under the harrow - Blair and Uriah Heep

There is something about Tony Blair that arouses the instinct to find some literary counterpart to explain him. How can a man so utterly mealy mouthed, so vacuous, so soft-soapy, an endlessly servile tool to the the Bush clique, an endlessly arrogant tyro to the powers under him, have attained his position? One almost instinctively looks to Dickens, and most of all, to Uriah Heep, to find a key to this rather loathsome soul. This is from the chapter on Uriah’s unmasking in David Copperfield:

“I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow [David Copperfield had struck Heep in an argument]. Our visit astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it astonished ourselves. He did not gather his eyebrows together, for he had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he almost closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his grisly hand to his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise. This was only when we were in the act of entering his room, and when I caught a glance at him over my aunt's shoulder. A moment afterwards, he was as fawning and as humble as ever.

'Well, I am sure,' he said. 'This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! To have, as I may say, all friends round St. Paul's at once, is a treat unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you well, and - if I may umbly express myself so - friendly towards them as is ever your friends, whether or not. Mrs. Copperfield, sir, I hope she's getting on. We have been made quite uneasy by the poor accounts we have had of her state, lately, I do assure you.'


In today’s Murdochworld – encompassing Australian papers, the Weekly Standard, and Fox – there is the usual contingent of the bloodyminded, whose blind belief that Israel is winning in Lebanon and that Israel is on the forefront of all things good is released in the media system like a toxin, to be washed through the Washington Post, the D.C. think tanks, CNN, finally achieving an extra-abstract form in an American made exploding bomb and its result (the wrenched off limb of an infant, the usual Lebanese carcass, the oil that covers the beaches of Lebanon). Among them is Blair, bleating at great length about what this is – this war, this green and pleasant war, this opportunity, this Sabbat, of which he is one of the umble enablers. First of course comes the pat on the back. Others, others could take the easy way. Not the crusaders. Theirs is the way of sacrifice – the stock options, tax cuts, and bribed Lords that mark the lonely monk’s path:

“The root causes of the crisis are supremely indicative of this. Ever since September 11, the US has embarked on a policy of intervention to protect its and our future security. Hence Afghanistan. Hence Iraq. Hence the broader Middle East initiative in support of moves towards democracy in the Arab world.
The purpose of the terrorism in Iraq is absolutely simple: carnage, causing sectarian hatred, leading to civil war.

The point about these interventions, however, military and otherwise, is that they were not just about changing regimes but changing the values systems governing the nations concerned. The banner was not actually "regime change", it was "values change".

The reason I say this is that we could have chosen security as the battleground. But we didn't. We chose values.””

O, Churchillians all! We rally to those values – the preemptive invasions, the curtailing of domestic liberties, the massive, continuous criminal incompetence of those who put their own poltical future, and the wellbeing of their billionaire cronies, well before the national interest!

“Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly
round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:

'Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take
care. You'll make nothing of this. We understand each other,you and me. There's no love between us. You were always a puppy with a proud stomach,from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you? None of your plots against me; I'll counterplot you!Micawber, you be off. I'll talk to you presently.'

“So the opportunity passed to reactionary Islam and they seized it: first in Gaza, then in Lebanon. They knew what would happen. Their terrorism would provoke massive retaliation by Israel. Within days, the world would forget the original provocation and be shocked by the retaliation. They want to trap the moderates between support for America and an Arab street furious at what they see nightly on their television. This is what has happened.

So the struggle is finely poised. The question is: how do we empower the moderates to defeat the extremists?”

Much port was undoubtedly spilt on many very fine and expensive laps as the crowd leaps to its feet to here this almost completely fictitious account of recent events, complete with that grand euphemism about what the Arab Street is seeing on their tvs. A neat stroke, that, since to say what they are seeing on their televisions rather gives the game away, doesn't it? Israel, which for forty some years has, in defiance of the UN, and with the financing of the US, made every effort to settle people on stolen territory, is being provoked – good, honest Israel! Provoked by, uh, an election. But elections are not, as Blair wisely knows, the essence of democracy – they are ploys and plays, with the higher thing – the imperialism of the those umble clear through to the gizzards in the pursuit of values –that is what we are all about, we who only want the best for Lebanon, for the Middle East, for all the world. We well intentioned few, we CEOs of oil companies and media, we seekers after cheap energy, we believers in the wind of freedom!

'Mr. Micawber,' said I,'there is a sudden change in this fellow
in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the
truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to
bay. Deal with him as he deserves!'

'You are a precious set of people, ain't you?' said Uriah, in the
same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped
from his forehead, with his long lean hand, 'to buy over my clerk,
who is the very scum of society, - as you yourself were, Copper-field, you know it, before anyone had charity on you, - to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I'll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I won't know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss Wick-field, if you have any love for your father, you had better not
join that gang. I'll ruin him, if you do. Now, come! I have got
some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before it goes over
you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don't want to be crushed.
I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently,
you fool! while there's time to retreat.”

“Our values . . . represent humanity's progress throughout the ages and at each point we have had to fight for them.

No wonder Blair is as popular as a case of piles in his own nation. And no wonder, in Murdochworld, he is everybody’s favorite toady.

one ray of light, at least

The news is so bad from Lebanon that LI has barely had time to celebrate Fidel Castro’s upcoming embalming. It is funny how communist parties in the final state of their decay leap over the French revolution and begin imitating Louis XIV. The failure to root themselves in anything but the bureaucracies they create is, perhaps, one reason for this, since family is the last trustworthy precinct in the morass of misrule. We do regret that Castro wasn’t either blown to smithereens by an anarchist bomb or otherwise deposed 35 years ago. Even for his sake -- at least that would have been an aesthetically pleasing terminus. Probably have done something good for the left in Latin America, too. Instead, like an island Franco, he reduced Cuba to a nullity, a welfare spot, a whorehouse for progressive tourists. That malign presence will now pass into the hall of fame of Latin American dictators: Duvalier, Pinochet, Vargas, Somoza, Castro.

Anyway, we can only hope that Raol, that old rotten homophobe, takes a dive into the pit too. Prying the corpse’s hands from the body of Cuba is going to take a long time, however. I hope Reinaldo Arenas is up in heaven, laughing.

the wapo editorial board - operation endless stupidity

“DESPITE THE terrible bloodshed in New York City on the eleventh, including the tragic death of scores of people in the World Trade Center, the United States, Al Qaeda and the Taliban continue to seek the same outcome to the war.”

This is only a slight parody of the truly demented editorial put out by the Washington Post today. It actually said – it actually said – “DESPITE THE terrible bloodshed in Lebanon and Israel over the weekend, including the tragic death of scores of women and children in the village of Qana, the United States, Israel and the Lebanese government continue to seek the same outcome to the war.”

We are becoming a real fan of the new, Fruit Loops style of WAPO punditry, in which black is no longer just white. No, black is a dozen shades of white. Black is oyster white, cream white, lily white. Keeping up its support for the American downward spiral in the Middle East, the editorial board does us all a favor by reminding us: it is the entire culture of D.C., not just Bush, that is diseased. Hubris, the inability to imagine the Middle East from any perspective except that acceptable at Sally Quinn’s cocktail parties, or your average Heritage/Brookings foundation blowfest, and the disconnect from America’s interests are the heads of this condition. The underlying cause is one familiar from previous dying empires – the Soviets, the Habsburg – which is that the political class has finally structured itself internally to so eradicate any consciousness of reality that it can only reach, externally, for the ultimate weapon: war. So, the story line is of unending U.S. power, in the epoch of the unending squandering of U.S. power. The story line elevates a solutions approach to problems it totally misconstrues, problems that, in fact, have no solutions. It casts things in terms of the Cold War and the War Culture just at a time when that metaphor has become unaffordable – when, literally, the Pentagon is eating away at the very foundation of America’s middle class life styles. You can’t continue to waste a trillion dollars every two years indefinitely. But of course, our blind warriors in D.C., who have decided – it would be funny if this wasn’t so painful – that the country Israel is bombing, Lebanon, is aligned with Israel – have gone into some black hole, in which everything happens backwards, logic is abolished, and there is no “then” – there are only the play of principles in the oxygenated air: Freedom! Terror! Principles have the advantage of shucking all “thens”, all actual events.

Unfortunately, the people of Quana have just suffered from an irrevocable ‘then’, and it would surprise the Lebanese to know that they are aligned, right now, in solidarity with Israel. Surely, if only the kids with the smashed skulls and extruded eyes could be given just a little bit of breath, surely they would be going, yeah Israel. Surely the guys in the vans crushed by Israeli missiles would be going, I do like that neighbor to the South. Say, isn’t it a fine thing that the missile that burned off my skin came from the U.S. – fighting for my freedom? The dialogue of the dead, as the WAPO editorialists must imagine it, is a monument to patriotism – American patriotism. The only kind, after all, that is legitimate in the world.

The bottom line, as always, is that our rulers are thieves, liars, and bullshitters. They are pulling the structures down around their own heads, and it would be fun to sit back and watch this, except that I have some sympathy for the human product of their experiments, which does have a tendency to die horribly.

But shucks – it is just another day in Heat Death America.

Thank you, Senator Hagel

Our relationship with Israel is a special and historic one," Hagel said. "But it need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships. That is an irresponsible and dangerous false choice."

"How do we realistically believe," Hagel said, "that a continuation of the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon, is going to enhance America's image and give us the trust and credibility to lead a lasting and sustained peace effort in the Middle East?"

He called the showdown in Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah guerrillas "sickening slaughter on both sides."

"President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire," Hagel said. "This madness must stop." - Dow Jones News Service.

One should note that the media approved word about the Middle East is 'solution'. An old, conservative tradition says: there are no solutions in human affairs. LI doesn't think that is completely right, but certainly one should use the word with caution. There is no solution in the Middle East. There are better and worse states of affairs, there. The worst was the eighties. Bush, in his insanity, presumption and ignorance is doing all he can to top that bloody decade.

I am still opposed to impeaching the man -- I want him scorched into the memory of this country, this representative of the low and the cretinous. I want Bush branded on Uncle Sam's behind. But I am beginning to think, hmm, maybe the world can't afford two more years of Bush. Maybe he will have to be impeached, for gross incompetence.

LI's adventures in the world

The writers LI admires most are scourgers of mankind – Swift, Marx in his political mode, Nietzsche, Kraus, etc., etc. Alas, though we nourish misanthropy in our bosom, hoping to become like them, when we are released into a crowd situation we become as unselectively friendly as a beagle.

So, I went and moderated this panel last night at the Bob Bullock museum. The crowd was sparse, unfortunately. But I loved it that anybody came out at all.

It has been a while since I addressed a number of people, and I was a little nervous. That soon passed. I will not bore you with the play by play of the three panelists and me. One of the panelists, Jim Haley, the historian, is an acquaintance.

The unexpected part of the whole thing, for me, was Ms. Denise McVea. She’s written a controversial book (if you are a Texan) about Emily West de Zavala. E.W.d.Z was the wife of the first vice president of the Texas Republic. Her slave, according to legend, amorously dallied with Santa Ana on the morning of the battle of San Jacinto, thus giving our Texas boys a fatal advantage as we routed the Mex. Our Delilah. McVea’s thesis is that this story is an distorted version of a suppressed fact – that Mrs Zavala was herself black, and possibly had been employed, before she met de Zavala, as a courtisan. This thesis has created a small storm – the Republic of Texas still has a space in the hearts of some of the men and women throughout the state who have never taken kindly to miscegenation, integration, and uppityness. I wish to God that I was caricaturing. I’m not. Denise turned out to be such an absolute doll, and in the Q and A she displayed no countering scorn for her detractors, who are the type to sling all kinds of your usual blog comment insults. Instead, she was the height of … well, dignity is an insufficient word. There is a sort of solemnity that accrues around a person who has a scholarly object that has absorbed her world, and when that solemnity is exposed to the light of the public response, it has a disarmed smile. It is a smile that continues even as the response to one’s researches seem, for mysterious reasons, to have provoked every jerkwater idiot within reach of a keypad to pen some dull and insulting opinion that goes straight for the genitalia or skin color. The serenity of the smile of reason in the storm of unreason stands out, like some broken marble column from a better age, around which spreads the ragged ass tents of a barbarian encampment. So Denise said that she found the response … interesting. Shockingly interesting. Such perfect poise – I was blown away.

Then it was out with a friend to get a couple of drinks on sixth street. Apparently, some convention of largeheaded bald men was happening in the city. A bouncer convention or something, since men with huge shaven heads were parading up and down the street. It looked like a loopy MTV video. And so, as Pepys would say, with some margaritas swimming in my belly, to bed.

thanks!

LI is such a putz sometimes. We meant to put this in post form yesterday. We want to give a big shout out of thanks to the Anonymous donor who helped us pay the electric bill. This is a bottom of our heart thank you. You don't know how hair thin our escapes have been this summer.

And so... onward towards the Writers' Braggin' panel tonight! Wish me luck.

Bela Tarr

Taking advice from our reader, Amie, LI went out and rented Damnation, the Bela Tarr film, the other day. We’ve watched it twice. …

I’m a reviewer of books, not film. I don’t know how to approach the medium. But let’s say something about Damnation anyway. Or one sequence. The sequence begins in a torrential rain – the rain beats down upon the coal mining city where the film is located, with few let ups, all through the film. You see the lights – this is a b&w film -- announcing the Titanik Bar. A car pulls up. A man gets out of it. We see all this from a camera that is mounted just behind the back of another man’s head, which looms in the shadows of the foreground. The camera is watching the bar at approximately his angle. Then the camera goes into the bar. In Goodfellas and Mean Streets, Scorcese made going into a bar or club a virtuoso fugue for camera, fluidly moving into the Copacabana (I think it was, in Goodfellas) through the kitchen and out into the show area with the faces of the people in the kitchen, first, and then the lit tables in the dark all turning to greet Henry and his date, and Henry greeting or stuffing money into the pockets of waiters and busboys. It was a perfect reflection of the giddiness of Henry’s date, but in its uninterrupted flow it stitches that giddiness into a larger glamour - Scorcese's camera seems to be making a liquid dive into the 'night' part of the nightclub, Peggy Lee's night, downtown. Tarr is so different. His camera is infinitely slow, and it will advance by millimeters on some completely trivial detail. There is a sequence, a really great sequence, later on, when the camera just shows a concrete wall sluiced by rainwater for almost two minutes. Going into the Titanik, we slowly go around, examining the patrons, who are often in odd angles and seemingly stunned. The camera has an ancient slowness – it is like an old man carefully examining his surroundings. The patrons and the bus people are like Brueghel’s peasants after the Industrial revolution and two world wars – they work in filth and rain, and outside of work they search for oblivion, escape from all thought, sprawled in stupor in chairs in the corners. We see them, at various moments, throughout the film, until we reach a sequence at the end of the film showing a dance that becomes a collective, linked arm dance, in which the stupor is completely cast off. A man – probably the lover, a man we have seen at the beginning of the film – has his hands over his face. And then the music begins. A deathly slow camera approach to the singer, a blonde woman with a big face, who holds the mike with one hand and holds a cigarette in the other – against which she is also leaning her head. She wears a cheap, crumpled black vinyl raincoat, and her big eyes with the big fake eyelashes are closed. She croons a love song that repeats variations on “its over/there’s no end, no end now.” At one point she does open her eyes, the song goes into a sort of small speaking chant – “he has the upper hand/without him life is barren” – then closes her eyes, and finishes the song. Not only her lover is gone, but he has taken her life. She really does seem to be at the lowest point, that point at which a person realizes that there actually is no lowest point, and that hell is simply an accurate representation of the human nervous system, with its infinite capacity for new and different shades of pain and its limited, even stunted, capacity for pleasure. Bottomless hells, sentimental heavens. The singers thin, exquisite voice – only exquisite in this one sequence, otherwise we only hear her harsh voice, talking, or her angry screams, in future sequences – seems to be trying to strip off not only the tatters of a superficial individual dignity which, offered to her lover, is weighed by him and found wanting, (as though it were the fatal law of the economy of love that the gift offered by the lover loses, in the moment of its surrender, the only value it ever had, which is precisely that it would never be offered) but the tattered dignity of the whole system, the filthy bars, eternal coal mine, the cheap clothes, the wretched faces that have been pounded by the years and years of futile labor.

Now, I am a huge fan of torch singing in movies. Obviously Tarr’s reference point is not Scorcese, but the Blue Angel. Just as that movie ends with Lola’s (Marlene Dietrich’s) lover doing an imitation of a cock crowing, Damnation ends with the lover doing an imitation of a dog. Everything is prefigured in the sequence that shows the song. The Barthesian question is: why do I want to see this sequence over and over?