So, I Guess I'm Not Changing Jobs

But he's still the best politician there is.

In Defense of George Clooney

Seriously, he's a great actor.

I know his career started as a dreamy doctor on "ER," but if you look at his movie career, there are some excellent, high-quality roles: "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "Syriana," and the "Ocean" movies, which I actually think are great fun, done with a loving wink at the audience -- all three are an in-joke of some sort, but Soderbergh, Clooney, Pitt et al are willing to include everyone -- and a wonderful mix of the highbrow and the low.

And then there's "Michael Clayton," in which I thought he was superb. The whole movie was written so well -- yes, Clooney had nothing to do with the screenplay -- but his acting was right on the whole time. The only two other Oscar-nominated movies I saw last year were "Ratatouille" and "Lars and the Real Girl," (both of which were also excellent; and yes, I don't get to the movies much these days), so maybe Daniel Day-Lewis deserved to win, but Clooney would've been equally deserving to be on stage.

OK, OK, I just think he's a big hunk!

Update: As if I needed further justification, the New Yorker had a good profile of my favorite hunk in a recent issue, the kind of profile that seems to be written with a "validating a mainstream but excellent actor" intent. It reminded me a bit of Truman Capote's famous 1957 profile of Marlon Brando in the same pages, though Clooney is no Brando and Clooney's profiler, Ian Parker, is no Capote. Both, with Clooney parked on his couch in L.A. and Brando hiding in his Tokyo hotel room, yoga books on the table, had the theme of staying sane amid the fame.

Grey Lady, Grey Hair: Are Lobbyists Ever Attractive?

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Times' counterlede yesterday about Sen. John McCain's (romantic) relationship with a telcom lobbyist is the paper had it ready in mid-December, but decided to hold it until this week.

Politico reports, "The Times only went with the story now because The New Republic was set to run a piece next Monday about internal dissensions at the paper over whether to run the long-held article." But then, that's attributed to Charlie Black, one of McCain's top advisors and a premier lobbyist, so I don't trust his assertion.

I find the New Republic's story elucidating because, amidst all its thorough details (there's barely anything like the TNR that brings you inside in powerful circles), there's no explanation about what changed from the story's first draft to its final one to compel Bill Keller and the Times' other top editors to go ahead with publication. There's no suggestion that there was one new chunk of details (purposefully not using "facts" because of how some of the story is sourced) that made everyone feel comfortable this was solid, worthy reporting.

Overall, I think the story is worthy. It would've been more worthy if the Times' reporters left out the romantic implications between McCain, the soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, and just used their close professional relationship as a window to McCain's historically sticky relationship with ethics, which, the Times notes, has continued to a much more moderate degree even since he decided to turn himself into an ethical saint. As Dan Kennedy, the Boston-area reporter and journalism professor, points out at his blog, the Washington Post's story did just that. Though the story seems like it was written quickly so the paper had something on yesterday's front to counter the Times, the story is better-sourced: Notice how the Post usually refers to multiple sources for attribution and the Times does not. (What I learned is, if you can write "according to three sources" you're good, and the Post has at least that at a few points.) It's really not a controversial story if you eliminate the suggestion of romance -- only damning. And McCain knew it was if he hired Bill Clinton's Monicagate lawyer, Bob Bennett, to try and kill it, and wouldn't talk to any of the Times' reporters on the record, but went around them to complain to Keller.

But now, the Times is making news for the wrong reason -- blowback instead of blow-up. They even trotted out Keller and others for a new edition of the "Talk to the Newsroom" series to explain how it all happened. (Though when you have Keller answering, it all has a corporate sheen to it, as much as I love the guy.) As evidence of how long the story was held, one of its reporters, Marilyn W. Thompson, left the Times to re-join the Post while it sat in limbo. Even worse, the story lets conservatives make the argument the Times only loves to go after Republicans, which any review of its stories would point out isn't true. Why doesn't the general public understand the divide between the news and editorial pages? As one small-time reporter's opinion, I enjoy going after Democrats as much as Republicans.

But really, in summation: Who would ever want to be a lobbyist? How do you take pride in yourself? At cocktail parties, when asked "What do you do?" what do you say? That this profession ranges from Iseman to Abramoff to former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (who's paid handsomely by Turkey, of all clients) says a lot about the state of U.S. politics.

Sarkozy Sort of Rhymes with Memory

The Times had a very interesting story on yesterday's front page: "By Making Holocaust Personal to Pupils, Sarkozy Stirs Anger."

In short, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has announced a plan requiring all French fifth-graders learn the history of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. At length, reports Elaine Sciolino, this has made many unhappy for several reasons: it makes children carry the 20th century's greatest grief at too young an age; Sarkozy has infused it with too much Judeo-Christian language and religious overtones; it is another part of an incoherent agenda by Sarkozy, who has the stated goal of making France a relevant international force but hasn't yet created a defined means to achieve it; and it might anger immigrant Africans and Muslims in the country, who certainly demographically overwhelm Jews there and everywhere.

As someone who only follows French politics through the Times and the New Yorker, Sarkozy strikes me as very interesting: hyper-motivated, tenacious, slick, and someone who enjoys the trappings of fame. Why else barbecue with the Bushes in Kennebunkport, Maine, or invite the press along for vacations with his new wife, supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni?

But I like this proposal. That it's mandated is perhaps mildly odd, but the question of memory, I believe, is becoming all the more acute in the 21st century. The number of people intimately connected to this era is dwindling ever more rapidly and the need to ensure its place in current events is important.

Yes, World War II, on a moral level, is now best and only identified with the Holocaust, i.e. everyone knows what it was at least on a general level; those years, times and events have been institutionalized for assumed perpetuity in our collective memory in many forms; and in the 21st century, information is more widely disseminated and available than ever before. Yet, that last point worries me, as the bits of information among the torrents now available that seem to ge the most attention are totally useless. Sarkozy, I want to believe, seems concerned about making the Holocaust relevant, not just remembered, and perhaps having all fifth-graders learn about it so deeply and intimately will combine the personal with the collective, the present with the past in a meaningful way so that the memory and the problem of evil versus that of compassion, equality and democracy will guide these kids' decision. (Yes, yes, I'm going in an overly earnest, perhaps naive, direction for this blog.)

I wonder if Sarkozy happened to read Tony Judt's recent essay in the New York Review and became inspired? Reprinted from a lecture in Germany on Arendt, Judt, the most interesting and articulate scholar of modern Europe there is today, commented at length on how the memory of the Holocaust is becoming increasingly marginal in 21st century memory. Overall, he addresses why it took a generation to begin to recognize and memorialize the Holocaust, and seems to argue for not using "the Holocaust" as justification for political goal or moral shorthand, but for a meaningful example of what can happen.

Quoting at-length: "Maybe all our museums and memorials and obligatory school trips today are not a sign that we are ready to remember but an indication that we feel we have done our penance and can now begin to let go and forget, leaving the stones to remember for us. I don't know: the last time I visited Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, bored schoolchildren on an obligatory outing were playing hide-and-seek among the stones. What I do know is that if history is to do its proper job, preserving forever the evidence of past crimes and everything else, it is best left alone. When we ransack the past for political profit—selecting the bits that can serve our purposes and recruiting history to teach opportunistic moral lessons— we get bad morality and bad history."

Like a good postmodern academic, Judt concludes by not answering anything definitively: "After 1945 our parents' generation set aside the problem of evil because —for them—it contained too much meaning. The generation that will follow us is in danger of setting the problem aside because it now contains too little meaning. How can we prevent this? How, in other words, can we ensure that the problem of evil remains the fundamental question for intellectual life, and not just in Europe? I don't know the answer but I am pretty sure that it is the right question. It is the question Hannah Arendt asked sixty years ago and I believe she would still ask it today." But really, you should spend 15 minutes reading the whole thing.

I wonder what Judt, very much on the left, would think of this idea of Sarkozy, very much to the right of the center. Judt probably would find it opportunistic: The French president trying to cozy up to Israel, or something like that. (Again, the end of Judt's speech focuses on not using the Holocaust for political gain and politicians are inherently political.) But as someone who can't make it through his sister's history of our paternal grandparents's survival in the Holocaust, or even someone else's personal history without nearly crying, I think I'd like to be a fifth-grader in France right now.

Thank You, Dwight Howard

OK, so I was all prepared to write about how useless and meaningless professional All-Star games are now, feeling inspired by watching the uninspiring NBA "skills night."

I was going to write about how uninterested everyone seemed (except for middling Cleveland Cavaliers guard Damon Jones, who seemed to be trying to make a name for himself by wearing a purple velvet suit and faux-hawk [how 2002!] and going crazy after each contestant finished his turn in the three-point shootout; huh?); how they're only an excuse to party for all the athletes (and more importantly and pathetically, the thousands of hangers-on) there; how future Hall-of-Famer Karl Malone didn't deign to look at the camera when it panned to him as a judge for the slam-dunk contest; how when TNT needed celebrity shots, they only had Alyssa Milano, Harry Connick Jr. and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, before the obligatory Spike Lee shot; and how, philosophically, All-Star games are relics of another era, when the money and glitz weren't so obscene, when players didn't hang out with each other and some actively disliked others, and when fans couldn't follow players in faraway cities whenever they wanted, making the games competitive for players and fanciful for fans.

And then the slam-dunk contest started. And Orlando Magic forward Dwight Howard, on his first attempt, began from behind the basket, threw it off the back of the backboard, caught it mid-air as he jumped to the other side and threw it down! I jumped up from the couch and probably said "Oh my god" eight times with my hands on my head. I've never seen that before.

And then Minnesota Timberwolves guard Gerald Green unveiled "The Birthday (Cup)Cake": He balanced a cupcacke on the rim, lit the candle and then dunked while blowing out the candle, before retrieving the cupcake and giving it to the judges! The cupcake -- which looked tasty, by the way -- somehow stayed on the rim despite the force of him throwing the ball in!

And then Howard took off his jersey, revealing a Superman shirt, put on a Superman cape, and then caught a ball thrown by a teammate and dunked it from the foul line. (Well, replays showed he never touched the rim, he actually threw it in with such force and at such an angle, that it seemed like a dunk, and was really cool.)

The videos don't seem to be posted on YouTube yet, so I'll just go with this tape of Howard practicing for the contest. It's a sly promo for Vitamin Water (I think in the ad biz they call that "guerrilla marketing"; Che would be proud), but nonetheless, it features two he broke out tonight and is totally awesome.



Update: This goes to ESPN's highlights of it, which capture most of how amazing it was.

Further Update: Here are the first dunks everyone did, including Howard from behind the basket and Green's birthday cake. The comments from TNT's broadcasters are actually hillarious, genuine and refreshing. You must watch.



I could go on, but I'll just say that Howard deservedly won.

The reason why the dunk contest works -- and baseball's homerun hitting contest never will -- is the dunk is just so viscerally thrilling. What makes the homerun exciting is context: It makes you cheer because of how it changes the game, shifts momentum, wins the game. In the abstract, it's only a ball traveling a long way. (Is this heresy for a lifelong, devoted baseball fan to write?)

But the dunk is an explosion. There is so much force involved (do physicists study it? they should) and so much joy in watching a human body fly like that. It's a beautiful balance of elegance and control and vigor and rawness. It's a smacking sound and a clean whoosh. It's life saying, "Here it is! He we are! Rejoice!"

Some Loud Thunder

Does anyone else find the similarities between Vampire Weekend and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah strangely familiar?

Both were formed at elite colleges, everyone in the bands look like they were part of the hipster crowds at elite colleges. (I don't mean that as a dig; some would say the same about me.) More importantly, they went from "Who's that?" to playing Pianos and the like to playing the Bowery Ballroom and the like to the Internet buzz building to the inevitable "Best New Music" designation on Pitchfork to reviews in the Times in about four months -- all without being signed to a label.

Now, some would say of this, Isn't the 21st century and the Internet a wonderful thing? I differ. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's self-titled debut is excellent and, while perhaps not totally original, so fun. When lead singer Alec Ounsworth gets to the "Far, far away from West Virginia / I will try on New York City" lyric in "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth," I usually drive with my knees so I can fully emote in the rearview mirror. (Don't tell the police.)

But it seems to me Clap Your Hands has gotten chewed up in the hype machine, whose cycles now only move exponentially faster because of the Internet. The band's follow-up, "Some Loud Thunder," did not receive much attention upon its release about a year ago (I haven't listened to it, nor the Vampire Weekend debut, for that matter), and they don't seem to be playing venues any larger than the ones they were playing two years ago. This should be a talented, growth band, but too many insta-pundits digested them and moved on way too quickly.

My main problem with the Internet's effect on the indie-rock scene is it doesn't let things gestate or grow any more. There's too much hysteria the moment something comes out and too much hysteria in general. Dude, remember when Pitchfork went crazy over Serena Maneesh? How about Tapes 'n' Tapes? (Alright, the former review was written by the now-discredited Nick Sylvester.) How about when Saddle Creek Records and everything Omaha was absolute gold? That was five-and-a-half years ago, not the 25 that it seems.

Maybe I'm just bitter that everything I do seems to take the slow road.

Thanks to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for the post's title. Kudos on the knowing wink that I think all the title implies about their past three-plus years.

Farewell, Mitt Romney

Since the last time I tried to write about former Massachusetts Gov. Romney I censored myself, let's turn to others for insight:

* Gail Collins in her Times op-ed column today: "Other than repeatedly offering to give up any civil liberty the Bush administration felt it might need, Romney never talked all that much about the war on terror as a candidate. He was more interested in denouncing illegal immigration. Until he got to Michigan, where he became Friend of the Workers Mitt. If that primary had gone on any longer, he’d have been picketing with the writers’ union."

* Jason Feifer, a good Boston reporter, at his blog: "Here’s a guy who...looks like he decided to run for president 40 years ago and then assembled a family to fit that."

* Peter Canellos in what the Globe thankfully dubbed a "news analysis" considering how it's a harsh assessment for a reporter to write: "As Romney pushed conservative issues on the campaign trail, he only invited critics to point out ways in which he had veered from that course in the past. In the end, all those inconsistencies combined with a somewhat plastic presence on the stump made Romney seem inauthentic and opportunistic - a meat-and-potatoes car guy in Michigan who morphed into a Pollo Tropico lover in Florida. Romney furthered those impressions by changing his emphasis in state after state, from being a social conservative in Iowa, to an anti-Washington crusader in New Hampshire, to an economic nationalist in Michigan, to the one true Reaganite who played to right-wing talk shows in the days leading up to Super Tuesday." (OK, that was a long excerpt, but worthwhile.)

All I'll add is: Remember the time Romney, at a Jacksonville, Fla., parade on Martin Luther King Day told a kid, "Oh, you've got some bling-bling here," upon seeing his necklace? Or how that was only a few minutes after he said "Who let the dogs out?" while posing for a photo with teenage girl? If this doesn't summarize the gulf separating much of America, what does? (His top flak explained that Romney "had responded to someone who asked, 'Who let you out?'")

Update: Here's an edited YouTube version. The "bling-bling" kid looks to be about 3 years old, which makes it all much better, i.e. "Candidate joking around with cute kid," but the other exchange, not so much.




And why did Romney keep referring to Europe during his farewell speech as though there are no water or sewer systems there? (Link to full text here, though it seems to be the prepared comments, and I remember a few Europe tangents in the actual thing.) One could easily argue its political, economic and health care health are better than the U.S.'s these days.

On a related note, why did President Bush, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday, one day after Romney used it to leave the Republican presidential primary, seem to indicate the Republican message in this year's race will be it is the better party on national security?

Among other reasons, it came three days after Director of Naitonal Intelligence Mike McConnell told a Senate Committee that Al Qaeda is now better poised to attack the U.S. again. Doesn't Bush administration, i.e. Republican, policy have something to do with that?

Perfection Can't Exist in a Post-Modern World

As someone who detests Boston's arrogant sports fans, I have to say I'm quite pleased with the Patriots' mind-blowing 17-14 loss to the Giants in Sunday's Super Bowl. At first Sunday night, I was slightly disappointed because a Patriots' victory would have been truly historic -- much like Joe Dimaggio's 56-game hitting streak in baseball for one generation, I don't think I would have ever seen another football team finish an undefeated season 19-0 as the Patriots were about to do. Their dominance this year was the only reason I turned on football games.

But after thinking about it, boy, do Boston fans deserve it. Three NFL championships and two MLB ones in the past six years, and the Celtics are the best team in basketball by far this year. All that, and all you ever hear on the sports talk radio shows and in the sports pages -- most especially the Herald's -- is the constant whining and overanalyzing of every team. Geez, there were people lambasting Francona on the radio in mid-September last year, when the Sawx were a month away from winning the World Series.

That said, it was beautiful to listen to WEEI's "Big Show" Monday afternoon during a long car drive, as all of New England melted from shock. Among the callers' suggestions: the brilliant Coach Bill Belichick should resign; the Patriots shouldn't re-resign Randy Moss, one of the most talented wide receivers of our time; and that the only way the Giants' defensive lineman could have so overpowered the Patriots' offensive lineman after not having much of an impact in the regular-season matchup that the Patriots won a month ago was the anabolic steriods they were taking?! Sports fans, particularly those who call talk radio stations, are largely irrational, hysterical and hyperbolic, but I find Boston ones far exceed the norm.

(Side note: Since moving to Boston a couple years ago, I've long wondered why the host of the "Big Show," Glenn Ordway, is dubbed "the Big O" by the station. Is to suggest "the big orgasm"? That would just beautifully complicate the sexual politics of a show where the constantly professed love of heterosexuality and fears of homosexuality are on such overdrive that the homoeroticism among all the "pundits" is overwhelming. This is all further complicated by the fat caricature of Ordway now at the WEEI home page [linked to above] and his general real-life ugliness. And the Herald proves my point by giving Karen Guregian's story today the headline "Belichick's on hot seat.)

Anyway, the Patriots lost -- according to everything I've read and heard since I was at a wedding Sunday and didn't even watch the game -- because their offensive line performed poorly and the ridiculous catch by Giants wide receiver David Tyree that you can watch below.



Belichick will return, as will Moss and many, though probably not all, the key players and the Patriots will again win the divisional title next year. The conference title isn't a preposterous notion, either. They didn't complete their perfect season because the odds of actually being able to do so are just too slim, no matter how much talent there is. The other reason, circa 2008: If there's one I thing I learned about postmodernism, perfection is just too absolute to be able to exist in it.

Farewell, John Edwards

Edwards, I think, gets it: The greatest domestic crisis facing the U.S. is its growing income disparity, which only seems to be getting wider. This story from the Times late last year is astonishing. Quoting from the lede: "The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows." That seems as though it should be unfathomable, yet it actually happened. How the highest of the highest echelon creates these investment returns for themselves is unbeliveable, but that's another post.

Edwards understands there needs to be monumental emphasis nationwide on personal savings, higher education, responsible lending practices and decent wages so tens (hundreds?) of millions can feel more comfortable about their futures and their children's. Four months ago, if you asked for whom I would vote, I would have said him. (Purposefully not mentioning my preferred candidate now.)

But it seems as he realized Sens. Clinton and Obama were such celebrity candidates, the only way to break through their spotlight was by taking a harsh populist edge. His stump speech went from "Two Americas" to "Everything is driven by corporate greed and profit is bad," which just isn't the case. I think the video posted above, taken in Londonderry, N.H., in July, summarizes it well: He hits all those main policy points, but the stump language starts to take things in a weird direction. It veered further off course, in my opinion, starting around November and leading up to the Iowa caucus.

What Edwards does now seems unclear to me. He's quite wealthy from his days as a trial lawyer, but in terms of national pull/gravitas, he's a one-term senator whose two presidential and one vice-presidential bids came up short. Perhaps he creates his own advocacy and fundraising center -- didn't he direct some center on poverty at Duke University? -- but it probably sits on the outside of the limelight. Hopefully he finds something enjoyable because it's clear he doesn't want to do anything but be at the top of the top of the country's leadership.

Oh, and I won't post about politics next time, I promise.