Lucy Mangan writes in Saturday’s Guardian about Eliot Spitzer, and takes the line that New York is a hard town – one moment you’re cleaning up corruption, the next you are Client 9, Wall Street is dancing with delight, and all your friends have deserted you. But ‘tough New York’ is a story from the 20s of the last century, perhaps from the 80s of the century before. Despite Mangan’s pseudo-lively prose, it’s a dud idea.
Compare commentator Antonio Caño, writing in El Pais last Thursday. He asks how it is that the Governor of New York state can lose his job for using the services of a prostitute, whilst nobody is trying to impeach a President who has caused the deaths of nearly 4000 US soldiers in Iraq.
It’s a case of American puritanism. Americans want heroes, and if you fail as a hero, down you go, Caño says. Look at all those heroes – John McCain, Vietnam hero – Obama, heroically overcoming poverty and prejudice – Hillary Clinton bravely overcoming the abuse of the American right – and so on. None of them is allowed to have weaknesses. But if they do screw up, woe betide (I am translating loosely).
In Europe we elect people we know are weak, and who will be corrupt, or fail. It’s no surprise when they do. Spitzer was effective (if not very nice), and had the voters’ support. But the peculiar moralism of America puts an end to him.
La Manga’s cliché about New York being a ‘hard town’ prevents such points as these getting into the debate. It’s a very American line of thinking – and one that has been unthinkingly followed right across the British press.
Come on Lucy – don’t be so American!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Al-Jazeera – or, what’s up in Lebanon?
In today’s Guardian Media, Yvonne Ridley writes, with notable tolerance, that al-Jazeera has brought a “heroic brand of journalism” to the Arab world. The tolerance is striking because she has just won a four-year battle for compensation after being sacked by al-Jazeera English. Her praise is justified because al-Jazeera’s reporting of the Middle East is reliable, yet quite unlike what we get from local (western) sources.
Take this story about Saudis being warned to leave Lebanon.
There are intimations of war here: the USS Philippine Sea has arrived off the coast of Lebanon. Back in 2003, the day after the start of the Iraq war, a picture of the night-launch of this warship’s first Tomahawk missile filled the front pages of the world’s press. Today, it is in the company of the USS Ross. The two boats carry a total of 212 cruise missiles. Last week Saudi Arabia contacted all its citizens in Lebanon by SMS (texts), and told them to leave as soon as possible. Bahrain and Kuwait were said to have quickly followed suit.
This is significant, but it won’t be on R4 news, and M. Apache’s quick flick through the Guardian and Times doesn’t find it there either.
But suppose we take the move as seriously as it is taken in the Middle East. Israeli news and propaganda sites say that the ships are there to discourage Hizbollah in Lebanon from intervening on the side of the Palestinians in Gaza during the present upsurge of violence. However, intervention by a radical Shia force (Hizbollah) on behalf of a radical Sunni movement (in Gaza) seems unlikely, and would in any case not pose a threat to Saudis.
The other suggestion is that Hizbollah is about to move to take over the Lebanese government from President Fouad Siniora – who is backed by the Saudis. However, remembering the lack of support given to the Siniora government by its Western “friends” as Israel took the country apart two years ago, it is unlikely that the US would make 212 Tomahawk missiles suddenly available to support Siniora’s government. Richard Murphy, former US ambassador to Syria and an old State Department hand, has suggested the deployment is a sign that the US government is short of ideas for action in the area, so has just sent a gunboat (or three).
A report by Prof Paul Rogers to the Oxford Research Group dated February 2006 suggests that one way Iran would hit back if it was attacked over its nuclear enrichment activities would be to mobilize Hizbollah to cause trouble for Israel. It is just possible that the Israeli “over reaction” to the border incursion and kidnapping of its soldiers in 2006 was an opportunistic attempt to damage Hizbollah sufficiently to reduce any threat from them if Iran was attacked by either Israel or the US in the next year or two.
Israel’s move seems to have had the reverse effect, and Hizbollah may be stronger and more confident as a consequence of the invasion – although the recent (12 February) killing of Hizbollah’s deputy leader Imad Al Mughaniya in Syria will have been a timely blow if he was as important to the organisation as has been rumoured.
Another reaction of Hizbollah might be to act as an Iranian proxy and attack allies of the US, especially if they are Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabians.
US ships off Lebanon could oppose any Hizbollah attack on Israel as well as participate in any moves against Iran, since many sites in northern Iran are within the 900 km range of cruise missiles carrying conventional unitary warheads. They could supplement those fired from the Arabian Gulf and Arabian Sea. It is believed that the key Iranian facilities are so well protected below ground that nuclear weapons would be needed by any enemy wishing to destroy them. Nuclear warhead cruise missiles have a range of 1350 miles.
George Bush has only 10 months left. He is showing increasing signs of mental instability, as he sings to the tune of the ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ the words
For there’s Condi
And Dick, my old compadre,
Talking to me about some oil-rich Saudi –
Does he really not know what to do with his cruise missiles, or shall we shortly taste a cup of horror and desolation? Well, if it happens, it’ll take place in the next three weeks.
Whoever wins gets first chance with those nice horsemen in uniform from Shoa and Pekod. (See Ezekiel 23, verses 22-23.) This has happened before….
All right, M. Apache is speculating. But how different this English al-Jazeera line of thinking is from the kind of thing we get daily from our own media.
Keep it up George (and Dick)!
Take this story about Saudis being warned to leave Lebanon.
There are intimations of war here: the USS Philippine Sea has arrived off the coast of Lebanon. Back in 2003, the day after the start of the Iraq war, a picture of the night-launch of this warship’s first Tomahawk missile filled the front pages of the world’s press. Today, it is in the company of the USS Ross. The two boats carry a total of 212 cruise missiles. Last week Saudi Arabia contacted all its citizens in Lebanon by SMS (texts), and told them to leave as soon as possible. Bahrain and Kuwait were said to have quickly followed suit.
This is significant, but it won’t be on R4 news, and M. Apache’s quick flick through the Guardian and Times doesn’t find it there either.
But suppose we take the move as seriously as it is taken in the Middle East. Israeli news and propaganda sites say that the ships are there to discourage Hizbollah in Lebanon from intervening on the side of the Palestinians in Gaza during the present upsurge of violence. However, intervention by a radical Shia force (Hizbollah) on behalf of a radical Sunni movement (in Gaza) seems unlikely, and would in any case not pose a threat to Saudis.
The other suggestion is that Hizbollah is about to move to take over the Lebanese government from President Fouad Siniora – who is backed by the Saudis. However, remembering the lack of support given to the Siniora government by its Western “friends” as Israel took the country apart two years ago, it is unlikely that the US would make 212 Tomahawk missiles suddenly available to support Siniora’s government. Richard Murphy, former US ambassador to Syria and an old State Department hand, has suggested the deployment is a sign that the US government is short of ideas for action in the area, so has just sent a gunboat (or three).
A report by Prof Paul Rogers to the Oxford Research Group dated February 2006 suggests that one way Iran would hit back if it was attacked over its nuclear enrichment activities would be to mobilize Hizbollah to cause trouble for Israel. It is just possible that the Israeli “over reaction” to the border incursion and kidnapping of its soldiers in 2006 was an opportunistic attempt to damage Hizbollah sufficiently to reduce any threat from them if Iran was attacked by either Israel or the US in the next year or two.
Israel’s move seems to have had the reverse effect, and Hizbollah may be stronger and more confident as a consequence of the invasion – although the recent (12 February) killing of Hizbollah’s deputy leader Imad Al Mughaniya in Syria will have been a timely blow if he was as important to the organisation as has been rumoured.
Another reaction of Hizbollah might be to act as an Iranian proxy and attack allies of the US, especially if they are Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabians.
US ships off Lebanon could oppose any Hizbollah attack on Israel as well as participate in any moves against Iran, since many sites in northern Iran are within the 900 km range of cruise missiles carrying conventional unitary warheads. They could supplement those fired from the Arabian Gulf and Arabian Sea. It is believed that the key Iranian facilities are so well protected below ground that nuclear weapons would be needed by any enemy wishing to destroy them. Nuclear warhead cruise missiles have a range of 1350 miles.
George Bush has only 10 months left. He is showing increasing signs of mental instability, as he sings to the tune of the ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ the words
For there’s Condi
And Dick, my old compadre,
Talking to me about some oil-rich Saudi –
Does he really not know what to do with his cruise missiles, or shall we shortly taste a cup of horror and desolation? Well, if it happens, it’ll take place in the next three weeks.
Whoever wins gets first chance with those nice horsemen in uniform from Shoa and Pekod. (See Ezekiel 23, verses 22-23.) This has happened before….
All right, M. Apache is speculating. But how different this English al-Jazeera line of thinking is from the kind of thing we get daily from our own media.
Keep it up George (and Dick)!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
La Bête de Belleville
Author ‘Petite anglaise’ has been busy this week selling her book entitled, very sharply, Petite anglaise. It’s a sentimentalization of the once-tough district of Paris known as Belleville.
Catherine Sanderson has been blogging about her life in Paris since 2004, and the story she tells is how much she loved France, was determined to live there, and lived with a Frenchman for seven years (he was Mr Frog, the offspring is Tadpole – not bad, eh?). Then there was an Englishman from Rennes, then there wasn’t. She worked as a secretary, blogged from work, lost her job, won the legal case, and got the money. As a Top Blogger, she gets a £500,000 two-book advance. Now she sits writing her second book, a novel, when she can drag herself away from ‘curling up’ in a café with the morning’s Libé.
The London Sunday papers have been full of extracts and PR, which in the Observer meant Cathy selling her bourgeoise-bohémienne lifestyle by directing us to all the acceptable local cafés and restaurants. Cue photos of ‘petite’ (as she coyly blogsigns herself – it should be La petite anglaise, but when charm is your thing, who cares about the French language?), reading a book about ‘secret’ Paris, with a French ‘character’ in the background – he looked more interesting than her, frankly, and the photographer seemed to think so too, so the blogsite has a pic of him also.
The trouble with all this bo-bo stuff – “and I am one”, Cathy sweetly says – is that Belleville has an interesting history that has got lost here. At war with central Paris, it was for centuries a working-class district, tough, left-wing, and difficult. Walking down rue de Belleville was, even twenty or thirty years ago, an edgy experience. M. Apache recalls a different kind of café – full of les beurs, the local Arab-descended ex-North African population. There is not much sign of such people in la petite’s blogworld, though when Tadpole goes to school, she has friends with Arab names.
La petite seems to be more interested in the local Chinese population – passive, manageable, charming, and not political at all.
In her launch-party video-blog (by “Frog with a blog” – can’t we get away from this joke?) we see the militant middle classes pleased to have a rising star of their own to cling to.
Circa 1900, M. Apache’s forebears would retreat to Belleville after a trip down to the grands boulevards for a little biffing and thieving. In the early 1920s the Surrealists Louis Aragon and André Breton wandered the streets of Paris, transforming it in their imaginations into something rich and strange. Particularly significant was the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, the park in the dix-neuvième with its square lake, central rock and unexpected Belvedere, its waterfall and bridges. For Aragon it was “This great oasis in a popular district, a shady zone where the prevailing atmosphere is distinctly murderous”, as he wrote in 1924’s Paris Peasant.
(He and his friends pass by rue Fessart – which reminds me of Béatriz’s sexy pun, recommending l’art des fesses – [Vivienne and Béatriz, where are you now? – long gone from rue des Ânnelets.])
For Aragon, Buttes-Chaumont was “a volcano of appearances”, but in the reduced sensibility of la petite it has lost its past and is simply a place from which you get a lovely view of Paris. It is her favourite Paris park, she says, and “everything about it is artificial”. True, but that seems to be all she has to say.
Petite anglaise is Cath’s blog rewritten as autobiography, as an amatory drama in which she loses Mr Frog because she loves her blog more. That (again) seems to be all she has to say. The book has been shamelessly fixed, in a downwards direction.
Both blog and book are bonk-free, though ‘the Boy’ is said to be useful in bed. It’s a common writing trick – exaggerating the minor crises of daily life, with lots of little cliff-hangers along the way.
On page one the child Tadpole starts crying on a “hairpin crescendo”. Do they have copyeditors at Michael Joseph? (Yes – see blog for 17.08.07.) On the final page, “Sometimes I feel I own this city”. This is the same Brit modesty about France that gave us Peter Mayle’s ghastly books on the Luberon. (La petite is nice, not ghastly.)
To Cath’s credit, she reminds us that in the 1871 Commune, the last barricades to fall were in Belleville. But it’s not enough.
Her taste in music and films shows she’s not nearly as dim as the autobiography makes her out to be. (See MySpace for the sparky cultural profile.)
M. Apache is sure she knows Cocteau’s film La Belle et la bête. Well….
Come on, Cath – let’s have less Belle and more Bête!
Catherine Sanderson has been blogging about her life in Paris since 2004, and the story she tells is how much she loved France, was determined to live there, and lived with a Frenchman for seven years (he was Mr Frog, the offspring is Tadpole – not bad, eh?). Then there was an Englishman from Rennes, then there wasn’t. She worked as a secretary, blogged from work, lost her job, won the legal case, and got the money. As a Top Blogger, she gets a £500,000 two-book advance. Now she sits writing her second book, a novel, when she can drag herself away from ‘curling up’ in a café with the morning’s Libé.
The London Sunday papers have been full of extracts and PR, which in the Observer meant Cathy selling her bourgeoise-bohémienne lifestyle by directing us to all the acceptable local cafés and restaurants. Cue photos of ‘petite’ (as she coyly blogsigns herself – it should be La petite anglaise, but when charm is your thing, who cares about the French language?), reading a book about ‘secret’ Paris, with a French ‘character’ in the background – he looked more interesting than her, frankly, and the photographer seemed to think so too, so the blogsite has a pic of him also.
The trouble with all this bo-bo stuff – “and I am one”, Cathy sweetly says – is that Belleville has an interesting history that has got lost here. At war with central Paris, it was for centuries a working-class district, tough, left-wing, and difficult. Walking down rue de Belleville was, even twenty or thirty years ago, an edgy experience. M. Apache recalls a different kind of café – full of les beurs, the local Arab-descended ex-North African population. There is not much sign of such people in la petite’s blogworld, though when Tadpole goes to school, she has friends with Arab names.
La petite seems to be more interested in the local Chinese population – passive, manageable, charming, and not political at all.
In her launch-party video-blog (by “Frog with a blog” – can’t we get away from this joke?) we see the militant middle classes pleased to have a rising star of their own to cling to.
Circa 1900, M. Apache’s forebears would retreat to Belleville after a trip down to the grands boulevards for a little biffing and thieving. In the early 1920s the Surrealists Louis Aragon and André Breton wandered the streets of Paris, transforming it in their imaginations into something rich and strange. Particularly significant was the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, the park in the dix-neuvième with its square lake, central rock and unexpected Belvedere, its waterfall and bridges. For Aragon it was “This great oasis in a popular district, a shady zone where the prevailing atmosphere is distinctly murderous”, as he wrote in 1924’s Paris Peasant.
(He and his friends pass by rue Fessart – which reminds me of Béatriz’s sexy pun, recommending l’art des fesses – [Vivienne and Béatriz, where are you now? – long gone from rue des Ânnelets.])
For Aragon, Buttes-Chaumont was “a volcano of appearances”, but in the reduced sensibility of la petite it has lost its past and is simply a place from which you get a lovely view of Paris. It is her favourite Paris park, she says, and “everything about it is artificial”. True, but that seems to be all she has to say.
Petite anglaise is Cath’s blog rewritten as autobiography, as an amatory drama in which she loses Mr Frog because she loves her blog more. That (again) seems to be all she has to say. The book has been shamelessly fixed, in a downwards direction.
Both blog and book are bonk-free, though ‘the Boy’ is said to be useful in bed. It’s a common writing trick – exaggerating the minor crises of daily life, with lots of little cliff-hangers along the way.
On page one the child Tadpole starts crying on a “hairpin crescendo”. Do they have copyeditors at Michael Joseph? (Yes – see blog for 17.08.07.) On the final page, “Sometimes I feel I own this city”. This is the same Brit modesty about France that gave us Peter Mayle’s ghastly books on the Luberon. (La petite is nice, not ghastly.)
To Cath’s credit, she reminds us that in the 1871 Commune, the last barricades to fall were in Belleville. But it’s not enough.
Her taste in music and films shows she’s not nearly as dim as the autobiography makes her out to be. (See MySpace for the sparky cultural profile.)
M. Apache is sure she knows Cocteau’s film La Belle et la bête. Well….
Come on, Cath – let’s have less Belle and more Bête!
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