Volume 57

MARCH 2009

57. 5:      L’ETAT C’EST NOUS!      3.26.2009

The French had the right idea in 1789. That statement alone ought to royally piss off those right wing hypocrites who concocted “freedom fries” so they could keep up the fat content in their couch potato asses. People like to forget that the French helped us drive off the Brutish Empire (and gave us many kinds of cheese), but just because they decided not to send the flower of their your into George Bush’s Iraq Cuisinart they are now “not with us,” hence, in Bushian simplicities “agin us.” They have also given us some fascinating history and some Enlightenment philosophers who have enlightened our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We had our war of independence and our Civil War but because we never quite got to the aristocracy like the French did, we did not have a revolution that was like the French Revolution. I, for one, have always been proud of the fact that we Americans never went on a killing purge of he royalists after our revolution (of course, like the French in WWII, there were a lot of people who claimed to be in le resistance).

But maybe we have reached that stage in our own history when it is time for a bit of “royalist” house cleaning. All the essential elements of the French Revolution are present in America today. One, we have Bastilles all over the place. Prisons are one of our biggest industries, building and operating prisons that are filled mostly with people who were caught carrying a few ounces of “controlled substances,” our contemporary equivalent of some poor sap who stole a loaf of bread back in 18th Century France and got to become another Jean Valjean. We also have Guantanamo.

So stage one is to have a Bastille Day where we let a lot of screwed, angry people out of prisons, making room for a lot people who need to replace them—(not necessarily in any order of deservedness) people like Dick Cheney and his neo-con pals, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove . . . well, there’s quite a few in that administration, then on to the Wall Street crowd, after all we can’t let poor Bernie Madoff die of loneliness. Madoff would have been the perfect contemporary Marat, sitting in a Jacuzzi in one of his several homes faking stock transactions, and some Charlotte Corday who has seen her life savings disappear in less time than it takes to say “Ponzi scheme” shows up with a kitchen knife and eviscerates the bastard. Marat had a skin disorder that kept him in the tub; Madoff had a skin disorder that kept him skinning his victims.

Remember the sans-culottes? The term, meaning knee-breeches, came to be a reference for the poor and the working classes. Well, we have our contemporary equivalent in the sans-401Ks, those people who thought they would have some of their hard-earned money around to see them through their retirement years, but which the Wall Streeters played fiddled with their sans-knowing, or unscrupulous lenders sold them sub prime mortgages when they had sans-income to cover the adjustables and balloon payments. The sans-401Ks need to hit the streets and haul these con men out of their offices and beat the bejeeezus out of them until they sign over their commissions and bonuses.

It would also be a good time to haul out the old Guillotine, put a good edge on the blade, and engage is some decapitation—or would that be de-capitalist-ization? A little divertisement for the jobless and homeless. There could be dozens, not just one, Mesdames deFarges, maybe single mothers who don’t have health care for their children, knitting and calling for more heads as the charrettes, the tumbrils that used to haul both the guilty and the innocent clatter through the streets of Washington and Wall Street to the Guillotine. Bush W as Louis XVI (but not accepting is fate with as much dignity)—off with his head! Condi Rice is the place of Marie Antiionette, and throw in handmaidens Dana Perino, Karen Hughes, and Harriet Miers, and for good measure, Coulter and Malkin—off with their empty heads! Instead of Danton we can have the head of Rumsfeld, still mouthing “stuff happens,” as the blade whistles down, and the contemporary Robespierre, none other than “le Dick” Cheney, now there is a rolling head that will indeed bring a roar from the slavering crowd. Cheer on the sanguinary entertainments ye Iraq war amputees and PTSDs. Off with their heads! Let the charrettes role through bloody puddles into the place, carrying Delay, Lott, McConnell, Boehner, Scalia, Thomas, and the rest of the Republican rogues.

But any revolution worthy of the term must go broad and deep. There are those others who abetted the titled aristocracy—the ministers. Also rolled into our American Place del Concorde to face their comeuppance must be the likes of Fed reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, still trying to get one more interest rate reduction in place before he is strapped down to receive the blade. He would be followed by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who would be uttering, “I regret that have but one seventy billion dollar bailout to give without any restrictions to my friends at Goldman Sachs.” Let the cobbles of Wall Street be cleansed with their blood!

While we are at it, let the angry mobs of retribution haul to the blade those hypocrites who gave their pious blessings to the ancien regime: the Dobsons and Warrens and Robertsons, and their secular counterparts, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity and their enabler, the graspy Mr. Murdoch.

Finally, Mr. Bush must be called to account. Some will protest, as his tumbril, “Charrette One” rolls through the streets, that he was just a simpleton marionette who dangled at the strings of the sinister “Monsieur le Dick.” But no, this time there will be no escaping responsibility as his did for his business failures and his “so-called” military service. It is time for George to pay up. So as he is strapped down before the dripping blade, a banner announcing La Mission Fait Accompli fluttering overhead, we might hopefully hear these fateful words, a la Sidney Carton, “It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done.”
_________________________________________________________
© 2009, James A. Clapp

57. 4:      DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND HONG KONG     3.18.2009

No, I don’t mean in the Orwellian sense; I mean, more prosaically, down the stairs and out the door. My point of view here is less existential (although not entirely so) and more spatial. It is about that fundamental component of the urban fabric—the neighborhood. It is a minor exposition of the subject from the perspective of living experiences in two of my favorite cities: Paris and Hong Kong.

In the true urban neighborhood one typically lives at higher densities (and hence altitude) and enjoys in return—just down the stairs and out the door—the greater accessibility to the necessities and luxuries of the well-appointed land uses of the authentic urban neighborhood. I have lived in a few such places, but two experiences stand out: my tenure in the Gobelin area of Paris’s treizième, where I lived in a little street, and maybe even the same building, that was the home of Ho Chi Minh. (Oui, c’est vrai; a street called Villa de Gobelin. That probably explains to some of my friends my leftist politics.) I was teaching at the University of Paris at the time, a post that allowed me plenty of time to be a flaneur in the neighborhoods of the city.

The other experience has been several stays in an area of Hong Kong called Sheung Wan, hard by the Central district of the city, but a true indigenous Chinese neighborhood (albeit one in danger of being gentrified out of existence). Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Chinese republic once lived on the edge of this neighborhood, not that a good neighborhood requires such a political pedigree (although I can’t help but mention that I spent some childhood years riding my tricycle past the door of the house of suffragette Susan B. Anthony in Rochester, New York, less than a dozen doors from where I lived. Does that explain my feminism?)

There are some common elements to these two experiences, language being one of them. I spoke enough French in Paris to be able to “get by” in the neighborhood. In Hong Kong I have a very limited vocabulary of Cantonese, but then there is the colonial residue of English that is spoken by some Chinese residents, so the communication quotient is about even in both places. But the similarities that make a true neighborhood transcend language and other aspects of culture; they relate to land use location and arrangement.

Paris                                                  

My studio was so small I could take the coffee from the hot plate without getting out of bed. To sit on the toilet required sliding one of my legs under the sink. The flat has a “balcony,” but it was only eighteen inched wide, more for appearance than functionality (good for underwear dying though). My desk and dinner table were the same small piece of furniture.

I bring this up because, often, this cramped existence is commonplace in older cities. Hence, the ameiliorating features of the immediate neighborhood become of greater importance. Sidewalks, piazzas, cafés and markets come to serve as public spaces of convivial encounter, substituting as parlors and living rooms, the city becomes an extension of the home. At the bottom of my building in Villa de Gobelin, at its corner with the Boulevard de Gobelin is a café-tabac where I can grab a quick café espress at the comptoir. A few feet away is a journeaux stand that sells my International Herald Tribune and the thick PariScope that lists all the films playing in Paris for the month. A dash across the street to the patisserie-boulangerie and I can obtain a fresh baguette and a croissant d’almond. The market is less than a bundred yards in one direction, with a laverie next door, and the bureau de poste is the same distance in the other. There are movie theaters, stationary stores and libraries (book shops) and a couple of banks all along the street that are interspersed with brasseries and various other cafes and restaurants. A taxi stand is right at my corner, as is a bus stop, and the Gobelin Metro station is two blocks north, making all Paris accessible with my Carte Orange, a monthly pass to the Metro and buses.

This might not be everyone’s idea of ideal urban living, but the cramped space of a studio flat excepted, it is mine—a local neighborhood of many indigenous land uses at neighborhood scale (not Wal Mart and Costco scale), with variety and the possibility of familiarity. Every shopkeeper might not be smiling and solicitous, but even in a place that can be as fussy and unforgiving as Paris, there comes, after some time and repetition, some reserved recognition that you are “of the neighborhood.” You are still the etranger, but this urban context is as close as one gets to being not a traveler, but a guest. Then comes one day when some other “stranger,” from Lyons, or Rheims or Bordeaux, asks you as you are abroad in the “hood”: “Excusez moi, monsieur, ou est la mairie?” And you reply in French that makes them wonder where the hell they are; but with confidence and correctness, directing them to the town hall like somebody who knows the neighborhood.

Hong Kong                                            

My most recent tenure in Hong Kong made me more acutely aware of the benefits of spatial compression of the urban neighborhood. Limping from a recent accident on my moped in San Diego, the distances between things was of more than usual concern. But here, again, proximity of the daily necessities of urban life. My flat is again munchkin-sized (about 500 sq. ft.), but quite serviceable because immediately down stairs and out the door are my most immediately needed land uses. One block to the left is the Pacific Coffee café that serves as an “office” when I need to meet with someone. A block in the other direction is the Hong Kong idea of a supermarket, something quite smaller than we are used to (even the carts are miniaturized) and on two floors. My bank is a block further on and the Post Office one more, beside a plaza where old people who have shopped at the adjacent public market and community service building congregate. If I turn left in leaving my building, I can, by means of a pedestrian crossover reach a small park beside the harbor, ideal for reading and watching the harbor traffic. All of this is within the orbit of a couple of football fields.

A special feature of my Hong Kong neighborhood there are some narrow lanes chocked with little booths that comprise the equivalent of the venerable, but now extinct, Five and Dime store of yesteryear. All sorts of necessary little sundries and gadgets—you name it, lights, locks, batteries, powerstrips, nuts and bolts, sewing materials, housewares and underwear, shoes and sandals, baskets and bags—and you can have business cards printed, cops made, you name, they got it or can get it in minutes. It is a compressed bazaar of shops crammed into booths not much larger than a London phone box and usually operated by a elderly Chinese who is often engaged in a steady stream of indecipherable Cantonese banter with his neighbors. One day I take my watch to the repairman who probably has occupied the corner spot for decades. I mime that it has lost the little pin that fixes the band to the watch and he reaches for a greasy little box with a bizzillion of the pins, extracts the exact one and has the repair done in a flash. He makes a cross with his two index fingers—Chinese sign language that make the cross character for the number 10—and I hand him 10 Hong Kong bucks (US$1.13) and I’m a happy customer. I am also a happy urbanist who has had an experience that extends deep into the urban past, to when all such businesses were indigenous, no corporate, to where there were districts in cities where you could find dozens of like and allied businesses—the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul has over five thousand—that cater to nearly every need. A couple of streets further on I encounter a curious little shop of sundries that, lo and behold, happens to sell replacement rubber tips of the sort that has just worn out on the umbrella I am using as a cane. Where else, but in such a neighborhood.

From the street of my building I can catch numerous buses, a taxi at he stand a block away, the MTR (underground) a block the other way, or a tram next to that. All Hong Kong and Kowloon are transit accessible just outside my door—and the jet foil ferries to Macau and Zhuhai in China are across the street.
Foreign travel requires more alert senses. Just to plan a trip across town demands a look at the map, checking to where the bus or subway stops are, gauging time and distance. What if you might need a lavatory, or to change money? Did you pack your map and your dictionary? One must always be on the alert for the unfamiliar, even the dangerous. But living abroad especially in neigborhoods such as these, is a different experience, one in which there is a partial, but satisfying, even comforting, integration into the city, and with it the ease of familiarity. One begins, unconsciously to use possessive adjectives—my neighborhood. Indeed, these places did, in a sense, become my neighborhoods; I could tell you right where you can get a fresh croissant d’almond, or a rubber tip for you umbrella. And you won’t have to walk very far to get either.
_______________________________________________________
© 2009, James A. Clapp

57. 3:      TV iz US        3. 13.2009

When I first saw television—I think it was 1948—I saw John Cameron Swayze delivering the news and pushing cigarettes on the Camel News Caravan. Then came what I was really interested in (remember, I was a kid back then), it was Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a hand puppet program (except for Fran). Then we went home—because the only TV in the whole extended family was at my grandparents. I think there were two, maybe three channels, the set had a round screen, and there was a thing called the “test pattern” that came on a lot. Of course, it was black and white, and the reception was awful, about fifty percent of the time a flipping picture of a snowstorm. At the end of the broadcast day they put up a flag and played the National Anthem; now they plunge right into all-night infomercials for insomniacs, selling crap for hair replacement, reverse mortgages and erectile dysfunction.

Thinking back on those days television wasn’t us. It didn’t reflect America because it didn’t have the audience penetration, it didn’t have movies, and it didn’t have the capacity. A lot of people didn’t think it would even last, that TV was a fad. But, as the blue glow entered more and more living rooms, programming gradually expanded, but mostly its sit-coms, advertisements and such reflected the people who could afford a television set. TV hadn’t quite figured out its own media purpose; rather, it borrowed soap opera and sit com from radio, news and chat format from radio as well (Arthur Godfrey), and entertainment from variety shows and even vaudeville. The cinema was still a rival, but there was theater with live teleplays such as the Philco Playhouse. Sometimes, what made it interesting was that it was “live.” I remember an actor expelling snot from his nose when he laughed, and a singer’s boob fall out of her dress on Name That Tune, mic-boom shadows in the shot, and flubbed lines. In that sense, I guess, TV was a reflection of us, clumsily learning a new medium.

But these days I nearly gag when someone, usually on television, invokes the will of “the American people,” especially when it was some Bush administration hack staying the message like one of a chorus of ventriloquist dummies. Condi Rice actually had the hubris to tell us that “the American people will not put up with a nuclear Iran.” Wow, Condi knows the American people! Yeah, and Colin Powell knew Iraq had WMD. (Forgive the digression.)

“We Americans,” the common element of citizenship aside, is a joke phrase, especially when expressing what our will, values and attitudes are. I think that the closest we can get to a profile of what we Americans are, and have become, is by looking at our television. Television, especially since the advent of cable, recognizes the niche-ness of America. Television advertising also tells us what we think of ourselves, sometimes even more clearly than the programming itself.

First, it needs to be stated that American TV is rather depressing. In this writer’s opinion, the great part of it is mindless garbage. Cable delivered television is not a la carte, so I must also pay for a hundred or so channels servicing other niches, the great part is of no interest to me whatsoever. The only benefit is that I get a glimpse of what my other “fellow Americans” the pundits and politicians think they know so well, are watching.

I happen to have a Monday Night Football game on whilE making notes for this piece, so it seems a good place to begin. I rarely watch it anymore, but the changes to the program warrant comment because they are illustrative of several changes and niche-elements about contemporary America. First of all is that MNF is going for a specific niche. Splashy, over the top graphics and country music singers intro the program with rapid cuts of football, flags, and other imagery that conveys the idea that football is manly, patriotic and sexy. The commercial underwriting tells more; it is principally trucks, beer and erection drugs and consumes about a third of he programming time. The line between sport and entertainment has long been blurred. The announcer teams are more concerned with sounding clever, women correspondents on the sidelines deal in inane gossip about the players, while nearby bimbo “cheerleaders” pole dance for idiot fans trying to outdo each other in body ornament (the line between the game and the spectators has also been blurred). On the field, prima donna players celebrate every play with self-congratulatory dances and thank their “Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” for their touchdowns (more blurred lines). I enjoy watching some football; it’s part of America, but this is not my niche. This is hardly sport; it’s something between circus side-show, soft porn, and the pathetic sociology of a people who are in perpetual identity crisis. (But those are only the positive elements.)

Network news is also not my niche. It makes me ill. Not just the news content, or the Katie Couric infotainment style, but the commercials. Every commercial break on network news asks you to ”ask your doctor” if you need some new drug for arthritis, heart disease, urination problems, respiration or erectile dysfunction, etc. So the news is supposed to make me feel ill. The news in America is run by the American Pharmaceutical Cartel. They don’t care whether you really are sick, they just need to make you feel sick enough to go out and buy their drugs. It is as though the news content—“if it bleeds, it leads”—is not enough to make one ill; they have to tell you that you really might be ill and should go and ask your doctor if you should start taking their latest (ahem) medicament. My doctor’s Rx should just tell me to stop watching the news.

As far the news formats and treatment are concerned, every premonition of films like Meet John Doe, Network, and Broadcast News seems to have been met and exceeded. It seems that television is sometimes at its best when it spoofs itself. That helps explains the success The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, both send-ups of network news, or the more egregious version of it, that hemorrhoid on broadcasting, Fox News, with commentators as visually unappealing as their minds. Fox is, of course, essentially a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration and right-wing politics in general. Just the names of O’Reilly, Hannity, and frequent guests like Ann Coulter should be sufficient to indicate the kinds of minds their programming is designed to appeal to. Fox extends its programming to the rest of its social bottom-feeders with offerings such as Cops, Sex and the City, and the ludicrous American Idol, a program for people who enjoy seeing un-talented fools being abused by an arrogant twit-Brit. This is a sickness for which Big Pharma neither has, nor wants, a cure.

Of course, without Fox the Daily Show and Colbert make no sense. These shows are the contraposition of the idiocy of Fox. Seniors are watching NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and Fox (and learning what new drugs to try), and their kids are getting their “truth” wrapped in irony from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert and laughing at the irony that their society is being completely f***ed-up by the people watching the putative “real” news. Families no longer eat together, so why should they watch their nightly news together. They probably don’t vote together either.

The really depressing thing is that, as measured by what focus groups and other audience instruments determine, Americans have become (or always were) a concoction of social bottom feeders with identity issues. Sport, for example has widely expanded in type and definition. NAASCAR races are on several cable channels, WWF “Pro” Wrestling is also. Added to that is the growing popularity of “cage” ultimate fighting, the closest thing we have to gladiatorial fights because American Gladiator is an over-the-top circus for the steroid set. Then there is the idea that the World Series of Poker, a bunch of sleazos sitting around a table, is a “sport.” It, and several other poker shows are as exciting and informative as watching paint dry. Once I saw one guy’s poker chip knock another guy’s chip all the way across the table. It’s like tiddly-winks, but less violent.

Guy shows are not just about sports anymore. There are now several “manly” white guy shows, including the Man Show, which is for guys who really have problems. The hosts drink beer, talk about penises, and everybody ogles several mammiferous bimbos who bounce around. Other manly offerings stress that men do rough work. There is Most Dangerous Catch, which is a reality series about crab fishermen in Alaska. These guys handle huge cages on rolling, slippery decks as waves crash over the gunnels. They could be swept over and eaten by sharks (or angry crabs). Spellbinding. Then there is Ice Road Truckers. These guys drive big rigs over frozen ocean somewhere “way up there” where the ice is melting from global warming. They could plunge through the ice and be eaten by a polar bear. Whatever; it is manly, testosterone-building programming. Who thinks this crap up? Probably the producers who came up with Orange County Choppers, the guys who build ridiculous looking Harleys while having (really phoney) father-son disputes, he father being a tattooed, steroid-ish looking bully in permanent adolescence.

Women have their niche as well. Sex in the City, Housewives of here and there, programming that has them humping with the tennis coach or the delivery boy while the guys are catching crabs or freezing their testes off on icy roads. And lets not forget those several shopping channels where they can addict themselves to all sorts of useless kitch and crap. Later, they can catch Oprah, and feel good about themselves again.

Foodies are another niche. But this is not just about cooking, although there are numerous legit cooking shows that show you how to make a quiche or a cake. No, the chefs have to be prima donnas, or (bad) comics. Then there are several guys who manage to get programs that involve going to strange places and eating what I call garbage or road kill. These are ridiculous jerks who travel to foreign countries and combine daredevil macho-guy antics with eating guts, bugs, worms, whatever (and probably puking off-camera) and showing how much they can drink. It’s all winky and snide, of course, the subtext being “look at the shit these foreigners eat.”

Some compete on the Iron Chef. It seems these days that everything in America has to be a competition, even food. There always has to be a winner, a number one—we are maniacally ordinal.

I have to wonder what the audience profile is for the proliferation of reality TV daytime courtroom shows. The judges, a deviation from the venerable Judge Wapner, are all in the Judge Judy mold, smart-assed, arrogant bullies whose effect on respect for the judiciary at any level is to make Antonin Scalia Clarence Thomas seem almost like a human beings. The base line sociological element is, once again, to make inadequate, self-loathing, couch potato TV addicts feel superior to somebody, in this case the mostly idiots and social bottom-feeders who are given a good wuppin’ right in front of the cameras. This is probably the same cohort that loves those homemade video shows where kids swing clubs or hit balls that end up hitting the testicles of their fathers. Studio audiences roar with laughter each time—and most of the videos involve some sort of near emasculation—at each video. What is it that is bothering these people?

But lets’ return to where we started—the family—the holy “building block” of American society. I can still see in my mind the three generations of my family, sitting in the cathode glow, watching Swayze and Kukla and Fran and Ollie, and maybe a benign family sit-com like the Nelsons. Today that would be impossible: most of the shows are about how dysfunctional the American family is. We want to see how much we hate one another, cheat on one another, don’t think at all alike. Drama is conflict; but this is sociological warfare—firing invective and opprobrium from our programmatic niches. We call a lot of it “reality TV.” It is contrived (and cheap to produce, which is why the networks like it) reality. But underneath, down in its motivations, and where there is some sick delight in the competition, the nastiness, the toxic schadenfreude that the viewer gets, comfortably munching nachos in their niche, there is a worrying reality of what we have really become—our TV.
_________________________________
© 2009 James A. Clapp

57. 2: PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, by Geraldine Brooks, 2008 BR 2.8.2009

           

My old friend, Danny, much more techno-savvy than I will ever be, suggested recently that I might want to consider buying a Kindle, the digital book reader that it sold by Amazon.com. The Kindle can hold something like 1,500 books (out of a quarter million available and growing). It’s amazing: it can talk to you when your eyes tire, you can download from anywhere, and you can even make digital marginalia. It weighs less than a paperback book and its thinness is a boon to the traveler. For a guy (me) who is forcing himself out of his own house with his addiction to buying books, it seems like a life raft. Only one problem—its not a book.

I love the kinesthetics of books, the sort of solid, woody feeling that have in one’s hands, the little drumming sound you get when you tap on them. I love their smell, texture, the way stuff gets stuck in their pages, or you can put stuff—postcards, boarding passes, and little notes—in their pages. I like writing in margins. I like the smell of them. When I write my own books the first handling of them is like a new baby, like your mind being given substance. I love to look at my shelves of books, remembering those I have read and indulging myself with the thrill of selecting the next one. I like books that have been read by others, that have been handled and have little marginalia or inscriptions. I like putting my name and chop in my books, possessing them. (See, DCJ Archives 23.5 Ex Libris) These are old habits; I don’t know if I am ready for the clean, efficient antiseptic Kindle.

People of the Book is a book about a book, the Sephardic Sarajevo Haggadah. Brooks, Australia,, a former journalist and Pulitzer winning author, must like books, too. This is a novel, but it is about a famous book that—and this is the essence of the story—was imperiled many times in its history, before it ended up in a museum in Sarajevo, and makes (I won’t spoil the mystery of the story) its final journey. It’s a book that crosses over from its origins in the Spanish la convivencia, into the hands of an inquisitor priest in Venice, ends up in Vienna in WWII and finds its way to Sarajevo.

Brooks takes her story from the existence if the actual Haggadah, the Jewish seder narrative. In this case, it is an exquisitely, and mysteriously, illustrated haggadah, that Brook’s protagonist, Dr. Hanna Heath, a rare book conservator, its engaged to restore and authenticate. Clues to events in its diasporic life from it departure from Southern Spain in the Expulsion, to its eventual “destination” consist of wine stains, salt crystals, a hair from a paintbrush and a fragment of a moth’s wing. If Heath’s investigations were all there were to this it would be just a version of CSI, with an old hook as the corpus delicti of outrages against quattrocento European Jewry. But each clue is imbedded in an evocative and richly-textured return to the period and personalities of the provenance of the haggadah. Heath herself is no mere narrator, but has her own tortured personal journey that lends an added layer if suspense to the story.

The Sarajevo Haggadah comes into history at a time when books certainly had a more powerful mystical grip on people’s minds. Very few people who literate, and at least the Roman Catholic Church preferred it that way; it would be the guardian of interpretation, especially of scripture. (For a long time, priests were the only ones in man small communities who could read; once more people became literate the prelates apparently turned full-time to pederasty.) An illustrated manuscript opened the possibility for wider, and more subjective interpretation of meanings. All sorts of hidden messages might be hidden in various signs and symbols. At any rate, illustration was more “connotative,” hence more subjective in its result.

Of course, being a Jewish book, written in Hebrew characters, would make such a publication suspect in a world in which the contending supermetaphysical powers seem to regard the Jews as people on which to practice their nastiness. Springing from the Abrahamic soil as they do, Christianity and Islam seem at times in a brotherly contest to commit patricide.

Although it is about a famous illustrated manuscript, in reading Brooks’ book one must rely upon her descriptive abilities to conjure an image of what it looks like. Her decision not to illustrate her own book might have been intentional, or she might rely on the fact that most of her readers would likely have seen some of the books of hours and other illustrated books from the Middle Ages. Then again, she might not have wanted the image of the actual book to detract from the fascinating descriptions of the craft of rare book restoration and preservation. In any case, one can, in these days, go to the Internet and, click, click, click, voila! Sarajevo Haggadah. And here we can appreciate that this precious little book is illustrated (although “illuminated” is frequently the word used) in pre-Giotto style. Faces are stylized, but much attention is given to other details—clothing, architecture and decorative elements, historical events, calligraphy, and ceremony.

We live in age of image bombardment; we see, whether we wish to or not, thousands of images every day. Such inflation might cheapen individual images, but the image has not lost its potential power. For one thing, as we know with the photo and motion pictures, images pass through the membrane of cultural boundaries where words become snagged in language differences. The power of the image was doubtless recognized quite early, maybe as far back as the pre-historical cave illustrations at Altamira, not all that far from where the Haggadah was “illuminated.” The image was the first human form of communication after language, the form that answered the question, “what did it look like?” Brooks relies in her verbal description, but I will cheat a little bit for the people of the Journal.

    
_____________________________________________________
© 2009, James A. Clapp

57. 1:    SLUMDOG GOVERNOR, CHILD OF THE KROHN, AND THE PLUNGER    3. 4.2009

                                                                            © 2009, UrbisMedia

In these pages I have addressed or referred to “our Republican friends” from time to time. We have wondered and even worried about them. How could people we knew back in our school days who once seemed to have human values and a sense of humor have transmogrified in worshippers of The Gipper and zombie-like followers of the Bushes and Cheney? How could people you knew to be intelligent human beings be fooled into trickle-down economics, non-existent WMD, fake missions accomplished, and the faux-Christian nonsense of the American Taliban. Could some of them even be attending the CPAC in Washington this past week, a convocation of gun-loving, Obama-hating, Limbaugh-slavering whack-jobs so-called “conservatives” who are like sharks feeding on their own entrails? Is this a political party, or is it a . . .

Cult?

This is not hyperbole. We have to find out whether “our Republican friends” have been taken over by some insidious and nefarious what?---Parasite? Germ? Alien life form? All the signs of a cult are there. The slavering adherence to an ideology—one that has failed miserably and ruined the country’s reputation, military, and economy—but which they unfailingly believe is the answer to the very disasters it has created. There are frequent references to the word “evil.” Bloated blowhards with dark names like Rush and Newt, and butts as big as their egos, receive thunderous applause from people who don’t mind being called “ditto heads.” Theirs is a siege mentality, frightened by Muslims and Socialists and Satanic forces intent on stealing their stem cells as they sleep. They are so fearful and distraught that they actually—forget that “country first” stuff—will fight to see the new American president’s economic recover policies fail! Yes, fail. They would rather see more Americans out of work, shelter and health care, than see—what they call “socialism”—than to see the other political party succeed. Such is their conception of America. Such is their notion of “bipartisanship,” of “hands across the aisle.”

The cult has rejected its most recent leader, W, and is frantically searching for another object for their worship. Some, but not enough, placed their hopes on an erratic arm-flailing “John the Prisoner” and a serial breeding bimbo who shoots wolves from helicopters, but they failed the test. They were soundly thrashed by that “uppity” guy they claim was not born in the USA (although Springsteen did sing on his behalf), and they will soon claim he was the “second shooter” on the “grassy knoll.” Their cult never admits to its ineptitude or psychotic creativity.

And so the search for a cult leader has moved to CPAC attendees, who see themselves as the purists of the conservative movement, the true heirs to the legacy of the putrefying Gipper. Joe the Plumber showed up, hawking a book he has supposedly written, but drawing only a half-dozen takers at his book signing. Joe’s popularity is even plunging among the conservative faithful. He has peaked in his purpose to he movement as the idolizing acolyte to Sarah Palin.

Then along came a strange fellow who might be called “Slumdog Governor,” from tiger infested mangrove swamps of Louisiana. This swishy-stepping fellow with the sibilant whispery delivery of Mister Rogers was seen as a leading candidate until he self-destructed on a set aptly left over from Gone With the Wind. To evidence his flatulent conservative ideological purity, Bobby Jindal actually said he would refuse Federal aid for his still Katrina-ravaged state (Bobby lives in the governor’s mansion). Frankly, Bobby (real name Piyush, Hindi for “shit for brains”), my dear, we don’t give a damn.

But old on folks. The CPACers hauled out some new blood, an arrogant little 14-year-old twerp named Jonathan Krohn (who just might be a pint-sized re-incarnation of Ralph Reed), who every kid in is class must be dying to kick the crap out of, who is clearly looking for a regular spot on Fox and a seven-figure book deal. They adoringly applauded his robotic recitation of all the conservative Obama bashes and we can expect that, although he sounds like the bastard issue of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plunger, he will be touted as having been born in a manger in Orlando. Against hope (that his schoolmates kick his arrogant ass), I expect to see and hear more of this little creep.

The Republican Cult continued in its search.

Also with no chance to lead the cult back to the promised land of K Street goodies is Michael Steele, a black Republican (maybe with hen’s teeth as well) who has a perpetual look of surprise (why not?) and the demeanor of a white Baptist Minister with an all-Black congregation. Steele heads (not leads) a devastated party that the CPAC people feel has strayed from its “conservative roots.” It hasn’t; it just destroyed the country it used to live in. If the CPACers consider themselves the “true believers” of the cult, then Mr. Steele really has nothing to do (except maybe stand in front of Bobby Jindal’s mansion in a little jockey outfit and holding a tether ring for carriages).

Meanwhile, Steele showed his steely resolve by kissing the bloated ass of that angry tub of Oxycontin-laden guts, Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh is a god to the intellectually-challenged “base” (or is it de-based) of the Republican Cult. He sews fear and hatred so well that O’Reilley, Hannity and Coulter are mere minor deities in conservative pantheon. He took Mr. Steele to task before his millions of dentally-deficient Mountain Dew swilling “ditto head” listeners (indeed the very people who probably most need President Obama’s projected medical care and jobs initiatives) and the RNC head puckered up and smooched his ample butt. Mr. Limbaugh can say, if he wants to, that he wants Obama “to fail” and the cult should devote itself to that end, or he will rip the guts out of all that remains of the Republican base.

And so, like Opus Dei and other dark and sinister burbling to the surface of the Nazi Catholic Church of Benedict XVI, the Obama revolution has forced the cult of the Republican party out into its only real option, obstreperous opposition. They will do their voodoo, sticking pins in Hillary dolls, calling the country the USSA. They must hope for more unemployment, foreclosures, financial meltdown, more of what their laissez-faire capitalism and greedy, corrupted political leadership brought about, and they will be proven correct. Their newly-anointed leader, Rush, apparently not interested in reading to the end of Aesop’s fable, announced that “the scorpion must sing the frog.” Of course, both end up dead. That’s he way of cults; sort of like if the Rev. Jim Jones had become president.

Our Republican “friends” might be beyond redemption.
______________________________________________________________
© 2009, James A. Clapp