Entries from May 2007 ↓

Even Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, ahem, members do it—near Yasser Arafat’s grave:

According to Israeli security officials and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades sources in Ramallah, Shawish was arrested after the Israeli police stormed his jeep, which was parked in a lot outside the Muqata, about 200 feet from Arafat’s grave. The sources said at the time of his arrest, Shawish was having intercourse in the back seat of his jeep with a Palestinian woman, whose identity is being withheld by WND. The woman was not his wife.

The Brigades, founded by Arafat, largely considers the late PLO leader’s resting place to be a sacred site.

Indeed!

Do not retreat. Do not withdraw. Speak up. And always, always, always stand up to a bully.***

That’s the lesson learned by Shaul Bakhash, who teaches Middle Eastern history at George Mason University and whose wife, the 67-year-old Persian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, was taken hostage by Iranian thugs and incarcerated at Evin prison in Iran [e.a.]:

Should you wake up one day to find your wife or child or parent in the hands of the secret police in a country that routinely violates the rule of law, you will likely choose quiet probing over publicity. You have no recourse to law or courts. You fear publicity may make things worse. You believe, almost always wrongly, that if you work quietly, use the contacts you have and wait reasonably, the nightmare will be over.

Read the whole thing, spare a thought for Esfandiari, and support political freedom and human rights for oppressed people everywhere. Pressure works.
———–

*** She’s no totalitarian, of course, but Rosie O’Donnell sure is one hell of a big-mouthed bully. And a righteous Rachel Sklar really let her have it today on ETP. Nice.

I rag on Andrew Sullivan a lot—his punitive moralistic streak drives me crazy—but I’ve been reading him for a long time and, credit where credit is due: he’s a stylish and informative blogger. He always brings in great stuff from far and wide.

Like, for instance, this welcome news from The Futurist:

In partnership with Carnegie Hall and the Weill Music Institute, Juilliard has launched a new fellowship program called “The Academy,” intended to help talented graduates balance the cultivation of their craft with teaching and community outreach.

“The so-called reclusive artist of fifty or sixty years ago, the Horowitzes who showed up, played their concert and then left, although extraordinary artists, are gone. The world has changed a great deal, especially in America,” says Joseph W. Polisi, president of the Juilliard School. We need musicians, actors and dancers who can be good and effective representatives for their art or community and take advantage of various funding sources. That’s what the goal of this is, to provide an environment for the fellows of The Academy to really hear what their colleagues have to say, to provide the tools for them to be articulate spokespersons for the arts in schools and with school boards, etc. and to really give them a sense of their own entrepreneurial abilities.”

It’s a good thing they’re “down with capitalism,” as Sullivan says, since

[y]oung artists fresh from graduate school probably won’t have the support systems many of their predecessors enjoyed. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand in the arts is expected to grow as fast as for all other occupations through 2014, but the competition for both salaried and freelance jobs will intensify as talented aspiring artists with master of fine arts degrees will vastly outnumber lucrative openings for painters, dancers, and musicians.

I suspect this will be a continuing series. Today we note how things have changed in the movie business:***

“I slept on the beach when I first came here [to Cannes] in 1971. You can’t do that anymore.”

————

*** from a Reuters article, headlined “Stress Runs High Behind the Scenes at Cannes”

Our courageous leaders at work:

Democrats said they did not relish the prospect of leaving Washington for a Memorial Day break — the second recess since the financing fight began — and leaving themselves vulnerable to White House attacks that they were again on vacation while the troops were wanting. That criticism seemed more politically threatening to them than the anger Democrats knew they would draw from the left by bowing to Mr. Bush.

I’m unplugging for a long weekend. See you on the other side. Here are a few more New York pix to tide you over:

Bush gets a chance to talk, and he runs with it:

THE PRESIDENT: I’m credible because I read the intelligence, [NBC reporter] David [Gregory], and make it abundantly clear in plain terms that if we let up, we’ll be attacked. And I firmly believe that.

Look, this has been a long, difficult experience for the American people. I can assure you al Qaeda, who would like to attack us again, have got plenty of patience and persistence. And the question is, will we?

Yes, I talked about intelligence yesterday. I wanted to make sure the intelligence I laid out was credible, so we took our time. Somebody said, well, he’s trying to politicize the thing. If I was trying to politicize it, I’d have dropped it out before the 2006 elections. I believe I have an obligation to tell the truth to the American people as to the nature of the enemy. And it’s unpleasant for some. I fully recognize that after 9/11, in the calm here at home, relatively speaking, caused some to say, well, maybe we’re not at war. I know that’s a comfortable position to be in, but that’s not the truth.

Failure in Iraq will cause generations to suffer, in my judgment. Al Qaeda will be emboldened. They will say, yes, once again, we’ve driven the great soft America out of a part of the region. It will cause them to be able to recruit more. It will give them safe haven. They are a direct threat to the United States.

And I’m going to keep talking about it. That’s my job as the President, is to tell people the threats we face and what we’re doing about it. …

It’s better to fight them there than here. And this concept about, well, maybe let’s just kind of just leave them alone and maybe they’ll be all right is naive. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraq, and they’ve been attacking ever since. They are a threat to your children, David, and whoever is in that Oval Office better understand it and take measures necessary to protect the American people.

Mickey Kaus, who cops to being paranoid about this because of his immigration obsession, calls it an “unusual” press conference—I agree; Bush was unusually articulate and measured, for one thing.

Ann Althouse says it so I don’t have to:

I hate this fluorescent oppressiveness — the bullying and the light itself.

My carbon footprint consists of air-conditioning in the summer, a car for getting away on weekends, and maybe three six (round trip—duh) flights a year.

If I promise to stop making fun of offsets, can I please, please, please be excused, along with Ann, from the horrible gray-yellow light cast by those “bulbs”?

down by the Hudson River:

SoHo fire escape:

Glenn Reynolds posted something guaranteed to catch my attention.

THERE ARE TWO AMERICAS: One with good PR skills, and one with a talent for self-destruction.

The link leads to a discussion of the apparent unraveling of John Edwards’s campaign theme, in light of a series of embarrassing revelations (of the oppo-research kind).

 Democrat John Edwards has eloquently established his credentials as an advocate for the poor with a presidential campaign focused on the devastating effects of poverty in America. But the former North Carolina senator’s populist drive has hit a series of troubling land mines: a pair of $400 haircuts, a $500,000 paycheck from a hedge fund, and now a $55,000 payday for a speech on poverty to students at UC Davis.

S.F. Chronicle writer Carla Marinucci cites three bloopers that create the impression (for Marinucci, at least) that Edwards’s campaign is imploding. Quoting Democratic strategist Garry South, Marinucci continues:

[South said] “[T]here’s always a danger when you’re running for public office that a pattern of behavior starts to emerge. And it might be utterly unfair to draw conclusions when things add up to a pattern — but that’s what people do, and that’s what the media does.”

 South goes on to give examples of “unwanted perceptions for politicians”:

He said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is an example of a politician whose public image was eroded by a series of headlines on his dating habits, including an admitted affair with a colleague’s wife, which paint a picture of a personal life in disarray.

Former Vice President Al Gore regularly was the subject of stories suggesting he was an exaggerator and often fudged facts; the theme became so prevalent that opponents accused him of boasting that he “invented the Internet” — a statement he never made.

And although President Bush’s polls have suffered with his handling of the Iraq war — it was the litany of missteps on everything from Hurricane Katrina to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ involvement in the firing of prosecutors that cemented an image of an administration that was incompetent, South said.

 I’ve got a few things to say about this.

First, Marinucci, twice in a single article, commits what Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus have defined—loosely and ironically—as the “three’s-a-trend” school  infraction [of journalism's misguided "rules"]. (She cited three Edwards “bloopers” and South cited three examples of campaigns unraveled by unwanted perceptions.

Second, Garry South was an adviser to Joe Lieberman in election 2004, so no doubt he’s looking at the blooper theory from a point of view known only to him.

Finally: what a load of unadulterated bullshit. Yes, PR is very important. If Edwards’s campaign sinks, it won’t be because of the petty morsels uncovered by oppo research. It will be because he’s not a good enough candidate to compete in the 2008 field.