NYCweboy

This Is What An International Coalition Looks Like

I find the hand wringing over international intervention in Libya fascinating. So does my mom. It's one thing to see conservatives completely flummoxed, yet again, by President Obama's ability to confound their expectations; it's another to see lefty progressives struggle to figure out how to be both pleased and angry at once.

When the history of this is written, I'm convinced that it will probably be anything but the way it appears now: stories that suggest that a "reluctant" President "finally" signed off on intervention miss, I think, that the President's foreign policy team seemed determined to develop an international coalition all along. There was never a chance that the US would, unilaterally, announce airstrikes or a no-fly zone. At the same time, I suspect the moves to convince European and Arab allies to lead the way on just such a plan has been going on for months.

Fears of America being drawn into yet another "Middle East war" strike me as overblown: nothing that has been happening in the past week or so looks anything, to me, like Iraq under George W. Bush or even Iraq under George H.W. Bush. It does, I think, look a lot like Sarajevo and Bosnia... but I think it's the sense of preventing another country's "ethnic cleansing" that will be different. A lot of what's happening right now, after all, is about, of all things, Rwanda; no one wants to see the world stand by as a national army murders its own people.

The reality that Muammar al-Qaddafi planned to kill his enemies, and the reality that his money and his army could achieve that goal is a plain spoken reality that many progressive critics seem determined to minimize or ignore. I'm astonished that bloggers I generally like - and even the bigger, less useful ones like Josh Marshall and Steve Benen - see to suddenly have lost their ability to evaluate complex ideas and deal in more than simple sentences. It's entirely possible to both want to stop a massacre and not want to  tajke over the fight in a civil war. And, as well, I think it's possible to avert a terrible tragedy, and possibly even oust a dictator... without being an invading force.

It's been less than ten days, and for more than four of them, liberals have been sharply critical of the plan to "turn over" leadership of the intervention in Libya to an international coalition (and, naturally, conservatives wonder why we would do such a crazy thing at all). It's as if George W Bush and his terrible Presidency erased nearly all memories of how international cooperation, diplomacy, and consensus work. (I've been especially amused and amazed by experts like Rachel Maddow, who actually study international relations, approaching this action as if they've never seen an international episode before.)

This, what we're going through, is how international coalitions work - or, alternatively, don't. It's process by committee, it's slow and sometimes painful and it's hard to get a lot of disparate groups with disparate interests to find common ground and agree on a plan. What's been remarkable, to me, is that pretty much every promised milestone - establishing a no-fly zone, making sure that airstrikes and flyovers have a multinational component, are actually happening. Within a day of launching these attacks, Bengazi was both safe and a massacre averted; within 3 days, Qaddafi has lost almost all of his airstrike capability. It seems to me... that's what everyone moaned about wanting all along.

Our army is not going into Libya, because we can't (we have no troops for it) and because we don't want to. It's reasonable to be concerned about how the Libyans can possibly form another government, and reasonable to wonder if Qaddafi, even after all this, can be convinced to leave (I tend to think he can, and he will). In the end... these are not our problems. But from an international standpoint, it is everyone's problem to stand by and do nothing when a dictator announces a plan to go into his nation's second largest city and kill everyone in it. This does not strike me as a hard call.

Since the Tunisian uprising, Americans - and some Europeans - have been looking at unrest all across the "middle east" as one big, identical event. In fact it's many different events, with many different factors in play in different countries, and more pointedly, this is a different story when we talk about North Africa - i.e. Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, versus actual middle eastern peninsula nations like Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Bahrain. One of the primae failures of teh GW Bush years was an undifferentiated, blanket assessment of the threat of "Muslim" extremism. There are a lot of Muslims, a lot of sects, and many tribes.

What might - or might not - happen in Libya isn't going to be so much about what we, as Americans do, as part of an international coalition. This is a civil war, and the ultimate result will be decided between Qaddafi's army and rebel forces. The events in Libya are, after all, the worst case scenario many feared for Egypt and Tunisia (and still fear in places like Syria and Bahrain): some despots will do anything to maintain their hold on power. Anything. And thus, the question becomes: can we stand by, or must we get involved?

It's fair to ask, as liberals do, why Libya and not other nations (especially pointedly, why not African nations like Congo, Sudan or Somalia)... but that, too, is no excuse to argue, as an alternative, that the answer when faced with Qaddafi's threats is to not go into Libya either. Go somewhere. Do something. Start somewhere. We spent a good ten years, as a nation, going it alone, disrespecting international relations and organizations like the United Nations. It takes years, a generation even, to get things back on track. The alternative of going nowhere, doing nothing... that too is no answer. Start somewhere. Start here.

Tomorrow night, President Obama will give a speech. I suspect, for once, that this may be his first real speech - a speech which does not arrived preapproved, its fan base preconditioned to call it his "best ever." This is a speech that will actually have to do the work of winning people over who don't already agree. Oddly, I'm not one of them. I won't need much convincing. I'm already there (and yet, I suspect the speech will be something of a dud, too). This is what international intervention looks like, how an international coalition is formed and how it works. And we don't know how Libya will turn out... but even in 8 days, we can be pretty sure that what's likely to happen is way better than not intervening at all.

And that, it seems to me, is the point.

The Lincoln Lawyer: ChinaTownhouse (or Jagged Edgeless)

With its gritty look and hard edges, The Lincoln Lawyer can seem - especially in its busy trailer - like a refreshing, ambitious piece of noir realism. It's a shame, then, that what seems so promising turns out to be yet another dismal by the numbers thriller/procedural.

Matthew McConnaughey's career has been spinning wheels for years now, and the career calculus involved in making The Lincoln Lawyer is all too obvious: skip the blockbusters and the chick flicks, make a low(er) budget drama with a great script, and tone down the "sexy dude" persona. And here we are... with The Lincoln Lawyer.

McConnaughey plays Mickey Haller, a workaday attorney representing the usual dregs of society - hookers, drug dealers and such - who trips over a higher profile case when the scion of a prominent LA real estate family is accused of beating and raping a prostitute. After a quick consultation with his potential client, Haller takes the case... only to find himself defending a probable psycho-sociopath serial killer. And it looks like his client could get off scott free.

The fact that I can sum up the whole of The Lincoln Lawyer's plot (really, that's about it) in a couple of sentences that give nothing and everything away is a good indication of what's not happening in the film. Thrillers and noir pieces are often approached as if they're easy, when in fact they're not: constructing a tense, tight puzzle full of twists and unexpected turns is actually very difficult, and The Lincoln Lawyer falls down pretty much every step of the way. Motives are telegraphed. Alternative explanations make no sense. Characters are exactly who they seem to be. A big part of the failure, I suspect, comes from the Michael Connelly novel on which the film is based; while Connelly has had a major career as a novelist, the book world is top heavy with procedural bestsellers like Connelly clogging up airport book racks.

It'd also be easy to blame McConnaughey for what's not working, but he does acquit himself nicely as Haller, a reminder that, at his relaxed best McConnaughey has an easy, natural grace onscreen. Still, the role isn't a stretch (think way back... to A Time to Kill), and trying to "rough up" Haller's surfer dude demeanor with a soundtrack of hip hop tunes isn't just jarring, it's pretty much absurd.

What derails the film, though, is probably Ryan Phillippe as the sexy psycho, who has little do and what little he has is unsubtle and obvious. Phillippe's silky demeanor often gets him cast as upscale heels (think way back, again... to Cruel Intentions), but he's not actually right for these parts; there's little joy in these performances, and he tends to look sullen and uncomfortable. Here, in The Lincoln Lawyer, his sullen presence and faint protestations make what little mystery there is in the film obvious and inert. (And soon, he may lose most of these parts to Justin Timberlake, who probably is right for them.)

Loaded with famous faces, The Lincoln Lawyer is top heavy with stars doing their darndest to make minor roles into eccentric character bits, with varying degrees of success. Katherine Moennig - my reason to watch The L Word - has a few memorable moments, William Macy is gone too soon (though borrowing his wife's wig was a mistake), and Frances Fisher ought to find an agent who'll quit steering her twoards parts easily summed up as "icy bitch". More notably, what glamour and truly noir-ish feel this film has is lent to it by a luminous Marisa Tomei, as Haller's on and off again ex. Her gentle, Rita Hayworth-like wave  and no-nonsense sexiness go a long way to almost making these proceedings work (and makrs her as somebody who seems to have figured out how to negotiate a transition into a second phase of one's career).

Director Brad Furman has an eye for a gritty LA realism, refusing to romanticize the place, while still reveling in its sunwashed attractiveness (check out the view from Haller's home office window!), but he's young, and seems overwhelmed. Whether he can manage the complexity of noir - or even a top heavy cast of well known names - is debatable. And ultimately, with a few more scenes of high tech forensics, much of what's here wouldn't look out of place on a TV procedural.

Like many an aging boytoy these days - yes, you too, Phillippe - McConnaghey seems determined to find a "seriousness" that will replace "shirtless" as his defining characteristic (which I keep pointing out is effectively keeping one's best assets under wraps). I don't think he's going to find it in earnest do-gooder roles, unfortunately. If only we could cinvince him to try those sexy psycho parts. The Lincoln Lawyer would be way more interesting, I suspect, and much more like the kind of "Chinatown" it aspires to be, with more menace in the villain role.

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

Loleatta: It's Such A Sweet Sensation

J was absloutely right, of course: here I am going on about Liz, and letting that completely overshadow Loleatta Holloway.

Loleatta Holloway is one of those people you know about if you're serious about dance music. Sure, everyone knows about Saturday Night Fever and Donna Summer... but if you're serious about disco, Paradise Garage serious, Studio 54 serious, Mudd Club serious... then you know about all the black women who make Summer look like a well meaning, even talented, amateur. Listen to "Love Sensation" and hear a singer who can pretty much do anything at all to a lyric.

Holloway was one of those singers who brought gospel fervor to disco's secular cravings.  Lifted up, higher, flying on love sensations and good vibrations.... she was a belter and a shouter and few women can do that and stay tuneful and lyrical... and she was all that, and more.

Always enjoying underground cred, Holloway enjoyed a second renaissance in the late eighties era of sampling and reediting: because of the power of her singling and the clean productions she'd done originally, her voice was lifted, a lot, for remixed versions of her original hits (and sadly, generally not for reimbursement). J brought back Black Box and Ride on Time; here, for your consideration is Marky Mark. It's fashionable, these days, to dismiss Mark Wahlberg's rise to fame as a house music rapper... even he's a little embarrassed about the whole thing. But at the time, it wasn't just that he was hot and wore little more than his Calvins... I mean, he also hired Loleatta Holloway. And paid her.

 

 

Elizabeth

To me, it's her entrance in A Place In The Sun: Montgomery Clift and the actor playing her father in the living room foreground when the door opens stage rear, and we hear the chatty laughter of a young woman who takes off her wrap and glides into the room, never quite pausing for a breath. And then... she is just there. In that classic fifities gown, all tight strapless bodice, and full skirt, her figure amazing, her face just stunningly beautiful.

The first time I saw it - years after I should have - I literally gasped. I heard the tales of legendary Elizabeth, seen the still pictures from her youth, followed her in the gossip rags as a teenager... but nothing, really, prepares you for what she was at the height of her beauty and fame. Elizabeth Taylor was breathtaking. Breathtakingly beautiful, breathlessly alive, almost utterly unreal. It's almost impossible, as they say, to explain, if you've never seen it; hard, I think, to understand if you didn't experience it at the time. But that entrance, in that film... and a legion of fans were born.

She was a great movie star, possibly the ideal movie star of all time. She was after all, raised to do it: signed into MGM as a preteen, she would be at the studio until her mid-twenties, at the zenith of the star system, trained to be a movie star, nothing more... and nothing less. She shared that world with a generation of similar unicorns - Roddy MacDowell, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, Judy Garland - and like them, it was her triumph and her tragedy to have been made into something so completely unreal, the only thing she knew how to be.

She is one of the greatest movie stars because she derlivered what the movies want: not acting, but being. She was a stand-in for people's dreams and hopes and fears... and she delivered on that promise, endlessly. She was the girl next door and glamour incarnate, a child and woman all at once, Coca-Cola and Apple Pie. Was it acting? Absolutely. Was she good at it? That's harder to say.

It's undeniable that her two Oscars were probably for her two greatest performances: most obviously, for the transformation she achieved to play Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which she seemed totally miscast and proved everyone (except Richard Burton, who knew she had it in her) wrong. But though people tend to label her Oscar for Butterfield 8 as a "get well card" - and it was; she'd nearly died of pneumonia, saved by an emergency tracheotomy - it's also the case that Gloria Wandrous was also one of her best performances, even as she hated it, and the film.

Beyond those, though, it gets hard. At her height - from Place in the Sun through Suddenly Last Summer, maybe to Cleopatra if you're generous - she is often carrying weak pictures, submerged into oversized clunkers (try wading through Raintree County and Giant, never mind Elephant Walk), or doing what's required, but little more. Sure, she's sexy and vulnerable and sane in Suddenly... but the character is essentially helpless, and so is Taylor, carried along by the rest of the ensemble (that she holds her own up against Katharine Hepburn is probably less about Taylor's acting prowess than about Hepburn's curious reputation for being a greater actress than she necessarily was - onscreen, she and Taylor are basically equal, stars at the top of the firmament).

She was tailor (or more pointegly, Taylor)-made for Tennessee Williams' young, nubile, vixeny victims, an idealized notion of the ultimate woman, the ultimate object, sexual and terrifying (especially to a gay man). She's great as Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but her strengths tend to underscore the weaknesses of the play, never mind the tastefully cleaned up homosexual overtones all but erased from the film. One of the great underrated sketches from Saturday Night Live's weak period in the early eighties pitted Cat (a Taylor-ized Lara Flynn Boyle, especially droll) gainst a gay man who's passed through a Twilight Zone into the film. As she coos her come-ons, he screams "I'm gay! I'm not interested!" And that, really, is the point.

My mother alwasy pointed out that Taylor could annoy onscreen by simpering through her roles: weak, needy, feigning helplessness to get her way. That's why Martha and Gloria were such strong surprises: when push came to shove, Taylor absolutely had it in herself to be strong, confrontational, difficult, even unlikable; and even then, especially then, she won the audience to her side. That's star power, and God knows she had it... but it doesn't take much to just get by, and a lot of Taylor's filsm are about her getting by. Because she can, and because she will.

That duality, helpless and strong, brilliant or adequate... was what helped make her, in many ways, the ultimate Pisces, the most famous of my water signed people. She was passionate, emotional, mercurial... and yet, under it all, was a singular strength, and a sense of sureness of following her own inner instincts. "Nicky's the one I want to spend my life with" she said, at 18, of Nicky Hilton, her first husband; I'm sure she believed it. I'm sure she thought, each time, that this time was different and this time it would all work out...and it almost did, with Mike Todd, and even with Richard. But in the end, after all the husbands, all the tabloid fodder, the scandals and the weight issues... she didn't need a man to be complete, and nothing, really, could dim her stardom.

Like everything, her commitment to AIDS activism, which seemed, at times, like a lark, was nothing of the sort: it was intensely personal, from all the gay men she'd known (Roddy and Monty and Rock, most of all) to her former daughter in law, Aileen Getty. Thanks to Taylor's passion and her willingness to speak up and be seen, AIDS couldn't be hidden, or ignored. And in the end, that probably cemented the Legend of La Taylor as a gay icon: she wasn't just the great beauty, the bosomy brunette with the violet eyes... she was our champion.

I am stunned that Elizabeth Taylor died yesterday; as ill as she (so often) was, that sense of strength and resilience tended to make her medical dramas into backgrouns noise. Surely she would show up and make the rounds once more. Instead, she is gone. There will never be another one. Never, ever.

R.I.P. Loleatta Holloway

I'm guessing weboy will be posting on Elizabeth Taylor later, but didn't want this great lady's passing to go overlooked.

jinb

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

The Death Of Broder, The Life Of Broderism

Nothing gives quite the insight into the life and culture of Washington DC like the passing of its local political celebrities. Watching the formerly young, lefty blogging set - who came onto the scene promising to smash the old, the familiar, and the status quo - fall over themselves to share heartwarming stories and fond farewells for David Broder, you can see a pretty good indication of how and why nothing much changes in DC politics.

David Broder was, no doubt, a great reporter; his contributions to the journalism of politics, a way of soberly and seriously examining even the most contentious, divisive issues by focusing on the people and the story, have really shaped a lot about how, even now, we look at politics, as Americans. At the same time... the net effect is not necessarily all good, and amidst all the familiar refrains to remember those who've passed in their most positive lights, it's worth pointing out that the death of David Broder is a definite loss; but the lingering effects of Broderism ought to continue to be criticized and challenged.

Broder was among those who helped pioneer a notion - done largely by the Washington Post - that reporters could both report the news and comment on it, without injuring credibility or seriousness. The result, in many cases, has been to erode the sense of objectivity in journalism, exposing the fat that reporters come to stories with the same biases and foregone conclusions as most of us. But in Broder's case, it wasn't the reporting that suffered - it was the commentary.

He became known - and really it was almost all of my life as a political observer - as the Dean of the Washington Press Corps, the man who put eminence in eminence grise, and the conventional into conventional wisdom. Broder rarely offered an opinion that was especially brave or daring, just a recapitulation of particular events as they recently transpired, and some fairly obvious conclusions about where things might be headed. He was a big proponent of the middle ground, the negotiated compromise, the sense that governance requires action and action requires cooperation.

And for almost anyone with a passionately held belief about one side or another of an especially divisive issue... he was immensely frustrating.

Lots of people objected to Broder's opinion setting and its "conventional wisdom" for being just that: conventional. My objection was always the perception that it was, in fact, wisdom. Broder's instinct to split the differences, to promote the ideas of the most wishy-washy and muddled centers, was a good explanation of why the center is, often, a mirage and effective compromise frequently nonexistent. There's no way, really, to find "common ground" on, say, abortion. There's a fundamental, central problem of how one views a baby in a womb and how one balances fetal rights against a woman's rights that can't really be solved without one said essentially capitulating to the other. Broder didn't like to take sides - and his reporting was better for it. But in terms of developing a thoughtful, deeply held position on an issue... it's a recipe for chaos.

Broder's opinions, his reasonableness, his way of balancing all sides towards a nonexistent middle combined with his age and experience gave his voice a kind of weight it probably never deserved in the shaping of public opinion. I loved reading Broder for the insights he could find in talking to real people about their circumstances, their stories, their views on the issues of the day. But to watch Broder on nearly any opinion discussion program was an exercise in frustration - a recapitulation of the status quo, a defense of doing very little, a reasoned case for giving in.

The sadness of Broder's passing is that we've lost the good - the reporter who worked endlessly not to make himself the story - and retain, most likely, the bad. All over the place - David Brooks being merely the most obvious starting point (and that's realizing that many people don't already see that Dan Balz has smoothly placed himself in the spot of Broder's heir) - are similar muddled defenders of "the middle" ready to take up Broder's shining mediocrity. Broderism, more than Broder, lives on.

Wisconsin, And The Articles Of Faith

As I said previously, I think the challenge in looking at events unfold in Wisconsin between the Governor, the Legislature and the Unions, is trying to figure out how this plays out. Even though this week so a resolution that had clearly been likely all along - that Republicans would simply enact the union-busting provisions without the budget votes that needed Democrats present - where things go from here is still something of a mystery.

Partly, Wisconsin is a reflection of the worst effects of deep polarization in politics, where there is no common ground, where two sides can never agree. More than that, though, Wisconsin strikes me as being about the roots of that polarization - the "articles of faith" that drive true believers in both parties, beliefs that are, in many ways, unshakable.

Democrats have been dealing with their own damaging articles of faith during the health care "reform" debate and the aftermath of the 2010 elections. These were the assumptions that all the reform proposals were good and right, and that by being good and right, they would win with public support. Many liberals - good, thoughtful people otherwise - are bewildered to discover that so much of the health care reform plan is highly unpopular, did little to encourage voters in the last election, and still cannot be entirely sold to the public.

In my idealistic youth - and believe me, I had one - I too would have been mystified. We have a great ideas. We are right about so many things. Who doesn't see that? It took years, a number of painful Democratic defeats and some real immersion in the conservative side of arguments to realize that there are, in fact, more ways of looking at things - still, not necessarily the right ones, but listening to counterarguments made me think harder about what I consider facts, and what are simply, deeply held beliefs.

For conservatives, it's an article of faith that unions are bad, dangerous, and counterproductive (as well as a corrupt, slushy, source of funds for Democrats and their political goals). Their belief in this is unshakable, unbowed by facts... and not generally susceptible to negative public opinion.

Yes, it's also counterintuitive - especially when one considers that white working class voters - who make up some of the angriest and most vigilant conservative supporters - owe a great deal of their working rights, and their incomes, to the work of unions. A lot of this is regionally driven, an example of how views from the formerly confederate South have taken over the conservative movement and the GOP; it's the "right to work" South that was always the staunchest opponent of unions and unionization. And much of the recent anti-union effort has been driven by transferring "right to work" ideas from the South into the midwest.

We won't know, I think, for a while yet if these efforts take hold firmly enough to damage what remains of the union movement... but in a sense, it doesn't matter how this plays out to many conservatives. Win or lose, some will hold onto that article of faith that is antiunion. That's the real lesson of Scott Walker, who has shown the kind of absolute faith in an unpopular idea that may well lead to his political defeat.

In a sense, we were always bound to get to this point in American politics: the last few years have been, on both sides, a challenge to previously long held beliefs, certainties about how the world works, what people will agree with us about, and who's really right. Democrats have paid a huge price for insisting on a course of action on health care "reforms" that steamrolled public opinion, ignored reasonable opposition, and stifled even internal dissent. Similarly, Republicans have decided that the Walker play has to be defended at all costs, and unpopular arguments about fiscal discipline, steamrolling of public objections, ignoring reasonable discussions about compromise, and stifling internal dissent.

This is about true believers, and deeply held beliefs. And chances are, Republicans in many states will pay a price quite similar to theone Democrats just paid in the House elections. Because America, mostly, is not a nation of true believers... just situational ethiics and foxhole prayers. Wisconsin should never have come to this. But here we are... and if the true believers, and their absolutes, are rejected on both sides... then what?

The Island Of The Day Before

The first thing that struck me, as I woke up this morning to the news of Japan's earthquake, was that because of the International Date Line, the warnings for a tsunami in Hawaii would mean that the waves would be hitting those islands at a time on the same day as the earthquake, hours before it actually struck the Japanese coast. That is, they were being warned to expect a tsunami that had already happened a day later, somewhere else. A literal island of the day before.

That sense of watching all of these events unfold at some kind of strange time and space remove from the actual events never left me. Here in the northeast, we are dealing with the after effects of two days of sustained rain, on top of more rain only a week ago. Many of the highways between my house and New York City are actually closed, even this evening. News organziations in the US, and especially on the east coast, struggled all day with balancing major world events and the local business of dealing with closed roads and downed power lines.

In a moment of such fearsome reminders of "nature's fury" and such, it's easy to feel small and kind of humble. Our lives as we know them can, literally, come apart in moments. The earth can move, the water can flood, and lives are completely changed. That sense of sudden disarray is even harder to fathom from the comfort of one's own perfectly fine living room.

It was one of those days when the morning paper is instantly "old news" - I never held onto the newspapers from the morning of Setember 11th, 2001. They were irrelevant by 9 am that day. Today was a similar sensation, stuck as I was most of the day at a job where one can seem especially cut off from love events as they unfold. It's very disorienting. All of this doesn't matter now. The real news is happening elsewhere.

As we go to bed in the northeast, it is midday in Japan, on the day after. We live our lives in the day before, and always have. It's rare for events in the future to reach back and affect the day before. It is tomorrow, Kevin, in a world where we are clearly so all connected to one another, and so humbled by the hugeness of events beyond our control. Our humanity, in these moments, I think, is how blithely we carry on, knowing that we are so small, so ineffectual, and so transient.