chinook the right to challenge Dr. Tinsley, a professor of mathematics at Florida A&M University, for the world championship, but the American Checkers Federation and the English Draughts Association refused to sanction a match. After much wrangling in the checkers world, Dr. Tinsley and Chinook battled for the man-versus-machine checkers title in 1992.
Dr. Tinsley won, 4 to 2 with 33 draws. Chinook’s two wins were only the sixth and seventh losses for Dr. Tinsley since 1950. In a rematch two years later, Dr. Tinsley withdrew after six draws, citing health reasons. Cancer was diagnosed, and Dr. Tinsley died seven months later. ...
The next game Dr. Schaeffer hopes to conquer is poker, which is harder to solve, because players do not have complete knowledge of their opponents’ positions. Next week, his program, Polaris, will take on two professional poker players in Texas Hold ’Em for the $50,000 man-versus-machine world championship.
Soon, computers may not just be winning games, but taking people’s money, too.
The Times' second day of articles on Rupert Murdoch takes a look at how he's operating in China. Paragraphs 11 and 12 of Dealings in China: It’s Business, and It’s Personal are particularly interesting, if slightly off-topic:
News Corporation officials in Beijing and Hong Kong declined to comment for this article. After The New York Times began a two-part series on Monday about how Mr. Murdoch operates his company, the News Corporation issued a statement:
“News Corp. has consistently cooperated with The New York Times in its coverage of the company. However, the agenda for this unprecedented series is so blatantly designed to further the Times’s commercial self interests — by undermining a direct competitor poised to become an even more formidable competitor — that it would be reckless of us to participate in their malicious assault. Ironically, The Times, by using its news pages to advance its own corporate business agenda, is doing the precise thing they accuse us of doing without any evidence.”
What about paragraph 13? Well, it's the Times, so:
China has never been a make-or-break proposition for the News Corporation, since its operations here represent a small part of the company, which is valued at $68 billion. But Mr. Murdoch pushed for nearly 15 years to create a satellite television network that would cover every major market in the world, including China.
Heh, heh. Now that's power--or arrogance. Very Chinese, in a way.
The balance of the piece is interesting; obviously, to the extent Murdoch's (third) wife is Chinese, he's got more than a business interest in the country. I've never really liked him, but have generally thought of him as one of the few media executives who actually knows what he's doing. He's like Ted Turner, but on a much larger (and less soft) scale.
Some tidbits from Joseph Kahn's slightly disjointed piece:
Mr. Murdoch’s initial foray into China was disastrous. Shortly after he purchased the satellite broadcaster Star TV in Hong Kong for nearly $1 billion in 1993, he made a speech in London that enraged the Chinese leadership.
He said that modern communications technology had “proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.” Star could beam programming to every corner of China, and Murdoch had paid a big premium for the broadcaster for that reason.
Prime Minister Li Peng promptly outlawed private ownership of satellite dishes, which had once proliferated on rooftops. Star TV faced a threat to its viability.
Chinese leaders rebuffed his attempts to apologize in person — a ban that lasted nearly four years. But he sought to placate them. ...
Mr. Zhu noted that Mr. Murdoch had become an American citizen to comply with television ownership rules in the United States. He joked that if he wanted to broadcast more in China, he should consider becoming Chinese, a person who attended the meeting recalled. ...
The Murdochs often echoed the Chinese government line. In a 1999 interview with Vanity Fair, Mr. Murdoch spoke disparagingly of the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese condemn as a separatist. “I have heard cynics who say he is a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes,” he said.
James Murdoch, who ran Star TV from 2000 to 2003, said in a speech in Los Angeles in 2001 that Western reporters in China supported “destabilizing forces” that are “very, very dangerous for the Chinese government.” He lashed out at the Falun Gong spiritual sect, which had just endured brutal repression in China, calling it “dangerous and apocalyptic.” ...
Wendi Murdoch has stepped up her role in China. She plotted a strategy for the News Corporation’s social networking site, MySpace, to enter the Chinese market, people involved with the company said. The News Corporation decided to license the MySpace name to a local consortium of investors organized by Ms. Murdoch.
As a local venture, MySpace China, which began operations in the spring, abides by domestic censorship laws and the “self discipline” regime that governs proprietors of Chinese Web sites. Every page on the site has a link allowing users or monitors to “report inappropriate information” to the authorities. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have made similar accommodations for their Web sites in China.
The Murdochs will soon be able to call Beijing home. Workers have nearly finished renovating their traditional courtyard-style house in Beijing’s exclusive Beichizi district, a block from the Forbidden City. Beneath the steep-pitched roofs and wooden eaves of freshly coated vermillion and gold, the courtyard has an underground swimming pool and billiard room, according to people who have seen the design.
Plainclothes security officers linger on the street outside. One neighbor is the retired prime minister, Mr. Zhu, who invited Mr. Murdoch to become Chinese.
My guess is at some point Murdoch will indeed take up Chinese citizenship; he's nothing if not opportunistic, and heck--as an Australian, China's practically family.
Reuters photo of Rupert and Wendi Murdoch by Chris Pizzello in the Times.
Aside from the unprecedented, in my memory, spectacle of twins running a major nation, it seems there's all sorts of wacky things about them:
Half a century after the European Union was created to forgive and forget the Last Great Misunderstanding, the identical twins who are Poland’s president and prime minister let off a massive stink bomb at last week’s summit by mentioning the war. To cries of horror – and some quiet chortles – Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski invoked Nazi atrocities in order to cut Germany down to size.
So Jaroslaw, the prime minister and elder twin by 45 minutes, had no hesitation in invoking the “incomprehensible crimes” against Poland as a means of raising the stakes in its battle with Germany over voting rights. This had become an obstacle to agreeing a revamped EU treaty. “If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would today be looking at the demographics of a country of 66m,” he said on Polish radio in an implicit reference to his country’s 6m war dead.
His point was that whereas the EU voting system currently gives Poland disproportionate clout, proposed changes based on population size would give most benefit to Germany’s 82m people while Poland with 38m people could be steamrollered – despite being the largest of the 10 countries that joined the enlarged club in 2004.
The 58-year-old Kaczynski twins had kept the summit guessing about which would turn up – some thought this a bit academic since they are nearly identical, though Jaroslaw plays the Mr Nasty to Lech’s Mr Nice. “Both are small, not very bright, mean-minded and resemble provincial solicitors – which Lech used to be,” said a journalist who has met them. ...
Lech is married to Maria, a tireless charity worker who sometimes acts as his special envoy. Jaroslaw, who has never married and lives with his formidable mother Jadwiga and her cats, is said to have a “dark side”, although the rumour is based on little more than his unaccountable absences. Recently he revealed he had no bank account and deposited his money with his mother. “I don’t want a situation in which someone pays some money into my account without my knowledge,” he said mysteriously. ...
The twins briefly stole the limelight at the age of 12 as stars of the 1962 film The Two Who Stole the Moon, playing a couple of greedy, cruel youths who dream up a plan to steal the moon and sell it.
You can't make this stuff up; it seems ever since Bush vs. Gore, the political world's turned unabashedly Shakespearean.
Uncredited photo of Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski from Der Spiegel.
For some reason, I've never liked John Edwards. It's weird--on paper, I agree with many of his positions, and I think he's a decent person; but there's something about him that's always rubbed me the wrong way.
I could expound, but now there's a YouTube video that captures exactly what I mean.
The video is hilarious, and devestating; the synching of music to action is perfect, and you couldn't ask for a more perfect ending.
I really don't see how Edwards can overcome this--he's clearly deadly earnest in it. If he manages to stick around, at some point one of his opponents can just run this as a commercial in swing states.
Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer turned into an unexpected treat. I didn't know anything about O'Day going in--but I always try to watch music documentaries at Tribeca, they're usually very good.
This one started out pretty unevenly--the filmmakers choose a very disruptive editing style, with lots of random graphics and distracting transitions. Maybe they feared otherwise it'd be just another Ken Burns talking head documentary--there are worse things than that style, and one of them is going MTV on a subject that requires gazing.
Plus some of the interviews were shot in an amateurish fashion, with bad lighting and awful backgrounds. There's one extended interview with O'Day, intercut throughout, that seems like she shot it herself in one of those 4-photos-for-a-buck booth. She's constantly out-of-frame or too close to the camera--if it weren't for a bad zoom at one point of the interview I'd have believed that she did just film herself.
But try forget all that, and just listen to her O'Day's voice. Oh, my, gosh. I had no idea. I've never seen facial expressions like O'Day; never seen songs performed like she does, with arm movements and shoulders and body positioning--not over-the-top, just totally apt. Her voice isn't unbelievable, but it suited the songs she chose and her persona so well.
All I really knew about her was that line from Let Me Off Uptown, where (a famous black trumpeter, Roy Eldridge it turns out) wails "A-nniiii-ta, oh A-nniiii-ta... say, I feel somethin'". There's a clip of it, via YouTube.
It turns out the back story is Anita doing that duet with Roy was a pretty risky thing in 1941; I hadn't realized she was white, and obviously all the back-and-forth of the song between Anita and Roy would've riled up people back in the day.
O'Day was just like that--she did her thing, and let the chips fall where they may. There's a lot in the documentary about her drug problems; initially, she was jailed for marijuana--which she says just made her say if people think I'm like that, then I'll become like that (to the point of clubs advertising her as the 'Jezebel of Song').
Then later in life O'Day was on heroin for like 15 years, in a very serious way--to the point that she really should've died, except for luck and some of her many devoted friends (including Carroll O'Connor) helping her quit.
Aside from the drugs and a lot of sleeping around, she also spent a lot of years in Japan when jazz in the 60s fell out of favor in the States; and also seemed to love horse racing, and talking people's ear off.
But in the end, the documentary's memorable because of her music, more so than her story. As one of the many interesting jazz commentators said, she did "wonderful things with time"--and that's it, she had a great sense of when to speed, when to slow, when to play with a phrase, when to let it out rat-a-tat-tat, when to scat, when to go silent.
The filmmakers said afterwards her personality--which totally comes across in the film--was uninhibited; she spoke her mind and let it all out. There's a hilarious interview with a younger Bryant Gumbel, who's actually being a good journalist in repeatedly asking in different ways why she did drugs; she keeps putting him off, until saying in a tart tone: "That's just the way it went down... Bryant."
There's also interesting interviews with Dick Cavett, and Harry Reasoner. In one of them, displaying her wonderful cadence, the interviewer asks, "How could you ever get involved with all that junk?"
Her pitch-perfect 'response' which isn't done justice by type: "How couldya."
If she were a different type of person you could say she was vulgar, even low-class based on some of her life experiences; but in the package she was it wasn't true at all, the opposite actually.
As one of the commentators says, "there was a lot going on under the surface that catches you unaware because it's mysterious, restrained--it's kind of secret."
O'Day died about a month after the filmmakers showed her one of the final cuts; we're lucky some of her performances were caught on film in her lifetime. My favorite:
-Sweet Georgia Brown, in Newport Jazz Fest 1958 (from the very idiosyncratic documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day)
The drawn-out junglish opening and snycopated timing works perfectly for the song; it's funny watching the (very white) audience in the first part, before the camerman focuses more on her. (The second song, Tea for Two, has a shot of the famed 'ice cream lady.')
And oh that outfit, in combination with that saucy voice punching it out; she's totally in her element. This is one of the greatest performances I've ever seen on film; it's so interesting.
And she alludes in the film to being high at the time.
Uncredited Anita O'Day photo at Newport from Time magazine in various places online. She tells the story in the film of how she pulled together the outfit at the last second.
Run through Sahara more than personal challenge, ESPN.com: Three runners embarked on an epic journey to run across the Sahara Desert, not only for the challenge but also to raise awareness of some of the most impoverished nations of Africa. Three runners -- Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab and Kevin Lin -- ran for 111 days over 4,300 miles through six countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and Egypt) and lived to tell their tale. Engle took time to share stories about this incredible journey with ESPN.com contributor Graham Bensinger. ...
When we did the math, we realized that we need to really cover 40-50 miles per day, every single day. It became obvious we couldn't physically train our bodies for that type of stress. What we really did was try to go into the expedition as healthy as possible. Of course, we did a lot of running, hundreds of miles a week in preparation. It was much more of a mental exercise than physical. We weren't going very fast, but we were running 14 hours per day, every single day. It was much tougher on the mind than it was on the body. ...
The average day is very monotonous. We're up at 4 a.m. I was the taskmaster, although Kevin referred to me as the monster. Part of what I did as the expedition leader was focus on getting us going every day. We'd start running at 5 a.m. and take a break around noon for some lunch and even a quick nap on the hottest days. We'd start running again at 2:30 p.m. and not stop until 9:30 p.m. We'd get five hours of sleep and get up and do it again. There wasn't a lot of variety going on in our lives at that point. ...
One of the things that really motivated us was the fact we decided that water was our real focus during this expedition. That sounds obvious for runners, but what I mean by that is we actually aided in setting up a NGO [nongovernment organization] called, "H20 Africa." The goal was to help bring attention to the problem of clean water in Africa. In particular, bring attention to the problem in the Sahara Desert. It was very motivating for us just to run through these towns and villages and see people that were happy, well-adjusted and family-oriented. But almost every place we encountered lacked access to clean water. We're hoping that in phase two of this expedition, happening now, we're able to bring attention to that and solve a few of the problems over there.
Q: I recall reading a story from Don Webster's blog. You all encountered a 7-year-old boy whose parents left him alone for a couple days, with very little food and drink, while they went to search for water. It seemed stories like that were common.
A: Very common. That little boy was incredible. I have children of my own, Brett and Kevin, who are 12 and 14. I couldn't imagine leaving them anywhere in the world. I couldn't imagine leaving them in the house for two or three days by themselves! Just picture this 7-year-old boy who is out there in the desert in his nomadic camp. He's fending for himself while his parents are off with the camels on a two-day journey just to get enough clean water to bring back to camp to last for a week. Then, the process starts all over again.
Photo of Kevin Lin, Charlie Engle, and Ray Zahab pacing their route down a straightaway on the Trans-Saharan Highway in Mauritania by Don Holtz at Running the Sahara.
In politics, like everything else, both the things that grab the headlines and a flood of information can sometimes blind you to the telling details.
The big story Sunday was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign announcing they had raised more than $26 million in the first three months of 2007, shattering the previous record (which was around $8 million).
Buried in the story, however, was a key line--Clinton wasn't revealing how much of that money had been raised for her primary fight, and how much for the general election.
It's obviously an important distinction; mixing the two numbers is like telling someone your salary's $1 million... based on lumping together the next 10 years.
How about Barack Obama? He hasn't officially reported yet, but his campaign is leaking that he raised $20 million.
[G]o beneath the raw data and a different victor emerges.
Obama is the winner of fund raising first quarter race. He raised over 20 million, Hillary raised 26. But much of her money was in $4600 slices: 2300 for the primary election, 2300 for general election. Since she already announced that she will not take federal money for general election, she was free to collect money for both.
Obama has not decided yet whether to forgo public financing for the general election, so virtually all of his money is just for the primary, and he is limited to $2300 per donor.
Most analysts thought Hillary would raise 30-35 million and Obama 15-20 million. According to Drudge, Hillary found it necessary to transfer $10 million from her Senatorial Campaign Committee in order to pump up her total to $36 million.
Clearly, Obama has had an extraordinary rise and Hillary is worried.
I'd say Hillary is more than worried. Remember, the candidate who raises the most early doesn't always win--just ask Howard Dean about that.
However... Hillary had all the advantages coming in, and she's not someone who's got a lot of new people to tap into at this point. She's had years to cultivate donors; has 100% name recognition; has the support of tons of operatives and party officials; represents New York, where a giant percentage of the top donors live; has a big network in California, the other fundraising hub; and has hubby Bill's magic Rolodex to draw from.
Mr. Obama appears to have such a firm hold on so many of Chicago’s big donors that Mrs. Clinton, who grew up in a Chicago suburb, did not even have a fund-raiser here during the crucial first quarter of this year. ...
And Chicago has become almost completely an Obama town. Though Democrats here still express respect for Mrs. Clinton, "if she’s raising any money in Chicago, I don’t know who’s doing it," said Mr. Schmidt, the lawyer who was once co-chairman of President Clinton’s fund-raising here.
Ouch; if you can't get people to believe in you in your hometown, you're really in trouble, as Al Gore learned when he lost Tennessee to George W. Bush in 2000.
Rudy Giuliani's got the same problem as Hillary, except worse. Not only are things still coming out about his past, but he lost the first quarter fundraising race to Mitt Romney, who raised $20 million to his $15 million.
It seems insane that a man who raised $15 million in three months can be seen to be in trouble--but that's the way the game is played now, with the compressed primary calendar and spiraling arms race.
Looks like the Final Four's set for the presidential race; only question is whether Hillary and Rudy deserve their current #1 seeds.
AFP photos of Obama by Mannie Garcia, of Romney by Mandel Ngan.
Joe Jamail takes a deposition defended by Edward Carstarphen
It's hard to believe, but the lawyer off-camera doing the questioning in this crazy deposition video is Joe Jumail, Texas superlawyer. Here are some other aspects of the man; they really need to make a movie about him.
He may be the richest lawyer in America, but even at 78 Joe Jamail shows no signs of slowing down.
The King is 45 minutes late when he walks out of the elevator and into his penthouse office, high atop 500 Dallas Street in Houston. His pace is slow and regal through the lobby, as he is being politely acknowledged by his staff. He doesn't need to explain where he's been. After all, he is a man who claims more trial victories than anyone else, ever. A man who forced the withdrawal of three products from the marketplace because he deemed them dangerous. A man who won the largest civil damage award in history. A man whose legal victories are so astounding and groundbreaking that he was acknowledged in the Guinness Book of World Records. But this is no mere man. This is Joe Jamail — King of Torts
-Oh, yes, the King likes to imbibe on occasion. In fact, a morning's worth of Jamail's stories tends to start out the same way: "I was drinking with a couple of my buddies when ...”
For instance, where was he when he was first inspired to become a lawyer? In a saloon in Lafayette, Louisiana, trying to score with the barmaid when an attorney named Kaliste Soloom intervened to spark Jamail's curiosity about the law.
Where was he when he decided to take the bar exam on a dare -- with only three days to prepare? Drinking off-campus with some law school buddies. He passed by one point -- and boisterously claimed that he had overtrained for the test — then headed right back out to celebrate.
Where was he the night before he was to deliver his closing arguments in the historic Pennzoil versus Texaco trial? Drinking with Willie Nelson and former University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal. "Willie and Darrell showed up in a white stretch limousine and started pounding on the front door They kept me up drinking and bullshitting past midnight," says Jamail.
-Despite that highly unusual all-night liquid strategy session, Jamail still nailed the summation and cemented his footprints into the legal walk of fame with the verdict that followed.
By now, a trainload of ink has been spilled over that trial, and Jamail still considers it the shining jewel in his crown. It took place in the mid-1980s, a period often perceived as a decade of greed. Getting a jury to care about two big oil companies fighting over more money seemed a daunting task. What's more, there would be substantial testimony of Wall Street dealings and business acquisitions and a whole mess of other financial stuff that might confuse or bore a jury.
Jamail was representing Pennzoil, who claimed that Texaco knowingly savaged its deal to take over Getty Oil. He agonized for weeks over how to argue it. Finally, he found the clarity he was seeking and saw the situation as a matter of honor, and that's the foundation with which he chose his picks for the jury "[Pennzoil] didn't have a signed contract, but we had a word. We had a handshake. So I was looking for people with long marriages, long church affiliations ... people whose word meant something," says Jamail. "I had to try to make them understand that they didn't give up their common sense when they got to court. And it worked for me."
Oh, it worked all right. Jamail compelled the jury to get excited enough to send a warning shot across the bow of every company in America that morality and ethics have a place in business just as they have in life's other arenas. And it was a big shot. The largest legal shot in history, in fact. It was an $11 billion shot, and, of course, Jamail got a lawyer-sized cut of the award. (And even though the case was ultimately settled for $3 billion, that's still a lot more money than most attorneys will rack up in a lifetime of litigating.)
-He's charming and talented, but Jamail is also a warrior. He’s extremely hard-working and thorough when preparing for a case. "When you really prepare — and that's one of the things that I'm noted for: I really get ready — then it looks like it's all coming right off the top of your head. But look, the only thing that comes off the top of your head is dandruff. So I drive everybody around here nuts picking apart every little thing,” says Jamail. "Anybody who thinks they're smart enough to go to court and the Holy Ghost is going to descend upon them with all the knowledge they need to win is ... goofy. It just doesn't happen like that. If you're not prepared, you're just not gonna win." ...
The discussion swings toward the current political climate — which he is none too happy with and what he perceives as an erosion of civil liberties. He then leans in to make his last point crystal clear and the soon-to-be octogenarian assumes the role of warrior king again. "There's never been a bigger assault on people's privacy and their liberties and on the Constitution itself ... because of some hocus-pocus cry of `war-time president!' thereby revoking all our constitutional guarantees. Give me a break. I don't believe that. I don't like that and I'm not going to put up with that. I'm going to fight that."
-A grocer's son and of Lebanese descent, Mr. Jamail grew up in Houston in the "Jamail Compound," where aunts, uncles, and cousins also lived.
As a neighborhood runt and facing pressure of being as good as his older brother, George, he quickly grew to resent authority.
But the chip on his shoulder "the size of a manhole cover" taught him to fight back, long before he started taking on big corporations.
Once, sick of being a bully's punching bag, young Joe kept a sock loaded with marbles handy.
"I just got tired of it, so when he got close, I nailed him," Mr. Jamail recalls. "It taught me something. If you don't stand up for something, then what are you going to do?"
-"He almost always uses very traditional theories of liability," says Bill Powers, who is the dean for UT's School of Law and still teaches tort-law classes.
"His forte has always been his technique. He takes the core legal principles and tells a great story to the jury under those traditional principles: If they are violated, then someone ought to pay."
Mr. Jamail will stun juries with blunt deliveries, just as he did one afternoon when admitting that his client, paralyzed in an accident, registered a .31 blood alcohol content – more than three times the legal limit.
He went on to convince the jury that his client, despite being drunk, was not weaving or causing his own peril but was forced off the road by a commercial truck. The jury returned with a $6 million award.
"Any attorney who goes into court thinking he's going to flim-flam a jury is nuts," he says.
"That's why I told the jury during voir dire: 'I want you to know right off my client was drunk. I don't care what you've seen, you've never seen anybody as drunk as he was the night this happened, so if anyone who feels it's open season on drunks and they are not entitled to protections of the law, I need to know.' Half wouldn't give a drunk a fair trial."
"As for doctors, I was in this debate once with the head of the Harris County Medical Society, and it was being televised. He went off on lawyers; it was terrible. And the last couple or three minutes the moderator looked at me and said, 'Mr. Jamail, I'm sorry he's taken most of the time but you have thirty seconds if you'd like to respond.' I said, 'That's more than enough time. I would like for you to remind the doctor, and I hope he doesn't mind if I call him a doctor. I would like for you to remind him that when his professional ancestors were putting leeches on George Washington to bleed him, mine were writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.' That ended that shit."
Jamail didn’t get to where he is now by being a softy, though. In Paramount Communications Inc. v. QVC Network Inc., Jamail represented one of the Paramount directors. During the course of the case, Jamail was defending a deposition when the following exchange took place:
Q. . . . Do you have any idea why Mr. Oresman was calling that material to your attention?
MR. JAMAIL: Don’t answer that. How would he know what was going on in Mr. Oresman’s mind? Don’t answer it. Go on to your next question.
MR. JOHNSTON: No, Joe –
MR. JAMAIL: He’s not going to answer that. Certify it. I’m going to shut it down if you don’t go to your next question.
MR. JOHNSTON: No. Joe, Joe –
MR. JAMAIL: Don’t “Joe” me, asshole. You can ask some questions, but get off that. You could gag a maggot off a meat wagon. . . . .
This exchange was apparently only one example of a number of similar exchanges. The Delaware Supreme Court actually added an addendum to its decision, noting “an astonishing lack of professionalism and civility that is worthy of special note.”
Sheik Reda Shata pushed into Costco behind an empty cart. He wore a black leather jacket over his long, rustling robe, a pocket Koran tucked inside.
Mr. Shata and his family enjoy Middletown’s tranquillity, a sharp contrast to their old Brooklyn neighborhood. Outside their new home, which is next to the mosque, he lingered with his young son, Mohammed, and his daughters Esteshhad, left, and Rahma.
The imam, a 38-year-old Egyptian, seemed not to notice the stares from other shoppers. He was hunting for a bargain, and soon found it in the beverage aisle, where a 32-can pack of Coca-Cola sold for $8.29. For Mr. Shata, this was a satisfying Islamic experience.
“The Prophet said, ‘Whoever is frugal will never suffer financially,’ ” said the imam, who shops weekly at the local store and admits to praying for its owners. He smiled. “These are the people who will go to heaven.”
Seven months have passed since Mr. Shata moved to this New Jersey suburb to lead a mosque of prosperous, settled immigrants. It is a world away from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he toiled for almost four years, serving hundreds of struggling Muslims for whom America was still new.
His transition is a familiar one for foreign-born imams in the United States, who often start out in city mosques before moving to more serene settings.
For Mr. Shata, Middletown promised comfort after years of hardship. He left behind a tiny apartment for a house with green shutters set amid maple trees and sweeping lawns. He got a raise. He learned to drive.
But the suburbs have brought challenges that Mr. Shata never imagined. His congregation in Brooklyn may have been on the margins of American society, but it was deeply rooted in Islam. Muslims in Middletown were generally more assimilated but less connected to their mosque.
To be a successful suburban imam, he found, meant persuading doctors and lawyers not to rush from prayers to beat traffic. It meant connecting with teenagers who drove new cars, and who peppered their Arabic with “like” and “yeah.” It meant helping his daughter cope with mockery at school, in a predominantly white town that lost dozens of people on Sept. 11.
It's a great article, of course; the audio slideshow, narrated by the imam, gives it another dimension. And the closing paragraphs--wow.
One afternoon this month, a yellow school bus with mechanical problems pulled into the mosque’s parking lot.
The imam had just finished the afternoon prayer and was leaving the mosque. Eagerly, he walked up to the bus, his long robe flapping. He wondered if his daughter Esteshhad might be onboard.
As he drew closer, he saw the children pointing at him and laughing. He struggled, in English, to offer the driver help, but she politely declined. He searched for his daughter. It was not her bus. Relieved, he walked away.
For Esteshhad, life had been hard enough, he thought. After attending an Islamic school in Brooklyn, she is now one of only two girls who wear head scarves at her public middle school. She sits alone at the front of her bus. In the cafeteria, she eats by herself.
She hears about sleepovers and trips to the mall, but she has yet to experience these things. Her mother cannot drive, and Mr. Shata is reluctant to chauffeur his children until he feels safer in the car.
Outside school, Esteshhad’s only other contact with her peers comes at the mosque. But even there — where some girls carry designer bags — she often feels left out.
One night this month, she sat slouched on the edge of her bed. If only she had a cellphone or an iPod, she said, she might have friends.
“I have friends,” her 7-year-old sister, Rahma, piped up.
“You don’t wear a hijab,” Esteshhad shot back.
Recently, her mother noticed that Esteshhad had forgotten parts of the Koran. She was also becoming more assertive.
A sign outside her room read, “Please knock before entering!” and then, in smaller letters, “I’m angry.”
Esteshhad’s mother has thought of enrolling her again in an Islamic school, but Mr. Shata is reluctant. He wants to give public school a chance. Still, it pains him to see Esteshhad so alone.
When asked how he would respond if Esteshhad stopped wearing a head scarf, the imam thought for a moment. Such a scenario, for him, would have been unthinkable in Egypt.
“I would try to convince her and I would find 1,001 ways to her heart,” he said. “I hate aggression. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, ‘Teach, don’t humiliate.’ ”
Teaching, for the imam, also means learning. He will learn as he goes, he said, with Esteshhad at school, with the teenagers at his mosque.
It is a path he began in Brooklyn. To live an Islamic life in America, he said, requires a curious mind and a strong heart.
Mr. Shata tries to bring both to his youth group every week.
Only 11 young Muslims came to the first meeting in October. Now, the imam looks out at a room full of faces.
“Sixty and counting,” he said.
Like anyone else of integrity and goodness, Imam Shata is not what you might think he is. He's the kind of person who you want to converse with, hear about his experiences, listen to his views; things like this make sense about him:
Every Friday, a dozen of Mr. Shata’s former Brooklyn congregants began appearing in Middletown to hear his weekly sermon.
“Maybe he’s here in body, but his soul is there,” said Amgad Abdou, an Egyptian driver who came every week, his limousine full. “He’s like the Statue of Liberty, part of the skyline. He’s part of Bay Ridge.”
What great quotes; what telling details, the perfect story arc.
It does make me think Elliott's fingerprints are sometimes a bit too apparent in her articles; but that's probably because when it comes to Islam, non-Muslim Americans still need their hands held a little.
Photo of Imam Shata and his young son, Mohammed, and his daughters Esteshhad and Rahma by James Estrin for the Times.
An interesting Times profile about Ennio Morricone--whose work in The Good the Bad and the Ugly (the flute, the horns), Once Upon a Time in the West (the harmonica) and Cinema Paradise I've always liked--and a funny/telling quote:
The Maestro of Spaghetti Westerns Takes a Bow, Jon Pareles: For many filmmakers through the years, a certain kind of pilgrimage to Rome leads to the opulent parlor of the composer Ennio Morricone. It’s the place where he has discussed grand concepts and crucial details, and often unveiled new themes on the piano, for the distinctive film scores he has written over the past four decades, from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” to “The Mission.” There are more than 400 of them, though he hasn’t kept count.
Next Saturday Mr. Morricone, 78, makes his long-overdue American concert debut with 200 musicians and singers at Radio City Music Hall. It is the beginning of a triumphal month in the United States that will also include festivals of his films at the Museum of Modern Art and Film Forum, and the release of a tribute album, “We All Love Ennio Morricone” (Sony Masterworks), with performances from Bruce Springsteen, Renée Fleming, Herbie Hancock and Metallica, among others. On Feb. 25 he will be presented with an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, atoning for past omissions. After five nominations, he has never won.
Massimo Gallotta, the promoter who is producing the concert, has been working for more than a year to present Mr. Morricone’s American debut. “It was strange for me that Morricone had never performed here in the past,” Mr. Gallotta said. “He agreed right away. And then I was lucky about the Oscar, the CD, everything.”
Mr. Morricone has given concerts periodically in Europe, including a December performance that drew 50,000 people to the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. At Radio City he will lead the 100-piece Roma Sinfonietta orchestra, along with the 100-member Canticum Novum Singers.
Everyone except Maestro Morricone, as he is called in Rome, considers him startlingly prolific. Along with his hundreds of film scores, he has composed a sizable body of concert music like “Voci dal Silencio” (“Voices From the Silence”), a cantata he wrote in response to “the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and all the massacres of humanity all over the world,” he said. He will be performing that work on Friday at the United Nations, at a concert welcoming the new secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.
“The notion that I am a composer who writes a lot of things is true on one hand and not true on the other hand,” he said in an interview at his home, speaking in Italian through a translator. “Maybe my time is better organized than many other people’s. But compared to classical composers like Bach, Frescobaldi, Palestrina or Mozart, I would define myself as unemployed.”
There's a lot more in the article, including an interesting section on how he works and what he leaves out; but that quote jumped out at me.
What makes some talented people prolific, and others not-so-much? It's gotta be more than just organizing your time--right?!
I'd say a key element is your work can't seem like work, it's got to be something you love to do, perhaps even need to do. You have to set up a framework where time plus effort leads to results. And you have to be in a field where measurable output is possible.
I think it also helps to work with, or be around, other productive people. I noticed the Times' audio extra featuring five of Morricone's works, Yo Yo Ma plays two of them. Ma, for me, has always seemed the epitome of productivity; he's involved in so many projects, all stemming out of his mastery of the cello but many no longer directly related. That's another prerequisite, you need to work in a field where you can be productive on various levels and in different ways.
But probably above all is you have to be totally dedicated to one thing, and do it well. Everything stems out of that.
Watching Barbara Walters' 10 most fascinating people of 2006. They list nine at the opening:
Anna Wintour--maybe Jay-Z--sure Andre Agassi--yes Sacha Baron Cohen--yes Joel Osteen--sure Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt--yes John Ramsey--uh, no Patrick Dempsey--uh, no Terri Irwin--maybe
She starts with Andre Agassi, who I think is great. I've always liked him; but he's absolutely transcended sports as he's grown--Walters notes his foundation has raised over $60 million dollars for underprivileged kids. Steffi Graf, looking a bit like Sarah Jessica Parker, joins the interview; she's one of my favorites too. They just have a great air to them; the chemistry is there, and they both seem like good people.
Next, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. A co-worker and I were just talking today about how much we like them (for movie stars)--they're both smart, and have a sense of depth to them. It's easy to make fun of her especially, given her past. But, as Walters says, theirs is a tale of two people who had everything but weren't happy, and did something about it. In an odd ending to the piece, Walters refers to their 'multiracial brood'. Uh, ok.
Then, Joel Osteen. Who I've always disliked. He runs the largest church in America--Houston's Lakewood church, now housed in the arena where the Houston Astros used to play. He looks a bit like a toothy Tim Allen, there's an element of the slick to him; and you can see him trying to impose his personality on people. Walters sums up his philosophy as no sin, no suffering, no sacrifice. He prays for money for his congregation--raises, bonuses, promotions (Jesus: A fair boss for an unfair time). Three words to describe himself? Happy, compassionate, and integrity (not exactly parallel construction)--to which Barbara adds 'smiling.' I'd add ugh.
Jay-Z, who I know little about, except for what I read in the Times. Walters calls him 'Jayzee', one word. Funny, he looks kindof nerdy. And seems quite thoughtful and intelligent. Hmm, he's apparently involved with Beyonce. Walters says although you'd never know it--sure enough, he refuses to gush about her, except she's a great person. She seems cool too; another neat celebrity couple. The secret to his success? Truth, he says.
Next, Walters says they honor the crocodile hunter, Stephen Irwin, by picking her widow (they only allow living people to be fascinating). Okay.... She's an American, seems very determined, tough. Very odd--she talks in emotional terms about him, but in pat phrases, almost everything she says is a platitude. It seems like they're entire life was a show. She thought of him as invincible, as long as they were together. I mean, she seems nice and it's a sad story--but ultimately this is a stuntman who died. She's not fascinating, what's fascinating is our interest in things like this.
Anna Wintour. Who just seems tough, and determined, and someone who knows exactly what she wants. It feels like she and Babs travel in the same circles, there's an odd dynamic to their interview. She's apparently had her hair in the same style since 15. Has an odd accent (she's from--Philadelphia?!) Walters asks her if the mood of the country affects fashion--she says yes; fashion has been militant lately, there was a real sense that the women on the runway are going into battle, but post-election there's optimism, a sense that there'll be a withdrawal from Iraq, which is translating into more fun designs. Sheesh, nothing like hearing about politics from fashionistas.
Next, Sacha Baron Cohen. Whose Borat character I thought was hilarious in the tv shows, horrible in the movie theater. She doesn't get an interview with him--Cohen's apparently not talking anymore. No loss, he's grown quickly irritating. Heck, who didn't cheer when 'Borat' got punched in the street.
John Ramsey, dad of JonBenet. Ridiculous choice; her breathless demeanor makes it seem like Walters is their PR shill. Hmm... watching it, I'm more sympathetic--his first wife had cancer, their daughter died in a car accident. He even says at one point he started feeling sorry for John Mark Karr, because he was being convicted in the media, like they were.
Next, Patrick Dempsey, who I guess is on (ABC's) Grey's Anatomy. Apparently, he's dreamy. And, it seems a big part of the appeal of the show is his hair (good thing he's married to a hairstylist)? Uh, okay. This is a total waste of time, he seems like a typically self-centered Hollywoodite who probably thinks playing a surgeon is as important as being one.
Who's the most fascinating person going to be? My guess is a politician. Donald Rumsfeld, if she plays it straight. Barack Obama if she really is a product of her environment. Nancy Pelosi, if she goes nuts. Or, Mark Foley if the ABC brass have their way.
And it's indeed Nancy Pelosi, which I think is more wishful--or, premature--than actual. Wow, I didn't know she had 5 kids in 4 years, essentially a stay-at-home mom until her youngest was in high school. That's pretty cool. She says she wants to root out corruption in Washingon--maybe it'll take a woman to clean up the house, she says.
I guess we'll see. As for my own lists, I agree with Agassi, Cohen and Bradgelina, would add Rumsfeld and my list of ideal dinner party guests, and--because hey, maybe 2006's most fascinating people should include non-Americans! I'd throw in the following:
The latest Times book review section takes a look at photographer Pete Turner's The Color of Jazz, which collects some of the notable album covers that use his photos.
Turner, who learned his craft in the military, apparently is known both for his striking images and the tints he gives them. His photos are great; you wonder a bit what's real and what's not, but somehow they work.
Pete Turner photos Giraffe, Ibiza Women, and Sand Dune in Namibia via Photo District News.
If I could only watch one tv channel, I might very well pick the Food Network. Even though or maybe because I don't really cook I love watching Good Eats, Iron Chef (the Japanese original is waaay better than the American wanna-be) Ham on the Street, The Hungry Detective, Unwrapped, Emeril Lagasse and of course Rachel Ray.
Granted, the channel's usually on in the background, and every host save one is white (some extremely so--it's got to be part of a deliberate demographic decision). But the network's done a good job of putting together a mix of easy-to-experience programming.
One person I've never liked much is Paula Deen--she's always struck me as a little too much Southern hokey. And her sons, now with their own show, are just spoiled good-old-boys.
But I like Paula now, after watching her with Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. Yup, the ex-president of the United States was on her show, cooking and making easy small talk.
She was appropriately respectful--even if she oddly called him Mr. Jimmy--yet obviously was having a ball with her fellow Georgian. They finished the show holding hands, eating a meal on the Carters' couch, as she delivered an emotional tribute, calling him the greatest humanitarian in the world today.
As for President Carter... what a great guy. He seemed totally at ease rolling out dough for biscuits; seems to know his way around the kitchen. But then again, he's always been a down-to-earth, hands-on person, sometimes to his detriment (i.e., his personal involvement in who was scheduled to play when on the White House tennis court; for a fascinating look at this anecdote and Carter's personality, see Match Point to the Media).
Like his nemesis Ronald Reagan, Carter is definitely a much more complicated and thus interesting guy than the caricature most people carry around of him. He was not only deeply religious--in an absolutely appropriate way--but also, as reflected in his days as a Navy nuclear submarine commander, a steely, stubborn man who stuck by his principles and expected others to hold themselves to similarly high, professional standards.
In some ways he was let down by the less-exceptional people around him, in particular the foreign leaders whom he trusted to care about their people's interests as much as he did.
As for his legacy with the American people, it's too bad he didn't take a page from Bill Moyers, his fellow Southern liberal Baptist, and learn the supreme importance of image and communication in politics. Americans want a president who seems presidential. Carter, post-Watergate, purposefully tried to strip the office of its pomp and hauteur, but in the process lost his bully pulpit and made himself seem a mere technocrat.
Oh well; history will remember him more kindly than many of us do, he may well have been the most decent man to hold the job since Abraham Lincoln.
And heck, not too many other countries where you can turn on the tube and see your ex-supremeo leader wearing an apron, with flour on his hands.
Photos of Jimmy Carter from PBS' American Experience's telling photo album.
