The perfect jelly bean

The New Neo Posted on by

There is only one jelly bean worth eating at Easter or any other time of year.

No, not those weirdly flavored “gourmet” Jelly Bellys (I consider the term “gourmet jelly bean” to be an oxymoron). The traditionalist in me abhors them, despite Reagan’s fondness. As for those jelly beans placed on the endless supermarket aisles of Easter treats that tempt us from Valentine’s Day until tomorrow—when the remnants go on sale and those get scarfed up as well—the vast majority should not be consumed by anyone above the age of four. Maybe even by anyone below the age of four.

What should? I submit these, which are a tad more expensive but probably will not break the bank:

jellybeans.jpg

Traditionally fruit-flavored, made with smooth and succulent pectin, with a lovely and slightly translucent sheen, they go down easy. Maybe too easy; it is possible to eat quite a few before realizing what’s happening. Take it from one who knows.

How did jelly beans come to be associated with Easter? It seems a no-brainer because of their egglike shape, but apparently the tradition didn’t really get going until the 1930s. Jelly beans are far older than that, however, making their debut as the confection promoted by Schrafft of Boston for sending to Union soldiers during the Civil War (a crafty man, that Schrafft).

A little-known jelly bean fact (at least to me) is that, “in United States slang in the 1910s and early 1920s a ‘Jelly bean’ or ‘Jellybean’ was a young man who made great efforts to dress very stylishly, presumably to attract women, but had little else to recommend him…The word was also used as a synonym for pimp.”

Returning to the actual candy, I offer a caveat: there is hardly anything worse than the shock of thinking you’re biting into a normal fruit-flavored jelly bean and getting a spicy one. They should be identified by special markings, like those insects that are bad to eat, as a warning to others. I suggest racing stripes.

But if you buy the Russell Stovers, no need to be on the spice alert. And remember: tomorrow the sales begin! Although, come to think of it, it’s a sign of this particular jelly bean’s superiority that not only are they generally available year-round, but at some stores they are exempted from the post-Easter markdowns. They’re that good.

Happy Easter!

The New Neo Posted on by

Happy Easter to all my celebratory Christian readers, and to all those who just enjoy the holiday as well!

One year when my son was little, I spent the week prior to Easter blowing out eggs and dying them. Now that he’s grown and away, the eggs are packed away in boxes and stored in parts unknown. If I could get my hands on them I’d photograph them for you, because even all these years later they are beautiful, with dyes both subtle and unsubtle, interesting etched patterns and rainbow effects—definitely one of my finest crafts hours (to tell the truth, I didn’t have so many fine crafts hours, although there was also a gingerbread house we made that was stored in the attic and alas, eaten by small creatures–and not human ones, at that.)

Blown-out eggs are well worth the trouble, and why? Because they last. And nothing eats them. You only have to make them once, and you’re all set. They are a bit fragile, but not so very.

So here’s my Easter present to you (not that you couldn’t find it yourself): the instructions for blowing eggs:

First, you’ll need to make a tiny pin hole on each end of the egg. A pin works well, or a wooden kitchen skewer or even the tip of a sharp knife. Gently work the tip of the pin/skewer/knife in a circular motion until a tiny hole appears. Repeat on the other side. Then insert the pin or skewer (the knife will be too big here) far enough into the egg to break the yolk. Use your mouth [blow] to expel the contents of the egg.

And here is a more complex–but perhaps better–way, for those obsessive-compulsives among us.

These aren’t mine, but they’ll have to do as substitute:

[NOTE: This is a repost from Easters past. But it still works for me.]

You want arrogant, dismissive, and derisive? I’ll give you Obama Press Secretary Gibbs

The New Neo Posted on by

At the outset I ignored this business about Obama’s Saudi bow. No, I didn’t like it and yes, I thought it was just another sign of Obama’s inattention to American traditions and history, including the precedent of not bending low to foreign royalty.

But I didn’t think it important enough to write about until an anonymous White House aide made an excuse for the bow that was patently absurd on its face (in other words, a baldfaced lie): that it wasn’t a bow, but instead a dip in order to equalize height during a two-handed handshake. I forgive mistakes much more easily than lies, you see, especially lies that insult the intelligence of the listener.

But even then I figured that there was a possibility that this was a rogue statement by an anonymous White House aide. Now that reservation has been removed—unless, of course, you would like to claim that Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is not an official spokesperson for the President himself.

Not only did Gibbs lie about Obama’s bow at a recent press conference by telling the same tale, but he did it with a smile that was—dare I say it?—as arrogant and derisive as they come, and added some dismissive comments, as well:

Here’s a transcript, just in case you didn’t catch it (although the text fails to capture the all-important tone of Gibbs’s remarks):

QUESTION: And then one unrelated question. When the president met with King Abdullah, there was something that took place which I believe the White House explained as just the president being taller than the king. We took a look at the video, and it does appear that the president actually bowed to King Abdullah. Did he bow or didn’t he?

GIBBS: No, I think he bent over with both to shake ”” with both hands to shake his hand, so I don’t”¦

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) one hand, that he ”” he was just”¦

GIBBS: Well I ”” I ”” I ”” this is”¦

QUESTION: Did he bow or didn’t he?

GIBBS: No, but I think this meeting was like a week ago, right?

QUESTION: That’s right, but this is something that a lot of people are still talking about today.

GIBBS: I can only imagine it is of great cause and concern for many people struggling with the economy.

As usual, it’s not the original act so much as the coverup. This particular coverup is somewhat like trying to hide something under a piece of Saran wrap. The truth is obvious to any person who objectively studies the tape; therefore the lie is also obvious.

I cannot recall another administration so willing to offer lies that are so unconvincing and so easily identified as such (when Clinton denied his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, for example, the American people hadn’t yet seen the evidence, and I assume he was hoping they never would). The closest I can come is Richard Nixon, the “Rose Mary stretch,” and the erased audiotape. But at least that happened during Watergate, when Nixon was fighting for his political life.

In contrast, the Obama administration tells obvious lies over events that seem relatively unimportant; why not just say the bow was an error? I can only conclude that this administration’s behavior stems not only from an amoral disregard for truth and falsehood (not all that unusual in politicians, sad to say), but from a concomitant arrogance so deeply ingrained as to be reflexive, and a profound contempt for the American people’s judgment. I can only hope that events will prove Obama and Gibbs wrong in that last assessment.

The roots and longevity of anti-Americanism

The New Neo Posted on by

The topic for the day is anti-Americanism.

Some liberals think it all started with Bush. Some Leftists like to pretend it did, although they may know better. And some people think it’s because America is a swaggering, aggressive, imperial power, and that if Obama abdicates that role and says the proper mea culpas, it will all go away.

Anti-Americanism may not be up there with anti-Semitism in its longevity and protean nature, but it has one characteristic in common: it’s a shape-shifter. Anyone who thinks anti-Americanism (or anti-Semitism) is due to a particular thing, and that if that thing were changed or eliminated it would disappear, is ignoring the hatred’s long and varied history.

If you’re not familiar with James Ceasar’s 2003 essay on anti-Americanism, please give it a read. Ceasar writes that “anti-Americanism reigns as the lingua franca of the intellectual class” in Europe, and that it “rests on the singular idea that something associated with the United States, something at the core of American life, is deeply wrong and threatening to the rest of the world.”

The remainder of Caesar’s essay is dedicated to analyzing the components of that idea as well as its antiquity. Along the way there is much that is fascinating—for example, he traces pre-WWII Japanese concepts of America to the influence of German philosophers on Japan’s elite.

Anti-Americanism started at virtually the same time as the country’s birth—actually, even before its birth—and was a European creation that later spread around the world. Ceaser has identified five epochs and types of anti-Americanism, although there is same overlap among them. But the main point is that any hatred that has persisted for so long in so many differing manifestations partakes a great deal of the irrational, no matter how rational some of its points may sound.

One of the many underpinnings of anti-Americanism—although Ceasar does not focus on this particular one—is America’s idea of itself as an exceptional country. This is somewhat similar to the largely misunderstood idea that the Jews think they are a chosen people, and is used as an excuse for hating each group. Although there’s a great deal of disagreement as to what “American exceptionalism” acutally means (in fact, the notion was coined by a Frenchman, de Tocqueville) in general it refers to the fact that America thinks it has a special place in the world as the bastion of liberty.

This seems to be okay with Europe as long as America is involved in defending Europe’s liberty, which it did at great cost during WWII and the Cold War. And although even then anti-Americanism was rampant in the western part of that continent—especially in academia and lofty philosophical circles—the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union caused western Europe to perceive less need for us, and anti-Americanism began to grow and spread.

George Bush’s presidency served as a focal point and multiplier for an already-existing dislike. Barack Obama will be able to damp down that hatred only to the extent that he humiliates America before the world, surrenders individualism for the collective, and joins Europe in its statist tendencies and welfare-state economy—in other words, to the extent that he surrenders the idea of American exceptionalism.

This pizza has pizzaz

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama spares no expense to get his favorite pizza.

Sure, guy. Have one on us.

[Hat tip: Jack M. at Ace.]

[NOTE: And yes, I know that all presidents indulge in these perks now and then. But Obama is facing a financial crisis in which excesses like this seem particularly offensive.]

[ADDENDUM: Is this the truth behind Pizzagate? Or is it just the coverup?]

Those unfashionable male chest hairs

The New Neo Posted on by

Fausta notes the current trend towards men’s chests that are bulging with muscles and yet simultaneously as smooth as babies’ bottoms:

Why are young men waxing their chests? You look at any ads showing bare-chested men nowadays and there’s not one singe chest follicle on display.

True, all too true, although I can’t say I ever paid much attention to the phenomenon until Fausta did; young male models are rather out of my league these days.

But although the hairy back was never a sought-after commodity even in my youth, men used to want to have hairy chests. Or, rather, they used to not care so much whether they did or didn’t—certainly not enough to submit to the painful experience of waxing.

There’s a tremendous amount of variation in what’s considered normal in the male chest hair arena. Much of it is genetic; in my own family, for example, the males tend towards the hirsute. But in my love life, I can’t say I’ve been aware of any personal preference, and I’ve never really cared whether the man is virtually hairless or quite hairy.

But hey, my preferences (or lack thereof) apparently don’t dictate fashion. And so now, young men in the prime of life are busily stripping their chests of every last trace of body hair just to look good.

Oh, I know that swimmers have done it for decades in order to reduce drag. And body builders do it to enhance the shape of the muscles. But apparently the practice has spread from being the exclusive province of swimmers and bodybuilders to the male models and then to the movie stars and then to the young buff Joes on the street trying to attract the chicks.

Why? I’m never at a loss for theories, though, so I’ll offer up a few.

There’s been a growing trend towards male TV and movie stars who look boyish rather than manly. Leonardo DiCaprio is typical, a fine and wildly popular actor but a perennial babyface who appeared, in most of his early roles, to have been unable to get a beard going if his life depended on it (although now that he’s entering middle age, he seems to have developed the ability to coax out a modest amount of facial hair). I don’t get his sex appeal; I thought that in “Titanic” the lovely Kate Winslett looked as though she could have chewed him up and spit him out for breakfast—or at least told him to go out on the deck and play with the other kids.

One could also say that this is part of a general trend towards androgyny and away from sexual dimorphism, and perhaps one would be correct. But I’m not at all sure; I think the more basic trend is away from age (or even adulthood) and towards youth. It’s not so much that sexuality or even sexual dimorphism are being spurned, it’s growing old—or growing up.

Purposeful and self-inflicted chest hairlessness is also an example of the general tendency to tinker with the human body. Body-building, body-piercing, liposection, plastic surgery—every inch seem to be fair game for transformation and supposed improvement. Throughout history and across the world, people have always been willing to suffer for the sake of attractiveness; the only things that keeps morphing are the details. And if you think about it, shaving or waxing are a whole lot less traumatic than foot-binding or neck-stretching with rings, or so many of the manifold torments to which human beings have subjected themselves in the vain (in every sense of the word) pursuit of beauty.

If you Google “chest hair makes comeback,” you’ll get a bunch of articles claiming that this is so. Some of them even go back quite a few years. And yet the shaved chest is still going strong, which makes me think the vaunted comeback is somewhat of a fantasy. I’ll believe it when I see it in male models. Don’t hold your breath.

I guess I can’t publish this post without a photo; it would just be so wrong. So here’s the male model and actor (and not at all babyfaced) Giles Marini. I confess to intermittently watching “Dancing With the Stars,” and this guy is a natural dancer and favored to win it all.

Here’s Giles as model, minus chest hair:

gilesshower.jpg

And here he is dancing a fiery tango (the accent doesn’t hurt, either):

America’s arrogance, and Obama’s

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “expat”—who is in a position to know a thing or two about Europe’s reaction to Obama—has written in regard to German opinions about Obama’s statements on Turkish EU membership:

They resented specifically Obama’s public lecturing tone, which was obnoxious, especially since he seems to know nothing of the situation.

During his recent European jaunt, Obama called America’s past attitude towards Europe arrogant. He failed to offer any particulars, and with his concomitant criticisms of predecessor George Bush, my guess is that he’s referring at least in part to that cowboy swagger Europeans so loved to hate.

But expat’s description (and my own observations) of Obama is as least as much (if not more) in line with the definition of the word “arrogant,” which has always seemed to me a perfect description of the man: “overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors.”

George Bush may have been cocky. But I don’t recall him having an air of looking down on others. This is precisely the attitude Obama conveys, and it’s all the more strange since he—as expat points out—is relatively devoid of real world experience other than the academic. But arrogance is a trait I’ve often noticed in academics, as well.

Note, however, that arrogance is a trait that Obama ascribed to America, not to George Bush specifically. And, although I assume that Obama was relying on people to get the obvious subtext about the cowboy Bush and fill in the blanks themselves, we should take Obama at his word and ask what it is he thinks is so arrogant about America?

It’s an odd adjective to a apply to a nation, come to think of it. Most nations feel a bit superior to others, if only in the cultural sense; it’s part of national pride, which used to be universally thought as a good thing. It’s only when this pride gets out of hand in terms of oppression and/or aggression that it turns bad. Think Germany during WWII, although part of the motivation there was actually the reverse—a sense of shame at having been humiliated at the end of WWI, turned into arrogance and aggressive efforts to restore lost dominance.

If America has done anything even remotely comparable, it has been done in the defense of liberty and the cause of freedom. Is it arrogant for America to be proud of its liberties, and the fact that so many people around the world are desperate to emigrate here? Was it arrogant of America to enter WWI and manage to break the stalemate so that an armistice could finally be signed? Was it arrogant of America to respond to Pearl Harbor by defending itself and all of Europe into the bargain during WWII? And how very arrogant was the US’s postwar Marshall Plan, its assumption that it would be able to rescue and rebuild Europe after the devastation? Was it arrogant to fight against the USSR’s attempt to spread Communism throughout Europe and the world during the Cold War? Is it arrogant of the US to be the major contributor financially to the US-bashing UN, or to host it on its shores? Maybe we should return the organization to some country abroad, where it rightly belongs these days.

Ah, but the Iraq War was arrogant, right? Was the long buildup to the war in which the UN was asked to vote, and Saddam was given plenty of time to prepare for the invasion as best he could, arrogant? I suppose it was arrogant if you believe the “Bush lied about WMDs” meme, but does Obama actually believe that to be the case?

I don’t know; he’s not saying. Not that he’s offering any specifics at all. That makes it easy for the listener to fill in the blanks. What Obama is doing, however, is playing to Europeans’ arrogance about their superiority, while also asserting his own personal arrogance.

[NOTE: I was thinking of writing at more length about nationalism itself, but it turns out that I’ve already done that. So why re-invent the wheel, as it were? Here are some excerpts that seem relevant, especially in regard to the present-day European attitude towards nationalism and its inherent arrogance:

Patriotism has gotten a very bad name during the last few decades. I think part of this feeling began (at least in this country), like so many things, with the Vietnam era. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were seen to have wrought during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, but it seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.

Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:

If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration”¦”

A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country, who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which unbridled and amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response, one that helped lead to the formation of the EU. The nationalism of the US is seen by those who agree with him as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.

I would add that many liberals and Leftists in this country would concur with that last sentiment. Is Obama one of them? I believe so.]

Obama’s world popularity: what difference does it make?

The New Neo Posted on by

There was some discussion yesterday in the comments section about this recent quote from Joe Biden (remember him?):

[T]he last administration left us in a weaker posture than we’ve been any time since World War II: less regarded in the world, stretched more thinly than we ever have been in the past, two wars under way, virtually no respect in entire parts of the world. And so we’ve been about the business of repairing and strengthening those.

Biden’s remarks caught my attention because they reflect a number of discussions I’ve had recently with friends who are Obama supporters. The basic idea is this: they feel a sense of blessed relief that Obama is President.

This not only contrasts sharply with my own feelings on the subject, but it is puzzling because in some cases they simultaneously confess to being disturbed by some of his actual policies, particularly on the economy. In general, they admit they’re not paying attention to the details (understandable; most people are very busy). But although some of the details of which they are aware make them quite uneasy, they paradoxically retain a tremendous faith and trust in the man. Lest you think my friends unusual, this coincides with the results of many recent polls that place Obama’s favorability very high at the same time respondents disagree with many specifics of his proposals.

What’s going on here? When I question my friends more closely, or just listen to them speak amongst themselves, two things seem especially important in shaping their positive feelings about Obama: they are drawn to his personal style (especially in contrast to predecessor Bush, whom they uniformly detest), and they are happy that the world now likes us better.

It’s that latter idea that ties into the Biden remark. There is no question that polls in many countries indicate a renewed optimism about the US now that Obama is President. If our goal is to say, like Sally Field, “they like us, they really like us!” then I suppose that’s a good thing. But except for the warm glow, what difference does it really make?

It’s interesting to observe, as I did when I looked up that Sally Field quote, that what she really said was [emphasis mine], “You like me; right now, you like me!” The temporal and transitory nature of popularity that even Ms. Field managed to place in her sentence in the midst of her euphoria at winning an Oscar is a realistic and sobering note. This is at least as true in the world of geopolitics as in Oscar competitions.

How much does such a thing as popularity actually matter in the course of world affairs? And what does it really mean to be liked in such a way? What does it mean to be liked in countries that have their own interests in mind, when those interests conflict with ours? Could “optimism about the US” sometimes mean “optimism that we will now be able to control/exploit people instead of them?” And does the opinion of the average person have anything whatsoever to do with what the leaders of his/her country are likely to do, or with the power struggles of those leaders and countries on the world stage?

Several analysts have pointed out that, for all of Obama’s European rhetoric, bowing, and ‘umbleness about the role of America in the world, he gained nothing from his visit except personal adulation [emphasis mine]:

Warmly greeted by European leaders and the public alike as a welcome relief from his predecessor, Obama’s appeal hasn’t enabled to him to bridge differences on key economic and military issues with American allies.

Obama left the G-20 summit in London without securing any further commitment by individual countries to enact more stimulus spending. And Saturday he departs from NATO’s gathering in this French-German border town without a pledge by allies to send further combat troops to Afghanistan to bolster the American military surge there.

Note the highlighted sentence—exactly and precisely the sentiment of my friends. But the rest of the excerpt indicates how meaningless it all might be, except as window-dressing. Perhaps it might even be dangerous.

To learn why, one could do worse than to turn to Machiavelli, who noticed certain political truths some time ago (the following refers to rulers within a country, but I believe one could well extrapolate to having power in the world):

In answering the question of whether it is better to be loved than feared, Machiavelli writes, “The answer is of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.”

Machiavelli, of course, is considered—well, Machiavellian. But he was a keen observer of the way things are rather than the way we might wish them to be.

Is Obama? Well, it depends on what you believe about Obama’s intent and motivations. If he is merely naive (or, as Mark Steyn wrote of Obama: “talking like a 14-year old who’s been up in his room listening to ‘Imagine’ for too long”), then his choice to be loved and not feared could be detrimental or even fatal to US security and interests in the world. But if you believe that loss of US power is his actual goal, then he may indeed be a very keen observer of realities.