What's Nina Burleigh Got against Women?

I get up quite early because my clients have a nine-hour head start on me. Today I woke up to the usual flurry of work-related emails plus a message directing me to Nina Burleigh’s Time blog post devoted to the “haters” – i.e., the many people around the world who have expressed their support for the family of Meredith Kercher and who are convinced that Italy’s first instance court got things right when it convicted Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for their role in Meredith’s brutal murder. Italy’s highest court has just overturned the acquittal and definitively upheld Knox’s conviction for the felony offense of falsely accusing an innocent man of murdering Meredith Kercher. In that false accusation, Knox placed herself at the scene of the crime.  

In her blog post, Burleigh once again misquotes an off-the-record conversation with me, though I set her straight the first time she did it and asked her to cease. She also wrongly asserts that I am a “housewife” and “former” translator.

For those who may have missed them the first time around, the two blog posts I wrote that got Nina Burleigh all riled up can be found at TJMK or here, under 2011 posts.

First, a bit of background: Burleigh spent a lot of time in her book maligning two of the best reporters covering the case, one of whom, like Burleigh, wrote a book about it. Since I wrote my review of Burleigh’s book and then pointed out that the New York Times was critical of her advocacy masquerading as journalism, time has passed. According to her online news site (thefreelancedesk.com), which focuses on current events in Italy, where she lives, Andrea Vogt has been working as a reporter for 20 years and writes for, among others, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Seattle Times and The BBC. As for Barbie Latza Nadeau, in addition to her frequent reporting for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, she is also a regular contributor for CNN. Both are excellent journalists whose work speaks for itself. But what's up with Nina Burleigh? I honestly don’t know what she was thinking when she decided to belittle their accomplishments in print, not to mention her decision to misrepresent my own rather more modest ones. Is she just angry because she got this case so wrong? Is this a simple case of sour grapes from a sore loser? It probably doesn't matter in the larger scheme of things. But I would caution anyone who talks to a reporter off-the-record to beware. I have talked to many reporters off-the-record, and they have all respected this agreement, except for Nina Burleigh. In addition to breaking a promise, she misrepresented what I said.

And now that she has had her public snit, may I suggest that the focus now shift from these petty personality clashes - between Knox’s fan base and anyone who doesn’t share their views - and onto the facts? I think the tone needs to change as well: facts are best discussed rationally, calmly and respectfully.

For the record, I have nothing against women who choose to be homemakers.

I think it is important not to give this latest episode/rant more attention than it deserves, however. Ironically, in the final analysis Nina Burleigh has unwittingly done Meredith Kercher and the truth a huge favor by attacking her supporters as “haters” and, in doing so, giving our efforts a needed plug. It’s too bad that she could not resist plugging Knox’s upcoming book as well, although she only succeeds in proving the point made by the New York Times: that Ms. Burleigh is treading what she must know - as a seasoned reporter - to be a very dangerous line, that which separates journalists and advocates. She seems to have lost her way and, instead of figuring out how to get back on track, has decided to lash out at those advocating for truth in reporting. Where does that put her?
 

Update: Knox and Sollecito's bizarre acquittal is overturned!

I'll be back with a post on the subject in the near future. I just wanted to say that the Kerchers are one step closer to getting the justice they deserve, which they have been waiting for with such patience and grace.

For some background, read Andrea Vogt's excellent piece here: http://thefreelancedesk.com/?page_id=148

Steubenville: will there be a book deal or two?

http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/i-am-not-your-wife-sister-or-daughter/


I have been too busy to do much blogging lately and also kind of rethinking the whole idea of keeping a blog. I've got other projects in mind.

In case you care, Italy's Supreme Court will rule next week on the acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for their role in the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in November of 2007. Knox and Sollecito were convicted in the "first instance" trial and then, against the backdrop of a zero integrity, PR-driven media campaign, they were acquitted, though the calunnia conviction against Knox for falsely accusing an innocent man of the crime (placing herself at the scene) was upheld. This entire charade left a lot of people scratching their heads.

After the acquittal, which came in October 2011, both Knox and Sollecito and their various handlers got busy hammering out the book deals. Knox is much more high-profile, of course, and will be interviewed in an exclusive by Diane Sawyer in late April. I don't expect any truth-telling or hard questions; this is part of the book promotion. According to the twitter feed, Sawyer was recently in Perugia doing some background research (which amounted to asking young American women if they felt safe over there?!).

I'm reposting this blog post about Steubenville as a reminder that violence against women is distressingly common and that it will continue to be for as long as we reward perps, feel sorry for them, excuse their behavior, blame victims and so on. All the stuff we do so well.

Knox allegedly got a 4 million dollar advance for her co-written book. As for Sollecito, he faces defamation charges in Italy for some of the absolute nonsense he and his "co-writer" (read: the journalist who wrote the book for him) came up with. Even his own father felt compelled to go on television in Italy and deny the worst of it.

What a world, eh?

By the way, Happy New Year

I'm just too dang busy to tend to this blog right now. Maybe I'll be back one day, to protest an unspeakable injustice or celebrate a small miracle. The unfolding story of the unbearably brutal death of Reeva Steenkamp (her boyfriend Oscar Pistorius, aka The Blade Runner, has been charged with premeditated murder) is on my mind, in part because of the rapidity with which his family hired a PR firm. Does this remind anyone else of another unbearably brutal death, that of Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, in late 2007? Two of the three people convicted in the first instance trial of her murder were acquitted on appeal but Italy's Supreme Court will have the last word, in March of this year.

Both Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox have written books to pay off the high cost of running a trial by media strategy. Sollecito's was written by Andrew Gumbel, who seems to have merely scribbled down Sollecito's dubious claims. Sollecito now faces libel charges in Italy for some of the whoppers he thought he could get away with (after all, he got away with something far worse, according to many who followed the case). As for Knox, her book is scheduled for release in late April, at which time she'll be sitting for a disinfomercial chat with Diane Sawyer. In a recent tweet, Knox (or someone pretending to be her) committed a nice Freudian slip, referring to her book's title as "Waiting to Me Heard" instead of "Waiting to Be Heard". Either way, this is a very strange title for many reasons. For one thing, Knox does not seem to have waited at all; unlike Sollecito, she was only too happy during the trial to ramble on at regular intervals. For another, the world is all ears should she wish to offer up a coherent account of her words and deeds, including falsely accusing an innocent man of the heinous crime.

Sollecito's book is not very good and did not take the world by storm. His US book tour seemed more like an excellent vacation paid for by daddy, with a couple of lacklustre interviews thrown in for good measure. Now he spends his time dancing at what look to be sparsely attended school dances and then posting videos of himself dancing on youtube. He runs a FB page that is frequented by a small group of his diehard fans and his agent, the one who got him the book deal. Occasionally, he asks for questions from the audience but then folds his tent when they become too uncomfortable. Which they quickly do. He seems to be hungry for attention.

Maybe I'll get to the strange saga of Francesco SFORZA one day. He's the Perugian blogger who is a legend in his own mind. I briefly helped him edit his blog; that was a mistake. He turned on me after I dared to write for publication that Frank Sfarzo was his "stage name". It would seem that he was willing to be sold to the highest bidder. Since then, his fortunes have diminished, with at least two arrests in North America for assault... against people kind enough to host him! The fallout from this has been sadly hilarious to watch. SFORZA already faced charges in Italy, where he allegedly resisted arrest after his own mother and sisters called the cops to report domestic violence and then assaulted the arresting officers.

All of the above has been duly noted and discussed "on the internets", so anyone who is interested can read all about it.

Winter sky

Instead of complaining about the ground service at Charles de Gaulle since Delta began running the daily non-stop Paris-Seattle flight, let's focus on the winter light in the Marais.

Regarde le ciel - Look at the sky.

So my suitcase did not make my flight. It arrived two days later and I got bumped up a class.

The news of the Sandy Hook massacre broke while I was in Paris. It cast a long and chilly shadow. People kept asking me why. Why does this happen in America? What is wrong with America? Why is America so violent? Why are there so many guns? I don't have an answer. Well, yes, I do have one but it takes about three hours to lay out and it involves talking about things like the nature of American capitalism, the myth of self-reliance, the reality of what and who get left behind on the path to success and wealth.


The shadow is long.
But there is always a slant of light, however thin, however distant.
Even in the dead of winter.

Keeping the apple pie tradition on the table

This quarter (see photo below) of what was just yesterday a whole apple pie may not look all that impressive to you, but consider this: it was made by two people who have, up until now, left the making and baking of desserts to other, more qualified, bakers.

My excuse has always been that I lived in Paris for 20 years. And that's a pretty good excuse. When you live in the heart of a city that boasts a pâtisserie (and a pharmacie) every 50 meters, why would you ever want or need to make a dessert? The only person I know in Paris who actually has been known to make desserts for his invités is my friend Pierre, who was married to my friend and fellow translator Cathleen. Cathleen, who died a couple of years ago, was diabetic, and her husband Pierre managed her diabetes by managing her menu planning and food preparation. Pierre retired long ago from the EDF, where he worked as a lawyer. But he has never retired from his vocations, which are painting, writing poetry and cooking beautiful, elaborate meals, served in Pierre and Cathleen's apartment in the 13th. It is a magical place, literally stuffed with books, art and knick knacks of all kinds. The kitchen is so full of utensils and stuff you can't see inside. But I digress. The point is, I had no reason to ever pick up a rolling pin during my formative potential adult dessert baking years, spent in Shanghai and then Paris. I can assure you, I sampled some exquisite desserts during this period.

Walt's excuse up until recently was his mother, an extraordinary baker who excelled at all kinds of cookies, pies and cakes. She set the impossible standard for desserts, and she did so effortlessly. Well, I'm sure she sweated during the process, but all we ever saw was the result. She would sometimes engage in self-criticism, but we would shush her up between bites by waving our forks. No, we would say, it's fabulous your apple pie. Or blackberry pie. Or whatever. Jo Cougan died in mid-October, but we have had her personalized glass pie dish, with her name ("Made with Love From Jo's Kitchen") emblazoned on the bottom. When Walt said he wished someone from my family had made an apple pie for our Thanksgiving last Sunday, I sensed a wistful tone. We agreed that we would never again be the privileged recipients of one of Jo Cougan's pies and that we needed to do something to keep the tradition alive.

I suggested that we try, as a joint venture, to make an apple pie to take with us to the Thanksgiving meal we had been invited to share with friends in Anacortes. So the two of us went out in search of ingredients to bake an apple pie. We should have started earlier, but we did passably well considering the late hour. Now I know: our unsalted butter should have been a bit colder. And Christina, our hostess for dinner, suggested that we chill the bowl in which the crust is made. Fantastic idea! She learned that when she worked at an ice cream store where one of her jobs was to make certain desserts. Also, a word about the top crust. That didn't come out as I was planning. I got overly ambitious and had visions of lattices dancing in my head. But I got a little distracted by the filling, which Walt was in charge of, while making the top crust (since the pie itself was an afterthought, we had not made enough crust for the top) and, as a result, left it sitting in its rolled out state a little too long. Something weird happened to the dough and it formed little patches that refused to come together as one. So we decided to call it a "patchy" apple pie and put the patches on top. That name evolved into "Apache" Apple Pie, which seems fitting on this particular holiday, wherein America turns its slaughter of the indigenous population into an orgy of eating followed by a hysteria-driven shopping frenzy.

A word about the filling: at Walt's insistence, we used granny smith apples and one cameo. We added sugar, brown sugar, a little salt and the required amount of flour. The recipe I found online, confidently titled "Perfect Apple Pie", called for lemon juice, which we did not have on hand. So we used the juice of half an orange instead, which gave me the idea that a little grand marnier would be a nice touch. We also added cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. I think that's all.

The "Apache" Apple Pie

The result: Our pie did not look like Jo's pies. The top crust looked like it had a case of shingles. But it passed the taste test. The filling was heavenly, our fellow diners all agreed it was, and our crust tasted right. But I know we can do better, with colder butter, a cold bowl and more patient rolling out of the dough. Walt is very competitive and would probably go so far as to try and surpass his mommy in the pie department. Let him dream! In the meantime, a pie "Made with Love from Jo's Kitchen" gracing our Thanksgiving table brought a little slice of Jo back.

On a related note, recently we spent a long weekend in Las Vegas, where we had the good fortune to NOT spend a minute in the casinos after one night at the MGM Grand for a fundraiser/birthday party. Our old friend Lisa Lundt lives there with her family, and she graciously offered to show us the non-casino side of LV and the area. On Saturday, the day after Dia De Los Muertos, after visiting the fantastic new neon "boneyard" museum in the Fremont section, we visited the Springs Preserve, which is both a park and a museum in Vegas. The outdoor part of the Preserve was dotted with publicly created altars and catrinas honoring the dead. And there were lots of cool sugar skulls, like the ones below. All of the alters featured the favorite food, drink and, in some cases, smokables of the departed loved ones for whom they were lovingly and painstakingly created. Anyone who has ever taken part in a Mexican Dia De Los Muertos celebration knows how colorful, upbeat and almost hallucinatory they are. I kept seeing ghosts among the living as we walked from altar to altar. I would do a double-take and they would be gone. I certainly felt the presence of Jo, and I know Walt did too. It suddenly hit me - simultaneously - that she was both gone forever and yet among us. She lives on in the pies we will make and in all the things she created and loved during her generous life. This year, I give thanks for having had the opportunity of knowing her. I grabbed a little notepad she was using when she died. On the cover and on every otherwise blank page, it says When Life Becomes a Roller Coaster, Climb into the Front Seat, Throw Your Arms in the Air and Enjoy the Ride. I also grabbed a paper weight on which is written NEVER NEVER NEVER QUIT - Winston Churchill. And I can say for a fact that she never did.

 

 

There's a kind of hush all over the world!

Happily, I won't be giving Mitt Romney another thought, since he promised to retire from politics if he failed to buy his way into office. Well, he didn't exactly put it that way, but this is the gist of it. As everyone knows, he offered one more glimpse of the True Mitt as his parting shot, in a post mortem debrief with his biggest fat cat donors, wherein he suggested - nay, he shouted ex cathedra - that his rival won because the losers people who vote for the dems just want free stuff. Actually, Romney just demonstrated that he pays attention when Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are talking. O'Reilly, you will recall, said exactly that in his little hissy fit on Fox, where he bemoaned the demise of "traditional" America, by which he means an America where a certain type of white male runs things. Imagine a big fat guy in a shirt with horizontal stripes that accentuates his moobs, smoking a cigar and spewing his hatred for anything and anyone who isn't just like him... that kind of guy.

So, anyway, Romney rambled on to his donors about how families making 25 or 30 thousand dollars a year are unable to resist the candidate who offers them 10 thousand dollars worth of free healthcare and about how he as a Republican just could not compete with that. What I find interesting is that he admits healthcare has a price tag that puts it out of reach for many of the very people he and his kind exploit in jobs that pay such lousy wages they can't escape poverty, let alone buy healthcare. What a douchebag! To the bitter end! And I do mean bitter. What a smug, bitter little man he turned out to be.

Enough about him already. May he spend the rest of his days riding up and down in his car elevator!

 

 

 

 

The Right Thing

I have posted this poem on my blog before, but that was years ago. I was reminded of it today when I read this interview, with author Cheryl Strayed (Torch, a novel; Wild, a memoir; Tiny Beautiful Things, a compilation of her work as "Sugar," an online advice columnist). In the interview, Strayed is asked what she thinks impedes or detracts from her happiness, and she says it is the tendency to say yes:

Saying yes. Yes and I have a long history. Yes is generous and open-hearted. It’s kind and fun. It’s led to so many good things in my life. But everything in balance, as they say, and I’m feeling a strong need for a bit of no. Yes has become a shackle to me. It’s keeping me from spending my days in ways that make me the happiest. I’ve been reflecting on this lately because with the amount of things people have asked me to do in this past year, I’ve realized how difficult it is for me to say no. I mean it kills me. Probably because it goes way deep into my psyche and my ancient desire to be loved. People love you if you say yes to them. It’s an incredibly effective survival technique. So now I have to learn a new way to survive. What will happen when I say no? I’m going to try it and see.

Her words reminded me of one of my favorite lines from another of my favorite poems, Theodore Roethke's poem The Right Thing: Time harried prisoners of shall and Will.

Sometimes, I am that time harried prisoner.

Yes, I memorized this poem as well, when I was about 16. I had no idea who Roethke was at the time. I did not know of his connection to the English Department at the University of Washington, nor of his struggles with mental illness and the bottle. He died at the age of 55, after suffering a heart attack in a friend's swimming pool.

The Right Thing

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—
The right thing happens to the happy man.

The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.

God bless the roots!—Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,

And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Romney and Ryan: Today's Hollow Men

One of the first poems I ever memorized was The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot. It may seem an odd choice at the age of 13, but I won't deny that I was an odd child. I liked the cadence of this poem, which was sorrowful, urgent and incantatory, like a prayer. There is an apocalyptic weariness to The Hollow Men that makes it timely today. Even if you don't know the poem, you probably know how it ends, since the final refrain took on a life of its own that is probably eternal. It sounds more like a children's nursery rhyme: "this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."

 

In other words, we all fall down.

 

 

Here is the first verse:

 

The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

More to life than smoothies

As we move into fall, I find there is nothing more satisfying in the morning than a bowl of hot cereal. Since we discovered Wheat, Montana, on our way back from the cabin, that's where we buy our steal-cut cereal. This morning's serving, shown here, is topped with half a banana, sliced; two fresh figs, sliced; a green grape, quartered; a handful of pomegranate seeds; a dollop of my neighbor Genevieve's plum, lime and ginger jelly; and some oat milk. As with smoothies and fashion, color coordination is the key to success when it comes to a bowl of hot cereal. Enjoy!

Famous Men

With just under two weeks to go until election day, I would like to crawl under a rock and hibernate. And I don't even live in a swing state. I swore I would not set foot in the US for as long as George W. Bush was in the Oval Office but ended up returning to the US to live before he slunk away, never to be seen again. It was a strange time: the entire American public seemed to have given up on or even actively repudiated Bush, his policies, his politics, his wars, his neocons... As his presidency wound down, the subprime crisis emerged and the housing bubble burst. This came as no surprise to me, a virtual newcomer to the US, where everyone I met was involved in the mortgage refi or real estate business, or was married to someone who was. This can't be a good sign, I thought. Turns out it wasn't. (Note to the 40-somethings who were riding high during that time but who have since lost jobs and extra cash: you are crazy if you think a Romney presidency will bring those crazy money jobs back. Once Romney eviscerates the mortgage interest deduction,the housing market will scream in pain.) I'll never forget where I was when I heard, on the radio, that Lehman Brothers had collapsed. I was driving south on I-5 to join my husband for a post-charity golf tournament dinner. I literally looked up at the sky, to see if it was falling. The election of Obama marked a turning of the page, symbolically, but many people seem not to have realized that the economy, in free fall, would have to bottom out before it could begin to heal. Since my work involves deciphering economic texts, I was privy to what the non-partisan economists - most of them not American - thought about the global financial meltdown. They all agreed it was a long overdue and hence necessarily brutal correction, and they all agreed that the recovery would take a long time to materialize and that it would be characterized by weak job creation. Guess what? They were right! Let's not dwell on these complex matters. Let's instead just say that, given the slow nature of the recovery and the weak net job creation numbers to date (partly due to the huge number of jobs that disappeared, see above), it is amazing that the sitting President has never fallen behind his challenger and often has in fact led in the polls. This can only be due to one thing: an incredibly weak and lunatic field of Republican contenders resulted in an incredibly mediocre, hollow and unfit candidate, the man we know as Mittens. Had the Republicans come up with a strong or even adequate Republican candidate - someone with genuine, enlightened conservative values, substantial governing experience and charismatic leadership skills - they would be running ahead in this campaign. Instead, they chose someone who exemplifies everything that is wrong with latter-day capitalism and the corporate mindset. If Mittens does end up pulling out a victory, it will not be due to his leadership, experience, genuinely conservative worldview or anything like that. He does not have any of those things because he is fashioned out of silly putty. It will be due to voter intimidation and chronic mendacity combined with that lethal, uniquely American blend of apathy, fear and greed. The stock market took a big tumble yesterday, falling by something like 248 points on worse than expected corporate earnings numbers. According to the corporations in question, these disappointing numbers are attributable to the global slowdown (led by slower Chinese growth, now at single digits) in general and the European recession in particular. Okay, this is logical: US corporations are multinational, in part, ironically, to spread their risk of exposure to economic cycles. When Chinese GDP growth is double digit, this is good for everyone who does business with and in China. When the Euro Area is relatively strong, trade is more robust for everyone. This is called globalization. As a CEO, Mittens knows all about this. Which brings me to my next question: if Mittens is elected, and after he has spent the week repealing Obamacare and rolling back a half-century of women's rights, how is he going to create 12 million jobs if America's trading partners are suffering? I'm afraid that while America's multinantional corporations can "explain" their poor performance by pointing to slower growth in Asia and a recession in Europe, American voters will see this as an excuse, and an inexcusable one at that. As a CEO, Mittens is probably used to dictating a set of "must have" numbers and then getting them. This would be a lot harder to accomplish if he were CEO of America. These days, I find myself thinking about the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. I read it as an undergraduate and have never forgotten either the austere, gripping photos (by Walker Evans) or the complex, poetic text (by James Agee), documenting the lives of three white sharecropper families living in Southern Alabama during the Great Depression. The foundations for what we think of as the social safety net were laid at this time by FDR. He succeeded Hoover, who had presided over the start of the Great Depression and who made things worse by stubbornly clinging to the idea that business would correct the economy without government interference. When that did not pan out, he said let the state and local governments take care of the problem. The problem was that they simply did not have enough money to cope with the magnitude of the misery. And the rest, as they say, is history. And as we know, those who do not learn from history tend to repeat it.

A Walker Evans photo from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Not about Myth Romney this time: how about Bob Dylan?

We got free tickets to the Bob Dylan concert at Key Arena last Saturday night. If I had a bucket list, which I most certainly do not, I would be able to cross one more item off. Everyone knows that Dylan's voice has.... umm, changed over the course of his long career. You can read the polemic surrounding this fact on the internets, so I will spare you. Yes, his voice has changed. Yes, it was distinctive but not great to start with. And yes, it is still distinctive but has gone from not great to truly awful. How awful? Most of the time it takes awhile to figure out what song he's singing, even if you know his music well. He has rearranged the songs, in part to work around the severe limitations of his current voice. All singers do this more or less. To cite but one case among many, we saw Joan Baez a couple of years ago at a Zootunes concert, and it was clear that her voice had aged. But it had aged well and her workarounds were as lovely as whatever she was working around. Bob Dylan is in another category altogether. His voice is a wreck, and not a fine one. Every once in awhile, he hits a note at the same time he hits a word, but most of the time he sounds like a baby who has cried its lungs out but continues to cry. An angry crying baby. There was one moment that may have made the evening worthwhile, however. It was the moment when a light shone on the dark stage and all that was visible was Dylan's light-colored hat. Then Dylan's face. And I thought to myself, behold the man: one of the most well-known names on the planet. There he is, standing before me. I also appreciated his playlist, though most of the songs were not immediately recognizable. They were only recognizable when a word and note combined with clarity. "Oh," Walt would say with a laugh, "that's Tangled up in Blue". Or "Wow, that's All Along the Watchtower". "Highway 61!" Etc. Mark Knopfler opened for Dylan. It is hard to imagine Knopfler opening for many people - Dylan is one of few who has that kind of stature. I mean, Knopfler is pretty mythical himself. I had seen him once before, in Paris. It was 1986. I was actually attending an Eric Clapton concert, and Knopfler's appearance onstage came as a total surprise for everyone. When we emerged from the Zénith after the show, exhilarated, snow was falling. It took hours to get out of the parking lot and then endure a slow crawl back to Paris. But what a night! Knopfler continues to amaze. He is certainly one of the best if not the best guitarist alive. His voice is distinctive but not great. Unlike Dylan, however, his has not changed much. It is still distinctive but not great. He seems to be just a guy who wants to surround himself with the best musicians and jam. That's what he did on Saturday. I am sure half the crowd was there to see him, including the increasingly insistent loudmouth who wanted him to do "MTV". Knopfler ignored him, though he ended with a relative oldie, So Far Away From You.

Elizabeth Warren demonstrates why she should be the next Senator from Massachusetts and why Scott Brown should go back to doing whatever he was doing before

"I have no doubt that Sen. Brown is a good husband and a good father to his daughters. But this is an issue that affects all of our daughters, and our granddaughters. And what matters here is how Sen. Brown votes. So he's gone to Washington, and he's had some good votes. But he's had exactly one chance to vote for equal pay for equal work, and he voted no. He had exactly one chance to vote for insurance coverage for birth control and other preventive services for women. He voted no. And he had exactly one chance to vote for a pro-choice woman -- from Massachusetts -- to the United States Supreme Court, and he voted no. Those are bad votes for women. The women of Massachusetts need a senator they can count on, not some of the time, but all of the time. [...] "I am a mother of a daughter, and a grandmother of granddaughters, and this is about their future. And I want to be blunt: we should not be fighting about equal pay for equal work and access to birth control in 2012. These issues were resolved years ago -- until the Republicans brought them back."

Mitt's soul

The definition of a soul: “That which crawls away and hides whenever someone mentions algebra.” (Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities)

go to elles!

I'm talking about SAM's latest exhibition, not imitating an angry Frenchman speaking English. It runs from tomorrow through January 13, 2013. The exhibition features more than 130 works made by 75 women artists between 1907 and 2007. The Centre Pompidou in Paris (home of the Musée National d’Art Moderne) curated the exhibition with SAM. Artists include Sonia Delaunay, Frida Kahlo, Dora Maar, Diane Arbus, Marina Abramović, Louise Bourgeois, Atsuko Tanaka, Cindy Sherman, Sophie Calle, Hannah Wilke, Nan Goldin and Tania Bruguera, among others. I was lucky enough to attend a special preview last night that was attended by more than 500 special guests, including the French Ambassador to the US (François Delattre, a Sarkozy appointee and career diplomat), Alain Seban (PDG of the Centre Pompidou), Alfred Pacquement (director of the Musée national d'art moderne) and Cécile Debray (curator of the MNAM). I am particularly thrilled to see Sophie Calle among the artists featured in this show. Her latest exhibition just opened in Paris (Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin) to rave reviews. Called ”Pour la dernière et pour la première fois” (For the Last and for the First Time), it features a project called Voir la mer (To See/Seeing the Sea) that took Calle to Turkey, where she captured on film three Turks discovering the sea for the first time in their lives. I think everyone remembers the first time they saw the sea or the ocean. I know I do. I don't think I really believed it existed until I actually saw it. Ah, that oceanic feeling!

Bullshit Mitt

Everyone keeps harping on about Mitt's lies during the debate, which were delivered in a fast and furious style intended to dazzle the viewer. Apparently, many were hoodwinked. Sure, Mitt lied, in the sense that he said many things that just don't bear up to scrutiny. But I think the essence of the performance, which captures the essence of the man, is that he did not so much lie as bullshit for a full 90 minutes. And people lapped it up because bullshit is one of the most pervasive features of American life and culture, especially our political culture. Way back in 2005, professor emeritus of Princeton Harry G. Frankfurt devoted an entire treatise to the subject called On Bullshit, which begins in the most provocative and refreshing way: "There is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted." In a nutshell, Frankfurt gets at the heart of what bullshitting entails and how it can differ from outright lying. For one thing, bullshit is bullshit even if it happens to be true on some level. The difference between a liar and a bullshitter is the latter's complete and utter indifference to whether or not what he's saying has any bearing on facts or the real world. In other words, the bullshitter does not acknowledge the existence of truth at all: he ignores it. And this is precisely why bullshitters and their bullshit are more dangerous than liars and their lies. Any expsosure of the truth will just result in more bullshit. That's why Jon Stewart's Bullshit Mountain is so brilliant. Let's take just one example from Mitt's bullshit treasure trove. During the debate, he said that Obama's tax plan (which involves, among other things, letting Bush era tax cuts expire for incomes above a certain amount - for example, for a couple making more than 250,000 a year) would cost middle class folks an additional 6,000 dollars a year (or something like that). What he does not say is who he is referring to as middle class. You have to have been paying attention when he said weeks earlier that a couple making 250,000 dollars a year is middle class. It is true enough that those of us who are lucky enough to be in this category would see their tax cut expire. [My husband and I are in this category and thus would see our tax bill rise. And that's fine with us. We could never have gotten beyond high school without heavy financial aid. And we are grateful for our public school education and the everyday heroics of law enforcement professionals, firefighters and others. We think veterans deserve rewards.] It is tempting to cite other examples, in part because they are so plentiful. But I think this one illustrates the broader point. I don't think I am alone in feeling frustrated with and saddened by the inexorable expansion and rise of bullshit. How did it happen? Can it be combatted? Is a retreat into privacy the only consolation in a bullshit infested world? Frankfurt has some ideas about where the bullshit explosion originated, and his answer offers additional insight into Romney's brazen performance in the first debate. Professor Frankfurt sees the postmodern preference for subjective truth sincerely rendered over objective truth as the main cause. It is a form of narcissism, for sure. And, as Frankfurt concludes, "sincerity itself is bullshit." Bullshitters are interested in one thing only: advancing their agenda. In order to do so, they must persuade people, which they do by exuding sincerity and talking fast. One of Plato's most important Socratic dialogues, The Gorgias, is devoted to this very problem, which proves, among other things, that bullshitters and bullshit have always been with us. Socrates uses his famous Socratic method to demonstrate that the art or "knack" of the rhetorician, which produces verbal sophistry, is antithetical to both philosophy and the truth. But these days, those sound like such quaint concepts, don't they? Where have all the lovers of wisdom gone? Let's not end on a pessimistic note, though. There may be hope. The bullshit detecters may be slipping into active mode. The urban dictionary's primary definition of "mitt romney" is "to change your position in order to win favors or votes". The third definition is wonderfully apt: "Something Massachusetts is happy to be rid of", also known as "Mitt the Shit" or "Mittens".

Etch-a-sketch my ass! Everyone knows Mitt's Slinky!

Mitt Romney, what a concept! It took him 17 days after the tape surfaced in which he is heard stating that 47% of all Americans are the unwashed masses who think they are entitled to everything from food to healthcare to air, who see themselves as victims, and who will thus never vote for him, in part because he would never be able to convince these victims to care about and take responsibility for their lives. Okay, I doubt there is anyone out there who has not heard the tape or at least heard about it, except maybe those who think all they need to know is on Fox News. Even they know about it now, though, because that Hannity fellow asked Mitt to clarify his remark last night. You see, Mitt had memorized an answer for when he was asked about it in the debate, but it did not come up. Perhaps we should fault Obama for this oversight; then again, maybe Obama knew Romney had a canned response and did not want to hear it during the debate. Let's get the chronology of events straight: Romney made his offending remarks, which then surfaced in an uncut tape. Her Haughtiness Ann Romney made a haughty and unsuccessful attempt to claim Mittens' remarks were taken out of context. Not. Mittens hastily called a press conference wherein, looking a bit like Shifty Nixon, he said that he stood by his remarks and that they were "inelegantly stated" but basically reflective of his worldview. As the days went by, the soundbite did not go away. So Mitt told reporters he was only trying to express the difference “between a government-dominated society and a society driven by free people pursuing their dreams.” He certainly did not disavow the sentiment caught on tape. Then came the debate. Romney delivered the various zingers he memorized, along with a bunch of mostly made-up facts, in a combative, fast-talking style that many found offensive. [As an aside here, I told my husband as we watched the debate that Romney's arrogant and fast-talking bully persona is exactly the kind of alpha male behavior that most women loathe. We have all known people like this and generally try and have nothing to do with them. Ugh.] Mittens, feeling high on testosterone after that performance, called up his campaign central - Fox News - and said he wanted to deliver his memorized response to the 47% problem. Hannity obliged the boss. Mitt then said "it" was completely wrong. Notice he did not say "I" was completely wrong - the devil is in the details and that extra "t" is just one of those details. Mittens never admits to being wrong. So one might wonder - and Hannity certainly did not ask - what, exactly, was wrong? The fact that he got caught saying it? The fact that he called 47% of all Americans victims who don't care about their lives? He did say that he thinks his life shows that he has always cared about 100% of the people. Say what? Those outsourced jobs? Those shuttered factories? Those unpaid pension obligations? That sweat factory in China he mentioned on the tape? Was he kidding when he said the high fences topped with barbed wire were to keep people out who wanted to join the inmates - I mean workers - inside the factory he had acquired? Because the fact is, the people inside work 16 hour days and are paid just pennies for their pain. Does Mittens have trouble sleeping at night or is he truly a full-fledged sociopath? He sure is Slinky and if you put a t in place of the l, you have a perfect description of the steaming pile that he delivers up on a daily basis. The best thing about Slinkies, as I recall, was that you could set them in motion at the top of a staircase and then watch them flip flop flip flop flip flop all the way down to the bottom of the stairs. In fact, that's basically all they did: flip flop. Wake the f*ck up, people!

Mitt Romney: Home of the Whopper!

Well, sorry I have been away for the last four months. The reason is kind of embarrassing, truth be told. I lost my blog, meaning I lost the capacity to access it. After trying to fix that problem for at least ten minutes, I concluded that what I really needed was a new computer. It turns out I was right, though it took me four months and thousands of word crashes to do something about it. Having a new computer is like getting a new body. And my old computer is like a room that has become so cluttered I just don't go in there any more. If you are interested in my thoughts on certain people profiting from the murder of Meredith Kercher, I am sorry to inform you that I will have no comments on the subject. I will say this: I sincerely hope that those currently doing so or about to do so enjoy their moment in the spotlight and then crawl under their respective rocks. And to the public, I would only say that the truth lies elsewhere, way elsewhere. I don't care much for Nancy Grace's in-your-face brand of talk television, but I think she nailed it on Knox and Co: why interview people who aren't going to tell the truth? Speaking of liars, did anyone make it through last night's debate? Mitt Romney: Home of the Whopper! That's probably a company Bain acquired and then forced into bankruptcy for all I know. Anyway, I think I have figured out Romney's plan to cut the deficit. He's going to eliminate funding to PBS, generating not only a whopping spending reduction of 445 million dollars a year but also a huge incentive for all the slackers who sit around in their jammies 24/7 watching documentaries to get dressed, get out the door and get a job at their nearest Staples store. For those who live in an area where one has been shuttered recently as part of the restructuring effort required to make sure shareholders get their big dividend, the option of moving should also be taken seriously unless the local KFC is hiring. Channeling Reagan here: VOTE WITH YOUR FEET, SUCKERS! But here's the deal: Romney says he will magically raise people's incomes so they get to pay taxes (which incidentally will also reduce the deficit by adding to the government's revenue and revenue base). Does this mean Mitt's going to raise the minimum wage or somehow require business owners to pay their employees higher wages? Or is the private sector suddenly going to realize that people need more money so they can buy the stuff these businesses produce and also pay taxes? Or will Mitt's across the board tax reduction (which he said he will only offer if it doesn't increase the deficit) come with the proviso that businesses have to plough some of that extra profit back into their payroll? Mitt's detailettes (not quite enough to be called details) are intriguing but they still don't add up. Expect no explanation, however. That just leads to trouble: questions, more questions and more questions. My other thought on the subject of The Whopper came to me at 4 am: Romney figures that with so many people getting back to work under his leadership - doing all those overtime hours at Staples or Walmart - they won't have time to watch public television anyway, so why not just eliminate its funding altogether? PBS funding costs each American about one dollar a year, after all. That dollar could be added to savings and eventually get you a pack of cigarettes instead! As for NPR, same thing. Where did people get the brazen idea that they are entitled to freely accessed culture? What an absurd idea! Next thing you know, they'll think they are entitled to food! There is an upside to all this though, folks: Since there will be no pressure whatsoever on these businesses to provide health care for their employees, people will forgo health care if they don't have it through their spouse and thus not be overly healthy if they make it to retirement. Therefore, they won't miss that "free" access to culture very much if at all. And this is probably a silver lining too, since most of these fantastic new jobs will either have no retirement benefits or they'll have retirement benefit obligations which can easily be dipsensed with. All that is needed is a Bain style intervention that will force the companuies into bankruptcy when their pension obligations start to become a burden. Here are my favorite images created in response to the Whoppers that The Whopper Mitt Romney served up last night. (Although, come to think of it, the only non-Whopper last night was when Mitt looked Jim Lehrer in the eye and said he was going to defund him. I can now understand what he meant when he said he likes to fire people. The Whopper was positively giddy with delight when he fired Jim Lehrer, effective immediately. You could tell it was immediate because The Whopper stepped in and ran the debate, pretending Lehrer had already left the building.):

Memo to Romney: gaming the system does not create jobs or heal economies

According to The Wall Street Journal, of the 77 companies in which Bain invested while Romney headed it from 1984 to 1999, 22 percent filed for bankruptcy or went out of business. In addition, Bain hid its profits in tax havens. And a recent article in Counterpunch quoted William D. Cohan, a Wall Street deal adviser for 17 years, who wrote in the Washington Post: “Seemingly alone among private-equity firms,” Bain Capital under Romney’s leadership “was a master at bait-and-switching Wall Street bankers to get its hands on the companies that provided the raw material for its financial alchemy.” Cohan said Bain “did all that it could to game the system.”

Out and about

Jo Cougan and me at Peter and Rachel's wedding, April 28, 2012.