Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for July 2012

Another (Mostly) Irrelevant Horsepix Diary

I don’t know why you guys put up with this, but you do, so here’s another bit of silliness if you feel like wasting a few minutes of your time (and if you slog down to the comments you’ll find Chris turning my frivolity into thoughtful musings):

Gee, I haven’t posted anything for a while.  Maybe because I had nothing of note to say?  And you, yes, you over there, hush up about never having….

 Anyway, it’s time for another pointless but amusing (to me, anyway) photo essay.  This one goes way-way back, back before the Serious Photographer/Serious Camera (stop snickering, dammit) to the point-and-shoot days.

Here I am, Stuck in the Middle With You: A Moderately Open Thread

With the summer winding along and fall vaguely looming on the horizon, two great forces align to compete in the ritual fashion.

On the fringes of each camp zealots and True Believers burn effigies and dance to their gods. On the far right of the field of battle directionless Fear rules, on the far left unfocused Angst is emoted. Trembling fingers clutch spasmodically the china walls of genteel Tea cups in Faux colonial halls to the east, to the west scowls wreath the visages of Occupiers of empty lands.

The majority in each camp are at rest, healing from a hard road behind and focusing on a better road ahead.

Who will win, come the chill of November? Will it be the Tea-sipping shut-ins of the Right, the invective-hurling Occupiers of the Left or the vast majority in the Middle?

Consider this a Moderately Open Thread.

What’s Wrong with America

There’s plenty wrong, but this is in my craw today: People who think that the poor and middle class are too ignorant to think for themselves.

filthy rich

Exhibit P:

The line of Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadsters and one gleaming cherry red Ferrari began queuing outside of Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman’s estate off Montauk Highway long before Romney arrived, as campaign aides and staffers in white polo shirts emblazoned with the logo of Perelman’s property — the Creeks — checked off names under tight security.

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Exhibit Q:

A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney. “Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.” ….

A few cars back, Ted Conklin, the owner of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, long a favorite of the Hamptons’ well-off and well-known, could barely contain his displeasure with Mr. Obama. “He is a socialist. His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” Mr. Conklin said from inside a gold Mercedes, as his wife, Carol Simmons, nodded in agreement.

These people spent more on dinner than I make in a year. Look, I’m a capatalist (mostly), but SRSLY? Since Romney’s money has more foreign policy experience than he does, shouldn’t he be Running for President of the Caymans?  

The Church of The Grand Old Tea Party

This year, the 4th of July, our “Independence Day,”  felt a little different.  It felt less celebratory.  There are certainly many contributing reasons for this.  But one of them is certainly an awareness of how entrenched our divisions are.  Despite occasional pronouncements to the contrary by leading national political figures, their pious affirmations of the essential unity of all Americans, political opponents in the current era treat each other as threats and enemies much more than contending interlocutors within a civil society.  And so, I found myself sidling up to a friend at a holiday gathering and asking something like: So, how are you doing now that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stabbed Freedom in the genitals, hiked up his august judicial robes and shat directly into the hearts of our founders, and jabbed his middle finger into the eye of Divine Providence itself?  And as he laughed, it was clear to both of us that my satiric hyperbole was likely less extreme in expression than the sincere expostulations and scribblings of many of our fellow citizens.  

How do we engage with Americans who see us as enemies of Freedom itself, as a conspiracy to undo what they understand to be the work of our founders?  How do we pursue better policies and civic harmony, and do we reform our political processes when we are viewed as demonic opponents of their Church of ‘Freedom’?  Just as innumerable people throughout history have branded others as radical evil in the name of Christ and Christian love without consideration of the foundational teachings they supposedly champion, we now face a party dominated by a constituency that brands us as radical evil in the name of America and American freedom without any real consideration of their history and functions.  In both cases, communities have lost sight of the fact that their institutions and ideologies are the means and not the ends, conflating them in terrifying self-justification.  One says: “If you disagree with me, you oppose Christ, Love, humanity and its salvation.”  The other says: “If you disagree with me, you oppose America, Freedom, humanity and its salvation.”

Party in Slow Motion: A Summer Sun Open Thread

Last (ok, also first) call for Moose Meet Scotts Valley, July 7th and 14th. We are done with the California Experience, going back to the lake lifestyle, this time on Douglas Lake in Knoxville, TN. You will find us here in various shades of dishabille.

Any Moose in the Bay Area (Adept? Fog? …?) are welcome for Saturday night bonfires and bower conversations. Any other day or night up to the 17th Moose are always welcome. Email, 408 656-8732 or just show the heck up.

Same goes for Tennessee on the other end, anytime. Pontoons and BBQ in the southern summer sun!

What does the summer hold for all you other Moose out there in the world?

Consider this a sun-soaked open thread.

A Year On: How Milly Dowler Shook the World, and Ended a Media Dynasty: FOTHOM XLIV

It’s hard to believe, but at 4pm BST today it will be exactly a year since Nick Davies and Amelia Hill published online a leak from Operation Weeting, the newly recreated (third) investigation into phone hacking, and revealed that the News of the World had hacked the phone of a missing 13 year old schoolgirl, who was found dead six months later, murdered by Levi Bellfield.

That headline changed the political scene here in the UK. Within days the News of the World had closed, and New Corp were forced to withdraw their takeover bid for Britain’s most lucrative broadcaster, BSkyB. Within two weeks James and Rupert Murdoch were summoned to appear before a Parliamentary select committee, and David Cameron was forced to set up the Leveson Inquiry.

Over the next year, the hacking scandal expanding to a corruption and bribery scandal at the News of the World’s sister paper, the best selling Sun. Over 50 people have now been arrested. An internal News Corp inquiry, the MSC – set up under pressure from the FBI, SEC and DOJ – has now handed over thousands of emails suggesting bribery of public officials. The scandal expanded to include allegations of TV piracy at News Corp’s pay-TV encryption services in Australia, the UK, Italy and the US.

But more than anything, for the UK, the Leveson Inquiry has shone a light into the dark corners of the political media class, and revealed such extensive back door lobbying between the Murdochs and the last five prime ministers, that it was almost like discovering a state within a state. And of course, with Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and James Murdoch meeting virtually every day with David Cameron, George Osborne and Jeremy Hunt, the convergence over the last few years has been almost seamless. As a senior News International journalist expressed it to me:

The Court of Cameron and the Court of Murdoch have become almost totally enmeshed.

This last year has been an amazing journey for our country, and for me personally, as I became inextricably caught up in the coverage of the affair. My book, which explores those 14 days in July which ended a media dynasty – and the 50 years leading up to it – is in the final stages and due for publication at the end of the month.

Below I might share some of the book, particularly the reality of the Milly Dowler story, but mainly this diary is to share YOUR memories, to hear your thoughts about this momentous year.

Musical Moose: Strum’s Song of Songs Project

So I’m finally ready to share more widely.  This diary will contain 4 demos with lyrics after the project description.  So if you just want to listen, please skip ahead.  And the very last of them was done just last night and is probably the strongest.

These are from an inclusive setting of the biblical Song of Songs (Shir Hashirim) in the original biblical Hebrew. The lyrics are approximately 2500 years old. Traditionally attributed to King Solomon, who lived a few centuries earlier than that, the book’s superscription can be translated either as attribution or dedication. Accordingly, it has also been called the Song of Solomon. The Latin version is known as Canticum Canticorum, which also serves as the title of Giovanni Palestrina’s amazing setting of selections of the Latin lyrics. For over two millennia, these lyrics have informed both Jewish and Christian liturgy and theology, though there is no explicit theological content. Indeed, it is largely a collection of erotic lyrics loosely united by theme and imagery. Some Jewish communities chant it on the eve of the Sabbath and it is widely chanted ritually in synagogues on the intermediate Sabbath of Passover. Rabbinic interpretations have employed its verses to express ideas about the erotic relationship between God and Israel and to illustrate points about the Exodus from Egypt, the Revelation at Sinai, the dedication of the Tabernacle, the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem, and Israel’s exilic situation in the diaspora. Rabbi Aqiva declares in Mishna Yadayim: All of the writings are holy, the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. Christian exegetes and theologians have drawn upon these lyrics to express the relationship between Christ and the Church, Christ and the individual soul, and marian theology as well.

By rendering the book inclusively, without editorial rearrangement or comment, without excerpting or omitting anything, my song cycle leaves all of these interpretive opportunities open. It can simply be apprehended as some of the oldest recorded erotic poetry, or as part of this or that theological or historiographic tradition. Oddly, my research has not turned up another version that does this in any language (though one may yet appear out of some as yet untroubled archive) outside of traditional cantillation. I omit nothing, though words and phrases are repeated to fill out metrical lines and to serve as choruses for the 18 songs into which I have re-divided the 8 traditional chapter divisions. On a very few occasions, a lyric may be introduced just slightly out of order when interweaving lines in counterpoint. The lyrics are assigned to a male soloist, female soloist, and male and female choruses according to grammatical and narrative cues in the text.

The instrumentation will eventually include a mix of western and middle eastern instruments, especially an oud, traditional percussion, drum kit, possibly some electronic beats, reed, violin and perhaps accordion/harmonium. I’ve composed the entire thing from guitar riffs, but some of that may need to be trimmed or subordinated as other instruments are incorporated into the arrangements. The current demos are sketches to be filled out.