Fashion tales of fashion tails—this can’t be a trend, can it? It just can’t.
First, there’s fore:
And then there’s aft:
The wearers are Emma Roberts and Olivia Palermo, in that order. I have no idea who they are and I’m not about to look them up and link to them. If you care, that’s your task.
[Hat tip: Go Fug Yourself.]
I’ve been asked to comment on Obama’s depression—no, not the economic kind; the psychological kind. Speculation is that the NY Times is about to do a story on the president’s growing gloom and listlessness.
So here it is: I haven’t a clue whether Obama is depressed. No one except his close associates has a clue. However, depression would be a pretty normal response to what’s going on in Obama’s life right now. Of course, there’s depression of the mild and non-incapacitating sort, and depression of the severe and disabling sort. My guess is that the allegations—if they do come out—will be that Obama is suffering from the former rather than the latter.
Presidents have been depressed before. Abraham Lincoln, for example, was famous for suffering from the malady, and he seemed to do okay at his job. In those days there were no anti-depressants, and Lincoln showed great strength in battling with what was then known as melancholy throughout his life:
With Lincoln we have a man whose depression spurred him, painfully, to examine the core of his soul; whose hard work to stay alive helped him develop crucial skills and capacities, even as his depression lingered hauntingly; and whose inimitable character took great strength from the piercing insights of depression, the creative responses to it, and a spirit of humble determination forged over decades of deep suffering and earnest longing.
Obama is not Lincoln, however much he might quote him. But Lincoln is not the only president who’s been depressed. LBJ is reported to have become depressed about the Vietnam impasse:
Moyers described Johnson to me [author Robert Dallek] as “paranoid” and “depressed,” and never more so than in 1965. Moyers attributes this dark passage to “the realization about which he was clearer than anyone — that [Vietnam] was a road from which there was no turning back.” Johnson saw the decision to send troops as potentially marking the end of his presidency. “It was a pronounced, prolonged depression,” Moyers adds. “He would just go within himself, just disappear — morose, self-pitying, angry…. He was a tormented man,” who described himself to Moyers as being in a Louisiana swamp that was “pulling me down.” “When he said it,” Moyers remembers, “he was lying in bed with the covers almost above his head.”
I asked Moyers if others in the White House were as troubled by Johnson’s behavior as he and Goodwin. Yes, Moyers replied, and “when they were deeply concerned about his behavior, they would call me — Cabinet officers and others. Rusk would call me and tell me about some exchange he just had with the President that was very disturbing, and he would say that he seemed to be very depressed.
We all know how that ended: with Johnson’s withdrawal from the 1968 presidential race, leaving Nixon and VP Humphrey to duke it out. And we all know how that ended, as well.
Although in some ways it hasn’t ended yet.
NOTE: And then there’s always this:
The day after the special election to replace Rep. Weiner was won by the Republican Turner over the Democrat Weprin, a few things are clear:
(1) A district that is ordinarily 3-1 Democrat went strongly for a Republican candidate, giving him an 8% margin of victory.
(2) A district that went for Obama by 11% in 2008 went strongly for a Republican candidate.
(3) A district that gave Weiner a 20% margin of victory in 2010 (a year that was mostly a Republican tsunami nationwide) went strongly for a Republican candidate.
(4) The district has a very unusual composition ethnically and religiously: 1/3 of voters are Jews, and 1/3 of those are Orthodox. However, the losing Democrat was an Orthodox Jew and the winning Republican a Catholic.
It’s difficult to know exactly what this all might mean in the long run—except that I think it’s safe to say that, although it may be “good for the Jews”, it’s not good for Obama. Was the main issue here the president’s lack of support for Israel, or generalized discontent with the economy, or other factors such as Democrat Weprin’s vote for same-sex marriage (which is against Orthodox Jewish law), or some combination of them all? Only the voters know for sure, and I haven’t seen any exit polls to indicate which of these was most important.
Turner’s victory cannot be explained by saying that in general, Orthodox Jews tend to be more Republican. Although they indeed do, the voting results in this district for 2008 and 2010 make it clear that many there who voted Democratic just a short while ago had to have changed their vote to Republican now. And when Jews start to desert the Democratic Party, the Democrats have got to feel the ground shaking beneath them.
This Jerusalem Post article explains a bit more about why:
Ari Fleischer, former spokesman to president George W. Bush, said at a panel discussion at the AIPAC conference in May that if Obama wins over the Jews 4:1, as he did last time, he wins the next election; but that if he only takes the Jews 3:1, he’s in trouble. A shift of a few percentage votes among Jews in 2012 in key battleground states with large Jewish populations such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania could have a huge impact in a close presidential race.
Though some will say that the Jews who live in the Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods that make up the 9th district that was up for grabs Tuesday – the district that once belonged to disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner – are not reflective of American Jewish demographics: that the Jews there are more religious and Russian than the national average, which makes them more conservative. However, the Jewish demographics in southern Florida, where presidential elections have been won and lost before, does reflect to some degree the demographics in Queens and Brooklyn, as many of the Jews in south Florida hail from areas represented in the contested congressional district: Kew Gardens, Forest Hills, Sheepshead Bay.
Jews are a very small group, representing only 1.7% of the population of the US. However, as Fleischer points out, a change in the Jewish vote can affect totals in large states that will be exceedingly important in 2012. Weprin seems to be less an anomaly and more the canary in Obama’s mine.
…here.
The race is a close one. Republicans have framed this as a referendum on Obama, and although the Democratic candidate Welpin would ordinarily be highly favored to win, polls have shown him falling behind.
Israel is a particular issue in this election, since many of the district’s voters are Jews, and Orthodox Jews at that:
Orthodox Jews, who constitute a substantial chunk of the district’s electorate, seem particularly resistant to supporting Weprin, who is an observant Jew, against Turner, who is not Jewish but who never misses an opportunity to reiterate his support for Israel and raise doubts about Obama’s support for that country.
Whether the president’s political problems in the district stem primarily from the economy or the perception among observant Jews that he isn’t suitably supportive of Israel is a matter for some debate, but it really doesn’t matter to Weprin right now.
The Orthodox Jews of District 9 are not typical of the makeup of the Jewish vote around the country, of course, where they are more of a minority within a minority. Orthodox Jews tend to be more conservative politically in general than Conservative (the religious designation, that is), Reform, or secular Jews.
ADDENDUM: Here’s District 9:
The district went for Obama in 2008 by 11%. Granted, this is a special election, but it’s the first time a Republican has held the seat since 1923.
Even Weprin sought to distance himself from Obama, telling the Jewish Weekly that he would “probably” back him for reelection.
But Dov Hikind, a Democratic colleague of Weprin’s in the New York assembly who nonetheless endorsed Turner, suggested that the deciding factor in the race was the economy.
“People want to go back to work,” Hikind said. “They’re sick and tired of speeches.”
This.
But my question is: why would anyone be surprised? Hasn’t it always been obvious that reverse discrimination is an inevitable effect of the whole affirmative action enterprise?
And I’m not at all sure it matters anymore whether affirmative action is de jure or just de facto. It is firmly entrenched in academia at this point.
[ADDENDUM: Criticism of the statistics used in the study. I don’t have enough statistical expertise to evaluate this myself.]
Well, not really. For one thing, the interview was conducted in 1958, before Obama was born. But maybe you’ll see what I mean if you watch some of it:
As for Huxley, although I think Brave New World was a good book (and obviously a seminal classic), I happen to prefer Crome Yellow (also available in Kindle). But I don’t expect a whole lot of people to agree with me.
Caroline Glick assesses the situation in Egypt in light of the recent mob attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo. The crowd was prevented from killing six Israeli security officers only because the military leaders of Egypt, who had been sitting on their hands as the drama played out (either in order to appease the mob or because they sympathized with it, or perhaps both), finally acceded to US pressure and intervened at the eleventh hour to save the Israelis.
This says quite a few things, some of them things we already knew. One is that in the absence of Mubarak events will probably be going more poorly for Israel in terms of Egyptian attitude and actions towards it. Another is that in a pinch, the Obama administration will sometimes intervene to avoid a result that is bad for Israel. If one looks at it cynically (and I am strongly inclined in that direction), Obama knows that any bad repercussions from the current Egyptian leaders will be placed at least somewhat on his head, and that that sort of thing could bode very badly for him in the 2012 election (see this for more).
Of course, it’s also possible that Obama is trying to do the right thing by Israel. But there’s not a whole lot of precedent that would support that belief.
At any rate, as Glick writes:
…US leverage may end after [Egypt’s] November’s elections. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are expected to win a parliamentary majority and the presidency.
And then it will get a lot more interesting.
Egypt is not alone in this trend. Iran, of course, is the template, as many (including me) feared when the movement to depose Mubarak began, and Obama decided to play the Jimmy Carter role. But once-moderate Turkey is not far behind, as well.
Michael Totten has an in-depth piece on what’s been happening in Egypt since the revolution, and the news isn’t good (the piece, on the other hand, is). Here’s the summary version of the article, which features an interview by prominent liberal Egyptian intellectual Hala Mustafa:
“All we can do,” Mustafa said, “is preserve the minimal amount of our liberal tradition that still remains. But the military rule and the growing Islamization of the society make it very difficult. The conservative forces are trying to prevent any sort of progress in the country. The military rulers are different from the Muslim Brotherhood, but they don’t contradict each other.”…
“It was a premature revolution. Mubarak’s regime wasn’t Mubarak’s. It was the regime that was founded in 1952 and it’s still here. The regime’s attitude against Israel is the same. Americans thought Mubarak was with Israel, but it’s not true. Mubarak did nothing to change the propaganda or advance peace. You have to rethink what was happening.”
The elite in the government and the army [have] never stopped broadcasting the message that Israel and the United States are their enemies. Right now the army is blaming all the problems in the country on foreign (i.e., Israeli and American) saboteurs and subversives, and just a few days ago tightened entry requirements on Western visitors, even tourists. This is not the way a peaceable ally behaves, but aside from the new visa requirements, it’s nothing new, really. Mubarak’s government did the same thing.
So Totten’s interviewee doesn’t think the new regime will be worse than Mubarak’s was—but that’s scant comfort to those who support Israel, because Mubarak’s relative friendliness to Israel was a sham, anyway.
As fare as transparency of the new leaders goes, this says it all:
It’s next-to impossible to get an interview with anyone on the junta. I was laughed at when I tried. “They won’t give interviews to the Egyptian media let alone the American media,” by Egyptian colleague Yasmin El-Rifae said.
They are the men behind the curtain, pulling the levers of power. After the election, will they lose some of that ability? And will it even matter, or are the military leaders mostly reacting to both the mob and to the Muslim Brotherhood, already?
Mustafa makes it clear that she thinks the military will remain in control in Egypt even after the elections; after all, they’ve been in control there for at least a half century. And certainly she knows more about Egypt than I do. But I’m not sure she’s correct, because something in my gut tells me that Iran—which effectively destroyed the old military leaders of its country after the revolutionary Islamicists came to power—may be the model in that respect, despite major differences otherwise between Egypt and Iran. As Totten writes:
Egypt’s revolution is very different indeed from Iran’s, but history doesn’t need to repeat itself exactly before its lessons ought to be heeded.
For now, anyway.
I maintain that most of the public still doesn’t know Perry very well. The already-interminable-seeming 2012 campaign season has barely begun. But it seems that the real race will remain between Perry and Romney—unless, of course, Palin declares, and I just don’t see that as likely. We do know Romney pretty well since he’s been running nearly forever, but Mr. Smooth just doesn’t seem to be able to gain traction.
It’s not surprising, though, that the frontrunners are governors or former governors. That’s the classic way to gain executive political experience, as opposed to the legislative route (or even the pizza company route).
[ADDENDUM: So, is Perry being honest with the American people?]
The NY Times offers some excerpts from a series of interviews Jackie Kennedy granted Arthur Schlesinger in early 1964, just a short while after her husband was assassinated. The content of those talks has been sealed all these years, but if the Times article is any indication, the about-to-be-released recordings and book about them will generate a certain amount of soundbite chatter and not a whole lot else.
The excerpts are puzzling. Not because in talking to the trusted Schlesinger Jackie makes some observations that seem petty or catty, or because she is careful to mention her marriage only in glowing terms. After all, she was a 34-year-old woman who had recently undergone a profoundly stressful and traumatic—even searing and bloodcurdling—event. The puzzlement is that Jackie ever wanted some of the more gossipy parts (example: calling Indira Gandhi a “a real prune ”” bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman”) made public, even a half-century later. She constructed her public image as carefully as she coiffed her hair, and whoever she was when among friends and family (and all indications are that she was bitingly witty, entertaining, and charming), she seemed an intensely private person who guarded her public persona and clothed it in dignity for the majority of her life.
Maybe she just wanted to let her hair down and cut loose, even if this side of her would only air posthumously. And yet the tapes seem carefully crafted: nothing about the assassination, nothing about her husband’s affairs, nothing about his Addison’s disease. We don’t even know how much she knew about those last two things, but it’s probably safe to assume she knew something, and perhaps a great deal. But whatever she knew, she seems to have taken it to the grave.
…would taste as sweet. The survey that demonstrates this is not especially scientific, but it’s fun.
Growing up in New York, the operative word for carbonated beverages was “soda.” Later I learned that in the midwest “pop” was much preferred. I’ve never really heard the survey’s generic “Coke” of the south.
But in New England it’s long been “tonic.” The survey bore this out, with “tonic” being one of the most popular “other” responses. It seems to be used in a fairly circumscribed area of New England: the north. In other words, Red Sox as opposed to Yankee territory.
Whatever you call it, I don’t drink any of it except for club soda. But of course, you already knew that.
[Hat tip: Maetenloch at Ace of Spades.]
Ten years ago today.
That’s a long time. So long ago that there are now teenagers who were so young back then that they don’t remember it. To them, 9/11 is just a piece of history, not part of their life experience. It’s something that was always there, part of the background of the world as they know it.
For those of us who were grownups when 9/11 happened, it’s also been transmuted—not to something that was always there, but to something that’s been incorporated into our view of the world. We’ve all done that differently. But for us, the shock and surprise and horror reoccurs (to a somewhat diminished extent, of course; there’s no shock like the first shock) whenever we see the footage, or when we think—really really think, without the protective shield of familiarity—of what actually happened on that day.
Enormous passenger jets cleaving into skyscrapers at speeds of over 500 mph, bursting into orange flame fiery against the bluest of skies. Firefighters and police going up the WTC stairs while everyone else was coming down. The jumpers. Bereft relatives desperately searching for the lost, papering New York with notices that finally fluttered down from their posts, taking the last hopes for survival with them.
The temporary near-unity the country felt (and it was always illusory; there were those willing to blame us from the start) has dissipated as though it never happened. That’s not surprising, because the rifts were already deep. But they have only become deeper since.
Perhaps that’s a good thing. Things are clearer now. In general, people are more alert and interested in what’s going on. I know I am. I would not be a blogger but for a chain reaction of internal events that began for me on the day. That’s very small in the larger scheme of things, but for me it’s big.
What do I hope for the future? That we continue to remember. That we not have any sort of repeat. That the repercussions of that day will enhance the spread of liberty both in this country and around the world, so that none of the people who perished on 9/11 will have died in vain.
Well, the 9/11 Memorial was a long time coming, but it will be opening tomorrow on the 10th anniversary of that fateful day.
Take a look, and perhaps you’ll agree with me that it’s a fitting tribute, classic and moving in its respectful and timeless simplicity. A tower or any structure erected in the WTC footpath would not have been nearly as appropriate:
Here’s a host more information about the Memorial. I especially like the thoughtful way the names were arranged, and the fact that the Pentagon and Pennsylvania victims are included as well:
As part of the 9/11 Memorial’s official names verification process completed in 2009, victims’ next-of-kin made specific requests for names to appear adjacent to their loved one’s name (“adjacency requests”). Some of these requests were for relatives, friends, and colleagues; others were for loved ones to be listed with people they may have barely known or just met, but with whom intense bonds were quickly formed as a result of shared response. Over 1,200 of these requests were made and all are reflected on the Memorial. In fact, these requests drive the ordering the groupings on around the Memorial pools, the affiliations within them, and in many places, the placement of the names themselves.
[NOTE: I’m not sure of the best way to categorize this post. My initial impulse was to put it under “terrorism and terrorists,” and it certainly is that. But it’s so much more; after ten years it really does seem as though we have transcended that category, although it still is a huge part of it. Well, “history” will just have to do, as well as “painting and sculpture.”]
[ADDENDUM: I was thinking that the trend in monuments ever since the Vietnam memorial has been anti-vertical. They are still monumental, but not in an upward direction. Rather, the emphasis is horizontal or even downward.
Maya Lin’s groundbreaking—in more ways than one—design to commemorate the Vietnam conflict began the trend. It was actually set in a depression in the earth, very controversial at first but later accepted as a properly somber tribute. Its beauty, majesty, and mystery are not apparent in photos; its impact is best seen in person.
People may criticize this trend as anti-heroic, and they may be correct. But I cannot help but think it is fitting for the 9/11 Memorial. The original towers soared to the sky, as did the airplanes that took them down. Water soothes and heals, and the depression calls attention to the terrible absence, which is the point of the Memorial. As the poet Edwin Markham once wrote of a different traumatic national loss, that of Abraham Lincoln:
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
The new WTC towers that are still being built will retain the upward thrust of the old ones, reasserting the country’s desire to soar again. But the 9/11 Memorial retains the grief of that “lonesome place against the sky.”]