Israel’s Strategic Blunder

June 30, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Israel and Palestinians | 2 Comments 

The Israeli cabinet’s decision to release a notorious, unrepentant terrorist in exchange for the bodies of captured soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev — whom Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hoped might be alive when negotiations began but now knows are dead — was an enormous strategic blunder, no matter how comforting it will be to the soldiers’ families to know their fate for sure and have them home.

In return, the Israelis agreed to release Lebanese-born Samir Kantar, who murdered two police officers and three members of an Israeli family during a raid in the Northern city of Narahiya in 1979. Smadar Haran Kaider, the widow and mother who saw her family brutally murdered, recounts their last moments in a 2003 op-ed in the Washington Post:

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar. By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

Once freed, Kantar may be back at work. Here’s a portion of a letter he wrote to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah:

“My dear and respectable master and commander,” Kuntar wrote in the letter to Nasrallah. “Peace be with you and with our shahids (martyrs).

“I give you my promise and oath that my only place will be in the fighting front soaked with the sweat of your giving and with the blood of the shahids, the dearest people, and that I will continue your way until we reach a full victory. I send my best wishes and promise of renewed loyalty to you, sir, and to all the Jihad fighters.”

In Gaza, the Hamas regime, holding Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, undoubtedly realizes that the value of its currency has increased. As the AP reports,

In exchange for Schalit, Hamas has demanded freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, though Barghouti is not known to be on the list. Israel, which is holding about 10,000 Palestinians, has refused to free prisoners involved in deadly attacks. However, in recent days Israeli leaders have been talking about paying a “painful price” for the soldier, signaling a possible change. On Monday, after the Israel-Hezbollah deal was approved, Gaza militants took a hard line. “Schalit will not see the light until the Israelis fulfill our demands,” said Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, another armed group involved in his capture. “The (Israeli) occupation’s decision to release Samir Kantar will pave the way for the release of Palestinian prisoners who are serving lengthy sentence.

By swapping land, Israel hoped to achieve peace but guaranteed more war. Swapping prisoners, the result will be the same. As for Sen. Obama, here’s hoping that he learns from Israel’s experience how not to negotiate with an adversary like Iran.

Stone Completes His Trilogy

June 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Presidents | 2 Comments 

At least director Oliver Stone waited until President Nixon had died to make “Nixon,” which didn’t contain a single purely honest thing about him and died at the box office after his daughters denounced it. “W” is in production already, with two living Presidents (Bush & Bush) getting Stoned this time.

Thanks to Stone’s “JFK” and “Nixon,” generations of high school and college history instructors will have to work overtime to counteract his fetid characterizations and conspiracy theories. To the astonishment of anxious critics, his “World Trade Center” was beautifully done, and now colleagues artfully point to “WTC” as evidence that “W” will be OK:

“You put the two names together — Bush and Stone — and everybody had a preconceived notion of what the film would be. But look at ‘World Trade Center,’ ” ["W" producer Moritz] Borman said of Stone’s commercially successful 2006 movie about two Port Authority policemen rescued from Sept. 11 rubble. “There was an uproar when it was announced and then, when the movie got closer to release, the very people who protested it preached from the pulpit that it was a film that had to be seen.”

Nonetheless the Bushes would be wise to gird for a reversion to type by Stone, who says,

It’s a Shakespearean story. . . . I see it as the strange unfolding of American democracy as I have lived it.

We’ve heard all that before. The initial W title is the giveaway: Stone’s completing his great American trilogy. Expect to see rivers of blood flowing from T-bone steaks at the Bush family dinner table as the youngster plots his Iraq invasion. As for Stone’s latest Iago, you saw him in “The American President”: Richard Dreyfuss as creepy GOP Presidential candidate Sen. Bob Rumson, now co-starring in “W” as — do I really need to say it? You don’t realize it intuitively? — Vice President Cheney.

Senator Obama, Meet Reverend Gortner

June 30, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Election 2008, Entertainment, Faith, Islam, Religion, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

One of the curious things about this ever-curiouser election is that half the time it seems like any of its interesting or unusual features ties in, somehow, with someone or something closely associated with the days of cold duck, bell bottoms and shag carpets - in other words, the Nixon Era.

A case in point came up in an article that appeared in last Saturday’s Washington Post. It concerned the efforts of Danielle Allen, a highly-respected political scientist and fellow of the Institute For Advanced Studies (the place in Princeton which sponsored Einstein’s post-1933 research) to determine just how the claim that Sen. Barack Obama was a Muslim began circulating on the Internet. The Post reported that she managed to track the rumor’s primary point of circulation to posts that appeared toward the end of 2006 in, unsuprisingly, Freerepublic.com. One of the “Freepers” most active in discussing the charge against Obama - disproven time and again, but still believed, according to recent polls, by at least 10% of the electorate - was a regular at the site known as “Eva.” Professor Allen discovered that “Eva” was Donna Shaw, a 60-year-old teacher in rural Washington state. Ms. Shaw told the Post’s reporter that “Obama’s ability to captivate audiences made her deeply uneasy because his ‘tone and cadence’ reminded her of the child revivalist con-man preacher Marjoe Gortner.”

Marjoe?!

For anyone who was a teenager or older in the 1970s, the name instantly evokes a curly-haired, lanky figure shouting from a pulpit, or shambling through a dozen or more cheezy movies (both on the big screen and TV), or, later, gliding through the intrigues of Falcon Crest. But for anyone under 35 (unless they’ve come across his six dozen clips at Youtube or the three or so pages devoted to him in Christopher Hitchens’ bestseller God Is Not Great), the reaction almost certainly is, “Who?”

So here’s a quick biography, partly drawing on Wikipedia’s entry (which can be found, along with representative Youtube footage of Obama and Marjoe, at the Right Rev. James W. Bailey’s self-proclaimed “pro-American art blog”):

Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner - the second name is a combination of Mary and Joseph - was born in January 1944 in Long Beach, California, the son of an itinerant evangelist. At the age of three, the toddler’s father noticed his uncanny self-possession and remarkable verbal skills. The elder Gortner promptly began schooling Marjoe in the Bible and fundamentalist theology. By 1948, such was the youngster’s progress that he went on the tent circuit, billed as the world’s youngest ordained minister (though by what institution or church remained a mystery).

Before long, Marjoe began officiating at weddings in southern California. One of these ceremonies was captured by a newsreel crew and a Life photographer, and thus the adorable, curly-topped four-year-old became a coast-to-coast celebrity. For the next decade, he toured America with considerable success, drawing crowds that sometimes numbered in the tens of thousands.

But with puberty, interest in Marjoe waned. Around his fourteenth (or, as sometimes stated, sixteenth) birthday, his father vanished with his accumulated earnings. A disillusioned Marjoe then parted with his mother and drifted to Santa Cruz, California, where he was taken in by an “older woman” who saw to it that he finished high school, then studied at San Jose State College. There, he fell in with rock musicians and the nascent hippie community, spending many an afternoon in Haight-Ashbury.

By the end of the 1960s, nearing his mid-twenties and in need of money, Marjoe took up the ministry again, this time featuring his musical talents heavily and working the tent circuit he once wowed as a curly-haired moppet - but now with moves borrowed from Mick Jagger and Hendrix. For a few years he did fairly well - but there was a difference. For most of his time as a boy preacher, Marjoe had done it for the love of God. Now, he was doing it for the love of Mammon.

In 1971, after meeting two filmmakers (the late Howard Smith, who was also the Village Voice’s “Scenes” columnist, and Sarah Kernochan, from a socially prominent New York family), Marjoe decided to undertake one last revival tour, with a camera crew in tow. Smith, Kernochan and their cohorts filmed Marjoe unleashing the Holy Spirit before the multitudes, preaching the gospel, healing the sick, counseling the troubled - and, backstage, cold-bloodedly (yet somehow disarmingly) explaining just how he spun the crowds and staged his miracles - a real-life Elmer Gantry for the Jesus-freak generation. The resulting film, juxtaposed with archival footage of the boy preacher, became the documentary Marjoe, which was released to rave reviews in late July 1972, and won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature the following year. (The film is now available at Amazon, as a download and on DVD, and can also be seen in nine segments - “Marjoe 1,” etc - on Youtube.)

And thus it was that, even as Nixon and McGovern vied for the attention of the voters, Marjoe Gortner provided a colorful sideshow in the world of pop culture. Once the film was released, of course, his days on the Pentecostal circuit were over. His first move was to try to redefine himself as a rock star; an album, Bad But Not Evil (borrowed from his self-description in the film), was released by Chelsea Records (also the musical home of Lulu and Wayne Newton at the time), and a single, “Lo And Behold,” rose to #109 on the Billboard chart. But it went no higher.

Following an authorized biography by Steven Gaines (later to write the life of Halston), and an article for Oui magazine in which he analyzed the appeal of the teenage Guru Maharaj Ji (who was filling stadiums during the Watergate era), Marjoe ventured into acting. He made his debut in a supporting role in the 1973 TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders (starring Telly Savalas in his debut as Kojak), and then got seventh billing in the all-star disaster movie Earthquake, playing a mad grocery clerk who gets to romance Victoria Principal. More movies, mainly for TV, followed. Especially notable was Pray For The Wildcats, in which the onetime Hashbury habitue played a hippie menaced by sadistic bikers Andy Griffith and Robert Reed. (Sheriff Taylor and Mike Brady on Harleys? Rest assured that wasn’t too out of the ordinary in the world of 1970s TV movies.) And then there was The Food Of The Gods, in which Marjoe (along with Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker and Ida Lupino) was menaced by giant worms, rats, and wasps in a loose adaptation of the H.G. Wells story. (The latter film is especially well represented on Youtube, and it’s also worth noting that Michael Medved, in his pre-radio days, ranked it Worst Rodent Movie Of All Time in his book The Golden Turkey Awards.)

But by 1980 the movie roles were drying up and Marjoe, after getting excellent notices as a maniacal thug in When You Comin’ Back Red Ryder? (and awful ones in Starcrash), moved to the world of series TV. He appeared twice on Fantasy Island then went on to guest shots on Hotel, The A-Team, and Matt Houston. He spent the 1986-87 season playing Vince Karlotti on Falcon Crest.

The end of the Reagan era also saw the conclusion of Marjoe’s acting career (except for an appearance in the 1995 Western Wild Bill as, naturally, a preacher). Around 1989 he moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, and launched yet another career as a fundraiser for charitable events. His primary work for the last two decades has been to preside over Marjoe Gortner Entertainment, which, most recently, has produced star-studded TV spectaculars out of the Banff Springs Hotel in Canada to benefit Robert Kennedy Jr’s Waterkeepers Alliance. According to an employee who recently posted at the Ex-Christians message board, he no longer gives interviews or answers questions about his past.

And that’s the sixty-year career of Marjoe in a nutshell. Here’s a Youtube clip (one of the segments of Marjoe) in which the semblance to Obama seems particularly visible.

Tired Of Politics? Better Not Go To Church

June 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Episcopal Church, Faith | Leave a Comment 

Old tactic of conservative Anglicans: Spearheaded by U.S. parishes and dioceses that had left the Episcopal Church, persuade the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion to ally with them instead of the Episcopal Church.

New tactic: Spearheaded by African bishops, they take 150-300 out of 7,347 U.S. Episcopal congregations and create an entirely new Anglican body of their own; we keep Archbishop Rowan Williams.

According to the New York Times, quoting a former Episcopal priest from southern California who’s just been made a bishop in Nigeria, here’s what it’s all about:

Bishop [Robert] Anderson said a new province would unite believers in North America who had abandoned the Episcopal Church in recent decades because they disagreed with the ordination of female priests and bishops, its interpretation of Scripture or its acceptance of homosexuality.

American Anglicans may have some decisions to make about those now clearly marching at the head of their movement — their new church leaders and also some of the church’s secular partners. Newly sworn in after a crooked, bloody election, Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe is backing the new Anglican group because of its superior moral odor:

[He] has condemned Archbishop Rowan Williams as lacking a “moral compass” and said that gays in the church are a sign of “moral degeneracy”. The embarrassing endorsement of their cause…came as hard-line Anglicans have been meeting in Jerusalem. In the past, anti-gay and homophobic rhetoric has formed a strong part of Mr. Mugabe’s attack against the West and against the human rights standards advocated by the international community. British gay and human rights activist Peter Tatchell has been badly beaten by the dictator’s security staff trying to make a “citizen’s arrest” of Mugabe for his abuse and crimes against sexual minorities. The comments came after two African archbishops declined opportunities given at a press conference earlier this week to condemn violence against lesbian and gay people, saying that it was not the churches’ business to get involved in arguments with governments.

But at that June 22 press conference in Jerusalem, where the dissatisfied Anglicans were meeting, Nigeria’s Peter Akinola, leader of the world’s largest Anglican province, both gave advice to government about how to handle gay people and also implied that he supported vigilantism — in the process sounding a little like the Iranian president when he said there were no gays in his country. Akinola:

If the practice (homosexuality) is now found to be in our society, it is of service to be against it. Alright, and to that extent what my understanding is, is that those that are responsible for law and order will want to prevent wholesale importation of foreign practices and traditions, that are not consistent with native standards, native way of life.

How exactly, Bishop, are you suggesting people be “of service”?

Still Waiting For The Times

June 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, News media, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

The International Herald Tribune, which calls itself “the global edition of the New York Times,” had to reprint a Boston Globe review of James Rosen’s book The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate because the Times itself hasn’t reviewed it yet. Does the country’s premier newspaper really believe that the Watergate canon is closed?

Venezuela’s Popular “Change” Agent

June 30, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs | Leave a Comment 

Central Caracas Mayor Leopoldo López is more popular than the odious Hugo Chavez, but due to trumped up charges he’s been disqualified as a challenger against the Chavez backed candidate in advance of the upcoming mayoral race in Greater Caracas. Though Lopez hasn’t been formally convicted or sentenced for a crime, Chavez’s control of the Supreme Court allows him to wield power through the ambiguity of judicial fiat:

Like the rulers of Iran, with whom he has cultivated a close alliance, Chávez has adopted the tactic of rigging an election by excluding his most formidable opponents in advance. This straightforwardly violates the Venezuelan constitution as well as the Inter-American Democratic Charter; both say a citizen cannot be stripped of political rights unless he is convicted of a crime and sentenced by a judge. The charges against López, never tested in court, are a blatantly bogus concoction. One concerns a supposedly improper contribution he made to a judicial advocacy organization nine years ago, before he was elected.

But the law doesn’t matter much in Venezuela these days. Chávez also controls the Supreme Court, and it appears unlikely even to respond to appeals of the ban before the August deadline for registering candidates for the ballot. Opponents of the blacklist have staged one mass demonstration in Caracas, and a poll out last week showed that 80 percent of Venezuelans oppose it. But Chávez isn’t backing down, and for good reason: An opposition victory in Caracas and other big states would virtually ensure that his project to convert Venezuela to Cuban-style socialism would collapse.

Featured Articles — June 30, 2008

June 30, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes from Home and Abroad:

Dreams From His Grandmother By Victor Davis Hanson
Ten general-election strategies Obama can use to disguise his hard-left views.

The Tragic End of Bush’s North Korea Policy By John R. Bolton
The Soviet dark art of denial, deception and disguise – is alive and well in Pyongyang, years after the Soviet Union disappeared. Unfortunately, the Bush administration appears not to have gotten the word.

What we can do in this dangerous moment By Lawrence Summers
It is quite possible that we are now at the most dangerous moment since the American financial crisis began last August. Staggering increases in the prices of oil and other commodities have brought American consumer confidence to new lows and raised serious concerns about inflation, thereby limiting the capacity of monetary policy to respond to a financial sector which – judging by equity values – is at its weakest point since the crisis began.

France’s military about-face By Cristian Science Monitor Editors
President Sarkozy wants to rejoin NATO’s military command, a welcome move.

A Terrible Bust Is Born By Roger Cohen
Yes, a bear market is upon us. But not everyone is suffering as the Dow dives.

Some Gun Rules We Can All Agree On By Michael R. Bloomberg & Thomas M. Menino
It’s time to move beyond ideological debates and fix the system.

Grasso’s Payback By Wall Street Journal Editors
Eliot Spitzer has left the stage. It’s time his overzealous legal crusades folllowed.

The Choice They Made By William Kristol
The Declaration of Independence is an example of how liberty sometimes requires the bold leadership of a few individuals.

All Speculation Aside By Sebastian Mallaby
The federal government’s intervention won’t make the price of oil any lower.

Who’s Bitter Now?

June 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

According to Norman Ornstein, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, in their new book on the GOP’s dwindling prospects, Grand Old Party, essentially argue that it’s the Republicans who are the elitists, for repeatedly letting down the the working class voters who have given Republican Presidential candidates the edge in election after election:

[Their] core thesis…is that the working class in America — the non-college-educated half of the electorate — continues to ping-pong between the parties and is there for the taking by any group that can seriously and directly address its concerns. The authors note: “Since 1968, these voters have provided the ‘silent majority’ that elected Nixon, the ‘Reagan Democrats’ who gave the Gipper his landslides and the ‘angry white men’ who put the Gingrich G.O.P. over the top in 1994. … Yet after each Republican triumph, this working-class constituency … has become disillusioned with conservative governance and returned to the Democratic column.”

Two Fiddlers, Same Strad

June 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, News media | Leave a Comment 

Paul Musgrave at the Nixon Library shows a Washington Post columnist how he got scooped — 78 years ago.

More On The Little White Ball

June 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under China, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library | Leave a Comment 

For Sunday evening’s “NBC Nightly News” coverage of our ping pong diplomacy rematch, visit the program’s web site and scroll down. We’ll embed the story if it ever makes it to YouTube.

McCain May Need A Georgian Strategy

June 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Election 2008, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

New York Times:

[A]nalysts said [libertarian candidate Bob] Barr could be a menace to Mr. McCain, particularly in Georgia, where Mr. Barr is relatively well known and Mr. Obama has already begun running television advertisements. “Clearly in Georgia, Bob Barr is making the state competitive,” said Larry J. Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “We all remember Nader. Sometimes you can get a tiny fraction of the vote and make a difference electorally in a state or two. It’s entirely possible.”

What Would Tim Have Done?

June 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

NBC political director Chuck Todd was on Meet the Press this morning, being interviewed on politics in the U.S. west by interim host Tom Brokaw:

MR. TODD: …Obama’s trying to win Montana and North Dakota, too. Those are two states he thinks he can do well. He’s not going to win them, but he is going to sort of drive McCain and Republicans crazy.

MR. BROKAW: Now, be careful about what you say at this stage about what he’s going to win and what he’s not going to win.

MR. TODD: That’s true. That’s true.

Kind of hard to fault a guy for predicting the GOP would win North Dakota, which it’s done for the last ten Presidential elections, at least. Ditto Montana except for 1992. Besides, people like to hear predictions. Perhaps Brokaw thought his colleague would be seen as speaking for the network, but I felt a certain chilling effect as Brokaw spoke, and it looked as though Todd did as well.

Is Honesty Always The Best Policy?

June 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Inspired by Sen. Obama’s decision to opt out of federal funding for his campaign, Daniel Schorr waxes philosophical on flip-flops, arguing that politicians should just admit that their thinking on an issue has changed owing to their growing maturity and a situation’s changing circumstances.

But I don’t see how Schorr’s theory works for Obama’s financing 180 (or ostensible reformer Sen. McCain’s analogous moves last year, when his campaign was struggling). Obama changed his mind because he realized he would end up with more money this way, making it easier to beat his opponent. Pace Mr. Schorr, but would Obama really have wanted to come right out and say that?

The Three Dons

June 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Our friend Katherine Loker, who died last week, had lost her actor-businessman-philanthropist husband, Donald, in 1988. His stage name was Don Terry, and his most famous character was Don Winslow of the Navy in a popular World War II-era serial about a military intelligence officer battling a sinsister organization called Scorpion (sort of a KAOS precursor). Read more about Loker/Terry/Winslow here; below is a “Don Winslow of the Navy” trailer.

Is Putin The New Yeltsin?

June 29, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Russia | 1 Comment 

According to Jeffrey Taylor of The Atlantic Monthly, the succession of Dmitry Medvedev to Russia’s presidency is analogous to former President Boris Yeltsin’s resignation almost ten years ago. Plagued by scandal, Yeltsin’s wink and nod to his successor, Vladamir Putin, insured his graceful exit as Russia’s first elected President and a private life free of legal hardships.

Putin faces a tougher balancing act. Also faced with potential legal battles, Taylor argues, the ex-President nurses an unquenchable thirst for power. But to Putin’s credit, his handpicked successor has departed from the draconian diktatura zakona — Putin’s heavy handed “dictatorship of law,” which the Russian citizenry has come to despise. Meanwhile Putin will continue to maintain support in a largely lockstep Duma, and if he desires he can conveniently escape political life free of the previously precedented zakona:

Hence Putin’s need for a “liberal” successor to offset the ambitious siloviki. If he had anointed a silovik with a functioning power base, he might have brought on his own doom. But by orchestrating Medvedev’s rise, Putin has outsmarted—and possibly imperiled—all those in Sechin’s clan. Moreover, since Medvedev lacks strong personal ties to the security ministries, he can’t control the siloviki without his mentor’s help. Medvedev’s very haplessness before the forces that really run Russia makes him the ideal stand-in for a jealous Putin eager to hold on to power.

As Taylor notes, however, Putin’s attempt at unelected auctoritas has enormous potential to backfire. While Putin enjoys 70 percent approval in the Duma, President Medvedev has more constitutional power than Prime Minister Putin:

Thanks to the drastic imbalance in power that formally exists between Putin’s new post as prime minister and his former position as president, Putin remains vulnerable. The president is head of state, commander in chief, custodian of the nuclear suitcase, director of domestic and foreign policy, master of the security services and the Security Council, and appointer of regional governors. He may impose military law, and he also effectively controls the parastatal energy companies that drive Russia’s economy. Most important, the president can (as Yeltsin often did) dismiss the prime minister, who is tasked to serve him.

The consolidation after the chaos that ensued during the Mexican Revolution comes particular to mind. Barred from consecutive terms during the 1928 election, President Plutarco Elias Calles stepped aside and ruled Mexico by proxy installing a series of manageable puppet presidents from 1928-1935: Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Abelardo Rodríguez. Calles even adorned himself as the nation’s “Jefe Maximo” or political chieftain. He couldn’t, however, compete with his handpicked reformer, and young general Lazaro Cardenas following the 1934 presidential election. Growing in popularity, Cardenas was able to politically isolate Calles by removing his key allies within the government, and effectively dismiss “Jefe” to exile in the United States.

Similarly Medvedev’s constitutional powers give him the same latitude that allowed Putin to repress press freedoms, rig elections, and effectively impose a dictatorship over an eight-year period. That Medvedev is Putin’s puppet remains to be seen. It is certain, however, that Putin — for the time being — is a fixture in Russian political life.

Featured Articles — June 29, 2008

June 29, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home and Abroad:

No Babies in Europe? By Russell Shorto
IT WAS A SPECTACULAR LATE-MAY AFTERNOON IN SOUTHERN ITALY,but the streets of Laviano — a gloriously situated hamlet ranged across a few folds in the mountains of the Campania region — were deserted.

The Price of Justice By Wall Street Journal Editors
Funding the Khmer Rouge war-crimes tribunal.

Anxious in America By Thomas Friedman
Just a few months ago, the consensus view was that Barack Obama would need to choose a hard-core national-security type as his vice presidential running mate to compensate for his lack of foreign policy experience and that John McCain would need a running mate who was young and sprightly to compensate for his age.

Enough Rope for Russia By Jim Hoagland
Vladimir Putin’s switch from running Russia as its president to running Russia as its prime minister has changed traffic patterns here, but little else.

Yes, it’s messy, but toppling Mugabe may be the only option By Martin Ivens
How Bill Clinton brightens a room. Last week he dropped into town to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday. One minute he was hobnobbing with Elton John and Robert De Niro at a charity dinner – corporate tables a snip at £100,000 – the next he was seen leaving No 10 in what the fashion writer of The Times gushingly described as “a dazzling pistachio shirt, an eye-popping striped tie and a raffish summer jacket in dove grey, the season’s most fashionable shade”.

Closing the Enthusiasm Gap by Stephen F. Hayes
McCain and Obama, by the numbers.

If Only Mugabe Were White By Nicholas D. Kristoff
Zimbabweans suffered for so many decades from white racism that the last thing they need is an excuse for Robert Mugabe’s brutality because of his skin color.

The Return of Dr. No By Stephen Moore
“They didn’t live up to what they promised to do. Power corrupted them. They spent lots of money and tried to buy votes. Republicans concluded that they could make voters love them by governing the way Democrats did.” So says former Texas senator and current John McCain economics adviser Phil Gramm.

Chávez Meets His Match By Wall Street Journal Editors
It’s not been a good month for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. He had to do an about-face and call on the Marxist guerrilla group FARC to stop trying to overthrow the government of neighboring Colombia, lay down its arms and release its 700 hostages.

If Terrorists Rock the Vote in 2008 By Frank Rich
Since 2002, it’s been a Beltway axiom that Bomb in American City=G.O.P. Landslide. That equation was the creation of Karl Rove.

Salaam, Iran By Ivo Daalder and Philip Gordon
Talking, without preconditions, offers the best hope of rescuing a failed policy.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives: “Mrs. Robinson”

June 28, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Every Sunday, The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular forty years ago, around the time Richard Nixon ran for, and was elected, President.

MRS. ROBINSON (Paul Simon) performed by SIMON & GARFUNKEL

Few films have made the kind of impact that The Graduate did when it premiered at the end of 1967. It became a cross-cultural cross-generational phenomenon — talked about, discussed, debated, and, of course, seen by almost everyone with a pulse.

In addition to its qualities as a drama, a comedy, and a metaphor, it was also a triumph of marketing. It addressed a newly-developed and highly self-conscious demographic —the high school and college age kids of the Greatest Generation— that had money in its pockets and movies on its mind.

Today it’s a commonplace for the young uns to see a movie several times. But that was something new back in 1968. Not surprisingly, it was a movie about themselves — which made memorizing entire scenes and whole sections of dialogue (another first) that much more satisfying.

The Graduate was one of the major markers on the road to the Generation Gap. Kids loved it and insisted that their parents see it. Parents were ambivalent at best (mine hated it). After all, who wants to pay good money to watch themselves and their values be mocked? If politicians had just studied the faces emerging from the theaters —half wreathed in smiles and half furrowed with confusion or concern— they might more clearly have understood where the country already was and where it was headed.

The Graduate is a relentless and unforgiving indictment of the middle-class capitalist society that America had succeeded in becoming by the late 1960s. The envy of the world was the embarrassment of its most-blessed offspring. The film’s indictment of America was embodied in the single damning word that said it all: Plastic.

Relentless and unforgiving The Graduate may have been. But looked at again today it also seems facile and, at base, jejune. In The Graduate, all the adults are superficial, grasping, materialistic, quasi-alcoholic libidinous louts.

And, to be fair, while the kids in the film are idealized and appealing, they are definitely not all right. They are disaffected, reactive, borderline articulate, naïve, uncultured, and, in many ways, clueless (”Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”). The kids filling the seats, however, were too focused on the beams in the grown-ups’ eyes to notice the motes in their own.

Not the least genius element of the film’s marketing appeal was the choice of Paul Simon to write, and Simon & Garfunkel to record, the soundtrack. The LP spent most of the spring and summer if 1968 as the nation’s number one selling record album. It was followed in that spot by Bookends — another Simon & Garfunkel album with the complete version of “Mrs. Robinson”. (The soundtrack LP had included an instrumental version and a vocal with truncated lyrics.)

Paul Simon had been working on a song about Eleanor Roosevelt around the time director Mike Nichols approached him regarding the film. Simon, well-known for working up to and against deadlines, was still writing as the film neared completion.

The relevance of a song about an idealized former First Lady to the film’s blowsy alcoholic adulteress wasn’t clear, so Nichols nixed Mrs. Roosevelt. The result was Mrs. Robinson, and the heroic role was reassigned to Joe DiMaggio.The context in which the Yankee Clipper makes his appearance —in the song’s last stanza— is clearly political:

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose

That was the way the kids saw election year 1968 — whether you were shouting at the barricades or laughing at the absurdities, when the time came to vote, “every way you look at it, you lose”.

The song was written and the movie opened three months before the political earthquake at the end of March 1968 when LBJ announced that he wouldn’t run again, so the alternative wasn’t McCarthy or Kennedy —much less Johnson or Humphrey or Nixon. 1968 was all problem and no solution and the only comfort to be found, and a cold comfort it was, lay in the remembrance of things past:

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away

This was the same kind of bleak image —and bleaker prospect— that also informed Simon’s song “America” that was on Bookends. The singer and his girlfriend are on a bus:

“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I knew she was sleeping
“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
And they’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

Joe DiMaggio apparently misunderstood the lyric’s intention and was said to have considered a law suit — on the grounds that, far from having gone away, he had just made a Mr. Coffee commercial and was very visible around New York as the on-air spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank. Paul Simon had the opportunity to explain the reference and express his admiration when the two met at a restaurant.

When Joe DiMaggio died in March 1999, Paul Simon wrote an op-ed for The New York Times called “The Silent Superstar”. In it, the composer-poet-lyricist mused on the choice and meaning of the baseball great for his song:

In the 50’s and 60’s, it was fashionable to refer to baseball as a metaphor for America, and DiMaggio represented the values of that America: excellence and fulfillment of duty (he often played in pain), combined with a grace that implied a purity of spirit, an off-the-field dignity and a jealously guarded private life. It was said that he still grieved for his former wife, Marilyn Monroe, and sent fresh flowers to her grave every week. Yet as a man who married one of America’s most famous and famously neurotic women, he never spoke of her in public or in print. He understood the power of silence.

He was the antithesis of the iconoclastic, mind-expanding, authority-defying 60’s, which is why I think he suspected a hidden meaning in my lyrics. The fact that the lines were sincere and that they’ve been embraced over the years as a yearning for heroes and heroism speaks to the subconscious desires of the culture. We need heroes, and we search for candidates to be anointed.

Mr. Simon concluded:

In these days of Presidential transgressions and apologies and prime-time interviews about private sexual matters, we grieve for Joe DiMaggio and mourn the loss of his grace and dignity, his fierce sense of privacy, his fidelity to the memory of his wife and the power of his silence.

Silence was very much on Paul Simon’s mind. His earlier hit “The Sound of Silence” had already achieved totemic status with young people who felt that it expressed their disaffection.Richard Nixon understood the power and purpose of silence from his earliest days in Quaker Whittier. In his First Inaugural Address, he talked about its application to the superheated America he had just inherited:

Greatness comes in simple trappings.

The simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.

To lower our voices would be a simple thing.

In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

Of course in the minds of many Americans —and very many young Americans— Nixon was a major part of the problem so his proposed solution was considered either hypocritical or phony.

The more things change the more they stay the same, and Paul Simon’s words evoke no less powerful reactions today than they did forty years ago. Well, perhaps slightly less powerful reactions —because Joe DiMaggio, without even the reminders of Mr. Coffee and Bowery Bank commercials, has faded deeper into the American memory. But for those who were around and young back in that day, the impact is undiluted. And we all could still profit from hearing more silence.

When Joe DiMaggio died in March 1999, Paul Simon poignantly performed the song alone in center field at the tribute held the following month at Yankee Stadium.

Mrs. Robinson at Yankee Stadium

Oops

June 28, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

The McCains owed back taxes on a La Jolla condo, evidently because the bills lost their way. Unfortunately for Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the story takes the sting out of an analogous lapse by his Democratic opponent, comedian and polemicist Al Franken. Fortunately for Coleman, he’s ten points ahead.

Hazardous Household Items

June 28, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture | 1 Comment 

In a moving reflection on his battle against chronic depression, Dick Cavett makes a point Heller hailers might not have thought of:

I guarantee that one result of this week’s Supreme Court decision on guns will be the deaths of people who have a gun at home for the first time while in depression. In the depths of the malady, getting a stamp on a letter is a day’s work. Going out to somehow arrange for a gun would be way beyond your capability while stricken. But having one near at hand is another matter. There were times when I longed for my ancient .22 single-shot squirrel-hunting rifle. Luckily it had been given away years earlier. Suicide rarely happens when you are all the way down in the uttermost depths. Again, it’s too much trouble. Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently. “She seemed to be improving,” is the sad cry of the mourners.

Owning Up to the Al-Dura Affair

June 28, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Israel and Palestinians | Leave a Comment 

On the heels of an exposed hoax that Scott Johnson ranks right up next to the Dreyfuss Affair, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet explains how the French can never own up to their own mistakes.

[Hat tip: Powerline]

Just Let Him Play His Guitar

June 28, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture | 2 Comments 

We various TNNers are deep into Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. I’ve just begun the chapters on the Presidency. Having promised to withhold substantive commentary until reading it all, but since the author is kind enough to drop in at TNN from time to time, let me just say, for now, that it’s Mervyn Dymally, not Melvin. (I can’t give you page numbers, since I only have the Kindle version with me.) Also, once the text says “Jimmy” Hendrix, not Jimi, as it correctly says later.

But you knew this was just a setup for a song. Here, by the greatest rock guitarist, is the greatest cover of what is generally acknowledged as the greatest rock and roll song of all time, Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone.”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was performing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. When Hendrix says, “That’s [Dylan's] grandmother over there,” he’s probably looking at bassist Noel Redding. As other nostalgic boomers know from the old Warner Reprise album (which the JHE shared with Otis Redding), just before he pounds out the song’s majestic I-IV-V opening progression, Jimi says what a nice evening it is, adding, “No buttons to push.” I always felt I knew just what he meant.

Listen for his deft rephrasing of Dylan’s then two-year-old original (BD: “Napoleon in rags and the language that he used”; JH: “Napoleon in rags and the sweet talk that he used”). And that guitar! How could there possibly be just one of him? On the original, Dylan used bluesman Michael Bloomfield but warned him not to play any blues licks. So the Dylan cut has Roger McGuinn/Peter Buck-style jangling, which Hendrix gently reappropriates and literally turns upside down.

[Hat tip to the late David Ware, PA '72]

“Rather Be Right Than President”

June 28, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

LA Times this morning:

Sen. Obama moves to the center –

In recent weeks, he toughened his stance on Iran and backed an expansion of the government’s wiretapping powers. On Wednesday, he said states should be allowed to execute child rapists. When the Supreme Court the next day struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, he did not complain. These views would fit many Republican candidates, but they are the recent profile adopted by a man who has been called the most liberal Democrat in the Senate.

– while Sen. McCain is still worried about his base:

While Obama is making a play for centrist voters, McCain’s strategy seems more geared to pinning down his party’s conservative base, as he has steadily tacked to the right on a range of issues. He has abandoned or downplayed views on which his reputation as a maverick are based: his opposition to President Bush’s tax cuts, his liberal approach to handling illegal immigrants and his opposition to offshore oil drilling. McCain is bringing his campaign agenda in line with party orthodoxy because many conservatives still view him with suspicion due to past departures from core GOP positions. His burden is to mobilize a party that is fractured and seemingly unenthusiastic about its standard-bearer.

Hey, conservatives: Why isn’t Obama worrying about his base? Could it be that they’d rather see a Democrat in the White House than a Republican?

TNN Weekend Reward: “You Never Can Tell”

June 28, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | 1 Comment 

This weekend brings a double reward; or, more accurately, a single reward with two payouts.

Chuck Berry wrote “You Never Can Tell” in 1964, at the end of the inspired and productive decade that began with “Maybellene” (1955) and included “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957), “Sweet Little Sixteen” (1958), “Johnny B. Goode” (1959), “Back in the U.S.A.” (1960), and “Nadine” (1964).

Born in St. Louis in 1926, Mr. Berry has had a decidedly checkered career that included three prison terms (in fact he had been incarcerated during 1962-3 just before writing the song); a command performance (for President Carter) at the White House; and ranking number 5 on Rolling Stone’s list of The Immortals - The Greatest Artists of All Time (and #6 on the RS list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time). He still performs for an hour one night a month in the Duck Room (named after his characteristic Duck Walk) at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame states that “While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closets of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together.”

“You Never Can Tell” was on the album St. Louis to Liverpool. The single reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Beatles were already committed Berry fans; John Lennon said “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’”

The music perfectly captures the spirit of time and place, and in four concise and pithy verses, anchored by many specific references, he tells the story of what might have been a too-early Cajun marriage that ends up turning out very well indeed. And what’s not to love about a lyric that rhymes “Roebuck sale” with “ginger ale” and contains the words “coolerator” and “souped-up jitney”?

It was a teenage wedding,
and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre
did truly love the mademoiselle
And now the young monsieur
and madame have rung the chapel bell,
“C’est la vie”, say the old folks,
it goes to show you never can tell.

They furnished off an apartment
with a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed
with TV dinners and ginger ale,
But when Pierre found work,
the little money comin’ worked out well
“C’est la vie”, say the old folks,
it goes to show you never can tell.

They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast
Seven hundred little records,
all rock, rhythm and jazz
But when the sun went down,
the rapid tempo of the music fell
“C’est la vie”, say the old folks,
it goes to show you never can tell.

They bought a souped-up jitney,
’twas a cherry red ‘53,
They drove it down New Orleans
to celebrate their anniversary
It was there that Pierre was married
to the lovely mademoiselle
“C’est la vie”, say the old folks,
it goes to show you never can tell.

As Joe Perry writes in his Rolling Stone immortalization of the composer:

As a songwriter, Chuck Berry is like the Ernest Hemingway of rock & roll. He gets right to the point. He tells a story in short sentences. You get a great picture in your mind of what’s going on, in a very short amount of time, in well-picked words. He was also very smart: He knew that if he was going to break into the mainstream, he had to appeal to white teenagers. Which he did. Everything in those songs is about teenagers. I think he knew he could have had his own success on the R&B charts, but he wanted to get out of there and go big time.

There are no contemporary videos of Chuck Berry performing “You Never Can Tell”, and his interpretation is very, and fittingly, different in more recent performances.

So here is the original 1964 recording used as the soundtrack for the dance contest scene in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction. (It may also be the only scene in the film that could be linked to a non-X-rated site.) Uma Thuman and John Travolta epitomize the chilly mix of menace and musicality that characterizes the Tarantino oeuvre.

Emmylou Harris had a country charts hit when she recorded the song (renaming it “C’est la Vie” and relegating “You Never Can Tell” to trailing parentheses) on her 1977 album Luxury Liner.

Her performance on the German TV program Beat Club is from around that time. She was playing in those days with the Hot Band; and, yes, that is an impossibly young Rodney Crowell on the bass in the green t-shirt. (Of course everyone was impossibly young in 1977).

By 1980, performing with the Hot Band at the Zurich Country Festival, her interpretation has taken on a funkier and friskier and even occasionally abandoned aspect; of course that may be the only option when playing for a bunch of chocolate filled burghers at a gig that sounds like an oxymoron.

By 1992, Ms. Harris’ hair had turned to silver and her interpretation had turned to gold. Her masterly restrained approach, sliding in and out of sprechstimme, heightens the story while the Nash Ramblers’ bluegrass approach to the music swings the song in a happy new direction.

Featured Articles — June 28, 2008

June 28, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes from Home and Abroad:

Why Veeps Now Matter By Michael Barone
“Not Exactly a Crime” is the title of a book on America’s vice presidents published in 1972 — a year before Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign for actually committing a crime.

McCain’s Challenge on Security by Jennifer Rubin
Justice Kennedy started the fireworks. As the deciding vote in the landmark Supreme Court decision which extended habeas corpus rights to detainees held at Guantánamo he not only made legal history — he set off one of the hea