December 2003 Archives
Sharon Waxman shames the New York Times
The New York Times, in its efforts to transform itself into a truly national newspaper, has of late decided to beef up its coverage from the third most important city in the country, Los Angeles. LA has never had anything approaching the depth of coverage that New York and Washington have, but now the Times wants to start breaking entertainment-industry news, and to become more relevant to west-coast readers.
After a long and high-profile search, then, the Times finally alighted on Sharon Waxman, a Washingon Post style reporter, to replace the fluffy and harmless Rick Lyman. A former foreign correspondent, Waxman was charged with getting her byline on the news pages, rather than simply observing the Hollywood hype machine.
And she's done just that, with two consecutive stories, yesterday and today, on the ongoing Michael Jackson affair. The first one put a lot of meat on the bare bones of the "Jacko X" story, trying to get to the bottom what the Nation of Islam was and wasn't doing with the beleaguered popster. After talking to half a dozen sources, both named and anonymous, Waxman said that the Nation of Islam was essentially controlling all access to Jackson, resulting, inter alia, in the departure of his longstanding spokesman, Stuart Backerman.
The story was solid and well-reported, and even included a classic non-denial denial from Jackson's lawyer, Mark Geragos: "Mr. Geragos said that members of Mr. Jackson's security detail were Muslim but that that did not mean they belonged to the Nation of Islam." That's right, Mark, but it also doesn't mean they don't.
Ultimately, however, the Times was late to the story, which was first broken as early as December 18.
Waxman's big scoop, then, was today, with an article headlined "Michael Jackson's $1 Million Interview Deal". This story, in contrast to yesterday's, is a lot rockier, and, frankly, not up to the normal reporting standards of the New York Times.
This isn't a case of solid reporting under a sensationalist headline: the lead, in typical let's-try-to-fit-everything-into-one-sentence fashion, says that "Michael Jackson struck a deal with CBS to be paid in effect an additional $1 million for both an entertainment special to be broadcast on Friday and his interview on '60 Minutes' this past Sunday, part of yearlong negotiations between CBS and Mr. Jackson, a business partner of his said on Tuesday."
There follows 1,200 words of very dense and hard-to-follow prose, during which none of the questions raised in the lead are really answered. What does "in effect" mean? Who's the "business partner"? And was Jackson paid, or is he just of the opinion that he has "struck a deal to be paid"?
The story, of course, if it really was a story, could have been reported much more simply: "CBS paid Michael Jackson $1 million for the interview he gave to them." But the Times never really comes out and says that: rather, it says that the $1 million was "additional", while remaining tantalisingly vague on the subject of what, exactly, it was additional to.
What we know is that CBS had a $5 million deal with Jackson to put on an entertainment special during a sweeps period, and that CBS had already advanced the singer either $1 million or $1.5 million of that fee, depending on whom you believe. The special was cancelled when Jackson was charged, and then reinstated after Jackson gave the interview.
Everything else is murky. Here's the Waxman reporting:
Both CBS and the Jackson business associate said that Mr. Jackson had failed to record the show, effectively rendering the $5 million deal moot. CBS tried to recoup some of the money it had advanced by offering another $1 million in exchange for an interview by the correspondent Ed Bradley of "60 Minutes" last February, the Jackson associate said.
Everyone agrees that interview never happened, because CBS never paid Jackson. Fast forward to last week:
The latest round of negotiations resulted in an agreement to do the aborted interview with Mr. Bradley, an airing of the special without the still-incomplete music video and another $1 million to Mr. Jackson, according to the Jackson associate.
I've read these paragraphs over and over again, and I just can't make sense of what they're trying to say. If the Michael Jackson special was "moot" as long ago as February and CBS wanted its $1 million back, how was it going to get that money by paying the star another $1 million on top?
More importantly, what was the $1 million on top of? Was it on top of the $1.5 million already advanced, or was it on top of the $5 million already agreed for the special? It's a world of difference: if it's the former, then far from paying for the interview, it would seem that CBS actually managed to get its Michael Jackson special for half the agreed price. But nowhere in her 1,241 words does Waxman deign to actually do the maths, and tell us that $1.5 million + $1 million = $2.5 million total, or that $5 million + $1 million = $6 million total.
If CBS ends up paying $6 million for a special plus an interview, after already agreeing to pay $5 million for a special, then it certainly looks as though the station has paid $1 million for an interview. If, on the other hand, CBS ends up paying either $2.5 million or $5 million for the special plus the interview, then it looks as thought the interview was free.
But Waxman completely fudges the question, simply saying that "it was unclear how much Mr. Jackson will ultimately earn from the programs."
In a case like this, where you're accusing a major news organisation of a major ethical impropriety, you had better have your facts straight: making the accusation and then saying that the facts are "unclear" is pretty dodgy journalism.
What's worse, this entire story is based on a single anonymous source. The only backup that Waxman has for her claims is this one "Jackson associate," whom she admits "was speaking to the news media because he had not been paid his commission for negotiating the deal and had been denied access to Mr. Jackson".
So scratch that: the entire story is based on a single anonymous source with an admitted axe to grind. How often do such stories make it into the New York Times's news pages? Not often, I'd hope. If the Times does run such stories – and I'm sure that most of us would rather it didn't – then it should do so only when the source is very, very senior, and very, very trusted. But neither of those crtieria seems to obtain in this case: in fact, Roger Friedman of Fox News says today that
Maybe someone should tell Times editor Bill Keller that Waxman spent a good deal of her day on Monday chatting up Jackson's former manager Dieter Wiesner. Now back in Germany, where he owns sex clubs, Wiesner was very happy to tell Waxman anything he could think of to destroy Jackson's reputation.
I have no idea if Friedman is right, but it certainly fits: Wiesner was a named source in yesterday's story about the Nation of Islam, although he provided no on-the-record quotes. He was also certainly in a position to be getting commissions for negotiating deals.
In the end, I'm perfectly happy to believe the worst of everybody involved in this – Jackson, Wiesner, Moonves, Friedman, and all the others. But the New York Times shouldn't print such an incendiary story about a rival news organisation unless it's sure it's got its facts straight. I'm reasonably sure that the New York and Washington news desks would never have printed this story; the LA bureau should not be held to a lower standard.
UPDATE: Lisa de Moraes, in the Washington Post, weighs in with vehement CBS denials of just about everything in the article.
Posted by Felix at 14:17 EST | Comments (2)
So close but so far away
(A quick note of explanation from Felix: sea ice has blown back towards Halley, and where it meets the sea ice which never detached itself in the first place, there's a five-foot crack which precludes moving heavy equipment off the boat and onto the base. So the RSS Ernest Shackleton is trying to crunch its way through the ice until it reaches the crack and can start unloading.)
I will try and describe what I see before me when standing out on deck. Firstly, it is not that cold, especially not with Antarctic gear on. Minus a few perhaps, sometimes even up to plus one. Secondly, there is a lot of white. And a lot of white on white. Without sunglasses, you can't see much at all; it's too white and too bright. With sunglasses, the picture gradually emerges, like one of those computer-generated posters that first looks like nonsense until an elephant appears in 3D. Once you see the elephant, you will never see the nonsense again. So it is with the ice cliffs.
But first, the immediate surroundings. We have barged and bashed a channel through the sea ice that is 1-2 km long, a couple of ship-widths wide and has a bend in. It took three days to do this. The motion of the ship was worse than Biscay when ramming at top energy – we back up, speed up, ram ram ram, brace brace brace, the ship hull slides over the sea ice and crashes down: thump. Often one whole side of the ship points worryingly to the sky. And then we sink down again, anxiously scanning the ice for any sign of a crack that we can pursue. Usually there is none, the result being more of a nibbling than a munching. So we've now stopped. It's stalemate0
It could take weeks for to reach the crack between us and Halley. Maybe Halley can find an alternative route for us. I'm glad I have no role in the decision making right now. After making such good time here we might end up with a significant delay in arrival. For winterers expecting a handover and no more, that's no calamity, yet, but for folk here for the summer only, time is already pushed in a six week season. At some point, we'll have to start prioritising tasks. The good news is that we can cross the crack by skidoo and some people have gone up to base already. The bad news is that none of our heavy cargo will make it as things currently stand.
Back to the scenery. Around us is a channel of ice porridge, slushy, on the cusp of freezing and thawing. It looks like Lux flakes, I don't know why. Above the surface is the sea ice we're trying to break up. This is perhaps 2-3m thick at its worst, easily 1m thick in most places. This is ice that formed last winter and hasn't melted or been blown out to sea yet. On top of the ice therefore is a years accumulation of snow,- at least another metre and heavy. So we're driving through porridge, trying to break up a heavy, soggy, very stable wall of ice. And when it does break up, it falls into the porridge and stays there. We need wind. Usually there has been a strong burst of wind by this time of year that creates a large swell and breaks up the winter ice. This year's winter was particularly cold but the summer has been amazingly calm. Nice for the residents, not for the ship.
On top of the sea ice is sastrugi, beautiful sastrugi, and penguins. Sastrugi forms when the wind blows snow about,- it is the formations of snow on the top layer. It's all the vertical structure I have to feast on, maybe only 5cm high, but to my eyes, as beautiful as a forest. In a very different way. The penguins are emperors, large and elegant, yellow collar, head held high, proud. I hadn't seen them swim before; they are more like seals than dolphins in the water, unlike their littler cousins. Adelies, gentoos, chinstraps – they fly out of the water, following a parabola with their entire bodies, completely air-borne at the top of the jump. This is called porpoising and makes you giggle every time you see it. Emperors are larger, sleeker and, I imagine, heavier. When they swim, their backs emerge but not their whole selves. Watching them, they are less playful but just as much fun. Only when following an emperor swim deep, do I realise how clear this seemingly black water really is. Deeper and deeper they twirl, then they dissappear. A minuter later, flying, flying, they fly out of the water and onto the ice, slip slide, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee on their bellies, brace with their wings, stand up, shake off and walk away as though that wasn't really the best thing they could imagine doing ever.
There is about 10km of sea ice between us and the ice shelf. Half way between the two is this damned five foot wide crack. Everywhere else, the sea ice is thick and strong, perfect for relief of the ship. The ice shelf however, that's what calls me. The cliffs are about 50m high and, when the sky's clear, endless in both directions. They look a bit like Beachy Head or the Seven Sisters except they're white all over. That is the edge of the ice shelf which is the edge of the continent, miles and miles away, that is Antarctica. The pedant in me knows that although this place is known as 'The Real Antarctic', it's not – one day I'd like to feel the Land under my feet as well. Perhaps in the Dry Valleys or the South Pole. I'm not picky! For now, however, I've arrived, I've come home to Halley. I don't know why this place makes me tick but it does. It's just so huge, and so white, and there's so much ice.
Posted by Rhian at 11:24 EST | Comments (5)
Selling Apples
There's a lot of garbage written about Apple, but the cover story of the latest issue of Fast Company seems pretty fair, if unoriginal. (Innovation on its own doesn't make money: who'd'a thunk?) The bit which piqued my interest was in the sidebar at the bottom of the article, on the new Apple store in Burlingame, California:
The store is done in iPod shades of white. "We chose hand-selected Tuscan stone for the floors--a stone that's somewhere between sandstone and limestone," says Ron Johnson, Apple's vice president of retail. "It's the same stuff Florence was built on." ...
Apple is holding leases on some of the most expensive real estate in the country, in places such as tony Michigan Avenue in Chicago and New York's trendy SoHo. And then there are those Tuscan stone floors. "Apple is creating a boutique environment, and they're doing it in a very expensive way," says Roger Kay, from the technology market research firm IDC. "It doesn't seem very reliable as an approach for selling large quantities of goods."
I think Kay is exactly right. People tend to ooh and aah whenever they see an Apple store: they'll even line up round dozens of blocks to get in. It's far from clear, however, that the Apple stores are particularly good at getting people to actually buy their computers: the company's market share seems to be stubbornly stuck at around 3% these days.
Apple's retail strategy isn't working, and the reason, I think, is the signal that the expensive polished fabulousness of the stores sends to the Great Unwashed on Wintel machines. Tourists from Pennsylvania come to New York to window-shop, and if they walk down Prince Street from the Prada store, they'll find Apple just past the Mercer Hotel, and opposite Miu Miu. All of them have austere white interiors, carefully designed to showcase objects of unrivalled beauty and sophistication (or, in the case of the hotel, Christina Aguilera). For all that people are welcome to browse the machines in the store, check their email, and ask questions, you're never quite rid of the feeling that you're basically in a design museum with price tags.
Virginia Postrel is making a big splash these days with her book about how great design is becoming ubiquitous in contemporary culture. But there's something interesting about, say, the huge success of Michael Graves at Target: while the individual items are wonderfully designed, they're still sold alongside bog roll and Wonderbread in cavernous warehouses abutting even larger car parks. They're cheap, they're accessible, and they're not in the least bit intimidating.
Now, New Yorkers do not get intimidated by retail spaces such as the Apple Store Soho, and in fact it might be the perfect shop for them. But selling Apples to downtown New Yorkers is a bit like having half a dozen shops in the Bay Area: you're preaching to the converted. Apple wants its stores to appeal to the 97% of the population who use Windows, and that means going beyond the creative metropolitan types with high disposable incomes and targeting what politicians like to call Working Families.
For
one thing, Working Families live in places like Oklahoma and Oregon, neither
of which have an Apple store. If you look at the map on the left, the black
dots represent Apple retail outlets: they're clustered in Boston-Washington
corridor, the two big California conurbations, and a handful of other urban
centers. Dye the Apple stores blue, and you could almost have a map of Democratic
states. (No wonder Al Gore's on Apple's board.)
More importantly, however, Working Families, even if they're in Oakland or Staten Island and have easy access to an Apple store, tend not to pride themselves on paying extra for glitzy packaging. That's not to say they won't do so if given the opportunity: if they see a sleek stainless steel dishwasher next to an ugly beige one, they might well pay a small premium for it. But here's a thought experiment: take that same sleek stainless steel dishwasher, at the same price, and put it in a super-sleek Soho kitchen-design store, full of polished marble countertops and state-of-the-art ranges. Then, take your average working stiff, put him or her in that shop, and ask him if he'd like to buy the dishwasher. There might be lots of cooing over it, but ultimately the answer will be "oh, no, that's not for me."
What Postrel talks about in her book is not just a reflection of the way in which Americans are increasingly conscious of good design; it's also a reflection of the way in which American mass retailers are increasingly proficient at selling that design to their customers. But Apple is not, and never has been, a mass retailer, and its aesthetic is much closer to Helmut Lang than it is to JC Penney.
It's entirely natural and proper for Apple to position itself as the computer company for people who "think different". But the risk in that strategy is that people will consider themselves more-or-less normal as far as computers go, and therefore not the kind of people who should be getting a Mac. I have a nasty feeling that Apple's ultra-high-end retail stores only serve to reinforce that notion: that Apples are for the kind of people who shop in Soho, or Michigan Avenue, or Ginza.
What Apple needs to do, I think, is break out of the white box. The white stores, the white-background television ads, the white computers: these all look gorgeous, but they're also somewhat intimidating. People need to be persuaded that the guy next door has an Apple, not because he's different or particularly cool, but just because it does what he needs it to do much better than a Windows machine could.
In a way, the evangelical fervour of the Apple faithful works against the company: the average Windows user, looking at the wild-eyed fanatics who'll line up round the block to celebrate the release of an upgrade to their operating system, simply doesn't understand why anybody would feel so strongly about their computer. These people, maybe they Think Different because they are different.
Most people are intimidated by computers, and Apples, by right, should be less intimidating than PCs. Apple should, really, be able to paint PC users as the megahertz-and-gigabytes crowd, while Mac users don't really care what's going on under the hood, they just know that they find it really easy to get things done. Apple shouldn't be the computer equivalent of a Viking range. Rather, it should be a George Foreman grill: simple, accessible, and popular.
Apple probably came closest to that ideal when it released the original iMac in a rainbow of fruit flavours, back in the olden days of OS 9. But, bizarrely, now that it has an operating system which is orders of magnitude better, Apple doesn't seem to have capitalised on its newfound user-friendliness to gain any market share at all.
When Steve Jobs gives his next major speech, at Macworld San Francisco on January 6, everybody's expecting him to announce new, lower-priced iPods. What I'm hoping for are new, lower-priced computers: when the iBook went from G3 to G4 a couple of months ago, the prices actually went up, ferchrissakes! If the iPod can come in a low-priced, mass-market, brightly-coloured version, then – fingers crossed – maybe the Macinosh can, too.
Posted by Felix at 17:45 EST | Comments (19)
Before and After
Note from Felix: Due to email cock-ups, I received both these blogs at the same time. So here they are, Before and After.
Before, Part 1:
Arbritrary day, arbritrary time.
I feel as though we are floating through a mirage. The water outside is so calm, it can only be identified by reflections of cloud and ice. Behind us, we leave a wake of ripples like velvet chocolate. The space in front is dappled and continuous, occasionally broken by the landing of a bird or, magically, breaching of a whale. It is silent outside. Inside, it is impossible to feel any motion of the ship, so calm it is. Floating through a mirage of grey. Mesmerising.
Yesterday I could see nothing but open water in every direction, to the horizon. Today there are a few bits of broken pack ice floating around, blue and melting below the surface, snow-like above, perfectly reflected in the mirror underneath. The more I contemplate it, the more erie it becomes. So still, so silent, so smooth, and so huge. An enormous expanse of open water so close to the Antarctic, surrounded by ice. This is a polynya: at some point, the Shack website should have my entry about it and photos. We've been sailing through this for a couple of days now and probably have another day to go. At the other side: The Ice Shelf and hopefully a shore lead all the way to Halley.
We went to Bird Island after Signy. From ice castles and magical light to a heaving, overpowering concentration of life. The smells, the sounds, the activity. Continual and everywhere, the dance of life. Mating, fighting, hunting, flying, nesting, feeding, killing, breeding. "My anxiety on Bird Island is similar to that which I feel in central London on a Saturday night" said one, others were spellbound by the activity and proximity of wildlife around us.
I was a little overwhelmed by the fur seals upon arrival, unavoidable and territorial. Similarly, the colony of 70,000 macaroni penguins was almost too large to comprehend. But in between these two, we walked through marshland amongst large, peaceful birds. The Wandering Albatross. Imagine you are crouching down, as though to speak to a child. At eye level, you look at the nesting bird, perfect white, enormous, silent, eye to eye. Some nests had birds waiting to lay, others had chicks, a year old, waiting to fly. They've been sitting here on their own for the last nine months, fattening up, replacing fluff with feathers, stretching their wings and trying to jump. Sometimes they climb to the top of the cliff, jump off, flap, and fall to the bottom. Then they start climbing again. One day, they'll jump, their wings will hold them and they'll fly and fly and fly, not returning for five years or so until they're ready to nest. Once airborne, I guess, there's no turning back. I feel a bit the same way about coming to Halley!
Albatrosses and penguins: so different, yet, in one way, so similar. When the penguin swims, he is as sleek as a dolphin, when the albatross flies, it is effortless and powerful. When either try to walk, it is awkward and painfully funny to watch. But to swim or fly like that – who are we to laugh?
Before, Part 2:
Past midnight and I need shades outside.
We visited South Georgia after Bird Island, as heavenly as I tried to describe last year, and then set sail East. East to the Greenwich Meridian and then south down the coast. Rough seas first, then hard ice crunching, then the polynya: bizarrely calm.
Eternal sunset, or is it sunrise, for a while, and now permanent light. Bright white daylight light. I have no concept of what my next meal-type should be like or if it's bed time. There is no concept of time, let alone flavour of day, week or festive date.
We have now left the polynya and are sailing down a shore lead towards Halley. Ice shelf on one side, broken pack ice on the other. I can almost touch Antarctica! We're due to arrive tomorrow. TOMORROW!! It will have taken exactly eight weeks to get here. I don't know how I feel. I just want to be there now. It's time, it's definitely time. Outside, the scenery is stunning but inside, we're all going bonkers. I'm beginning to realise that this trip is going to be more than a physical challenge.
If you want to see any more photos or hear another's point of view, check out the Shack and Halley websites. A fellow-winterer, Simon, is also writing a web diary. And if that's not enough, there are even more blogs if you want them! Use these resources, that way you might have a reference in mid-winter if really do go bonkers! Happy Christmas to you all and to my family and friends, I love you. xx
After:
Right here, Right now. HALLEY!!!
Eight weeks ago to the day I boarded this vessel, today we arrived at Halley. Crunch. There's about 5 miles of solid sea ice between us and the ice shelf we need to get to so we'll be ramming the ice for a good day or three yet before we get off the ship.... but we're here.
Standing on the deck this afternoon in a towel and sarong having just emerged from a sauna, I saw three skidoos appear. Like electricity firing when a switch closes, the connection was made, we had arrived. By some miracle, we travel to the ends of the earth and there, waiting for us, are people. And more bizarre yet, people I know! A few hours later, a BAS twin otter circled over head so close I could see the co-pilot waving at me. All my cynicism, sluggishneess and griping of the past couple of weeks dissolved in an instant. I love it here. It doesn't matter how long it takes now before I see the base, I know we have arrived. Carols on the fo'c'sle this evening were surely a celebration for us all. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all. Rhian xx
Posted by Rhian at 15:45 EST | Comments (1)
The Freedom Tower
The design for the Freedom Tower – the big signature building which is to rise at the northwest corner of the World Trade Center site – was unveiled with great pomp today. Grand speeches were given by George Pataki, Michael Bloomberg, Larry Silverstein, Daniel Libeskind, and, of course, the architect, David Childs.
But what's the tower like? Is it a magnificent structure the like of which the world has never seen, a skyscraper to put New York City back in its rightful place as the home of the greatest tall buildings in the world? After all, a central part of the WTC redesign has always – since long before Libeskind was chosen as the master architect for the site plan – been the restoration of the skyline. And although this building certainly puts something tall where (more or less) the Twin Towers once stood, I'm not sure that it really has the kind of iconic power that the most optimistic of us were hoping for.
The Freedom Tower is not an easy structure to get your head around. For one thing, it kindasorta torques, which means that its shape can't be easily described or conceived. And then it's basically comprised of three unrelated elements: an office block at the base, with a latticework structure on top of that, and finally a 276-foot spire perched on the very top.
It's designed by David Childs, a competent architect with, as far as I can make out, no real genius or inspiration whatsoever. In New York, he has built perfectly good structures like the New York Mercantile Exchange and the Stuyvesant School Bridge, both very close to where the Freedom Tower will be built; mediocre buildings like the Bear Stearns headquarters; and, of course, the monstrosity that is the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. This is not the kind of man who will think outside the box: he more or less invented the box as we know it today.
The base of the building has been evened out from Libeskind's original, angular design, and is now a perfect parallelogram, mirroring the street grid around it: West Street on the west, Vesey Street on the north, Fulton Street on the south, and maybe some kind of extension of Washington Street on the east.
The base is actually the best part of the building, echoing the extra-high bases of the original World Trade Center.Weirdly, none of the publicity images really show what's going on down there, so you're going to have to make do with a blurry snapshot of the model I took with my digital camera. The view is looking north from the Trade Center site, with Fulton Street in the foreground.
You can see how Childs has lit up the model by turning the solid core of the building – where the fire stairs, elevators and whatnot are located – into a light source. So it's that much more difficult to tell what the building is actually going to look like when it's finished. What you can see, however, is that the entrance foyer is going to be pretty spectacular, complete with structural triangular entrance elements in place of the curved elements from the Twin Towers.
Now
continue looking at the building from this perspective – from the south.
As it rises, the south facade becomes narrower, with the left-hand (west) wall
going straight up, and the right-hand (east) wall moving in towards it. The
north and south facades are perfectly vertical, and don't torque at all: they
simply narrow. Meanwhile, if you're looking straight towards them, the east
and west facades kind of fall backwards on their left-hand sides, while remaining
perfectly straight and vertical on their right-hand sides. That's the
torquing you're going to hear so much about.
The picture on the left is a view of the south and east facades. Because of all the light and transparency, it's hard to tell what's going on. But essentially what you have is straight, vertical walls on the left and right edges of the picture (the southwest and northeast corners), and a torquing, falling-backwards wall in the middle (the southeast corner). The whole thing is complicated by the fact that the outside of the building is a diagrid – a diagonal structural grid which helps add rigidity and redundancy to the overall building structure. That's why the straight-up verticals aren't actually straight-up vertical at all, but weave in and out a little to incorporate the movement of the grid.
You got that? Because now we're going up, to the top of the office block, what Childs calls the crown, where you'll find public areas, an observation deck, meeting rooms, and – in another nod to the original towers – Windows on the World restaurant. The new restaurant won't just have spectacular views of both rivers; it will also have a glass roof, so that you can look up and admire the latticework trellis above.
The
crown has an angled top, with the high point at the northwest corner, and the
low point at the southeast corner. The idea is to complete Libeskind's spiral
of skyscrapers, the tops of all of which tilt inwards towards the center of
the site, as if in homage to the void there.
And in fact the experience of the crown should be fantastic. You won't be peering through narrow windows, like you had to in the WTC: rather, there should be gorgeous panoramic views from New Jersey to Brooklyn and from the Statue of Liberty up past Central Park.
The problem is that the positioning of the crown doesn't align with the positioning of the spire at the top of the trellis. The spire is at the southwest corner, not the northwest corner, which gives it a tacked-on, ill-fitted feeling. The spire should rise naturally from the building, continuing the base's tapering motion. Instead, while the base of the building points north, the spire drags the eye back to the south. From the north and south, it's not too bad, and from the east, the view is going to be largely occluded by other towers which are going to be built next to the Freedom Tower. But you're not going to see many pictures of what the tower is going to look like from the west – the famous view across the river from New Jersey, with the World Financial Center in the foreground – because that's where the disconnect between the top of the crown and the spire is most glaring. If you want, you can get some idea of what I'm talking about by downloading this 488k QuickTime movie of the view from the Hudson.
Above
the crown is the trellis, arranged around two broadcasting masts which emerge
from the building's core. The trellis continues the diagrid of the main building,
but instead of being under compression, it's made of cables which are under
tension. Childs makes a big show of talking about how this echoes the construction
of the Brooklyn Bridge, but I'm not entirely sold. I'm sure he's right that
the trellis relieves the weight of the building, and adds redundancy to the
structure should any of the supporting columns fail. But the way in which the
cables hold the building up isn't beautifully obvious, like it is in the Brooklyn
Bridge or any given structure by Santiago Calatrava. In fact, if it's reminiscent
of anything, the trellis brings to mind the Eiffel Tower – something which
is made up of beams under compression, not cables under tension.
Attached to the broadcasting masts are a bunch of windmills, which will provide a chunk of the building's energy needs: a nice touch. And then, stuck onto the top like an afterthought, is the spire.
Childs is unclear about exactly what sort of form the spire is going to take: according to the LMDC press release, "it is intended that an artist will collaborate to design the spire with the architects and the engineers, placing a sculpture in the sky". But as it stands, the spire is simply plunked down on top of the trellis, with its base not even extending as far as the southeast corner, where it could naturally continue the torqued line of the rest of the building.
Unlike much of the rest of what we think is going to appear at the World Trade Center site, it seems pretty clear that, in this case, what we see is what we're going to get. Larry Silverstein has committed to laying the foundation stone by September 11, 2004, and having the building ready for occupation in late 2008 or early 2009. He's got his favourite architect on board, and seems to have dodged any of the inconvenient parts of Daniel Libeskind's vision.
Once the building is up in the sky – and Silverstein says he intends to top out the steel by September 11, 2006 – we will indeed have a restored skyline. That's a good thing. But many architecture junkies, I think, will retain a feeling that ultimately we'll be missing out on something with a stronger overall form: something unified, something better.
Posted by Felix at 15:03 EST | Comments (46)
Distributed decision-making
I spent a chunk of this afternoon at Bush in 30 Seconds, a website from the people who brought you moveon.org. The purpose of the website is to find a 30-second ad which can then be run in Bush's State of the Union speech. Between November 24 and December 5, anybody could make their own ad, save it as a QuickTime file, and submit it to Bush in 30 Seconds for consideration.
The organisers expected about 300 entries; in the end, they got over 1,000. And even if there are lots of eager volunteers, it's hard to approach 1,000 Bush-bashing ads and keep a fresh and open mind with respect to each one. Many were excellent, but choosing between them was going to be very arduous.
So they didn't. Instead, they basically decided to use the same kind of web-based system that was initially popularised by Hot Or Not. Once you register at the website, you're shown a sequence of no more than 20 ads, chosen at random. (Of course, you can vote on just one or two if you like.) You then rate each ad on a range of criteria, ending up with an overall grade. Even if each person only votes for a handful of ads, pretty quickly the total number of votes will add up, and, with luck, a handful of spots will emerge as the clear favourites.
I looked at 20 ads in total, and some of them were truly appalling. Others were very good, however, like Bushopoly, featuring a Monopoly set; If the Bush Administration Was Your Roommate (pretty self-explanatory, but well executed); and a wonderful little spot called Bush Doesn't Tip, featuring his former beer vendor at the ballpark in Arlington, back when Bush was an owner of the Texas Rangers.
Three out of 20 is a pretty good hit rate, I think, and I can only imagine how good some of the other ads are that I haven't seen. I guess I'll find out when the 15 finalists are announced. More importantly, I have a lot of faith in this process: it's a lot more reliable than shutting a bunch of people in a room with junk food and asking them to choose between hundreds of different entries all of which start blurring into each other after a while. Moveon.org isn't being particularly innovative here: TriggerStreet.com has been doing a similar thing for the past two years with screenplays, cutting out the Hollywood bullshit to try and find the very best product.
Now, Jeff Jarvis seems to be proposing something very similar for the World Trade Center memorial competition. Don't trust a small jury to find the best submissions, he says: "Viewing 5,201 entries is a daunting prospect. But by the time Web viewers get finished, they'll have whittled that to, oh, a few dozen."
But a Hot or Not / TriggerStreet model wouldn't work in this situation. When people are competing on the quality of their television ads or their own individual pulchritude, a popular vote is a good way to measure quality. The ability to read, understand and judge an entry for the WTC memorial, however, is far more difficult, and in any case there are often very good reasons to dismiss memorials which might look good at first glance.
Jarvis, in fact, doesn't propose any kind of randomising device which would ensure that all the 5,201 entries got a reasonable amount of scrutiny. Just put them all up on the web, he says, and we'll do the rest. But we won't. His own entry, and those of a few other people with strong web presences or other brand names, would get quite a lot of discussion. And the vast majority of web browsers, not wanting to jump into such a huge pool at random, would seek out guides to the more interesting designs – guides which, pretty much by definition, would not have been written by people who've actually gone through all the entries individually. Take a design without significant traffic being driven to it: the chances of its being discovered and acclaimed are actually pretty thin.
That said, putting all the entries online is not a bad idea. The simple act of doing this could, as Jarvis, says, be positive:
What it does is open up the process, allow all of us to feel involved and to help point to those designs that touch us and speak to us. There are bound to be surprises there.
In addition, this also meets the jury's fine goal of displaying all the proposals as a memorial in and of itself. The heart and soul that went into those 5,201 entries will be, I guarantee you, inspiring.
And if it should happen that one or two of the entries do start getting a lot of popular support, then at the very least the LMDC can start wondering why that is, and whether certain elements might not be incorporated in the final design.
In general, though, the concept of using the internet to whittle down an unwieldy number of entries to something more amenable to straightforward "which of these is the best" comparison is surely an idea which is only taking off. Imagine if we could have had something similar in the California gubernatorial race: rather than everyone simply voting for Arnold because he had the name recognition and the momentum, all those tiny individuals might actually have been in with a chance. (Of course, you'd need to implement something like Single Transferable Vote or instant-runoff voting in order to make this worthwhile.)
And if it worked in California, imagine what could happen in a presidential race! Of course, if the WTC memorial is too controversial for such tools, then a political election is certainly beyond the pale. But just imagine... maybe, some day, there will be a way for voters to rank a large number of candidates based on something other than campaign money and name recognition. Then, a very minor candidate could win an election just by being ranked in the top 10 of most voters' lists. Choire Sicha for president!
Posted by Felix at 22:16 EST | Comments (3)
Opera on the radio
Anthony Tommasini is on holiday; in his place yesterday (the "critic's notebook" feature on the front page of the New York Times arts section), the Metropolitan Opera ran a 2,000-word fundraising drive under his byline. Or maybe he wrote it himself; if he did, the Met couldn't have wished for anything more fawning.
Terry Teachout paraphrases:
ChevronTexaco, which has been sponsoring the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday-afternoon radio broadcasts for the past 64 years, is pulling the plug at the end of the current season. (They now have other corporate priorities.) The broadcasts cost $7 million a year, and the Met doesn’t have that kind of cash to spare.
Tommasini makes it as clear as he can that it's ChevronTexaco who's the villain in this piece – he even calls down the wrath of Wotan on what he calls "the merged company that has pulled the plug". The contrast, you see, is with the virtuous pre-merger Texaco, which underwrote the broadcasts for 62 years, and whose CEO said in 1999 that "sponsoring the Met has become part of our corporate DNA".
The difference between Tommasini and Teachout is that the former clearly sees the potential demise of the broadcasts as disastrous for global civilisation, while the latter is less sympathetic, saying that "I don’t believe in sinking money into obsolete cultural ventures that have largely outlived their utility, and it occurs to me that the Met’s radio broadcasts—at least as presently constituted—may well fall into that category". His argument is that
the future of classical radio lies not in what has come to be called "terrestrial radio" (i.e., conventional radio broadcasting) but in satellite and Web-based radio, which make it possible to "narrowcast" a wider variety of programs aimed at smaller audiences. I suspect that’s where the Met really belongs—not on terrestrial radio. And if I had to guess, I’d say that the Tony Tommasinis of today would be more likely to listen to the Met on their computers than on high-quality radios bought by their parents.
He's wrong. The Met radio broadcasts reach 11 million people – vastly more than will listen to classical music on their computers worldwide over the course of a year. Tommasini makes the point that the broadcasts "have been a cultural lifeline for generations of listeners, both those who live in places far removed from any opera company and those who may live just a subway ride from Lincoln Center but can't afford to attend". Teachout, it would seem, would restrict them to the lucky inhabitants of the affluent side of the digital divide, those with satellite radios and broadband internet connections.
Teachout even gripes that he'd "like to know how many of the Met’s 11 million listeners live in the United States" – as though non-US listeners are second-class opera buffs, about whom we shouldn't really care. Terry, those non-US listeners might well number millions in Latin America and China – people who are certainly not going to get satellite radios any time soon. Would you deprive them of what is quite probably their only access to opera just because they're not smart enough to live in the USA?
Teachout just doesn't get it: he writes that he's never listened to the broadcasts, implying that therefore there's something irrelevant about them. But Teachout is a member of the cultural elite that they aren't aimed at – the people who, if they fancy some opera, can just hop on the subway to Lincoln Center, pull out some of their disposable income, and experience it live. If those people never listened to an opera on the radio, it really wouldn't matter. It's everybody else – those without easy access to an opera house – who are the people that the radio broadcasts are trying to reach.
That said, I do agree with Teachout on the subject of what Tommasini calls "compensation to commercial radio stations" – something which accounts for an undisclosed chunk of the cost of the broadcasts. Subsidising the wide dissemination of opera is a good thing indeed, but I'm not sure it should go so far as to directly contribute to the bottom line of for-profit radio stations.
But I also think that the whole debate is a little bit overblown. For the fact is that the Saturday broadcasts will go on, even if the Met can't find a big-name corporate sponsor to replace ChevronTexaco. The Annenberg Foundation has already given $3.5 million to keep them on the air, and both Joseph Volpe, the Met's general manager, and Beverly Sills, its chairwoman, have personally pledged that the programme will continue.
Why? Certainly, it's close to their hearts for all the reasons that Tommasini rehearses. But, more prosaically, it's crucially important if the Met is to continue to receive funding from the large foundations. Tommasini's article appeared on the same day that George Hunka blogged about how "Lincoln Center Theater, in particular, has an active education department that seeks to bring young audiences into the theater (mainly for the benefit of funders and New York Times reporters, it appears)".
I'm not nearly that cynical, but I'm sure that Volpe has done his maths: if he doesn't spend a couple of million on the radio broadcasts, he would risk losing much more than that from the kind of foundations that are very keen on public outreach, and very dubious about throwing money at institutions which cater only to the rich opera-going elite. Anthony Tommasini can stop losing sleep: the Met has every interest in ensuring that these broadcasts continue.
Posted by Felix at 9:12 EST | Comments (2)
Ice-castles at Signy
This is fairy-tale romance country. Well, my kind of fairy-tale anyway. A long, long time away, in a land far, far ago, is an island. This island, Coronation Island, has mountans like you have never dreamed, snow covered, rearing out of the ice cold ocean. To get here, you must navigate past icebergs forty metres high and whales forty metres deep. In this magical land, the sun barely sets, it just glides around the horizon leaving an ever-pink tinge in the sky. Every direction you look is breath-taking. Mountains next to glaciers, glaciers next to rocky outcrops full of cape pigeons flying to their nests. Snow petrels, perfect white on white, gliding the shape of infinity a foot from my face. Mosses and lichens that take hundreds of years to develop. An ecosystem that would not survive the impact of mankind. This land has never been explored.
Nestled within a secret bay hidden by Coronation is a yet smaller island, only four miles long by two miles wide, named Signy. And hidden behind a hill within a bay guarded by icebergs are a few huts with green roofs, and a jetty. This is my dream home. Navigation skills and wisdom alone are not enough to bring you to this land. The blessings of the gods are also required as fair weather is rare in these parts and seldom do the inhabitants see the glory of their surroundings. Perhaps it is too much to take in too often.
But the gods were having a party when we arrived. Never have I seen such a panoramic vision. It was simply too large, too awe-inpsiring, to take in. It's one of those moments that you just have to accept and enjoy in the now because no photo, no writing and no memory will be as fulfilling. So I spun around and around and around.
There was a buzz of excitement on the ship when we first arrived. Some folk had been up since 5am wondering at their first icebergs, the spectacular scenery, the truth that we finally had arrived, that we were in THE ICE at last! There was also much excitement about going ashore and working. Working, justifying our existence here, showing our new friends what we actually were worth, moving some limbs, exercising muscles other than those needed to lift beer bottles. Big burly steelies in orange telly tubby flotation suits grinning like seven year olds who've eaten too much birthday cake. It was infectious. There were masts to replace, reverse osmosis systems to install, a VHF antenna to mount and all sorts of IT troubles to attend to. Even I found myself a purpose: in a science lab, troubleshooting a petulant autosampler and, just as important, providing a bit of female company to a friend who is posted here for six months with seven men. She's no complaints but it's nice to have a change every now and then.
We went for a stomp, we slid down hills, we rolled and laughed and skidded and skipped like people who have been cooped up on a ship for six weeks. We visited elephant seals,- they're HUGE, eight feet long at least and I hate to think how heavy, and saw a sole penguin wondering amongst them. An excited biologist came running into the lab to tell us his penguin colony had just had it's first chicks and there were a bunch of eggs rolling around, chirping, due any day. We drank tea. We found friends in the remotest of places.
Leaving Signy was as stunning as the place itself. Coronation island as a backdrop: thirty miles long with peaks 4000m high, us sailing through a field of icebergs, all shapes and sizes, all around, all awesome. Penguins on some, seals on others, birds following us. It was like a cheesy clip from a japanimation film. Blue sky with pink bits, twinkly ripply sea, huge silent icebergs.. and, to top it all off, three mountain peaks rising separately out of the ocean: The Innaccessibles. This is the landscape that sailors and climbers dream of. To ascend these peaks you have to jump straight from the yacht to a sheer face of ice. Something about them was alluring but also terrifying. I'm beginning to understand why they call this the Last Great Wilderness on Earth.
Note from Felix: this is a photo by Simon Coggins, who's also on the Shackleton and who also has a blog. Go check it out!
Posted by Rhian at 10:27 EST | Comments (4)
The Death of Klinghoffer at BAM
Last night was a sad day for New York classical music: it marked the departure of Robert Spano from this city, after eight years as music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The fortunes of the two have diverged wildly: while Spano is now heading up the Tanglewood contemporary music festival and the winner of two 2003 Grammys, the Brooklyn Philharmonic has been on a downward path over the past couple of years, suffering strikes and declining attendance.
Spano's last engagement with the Brooklyn Philharmonic was conducting three performances of The Death of Klinghoffer at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Despite its name, BAM has always seemed to have a rather distant relationship with the orchestra: while the Brooklyn Philharmonic performs there, its concerts don't generally feature in BAM mailings, which are much more likely to emphasise dance or theatre performances.
The Death of Klinghoffer, however, was a co-production with BAM. That meant a much bigger budget than the Brooklyn Philharmonic could manage on its own, both for marketing and the production as a whole. But seeing what happened as a result, I have to say I wish that the orchestra had simply decided to stage a cheaper concert version on its own.
What we ended up with, you see, was a pudding of a show, with far too many cooks and a spoiled broth. Not only was it a BAM / Brooklyn Philharmonic co-production, but the staging was "produced in association with Ridge Theater", and the chorus was provided by the New York Virtuoso Singers, under the direction of Harold Rosenbaum.
All of these players, it would seem, came together only at the very last moment. Bob McGrath, the director, had put together a talented group of artists, with visual design by Laurie Olinder and film by Bill Morrison, who made Decasia. Faced with what was clearly a very limited budget, his set was more or less nonexistent, and the stage was instead dominated by two large scrims, onto which were projected images and films.
Both BAM and the Brooklyn Philharmonic had described the performace as a "staged concert version" of John Adams's opera, but that's not what we got. Just to be sure, I checked with Terry Teachout, and he confirmed that in a "staged concert version",
- The performance takes place in a concert hall, not a theater with a pit. (If the house has a pit, as in the City Center "Encores!" series, it is not used.)
- The orchestra is placed on stage, with no attempt made to conceal the players or conductor from the audience.
- The singers work in a small playing area, engaging in directed movement intended to create a theatrical illusion.
- There are no sets, but there may be minimal set pieces.
None of these were true in the BAM production. I don't know exactly what happened, but it seems as though McGrath, given the kind of limited budget which would normally accompany a staged concert version, managed to stretch it to the point where it took up the whole stage and relegated the orchestra to the pit.
I have no idea what kind of discussions took place between McGrath and Spano, but I have a feeling that the former persuaded the latter that he could basically deliver a fully-fledged operatic production on the budget of a concert performance. The problem was that he did this was by relying on scrims and projections.
I would like to make a plea, here, for an end to scrims in all opera productions. When they first appeared, they were a fantastic innovation: in a second, with a flick of a lighting switch, they could go from transparent to opaque. But then directors decided that singers could be forced to stand behind scrims without affecting sound quality (not true), and all of sudden the things were everywhere, a cheap and easy alternative to actually presenting something imaginative.
So when all the actors finally got together at the Howard Gilman Opera House for the first time, only a few days before the first performance, no one knew exactly what to expect. (A friendly member of the production crew explained some of this to me during the interval.) While the chorus and the singers and the orchestra were getting comfortable with each other and the omnipresent scrims, the director was trying to work out the blocking, and the technicians from Scharff Weisberg were fiddling with the video projection.
Suddenly, it seems, the needs of the video projection started overwhelming everything else. The front scrim was very near the front of the stage, and the lights from the orchestra pit were reflecting off it, much to the annoyance of the video people. Similarly, if the orchestra were put on stage, where they would be heard to best effect, that would ruin the quality of the video projections. So, faced with a trade-off between video quality and sound quality, the producers chose... video quality. In an opera.
That's right: not only was the orchestra in this "concert version" relegated to the pit, but it was also covered with a black scrim of its own, to minimise light reflections. A tiny hole was left open at the front of the pit for Spano to be able to peer out and actually see the singers he was conducting.
The black scrim effectively muted most of the higher register instruments in the orchestra. Suddenly, the sound engineers had to scramble to mike up every instrument in the pit, and artificially boost those who had been muffled using the opera house's sound system. They were also told that since the New York Virtuoso Singers numbered only a couple of dozen where the score called for a chorus of well over a hundred, everything sung by the chorus would have to be amplified as well.
For his farewell appearance in Brooklyn, then, Spano basically became someone telling the players in the orchestra when to come in. Any subtleties in emphasis were basically the job of the sound engineers, who spent the entire production making some instruments louder, some much louder, and amplifying the singers. In other words, we had all the hassles of a live performance (like trudging to Brooklyn in a blizzard), without most of the benefits, since everything we heard was amplified. (One would assume that a crucial part of a "concert performance", whether staged or otherwise, would be to keep amplification to a bare minimum.)
Some of the time, the amplification was reasonably successful and unobtrusive. At other times, it became a distracting annoyance, especially for those of us who weren't seated dead-center, and for whom the sound appeared to be coming (indeed, actually was coming) from a speaker at the edge of the stage, rather than from the pit.
The whole production, indeed, had a slighty thrown-together feel. Not only was the chorus severely undermanned, but they also needed to carry the score around with them: despite the fact that they weren't on stage very much, apparently these Virtuoso Singers weren't virtuoso enough to actually memorise their lines. At the beginning of the first act, there's a chorus of exiled Palestinians, followed by a chorus of exiled Jews. In this production, what that meant in practice was a group of black-clad singers on stage left singing through a scrim, then the lights going down, a loud rustling of papers as they closed up their scores and moved across the stage, then the lights going up again on the same black-clad singers, this time at stage right, singing through the same scrim.
And although the video projections were pretty enough, they didn't help us understand what was meant to be going on. Adams left a lot of work to the stage production: most of what happens in the synopsis isn't actually reflected in the lyrics. Projections of birds and water and hourglasses are all very well, but if you're going to go to the trouble of staging the opera, it would help if major plot points, like the gun at the head of the first officer, or the bird landing at the captain's elbow, or the terrorists leaving the ship in Cairo, actually took place on stage. Otherwise, at the risk of seeming horribly literal, what's the point? To me, at least, it seemed that at the end of it all, we were left with musical theatre without the music and without the theatre.
All in all, it was a disappointing note for Spano to go out on. He should have been up on stage the whole time, coaxing great music out of one of America's more improbable orchestras – something he's done dozens of times over the past eight years. Instead, he was buried in the pit, amplified by under-rehearsed sound engineers, reduced to providing the soundtrack for a show of conceptualist video art.
With Spano gone, I fear that the Brooklyn Philharmonic will do more of this kind of thing: essentially becoming the house band for BAM when it needs one, but largely losing its briefly-held cachet as being a cooler and more interesting alternative to the New York Philharmonic.
A few weeks ago, Terry Teachout posted a very enthusiastic review of a performance by the Elements String Quartet, which consisted entirely of 16 newly-commissioned pieces. They sold out the Merkin concert hall, which Teachout loved to see:
Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony are by all accounts galvanizing local concertgoers with unexpected combinations of old and new music, beautifully performed and imaginatively presented. But they’re a conspicuous exception to the numbing rule. I no longer go to hear the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel, for example.
Unlike the New York Philharmonic, the Elements String Quartet went out of its way to offer a musical experience I couldn’t even begin to duplicate in the comfort of my living room—which is why I made a special point of coming out to hear it on a dreary November night. So did a whole lot of other people, and judging by the eavedropping I did during the two intermissions and at the post-concert reception, most of them had a hell of a good time.
For a while there, a couple of years ago, I had hopes that Spano and the Brooklyn Philharmonic could be another of those combinations, like Twinkle-Toes and the San Francisco Symphony or Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which could successfully galvanize a new audience to come out and enjoy live classical music. It was not to be; I only hope that, having failed in Brooklyn, Spano will succeed in Atlanta.
And just to make it clear, I in no way blame Spano for the failure of the Brooklyn Philharmonic to get up to speed. I think the management has been weak, that it suffered greatly in the New York budget cut-backs after September 11, and that it needed – but never got – a much closer relationship with BAM. But even if it died tomorrow, I would remember it not as a failure, but as the orchestra which turned out such a magnificent performance of Saint François d'Assise in May 2000. Now that was a concert performance: an enormous orchestra and chorus up on stage, blasting out truly magnificent contemporary classical music without the need for any tarting-up by stage directors. And not a scrim in sight.
Posted by Felix at 19:33 EST | Comments (2)
"War": What is it good for?
When I was growing up in London, I occasionally suffered a mild bout of cognitive disconnect when I heard words used for purposes which went slightly beyond my own ideas of what they referred to. For instance, when London Underground talked about their "trains", I would do one of those internal double-takes: trains, for me, were above ground, while the things which ran intermittently up and down the Northern Line were tubes. I had a similar experience when McDonald's would talk about how many "restaurants" they had: restaurants, for me, were places where a waiter would recite specials, and where you ate your food with cutlery.
I got a similar feeling when US presidents would talk about the "war on drugs" – similar, but different. In the "train" and "restaurant" scenarios, I reckoned that basically LU and McDonald's were perfectly right: they did, in fact, have trains and restaurants respctively, even if they weren't the kind of trains and restaurants I was used to. (But I'd still look askance at anybody who said that they took a train to a restaurant, when in fact they took the tube to a McDonald's.)
In the "war on drugs" scenario, I reckoned that the word "war" was being used metaphorically, and that although it wasn't a real war, the usage could be understood by considering it to be political rhetoric. I was helped along in this understanding by the fact that the leader of the war on drugs was known as the "drugs tsar" – clearly, he wasn't a real tsar, which meant that everything could be best understood as being mediated by a scrim of metaphor.
Which brings us, of course, to the "war on terror". I think that one of the differences between conservatives and liberals is that the former consider the war on terror to be a bit like the trains and the restaurants: not, perhaps, the kind of war you're used to, but a genuine war all the same. Whereas the liberals are more likely to consider it to be a metaphor, and are therefore much more likely to get upset when the US does something like invade a foreign country in its name.
And in fact, I think that many of the disagreements about the Bush administration's foreign policy basically come down to this largely semantic question. The hawks are saying "don't you understand, we're at war here", while the doves are saying "no, the 'war on terror' is a rhetorical device, not a prima facie justification for invading whomever you want".
Of course, we can all agree that the US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq were real wars, with real troops losing their lives in battles for the control of foreign countries. But the decision to go to war in those countries is maybe not as difficult to make if you consider yourself to be at war anyway. Looked at from that point of view, Afghanistan and Iraq are important parts of a much bigger war, rather than unprovoked and probably illegal invasions of independent states.
As a general rule, I think it's probably safe to say that how you read the phrase "war on terror" is a very good predictor of how you'll vote. Literalists will vote to re-elect the present administration, while those who consider the phrase to be more metaphorical are likely to vote Democratic.
This is bad news for the Democrats, I think. Whoever ends up running against Bush is going to have a very hard time of things trying to persuade Middle America that the war on terror is a metaphor – especially when most undecided voters are unlikely to even know what a metaphor is. (It's a curious characteristic of the US electoral system that towards the end of an election campaign, the people who still haven't made up their minds tend not to be the sharpest knives in the drawer. They're perfectly happy holding two or three contradictory opinions at once, and are as likely as not to simply vote for the candidate with the best hair.)
The problem is that the Bush administration has done a very good job of selling the war in Iraq as part of the war on terror, and therefore has a great response to anybody trying to say that the war on terror isn't a real war. All the Republicans need to do is point to Iraq, and the heroic troops serving and dying there under horrendous conditions: "you say that's not a real war"? Anybody trying to answer "no, you don't understand, the war on Iraq is a real war, but the war on terror isn't" is going to come off as a hair-splitter who has problems with Moral Clarity.
Maybe the Democrats should launch their own War on Obfuscatory Rhetorical Devices, like "war on terror", "death penalty" (to mean inheritance tax), and "healthy forests initiative" (the name of a pro-logging bill). I fear they'd find themselves on the losing side, however.
Posted by Felix at 14:42 EST | Comments (1)
Port San Carlos, East Falkland
It was hailing when we got to the Falklands. Really hard. Then snow, sun, rain, sleet, you name it, all within the hour. "A cross between Dartmoor and the Scillies", "like Scotland but with penguins", "Bryher with more rust", "Landrover mecca", "bizarre", and other first impressions. By the evening, we'd stopped noticing how odd it was to be in a very familiar place. The beer, the products, the language, currency, even the familiar faces. Stanley was overrun with BAS employees waiting to go South, held back by poor weather for weeks.
The James Clark Ross was also in town, waiting for cargo that we were carrying. I was fortunate enough to have blagged my way onto a trip organised by the JCR doc, Emma. She had a mission to accomplish and I was honoured to be invited.
Back in the sixties, a young man came upon the opportunity to work as a travelling teacher in the Falklands. The journey from Britain took months: six weeks from Montevideo alone where we took three days. He arrived on a barren island and was given a horse. For houses not accessible by horseback, he was flown in and spent weeks to months living with each family that had children. After three years, he returned to the UK and worked in a range of socially active jobs. He travelled. He lived. He had an Alvis Grey Lady. He had a beard when he was younger. He looked like he could be your grandfather, father or uncle depending on your age and his age in the photo. He lived life to the full.
When he died, last January, his last wishes asked that his ashes be scattered off the jetty at Port San Carlos, East Falkland. A friend of a friend of my friend's friend's boss knew his wife. And so it was that we found ourself in a tiny japanese 4WD, lost, having missed the only other road that leads out of Stanley, with a cardboard box at our feet that had been lovingly carried all the way from the UK by ship.
"Tolkeinesque,- this is the last valley before Mordor." The landscape was bleak en route. Undulating flatness, scree, occasional outbursts of craggy rock, tussock grass. Very windswept. And water on all sides, there were so many bays and inland waterways that I was never sure which way the open ocean was. In some places, a rich turquoise bay, then around the bend, grey and wild sea. Four seasons and ten landscapes in an hour but always barren and British, in the most beautiful way possible.
Port San Carlos itself is gorgeous. There are three houses and an old jetty. A walk to a memorial stone brought us hail, snow, sun and much wind. We hid behind a bush while the weather passed. Gorse that smells of honey. In the evening, the sunset made you want to sing, or cry, and laugh, dance, inhale deeply, take it all in. It was so huge, immense, the skies here change so quickly that they tell a story. Reds and pinks, oranges blacks. The yellow yellow gorse in sunset light. A bird flying against dark skies, illuminated white from beneath. Horses and sheep in our garden. A bed, a real bed! Great company, a pack of cards, plain food that we made ourselves, water from the ground, peaty. I felt nourished and refreshed. We drank it all in.
The farmer owns thirty-two thousand acres of land and has seven thousand sheep. Over here, you talk in acres per sheep rather than the other way around. One glance at our wannabe 4WD in the morning and he offered to take us himself to the penguin colony. Serious cross country for a good hour through every weather. This country may look small on a map but it feels huge and endless, uninhabited, when you cross through it. Five hundred gentoo penguins nesting in tussock grass, the sound of purring and chirping, the smell of ammonia. Sheep, cattle and geese wander past oblivious of the fact that they should be in Scotland and penguins but a hallucinatory dream. Wobbly legged lambs next to freshly hatched penuin chicks, in a hail storm.
Posted by Rhian at 19:16 EST | Comments (4)
Uninspiring shortlists
What do you do when you're presented with a short-list of eight or nine candidates and none of them is particularly appealing? That seems to be the case, now, with both the World Trade Center memorial and the Democratic presidential candidates.
I'm quite glad, now, that I was out of the country when the finalists for the World Trade Center memorial were announced. I'd been looking forward to blogging them for a long time, and was very disappointed when I found out I couldn't make it.
Now, however, that the initial flurry of attention is dying down, the consensus opinion is loud and clear: none of the above. It's not the "we hate them all" that greeted the original plans for the site as a whole: it's more inchoate than that. Rather, there's a niggling feeling that none of these concepts is quite right, and that if we rush ahead and build one of them now, we'll probably regret it.
I certainly have no faith in the ability of any of these memorials to stand the test of time. I remember, as a kid, being rather perturbed at war memorials with eternal flames: it seemed to me axiomatic that whatever else the flame was, it obviously wasn't eternal. What I didn't realise then is that eternal flames have a habit of sputtering out wherever they are in the world: this is a known issue which still hasn't been resolved. But faced with an enormous acreage to convert into a memorial, everybody seems to have resorted to some kind of technological wizardry vastly more complex than a common-or-garden eternal flame.
Dual Memory is the worst offender in this resepect, with its "evolving images [which] are reflected as water flows down the walls that support the plane of water above". But did Michael Arad stop to think about what might happen if his water features had to be turned off during a summer drought? And there are huge practical difficulties associated with keeping 3000 votives in suspension, or maintaing a crystalline cloud. Remember, these things are meant to last for dozens, if not hundreds, of years.
With hindsight, the "program guiding principles" were far too broad and ambitious. The memorial had to, inter alia, "respect and enhance the sacred quality of the overall site"; "evoke the historical significance and worldwide impact of September 11, 2001"; "inspire and engage people to learn more about the events and impact of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993"; and, for good measure, "create an original and powerful statement of enduring and universal symbolism".
It seemed that the winning entrants didn't take the guidelines all that literally, but even so, original, enduring and universal symbolism is a tall order for anybody. (Quite literally: many people, including LMDC bigwigs, seemed to think that the memorial would include some kind of skyline-restoring structure which would complement or even outdo the Childs/Libeskind Freedom Tower. It's interesting that none of the finalists go much above grade.) In the end, we've arrived at a shortlist of plans which either ignore a number of the principles entirely, or which fail to meet their high standards. Better to wait a while, now that Plan A seems to have gone off-track somewhat, than to rush ahead with a proposal which doesn't have public support and which, in any case, has been designed to complement a general site plan which could change significantly between now and even its first built stages.
But at least, in the case of the memorial finalists, waiting is an option. In the case of the Democratic presidential candidates, the timetable is set, and we're stuck with the ones we've got. One of them, for better or for worse, is going to go up against George W Bush in November 2004, and it's up to the country's registered Democrats to pick the candidate with the best chance of success.
Once again, received wisdom has it that "none of the above" seems like the best choice. That's why Wes Clark joined the race so late: his advisors were telling him that it was still wide open, and that none of the candidates had caught the public imagination. In opinion polls, Bush has a narrower lead against an unnamed "Democratic candidate" than he does against any named individual: none of the choices, it would seem, has any appeal beyond simply being not-Bush.
The front-runner, of course, is Howard Dean, who recently went on Hardball to embarrass himself on foreign policy:
the key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons.
Yeah, that's right, the Soviet Union. Four times in three sentences Dean proved himself to be completely out of date, living in the past, and hardly the sort of person you'd want putting in place a coherent statement on America's position in a unipolar world.
Dean is doing very well in galvanising the younger end of the Democratic party; he's raising lots of money, and none of the other candidates look like toppling him in the near future. That said, however, I've never liked the guy, mainly because he seems to have no policies. Push on something like gun control or gay marriage, and all you'll find is the federalist cop-out: that's not a question for the president, that's a question for the individual states.
When I saw Dean at an event in New York, he certainly came over very pro-gay, talking about his implementation of civil unions in Vermont. What he didn't say was that they were court-ordered (he didn't really have a choice in the matter); and that when he's pressed, you get exchanges like this:
KING: So you would be opposed to a gay marriage?
DEAN: If other states want to do it, that's their business. We didn't choose to do that in our state.
KING: And you personally would oppose it?
DEAN: I don't know, I never thought about that very much.
Yeah, right.
The problem, or the reason that Dean is doing so well, is that none of the rest of the field seem to be having any luck at all in getting Democrats to care about them. Personally, I'm a big fan of Edwards, but even I have to admit that he's done an atrocious job in getting his message out. Or rather, that's been his problem: he's been concentrating on substance, and thereby losing out at the expense of Dean, who's nearly as good as Bush when it comes to showy rhetoric unencumbered by actual positions.
There's still a possibility that Kerry or even Clark might manage to get a groundswell going, but I feel Edwards slipping away into the land of the once-likely, along with Joe Lieberman.
Of course, the fact remains that it probably doesn't make the slightest bit of difference who wins the Democratic nomination. I wrote last year that
The chances of a Democrat wresting the presidency from Bush in 2004 are slim indeed: in order for that to happen, the economy will have to continue to deteriorate, the housing-market bubble will have to burst, and the US will have to fuck up in Iraq. Two out of three might just do it; one out of three won't be enough.
And just as the Democrats started seeing Iraq as good for them and not the Republicans, we get this economic turnaround. Alan Greenspan is going to be able to keep rates down for one more year, which means that even if Iraq is an election-winner for the Democrats, the economy and real-estate wealth is going to go for the GOP. They'll have two out of three, and the election in the bag.
Against that sort of incumbency advantage, the present line-up of Democratic candidates looks decidely sub-par. And no, there isn't a white knight (Eliot Spitzer, Hillary Clinton) waiting in the wings to gallop on stage at the Democratic National Convention and ride into the election with a huge and unexpected mandate. Unfortunately, unlike the WTC memorial, "do nothing" is not an option. The Democrats are going to have to choose someone, rally behind him, and hope for the best. All we can hope is for the best candidate to win – and for some much-needed luck.
Posted by Felix at 21:47 EST | Comments (5)
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