Hearts and minds

When I first saw a picture from Marwencol I was so struck by it that I used it in a post. Incredibly, despite the attention it received and the awards it garnered, it never seemed to be available to rent or buy and it took almost three years since that post before it was available to download via Apple TV. We watched it last night and it was just as amazing as I had expected: a deeply personal and moving documentary about how someone recovering from severe brain injuries after a beating outside a pub creates his own little world based on 1940s Belgium, populates it with dolls and takes wonderful, naturalistic photographs of hundreds of little storylines he enacts with them., often apparently as a way of sublimating his feelings of anger, despair or lack of control. There is no ironic distance in his photographs: he is part of the world he has created and it is part of his. As a result the photographs he takes are like nothing else you've ever seen and a slightly sad story becomes meaningful and even beautiful.  Highly recommended.

Put a sock in it

There seems to be a fairly uncritical acceptance of the assertions in the (astonishingly long) Wikipedia article about Beyoncé's single "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)", which are epitomised by the statement that the song is "empowering". Aside from the fact that history will not judge the use of that word kindly, if someone could outline just one example of how that song could be regarded as "empowering" I'd be happy to hear it. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a catchy song and Beyoncé and her sexy acolytes look great in the video; but how is stamping around in a leotard insisting that a man gives you a ring to prove he loves you (with the glaring implication that what all women want is to get married) in any way "empowering" for women?

If you were to ask the women in Afghan Hands whether this is "empowering" I get the feeling they would laugh in astonishment.

Liability

Joan Didion writes succinctly on Salon about the real issues obscured by the farrago of misinformation surrounding the US election.

Finding Number 1 of the recent report into whether Palin abused her power in having a state trooper fired: "For reasons explained in Section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute".

Sarah Palin's reaction? "I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there."

No wonder the rest of the world is observing this election with a mixture of apprehension and astonishment.

Myopia

The headline on CNN this morning: "Many Iraqis not focused on vice-presidential debate". That may be because they are focused, inexplicably, on surviving.

Hard news

I've remarked before that it's almost impossible to get proper news of any description while in the rural US. International newspapers are non-existent; I found a single copy of the exotic New York Times in Honololu, and after the first day avoided the vacuous local press, but TV news is worse than useless. The focus of every "news" channel? Tracking the path of Hurricane Gustav (CNN, ludicrously, was billing itself as "Your Hurricane Headquarters") and the evacuation of New Orleans which, while undoubtedly important for those involved, is less pressing than any of the other multitude of things that happened while we were in Hawaii, such as the political crisis in Thailand or Fukuda's resignation, which I didn't know about till I got back.

Even more saturation coverage, however, was afforded to the arrest of "Casey" Anthony, the mother of "Caylee", a missing 5-year old girl from Florida, on unrelated chequebook charges. Speculation, the principle of sub judice clearly not being an issue here, was running riot. The nadir of this prurient coverage was surely reached by a dessicated harpy, eponymous star of the current affairs show "Nancy Grace", who asked a reporter broadcasting live outside Casey and Caylee's apartment: "Did they make this arrest at this time because they knew Nancy Grace would be live on air?" To which the hapless reporter replied, bravely: "Uh, no, I don't think that was a consideration". Presumably Nancy's next words to her offline were "You're fired!"

On the other hand, the local paper, West Hawaii Today, reported every race we were in on the front page of the following day's issue. And you could buy a copy of something called "Da Jesus Book" at the airport.

Leaving New York

A friend who saw my pictures of Minnesota and New York, below, said they looked cold and lonely. It's certainly cold, and I think my vision is probably lonely (although as the inimitable Roddy Frame said , "they call us lonely when we're really just alone"). I've enjoyed many things about this trip. I liked Washington, if only for the novelty of the board games in my hotel (AKA rooming house, a shabby, glorified B&B presided over by a perpetually delighted Eastern European man with a shock of black hair and a disconcerting squint), with the White House just down the road, the sharp contrast of bitter cold and blazing sunshine, and the (black, middle aged, highly educated) taxi driver telling us he'd probably vote for McCain; Minnesota was an experience, from the ice storm at the airport which nearly prevented us landing, vertical shards of white dashing past the plane windows on either side as I said to myself they do this all the time, they do this all the time, and the question I always ask myself when I travel somewhere new (especially somewhere as monumentally undistinguished as St Paul), how do people end up here?; I've enjoyed getting to know New York, walking down Madison Avenue thinking about Kirsty McColl's song of the same name, buying Kiehl's products in Bloomingdales, passing the Empire State which is currently in a state of renovation, following the Pilates session on the TV in my hotel room and feeling silly lying on the carpet trying to connect my legs to the earth, and visiting the jawdroppingly enormous New York HQ of UK law firm Clifford Chance (the largest law firm in the world, both by number of lawyers and revenue) for a happily coincidental meeting arranged by one of my Hong Kong clients, who hadn't realised I was in New York, the night before.

The thing I don't like about travel is the fact of it. The weariness, waking at 4am with thoughts running round my head as insistent as a headache. Not knowing where I am, what time it is, and whether I should eat. When I've been in meetings I have had no trouble at all. Outside of that temporary adrenaline rush, though, it's been like walking around with several sheets of bubble wrap tightly wound around my head.

What I have positively disliked is the fact that the clothes in every shop I go into seem to be "Made In China". Having just moved house I have an unusually powerful distaste for buying anything, but I feel particularly averse to the idea of buying anything made in China; to China it shall not return, at least not in my luggage. Viewed in this perspective, even the most technically desirable dresses are nothing more than landfill futures.

Who's that next to the President of China?

At the time of the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC in 1997 Prince Charles reportedly described the Chinese leadership as "awful old waxworks". Looking at this photo of Bush in China next to Hu Jintao what immediately springs to mind is: who's a waxwork now?

There is a slight, but amusing satire in which Bush asks Condoleezza Rice "Who's the President of China?" and she says "Hu". And he says, "The President of China?", and she says "Hu's the President of China". And he says "No, I'm asking you, who's..." and she says "Yes, Hu", and he says "OK. So who's the Vice-president?" and she says "No, it's Wen", and he says "When's the Vice-president what?" ... and so on.

The global village idiot

Satire keeps on writing itself. Having appointed himself to head up the investigation into the catastrophe, thus ensuring that clearly it will never be held to have been his fault, or the fault of anyone he knows, in any way, Bush has now declared a Hurricane Katrina prayer day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4227974.stm

You've lost your home. Your pets and your relatives are floating face down in toxic sludge. You spent 5 days without water in Beyond Superdome. You don't know where you are going to live till the end of the year. But now help has arrived! Bush is going to pray for you.

Hell and high water

One of the problems for Bush, and perhaps the reason for the look of incredulity that keeps coming over his face, is that he simply can't imagine being too poor to own a car, to stay in a hotel, to flee the city. The reality of everyday lives of people who live on a few dollars a day is no more conceivable to him than the fact that hundreds of thousands just couldn't leave New Orleans because they didn't have the means.

Out of touch, out of compassion, and should be out of office.

Dropping the Baton

Bush has appeared completely dumbfounded by the scale of the damage caused by the hurricane in New Orleans - that characteristic blank, struggling-for-comprehension look came over his face when he was asked a not-all-that biting question by a TV journalist about the sluggishness of the response time to the disaster.

It's hard to take in the sheer epic scale of the catastrophe. The script for this movie would have been derided as too outlandish. And the complicity of the Bush administration in, amongst many other contributory factors, complacently sitting back while wetlands were overdeveloped and in denying scientific evidence of warming seas which contribute directly to the force of hurricanes, is nothing short of scandalous.

Bush is out of his depth - again. The image that comes to mind seems apposite.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1561417,00.html

She means it, ma'am

The BBC Ticker on my desktop is often a source of amusement as they try to reduce the day's news to a coherent soundbite. I am often intrigued by the news values which dictate that "Families to have 'voice in court'" today is more newsworthy than any number of other stories under "UK news". There is an even more classic one today, however: "Queen 'shocked' by US hurricane".

I can't help thinking that this is truly shameful. I'm sure the poor people of New Orleans will be immensely comforted, as they walk amongst the dead bodies, to know that The Queen of England is shocked by their plight.

(On that note: I see the US Open website described Andy Murray yesterday as "Old England's last hope".)

Think locally, act globally

Watching anodyne CNN in my Singapore hotel room this morning, it occurred to me that while the truism is that the prevalence of global news via cable, satellite and the internet has made the world a smaller place and events happening on the other side of it now feel closer to home and therefore (by implication) increase global connectivity to the extent that we start to care, if you watch the news - any news - in the US, this clearly is not the case and the US news channels have thoroughly turned the concept of "think globally, act locally" on its head.

I was there in September 2002 when the rest of the world was focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the continuing fallout of the "War on Terror". Headline news on every US channel? Whether Ricki Lake's new short hairstyle meant she was secretly a lesbian.

CNN, irksomely enough, have a strapline for all news coming from London regarding the apprehension, charging or trial of the terrorist suspects: "LONDON ON ALERT". So every time I switch it on, I think something must be happening again. This is lazy journalism, no?