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27.7.04
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IN LIEU OF REAL BLOGGING. Yes, I know, I keep promising & reneging, but this will just have to do.
In response to this article, I sent this email:
I certainly agree that we should debate US policy towards Israel and the Palestinians.
But Ray seems to be saying presumptively that US policy is simply wrong, and that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad was justified in murdering Americans because he disagreed with said policy.
Is this what you call debate? I call it stacking the deck.
I vill keep you posted.
Diana Moon
letterfromgotham.blogspot.com
I wonder if this "progressive" online 'zine will respond with a Victor Hansonish pro forma ("interesting thoughts"), or with something substantive? What do you think?
posted by Diana Moon @ 27.7.04
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26.7.04
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DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ART, but I'd say that Steve Sailer has it quite wrong here, at least as regards Spain in the 20th Century:
Latin America: The Cul-de-sac of Creativity -- My new VDARE column documents the traditional dreary lack of creativity in Latin American cultures and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the mother country of Spain, using data from the tables of significant scientists and artists in Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment....
For example, on the fact that Spain has not pulled its weight in Western Civilization for the last 300 years, consider the introduction to the famous book (and PBS series) Civilisation by Lord Kenneth Clark:
If I had been talking about the history of art, it would not have been possible to leave out Spain; but when one asks what Spain has done to enlarge the human mind and pull mankind a few steps up the hill, the answer is less clear. Don Quixote, the Great Saints, the Jesuits in South America? Otherwise she has simply remained Spain..
Modern art had notable Spanish input, and I think of one genre--Surrealism--as positively dominated by them, at least at the higher reaches. And if you don't think that Bunuel is a towering genius whose least works surpass the entire corpus of the hacks now infesting Hollywood, well, we haven't much to discuss.
As to why Surrealism would be a product of the Spanish mind, I leave that to Mr. Sailer to settle.
Regarding Bunuel, I'll say this: only a born Catholic could pull off his kind of revolutionary decadence. We Jews are just too earnest and optimistic and therefore, artistically disabled. You have to know that you are damned to produce the greatest art. Otherwise, why bother?
KNUCKLEHEADS. I'm late weighing in on the Cos controversy. Shorter version:
Cos is right. End of story.*
His use of the word "knuckleheads" made me giggle. It's the kind of word my dad would have used and therefore I have shunned it all my life but now I think I will use the word because it really does express the concept. Also an authoritative older man used it in a specific context so now when I use it people will know what I mean.
___________
*Further elucidation. I am on a bus about 15 or so years ago. A very sweet-looking pretty black girl about 10 or 11 is talking to another black girl. Sweet-looking pretty black girl is describing a boy named "Micah." The other girl says, "Michael?" "No," says the pretty girl. "Micah. You know--that tall nigger."
Right in front of me.
posted by Diana Moon @ 26.7.04
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24.7.04
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BLOGGER BURNOUT. I am suffering from blogger burnout too. Not so much the writing as the hyperlinking. Also the writing...
...I have downloaded the entire 9/11 report from Antiwar. I especially want to read the stuff about US policy towards Israel, and how that contributed to the attacks. (Is Sibel Edmonds now writing for Antiwar or are they getting her stuff from somewhere else?)
That's such a tough subject, so taboo, that I don't want to write about it until I can do it well, and I can't when I'm so burned out.
Suffice it to say for now that this issue is gonna come bursting out from around the dam soon. But right now it's still too hot to handle. Yesterday on Tucker Carlson he questioned "M" (Anonymous) about this directly but "M" parried the question. "M" was also on Charlie Rose and didn't deal with the issue forthrightly.
It's a dirty rotten job and someone's gotta do it. Before he went on a blog-break, Billmon vented a bit about this in uncharacteristically veiled terms ("special interests"). So did Jack Beatty of The Atlantic.
We have to start talking honestly about this, because when you don't, the crazies take over.
posted by Diana Moon @ 24.7.04
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FOREIGN MEN ARE SCARY. Further to the below post, I had a conversation with another blogger (who shall remain nameless) that proves this.
There's a stretch of Amsterdam Avenue between 100th Street and 106th Street that is, well, not very pleasant. I used to live on Broadway and 101st, and you know, I not once went there, even though I lived a block away. I directed my attention to Broadway and points west. It was as if the part of the nabe one block east didn't exist.
Well, time passed, crime rates dropped, I changed a few attitudes and I decided one day to walk from 79th to 111th Street on Amsterdam Avenue. I admit that I was a bit nervous between 101st and 106th Street. But I did it. I refused to walk one block to the west--out of my way--to accommodate silly, outdated fears.
Later on I had dinner with the unnamed blogger. He went to college in that area during the time period I lived at 101st Street and remembered the entire area as horrible, and that particular stretch as especially so. Which it was then. The area has become prime real estate now. It's completley out of sight. That little area, because of the projects, is a bit of a throwback.
He told me he wouldn't walk there. I thought that was an exaggerated fear, given current circumstances.
I thought it over and here are my conclusions. I still think his fears are exaggerated and that nothing will happen to him. But he's got a right to feel at greater risk than I do, because he's a guy. As a woman I may be less able to fend off attack, but I am also much less able to attract hostility.
People are territorial primates. When we talk about racism, about how white people fear to walk in certain areas and shun "persons of color," that's only one side of the story. The other side of the story is the fact that "persons of color" may not want their neighborhoods invaded by whites and will act accordingly. I attract hostile glances, or (more often) willful indifference (I am looking through you, not at you), sometimes sexual comments, but I'm not attacked. A white guy might well be.
posted by Diana Moon @ 24.7.04
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SURPRISE, SURPRISE. It seems that to some Annie Jacobsen has now become the kinder, gentler Ann Coulter. A reader sent me the reactions to the Jacobsen article in Salon.com (you'll have to click thru the ads yourself). Suffice it to say that I think most of the responses are of a piece with the Patrick Tyler article: nasty in-group insults with little rational analysis of what happened. This NatRev article treats the issue well. Yes. NatRev.
I screwed up a long post on this subject, which blogger ate, with my help. It was basically about what happens to the fear factor when you are in unfamiliar territory, which we all are now. Multiply that manyfold when you are in the prison/cage of a flight, sitting amidst a group of men who are of the same ethnicity as the people who used airlines as weapons not very long ago. Tell me if you would be frightened or not. Let's not panic. Let's not suspend civil liberties, but please, spare me the PC bullshit. We are all frightened of foreigners. It's encoded in our genes. Why is that so difficult to say out loud? OK, if you are running for President it is a stupid thing to say--and that may be the one thing I think Bush has done well, but I'm not running for anything so I'll say it.
Foreigners are scary. Foreign men particularly so.
posted by Diana Moon @ 24.7.04
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22.7.04
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"Don't blog angry," it is said.
But then, I'd never blog.
The post below was kind of an overreaction...
I'll refine my sentiments later. I thought of deleting it, but that would be dishonest.
posted by Diana Moon @ 22.7.04
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HYSTERICAL is a word that makes me hysterical. It's a word that men routinely use to denigrate women's perceptions, conclusions and feelings.
But make up your own minds. Read this and tell me whether it's a reasoned analysis or a bunch of cheap shots.
He makes one good point (panic is bad strategy), but they are buried in the middle of a barrage of nasty innuendo and illogic. (A case in point is his disagreement with "racial profiling" because Muslims come in all colors. I'd agree--they do. So let's do some religious profiling. Whatever the cause, whatever the reason, there's a war on between Islam and non-Islam, and it's suicidal to ignore the tactics of this war, which include killing non-combantants like you and me. It's impossible to addresss the root causes of this war if you are dead, or your society is in chaos.)
I didn't think that Jacobsen's piece was written in "grade school prose" and if seven Arab guys who made repeated trips to the can had gotten up in unison I'd have shat in my seat. Call me hysterical.
And how about this waste of words:
Late last summer I boarded a nonstop flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Newark, N.J. After taking my seat, I noticed that well over a hundred of my fellow passengers looked to be Muslims! Yes, that's the same faith adhered to by those dastardly perpetrators who knocked down our Trade Center and demolished part of the Pentagon. Not only that, but our aircraft, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, was registered and maintained by a company headquartered in a predominantly Muslim nation! What if the cargo holds had been stuffed full of anthrax or TNT by unscrupulous terrorists back in Kuala Lumpur!
Several passengers wore conservative Islamic dress -- men in white dishdashas; women concealed in full black burqa. Our plane contained a Muslim prayer enclave (for possible use by terrorists preparing for the throes of martydrom), and the seatback video displayed a graphic of the qibla, showing real-time distance and heading to Mecca. En route toward New York, dozens of Muslim passengers were seen socializing and using the lavatories, in some cases blatantly ignoring the illuminated seat-belt sign!
To my relief and utter astonishment, we landed safely (and on time).
What the fuck does this have to do with airline terrorism? With what happened on 9/11?
Nothing.
I don't think that Jacobsen was hysterical. Her fears were quite reasonable.
It turns out that the 14 Syrian musicians really were 14 Syrian musicians.
But you know, I don't give a flying fuck. The musicians were questioned--does Tyler object to that? Would they have been questioned if they were 14 Norwegian hardanger musicians?
After what happened on 9/11, my senses are heightened--as is the case with all of us.
posted by Diana Moon @ 22.7.04
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20.7.04
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CHECK THIS OUT. I saw it in the NY Times today. Reading the paper version sometimes pays off.
posted by Diana Moon @ 20.7.04
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15.7.04
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SORRY, but I'm just not into blogging nowadays.
However, I had to overcome my resistance to say that I think that George Bush should not be voted out of office.
He should be impeached, convicted and removed from office.
Since this may be the last thing I have to blog before the convention, I wanted those words to be the last ones on my blog till then:
George Bush should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office.
They say there are two sides to every issue...for the most part, that's true. But, logically doesn't that mean that there are two sides to the two sides issue? There aren't two sides to this issue.
George Bush should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office.
posted by Diana Moon @ 15.7.04
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11.7.04
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I drove around a section of the Catskills where my grandmother died, and where, some 90 years ago, my father was born on a little farm in Woodridge, New York. (The farm failed and the family moved to the slums of New York City, which I don't think they ever quite got over.)
It is very poor and heavily Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish. The old Broadway Danny Rose "Borscht Belt" culture may be gone but the ultra-Orthodox and Hasidim are thriving with astonishing vigor. Everywhere you look they have bungalow colonies, camps, and yeshivas. I caught one sign: "Visnitzer Yeshiva." (I don't know the spelling and in any case there isn't a standard one.) In Woodridge I just had to stop and buy a roll at the Heimishe Bakery. Then after I'd driven around some I saw Heimishe Bakeries everywhere. It seemed less of a novelty.
Even the shrubbery looked poorer than Orange County. What does God say, "you come from a poor county, you get less chlorophyll?"
A pretty emotional day.
posted by Diana Moon @ 11.7.04
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