George Kennan

In this article about George Kennan you can see how baggy human frailties create deep ambiguities of character. Kennan was Mr. Containment, creating a policy that served as the West's model in dealing with the Soviet Union.

Kennan had little hope by predisposition but his depressive personality sometimes did fit the circumstances — like paranoids who sometimes do have real enemies. But Kennan never seemed as large as the issues, his coagulated personality unable to fill the surrounding space.

The predicament of ordinary people seems not to have moved [Kennan] much. Lukacs quotes Kennan’s own memoirs to the effect that when the Wehrmacht marched into Prague, Kennan, then serving as a high-ranking diplomat, turned away the desperate Americans, “including a Jewish acquaintance,” who came to the American legation. Lukacs characterizes this nonchalance as “cold,” not “callous.” Is there a difference?

The reviewer says about Kennan something that is suggestive of the current strains of unexamined isolationism and exhausted retreat in the air:

After all, a low opinion of mankind, or a plain lack of sympathy for the mass of men, makes it easier to counsel restraint in the face of gross injustice. Similarly, a deeply ingrained pessimism makes inaction look wiser than action. Darfur? Best not. Kennan was fond of John Quincy Adams’s observation that Americans “do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” But sometimes we do; and the force that impels us to do so (the situation in Iraq notwithstanding) is not an ignoble one. We do, of course, need to do a better job of picking our monsters.

Sometimes though, the monsters pick us.

Interview(er)s

Jeff Jarvis is right on in his post about the “rules” of interviewing. The media has enjoyed a role of privileged gatekeepers but they should welcome collegial effort in an interview to arrive at substance rather than spin. It honors their profession to have the ideas being expressed by their subjects accurately reported.

Who says that reporters are in charge of interviews anymore? Why should they set terms? They are the ones who are seeking information.

Although journalists resent the tendentious intrusions of whatever media conglomerate provides them a venue they often spin stories wildly themselves. And when challenged hide behind free speech claims, saying the denotative is their sole aim, pretending words don't have connotative force.

One reason TV and radio interviews are popular is that people can hear the actual words and interpret the demeanor of the subject (and reporter) for themselves. Admittedly, people hear and see what they want, but at least there can be a foundationalist reality offered to the audience before the process of filling in the outlines of personal prejudice begins.

Desire

Leading the way in NYT articles that are getting longer and longer, with less and less grist, Natalie Angier's article on studies about the keys to sexual desire has some interesting factoids mixed with the numbingly obvious:

For example, 93 to 96 percent of the 655 [female] respondents strongly endorsed statements that linked sexual arousal to “feeling connected to” or “loved by” a partner, and to the belief that the partner is “really interested in me as a person”; they also concurred that they have trouble getting excited when they are “feeling unattractive.”

More of interest, Angier cites studies that indicate a reversal of conventional ideas:

A plethora of new findings, however, suggest that the experience of desire may be less a forerunner to sex than an afterthought, the cognitive overlay that the brain gives to the sensation of already having been aroused by some sort of physical or subliminal stimulus — a brush on the back of the neck….

Angier says that studies indicate that…

…with women, there’s a discrepancy between stated preference and physiological arousal, and this discrepancy has been seen consistently across studies.

There are some funny insights as well. Women scope the rags when shown sexually oriented material:

We got spontaneous reports from the women that we never got from the males, comments like “I would have liked the photos better if the people didn’t have those ridiculous ‘70s hairstyles”

The Queen

Stephen Frears' The Queen won some awards but it isn't his best movie. By a long shot. Focusing a movie around the wooden figurehead of Elizabeth II, even in her private moments a void, and then trying to squeeze some humanity out of her so the audience can empathize, seems a fool's errand. Movies that seek to anoint the honor of duty and offer the costs of repressed feeling as proof of great sacrifice require a central character with an interior life.

The dramatic core of the movie was the death of Diana, another poor calculation on Frears' part. The interest in the spectacle around Diana's death was in the calculus of the hive mind. If you want to see a Frears movie, see the excellent My Beautiful Laundrette.

The Wire Fini

Well, we have run the string of Netflix rentals of The Wire. Season 3, Episode 12 — Fini. Until the Season 4 DVDs are burned. When Omar and “bowtie man” hunt down Stringer, like two Fates who won't be denied, the mythic inevitability of it has the cool dramatic pull of a great Western.

My first impression of The Wire was of a well done, somewhat tendentious show — but it wasn't clear why it felt that way. Listening to David Simon's commentary on Episode 12 made it clear — he thinks he is doing a show about Iraq; but he isn't sure the audience “gets it”. When creative people talk condescendingly about the audience not getting it, it often means they aspire to a depth or meaning that really isn't present in the work. Simon's tiresome string of slogans dissing Bush and his favorite: the “war against the underclass”, makes Simon seem so lightweight he could levitate.

The Wire is a remarkable show. Simon should be proud. The acting is at the very highest level. The direction is wonderful — the quality of a really good movie. The writing isn't insulting — high praise for TV fare. But despite Simon's preening, this isn't Melville, Chekhov, Greek tragedy, or whatever his fluffing penchant invokes. Pellecanos is the best of the screenwriters. Richard Price's scripts often lose their way, going for ingratiatingly witty banter, much as he does when being interviewed on Fresh Air. Pellecanos has a hard edge, which fits well with the story-line. The very best thing about the show is the space it allows. Feeling is given room to develop and adhere to the characters and the situations in which they are embroiled. Great show; great TV show.

Analyzing the Analyst

Some suspect that many mental health professionals are often the ones most in need of their own services. This review of a book about a particularly dire case, a psychoanalyst named Masud Khan, makes you wonder why people can't see what is presented — why rep trumps cred?

According the reviewer the author is an enabler:

If I were a snob, a liar, a drunk, a philanderer, an anti-Semite, a violent bully, a poseur and a menace to the vulnerable, I would want Linda Hopkins to write my biography…But [the author] does not persuade me that English bigotry brought about his downfall…

Walter Mosley on Writing

The terror of creating art is the emptiness before you. The canvas, the piece of paper on which your novel begins, your symphony reveals its first resonance — in the beginning there was a nascent possibility. Writer Walter Mosley was on NPR talking about his book of advice to writers, which seems to recommend just writing. That is old advice — because it is wise. Years ago a writer named Peter Elbow wrote a book which principally recommended writing fast. Dive deep, past the caviling demons into your richer self.

Why advice to just make sure you write everyday, as Mosley advises, or do it fast? Because of the terror of the void, and the promise of release.

Vonnegut

Christopher Buckley on Lehrer offered Jonathan Swift's epitaph in discussing Kurt Vonnegut's death:

“He is now beyond the reach of the world's capacity to lacerate his indignant heart.”

From Vonnegut's irreverent Playboy interview:

This is a huge country. There are primitive tribes here and there who have customs and moral standards of their own. It's the way I feel about religious fundamentalists. They really ought to have a reservation. They have a right to their culture and I can see where the First Amendment would be very painful for them. The First Amendment is a tragic amendment because everyone is going to have his or her feelings hurt and your government is not here to protect you from having your feelings hurt.

The Departed

The Departed wouldn't be as big a disappointment if it were by another director. Martin Scorsese has built so much credibility — his public self is so warm and shy, so many of his movies admirable — you start by rooting for him. Scorsese must have thought he was making a Boston Irish Mean Streets when really he was stringing together stylish highly charged violent segments in a disjointed and soulless story. It is as though Tarantino's crude slickly wrought movies had issued a siren call bemusing Scorsese's better self — the lesser influencing the greater.

Years ago Pauline Kael knocked King of Comedy for having a sympathetic character steal an ashtray — a gratuitous dissing of the character. The Departed is a whole movie with that problem: a cold, humorless (but for Nicholson's witty performance) contraption. For Scorsese the simple icy pleasures of technique are now more engaging than the mysteries of the heart.

Sanjaya and American Idol

If you've wondered how Sanjaya has lasted so long on American Idol the network nightly news presented three theories a few days ago:

1. Indian call centers are flooding the vote.
2. Howard Stern has been trying to sabotage the show by promoting Vote for the Worst, a website which suggests that American Idol is not about singing but cheesy laughs at bad performers. So they figure they are helping the show along by keeping the worst for last…
3. Lots of young girls like Sanjaya.

It's fun to talk about the show, but the TV evening news is the only news for many — the subject is more appropriate for a journalist's blog. Journalists wonder why they are held in such low esteem by the public — 22 available minutes for national/international news and they squander time on Idol.

Man and Centaur

Periodically I thought I would go to different museum's websites just to see what's a doin'. Since I would travel about an hour each way on the weekends to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was growing up in New York that seemed a good place to start.

I got so involved cycling through their “daily featured work of art” that I didn't go much further today. Much like a trip to the awesome Met where you can spend hours in one gallery.

Look at this charming (and strikingly modern) Bronze man and centaur shown onsite to herald the opening of new Greek and Roman galleries. There is a graphical genius in this piece, reminiscent of much in African art.

Dewey's Story

Camille Paglia once said that pets often express the insane Id of their owners. If you are a runner you know what she is talking about.

But our love for animals does seem to open parts of the self that are clogged when interacting with our fellow bipeds. Whatever the reason, watching and talking about animals fascinates us — especially pets.

Apparently publishers agree because someone just sold a book proposal based on the story of Dewey, a cat who lived for nearly two decades in a library in Iowa. The proposal sold for $1.25 million.

Lecture Hall Musical

Usually pranks and practical jokes are perpetrated by people with no sense of humor but a shrewd sense of how to export their free floating hostility in a socially acceptable way.

A few pranks are harmless and even pretty funny. Here is one @ YouTube where a student (and compatriots) turns a lecture hall into a musical stage. The prof handled it very well.