Politics As Usual . . .

DES MOINES: In an act of political jujitsu, Mike Huckabee has halted a negative ad that he was about to broadcast on television Monday against his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. But while claiming the moral high ground, he proceeded to show the ad to a roomful of reporters, photographers and television cameras who are repeating his anti-Romney message for free while Huckabee declares that his hands are clean.

The display unfolded at the Marriott Hotel here to the mirth of the media who watched Huckabee's legerdemain even as the media itself became the conduit for his attacks against Romney.

At the same time, he pointed to media cynicism as the reason he felt compelled to show the ad, saying that unless he showed it, reporters would not believe that it really existed.

Source: International Herald Tribune December 31, 2007.

Facebook: The New Narcissism

Today’s online social networks are congeries of mostly weak ties—no one who lists thousands of “friends” on MySpace thinks of those people in the same way as he does his flesh-and-blood acquaintances, for example. It is surely no coincidence, then, that the activities social networking sites promote are precisely the ones weak ties foster, like rumor-mongering, gossip, finding people, and tracking the ever-shifting movements of popular culture and fad. If this is our small world, it is one that gives its greatest attention to small things. . . .

The world of online social networking is practically homogenous in one other sense, however diverse it might at first appear: its users are committed to self-exposure. The creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one’s own and others’ lives is the main activity in the online social networking world. There is no room for reticence; there is only revelation. Quickly peruse a profile and you know more about a potential acquaintance in a moment than you might have learned about a flesh-and-blood friend in a month. As one college student recently described to the New York Times Magazine: “You might run into someone at a party, and then you Facebook them: what are their interests? Are they crazy-religious, is their favorite quote from the Bible? Everyone takes great pains over presenting themselves. It’s like an embodiment of your personality.”

It seems that in our headlong rush to join social networking sites, many of us give up one of the Internet’s supposed charms: the promise of anonymity. As Michael Kinsley noted in Slate, in order to “stake their claims as unique individuals,” users enumerate personal information: “Here is a list of my friends. Here are all the CDs in my collection. Here is a picture of my dog.” Kinsley is not impressed; he judges these sites “vast celebrations of solipsism.” . . .

. . . The hypertext link called “friendship” on social networking sites is very different: public, fluid, and promiscuous, yet oddly bureaucratized. Friendship on these sites focuses a great deal on collecting, managing, and ranking the people you know. Everything about MySpace, for example, is designed to encourage users to gather as many friends as possible, as though friendship were philately. If you are so unfortunate as to have but one MySpace friend, for example, your page reads: “You have 1 friends,” along with a stretch of sad empty space where dozens of thumbnail photos of your acquaintances should appear.

This promotes a form of frantic friend procurement. As one young Facebook user with 800 friends told John Cassidy in The New Yorker, “I always find the competitive spirit in me wanting to up the number.” An associate dean at Purdue University recently boasted to the Christian Science Monitor that since establishing a Facebook profile, he had collected more than 700 friends. The phrase universally found on MySpace is, “Thanks for the add!” . . .

We should also take note of the trend toward giving up face-to-face for virtual contact—and, in some cases, a preference for the latter. Today, many of our cultural, social, and political interactions take place through eminently convenient technological surrogates—Why go to the bank if you can use the ATM? Why browse in a bookstore when you can simply peruse the personalized selections Amazon.com has made for you? In the same vein, social networking sites are often convenient surrogates for offline friendship and community. In this context it is worth considering an observation that Stanley Milgram made in 1974, regarding his experiments with obedience: “The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson,” he wrote. “Often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.” To an increasing degree, we find and form our friendships and communities in the virtual world as well as the real world. These virtual networks greatly expand our opportunities to meet others, but they might also result in our valuing less the capacity for genuine connection.

Excerpts from Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism New Atlantis Summer 2007

New Bin Laden Video Revealed!

Poetic Justice

If he didn't believe in karma before, Piers Morgan must surely do now.

The ex-newspaper editor, now a columnist for The Mail on Sunday's Live magazine, took great delight in making fun of President Bush for falling off a Segway - the two-wheeled, motorised, gyroscopically balanced scooter that, its makers promise, will never fall over.

His paper, the Daily Mirror, ran the headline in 2003: "You'd have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn't you Mr President." It added: "If anyone can make a pig's ear of riding a sophisticated, self-balancing machine like this, Dubya can." So, it seems, can Mr Morgan.

He broke three ribs after falling off the Segway at 12mph in California - just three days before he was due to make his biggest TV appearance to date, as a judge on the grand final of reality show America's Got Talent.

"The moment Piers Morgan broke three ribs falling off the Segway he said was 'idiot-proof'" Daily Mail UK Sept. 2nd, 2007.

No Coffee, by Jacob Norberg. Eurozine:

What is it about coffee – and coffeehouses – that makes it so agreeable to the bourgeoisie? asks Jakob Norberg in a brief social history of the dark, rich brew. For Jürgen Habermas, the coffeehouse is a place where bourgeois individuals can enter into relationships with one another without the restrictions of family, civil society, or the state. It is the site of a sort of universal community, integrated neither by power nor economic interests, but by common sense. For Carl Schmitt, coffee is a symbol of Gemütlichkeit, or the bourgeois desire to enjoy undisturbed security. And for Alexander Kluge, drinking coffee provides the opportunity for people to talk to each other beyond the constraints of purpose-governed exchanges, to enter into "human relationships".

Army's Hallucinogenic Weapons Unveiled, by Sharon Weinberger (Wired.com):

Advocates of using chemical agents in nonlethal warfare are increasing, making now a good time to start reviewing the historical record. A recently published book on the Army's infamous "Edgewood Experiments" involving hallucinogenic agents like LSD may help shed more light on the debate. The infamous CIA work, MK ULTRA, is often considered synonymous with all government LSD experimentation. But the historical record is far more complex.

This may be the first and last time in my life that I call a self-published book a "must read," but psychiatrist James Ketchum's Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten is an usual case. As Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News has already pointed out, this book "is a candid, not entirely flattering, sometimes morbidly amusing account of a little-documented aspect of Army research."

Nazi Pizza

One of the DUMBEST advertising campaigns of all time.

Elvis Presley: "There is a Greater King . . ."

A selection of posts and articles commemorating the anniversary of Elvis Presley's passing (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977):

• Fr. Nicholas Schofield (Roman Miscellany) recalls "Five Catholic Facts About Elvis".
• "The King is Dead, Long Live the King", by Jay Anderson. Pro Ecclesia
• New York Times' Peter Guralnick asks: How Did Elvis Get Turned Into a Racist? -- challenging a common (but sadly mistaken) assumption of the African-American community. (See also Elvis & Racism, a detailed exploration by Christopher Blank @ Elvis Australia).
• Thinking About Elvis - Powerline writes about Elvis' charity to soldiers returning from service in Vietnam, and his letter of appreciation for (and subsequent meeting with) President Nixon to express "concern for our country. The Drug Culture, The Hippie Elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it The Establishment. I call it America and I Love it. Sir I can and will be of any Service that I can to help the country out." From a memo detailing Elvis' meeting with the President [.pdf format]:

  Presley indicated to the President in a very emotionial mamner that he was "on your side." Presley kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore some respect for the flag, which was being lost. He mentioned he was just a poor boy from Tennessee who had gotten a lot from his country, which in some way he wanted to repay.

Live in Hawaii - Elvis performing "An American Trilogy":

Elvis died when I was three years old, and my music tastes leaning to the harder and more extreme side, it was not until later that I learned to appreciate his contributions to the world of music and Elvis Presley, the man himself.

From 2003 -- a re-post:

Senior pastor of the Bruderhof and social critic Johann Christoph Arnold devoted a recent column on "Remembering the King" recently. No, not that King, but rather Elvis Presley. It might strike some as strange for a writer from a countercultural Christian community like the Bruderhof to be covering a mainstream cultural icon like Elvis (much less a blog devoted to Cardinal Ratzinger), but Christoph Arnold reminds all of us to look beneath the surface:

"Good" Christians often self-righteously dismiss celebrities because they are turned off by the glamour, fame, and excess that surround them. How many remember that behind the frenzied publicity and the scandals cooked up by tabloids is a vulnerable person with emotions—a real person with a heart—and not just a two-dimensional cardboard cutout? ¹

Back in March [of 2003], PBS television ran the documentary He Touched Me - The Gospel Music of Elvis Presley. Featuring plenty of live footage and interviews with close friends and gospel quartets that backed him up, it chronicles Elvis Presley's spiritual roots in Southern gospel music and aspects of his life that are seldom publicized -- like the fact that he insisted on singing "Peace in the Valley" during one of his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show (some say it was to "tone down" his rebel image; the documentary claims it was on behalf of his mother), or that after concert performances he would invite his friends to join him in literally all night gospel singalongs.

Shortly thereafter I picked up a copy of "Amazing Grace", a collection of Elvis' religious performances (spanning a variety of genres -- soul, country, rock, gospel), and I was hooked. The world will remember Elvis Presley for his rock and roll, but from all accounts it appears that there was nothing he enjoyed more than singing gospel. As Gospel Music Association President Frank Breeden recalls:

"After the shows he would routinely sing with the gospel quartets that were used as his backgrounders . . . It was the gospel music that he turned to for inspiration and consolation. He was a person who appeared to be in conflict; he was not doing what he loved for a living ... he had a career that had just taken him captive."²

Or as Cheryl Thurber writes of the "Million Dollar Quartet" (Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash & Elvis Presley) -- the recording session at Sam Philips' Sun Studios in Memphis:

. . . When those rising stars of rock 'n' roll sang together the songs they chose to sing were largely gospel songs. It was the shared repertoire that they all knew. They sang other songs as well, such as current rock 'n' roll and recent and older country hits, but they seemed to sing more complete versions of the gospel songs. With gospel songs they knew all the words, not just snatches of the choruses. . . . It is clear when listening to the session that Elvis was the dominant force that day -- he was the one who started the singing of each song. It is also evident that he enjoyed the singing. This was Elvis having fun. ³

Of course, there are many who -- not without reason -- see Elvis Presley as the harbinger of moral decay and the corruption of America's youth. (Fr. Jerry Pokarsky, for example, uses Elvis as a convenient metaphor for the narcissistic character of abuses in the post-Vatican II mass). ⁴ And by no means should one applaud every star(let)'s excursions into spirituality (I expect Christoph Arnold would have a much different reaction to Madonna's dalliance with watered-down Kabbalah). But for all of his flaws, and the nature of his tragic demise, there is something about Elvis Presley which Christoph Arnold finds praiseworthy:

Here was a unique individual struggling to find his true identity. I am certain that it was through this struggle that God gave him the humor, humility, and kindness that endeared him to millions of people. These traits were even more important than his music . . .

Elvis knew his shortcomings. He was an ordinary guy who battled all the normal temptations. But he also had a vision, as expressed in a comment he made to a reporter:

"I ain’t no saint, but I’ve tried never to do anything that would hurt my family or offend God. I figure all any kid needs is hope and the feeling he or she belongs. If I could do or say anything that would give some kid that feeling, I would believe I had contributed something to the world."

In other words, for him, relationships were much more important than the glitter, fame, and money he is mostly known for.

I'll close this little tangent with a quote I found -- from an account of one fan's encounter with Elvis (or rather, a close call with his limo). It may or may not be true, but it's something I can easily envision coming from Presley:

"I know you consider me your king, but I am not worth dying for, there is a bigger King who is God whom you should be preparing yourself for."

---

1. Remembering The King: The Soul behind the Celebrity, by Johann Christoph Arnold. Bruderhof.com.
2. Gospel Music and Elvis: Inspiration & Consolation, by Helyn Trickey. CNN.com. August 26, 2002.
3. Elvis & Gospel Music, by Cheryl Thurber. REJOICE! The Gospel Music Magazine. (1988).
4. Elvis Sightings in the Roman Rite, Catholic World Report January 2002.

"In Praise of Tap Water"

Here are the hard, dry facts: Yes, drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it. And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.

Next, there’s the environment. Water bottles, like other containers, are made from natural gas and petroleum. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington has estimated that it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles Americans use each year. That could fuel 100,000 cars a year instead. And, only about 23 percent of those bottles are recycled, in part because water bottles are often not included in local redemption plans that accept beer and soda cans. Add in the substantial amount of fuel used in transporting water, which is extremely heavy, and the impact on the environment is anything but refreshing.

Tap water may now be the equal of bottled water, but that could change. The more the wealthy opt out of drinking tap water, the less political support there will be for investing in maintaining America’s public water supply. That would be a serious loss. Access to cheap, clean water is basic to the nation’s health.

From In Praise of Tap Water New York Times Editorial. (Hat tip Bill Cork. I got no problem with tap water.

Life Explained

Heard from a friend . . .

On the first day, God created the dog and said:

"Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years."

The dog said: "That's a long time to be barking. How about only ten years and I'll give you back the other ten?"

So God agreed.

On the second day, God created the monkey and said:

"Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I'll give you a twenty-year life span."

The monkey said: "Monkey tricks for twenty years? That's a pretty long time to perform. How about I give you back ten like the dog did?"

And God agreed.

On the third day, God created the cow and said:

"You must go into the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer's family. For this, I will give you a life span of sixty Years."

The cow said: "That's kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. How about twenty and I'll give back the other forty?" And God agreed again.

On the fourth day, God created man and said:

"Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. For this, I'll give you twenty years."

But man said: "Only twenty years? Could you possibly give me my twenty, the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back; that makes eighty, okay?"

"Okay," said God, "You asked for it."

So that is why for our first twenty years we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves. For the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family. For the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren. And for the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.

So I made some music.

An item of utmost importance . . . What's Susan Sarandon Thinking Right Now??!?

Evan Thomas could give DeNiro some pointers on making a good espionage film

I saw The Good Shepherd over the holiday weekend. Directed by Robert DeNiro, starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, it purports to be "the untold story of the birth of the CIA." Regretfully, it fails to deliver.

The plot is laid out across some notable events in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency -- it's origins in the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) struggling to roll back the Soviet tide in World War II, in anticipation of Stalin's bid for power, it's later operations in Central America and the Bay of Pigs fiasco, tied together from the perspective of a fictional character named Edwin Wilson (an amalgam of James Jesus Angleton and Richard Bissell). Failing to heed the advice of his mentor ("Get out while you still can, while you still have a soul"), Wilson's gradual moral corruption in the in the clandestine world of espionage and U.S. foreign policy is a window into the soul of our nation. "The Godfather Part II set in Langley, Virginia" as one reviewer put it.

While I am generally unapposed to the use of fictional characters when making a historical film, I wonder if, in this particular case, DeNiro couldn't have done better to forego the soap-opera and emphasize the history -- and even confine his gaze on a small part of that history for that matter. Covering three decades of U.S. covert operations and espionage would have been better accomplished in the form of a documentary series on PBS television. As a sprawling two hour and 46 minute Hollywood epic, one gets the sense that the scriptwriter (Eric Roch - Munich 2005) bit off a little more than he could chew. As Wesley Morris notes:

Indeed, "The Good Shepherd" is chock full of everything -- assassinations, betrayal, comeuppance, marital discord, the rise of Castro, an intense torture sequence, defenestration, John Turturro as a sociopath agent, De Niro "Strangelove"-ing it up in that wheelchair, the brief return of Joe Pesci as an informant, and a manmade plague of locusts.

But that also leaves it a 2 1/2-hour farrago: a character study, a soap opera, a psychological profile, and a docudrama full of Roth's obvious affinity for cool spy jargon ("The doctor has no more patients," says Hurt to Damon about a CIA-backed coup in Cuba).

In short, the film fails in its effort to be "all things to all people". Buried within are the makings of what would have been a truly great "cloak and dagger" film (Wilson's sparring with his KGB nemesis Ulysses), or even a decent chronicle of U.S. covert operations, but in the end, I found myself more annoyed than anything else -- suffering through the dreary soap-opera of the protagonist's life and anxiously awaiting the occasional snatches of historical reference that filtered through. And the fact that the main characters in the the film are works of fiction, their relation to the major players in this period of covert history, was for me the greatest aggravation of all. To concur with reviewer William Arnold (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer):

[DeNiro] can't begin to tie the movie's sprawling events into a satisfying narrative package. It seems not only aimless, but redundant, choppy and unnecessarily confusing. . . . his characterizations are clumsy, and his members of the Power Elite always seem less real people than stick figures in a propaganda movie.

DeNiro's interpretation of the CIA's history is tainted with a strong dose of liberal spin which I imagine will appeal to the Howard Zinn school of history. If readers desire something a little more substantial, they would be better served putting their $10 towards purchasing Evan Thomas' engrossing The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA Simon & Schuster (October 17, 2006: 2nd Edition), which asks the same moral questions and covers much of the same historical ground as The Good Shepherd.

Whereas DeNiro attempts to blend history and Hollywood fiction, a drama spanning three decades interspersed with allusions to historical events, Thomas covers the actual lives of four pioneers of the CIA: Frank Wisner, Richard Bissel, Tracy Barnes and Desmond Fitzgerald: principled men with strong convictions and laudable goals (stemming the Communist tide), yet deeply flawed in its execution. Benefiting from extensive interviews, Thomas' book portrays the CIA "as it saw itself". One can appreciated the fact that Thomas is both respectful of the general intent of these figures (never dismissing or minimizing the very real concern over the Communist threat), and yet approaching his subject with a critical eye towards the moral quandaries of their profession.

As Thomas concludes: "In the end, they were too idealistic and too honorable, and were unsuited for the dark and duplicitious life of spying. Their hubris and naivete led them astray, producing both sensational coups and spectacular blunders").

Related Links

• Review: "The Good Shepherd" by Harry Forbes. Catholic News Service Dec. 22, 2006.
• The "Traditionalist" Catholic blog TradReviews has seen The Good Shepherd as well. Apparently the blogger appreciated the character development much more than I. Perhaps if I didn't see the film with the expection of a history lesson I would have had a better appreciation for the drama.
• Readers interested in this subject may benefit from J. Ransom Clark's The Literature of Intelligence: A Bibliography of Materials. You can find reviews of the aformentioned book by Thomas here.
• "The Need for Integrity: Thoughts Provoked by The Very Best Men, by Michael Thompson. A "moment of reflection" from the CIA periodical Studies in Intelligence Vol. 39, Number 5, 1996:

  [Thomas'] empathy for his subjects--even though an air of amused condescension filters through to an audience when he speaks of his book--points up issues that would otherwise be obscure, as does his vivid evocation of a period when, contrary to the underlying realities of American politics (as we have since learned, sometimes painfully), a dominant Executive, a compliant Congress, a complicit press, a largely unquestioning public, and almost unlimited funds allowed the DDP to function virtually without oversight or accountability.

• "Expert's Picks: Books on Espionage, Selected by Evan Thomas" Washington Post, 31 Jan. 1999