Tourist in New York

The New Neo Posted on by

Thanksgiving weekend in NY, and what to do? As in many years past, this year I spent a couple of hours at Rockefeller Center drinking in the season. It’s a classic: the skating rink, the holiday decorations, the huge crowds, the festive atmosphere, the towering art deco buildings.

I took a different subway train than usual, one that brought me to the surface through the GE Building, otherwise known as 30 Rock (yes, like the TV show of the same name, about a fictional TV show that’s supposedly filmed there). Somehow I’d never been inside till now, and what a sight! Pure art deco inside and out, with spectacular floors, shiny black with brass decoration that goes on and on seemingly into infinity:

And then there are the Sert murals decorating the upper walls with their sepia messages of progress and optimism, a celebration of our culture in a heroic mode. Nothing like them could, or would, be attempted today. Here’s one on the conquest of disease:

This one over the information booth opposite the main entrance has an unusual history:

The story is that Rockefeller had originally wanted Picasso or Matisse to do the mural, the centerpiece of the lobby. But they either declined or were unavailable (reports differ), and Diego Rivera was brought on the scene. But he pulled a sly one. A Marxist, he snuck in an admiring portrait of Lenin that had not appeared in the approved draft, and titan of capitalism Rockefeller was not amused. The mural was destroyed, and in its place Sert painted a more acceptable and appropriate vision:

More than 16 feet high and 41 feet long, “American Progress” was installed in 1937 behind the information desk. An allegory for the building of contemporary America, the scene includes statues of the muses of poetry, music and dance, their arms reaching toward the men of action with laborers in the center and Abraham Lincoln, wearing a top hat, resting his hand on the shoulder of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It’s hard to get an idea of the scale of the thing from the photo, but it’s mammoth.

Afterward I wandered out and admired the outside of the building, magically lit in the night:

A crowd had gathered, facing the facade of a building opposite. It was Saks Fifth Avenue, and in a few moments this light show began to play on the wall:

Muslim Brotherhood doing well in Egyptian elections: is anyone surprised?

The New Neo Posted on by

Early election results indicate the Muslim Brotherhood is doing well in Egypt:

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following.

Anyone—anyone—with even a smattering of historical knowledge going back to Iran in 1979, and knowledge of the history of Egypt and the influence of the Brotherhood there, should have had no trouble whatsoever predicting this. It is simplicity itself. The only real question (and that question remains a question) is how far they will go and how restrictive and Islamist Egypt will become. There is no question, however, that a sizable and powerful percentage of those in charge of Egypt would like it to go very very far and become very very Islamist.

And yes, I know that Iran is overwhelmingly Shi’ite and Egypt overwhelmingly Sunni and that the two branches have some differences. But I also am aware of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it’s not a pretty one.

I claim no special prescience here in having predicted this from the very moment I heard Mubarak might be in trouble, and in harping on it thereafter. It took no particular insight to see it.

Here is the very first article I wrote on the subject, back in January of 2011, in which I said:

I have been concerned from the start about the possible influence and popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood [in Egypt], a currently-banned Islamist fundamentalist group that has its roots in Egypt in the earlier part of the twentieth century. And here’s some background on the position of El Baradei, who might (accent on the “might”) be in a position to take charge in a while.

The Egyptian people are protesting in favor of democracy. As a person who remembers the turmoil of the Iranian revolution of 1979””the different groups temporarily united for the Shah’s overthrow and then jockeying for position (vainly) against the fundamentalist Islamists who quickly established their dominance””I have to say the situation makes me nervous.

Here’s another long article I wrote on the subject, one of many. And I was hardly alone.

I still don’t know how the situation could have been improved, however. It’s the same old question: do we support repressive dictators or encourage democracy in countries that are unready, unwilling, or unable to guarantee liberty and human rights for their citizens, and who are likely to democratically vote in governments that could be worse than the dictatorships they replace, both for us and for their own citizens? I’ve written tons on that subject, too (see the category “neocons” in the right sidebar, and especially this 2-part series). Feel free to weigh in.

Why Newt Gingrich may just wind up the Republican nominee

The New Neo Posted on by

(#1) He’s likely to be the last man standing except for Romney—and Republican voters just don’t like Romney.

But they don’t like Gingrich either; so why might he win? That brings us to:

(#2) He’s not afraid to confront Obama.

In fact, that’s been Newt’s emphasis from the start of the campaign, in most of the debates. Even now, when the focus is on the fight among the Republicans, Gingrich is taking it to Obama.

One of the many reasons so many Republicans are still angry at John McCain for the campaign he ran in 2008 was his almost palpable fear of criticizing Obama. Gingrich will have no such problem, and it’s because Gingrich is unlikable rather than despite that fact.

(#3) His skeletons have been out of the closet and rattling around for so long that they’ve almost turned to dust.

I haven’t a clue whether Gingrich can actually pick up enough moderates to win the 2012 election. But right now he seems to be on track to get the chance to find out.

George Stephanopoulos has a new co-pundit: Ginger White

The New Neo Posted on by

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad: George Stephanopoulos gives us the earth-shattering news that Cain’s latest accuser, that well-known political commentator Ginger White, is of the opinion that Herman Cain would not make a good president.

This is what passes for reporting these days.

Cain has written an email to supporters calling White “a troubled Atlanta business woman” who is using “national media outlets to promulgate a fabricated, unsubstantiated story.” Whether or not White’s story is “fabricated” or not, the rest of Cain’s characterization of White seems spot on. Yesterday I described how unsubstantiated her story actually is, and although it should be relatively easy for her to offer more proof so far she has not.

I don’t usually make predictions, but I’ll make one right now: she’ll never offer more proof than she already has.

And for most of the MSM and much of the public, what she’s offered has already been enough to tarnish Cain’s already shaky reputation beyond repair. It doesn’t take much these days, does it? Text messages or phone calls, to or from Cain, suddenly get transmogrified into calls from Cain. Money he says he lent her because he was trying to help a person he thought to be a friend becomes money he gave her because she was his mistress (although not payment for sex; oh no!).

With “friends” like White, who needs enemies?

Speaking of enemies, here’s more about what White did to former business partner Kimberly Vay, with whom she had run a cycling coaching business, after the partnership had broken up at White’s request and White had continued to run the business:

On December 9, according to the complaint, White sent a “defamatory” note to a master email list of the company’s clients and to [Atlanta] city officials. The email said that White’s business had “come tumbling down [on] the day I invited Kim Vay into my life and my business” and that Vay had turned her “dream” into a “nightmare.” According to the complaint, the email alleged that Vay, a competitive bodybuilder, injected veterinary drugs into her system prior to contests,” and also said that Vay preferred to date black men but had made derogatory comments about black women’s hair.

Vay’s complaint termed the allegation about drug use “false, malicious, defamatory” and “reckless,” and therefore libelous.

Vay won the suit; White did not contest it because she says she thought the issue “had already been settled.” Right. This sort of defamatory background ought to make anyone suspicious of White as a reliable reporter, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped a press hotly intent on publishing her tale.

You may ask why I’m focusing on this story so much. After all, Cain’s toast, she’s a lowlife, and what’s he doing with her in the first place? So let’s move on. Well, I continue to find it fascinating as a case study in how low media standards have become, as well as the art of character assassination and how little it takes these days to accomplish it. This is true whether Herman Cain proves some day to have been guilty of adultery or not.

Cain and the women: what constitutes enough proof?

The New Neo Posted on by

Herman Cain continues to strongly deny Ginger White’s allegations that they had a 13-year-long consensual affair, but he’s thinking of dropping out of the race because, as he puts it:

It’s also taken a toll on my wife and family, as you would imagine. Any time you put another cloud of doubt, unfortunately, in the court of public opinion, for some people, you’re guilty until proven innocent. And so, the public will have to decide whether they believe her or whether they believe me. That’s why we’re going to give it time, to see what type of response we get from our supporters.

Whether or not you believe in his innocence depends on whether you believe that where there’s smoke there’s fire, and whether you think Cain’s accusers have generated enough smoke. As for me, I don’t know whether any of the accusations are true or not, because so far (and this includes Ms. White) we’ve not seen any evidence that I would consider powerful.

To be blunt, though, I don’t care if Cain had a sexual affair with this woman. I don’t care partly because I’ve never thought Cain’s candidacy was going to go anywhere anyway (except go away, which it might soon do). I do care that he doesn’t seem to know how to run a well-organized campaign and to effectively counter attacks, and that’s a pattern too, and perhaps a clue to what the flaws of a Cain presidency would be. I also care if he’s a serial liar, and if he went into this campaign with a history like this he’s a fool as well.

You may be as tired of all of this as I am, but I still think it’s instructive to look at the patterns here. Until now the accusations have been of harassment, but the current one by Ginger White is not of harassment but of a long-term consensual affair. But other similarities in the accusers (including White) are too strong to ignore: they tend to have made previous and/or subsequent accusations of sexual harassment about alleged perpetrators other than Cain, and usually have been awarded settlements.

And then there are the financial troubles. The accusers we’ve seen named have a history of frequent unemployment and multiple financial difficulties, sometimes even bankruptcy. White is no different:

Before [Fox in Atlanta’s] interview, we checked into Ginger White’s background. We found she filed a sexual harassment claim against an employer in 2001. That case was settled.

We also found a bankruptcy filing nearly 23 years ago in Kentucky, and a number of eviction notices here in DeKalb County over the past six years. The most recent happened this month.

Ms. White says she has been unemployed, and she is a single mom with two kids struggling to make ends meet.

But White goes the other accusers one better in the suspicious background arena—she’s been sued for libel by an ex-business partner and lost. Here’s more:

A former business partner, Kimberly Vay, sued White this year after a dispute that began when White wrote disparaging comments about Vay in a mass e-mail ”” comments that White recanted four months later as part of a legal settlement.

“She came back and stated that everything she stated in the e-mail was completely false,” Vay said in an interview. “She admitted to making it all up out of anger and frustration.”

None of that means White is lying about Cain and the affair, just as Sharon Bialek might have been telling the truth about Cain assaulting her, despite her financially troubled past. Recall that Bialek alleged, in her press conference with Gloria Allred at her side, that Cain had not only groped her (unprovable) but been responsible for upgrading her hotel suite (potentially provable). Likewise, Ginger White has alleged that Cain paid for multiple trips and hotel rooms for her, which would also appear to be potentially documentable for some enterprising reporter—or even by White herself, who could name dates and times that could be checked out against Cain’s whereabouts. But neither woman has not offered such proof, at least so far.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Cain and White knew each other, at least in the non-Biblical sense. His number is on her cellphone, and she’s got the cellphone records to prove that they have exchanged calls and text messages. Cain says that’s because he had been trying to help her financially. That could most definitely be a lie, although if true it could explain some of the communication (and White certainly did have serious financial problems and could probably use some help; she received an eviction notice this month).

Is this enough? Shouldn’t we (or reporters) demand something else—besides a couple of friendly but non-intimate inscriptions in a book, which she alleges Cain made? A compromising note would do; it’s not necessary to have a semen-stained blue dress. Did White not save an especially tender text message or voicemail recording, as lovers often do? Were there no sweet-nothing emails?

And who was sending most of those 61 calls or text messages that Smith’s records provided: Smith herself, or Cain? Fox in Atlanta, which broke the story, writes:

She showed us some of her cell phone bills that included 61 phone calls or text messages to or from a number starting with 678. She says it is Herman Cain’s private cell phone. The calls were made during four different months– calls or texts made as early as 4:26 in the early morning, and as late as 7:52 at night. The latest were in September of this year.

If I were a reporter writing this story, I think I’d have taken a moment to count how many were calls and how many text messages, and how many were to Cain and how many from him. It would seem to matter: the more calls vs. texts, and the more messages originated with Cain, the higher the likelihood that there was indeed a sexual relationship going on here. The absence of such information leads me to suspect that either (a) the reporter is incompetent, or (b) the bulk of the communication may have been texting rather than calls, and/or much more of it may have been from White to Cain than vice versa.

But the following can be no surprise to anyone who follows the press and its antics: the WaPo blog gets this part wrong [emphasis mine]:

To substantiate her claims, White showed the Atlanta reporter phone records documenting 61 calls from a number that the reporter later traced to Cain. The calls were being made as late as September 2011…

And here we have examples of the lie getting halfway round the world pretty quickly: USA Today writes [emphasis mine]:

White also supplied WAGA with phone records that showed 61 calls or text messages from one number that she said was Cain’s private cellphone.

At least the paper gets the fact that they were calls or text messages correct. Too bad it alleges they were all from Cain, although there’s no evidence of that.

Then there’s good old Politico [emphasis mine]:

White provided the station with bills that include 61 phone calls or text messages from a number that she says is Cain’s private cell phone number.

According to the report, Cain called White as recently as September 2011.

So, are these pros incapable of even minimal reading comprehension (after all, this is not such a complex set of sentences and concepts, mostly centering on the meaning of the word “or”), or is this purposeful twisting? You be the judge.

As I’ve stated before, the larger questions here have nothing to do with Cain and his possibly complex sex life. They involve the standard of proof required when accusing public figures of wrongdoing or scandal. The idea now seems to be that, if enough people come forward, the quantity of their accusations can make up for their undocumented quality. But if proof could be obtained, why not demand that some be provided? Otherwise an accuser can essentially say anything she wants, as long as she’s had some sort of contact with the public figure.

What the world has long needed was a Hooters for women…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and now it’s got one, although you’ll have to go to Seoul to dine there.

The marketing of male pulchritude for women has always had to follow a slightly different model than that of women for men. For example, the restaurant (strangely named Mies Container) has won awards for design, and the food is actually very good, according to the (male) reviewer. I don’t think you could say either of Hooters, but what do I know? I’ve never been there; can any of my readers shed some light on those all-important features?

Nor does Mies Container focus only on the looks of its male staff, much less on any particular secondary physical sexual characteristics they might have. Women seem to be after a certain general sexual je ne sais quoi, and Mies Container obligingly provides it, according to this spokesperson (can I safely say “spokesman”?):

We don’t discriminately hire staff based on their looks but we are focusing on hiring those with energy and masculinity. We agree to some extent about the comparison to Hooters. But we exhibit higher quality dishes, friendlier service and trendier design.

The entire enterprise is decorated to look like a construction site, although probably not any construction site in the real world. Men at construction sites used to be famous for loudly ogling the women who walked by, but at Mies Construction they’re just ultra-friendly and flirty—and, in a turn-about-is-fair-play move, the women are more likely to ogle the men. Ah, progress!

Broken windows, broken-into cars

The New Neo Posted on by

Last Wednesday I drove to New York City to be with my family for Thanksgiving.

Even though it’s ordinarily one of the worst days for traveling, I was pleasantly surprised to experience traffic that was hardly any worse than usual. Thanksgiving itself went well, and after driving my 96-year-old aunt and 97-year-old mother back to their respective residences, I had the good fortune to find a parking space not far from my brother’s place in the well-lit, pleasant, peaceful, trendy-yet-family-oriented neighborhood where he lives.

Sounds good, right? And it was, it was—except that the next afternoon, when I went to get my car, I found the back driver’s-side window smashed and a gaping hole in the steering wheel, my introduction to the new (to me) and apparently quite popular crime of airbag theft.

Yes folks, airbag theft. It can be done quickly by an expert, in under two minutes (isn’t human ingenuity wonderful?). And although it’s new to me, it’s actually been going on for at least fifteen years (see two articles from the mid-90s, here and here). New York is a leader in this, as in so many hot trends.

The following was written in 1996, but it’s still true. Just adjust the prices upward for 2011 and you’ve got the picture:

The crime [of airbag theft] is lucrative.

Thieves can sell the unexploded, Frisbee-sized devices for between $50 and $200 to unscrupulous body shop operators, who install them in collision-damaged cars, and collect from $400 to $1,200 from insurance companies, according to Insurance Crime Bureau statistics. Add on labor costs and the total payout can climb to $2,000.

“Some people, in theory, might be buying back their own air bags,” said Barbara Rambo, an Insurance Crime Bureau special agent based in Chicago’s south suburbs.

Although it happened to me on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend and no one was going to touch the car until today at the earliest, I felt the need to get it and its gaping wounds off the street. So I drove it to the body shop.

I have a high level of trust in the one I’m using, but before I got there I joked to a friend that the body shop probably runs the airbag theft ring and would be installing my very own (recycled!) airbag for a pretty penny. When I made that quip that I thought I was just being funny, but apparently that’s precisely what happens with some shadier body shops.

Even though in the scheme of things the whole thing is really just a minor inconvenience, and I’ll probably “only” have to pay the deductible, there’s something shocking and wrenching about coming upon one’s violated car (my relatively new car, at that, even though I bought it used).

At first it’s hard to believe one’s eyes. It seems as though the window’s only been left open. But the little bits of glass all around the perimeter of the place where the window used to be, and the shards—with smoothed and rounded edges, due to the special nature of automobile glass—that pepper the entire back seat, floor, and even the front seats of the car, tell the tale almost as clearly as the dangling wires in the hollow of the gouged-out steering wheel.

Did my car alarm go off? Don’t know. It turns out that car alarms are not always set to activate when windows are smashed, as thieves no doubt are aware. But even if it did go off, people tend to ignore the sound, and anyway it doesn’t go on forever.

[NOTE: The title of this post is a reference to this concept.]

You won’t have Barney Frank…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to kick around any more:

A top adviser told the Globe that the new district in which Frank would have had to run next year was a major factor in his decision. While it retained his Newton stronghold, it was revised to encompass more conservative towns like Walpole while losing New Bedford, a blue-collar city where the Democrat had invested a lot of time and become a leading figure in the region’s fisheries debate.

Frank’s campaign manager last year said his withering 2010 re-election effort spurred the congressman to think seriously about retirement, even saying a few days after the election that it would be his last one…

Sowyrda said Frank wanted to hold off on a decision until the redistricting process was finalized.

“When Barney saw the district changed, his exact words to me were ”˜They didn’t do me any favors,’” said Sowyrda, who has remained an unofficial adviser.

Serfs v slaves

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been slowly reading Paul Johnson’s The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830. Don’t let the dry dull title or its length put you off; it’s wide-ranging and has something of interest (and something I didn’t previously know) on every page, perhaps in every paragraph.

Here’s a little sample, involving the Russian institution of serfdom. Think you know about it? Think again—and while you’re thinking, contemplate how important this history was for the rise of communism in Russia:

In the early 19th century the systems of slavery in the Americas and of serfdom in Russia were often compared because both were growing rapidly. In west and central Europe, serfdom had declined rapidly from the 15th century onwards, and was extinct in any recognizable form by 1800. But in Russia it had actually expanded…

…[T]he [Russian] state disliked slaves, whom it could not tax, and helped to stamp them out, while promoting serfdom, which brought in revenue. In practice however it farmed out the serfs to their landlords, who made themselves responsible for their taxes. This practice increased the landlords’ power over the serfs and was convenient to the state, which collected its taxes more easily…

It is at this point that the difference between unfree labor in Russia and in the Americas becomes of overwhelming importance. In the United States, for instance, the slave was an unfree being living in the midst of citizens with full rights, rather like in ancient Athens. In Russia, by contrast, the serfs simply formed one category of people in a servile system which allowed no one whatever to dispose freely of his time or his belongings. Neither freehold land nor personal rights, in the Western sense, had any meaning in Russia. It was what Thomas Hobbes called a “Patrimonial Monarchy,”…in which the autocrat, or the state he personally embodied, disposed of all resources, human or material. Such concepts as individual rights and liberties, the rule of law, the limitations on the exercise of authority simply did not exit. Peasant serfdom was therefore merely the most visible and widespread form of bondage…

Everyone had to yield the state either services or money, or both, at a certain place, where it was due…If you moved to evade it, you were manhunted, whether you were a city dweller or a peasant. Not only was it your duty to pay; it was also your duty to denounce those who did not pay. Denunciation was, in practice, the only way a peasant could effectively act against a landlord. Failure to denounce, whether for nonpayment or any other crime against the state, such as conspiracy, was itself ranked as “treason,” and the entire family was implicated in the traitor’s guilt. In practice however, all did denounce because neighbors had to make good the losses suffered by the state when one of them absconded. Thus shopkeepers, merchants and dealers watched each other carefully…

The serfs were merely the least free members of a servile society in which no one except the Tsar himself was truly free. The frontiers were always sealed. To go abroad, you had to obtain, by petition to the Tsar, a proezzhaia gramota. If a merchant traveled without one, his property was confiscated and his relatives were liable to be tortured to find out why he did it and sent to Siberia…Foreigners, too, required an entry visa and were not generally welcome. If they looked at things too closely, they were treated as spies—one reason why there are so few drawings of Russia in this period. Russians were forbidden to make unauthorized contact with foreign visitors. Only in 1703 did foreign or domestic news cease to be a state secret in Russia, and thereafter both remained in meager supply.

When slaves in the US were freed, it was a long and shaky process to full participation in society. But at least there was a society that valued liberty into which they could ultimately be assimilated.

No such thing was available to the serfs. Is it any wonder that Communism took hold in Russia, with a people so unused to having any rights, and so accustomed to policing and informing on each other?