Past the Tipping Point

…when you're under murderous assault is precisely not the time to turn your entire political culture inside out. That's what the terrorists want you to do, that's what they are dying for you to do. But you're supposed to resist that temptation.

Instead, in thrall to the serpentine blandishments of fear, we spooked ourselves (or at any rate allowed our political class to spook us) into the grotesque disfigurations of the Patriot Act; the witch hunts aimed at Arabs and South Asian immigrants (many of them second- and third-generation American citizens); the botched invasion of Afghanistan; the calamitous Iraq fiasco; the preposterous fetishizations of Hallowed Ground and the Families and the Heroes; in sum, the hysterical deformation of virtually all of American politics, which in turn allowed the egregiously incompetent President George W. Bush that second term with its Katrina debacle, burgeoning deficits, and the whole clueless build-up to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

...

The 10 years just passing, as we all must realize if we are being honest with ourselves, constituted the hinge decade, the decade when something substantial had to be done if the world were going to avoid the exponential catastrophe into which we have now embarked. (You can't go on sagely noting, year after year, that we have only 10 years left within which to confront the crisis, without at some point those 10 years having run out.) Perhaps we could have done both: honored the victims of 9/11 while at the same time tending to the far greater devastation bearing down on us. The point is that, obviously, we weren't able to, and in almost every conceivable way, the result has been an utterly squandered decade.

Shame. Shame on us.

Lawrence Weschler, New York Institute for the Humanities, New York University

The Chronicle Review, August 11, 2011

Be Afraid! Be Very Afr... I'm sorry, what?

…Islamic terrorism has not posed as large a threat as reporters and the public think – certainly not as large a threat as Al Qaeda and its affiliates intended. They routinely complain about the failure of Muslims to join their movement.

Of the 56 million people who die each year around the world, around two million die from HIV/AIDS.  Nearly one million die from malaria.  Almost three quarters of a million die from violence.  According to the National Counterterrorism Center, terrorism peaked in 2007, with 23,000 fatalities, half of them in Iraq – a terrible toll, but not a leading cause of death.

In the United States, 15,000 people are murdered each year.  Islamic terrorism, including the Beltway sniper attacks, has accounted for almost three dozen deaths in American since 9/11 – a small fraction of the violence that the country experiences every year.  The toll would have been higher if the perpetrators has been more competent…Even so, the number of perpetrators has been relatively low.  Fewer than 200 Muslim Americans have engaged in terrorist plots over the past decade – that’s out of a population of approximately two million.  This constitutes a serious problem, but not nearly as great as public concern would suggest. 

Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina

The Chronicle Review, August 12, 2011

Isn't it wonderful to live in a post-racial society.

 
 
This picture was taken by James Edward Bates in August 2002 in Petal, Mississippi.


www.kkkproject.com

...if you got a gun, shoot 'em in the head. That's the sure way to kill 'em. If you don't, get yourself a club, beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy.

While traditional zombie narratives tend to end in apocalypse, most...theoretical approaches...suggested vigorous policy responses should we be attacked by the living dead.  Realists would push for a live-and-let-live arrangement between the undead and everyone else.  Liberals would call for an imperfect but useful global governing body to regulate the undead -- a World Zombie Organization.  Constructivists would call for a robust, pluralistic security community dedicated to preventing new zombie outbreaks and socializing existing zombies into human society.  Bureaucrats would very likely err in their initial response, but they'd adapt.

Daniel W. Drezner, author of Theories of International Politics and Zombies
"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zombies"
The Chronicle Review
February 18, 2011

Perhaps Urban VIII could help...

The moral [of the 2010 election] is clear. Republicans don’t have a mandate to cut spending; they have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic. 

Paul Krugman
The New York Times
February 14, 2011

Egypt: a caution

The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.

T.E. Laurence
Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Why'd you pick that name?

How High is the Watergate?
by Phil Ochs

How high is the watergate, Mama, she said it's one foot high and risin'
How high is the watergate, Papa, he said it's two feet high and risin'
There's a flood around the poker game (There's a bug on the window pane)
Gerry Ford must be insane
Oh, my God, it's Mickey Spillane,
The tides are risin' (Two feet high and rising)

How high is the watergate, Mama, three feet high and risin'
How high is the watergate, Papa, three feet high and risin'
In the Swiss bank the money's stashed
18 minutes of tapes were slashed
They've even taken in Johnny Cash
Three feet high and rising

How high is the watergate, Mama, four feet high and risin'
How high is the watergate, Papa, four feet high and risin'
Nixon's gone and taught you lies (Nixon doesn't talk, he lies)
A face that screams out for replies (...for a pie)
And the only one workin's is David Frye,
Oh the tides are risin' (four feet high and risin')

How high is the watergate, Mama, five feet high and risin'
How high is the watergate, Papa, five feet high and risin'
If there ever was a crook, he's it
Perversion is the soul of wit
Pack your shovel, he's full of shit,
The tides are risin' (five feet high and risin')

Five Feet High and Rising
by Johnny Cash

My mama always taught me that good things come from adversity if we put our faith in the Lord.
We couldn't see much good in the flood waters when they
were causing us to have to leave home,
But when the water went down, we found that it had washed a load of rich black bottom dirt across our land. The following year we had the best cotton crop we'd ever had.

I remember hearing:

How high's the water, mama?
Two feet high and risin'
How high's the water, papa?
Two feet high and risin'

We can make it to the road in a homemade boat
That's the only thing we got left that'll float
It's already over all the wheat and the oats,
Two feet high and risin'

How high's the water, mama?
Three feet high and risin'
How high's the water, papa?
Three feet high and risin'

Well, the hives are gone,
I've lost my bees
The chickens are sleepin'
In the willow trees
Cow's in water up past her knees,
Three feet high and risin'

How high's the water, mama?
Four feet high and risin'
How high's the water, papa?
Four feet high and risin'

Hey, come look through the window pane,
The bus is comin', gonna take us to the train
Looks like we'll be blessed with a little more rain,
4 feet high and risin'

How high's the water, mama?
Five feet high and risin'
How high's the water, papa?
Five feet high and risin'

Well, the rails are washed out north of town
We gotta head for higher ground
We can't come back till the water comes down,
Five feet high and risin'

Well, it's five feet high and risin'

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
by Pete Seeger 

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

Dark Tide, the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

by Stephen Puleo

The first account of the Boston molasses flood, when a 2.3 million gallon tank collapsed, sending a 15 foot high wave of molasses in all directions. The molasses, traveling at up to 35 miles per hour, destroyed a large section of the North End, killing 21 and injuring 150. 

The cause of the disaster was corporate neglect and incompetence, rushing construction to take advantage of the increasing demand for industrial alcohol (a byproduct of molasses) resulting from the war.  In its defense, the company tried to blame anarchists, largely Italian, who were becoming increasingly violent in opposition to war, capitalism, and government crackdowns on individual freedoms.  (One result of the activities of radicals and unionists was Mitchel Palmer and John Hoover's assault on civil liberties).

Puleo also gives a history of molasses as a commodity, which was a critical part of the slave trade, the "middle passage" being the voyage between Africa and the West Indies, after which human beings were traded for molasses which was shipped to New England to be traded for rum which was shipped to Africa to be traded for...

The writing is somewhat stiff, but the book is an interesting and well documented recounting of a forgotten incident in one of the critical years in American history.

Raise your hand if you could have voted 200 years ago.

If democratic legitimacy is the measure of a sound constitutional interpretive practice, then Justice Scalia needs to give an account of why and how rote obedience to the commitments of voters two centuries distant and wildly different in racial, sexual, and cultural composition can be justified on democratic grounds.

Jamal Greene, Columbia law professor, quoted in
The Commandments
Jill Lepore
The New Yorker
January 17, 2011

To Your Scattered Bodies Go

I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it.

A fictional neuroscientist 

Social Animal

David Books

The New Yorker

January 17, 2011

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Kung Fu Monkey via Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal

Atheism or misotheism?

...if God is nothing but silence and inaction, then there is no God.

John K. Roth

from "Hating God", Bernard Schweizer, The Chronicle Review, December 10, 2010

Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled.  Because He has had thousands of children burned in His pits?...I was the accuser.  God the accused.

Elie Wiesel, Night


from "Hating God", Bernard Schweizer, The Chronicle Review, December 10, 2010

...the hurt that God has done to the world is too great for any forgiveness...One hates our fathers for having committed themselves to such a worship and wonders how they would have fancied god was kind.

Rebecca West after World War I

from "Hating God", Bernard Schweizer, The Chronicle Review, December 10, 2010

I just stopped one day, and that was it.  Some things wear out quicker than others.  I used to collect stamps, you know, and I don't do that anymore.

Elvis Costello
The New Yorker
November 8, 2010

Next to Normal @ Edwin Booth Theatre

Next to Normal is a largely sung-through musical about the affect that Diana's inability to get over the death of her 8 month old son has on her and her family.  When the show starts, she is starting the day, interacting with her husband, daughter, and son, trying to make love, serve breakfast, and make lunches, with increasingly little success.  It's only later that we find out that her son, now 17, exists only for her.  She's working with a psychiatrist to control her condition, diagnosed as bipolar, through talking and drugs.  The drugs are doing what these types of drugs usually do, and Diana and her son flush them down the toilet.  This leads to supermom, for at time, but things get worse.  Natalie, the daughter, is lost, seeing herself as the lesser part of Superboy and the Invisible Girl.  Dianna, pressed by Dan and her doctor to get rid of the things that remind her of Gabe, her son, attemps suicide. 

Diana's new doctor presses ECT, shock therapy, as a way of getting rid of the memories that are haunting her.  She gives in, after a struggle between Dan and Gabe, but losses all memories of her family and Gabe  is gone.  Things start to come back, the strongest memory being of her teenage son, who returns to his mother.  The doctor urges more electric shock,  but Diana refuses.

Diana and Natalie talk, perhaps for the  first  time,  and connect.  They agree that normal is not something that is possible, but that they can try for next to normal.  Diana leaves Dan to seek her own way.  Gabe stays with Dan who, freed from dealing with Diana's grief, can now confront his own. Dan and Natalie together, and Dianna at her parents, but without Gabe, can look forward with some hope. 

This is the first musical I can recall that uses current rock music without making a point of the music:  Spring Awakenings was a rock musical set in German history.  Next to Normal is simply a musical, using the music of this time.

The set was all black and white and steel, with very pixelated images, particulary the large woman's eyes  on the second level, that fold in and out.  There are three levels connected by ladders, the first two are the two stories of the family's house.  The third level is open only to Gabe, the level he  appears on is frequently related to how present he is to Dianna and Dan. 

A very emotional role for Alice Ripley.   She never goes over the top, no matter how her character is  feeling. Some off-tune singing, perhaps due to the emotion and/or the placement of the  conductor and band, on the third level of the set, visible to the audience but not to the singers.

A major theme, in addition to the impact of grief, is the limits of medicine.  Drugs, shock therapy, talk therapy, are all just guesses in the dark.  We just don't know enough about the mind and the heart and maybe the soul.

Orchestra left, row J, started out on the far left side of the house, moved  to the aisle midway through the first act when the rest of the row was empty.  Great view and sound.

Dinner after the show at Thalia's:  burger (10oz prime new york sirloin, gruyere, bacon), seasoned fries.

Hair The Americal Tribal Love Rock Musical @ Al Hirschfeld Theatre

An amazing production of Hair, hard to call it a revival, with many different or differently arranged songs.  Sounds like Jimi Hendrix was the music director. The production owes much to Spring Awakenings in its rhythms and feelings.  What could have been an amusement park version of the 60s was alive, capturing the feeling of what times were and/or should have been.  Berger's treatment of  Shelia was typical of the male left.  Very erotic and sensual, or lewd or crude depending on taste.  Was the love  among men completely atypical of the time? Were the feelings more subjugated then?  The friendship between Berger and Claude was callous at times, beautiful at other times, particularly as they rolled around  together just before Claude conforms.

The second act hallucination/bad trip that shows Claude's future in Vietnam was very powerful, with Grant and  Lincoln and Booth and Custer and Washington and Clark Gable and Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the execution of the captured Viet Cong and parachuting into the jungle and much more.

There were a lot of cast changes, including all three  leads.  Claude and Sheila were very good, Berger was not the dominant presence that he should have been, Gail thought he was nervous and trying too hard.  Heard later that changes had been announced, but don't know if what we saw is the new permanent line-up or an interim cast.  Found out later that an open  casting call was scheduled in the theatre the day after we saw the show. 

High points: Black Boys/White Boys, What a Piece of Work Is Man, the reprise of Ain't Got No as Claude/Jesus dies.   The last scene before Let the Sun Shine In, with Claude, in uniform, stretched out dead, with snow falling.

After 40 years, it's hard not to look at the tribe and know that there's no future for their vision of love and peace. 

Set was great, industrial brick warehouse type building with wooden scaffolding, an old truck, the band on stage above center and right.  Wonderful lighting, a rainbow, and a blackout.

Seats: orchestra, row O, center, next to texting woman

God of Carnage, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre

Another "watch the thin veneer of civilization, imposed by ball-breaking women, be stripped off as inhibitions  disappear".  A  comic "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf", as Gail suggests.  Lots of very funny bits, but disappointing in total, given the hype.  The second cast (Ken Stott, Christine Lahti, Jimmy Smits, and Annie Potts) all had good moments, but I didn't think all fit.  Hard to picture James Gandolfini in place of Ken Stott with his strong Irish brogue.  Christine  Lahti was very good when controlled, as the phony intellectual, in-touch-with-her feelings, writer-cook-mother but over the top during a lot of the see-what-she's-really-like scenes.  Annie Potts throwing the flowers over her shoulder was very funny.  Jimmy Smits body language, at the beginning of the show and after his cell phone was drowned was wonderful,  something about his too-correct pronunciations didn't fit the character. 

Wonderful set, blood red carpet and painted floors and walls around the box.  Too many books stacked, very neatly, on top of and underneath the table and on racks in the corner. 

African drum-inspired music at beginning and end, is the God of Carnage from Darfur, the setting of Veronica's forthcoming book? 

Seating in mezzanine, row G, just behind an aisle, very good seats, hard to hear,  given Stott's accent, very fast line delivery, talking on top of each other, and much shouting and shrieking. 

Dinner at Queen of Sheba, meat and vegetarian sampler plates, Ethiopian coffee, baklava and creme caramel. 

A Little Night Music @ Walter Kerr Theatre

A fine performance of A Little Night Music, Sondheim's show about mis-matched  couples in Sweden at the turn of the 20th century, based on a film by Bergman.  Catherine Zeta-Jones did well, although perhaps too young and lacking some depth.  She  nailed Send in the Clowns.  Angela Landsbury was wonderful as the elderly, wise, cynincal grandmother.  Much of the rest of the cast were over the top, particularly Ramona Mallory as Anne.  The other musical highlight was A Weekend in the Country that closes the second set and places all the couples and rivals in the same house for the second act.  The Miller's Son, sung by Leigh Ann Larkin playing Petra, was also very strong.

Beautiful set, glass doors  and windows, with glass partially frosted, along three  sides, framing an inlaid wood floor in an octagonal pattern. 

Seats: mezzanine, seven rows up, in the center, very good view due to  the steep rake and short people in front.

Dinner at Crave: bbq chicken pizza and chicken soup, margheritta pizza and roasted shrimp and  corn soup, cannolis after the show

NEWSical the Musical @ 47th Street Theatre

NEWSical is a humorous but not hilarious attempt to continue the Forbidden Broadway tradition, making jokes about politics, TV, and music rather than musical theatre.  Too bad the material is not up to the cast, including the fabulous Christina Bianco, who was the highlight of the last FB show.  Michael West, Christine Perdi, and Rory O'Malley, in that order, are talented and funny.

Highlights include Christina doing Sarah Palin, Celine Dion, and Dora the Explorer (she was the first Dora in the national tour) asking advice from Suzy Ormand.  Other great numbers spoofed Hilary Clinton, the Obama party crashers,  and Michael West's imitations of Bill Clinton and others.

Capitol City does the  topical humor better and Forbidden Broadway got to twist the original music into something weird and wonderful.

A good high energy show to see right after getting off the plane, but not one to see every year.  Bring back FB!

Seats: 3rd row, second and third seats off the aisle.

Dinner at the Edison, chicken salad club, chopped liver