The Village Voice, which I couldn’t do without at one time in my life—when the paper was the lifeblood of the political and arts and cultural scene in New York City—is (and has been) in deep financial peril. On life support is its famed movie section. The good news is that the great critic J. Hoberman is staying. The bad news is, as I said, that the paper is in deep peril. If you’re an old-time New Yorker mired in nostalgia, you can read about it here and weep (or not).

There’s something here for the rest of you, too. In the comments, former Voice critic Amy Taubin sums up the situation and makes a wish [emphasis mine]:

What I omitted from my brief remarks to you is that the importance of the Voice’s film section was a result of its placement for some 30 years within the paper’s larger progressive cultural and political discourse. That context, rather than individual film critics, made movies matter intellectually and creatively. …
J. Hoberman, in whose company I’m proud to have written for over 15 years, is a great critic, but there’s a limit to what he can do when reduced to 800 word pieces and in an atmosphere where ideas are viewed with contempt. … Instead of moaning about the demise of the Voice, it would better for us in the film and arts communities to figure out a way to convince one or two of its billioniares to bankroll a new publication that would take the measure of and be an inspiration to the times in which we now live.

David Ehrenstein responds with the awful truth:

But that would imply the existence of worthy films dealing with the times in which we live — and on that count the pickins’ are small.

Still I’m glad Jim’s staying in place.

Hear, hear. (And wasn’t I just saying the same thing earlier today?)

Israel is up against many insurgencies (to put it mildly). Today, confronting the one that manifests itself as Hamas rockets lobbed across the border from Gaza to Sderot, Topic A in Israel is how to fight back.

Michael Oren explains the problem:

“The Palestinians have us in a half nelson,” says Michael Oren, a fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute. “They can shell us, and we can’t get back at them.”

Here’s the lay of the land:

Advocates of a [military] incursion say Israel must reoccupy a corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border to block smuggling of weapons with longer firing ranges and improved precision.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert cast doubt on the effectiveness of such an operation, pointing out that Defensive Shield by itself didn’t reduce militant bombings. “We have to remember that this war will not be over in one blow,” he said.

Yes—very good point: it’s a Long War. Still, the Israelis have to develop a strategy:

Mr. Oren, a military historian, argues that Israel should be directing its retaliation at Hamas leaders - even those in Damascus - rather than the militants who hide among Palestinian civilians.

“[Israel should] stop bombing and stop sending forces into Gaza. You have to make the people who are responsible for the rocket fire pay the consequences,” he says. Those launching the rockets “want you to invade Gaza, and get into a situation where you’re killing citizens, and then be condemned by the world,” he says. “Then you’re playing their game.”

But other security experts argued that a new equation of deterrence with the Qassam launchers mistakenly assumes that Palestinian militants are acting rationally under a unified command.

Here’s a voice of doom and gloom:

“Most of Israel’s national security doctrine in counterterrorism has been rendered ineffective in Gaza,” says Gidi Grinstein, a former peace negotiator and the head of the Reut Institute in Tel Aviv. “How can you deter a loosely connected network of people who have no central structure of command and control? In such circumstances what is victory, deterrence, and command-and-control?“

That, Mr. Grinstein, is the question of our age.

The New York Sun pronounces the end (more or less) of the counterculture. [emphasis mine]:

The complexity of [Thomas Pynchon's] novels, and of this eagerly awaited sixth novel in particular, is really a matter of simple multiplicity: They are stuffed to bursting with oddities, so that the reader moves through them at the halting pace of a rubbernecker. In “Against the Day,” which spans the quarter-century between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the end of World War I, Mr. Pynchon dispenses his oddities in double fistfuls. We get a hot-air balloon crewed by boy adventurers, a dynamite-toting anarchist, a mysterious fourth dimension, a crystal lens that splits time, a ship that can sail through sand, the legendary Tibetan kingdom of Shambhala — and that doesn’t even begin to exhaust the list. …

If you are dazzled by the sheer number of odd items Mr. Pynchon accumulates here, by the range of his knowledge and curiosity, you will be still more dazzled by the unstoppable proliferation of the novel, which adds new characters, new plots, and new settings until the very last of its 1,100 pages. Mr. Pynchon writes as if his pleasure in trundling the hoop of the novel from place to place were unlimited, and as if the reader could not help but share it. …

“Against the Day,” then, will inevitably be read as Mr. Pynchon’s contribution to the genre of post-September 11 fiction. Yet by comparison with the other major novelists who have addressed this theme, he displays a surpassingly crude moral imagination. This is a novel, after all, in which most of the heroes are proud terrorists, committed on principle to murdering plutocrats like Scarsdale Vibe. Writing about such characters in our own age of terror, one might expect Mr. Pynchon to have given some thought to the rights and wrongs of political violence.

In fact, however, his attitude towards violence is childishly sentimental, and ruthless in a way only possible to a writer whose imagination has never dwelt among actual human beings. Mr. Pynchon’s heroes (the poor, the workers, Anarchists) assassinate and blow up his villains (mine owners, Pinkerton thugs, the bourgeoisie) with no more qualms than the Road Runner has about dropping an anvil on the Coyote. In the novel as in the cartoon, good and evil are unproblematic, death is unreal, and sheer activity takes the place of human motive. The silliness of “Against the Day” about the very subjects where we are most urgently in quest of wisdom proves that, whatever he once was, Thomas Pynchon is no longer the novelist we need.

Unfortunately, the National Book Award went to an obscure novelist last night (or, at least, one whose work I don’t know—which is another way of saying “obscure”), even if it does seem to address the subjects we need to understand. (There’s nothing wrong with obscurity except the fact that it obscures your message…until [or if] you become less obscure. That ain’t gonna happen here. Count on it.)

Here’s my lament: Where are the novelists, filmmakers, dramatists, and artists we need?

And, no, I don’t mean Botero, whose new work you can read all about at Counterpunch.

You really have to appreciate politics as blood-sport (and I’m woman enough to admit that I do) to enjoy this, from Kate Zernicke in today’s New York Times, “With Politics as Subtext, Senators Clash on Iraq“:

But no sooner had [Senator and incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee] Levin outlined his case for a phased pullout of troops beginning in four to six months than the new Independent Democratic hero of the hawkish wing, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, began acting the role of cross-examiner, leading Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American military commander in the Middle East, to say that such a withdrawal would increase violence and instability.

“I take it by your answer that you profoundly disagree?” Mr. Lieberman asked. With the Democrats, he meant. “We have a window of opportunity and, really, responsibility now, after the election,” he said, “to find a bipartisan consensus for being supportive of the efforts of our troops and our diplomats there to achieve success.”

To this, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic contender for the 2008 race, knocked back the remains in her coffee cup.

Her leading Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, pressed his argument that more troops were needed in Iraq. When General Abizaid disagreed, Mr. McCain called attention to the remarks of retired military officers who characterized Congressional proposals for phased withdrawal as “terribly naïve.” Mr. McCain’s protégé, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, backed him up; when the general insisted that more troops were not the solution, Mr. Graham cut him off, saying, “Do we need less?” forcing General Abizaid to say that no, that was not the solution, either.

In the end, Abizaid gave a little bit to both sides. But of course each side was seeking the edge.

The “terribly naive” side did not come out ahead. To add insult to injury, that same side was delivered a hammer blow by the rest of the party, which soundly defeated Jack “Bring the Boys Home NOW” Murtha for Majority Leader today.

I’m waiting for the Democrats to tell me again that this election was about what a terribly mistake it was to get into Iraq and how we should get out of there right now.

scroll down for an update

Well, I think you’re wrong. I’m not saying CNN is conservative or anything (though after you read the rest of this post, you might well think the network is trying to improve its bona fides—you know: just in case things don’t go their way…down the road…).

What I’m saying is that the agenda of CNN and every other purveyor of “news” is to grab your attention and to entertain you—any way it can. To provide infotainment for your viewing pleasure…or displeasure. Take your pick.

For example, there’s this [you need to click on the link to get the essence of this post], which was heavily promoted on Paula Zahn’s program last night[emphasis mine]:

ZAHN: Let’s talk about a special you have on…extremism in the [Arabic language] media. …

BECK: You know, I — I really, truly believe that the media in general has been this close to criminally negligent on reporting the truth on what’s going on. They’re not showing us images that we need to see. …

ZAHN: Wait. You are them [i.e., "the media"].

BECK: I know. Isn’t that…

(LAUGHTER)

BECK: That’s sick, isn’t it?

(LAUGHTER)

ZAHN: So, you’re — you’re inflicting some blame on yourself.

BECK: No. No, I’m not — but I’m not a journalist. I’m — I’m — you know, I’m a rodeo clown. You know that.

And, when I’m sitting here in a media source, and I see videotape that I have never seen before, and I say, well, gee, how come I’m not seeing this? This is important stuff, images that will shock and horrify you.

Like, I am going to show you a tape — a piece of a tape here. This is in one piece of the special tonight about what is happening to the children in the Middle East and how they are being brainwashed. This is a three-and-a-half-year girl — three-and-a-half-year-old girl.

They go on to show a clip, courtesy of Hezbollah TV, of a little Muslim girl describing Jews as “monkeys and apes.” Shocking, I know—unless you’ve been reading LGF since its inception. Which most viewers of CNN have not been doing, so it’s new to their audience. Which is the whole point.

There’s a whole new sub-genre of nfotainment: the kind that’s designed to get your blood boiling. At least Glenn Beck owns up to being a “rodeo clown.” A certain pompous someone over on MSNBC

should get a clue.

[On the other hand: there's this serious conversation, which I haven't yet read, about "blurring the line between news, comedy, and commentary," in which Mr. O features prominently. Right up my alley. I'll report back after I've read it.]

update: When I posted this earlier today, I had no idea that there is a mini-war going on between Olbermann and Beck—or, rather, that Olbermann took aim at Beck yesterday for being the “Worst Person in the World.”

Anyhow: he did just that, for a segment in which Beck interviewed the first Muslim to be elected to the Congress, Keith Ellison. Read all about it here on Media Matters (which is on Olbermann’s “side” in this “debate”).

The only people you ever seem Olbermann interviewing are people who agree with him. Why is it that Olbermann always attacks people from behind the camera and never face-to-face? Could it be that he wouldn’t know how to have a dialogue with someone who disagrees with him? Just wondering…