Apologies that this post is a couple of weeks late. It got lost among my drafts, but I still want to post it … because it’s still relevant.

Quirky, cranky humorist James Lileks has had his weekly column cut. He still has a job at the Minneapolis Star Tribune if he wants it: reporting local news. That’s the way it goes in the media and entertainment biz these days, of course.

Nancy Nall, having been there herself, has a lot of bilious but cathartic things to say about the Brave New Media World:

It is, with a few details changed, pretty much exactly what happened to me five years ago at a fading p.m. daily in far-less-glamorous Fort Wayne, Indiana. Perhaps I can offer the pint-size pundit some perspective.

Sometimes I feel like journalism’s coal-mine canary. All the stuff that started happening in 2002 at our paper, the stuff that had my friends at bigger papers saying, “Wow, that’s terrible. So far, knock wood, we here at the Major Metro Times-Bugle are OK” — that’s happening everywhere now. Even Lileks, if he could stop the furious cycle of his narcissism for five minutes, would have to agree that having a job as a full-time humor columnist at a large-circulation daily is a little like being Henry Ford’s buggy-whip polisher in 1905. I’m sure his vision is somewhat clouded, though, by his status as a right-wing web star; his allies’ gift for understatement (”newspaper suicide”) is already muddying the waters. They forget the Lileks they know, with his daily Bleat and radio appearances and one-joke books, is not the Lileks the Star-Tribune readers know, the writer who offers 250-word dispatches on his sniffles, his dessert choices and …oh, I seem to have reached my limit of free Star-Tribune stories for today, but you can do your own explorations here. To them, the effect of killing the Daily Quirk is the destruction of their boy’s meal ticket. He gets paid for the Quirk; the rest of the stuff he does free. If they like him so much, they need to get acquainted with that 20th-century concept of paying for content.

I haven’t followed up to see if Lileks got a new gig, or if he responded to Nall’s post.
Nothing is forever, and in some quarters, it’s just beginning to sink in.

Some headlines can stand by themselves—they don’t need to be followed by a story.

Hamas blames world, Israel and Arabs

But here’s the story anyway:

The international community, Israel and Arab countries are to blame for the current inter-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip for failing to life [sic] an economic siege on the Palestinians, a senior Hamas official said Wednesday.

The remarks by Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, came as fighting renewed between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza early Wednesday when Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a top Fatah official in Gaza City, killing five bodyguards inside, Palestinian security officials said.

The Saudis just paid off the Palestinians to the tune of $1 billion to get their house in order.

In Yiddish, they’ve got a word for this “you owe me” attitude from Hamas. Perhaps you’ve heard it?

Fucking Chutzpah.

As if that weren’t enough, they’re also trying to provoke Israel into invading Gaza, to take the heat off themselves.

If it weren’t so pitifully transparent, it would be sad.

That is the bottom-line experience of our era: No one, no matter how astute and attentive, can possibly follow everything that is happening in the world—or even a fraction of everything that is being reported about what is happening in the world. The “news” is merely a distillation of the stories that are easiest to “report”—i.e., communicate the essence of—in a given 24-hour period. Even news junkies like me, dedicated to the pursuit of trying to figure out the vague outlines of what is going on, are almost totally clueless. After a while, it is all “video wallpaper.”

In these circumstances, perhaps it’s understandable that Tony Blair’s announcement last week that he would step down as Britain’s prime minister got only a tiny sliver of attention. It came 24 hours after the huge breakthrough in Northern Ireland that certainly didn’t get the attention it deserved.

But it will be Blair’s true legacy, as Time reports.

When Unionists dumped Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble as their leader, Blair adapted the process to bring in Paisley. He also employed “creative ambiguity” to get over the toughest hurdles by letting each side believe they were scoring points. Even today the central question of whether Northern Ireland will ultimately be British or Irish remains unresolved, but the matter will be settled in politics.

Perhaps more than anything, though, Blair brought patience and determination. Even when more pressing issues of global importance put demands on him, he still devoted extraordinary amounts of time to Northern Ireland — even though it offered him almost no political benefits.

Blair’s hard work usually bought time, however, and that was crucial. The more people in Northern Ireland became accustomed to a peaceful atmosphere, and the improving economy that came with it, the harder it became to contemplate a return to violence. A decade after he launched the process, Blair — and the IRA leadership — can contemplate retiring in peace.

Of course Blair will have to wait a long time to be vindicated by “opinion” (as he refers to the Western media elite), if BBC Radio correspondent Justin Webb and BBC presenter Katty Kay are any indication. Webb gave Howard Kurtz an interview in which he insulted America in the most extraordinary way (a fact Kurtz commented on as they sat face-to-face ***) just to take a swipe at Blair. And Katty Kay, a frequent panelist on the Chris Matthews Show, isn’t being herself when she isn’t being vituperative. +++

As I said, it will be a long time before Blair’s legacy can be judged. Even Anne Appelbaum, who is actually interested in the Blair phenomenon and addresses it in ”The Riddle That Is Blair“— wonders: is he a genuine humanist or the slickest of slick politicians?

Fundamentally, the man’s character is a riddle. On the one hand, he frequently describes himself as a true conviction politician, a man who sticks to his guns whatever the opinion polls say. Certainly that’s how he explains Iraq. “I decided we should stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally,” he stated in his resignation speech:

“Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That’s your call. But believe one thing if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country.”

Yet, at the same time, Blair is perhaps the most outstanding contemporary example of the politician who wants to be loved and who tries at all times to be all things to all people. He speaks the language of the left when he is talking to his own party, dwells on free markets when he addresses business executives and, at least for the first few years of his term, appeared to believe that getting everyone to agree with him about everything was only a matter of time.

Appelbaum goes on to explain how Blair went about trying to get everyone on board [e.a.]:

But since he couldn’t always “get out and explain to people what we’re doing,” he invented the British version of the modern media machine. Though “spin” wasn’t unheard of in pre-Blair Britain, it is fair to say that he perfected the arts of the well-aimed leak, the removal of fingerprints from the evidence, the careful timing of bad news. On the very day of his resignation speech, the British government quietly revealed that one of Blair’s pet programs was going to cost far more than anticipated — presumably because no one would write about a such a lowly subject on that day of bigger news.

Indeed, his fiercest critics claim that even the decision to invade Iraq is not evidence that Blair “did what I thought was right.” On the contrary, they say: He invaded Iraq because he thought it was going to be popular.

Impugning his motives is par for the course for Blair’s political enemies and rivals and for Britain’s increasingly shrill chattering classes. I was surprised, however, to find a gaping hole in Appelbaum’s logic as she attempts to understand Blair’s contradictions:

Is he deeply moral, a man of conviction? Is he deeply cynical, a man who governs by spin? Or does he use spin to make himself look like a man of conviction?

Did it not occur to Appelbaum that Blair is “deeply moral, a man of conviction” and also “deeply cynical” about how a 21st-century leader must communicate to those he governs (and also those he doesn’t govern)?

Does no one get it that spin is what everyone—politicians more than most!—needs to do in order to be present in the gaze of the public? to get a fraction of the public’s attention? to connect? to communicate?

Or is everyone, including thoughtful writers like Appelbaum, in on the “it’s black OR white” partisan media game?

Sheesh.

——–

*** Reliable Sources, May 13:

WEBB: And you know, the manner of his departing is seen as American too. And not American in a good sense.

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: I read a columnist who said it was very American, is that an insult?

WEBB: It is an insult, frankly speaking. Yes. Let’s be blunt about it. It is an insult. Because as I was saying with Winston Churchill, we like our (INAUDIBLE) to go, Margaret Thatcher just went. He is now staying on, he is doing kind of a world tour. He’s not going on until the end of June. What’s going on now? It’s an un- British thing. The fact that he said in his leaving speech, Britain is the finest country in the world, the greatest nation on the face of the Earth, that’s not something a British person would ever say. It’s utterly American (ph).

STEVENSON: Absolutely appalling (ph).

KURTZ: Absolutely appalling? I don’t understand why.

STEVENSON: I was watching it — I was watching with a group of people, and as he came to this “British are the greatest people in the world,” he subsequently referred to them as “it,” which was rather strange. But as he said this, everyone in the room gagged and said, take it back to Texas.

(LAUGHTER)

——-

+++ May 13:

Katty, a columnist wrote this week that Tony Blair is not only disliked by the
British people overall, he’s loathed by his political party. Is that true?

Ms. KAY: He’s not just loathed by his political party, he is loathed by the
British public. I think it’s hard, sitting here, to really understand the
level of vitriol that the British feel for Tony Blair. And you know why?
It’s because he stuck with George Bush so firmly. He became a superstar in
America and as he did so, he was being called “the poodle” back home. The
more he was loved on this side of the Atlantic, the more he was disliked on
that side of the Atlantic. And it wasn’t a coincidence.

GREGORY: And yet one of the things that he, I think, did very
effectively–whether you agree with him or not–in this country is give
articulation to the broader context of what the war was about, the war of
ideas, the war against fundamentalism beyond the nuts and bolts tactical…

Ms. KAY: Without doubt, he was–he was the eloquent voice.

Mr. STENGEL: (Unintelligible).

GREGORY: Right.

Ms. KAY: He was the eloquent voice for George Bush. He was the diplomat for the war in Iraq.

In the illuminating documentary Billy Wilder Speaks, Wilder, a man who came of age in Berlin in the 1920s and fled Europe with the rise of Hitlerism and was the very essence of “been there, done that” ***—talks about politics. He says offhandedly to fellow European Volker Schlondorff (I’m paraphrasing): “Republican? Democrat? Who cares! In America,” he adds, “there’s not much of a difference between parties.”

Rudy Giuliani would certainly disagree with Wilder, as he made plain in the second Republican debate last night when he attacked Hillary Clinton for her enthusiastic embrace of statism (to put it kindly):

 Without mentioning her by name, Giuliani accused Clinton of believing that the free market is “disastrous” and that the government has to take money from citizens to spend on the common good.

“There’s such a stark difference there that this election in 2008 is going to make a very big difference about whether we go in that direction - the direction of removing private choice, putting … government in charge of so many things,” Giuliani said. “Republicans should be uniting to make certain that what the liberal media is talking about, our inevitable defeat, doesn’t happen.”

Were your knowledge of the world limited only to the full spectrum of ideas and positions spouted by American politicians, from the “hard right” all the way to the “hard left,” you’d have to agree with Giuliani that there are stark differences between the Dems and the Reps.

After all, isn’t Rudy the Fascist calling Hillary a Commie? How different can two candidates get? They certainly represent the opposite ends of the spectrum in mainstream American politics (i.e., the politics of the vast center), that’s for sure.

Which is where the Billy Wilder Perspective—a wide-angle shot encompassing not just American politics but sinister and inhospitable world politics—comes in. And that’s where I must concede that Wilder’s point of view is the sensible perspective from which to look upon American politics. +++

Also, there’s this post from Andrew Sullivan, who thinks that unpleasant, nasty harassment is a sign of the “Christianism” that threatens to swallow America:

Their take-over of the military continues under the radar. This time, they have been preying on sick veterans, including an orthodox Jew with kidney stones:

“Takeover”?

“Preying on”?

Darling, get me rewrite!

————————-

*** an attitude that resonates with me, because I grew up in a milieu in which it was the prevailing attitude. My “people” were not jaded; they were experienced, in the sense of having seen everything and feeling that they’d seen too much … but at the same time knowing they had survived. Because that’s what human beings are wired, and fated, to do. 

+++ Because, obviously, Rudy is not a fascist and Hillary is not a commie. Their biggest quibble is about how much of your money the government is going to take, and whether the government is going to give you (us) value for your (our) money. Everything else—and I do mean everything—is moot, because regardless of what the hottest partisans in the hottest partisan atmosphere say, we are all American to the bone and we love our freedoms. Even when the government tells us we can’t do something, we will find a way not just to do it but to contest it.

That is what makes us American. That is what we all have in common: the deep-seated, reflexive knowledge that, yes, you can fight City Hall.

Because we hope, even when there is no reason to hope. Because we are human. Here’s Israeli author and peace activist David Grossman:

About four years ago, when my second-oldest son, Uri, was to join the army, I could no longer follow my recent ways. A sense of urgency and alarm washed over me, leaving me restless. I then began writing a novel that treats directly the bleak reality in which I live. A novel that depicts how external violence and the cruelty of the general political and military reality penetrate the tender and vulnerable tissue of a single family, ultimately tearing it asunder.

“As soon as one writes,” Natalia Ginzburg says, “one miraculously ignores the current circumstances of one’s life, yet our happiness or misery leads us to write in a certain way. When we are happy, our imagination is more dominant. When miserable, the power of our memory takes over.”

It is hard to talk about yourself. I will only say what I can at this point, and from the location where I sit.

I write. In wake of the death of my son Uri last summer in the war between Israel and Lebanon, the awareness of what happened has sunk into every cell of mine. The power of memory is indeed enormous and heavy, and at times has a paralyzing quality to it. Nevertheless, the act of writing itself at this time creates for me a type of “space,” a mental territory that I’ve never experienced before, where death is not only the absolute and one-dimensional negation of life.

Writers know that when we write, we feel the world move; it is flexible, crammed with possibilities. It certainly isn’t frozen. Wherever human existence permeates, there is no freezing and no paralysis, and actually, there is no status quo. Even if we sometimes err to think that there is a status quo; even if some are very keen to have us believe that a status quo exists. When I write, even now, the world is not closing in on me, and it does not grow ever so narrow: it also makes gestures of opening up toward a future prospect.

Read the whole beautiful, anguished thing.