North Korea: the military steps in?

The New Neo Posted on by

All news emanating from North Korea is automatically assigned an asterisk and/or question mark, but I’ll report this for what it’s worth: sort-of-trusted Korean sources have told Reuters that “North Korea will shift to collective [military] rule from a strongman dictatorship after last week’s death of Kim Jong-il, although his untested young son will be at the head of the ruling coterie.”

Sounds plausible to me. Kim Jong Il’s son Kim Jong Un is only in his late 20s. In contrast, the former took power when he was already in his mid-50s. Even grandpa Kim Il Sung was a very toughened 36 when he became premier and 60 when he became president.

[NOTE: Quickly skimming the now-deceased Kim Jong Il’s Wiki entry, I found some stuff that, if true, sheds a modicum of light on the making of a psychopathic dictator. These guys do not usually have Norman Rockwell childhoods, and Kim Jong Il was no exception:

[When Kim Jong Il was 3 or 4] the family moved into a former Japanese officer’s mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il’s brother, “Shura” Kim (the first Kim Pyong-il, but known by his Russian nickname), drowned there in 1948. Unconfirmed reports suggest that five-year-old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident.

In 1949, his mother died in childbirth. Unconfirmed reports suggest that his mother might have been shot and left to bleed to death.

Ah, but Kim Jong Il was always a wonder child:

Official biographers claim that his birth at Baekdu Mountain was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.]

The solstice is here!

The New Neo Posted on by

The winter solstice comes late tonight and I, for one, am cheering. It may not be a holiday exactly, but winter holidays cluster around it for a very good reason: the beginning of the end of the dark days.

Who wouldn’t drink to that? We who live up north are especially sensitive to the fact that the days that get dark almost as soon as they get light have finally peaked, and the lengthening of the days has begun. It’s no accident, no accident at all, that both of the winter holidays— Christmas and Chanuka (Happy Chanuka, by the way!)—are festivals that feature (literally) light in the darkness.

Payroll tax cut machinations: Republicans not covering themselves with glory

The New Neo Posted on by

The WSJ wonders how it is that “GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass.”

I’ll help them out.

(1) Never forget that, as Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest has so aptly put it:

(2) McConnell and Boehner don’t seem to be on speaking terms with each other. Or, that is, according to the WSJ, they were on speaking terms when they mapped out the strategy (pass the 2-months extension and simultaneously wring some concessions from Obama on Keystone) but Boehner bailed when some House Republicans bolted. Leadership? Hardly.

The WSJ suggests that “Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly. Then go home and return in January with a united House-Senate strategy that forces Democrats to make specific policy choices that highlight the differences between the parties on spending, taxes and regulation.”

Oh, those dreamers (the WSJ, that is, not the Republicans)! One consolation, although it’s a sad one, is that not so many people may be paying attention to the whole sorry business. Or, if they are, many of them might prefer Republican legislative disorganization to the greater ability of the legislative Democratic leaders to whip their underlings into shape and get things—like Obamacare—passed.

[ADDENDUM: More here.]

Run like a dancer

The New Neo Posted on by

“Esplanade” is a work by modern dance choreographer Paul Taylor that highlights the difference between modern dance and ballet. Ballet dancers are sometimes drawn to Taylor’s more graceful pieces such as “Esplanade,” because at first glance seems it seems as though they’d be suited to a balletic style. But I’ve never seen the crossover work really well. The effect is something like an opera singer trying to perform jazz or pop: the technique is strong but the tone, the emphasis—and, in the modern-to-ballet transition, the weight—are so different as to be virtually nontransferable.

When I speak of “weight,” I’m not talking about poundage. Ballet dancers are almost always ultra-light, and modern dancers can either be very light too or a bit more muscular and solid. But that’s not the difference I mean. Ballet training is geared towards pulling the entire body upwards to create a lighter-than-air illusion, while modern dance works with gravity to make grounded shapes. Ballet fights to conquer gravity; gravity is modern dance’s friend.

In a traditional ballet corps the idea is to dance as one. Individuality can come out in the soloists, but for a classical corps member it’s ordinarily not a virtue. Modern dance has no corps, and the dancers are chosen specifically for individuality. Paul Taylor especially emphasizes this, preferring dancers at extremes either of physique (very tall or very short) or quality of movement (distinctive) or both. It is said that at every audition he requires the dancers to run and to walk, and if they don’t pass muster on those moves, they’re eliminated.

“Esplanade” was choreographed in 1975, and it’s a work of inventive genius. Although lengthy, it employs no recognizable dance steps, just walking and running and jumping, and falling to the floor quite regularly. “BOR-ing!” you might say, and I’d forgive you for saying so, but if you did you’d be wrong. You can see why when you watch Esplanade, which has been posted in its entirety (in five parts) on You Tube. Here’s the final segment:

What does the future hold for North Korea?

The New Neo Posted on by

Hey, if you expect me to know what’s going to happen in that bizarre and shrouded country, you’re weirder than the North Koreans:

But I will join in the speculation as to whether the above emotion is real or not and say that IMHO it is real on the part of many people and nervously exaggerated on the part of others. When people live in a totally controlled environment and believe that their country, their society, and their very existence depends on one person, the loss of that person is a blow that is more analogous to a young child’s loss of parents than to anything we would experience at the death of a leader, Dear or otherwise. What they are feeling is not just grief (although it is that) but also fear.

This is especially true of the children and young people in the country. Kim Jong Il has been in power since 1994. You do the math. Anyone below the age of 21 or so has never known anything else. Terrifying indeed.

And those of them who don’t feel the requisite intensity for real would make sure they “catch” it from those around them, and demonstrate the requisite depth of emotion in order to demonstrate the proper depth of devotion.

Women and humor

The New Neo Posted on by

After Christopher Hitchens’ death I went back and re-read a couple of his old essays, including this one on women and humor (or their lack thereof). It’s written in his trademark style: witty, self-assured, and breezy; the musings of a gifted and vastly entertaining raconteur.

Hitchens loved to tweak and provoke his readers, and he got quite a bit of flak for this essay (mostly from humorless women?), especially for asking “Why are women…not funny?” Hitchens was well aware that there are a number of female humorists who are very funny indeed, but he correctly observed that, in general, it’s men who are more inclined to create humor than women are. Hitchens’ explanation was that it’s mainly because men are trying to appeal to women through humor, and women have no need to appeal to men that way because they’re already plenty appealing in other ways.

Now, it turns out that the subject of women and humor is one I’ve done a lot of thinking about (how humorless of me). Long before I ever read Hitchens on the subject I’d come to similar conclusions, although I’ve got something to add to his theory.

Hitchens is absolutely correct that the way to the heart of very many women (including, I must say, mine) is directly through the funny bone. But the same is not as true of men. But wait a minute, you say, that’s not true; my girlfriend/fiancée/wife has a great sense of humor and I love her for it. And though sometimes that’s certainly the case, I’ve got two questions for you: does she have a great receptive sense of humor or expressive sense of humor? And if the latter, is it as great as yours?

I’ve often noticed that when man praises a woman for her sense of humor, he’s likely to be talking about her receptive humor, the ability to appreciate the joke or well-turned witty phrase. That ability—to appreciate his humor—is something men like very much indeed. After all, who wouldn’t? But what one might call expressive humor—that is, the ability to make the quip—is often somewhat suspect when coming from a woman, at least for many or even the majority of men.

Expressive humor, so often a potent aphrodisiac for a woman when she perceives it in a man (a fact that Hitchens exploited to his great lifelong pleasure, because he was a very witty man), doesn’t tend to enhance her love life if she possesses the trait, unless she happens upon the uncommon man who finds it a turn-on (and there are such men), or unless she uses her gift sparingly. I’ve pondered why that might be so, and I’ve decided that humor is a decidedly aggressive act, even though it’s often a somewhat masked and de-fanged sort of aggression. It can be gentle or more barbed, but all humor has something of an edge, and as such is perceived in the gut as somewhat masculine.

It takes a strong man to love a funny lady. Fortunately, there are still enough strong men to go around, although it might take some extra looking to find one.

Kim Jong Il dies

The New Neo Posted on by

Now comes the news that North Korea’s Kim Jong Il (age variously reported as 69 or 70) has died. It’s been rumored for several years that he’d been gravely ill with a stroke and then pancreatic cancer, but his official cause of death was announced as “exhaustion brought on by a sudden illness while on a domestic train trip.”

Who knows? One thing we do know—and have known for years—is that it most likely will be a case of “the Kim Jong is dead, long live the Kim Jong” for the North Korean government, which is expected to feature the succession of Kim Jong Il’s son Kim Jong Un, just as the former succeeded his own father in 1994. The people have been so sequestered from the world that it’s hard to know what they think at this point.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s Kim Jong Un’s Wiki entry. Some interesting facts:

Kim is thought to have been born in 1983 or early 1984. He attended the English-language International School of Berne, Switzerland until 1998 under a pseudonym…An older student chaperoned him all the time. In Liebefeld, he told his friend Joao Micaelo that he was the son of the heir to the North Korea leader, though Micaelo said he didn’t believe him at the time. He was described as a shy child who was uncommunicative with unfamiliar people and was only distinguished for his competitive nature, particularly in sports, and a fascination with the NBA and Michael Jordan. Allegedly, one friend claimed that he had met and even had pictures taken with Kobe Bryant and Toni Kukoc, but was unsure where…

His eldest half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, had been the favorite to succeed, but reportedly fell out of favour after 2001, when he was caught attempting to enter Japan on a fake passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland…Kim Jong-il’s former personal chef, Kenji Fujimoto, revealed details regarding Kim Jong-un, with whom he shared a good relationship, stating that he is favored to be his father’s successor. Fujimoto also claimed that Jong-un is favored by his father over his elder brother, Kim Jong-chul, reasoning that Jong-chul is too feminine in character, while Jong-un is “exactly like his father.”]

Amazon reminder: there’s still time!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Bumped up from yesterday.]

There’s still plenty of time left to order from Amazon via the handy neo-neocon widgets on the right sidebar. I’m a big procrastinator, so I know. And there’s even time to sign up for 2 free months of Amazon Prime, which allows you to mail items for free.

I don’t usually push products, but here’s one I think many of you will like: the book Touching History by Lynn Spencer. The only thing wrong with it is the title, which seems too general to describe the contents properly. The subtitle, The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11, is somewhat better, but it really doesn’t really begin to convey how exciting this book actually is.

Think you know what happened in the air on 9/11? Think again. If you haven’t read this book, you’re only aware of a small fraction of the story. The frantic attempts of controllers, NORAD, the FAA, and everyone involved to piece together an understanding of the whole picture unfolding in real time, and to intervene to save lives, makes for extraordinarily gripping reading. I devoured the entire book in a single night. Be prepared; you may, too.