Desiring Machine

The Greying of Presidents

Originally uploaded by desiringmachineflickr.

One trend in the modern American presidency that I have noticed is the greying of presidents after being in office a few years. It is evident in this before and after montage. The one glaring exception to this was Reagan, but they all say that he dyed his hair. I think the weathered look on his face conveys the trend quite clearly. I suppose there are few different ways one could approach this phenomenon.

1.) The president is a hard worker and takes in the worries of the nation. The level of grey represents his level of dedication to the nation.

2.) The presidency is a stressful position and the level of grey over the years reflects the given tension of the presidency during those years.

3.) The modern president is a constantly dogged individual. The stress of addressing the American public is reflected in the president’s hair.

Whatever the reasons, and whatever the conclusions you may draw, the greying of the American president is an interesting metric. In many regards I think it is a useful metric. I think it tells us something about the nature of the office and the state of the nation. On the one hand I would imagine it tells us in a certain sense how engaged our president is. It also says something about the condition of our democracy and the resoluteness of our nation to put pressure on our president, through the media or otherwise. I would be very distrustful of a president who didn’t grey. It is likely to indicate that he does not really feel the pressures of the office and is not bothered by the issues facing the nation.

The legendary liberal economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, died Saturday in Cambridge Mass. at 97 years of age. May he be remembered for a long time. I am not that intimately familiar with all his work but what I do know of him, he has always impressed me. I saw him recently on C-SPAN he was great. And he made a very simple straight forward comment about welfare. He acknowledged the fact that there are certainly cheaters within the welfare system but this does not give cause to condemn the system. Welfare is a cost to society to keep things fair and more importantly stable. And with this notion I entirely agree. I think too little is paid to success stories. I consider myself one of those success stories. I grew up in very impoverished circumstances, my parents received public assistance and food stamps from time to time. I was fortunate enough to go to college during the Clinton years and I received pell grants and the occasional scholarship. All this welfare has benefitted me greatly. I have a comfortable middle class job and I live a nice lifestyle. But I know that I would not be where I am today was it not for all the charity and assistance of others and my society that enabled me to be where I am today. I know there are dedicated, hard working, industrious people like me all over the world but they don’t have the same advantages. Their society does not have a safety net at all, and they fall through the cracks every day. I thrive today because of the ideas of men like Galbraith, but I know others are not so lucky, and are forced to live a life of bitter, debilitating poverty and subservience.

The trenchant criticism of welfare seems to hinge on this idea of “cheating the system”. This rhetoric, more than anything else works because it generates a strong moral adversion. This is perfectly understandable. Cheating is an affront to anyone who has worked hard in their life and made an effort to achieve what they have achieved. This kind of rhetoric is perhaps more effective on the underclass than the upper class. People working minimum wage jobs with little to show for at the end of the day are certainly going to be more disgusted by their neighbor who “pops stamps” to buy alcohol or drugs, than someone who is wealthy enough to worry about capital gains taxes. But the criticism often seems unfairly focused on the poor. And moreover it misses the larger point that the costs of welfare are economically justified when weighed against the the economic costs of angry and impoverished citizenry. And moreover the price of a few cheaters in the system is far outweighed by the moral and common good that government serves by keeping children fed, students educated and people housed.

What I don’t understand is why cheating is so prominent in the debate on welfare, but not in other sectors of our society. It seems to me that our society deals with the cost of cheating in many facets of our economy without dismantling the entire institutions and systems in which the cheating occurs. There are cheaters, liers and louts everywhere in our society. In the corporate boardrooms, in the houses of congress, in the judiciary, in the housing projects, in the suburbs, in business, in schools, in churches, in retail, in gambling, etc. In all these other sectors cheating is approached in rational terms and addressed but never offered as a justification for condemning the entire system. Vegas and gambling is full of cheats but no casino owner in his right mind would suggest that the entire city be shut down because of cheaters. Take retail, the business that decided they must crack down and involuntarily detain and frisk customers as a counter measure against shoplifters would quickly have to shut its doors. Shoplifting is a cost of doing business. Some level of corruption is tolerated and accounted as an expense in any retail business. This doesn’t make the corruption anymore viable or less offensive, just the approach to it is sane. Even at the height of the corporate accounting scandals where Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers fleeced investors in the billions, there was an ordered and staid response to the problem. No one in power called for the wholesale dismantling of the investment banking system because of a few bad apples. And yet people will always easily fall into a line of argumentation that advocates wholesale dismantling of welfare because some people abuse the system. Even with my background, I often find it difficult to resist the temptation to view with a cynical presumption the homeless person who asks me for spare change. Do they really need my change? Do I need to pay money to this guy who is likely to spend it on alcohol or drugs? Its a defensive conditioning. I shouldn’t even really care what they do with change I might give them. The fact of the matter is that I would rather not reach into my pocket and hand this person change, however I am fully sympathetic to the plight. I think these problems should be dealt with structurally and on a system wide tax payer supported basis. A system that provides substantial low income housing and services is better than being nickle and dimed on the street corner. To be perfectly blunt, it is like the difference between a toll road and a freeway. I would much rather the highways and infrastructure be dealt with by the treasury and through taxes paid by all than by having to slow down and pay a small amount each time. It just makes sense to achieve economies of scale and efficiency when dealing with physical infrastructure. The same thing applies to human and social infrastructure and support.

Radio KAOS, a long forgotten pop album of the late 80’s by Roger Waters. It certainly had its element of cheesiness, but I think Roger Waters is perhaps one of the most underrated politically minded pop singers. He has been singing about the Middle East long before the American public really cared or was compelled to think about it. I remember always liking these verses from the song Home. Listening to it now it seems oddly prescient:

When they overrun the defenses
A minor invasion put down to expenses
Will you go down to the airport lounge
Will you accept your second class status
A nation of waitresses and waiters
Will you mix their martinis
Will you stand still for it
Or will you take to the hills

…

When the cowboys and Arabs draw down
On each other at noon
In the cool dusty air of the city boardroom
Will you stand by a passive spectator
Of the market dictators
Will you discreetly withdraw
With your ear pressed to the boardroom door
Will you hear when the lion within you roars
Will you take to the hills

I owe a lot to Roger Waters. His music had a deep influence on me. Amused to Death was a masterful album rooted with much despair and ultimately cynicism about the consumeristic culture we live in. I don’t necessarily share all this despair because I think consumption and the consumer society is a bit more complicated than his music portrays. But the emotional core of Waters’ music is undeniable. While many in my generation spent there time tripping on acid and reliving their parents’ glory days listening to David Gilmour and old Pink Floyd I spent my teenage years in sobriety intensely intrigued by Roger Waters. It was a political education of sorts. I still classify The Final Cut as the all time greatest Pink Floyd album. I remember exploring the back catolog of Waters’ solo albums becoming utterly partisan and entrenched in the Waters camp of the Roger Waters vs. David Gilmour feud. After a short stint lurking at alt.music.roger-waters I quickly realized how much in the minority I was in after comparing the dozens of Waters posts versus the thousands of posts at alt.music.pink-floyd. Even though I thought Roger Waters was the true soul of Pink Floyd even though the rest of the world clearly did not see it that way. In hind sight I chalk this up to the serious and strongly political intent of Waters’ music. By any objective account you have to admit that he is pretty clear and direct in his criticism of capitalism and American power, I guess these themes never really connected to the public like the much more ethereal and abstract muzak that Gilmour and company continued to produce under the banner of “Pink Floyd”. But the outcome of all this teenage obsession with Roger Waters is that it turned me into an obstinately serious individual. I constantly think and worry about state of the world, to an unhealthy degree perhaps. The marks of despair and political mindedness of these thought patterns come directly from Roger Waters’ music. And his music is always something that I can turn back to get in touch with that little bit anger needed to goad myself into action.

Waters’ song Home seems to say more about our times than even the time it was written in. I think the key term here is Market Dictators. The battle is not against making a living or free exchange in the market. The battle really is against the authoritarian forms of capital and class that leave the entire world in shambles. Home is a very simple song with a very simple question, how long are you willing to take it? What are your limits? Are you willing to passively accept your status as a second class citizen or will you stand up to the forces of evil that overrun our government and our world? Opposition can take many forms, but it basically boils down to an unwillingness to yield to fascist forces that always tell you no. No you cannot do this, no you cannot do that. We own you, and you will worry your life away when a couple of our office towers are collasped by the barbarian horde that we helped foster in the middle east. You will do our bidding as we commit your sons and daughters to desert sands far away to terrorize people you do not even know.

Well I can tell you I am tired of the whole lot. I would just as well ship the entire Bush family, and the Bin Ladin family to central Jerusalem and build a wall around the whole city and let them rot in the desert heat as they fight each other, eager to bring on the apocalypse. Then the rest of us can live in peace away from these murderous tyrants and thieves. For me this boils down to a simple proposition: I am tired of having to think about the murderous war lords that are running our country into the ground. I am tired of seeing them on my T.V. I am tired of hearing about the record profits these market dictators are collecting in the oil industry. I am tired of feeling ill at ease. And I am sure the rest of the world is tired of it as well. I am tired of living in an authoritarian culture. My patience is thin. I can’t predict my exact personal response but I think something has to give. It is time to vote the clowns out of office, and if that fails more dramatic action might be needed to take back our world.

Short is the time to be conciliatory, it is time to take a partisan stand. That is what taking to the hills means. It is not some romantic survivalist fantasy. It is taking a militant stand against fascism. It is about over turning the militaristic order that threatens our world.

I am on John Kerry’s mailing list and got an email recently about getting out of Iraq in 2006, with a link to a petition to impose a May 15th deadline for withdrawal. There are some choice quotes from the email that sum up my feelings quite succintly.

More citizens every day joining in support of our May 15 deadline for Iraqi leaders to stop their squabbling and form a government.

…

It’s time for Iraq’s leaders to seize the opportunity for democracy in Iraq that our troops are sacrificing every day to create. If Iraq’s leaders can’t move past their infighting and endless delays to form a new government by May 15, we should immediately withdraw all of our troops. If they meet the May 15 deadline, we’ll bring America’s combat troops home by the end of the year and put the future of democracy in Iraq where it belongs — in the hands of the Iraqi people.

This is exactly right. It really is time for Iraq to take command of its own destiny. To hear Neo Cons like Wolfowitz, Perle, and Kristol talk about Iraq a big part of their justification was that America did not do the Iraqis full justice after the first Gulf War by letting Hussein stand. And there is certainly some blood on our hands for the way we let various Hussein opposition groups shift in the wind after the first Gulf War. Wrongly, or rightly Bush Jr. took on the task and completed what his father left undone. However, in my mind the Bush team were so fixated on the paper tiger dictator Hussein, that they failed to account for the real test, managing a post Hussein Iraq. Bush was certainly aware of the fact that going into Iraq would invariably lead to a long term entrenched military involvement. But I think he brushed this concern aside and did not take it seriously. Or else there is a more sinister explanation. This foray into Iraq represents a new hot war fought in the desert sands with a cold war global strategic mindset. From the very instant that I saw the World Trade Center towers fall on T.V. I remember thinking we are doomed, the American public is going to demand blood and the unfolding conflicts will be like trying to shoot gnats with a bazooka gun. The use of force will be disproportionate and ultimately inaffective. That was exactly what I thought the minute the towers collapsed and that is what I still think today. Every time I hear about the war on terror, I think this nation is slipping irrevocably into a new hysteria where Terror becomes the new Red, and that the thing that most preoccupies that average American voter is that “OMG!! Osama Bin Ladin is after my precious bodily fluids“, or someting along those lines. Apologies to Mr. Kubrick, RIP.

But there is a fatal flaw when a Cold War against Terrorism is fought as a hot conflict. It is a formula for disaster because the strategic thinking does not approximate or account for the tactical thinking on the ground. With a sectarian insurgency willing to die fighting you this quickly becomes a sure fire way to bleed your treasury, and destroy an entire generation of hard working forces in the field. It may sound rhetorically pleasing for Bush to assert “we have no time tables”, but this just masks the fact that he has no real exit strategy, and probably never did. Or moreover this flies in the face of a century of time tested military strategy. In the conflict against Japan, it is argued (now controversially) that the bomb was dropped to prevent a million deaths that would have ensued if we had marched to Tokyo instead. We ended a “police action” in Korea after it was determined that it is was just too costly to completely remove the communists from North Korea. We left Vietnam after years of conflict when we didn’t seem to gain any ground in the jungle. And moreover who is adequately prepared to fight a jungle war when children and farmers are willing to lob grenades at you as you wander through their villages never quite certain who is friend and who is foe. The conflict was a mess and the American public said enough is enough and four years later Nixon finally recognized the will of the people and withdrew. Even in the Gulf War, Bush senior was willing to exercise constraint and was satisfied with a policy of containtment in the end, because the removal of Hussein might create a power vacuum in the region. Bush Jr. doesn’t seem to hold any of this concern. For whatever his initial reasons, WMD, political consolidation of power, oil money, or paternal approval and one upmanship, he has now opened a Pandora’s box and we are left to pick up the pieces. I think the train wreck of Bush’s foreign policy stems from a strategic thinking that doesn’t fully account for the required tactics on the ground. The unilateralism and Cold War mindset severely under estimates the difficulty of the problem. I don’t think the will of the American people is in place to accept 20,000 dead American solidiers and a 15 year conflict that could reach in the trillions of dollars. I know I am not prepared for this. If we are determined to keep troops on the ground then the only solution is to internationalize the effort in a big way. This would require that Bush eat a lot of crow and actually visit with the Europeans directly and offer major concessions. It is not enough to simply send Condoleezza Rice over there and flip flop like a choking fish in front of the British public. He needs to go in person and be prepared to do whatever it takes. Since I don’t think Bush intends to do this the only other solution is withdrawal.

I have heard it often echoed that we were sold the war and Bush started it, there is nothing we can do about the past and so we must stay the course. In the media the rightist fanatics have used the phrase “cut and run” as a mighty cudgel to rhetorically beat into submission anybody who disagrees with the Neo Con mindset and the fallacy that a Cold War against terrorism can be fought as a hot conflict on the ground. We must not let this rationale blind us and cloud our ability to think clearly about the issue. I understand the frustration and the psychological motivations the make people fear the phrase “cut and run”. No one wants to lose, a lot of hubris and honor get wrapped up inside intentions and after it all falls apart you come to the conclusion that you have nothing left to lose. This is not correct thinking. Dylan put this idea best in his song Trying to Get to Heaven when he says:

When you think that you lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more

This mindset does not help in the casino when you are down to your last few chips and lay them all on the black jack table in desperate hopes of doubling up, and it certainly doesn’t work in geo political conflict. The best bet is to walk away with the few chips in hand and your dignity still in tack.

Now to the Iraqis. I think John Kerry is absolutely correct when he says it is time for the Iraqis “to seize the opportunity for democracy in Iraq”. There is precious little that we can do to help that end at this point. Our continued presence creates the stain of occupation, and our withdrawal in fact presents Iraqi leadership with a strong incentive to get their act together. We must let Iraq form to it own devices and see what it brings. If it produces a brutual dictator that oppresses its people then we can cross that bridge when we come to it. I am not suggesting that we drop support of Iraq, just that we start to remove the boots on the ground. I still believe in nation building, I just think that boots on the ground is not a long term sustainable and viable strategy. There is lots we can do and should continue to do to help the people of Iraq, the continued use of aid, extensive cooperative and diplomatic involvement with the other leaders in the world to rally material support for Iraq, UN involvement and continued monitoring of the situation. I would even be emenable to a limited number of bases in the more stable quarters of the country to act as a bulwark. But it is time to get real about the situation, and time for us to place the burden of democracy directly on the Iraqis. Bush has shown an appalling lack of leadership on this issue so it is time for us to demand it from all of our leaders in congress. You can start this effort by signing John Kerry’s petition and you can do it this fall by only voting for politicians who unequivocally voice support of withdrawing from Iraq.

Update April 21, 2006: Serendipity is a miraculous thing sometimes. Not long after posting this blog entry I stumbled across Mark Morford’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle “Chips down, Bush prepares a Hail Mary bet” via Daily Kos. Mark’s analysis is spot on and we share similar analysis of Bush’s strategic thinking, especially when it comes to reckless gambling as evidenced by this quote from Mark’s column:

His pile of betting capital is down to a tiny lump, nothing like back when he had the table rigged and all the pit bosses worked for him and the pile was as big as a roomful of Texas cow pies. But now, fortune is frowning. In fact, fortune is white-hot furious at being so viciously molested, spit upon, raped lo these many years. The truth is coming out: Bush has now lost far, far more bets than he ever won.

What’s to be done? Why, do what any grumbling, furious, confused, underqualified alcoholic gambler does: reach down deep and say, “To hell with the nation and to hell with the odds and to hell with the rest of the planet,” and pull out one more desperate, crumpled war from deep in your pants, slap it on the table and hear the world moan.

I can only hope it doesn’t come to this. I hope the forces of sanity are strong enough to prevent Bush from taking a desperate leap and using Nuclear weapons in Iran. But you can never be sure what a desperate man down to his last few chips at the black jack table will do. More times often than not I think the impulse to put all the remaing chips on the table is the most compelling option. I know I have succumbed to this flawed gambling logic a few times when I have been down on my luck playing black jack.

While rereading a little of E.D. Hirsch Jr.’s classic work “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.” I came upon this great little quote:

Radicalism in politics, but conservatism in literate knowledge and spelling: to be a conservative in the means of communication is the road to effectiveness in modern life, in whatever direction one wishes to be effective.

I find this statement remarkable and compelling. Say what you will about Hirsch’s basic argument for school curriculum, it is definitely provocatively conservative and controversial, but there are many insights in his analysis. And this quote in particular holds a lot of truth for me. I often cling to the practice of remaining completely open and radical in my thought but strive to remain relatively conservative and staid in my manner of behavior and speech. I think this is a trait I acquired from my grandfather in many ways. I think Hirsch is totally correct about its effectiveness. For starters, I think it is very disarming, and enables people to make a certain kind of prejudicial judgment about you that can work to your benefit. When your manner, behavior, and method of speech convey a certain aspect, I often find that it throws many people off guard when your views don’t conform to their assumptions. In this moment there is a kind of rhetorical advantage to be had because it creates a momentary paralysis in your would be antagonist. And in this paralysis you can accomplish and convey a lot if you are willing to effectively exploit it.

Reading this quote made me think about the current rhetorical age we live in post Rush Limbaugh and the ultra conservative talk radio and T.V. news pundit. In a certain sense folks like Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, and many others embody the opposite characteristics of this Hirsch quote. They tend be quite conservative in their thought, political and cultural, but rather reckless, sloppy, and hysterical in the means of communication. It is almost as if they have no cultural literacy or awareness or even a sense of shared national identity. The respect for calm, collected, modern, and conservative modes of communication that our society is built upon are almost entirely disregarded. The mode of communication these pundits embrace, regardless of the political content, always hits my ears as utterly shrill. I always get the sense that they have a remarkably underdeveloped and perhaps rather crude cultural and historical awareness. Especially the likes of Hannity, and even Coulter when she talks about McCarthyism and Joe McCarthy as a liberal myth. These pundits’ mode of speech is very often jocular and jokingly derisive when they are challenged intellectually or politically.

I don’t have any particular insight in why this phenomenon exists or even why they are as popular as they are. They certainly speak to a segment of our society, but they definitely don’t share anything with the people in power that really run things in this country at the present. The Richard Perles, and Paul Wolfowitzes of the world don’t speak like they do. It strikes me as a relatively new phenomenon as well. One that has seen a ground swell with the presidency of George W. Bush. To hear Bush speak I get the feeling that there is a peculiar corresponding relationship between his mode of speech and the existence of these pundits. A lot of people call it the “echo chamber” and I think it is something Bush has relied heavily upon. But I say it is peculiar because it strikes me as rather unique for our political leaders. Just take the crude stammering of Bush especially when he is upset and challenged. His father didn’t have this problem, Reagan didn’t act like this, Nixon was rather well spoken, and Eisenhower was perhaps the most eloquent. And in my mind the Democratic Presidents in modern history have presented a pretty high standard when it comes to cultural and historical awareness and conservative modes of expression.

But this leads to a quandary. How effective are Bush and the pundits and this new colloquialism? I think Hirsch is basically correct about the effectiveness of conservative modes of communication. But when I see the likes of Bush in the Oval Office, or Hannity on my T.V. screen I have doubts. Either Hirsch is wrong about the effectiveness of cultural literacy and modes of speech or else our president and the radical conservative pundits are culturally illiterate in a most profound way.

Was watching some old PBS Frontline specials online, and watched this one about the Secret History of the Credit Card. It is a great episode and really does a good job of covering how the credit card industry works and all the players involved (consumers, banks, regulatory agencies, etc). Everyone who owns a credit card should watch this episode.

I believe in and tend to support strong consumer protections. But as a personal and political matter I don’t have a ton of sympathy for people who rack up tons of credit card debt with reckless spending beyond their means, or sheer willful ignorance of consumer finance 101. I generally am quite diligent about paying off the entire balance of my own credit cards and think personal fiscal responsibility is a high virtue. However, I myself must admit that I don’t always have the time to read the fine print and do the due diligence of understanding all the terms of my credit cards. This Frontline documentary does an excellent job of presenting the issues and frankly, I was very stunned at a few of the facts that I learned. There are some very sneaky ways that banks are able to trap individual consumers.

Here are two facts that stuck out to me:

1. Banks at any time can boost your rates arbitrarily for a variety of reasons and only have to provide you 15 days notice.
2. One clause that is in many credit card offers is that they are able to increase the interest rate even if you always pay on time but fail to make a payment with another lender.

Yes, you read that correct. Just got a good deal on a new card with 6 month 0% interest rate on balance transfers and decide to tranfer over several thousand dollars of debt to a new card? Be careful, miss a payment on your car, mortgage, or even an entirely different credit card and you might find your 0% interest rate suddenly disappearing. This was a shocking little detail, of which I was not aware.

There is no such thing as free money, and there is always a catch. It is always better to pay off your credit card in full each month, and never under any circumstances miss a payment.

My big complaint is that many credit cards don’t make it easy for you to avoid missing payments, such as automatic deductions of at least the minimum balance from your checking account. This really irritates me. I am a financially responsible person, but lead a busy life and can’t always keep up with the paperwork. To mediate the risk of missed payments I try to automate as much of this as possible so that in my haste I don’t overlook some bill and forget a payment somewhere. As an old friend once told me we have become a nation of book keepers. This is a fate that I dread, but understand its reality.

Spike Lee is one of those directors I never paid much attention to growing up. I finally saw Do The Right Thing probably a decade after it came out. Malcolm X was such a “controversial” film when it came out that the one local theater in my home town only agreed to play it on two or three time slots during the middle of the week in the afternoon, lest the dozen black people that lived in my home town would rise up in revolt. The reality was that at the time a handful of teenage white kids were running around wearing Oakland Raider’s caps and black bandanas, acting tough and trying live the lives of petty minor thugs. They were a joke to anybody my age (I was in high school), but the local authorities took the threat very seriously. And one explanation I remember hearing for only showing Malcolm X during the middle of a school day was to try and prevent these middle school “gerber gangsters” from getting too many ideas, or stirring up too much controversy. I guess the local movie theater proprietor was just doing his part to insure that the town didn’t collapse into riots and ruin if a handful of 13 year white kids watched the movie and got ideas. And that was a shame really, because they might have learned something in the process. After watching the movie several years later I was completely blown away by its impact. It presented a very moving story of Malcolm X and Denzel’s performance was beyond masterful.

The several Spike Lee films I have seen have never failed to satisfy. I tend to agree with a former professor of mine Steven Shaviro, who characterizes Spike Lee as the best living American director. As a purely movie going experience Spike Lee’s films rarely fail to disappoint. They work in deeply emotional and thoughtful ways to instruct and enlighten without being bogged down by ham handed didactic exposition. Issues of race and class are always present in Spike Lee’s movies and he presents them with such a gifted hand as a director you can’t help but be moved by them. I immensely enjoyed 25th hour, a film that did not garner much critical praise, but I felt was vastly underrated. Spike Lee makes movies for thinking people. In the 25th hour he portrays the final 24 hours of a successful drug dealer before he must face his prison sentence. Drugs, crime, and violence are conveyed but in a way that is always sensitive with a lot of nuanced detail. And it is this attention to detail that is Spike Lee’s real gift. He can take a conventional hollywood formula (drugs and violence) and completely turn it on its head.

Spike Lee’s latest joint Inside Man continues this tradition of excellence. Class and power seem to be the stronger backdrops in this film than race. Although issues of race are certainly present. For example there is a rather brilliant exchange between a Sikh bank emlpoyee/hostage and the police and detectives. This movie takes up the standard trope of bank heist plus hostage negotiator pitted against bad guy heavy and delivers it in a manner completely alien to the standard hollywood treatment. It is like Die Hard but without the heroism and cowboy swagger of Bruce Willis. There is a patience and methodical pace to this movie that you don’t find in the typical hostage drama. Like many of Spike Lee’s movies this one is about the characters themselves and the tangled web of commitments, motivations, and obligations that come about from their race, class, and or gender. The standard hollywood formula is to be heavy on the explosive tensions and zeal of would be heros. A kind of tension that invariably leads to a high anxiety and impatience for action. For example the mood and pace that you might find in the movie Speed with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. With Inside Man you will find none of that, it is mostly a story about method and a story about people. In fact there are several moments in the film where would be heros are explicitly beaten and humiliated. What we find in this movie is the interplay of identities, secrets, lies, power, and duty.

The always impeccable Clive Owen, who first came to my attention in the masterful film Croupier, stars in this film as a ring leader of a gang of thieves who take over a Manhattan bank. Denzel Washington delivers a truly perceptive performance as the lead detective and negotiator brought in to end the robbery without incident. Jodi Foster, continues her recurring role of the single white female attache to wealth and power, but this time as a cynical consultant whose job is to protect the interests of the owner of the bank, played by Christopher Plummer, after the heist goes down. Willem Dafoe plays a superb role as an eager but ultimately cooperative police captain on the scene.

The movie hinges and turns on the revelation of wealth, and the methods of its acquisition. I would say more but that would too revealing I fear. The genius of the movie is how it places the characters in an environment where their identity, actions and motivations are always the product of forces, and the confluence of race, class and gender. It is a smart film that weaves a tight plot and goes a long way to paint a fairly detailed picture of a quite elaborate heist. The films protagonists Owen and Washington do a remarkable job of providing tension but in a subtle and engaged way. The movie provides a convincing plot and sequence of events that ring true given the specific motivations and objectives of the characters. These motives are gradually revealed through the movie with a few unexpected twists in the end.

One criticism I might make about this film is that it is by far one of Spike Lee’s most mainstream movies. And in a certain sense it plays into conventional modes of good and evil as they are attached to the specific accumulation of capital and wealth. Read, the man, or rich white guy, does not come out good at all in this movie. I certainly don’t disagree with the outcome of the film, just seems like more complexity would be warranted. In some sense though there are some ambiguities and ambivalence in the ending. It was not clear to me whether certain indiscretions were left intact or if the benefactor of ill gotten wealth got his due. However, this is far from the only theme. There are nuances and complexities that make this film overall a very gratifying movie going experience. The story is tight, the cinematography detailed, and the characters thoughtful.

I am a huge fan of the Clash and this really upsets me. A man in the UK was detained and questioned for three hours as a terrorist suspect because he listened to the Clash’s “London Calling” in the taxi on the way to the airport. I guess it is a good thing he wasn’t listening to Guns of Brixton, or else he might have been detained indefinitely. But the bottom line is that this is really absurd. And if we continue to live with this much pent up fear then we have already let the real terrorists win. If this is the case then Western Civilization has lost more than a few thousands lives, it has lost its mind and its soul.

On the other hand maybe it really is as bad in the UK as the V for Vendetta film makes it all out to be. There really is something amiss, but you just can’t put your finger on it.

That being said, The Clash are kind of radical in a nice commodified way with a good back beat. And if more people started listening to the Clash then perhaps there would be some truth to Vendetta’s adage: “People shouldn’t fear their governments. Governments should fear their people.” And in my mind that is not necessarily a bad thing for civilization.

What is it about April Fools day that makes it such a favorite holiday of geeks? Slashdot goes pink and celebrates ponies.

Apple Computer founded itself on April Fools day in 1976, Steve Wozniak was an incurable joker. April Fools day is the one holiday that geeks tend to go all out for. It is one of those lighthearted days that brings the practical joker out of everybody.

April Fools is one of those delighfully simple holidays that helps ring in the spring season with a celebration of mischief and tom foolery. The holiday is unfettered with onerous solemnity and sacredness. This lack of theological encumbrance is what makes the holiday what it is. You would never hear some pundit drone on and on about how the secularists are killing the holiday by refusing to prioritize one religion over another. There is not this soul searching for the lost and true meaning of the holiday. In practice April Fools day is the expression of holidays in their purest form, a marking of time through action and ritual. But this particular holiday challenges our perceptions of truth and our trust in others. We play with truth and falsity with a kind of inspired innoncence. All is illusion and we are fine with that, on this day more than others.

There are many theories about the origin of April Fools Day. One theory ascribes the origin of the holiday to the changing of a calendar. The theory is that in the middle ages the western world changed from a Julian to a Gregorian calendar. This moved the new year from end of March to the beginning of January. After the calendar change went into effect there were a few hold outs who refused to go by the new calendar and continued to persist in celebrating the new year at the beginning of April. These folks became the object of practical jokes in the form of paper fish tagged to their backs and referred to as Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish.

Another theory goes back to british folk lore:

British folklore links April Fool’s Day to the town of Gotham, the legendary town of fools located in Nottinghamshire. According to the legend, it was traditional in the 13th century for any road that the King placed his foot upon to become public property. So when the citizens of Gotham heard that King John planned to travel through their town, they refused him entry, not wishing to lose their main road. When the King heard this, he sent soldiers to the town. But when the soldiers arrived in Gotham, they found the town full of lunatics engaged in foolish activities such as drowning fish or attempting to cage birds in roofless fences. Their foolery was all an act, but the King fell for the ruse and declared the town too foolish to warrant punishment. And ever since then, April Fool’s Day has supposedly commemmorated their trickery.

What is it about geeks in particular that seem to relish in this holiday? I think it boils down to a child like innocence and playfulness that the spring time holiday evokes. It is in this playfullness and innocence that we find renewal and rebirth with our relations to the world. On this day nothing can be taken for granted, and we must approach everything with curiosity and the insight of a child. There is a refusal to see the world as given but rather make it according to our imagination. And this is the heart and soul of the geek personality trait. Many will ignore you, many will write you off. But being overlooked is your greatest strength. Because when you are overlooked they will forget about you and forget that you are changing the world.