Nurture it is.
[NOTE: Busy day; will post more later.]
Springtime for Islamists in Libya?
The headline reads “interim [Libyan] ruler unveils more radical than expected plans for Islamic law.”
There’s that word again: expected. But those who thought they knew what to expect in Libya were either arrogant or daft, or both. And one of the many things that was clearly possible there was the ascendance of Islamist elements.
At any rate, here’s the announcement:
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its “basic source”.
But that formulation can be interpreted in many ways – it was also the basis of Egypt’s largely secular constitution under President Hosni Mubarak, and remains so after his fall.
Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning polygamy.
In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya’s economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia. “Interest creates disease and hatred among people,” he said.
It seems somewhat minor in the scheme of things. But is it an ominous portent for the future?
David Warren contrasts the irony of the relatively orderly Bush-overseen judicial end of Saddam Hussein with Gaddafi’s extra-judicial lynching under forces promoted by Obama. He adds:
In Libya itself, we will see what we will see. The reports I read suggest we may soon be nostalgic for the days when Gadhafi was alive, to unite the various opposing factions. Different militias, that despise one another, are in possession of different parts of Tripoli; old regime loyalists are still not entirely extinguished even in that city; and the rest of the country is far from peace. Contempt is also being expressed for the transitional government, by its various fickle allies…
No one is responsible in Libya, now, and such international assistance as the transitional government may require, to create security and make life less cheap, will come after the fact of chaos.
Not unexpected at all. That’s why there is something to be said for what happened in Iraq, where—because we invaded and stuck around, despite the huge cost in blood and treasure—that country has at least a chance of coming out relatively well compared to others in the region.
Steve Jobs refused to meet his biological father…
…Syrian-born Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, because his father had bragged that he’d met Jobs in his restaurant, and that Jobs was a good tipper.
This things were apparently not untrue, mind you: the two men apparently had met briefly in the father’s restaurant, which Jobs had patronized a couple of times, and had shaken hands. And, although no information is given one way or the other about it, it’s probably also the case that Jobs was a good tipper.
When all of this happened, Jandali had no idea Jobs was his biological son. Here’s the fuller story:
When I heard the tape, I wondered from whom Jobs had heard that “little bit” that he didn’t like about Jandali. Was it from a report by the man’s ex-wife, Jobs’s biological mother? She may be a wonderful person in all other respects, but no ex-wife should be the most trusted person to report fairly on her ex-husband (and I say that as an ex-wife, and I think I’m ultra-fair). Or did Jobs learn about his biological father from Mona Simpson, Jobs’s sister, who seem to have had her own issues with a father she only knew as a very young child (after their parents had gotten married and before their divorce when she was four)?
I know nothing about what sort of a person Jandali really is; he may be every bit as abominable as Jobs seems to have thought he was, and more. But I also know that these divorces stories are not always what they seem. When a father drifts away and is heard from no more, sometimes it is indeed abandonment by that father. But sometimes the mother has kept him away by being uncooperative about his visitation right, or even by dropping out of sight herself with the child and and becoming somewhat difficult to find (especially in those pre-Google days of Jobs’s youth). IMHO, unless a biological parent is a criminal and/or psychopath, if a child decides to search it’s probably a good idea to get information from the horse’s mouth rather than secondhand.
Jandali’s crime of wanting to impress Simpson, his long-lost daughter, with the fact that he was once a big shot who knew Steve Jobs is hardly the sort of thing that one would think would be judged so very harshly. We all have our flaws, and a father or mother is often an imperfect creature, full of the minor foibles common to humanity, such as looking back on a glory time and saying “I used to be somebody!” An adoptive child in particular can face a powerful dilemma when deciding whether or not to search for, and then to talk or meet with, a biological parent who has given him or her up. The parent is usually unequal to the task of being perfect or anywhere near it. And although the child is absolutely not required to forgive, it would be nice if the child gave the parent the chance to tell his or her own story at last before making that judgment.
[NOTE: Here’s a WSJ piece about Jandali.]
Voter ID: now, here’s a profile in courage
Sort of, anyway.
In this article Artur Davis, former Democratic Congressman from the 7th District of Alabama and an African-American, recognizes that voter ID laws can be good and are not inherently racist when well-drafted.
So, better late than never, Mr. Davis! He starts his piece with an unusually forthright declaration and admission, which fits right in with the theme of this blog:
I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws — I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one — and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office.
You can see why I’m choosing to highlight Davis’s article. He goes on to write:
When I was a congressman, I took the path of least resistance on this subject for an African American politician. Without any evidence to back it up, I lapsed into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists who contend that requiring photo identification to vote is a suppression tactic aimed at thwarting black voter participation.
Davis then goes on to explain how the Alabama law has provisions that protect potential voters (such as the elderly, who don’t drive) from being unfairly shut out of the registration process. Davis adds that he’s been disappointed to hear Bill Clinton, a president he admires (Davis is still a Democrat, after all), “compare voter ID to Jim Crow, and it is chilling to see the intimidation tactics brought to bear on African American, Democratic legislators in Rhode Island who had the nerve to support a voter ID law in that very liberal state.”
If Davis keeps paying attention, he may discover a lot more out there that’s chilling—and a large proportion of his cold shudder will be engendered by the actions of his own party.
What’s up with these dancers who don’t age?
First there was Maya Plisetskaya at eighty.
Then the other day I came across some recent photos of the dancers Carmen De Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder. I’d completely forgotten about them—although I saw both perform long ago—and to be honest I was surprised that they were still alive (although it turns out I thought they were even older by now than they actually are—80 and 81, respectively).
The couple has been married for 56 years, no mean feat. She is still (actually, they are still) as elegant as ever, and she especially seems to have held on to the aspect of youth. In almost all her recent photos, De Lavallade is wearing black or red or both (note to self: get a signature color to stick to as you get older!) and very dramatic jewelry.
Here’s a panel discussion with De Lavallade (recorded in July of 2011) that gives you an idea of how youthful her affect still is. Yes, keeping in shape through exercise is part of her secret, not to mention the fact that the sun is kinder to brunettes and black people than it is to the more light of skin. But I think the most important aspect is the je ne sais quoi of attitude (note those earrings!):
The following gives you an idea of De Lavallade when she was young in actuality and not just in spirit, and of the genesis of the Holder/Lavallade romance (he proposed four days after they met, but it took her a whole month to say “yes”—and oh yeah, Holder’s on the tape, too):
The fine art of insulting half your audience
[NOTE: I thought it might be a good time to republish this. I’ve revised it a bit, since in its original manifestation the references were to Bush as the object of the trash talk. But other than that, it’s still relevant—unfortunately—although it’s one of the earliest posts that ever appeared on this blog.]
It happens nearly every time. I’ll be reading a short story, let’s say, enjoying myself, lost in the experience—when suddenly, there it is: the gratuitous and mean-spirited and out-of-context slap at Republicans or Tea Partiers or those who support them. It’s not as though the story is even tangentially about politics, either; it can be about anything at all, it doesn’t really matter.
The Republican-dissing will be thrown in when you least expect it, just to let the reader know—well, to let the reader know what, exactly? To let the reader know that the author is hip, kindly, intelligent, moral—oh, just about everything a person ought to be. And that the reader must of course be a member of the club, too—not one of those Others, the warmongers, the selfish and stupid and demonized people who happen to have voted for Republican.
Back when I was one of the gang, too, back when I was in with the in crowd (“if it’s square, we ain’t there”), did I notice when authors dragged in their political credentials from left field? Or perhaps it wasn’t quite as commonplace back then for them to do so?
At any rate, now it seems positively obligatory. I’m reading along, sunk deep within the story, bonding with the characters—and then, suddenly, it’s as though the author has reached a hand out of the pages of the magazine (OK, I’ll confess, sometimes it’s the New Yorker—yes, I still read it for the fiction, just as some people claim they read Playboy for the interviews) and slapped me across the face.
Authors, do you really want to do this? Because, with a single sentence, you’ve managed to alienate and offend (not to mention insult) up to half your audience.
I don’t think this even occurs to you. I think you just assume that anyone perceptive and intelligent and downright nuanced enough to be reading your fabulous work couldn’t possibly—no, say it isn’t so, Joe!!—support those disgusting, repulsive, lying POS Republicans. Or maybe you just don’t care. Maybe you don’t want people like that for your audience.
It’s not just authors. It’s plays, concerts, performances of all kinds, even those given by friends of mine, people I know and otherwise respect, people with good hearts. It’s poetry readings most particularly. It’s gotten so bad that I go to all cultural events girding my loins and waiting for the blow to fall, waiting for my intelligence and judgment and ethics to be insulted. And this from people who consider themselves culturally and morally superior, although this sense of superiority doesn’t seem to reside in their needing to prove themselves to be well-informed or logical or knowledgeable about the issues—just in letting the world know that they’re on the right side of them (which would be the left side, naturalment).
Occupy Wall Street: New Yorkers say…
…NIMBY:
“They are defecating on our doorsteps,” said Catherine Hughes, who lives one block from Zuccotti Park, according to the New York Post. “A lot of people are very frustrated. A lot of people are concerned about the safety of our kids.”
Particularly annoying, suggested several community members at the meeting, was the repetitive drumming late into the night.
New Yorkers would have done a lot better with a bunch of Tea Partiers camping out in the neighborhood.
Gaddafi and the desecration of the dead
It’s hard to escape the grisly death photos and videos of Gaddafi. A flamboyant figure who was photographed often during his long and very public life, his well-earned enemies have made sure that his death has been especially well-documented, too.
But I haven’t looked at the photos, other than an unavoidable glance as one or the other image pops up on my screen. I feel very uneasy about them. I would have preferred that he met his end in a process similar to what happened to his fellow tyrant, Saddam Hussein.
My reluctance to gaze on Gaddafi’s dead face or to watch people mistreating his corpse has nothing to do with any admiration for the man. I have little doubt that he’s perpetuated many murders and kept the people of Libya under his brutal and capricious yoke for four decades, and that their rage at him is justified.
However, the moral stature of a culture and its people are judged by many things, and one of them is the way the bodies of the dead are treated, even the most hated and reviled dead on whom they understandably wish to wreak revenge. What happened to Gaddafi’s body does not bode well for the future of Libya (but then, not a whole lot does, although I’d be happy to be proven wrong on this):
A video on al-Jazeera shows Gaddafi wounded, but alive. The network quoted a fighter saying that he begged for help. ”Show me mercy,” he was said to have cried. There was little of that, in the video at least.
One fighter is seen pulling his hair and others beating his limp body. Two fighters interviewed by al-Jazeera said someone struck Gaddafi’s head with the butt of a gun…
In one, broadcast by al-Jazeera, his body is half naked and bleeding on a pavement. Even more dramatic is a video posted on YouTube. Jubilant fighters surround his corpse, which appears to have been washed. Clearly visible is a gunshot wound to his forehead.
Plus there’s this (warning: graphic footage at the link, of the type I’ve been talking about):
His bloodied corpse – eyes half open, a bloodied mouth and blood on his head – was displayed on live television and beamed all around the world yesterday.
TV footage also showed Gaddafi’s corpse being dragged through a Libyan street.
Dragged through a Libyan street—when I was a child and read the Iliad, one of the most memorable and terrible images in the entire book was what happened to Hector’s body after his death:
Achilles, choosing with his eye a vulnerable part where the armor leaves the neck uncovered, aimed his spear at that part, and Hector fell, death-wounded. Feebly he said, “Spare my body! Let my parents ransom it, and let me receive funeral rites from the sons and daughters of Troy.” To which Achilles replied, “Dog, name not ransom nor pity to me, on whom you have brought such dire distress. No! trust me, nought shall save thy carcass from the dogs. Though twenty ransoms and thy weight in gold were offered, I should refuse it all.”
So saying, the son of Peleus stripped the body of its armor, and, fastening cords to the feet, tied them behind his chariot, leaving the body to trail along the ground. Then mounting the chariot he lashed the steeds and so dragged the body to and fro before the city.
Later in the story there is quite a bit more dragging of the body around, but you get the general idea. It is not a passage that reflects well on Achilles, despite the fact that he was the victor and a hero (although flawed and impulsive). Hector was also a hero, as well as the more sympathetic of the two.
Of course, Gaddafi should not be considered a hero of any sort; au contraire, he was a villain. But that really is not the point. This issue is not Gaddafi at all, nor anyone in particular—it’s about how a society behaves. There is a word for this sort of thing, and that word is “barbaric.”
Why are these cities so empty?
Here are the five emptiest cities in American today.
Anyone know why these particular ones (I’m busy today and don’t have time right now to do the research)? Were they especially overbuilt in terms of housing during the go-go years? Are they particularly job-depressed now? Are some (such as Tucson) mostly second-home cities? I really thought Detroit would be among them, but it’s not; it checks in at number 8.
Herman Cain, Republican du jour: perceptions, the press, and the public
Herman Cain is the Republican frontrunner for now among Iowa’s voters:
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Iowa caucus-goers shows that Cain is in front with 28% followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 21%.
One Republican who has consistently polled ahead of the others has been “generic,” and each candidate has taken turns filling in his/her shoes. Remember Bachmann as frontrunner, remember Perry? It’s a bit like when a person who’s married daydreams about the perfect match; the one we can imagine is almost always better than the one we have. Then, after the breakup with Mr/Ms/Wrong, the new person seems really great when we are basking in the glow of new-found love, and before we start to know all their quirks and foibles and annoyances and flaws.
The press is cooperating in the process by doing its level best to destroy each candidate in turn. Cain is already feeling the fire, although I think he’s a tough guy who won’t let it faze or change him. Case in point is the flap about his remarks on “these small insignificant states around the world,” words that Joe Klein cited when calling Cain “a jerk and an ingnoramus”.
Take a look at what Cain actually said and the question he was answering:
I agree that it wasn’t diplomatic of Cain to have called a state such as Uzbekistan insignificant, but his larger point is true. His answer was much more about the MSM and its ways of getting at candidates it doesn’t like by asking them relatively trivial questions and then pouncing on them when they don’t have all the facts at their fingertips then it is about anybody’s foreign policy decisions.
Note that Cain adds, “When I get ready to go visit that country, I’ll know who [its leader] is.” I think that’s true. But will others believe him, especially after the MSM really sinks its teeth into the idiosyncratic and non-generic Cain? This is all just the warm-up act.
I’ve read many criticisms of Cain’s Uzbekistan remarks, and I’ve yet to see one that mentions the incident Cain is clearly referring to, where the press played an advanced game of “gotcha” with candidate Bush when he was frontrunner during the 2000 campaign:
The Republican presidential front-runner [Bush] sat down Wednesday with WHDH-TV, the NBC affiliate in Boston, and was asked to name the leaders of four current world hot spots: Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan.
He was able to give a partial response to just one: Taiwan.
That drew immediate criticism from the camp of Democrat Al Gore, which said the vice president could have answered all four correctly.
“I guess we know that ‘C’ at Yale was a gentleman’s ‘C,'” said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, referring to the way Bush has described his academic record.
The Bush campaign brushed off the incident.
“The person who is running for president is seeking to be the leader of the free world, not a Jeopardy contestant,” said Karen Hughes, Bush communications director.
It’s ironic that President Bush, as opposed to candidate Bush, was known for his foreign policy rather than the domestic policy he probably would have preferred to focus on. And though, like Cain, Bush was considered a jerk and an ignoramus (and much worse) by the likes of people such as Joe Klein throughout his entire presidency and beyond, there’s no question that Bush learned a great deal about those leaders before he actually had to deal with them as president.
Gaddafi captured, Gaddafi killed?
We’re getting conflicting reports, but something seems to be going on in Libya with Gaddafi. He appears to have been either captured or killed:
National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters earlier that Gaddafi was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked.
“He was also hit in his head,” the official said. “There was a lot of firing against his group and he died.”
There was no independent confirmation of his remarks.
It’s impossible to tell what is true and what is not, but I suppose it will emerge pretty soon. In the meantime, these details seem like they may have been somewhat embroidered:
The former Libyan dictator was reportedly found cowering in a hole in the ground at the centre of Sirte…Rebels said he had been armed with a golden pistol when he was found…
A golden pistol? What could that be about?
Spambot of the day
Unpunctuated but inquiring spambot minds want to know:
is that chocolate rain from the background