BBC Newsnight are running a weekly feature visiting various families in a little Virginian town called Culpepper. It will follow their views and opinion on the run-up to November’s US Elections.
It’s not the most interesting thing in the world, I must be honest but one thing did strike me. One of the ladies, a democrat, was asked if she would vote for Hillary Clinton. She replied that she probably wouldn’t because she thinks that it’s a job that requires a man, simple as that. She continued that there are just some jobs and decisions that she would rather see a man making.
It’s important to understand that this woman wasn’t a weak and submissive bonnet wearing 50s throwback, she was a smart professional go-getter. On further investigation they found this view to be not unrepresentative. I was very surprised, but then it hit me… they never had Mrs Thatcher. I just can’t imagine even the most misogynistic Briton or even European saying those things and the reason is surely Thatcher. It’s a whorey old cliché, but the best thing she ever did for women was becoming PM and then being a war-mongering tough-talking union-bashing battle-axe. No women in this country ever need to worry about being labelled weak and emotional just because of their sex… or at least you’d think.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices. - William James
It’s a difficult thing, but I have more respect for commentators, bloggers, politicians and pub philosophers who can step back some times and find something good to say about the person, country, party, tribe they usually disparage.
I’m not saying that we need to look at Hitler and say, well he built good roads (though he did), but we need to be able to see that people aren’t caricatures and by and large are just trying to do the right thing as they see it. Here’s a couple of obvious ones in the news at the moment (QM with his finger on the zeitgeist!)
A while ago when all the chat about whether or not Prince Harry should go to Iraq a number of commentators (not mentioning names… Guardian CIF!) waxed lyrical about how the rich and privileged never send their kids to war and what a rouse and public relations stunt it was to suggest that he was ever going to go. Skip forward 3-4 months and these same people are talking about how selfish it is for him to go, and sneering at him ‘playing soldiers’ and gung-ho bombing of Afgans etc. My respect drains from these people, it’s easy to find a job as a professional cynic these days.
The other one is President Bush’s African Legacy. I’m on board with the “GWB is/was a disaster of a pres” narrative. But, it is undeniable (read Geldof is Time this week) that his contribution to the plight of Africa has been greater than any president before him… and in fact there’s a reasonable argument that his contribution has and will lead to millions and millions of lives being changed and saved…which, it could be argued, dwarfs the legacy of his aggression abroad and right wing agenda at home. It sticks in the thoat of those who dispise him (most people!) but it doesnt mean it shouldnt be said.
In this information overload of an age are we now incapable of understanding nuance? Is all we want to be told… This person is the devil incarnate!! And this person is a magnificent saviour!! Questions questions questions…
A bit of classic West Wing, from the final series… the worst series certainly… but still great.
This episode was actually broad cast live, apparently they only had a basic script and pretty much did a live debate… it was great at the time, and is still pretty good on YouTube. I think i ended up wanting Vinick to win the election in the end, which said a lot that the show managed to keep ‘the oposisition’ so likable.
Its poor blogging to chat about stuff you saw on TV, it says something about a life wasted. But i am what i am.
There were two nice happy happy documentaries on last night, both set in the late seventies. The first was a Storyville special about the Jonesville Suicide death cult and the other was a historical look at America’s involvement in Afghanistan - which is topical I suppose with the release of the movie ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’.
First to Jonesville - this was one of the most depressing things I’ve seen. To give some background, Jim Jones was a cult leader/preacher in America in the late 70s who led a church called the People’s Temple. It was thousands strong, multi racial and counter cultural. A lot of the services were filmed, giving us lots of material of ‘healings’ and conversions and euphoric people selling their homes to give money to the church. Jim Jones then had a great idea to set up a new town in the South American rain forest and bring all his followers there. To cut a long story sort it all went sour when a congressman flew out there to investigate them (with some reporters)… all seemed idyllic until a couple of the members started passing notes to the reporters asking to be rescued… when they tried to leave Jones’ men shot and killed them along with the congressmen. This was all caught on film as one of the cameramen who died left his camera running.
It was gruelling to watch, especially then Jones then gathered up the 1000 people and told them that they would all have to die, and supplied the cyanide. There were no pictures of this but everything was taped through the PA system, letting us hear babies being wrestled from their mothers and poisoned, people pleading for their lives and ultimately the silence when everyone was dead. Three people survived by running into the jungle, and they told the story as we listened to the soundtrack. Gruelling. I’m not all that emotional or sentimental but I had to go and wake my baby son up to give him a hug after watching it - of course making him cry for the next half hour, doh!
Next was the retrospective from Afghanistan. This got my gander up a bit (always helpful when it comes to blogging). Some people have such a selective remembering of history, and are so accusing and self-righteous when using their 20/20 hind sight. In the late 70s when the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear holocaust which would have rendered the entirety of human progress and charity meaningless, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to set up a puppet communist regime. America decided to fund and assist the Afghan freedom fighters, a no-brainer really. But the narrative of this program seemed to be that American was stupid and immoral for backing the likes of Bin Laden and are now reaping a deserved whirlwind. Most of the interviewees were from countries who decided to spend their money on nicer hospitals and social welfare, and let bad old America step up to the plate of saving the world (hyperbole a go-go).
Anyway… this is too long a rant. All I’ll say is… if you travelled back in time to 1980 and told people that the Afghans they funded in the war against the USSR will turn on you after the year 2000, and you’ll get some problems with terror attacks, and a few thousand will be killed in New York. They would have run around the pentagon high-fiving saying… you mean we averted nuclear war!!?
The series is almost over, so it seems a bit late for a recommendation…. but Flight of the Conchords on BBC3, is very very funny.
From a shabby apartment on the Lower East Side, the friends spend their days seeking gigs for their digi-folk act, Flight of the Conchords (New Zealand’s “fourth most popular folk act”) in a bid to break onto the world stage.
Mid 1999, everyone was talking about what to do for the millennium. I think new years is always a bit of a let down, I always feel that I should be doing something more exciting than I actually am, so the millennium bought added internal pressure. As is usual, by early December I’d still no idea what I was going to do, bars were charging massive entry frees, anything remotely different and exciting was already booked up, so it was looking more and more like we were going to be ‘going around to someone’s house’.As soon as this realisation had set in, my mate Grumpy Man decided to lead a last ditch effort, “let’s just go down to the travel agents and see what there is, just to see”. Neither of us had any money, but we did have newly minted credit cards, which is as good as money, right?
Our first thoughts were to go somewhere obscure, Eastern Europe, Africa or Russia. Right from the off the nice travel agent lady was strangely open to the idea. We’d assumed she’d laugh at us and say ‘don’t be silly, everything was booked up a year ago’. But quite the contrary, she said people assumed everything was too dear and booked up, so no one asked.
There was a flight to Moscow on the 28th returning on the 2nd for about £300 (I think). So we thought ‘what the heck! Let’s do it!’ we didn’t book right away, we went for a walk around town to chat about it and phone people to see who would go (we were thinking 3 or 4 of are mates would definitely be up for it). To our great disappointment, no one seemed interested.
It was disappointing, but we decided we’d just go ourselves. We went back to the travel shop and right away we noticed something about an Aer Lingus deal to New York. We joked with the lady about it, saying phew, I bet that’s dear, millennium in Times Square! She nodded and looked up the price for the laugh - £400!
£400, 5 days in New York for the millennium! We couldn’t believe it. We’d heard of people spending thousands on things like this. (It goes without saying that neither of us HAD £400, but when you’ve got a credit card what’s the difference between £-300 and £-400… right?). New York, Times Square, for new years, for THE new years, too much to pass up.
[Coming soon "what happened in New York"... including ill-advised Greenwich Village tattoo story - possibly with pictures]
All I’ve got so far is a title… I’m awaiting inspiration
Premise: Most times it seems people are more comfortable being in a majority, group experiments have shown (as in, I saw it on a documentary once!) that people will say they the most ridiculous things which they know to be untrue, just because everyone else in the group says it. Other times though people seem to strive to be considered ‘different’. I think its rare that people strive to be in a minority of one, but as far as music, culture and society go the smaller the subculture the better, and when a music group or cultural totam becomes too popular and ‘mainstream’ people abandon it for this very reason (although they rarely admit it). Why?
Obviously at the moment it seems like a silly question, and its hard to look to the future and see a time, when it would be anything other than that. But, is there scenario which would see the Iraq war being looked back on as, although mismanaged and very painful, worth it?
The Vietnam war is largely looked back on as a disastrous mistake, but the Korean war is largely looked back on as a painful necessity. Both had similar goals of halting Communist aggression, and both had major casualties. Counted in hundreds of thousands, rather than the hundreds and thousands of the Iraq war.
I know that there is a seriously dodgy ethic when it comes to ‘imposing’ democracy, but if a reasonably stable and prosperous Iraqi democracy emerges in the next five to ten years, will history look back on the war differently?
I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries recently about the Independence movement in India, and been struck by the turmoil, uncertainty and recriminations at the time. With almost a million people dying in the Muslim/Hindu fighting that followed the formation of Pakistan. The wounds of Independence have taken decades to heal, and looking back I’m sure many people would have done many things differently. But at the end of the day, India is emerging as a stable, reasonably peaceful free democracy. Can Iraq be the same? And can it’s success spread throughout the region? Am i ridiculously optimistic?
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN is one of my favourite commentators. His book, The world is flat, is probably my favorite book of the last few years. Not exactly laugh a minute, but I’m a bit of a politics/tech/economics/future geek
BBC Newsnight are running a weekly feature visiting various families in a little Virginian town called Culpepper. It will follow their views and opinion on the run-up to November’s US Elections. 
view to be not unrepresentative. I was very surprised, but then it hit me… they never had Mrs Thatcher. I just can’t imagine even the most misogynistic Briton or even European saying those things and the reason is surely Thatcher. It’s a whorey old cliché, but the best thing she ever did for women was becoming PM and then being a war-mongering tough-talking union-bashing battle-axe. No women in this country ever need to worry about being labelled weak and emotional just because of their sex… or at least you’d think.
First to Jonesville - this was one of the most depressing things I’ve seen. To give some background, 
when it comes to blogging). Some people have such a selective remembering of history, and are so accusing and self-righteous when using their 20/20 hind sight. In the late 70s when the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear holocaust which would have rendered the entirety of human progress and charity meaningless, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to set up a puppet communist regime. America decided to fund and assist the Afghan freedom fighters, a no-brainer really. But the narrative of this program seemed to be that American was stupid and immoral for backing the likes of Bin Laden and are now reaping a deserved whirlwind. Most of the interviewees were from countries who decided to spend their money on nicer hospitals and social welfare, and let bad old America step up to the plate of saving the world (hyperbole a go-go).
Anyway… this is too long a rant. All I’ll say is… if you travelled back in time to 1980 and told people that the Afghans they funded in the war against the USSR will turn on you after the year 2000, and you’ll get some problems with terror attacks, and a few thousand will be killed in New York. They would have run around the pentagon high-fiving saying… you mean we averted nuclear war!!?
someone’s house’.As soon as this realisation had set in, my mate 
£400, 5 days in New York for the millennium! We couldn’t believe it. We’d heard of people spending thousands on things like this. (It goes without saying that neither of us HAD £400, but when you’ve got a credit card what’s the difference between £-300 and £-400… right?). New York, Times Square, for new years, for THE new years, too much to pass up.
Just when you think Fox News can’t get any worse. They imply that Al Qaeda might be responsible for the California fires.
but the Korean war is largely looked back on as a painful necessity. Both had similar goals of halting Communist aggression, and both had major casualties. Counted in hundreds of thousands, rather than the hundreds and thousands of the Iraq war.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN is one of my favourite commentators. His book, 