“Attack of the Killer Journalists”

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, not really.

But Iowahawk’s clever satire about journalists run amok makes a good point about the absurdity of the recent NY Times article on crimes committed by returning vets.

That Times piece is an excellent example of failure to include all-important comparative statistics in an article that one can therefore conclude has been written with an agenda—in this case, to portray vets in time-honored post-Vietnam fashion as broken victims/perpetrators, crazed and traumatized by their military service. Continue reading →

Bobby Fischer and the lunatic fringe of anti-Semitism and 9/11 truthers

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Bobby Fischer, who put chess on the mainstream map for a while back in the early 70s, has died at the age of 64.

Those of you too young to remember may find it odd that the nation was riveted by his televised chess match with Boris Spassky back in 1972. In fact, those of us plenty old enough to remember may find it odd, as well.

I didn’t share chess fever. But many watched, entranced by the static but tensely cerebral scene:

“It was Bobby Fischer who had, single-handedly, made the world recognize that chess on its highest level was as competitive as football, as thrilling as a duel to the death, as esthetically satisfying as a fine work of art, as intellectually demanding as any form of human activity,” wrote Harold C. Schonberg, who reported on the Reykjavik match for The New York Times, in his 1973 book, “Grandmasters of Chess.”

Well, I’m sure it is intellectually demanding. But for me it wasn’t all that thrilling. The intellect demanded is a very specialized and narrow one, and Fischer was a particularly specialized and narrow example of the genre. Continue reading →

The Blog of the Ancient Mariner

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[This is a version of a post I originally wrote a while back about the reasons I took on my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series. I thought I’d publish it again now that I’ve resumed the project.]

Whenever I finish writing a section of the “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series, I’m amazed at how much I have to say, and how long it takes me to say it. My guess is that there are at least eight more posts coming up in the series, maybe even more.

I’m always gratified and surprised that so many people actually have the patience to hear me out. And I’m especially and deeply touched by those who take the trouble to thank me (particularly any Vietnam vets, or Vietnamese-Americans), or those who identify with what I write, or those who were too young to remember but are nevertheless still interested. I’m flattered by those who suggest this could actually be a book (although sometimes I feel like it already is a book).

And I sort of chuckle at those who say–“well, but what about this, what about that, why haven’t you talked about x, y, and z?” I want to say, “Hey, man, are you some sort of glutton for punishment? Isn’t this long enough?” Actually, if I ever do write a book, I imagine I’ll get around to answering some of the excellent questions raised by many readers.

Every response and every reader is appreciated. The real reason I began blogging, I believe, was to write this series. But I don’t think I ever would have done so if some of the people whom I originally most wanted to hear my story–certain friends and family members–had not made it clear they did not want to hear from me about this at all. Continue reading →

The New Democratic Congressional Theater

The New Neo Posted on by

You may recall I wrote a series of posts about the Democrats’ proposals to block the surge and its funding (see this, for example).

You may also recall I recently wrote about an effort by Bush to lock in an alliance with Iraq in such a way as to make it impervious (or at least resistant) to dismantling by his successor.

Now it turns out that the antiwar leadership has turned its attention from the poorly-thought-out and doomed-from-the-start efforts to block war funding. Continue reading →

A mind is a difficult thing to change: (Part 7B: the Vietnam photos revisited)

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[Part 7A can be found here. The rest of the series is located by clicking on the category “A mind is a difficult thing to change: my story” on the right sidebar.]

The last thing I was thinking about during the buildup to the Iraq War were those two Vietnam-era photos. I was busy reading online about Iraq, trying to understand the situation there and to predict what might happen if we invaded or what might happen if we didn’t invade.

I no longer remember where, how, or why I came across the two Vietnam photos again. It was probably a random thing. Perhaps I found a link to them on a blog, perhaps somewhere else.

No matter. I saw something that caught my attention and clicked on a link that led to a piece about them. Just one of many articles I saw every evening as part of my online reading.

Here were the familiar images—the field execution, the napalmed girl. I hadn’t seen them in decades, but I remembered them well. I felt the shock and sadness again seeing them once more, even after all these years.

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But the story told by the article accompanying them was different. Continue reading →

A mind is a difficult thing to change: (Part 7A: Jenin, Jenin)

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[After a long hiatus, I have resumed my “change” series. This is the first part of a two-parter, the second half of which should be appearing tomorrow. You can find earlier posts by clicking on the “A mind is a difficult thing to change: my journey” category on the right sidebar. The post immediately preceding this one is here.]

In the most recent segment of this series, I wrote:

…the process [of change] was like doing a jigsaw puzzle. At first I only had a few pieces in my hands, and no real way to tell what the picture was going to look like. But bit by bit I started assembling it, and began to discern the outline of a new form as it was slowly being revealed. In the end, events that were happening in the present merged with a reassessment of the past, enabling the picture to emerge ever more clearly, piece by piece.

After the Afghan war was over, I felt a sense of relief that it had gone as well as it had, and a bit of puzzlement as to why the original predictions had been so different from events as they had actually transpired. I wanted things to calm down now, but my sense was that they wouldn’t be doing that for a long time, although I didn’t yet know where the next eruption would occur.

If you had asked me what my politics were at that time—spring of 2002—I wouldn’t have perceived that any change whatsoever had occurred.

I was still a liberal Democrat, just as I’d always been. Continue reading →

Sanity Squad tonight: Canada’s war on freedom of speech

The New Neo Posted on by

Tune in tonight live at 8PM Eastern Time (or click on the link later to hear the recording) for what promises to be an interesting Sanity Squad podcast on Canada’s PC assault on the freedom of speech of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. And send not to ask for whom the bell tolls, Canadians, it tolls for thee.

If you’re not familiar with what’s happening to Steyn and Levant, go here and here. To listen to the articulate, courageous, and outraged testimony of Levant for yourself, watch You Tube’s tapes of his testimony before the Alberta Human Rights Commission—and learn just how Orwellian that title is.

Sarkozy recherche la femme

The New Neo Posted on by

And I thought the French were supposed to be “sophisticated” about this sort of thing.

Talk about rebounds!

[ADDENDUM: I couldn’t resist adding the following tidbit on Ms. Bruni, found at Wikipedia:

“I’m monogamous from time to time, but I prefer polygamy and polyandry…”

While living with Jean-Paul Enthoven, Bruni fell in love and started an affair with his son, philosophy professor Raphaé«l Enthoven, which caused Raphaé«l to divorce novelist Justine Lévy, daughter of philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. The affair and the subsequent ending of her marriage were the inspiration for Justine Lévy’s best-selling book Rien de grave (“Nothing serious”), published in 2004. In the book, Lévy paints a vitriolic portrait of “Paula”, the female who steals the protagonist’s husband, as “a praying mantis” with “a Terminator smile”…

Bruni has also dated Donald Trump and Mick Jagger. Jagger’s wife acknowledged his affair with Bruni was one of the reasons for the separation.

Here’s one of the more sedate online photos of Carla, future (or perhaps even present, if this news can be believed) First Lady of France:

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It appears that Sarkozy will have his work cut out for him.]

Most underreported big story of the week: Iraq alliance

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Michael Hirsh reports on the fact that events in Iraq are moving along in such a way as to make it more difficult for a subsequent Democratic administration to undo them.

Oh, I have little doubt that where there’s a will, there’s a way; if the next administration—Obama as President, for example, and a strongly Democratic Congress—is utterly determined to leave Iraq ASAP, I assume it can be accomplished. But time appears to be making that prospect far more difficult even as Bush-haters continue their countdown to the Big Day.

This must seem to be the longest administration on earth to those who think it’s also been the most disastrous. Those who believe Bush won the election by thievery might also believe he’s somehow managed to stop time, so slowly have the last couple of years gone for them. And, in fact, although it’s hard to believe, Bush’s leavetaking is still slightly over a year away.

A year. A lot can happen in a year. A year ago the surge was just beginning, and took months to really get going, but now it is widely considered a success beyond even the most sanguine of expectations. Continue reading →

Ah, those clever literary intellectuals!

The New Neo Posted on by

For quite a while now I’ve been impressed by the fact that leading literary lights, for all their creativity and art, can be very dim bulbs indeed when dealing with certain other aspects of human endeavor.

I suppose that shouldn’t be so hard to understand. After all, there’s no reason to presume that, just because people can write well, they are also especially savvy about practical matters in the real world. On the other hand, good writers of fiction—and, to a lesser extent, poetry—need to be keen observers of the human mind and heart. As for literary criticism, that’s an endeavor that ought to require a discerning and perceptive intellect.

One would think so. But there’s a long history of literary “useful idiots,” people whose critical faculties seem to stop where their art ends. For every Emile Zola, there’s a Harold Pinter.

I was reminded of all of this recently when reading the book Partisans by David Laskin. It’s mostly a glorified gossip sheet about the group of writers who were connected to the influential journal Partisan Review during its formative decades, the 30s and 40s. Partisans follows their closely intertwined lives from then through the 60s and beyond; they were an especially active group, however, in their earlier years (and yes, that activity included playing an almost endless game of musical beds). Continue reading →

Whither the polls?

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One of the biggest stories of the NH primary is the failure of the polls to have accurately predicted the results. It’s not that it’s so unusual for polls to be incorrect, but for so many to be incorrect in exactly the same way—predicting about an 8% Obama victory and getting a result of Clinton by 3%, off by a factor of approximately 11%—is highly unusual.

There have been a host of attempts to explain; see this, this, and this, for example.

My own reflection is that Hillary’s emphasis on reaching the women of NH probably paid off, but perhaps late in the game. Her ads in NH were a media blitz on the female voters of the state, simplistic but relentless appeals in female voices only (young and old), stating how Hillary would help family and children and education. Just how she would be doing this as president was not specified, but apparently it did not need to be. “She’s a woman, we’re women, she understands”—that was the continual message, repeated ad nauseam on every radio station.

It didn’t reach the women I know, who uniformly seemed to like Obama and are disappointed in the primary results. And from my small and decidedly unrepresentative sample (I’m turning in my pollster badge), I still think Hillary is in a bit of trouble, because I know far too many loyal lifelong liberal Democrats who simply cannot stand her.