Ciceronian Review

Sister Palin

News of the day, of course, is Palin.  The announcement takes a good bit of wind out of the reporting on Obama's speech, which is a help to McCain in the short term.  But, Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend seems to me a pretty poor choice.  I would not expect people to t watch the news or read the papers over a long weekend - is there something special about this Friday afternoon? 

Hard to say much about her.  There is a great deal of favorable response among women Clinton supporters.  Take a look at TalkLeft for example, or the Clinton forum.  It is impossible to tell whether any of that stays over the next couple of weeks.  One reason is that there is not a lot of precedent for tracking the behavior.  Ferraro did not peal off Republican women, but that was a long time ago and the demographic was not notably woman-identified or feminist.  Clinton's more vociferous supporters are a good deal more feminist, and a fair portion pretty plainly support her and now care about Palin because of sex.  (Certainly at least as good a reason to support someone as where they live.)  There is not much policy overlap, so any shift would have to be explained some other way.  That explanation - vote for a woman - is no worse than lots of other reasons people cast ballots.  Advertising differentiation is not aimed at a reasoned decision.

In any event, I don't think Palin ultimately adds much to McCain and does not cure or mitigate the problems he and his campaign face.  One of McCain's problems is that he had serious difficulty getting 10,000 to turn out for the Dayton event, and ultimately failed to fill even that small space.  He has others, but that is the one that should be keeping the team up at night.  (I don't think elections are much about policy -- too few have any idea what policies the candidates advance, for one thing.) 

Palin makes no difference to me because I will not vote for McCain.  Folks in the undecided encampment?  Who knows.  My first line of attack is to describe the VP as a heartbeat away, and ask if she is that person.  Nothing more, no need to talk about the career. 

Can't help but think of Battlestar Gallactica.

Structurally, the election favors Obama still.    

Chisolm's Trail

Last night was the first time in 16 years I watched more than a few minutes of a convention.  When I was young, I watched as much as I could, but from Carter on the conventions were of little interest to me.  I wasn't planning on watching much at all.  I turned on the CNN coverage (which was being recorded) just as they interviewed John Lewis.  I am a sap -- it brought tears to my eyes.  I am not quite so old as Rep. Lewis, but old enough to remember just what he was talking about.  People my age went to segregated schools in the South, and parts elsewhere.  The vague history of the Civil Rights movement and anti-war movements are part of my memories.  Thus moved.  I remember Shirley Chisolm's nomination from the floor.  So played the coverage from the beginning of the night.  In the context of the theater of the convention, I thought Sen. Clinton performed admirably, and her cast of the New York vote to confirm Obama's nomination was delightful.  Bill gave a fine speech, and so did Biden.  Oddly, I thought Kerry gave the best speech he has ever given -- too bad he could not do such when he ran.  But that is the past that is not so interesting to me.  There are many respects in which the politics of Democrats and Republicans are in close convergence, especially on financial and trade issues.  All the same, there are also differences that matter greatly.  I am glad it is Lyndon Johnson's party that is the first of the two to present a Black nominee.  I am glad John Lewis and his cohort are here, and it is their party.  It has taken some time.  Shirley Chisolm and Bob Moses and Viola and, well, I don't know even a tiny portion of them or their names, made this way on.  It's their trail. 

Navel Politics

The world of serious political commentary (from Larry King last night; my emphasis):

DRIVER: You know, I think it's interesting. She gave her and her husband a little bit of a pat on the back, saying that out of the three elections that Democrats were elected, her and her husband were on two of those. And so she gives her little pat on the back and then she rolls it over to Obama.

Out of the two, I really felt that Hillary is treating Obama with respect. She angles her belly button toward him. She's treating him with respect. She has her hands in a fig leaf position, which tends to be a passive position, really turning the power over to Obama. We face our belly buttons and the core of our body to people we like, have affinity toward and people we respect. And she's doing it.

KING: Dr. Sophy?

SOPHY: I tend to agree. But let's also look at the fact that this is a woman who has had many years of being poised and practiced at this for her husband in many different ways. So I think it's just natural for her to be respectful and poised.

So, you know, I don't know if that really means that's what she feels, but I definitely think that she's had practice at it.

Well, to be paid well to be an idiot -- not a bad gig.  This commentary is as dimwitted as I have ever seen.  When you talk to someone face to face your belly button faces them.  So too when you yell at the person you are facing -- oh, yes, facing someone.  And, my god, Clinton practiced a nationally televised speech?!  One tell that from her fig-like hands and wandering belly button?  Or is it the fact that it is a nationally televised speech by a (now) professional politician?  

Dog Talk

School has started up in Zion (why start school the week before Labor Day weekend?).  Dog does not quite approve of the returning lines of children marching past his domain.  They have been away for the summer and he is not happy about the resumption.  So, being the dog he is, he barks at the children as they pass.  Some of the children do not take well to this, and think that if they talk to the dog they can convince him to stop barking.  By which, I mean they try to engage the dog in a reasoned discussion, telling him how nice they are and that they like him and so on.  In the past, when I have seen this, I told the kids he did not speak English - he only speaks Japanese and French.  Crestfallen looks, as apparently they had high hopes of a conversation with the dog.  I understand how small children could be under the impression that a dog understands a language -- but this works for adults as well.  People try to have conversations with the dog, to convince him to be nicer.  Eventually, I have to tell them he is just a dog, and dog's don't talk to people, doesn't know any language at all. 

Not that he cannot communicate effectively.  When he does not like someone touching his fence, he expresses the thought pretty effectively.  And if the person is dense or inattentive, the message becomes louder, both in volume and number of signals. 

Better Than A Cruise

Poets complain that the public pays too little attention to them and their work. But there are poetry cruises -- Poetry Workshops at Sea, week-long voyages through waves and waves. And a remarkable number of publications. When I see the complaints, I wonder if anyone making them reads the adverts in the magazines, and how come there are no history or philosophy cruises. At least until now. The London Review has the following advert in the August 14 edition: "PHILOSOPHY WEEKEND Spend a weekend in a country house hotel discussing philosophy with two of Britain’s leading philosophers . . ." Topics include the nature of consciousness, nature of space and time, etc. And, best of best: "It is equally suitable for those who have and those who have not studied philosophy in the past. . . .So the discussion willbe neither technical nor superficial." So pretty much everyone can attend. It is in beautiful Teasdale; near Fawlty Towers perhaps? Tim Craine and Barry Dainton are the enterprising duo running the show. Anyway, notwithstanding any of that, Philsophy has its weekend retreat -- up next will be week-long aesthetics course in Tuscany. Which might be the right thing after all.

Right Coast

Right Coast is pretty off in the right-handed woods, but there are still living things out in that wilderness.  Rappaport has it right about Ahmadinejad.  Back when Ahmandinejad spoke at Columbia, it seemed to me that all the brouhaha was misguided, at best.  I did not think it a bad thing particularly to have him speak at Columbia.  (Would it make sense to refuse an invitation to Putin?  Or Li Peng?)  And I thought it silly to complain about how rude Bollinger was.  (That complaint is in line with thinking it is worse to be rude to a public official than to comment on the fact that the official is lying.)  The wrong part was in the introduction itself -- Bollinger claimed that Ahmandinejad was a dictator (or about to become one), and a great danger and so on.  The guy does not and never will run Iran.  The fellow who matters in Iran is Khamenei.  Whether Iran negotiates on nuclear issues, builds a delivery system and a nuclear weapon is not decided by Ahmandinejad, but by Khamenei and his Council.  Ahmandinejad may be a public face, but he is not terribly important.

One of the entertaining things about Right Coast is that there is something amusing about a bunch of anti-intellectual intellectuals all tenured professors at a California university none of whom actually do anything of any practical value, and some of whom became academics for that very reason.  Not saying hypocritical, just puts a little pink light over it all.  Would not mind the life myself.

Pummelling

As they have all week, Russia said again that it would be pulling out of Georgia.  Looks just like a lie.  For its part, Georgia, or its President, continues to act a fool, declaiming what Georgia will and will not permit.  The obvious fact is that Georgia has no real ability to do anything about anything, and persisting in pretending otherwise is not in the helpful category.  There is an interesting and quite informative discussion of some of the background at Fistful of Euros.  I suggest scrolling back for additional commentary.  I don't line up with them and they don't quite line up as a group.  I particularly liked the history - I had completely forgotten the the Balkan War.  I had also forgotten that air supply to NATO in Afghanistan is through Russian airspace.  Interesting that we have all gotten so intertwined. 

One wonders what it will look like in a year or two, once the short term political show ends.  The great slogan of Tianamin Square comes to mind:  Stupid Old Men Resign. 

Beijing Quiet

China is meeting its commitment to the Olympic Committee on human rights issues, sort of.  China has set up three parks for protesters to use to present their complaints to the world.  All reports are that the parks have been very quiet.  China permits demonstrations and protests, with a police permit, and the locations are in Beijing.  But everyone who applies for a permit is promptly arrested and a number have been sent off under administrative detention.  A couple of 70 year old women just got sentenced to hard labor for disrupting social relations by applying to the police for a permit to demonstrate.  And the old farmer who wanted to demonstrate about corruption, he was promptly shipped home and then disappeared.  With no permit, of course, the demonstration is just a crime, and off to jail one goes.  (Do the foreigners get deported or imprisoned?)  As there have been no demonstrations by Chinese at the designated locations (or anyone else as far as I can tell), must be things are grand.  I don't know if foreigners can get permits for demonstrations or not.  I would guess not, but one never knows.

Dog Day

OSTEoSARCOMA: A LOVE POEM BY YVONNE ZIPTER For Easton, Zooey, and Nacho Cancer loves the long bone, the femur and the fibula, the humerus and ulna, the greyhound’s sleek physique, a calumet, ribboned with fur and eddies of dust churned to a smoke, the sweet slenderness of that languorous lick of calcium, like an ivory flute or a stalk of  Spiegelau stemware, its bowl bruised, for an eye blink, with burgundy, a reed, a wand, the violin’s bow — loves the generous line of  your lanky limbs, the distance between points A and D, epic as Western Avenue, which never seems to end but then of course it does, emptying its miles into the Cal-Sag Channel that river of waste and sorrow. I’ve begun a scrapbook: here the limp that started it all, here your scream when the shoulder bone broke, here that walk to the water dish, your leg trailing like a length of   black bunting. And here the words I whispered when your ears lay like spent milkweed pods on that beautiful silky head: Run. Run, my boy-o, in that madcap zigzag, unzipping the air. Source: Poetry (May 2008). I like this for good and bad reasons.  'boy-o" is what I call my dog from time to time, when we are playing certain games.  Makes him sound a bit Irish, which is not a bad thing for a dog of his kind (namely, smart).  Also because I have been worrying a little about him - he has new behaviors which do not go with the monster of even a year ago.  No evidence of any kind that he has a cancer, but close enough for civilian work.  And dead, thinking about dead, so a piece of a theme.

Sporting Life

The Olympic extravaganza brings out all sorts of oddities.  The WSJ prints the quadrennial idiotic claim that nationalistic cheering is being suppressed.  Like books about baseball, that trope should be barred for eight years.  The entertaining part are the sports -- there are always new sports or sports I had forgotten about and don't understand.  Winter Games have the ski around in circles and shoot things competitions and ice dancing.  (I wonder if ballroom is an event in the Summer Games?)  Over the weekend I have watched some sculling, which was compelling.  And field hockey and horse dancing and team handball and some others.  Field hockey was a mystery -- there are circles inside which one can (or cannot?) shoot?  Did not see enough of the game to figure out the rules.  Horse dancing.  I found that a weird sport.  Looks like the horse has to memorize the routine and the rider just sits tall.  Must be more to it, but that is how it looked.  The horses were gorgeous.  The riders, not so much in silly formal wear.  I wonder if we will get agility competition for dogs next.  It is a bit more interesting and the dogs are far more entertaining.  I wonder how the horse dancing remains in the  the Olympics given the pressures on time, etc. 

The whole process of selecting sports for the Games must be quite interesting.  Sailing is in, and sailboarding too I think.  I wonder if para-surfing is in now?  Is surfing?  I would guess not if the host is a place like London or Beijing -- or do they just zip off to a beach?  They have to go out of the city for the sailing anyway.  I wonder if motocross is in.