Marbury

every breath you take

Who is he spying on?

Anyone who has ever signed up to the Obama campaign will know what it is like to receive a relentless stream of emails from the president, couched in oddly personal terms. It can get a bit creepy.

Julie Beck at The Hairpin has put together a list of "Subject Lines of Obama Campaign Emails That Sound Like a Stalker Wrote Them". Here's a selection:

"Five years ago, today"

"Do you still live in Illinois?"

"Me again"

"Sometime soon, can we meet for dinner?" 

"You must be at least a little curious"

"Guess who"

"Last chance at dinner"

"This is not a joke"

Full list here.

poshlost

In this classic Paris Review interview with Vladimir Nabokov, the great man explains the many applications of his neologism, "poshlost" (a translation from the Russian):

Poshlost speaks in such concepts as “America is no better than Russia” or “We all share in Germany's guilt.” The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as “the moment of truth,” “charisma,” “existential” (used seriously), “dialogue” (as applied to political talks between nations), and “vocabulary” (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name—that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost's favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouvés in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots—all of it as corny in its own right as the academic “September Morns” and “Florentine Flowergirls” of half a century ago. The list is long, and, of course, everybody has his bête noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious wench to a young couple—she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canapé, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range.

All of these symptoms, including and especially the dreaded false moral equivalence (America is just like the terrorists, etc) are still with us.

Full interview here.

the noble gaze

This photo was used to illustrate an Onion classic from 2008:

Democrat Barack Obama has reportedly been working tirelessly with his top political strategists to perfect his looking-off-into-the-future pose, which many believe is vital to the success of the Illinois senator's campaign.

When performed correctly, the pose involves Obama standing upright with his back arched and his chest thrust out, his shoulders positioned 1.3 feet apart and opened slightly at a 14-degree angle, and his eyes transfixed on a predetermined point between 500 and 600 yards away. Advisers say this creates the illusion that Obama is looking forward to a bright future, while the downturned corners of his lips indicate that he acknowledges the problems of the present.

Of course, Obama isn't the only politician to use the 'staring pensively into the distance' pose. It's a standard image for candidate photos. But I hadn't realised quite how far this visual cliché goes back until I came across this brilliant dissection of it from 1957, by wily French penseur Roland Barthes:

The gaze is lost nobly in the future, it does not confront, it soars and fertilizes some other domain, which is chastely left undefined. Almost all three-quarter-face photos are ascensional, the face is lifted toward a supernatural light, which draws it up and elevates it to the realm of a higher humanity; the candidate reaches the Olympus of elevated feelings, where all political contradictions are solved.

I love that. The 2008 Obama campaign was particularly good at creating the sense that there was a place, just out of frame, in which "all political contradictions are solved".

(Compare also "Obama Staring Pensively Out of Windows".)

(Sam Anderson's short essay on Barthes and Mythologies, where I came across this extract, is worth a read.)

the rosenbergs' son

Those of you who have read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (and some of you who haven't) will recall its famous opening line:

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

Plath's reference was to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American communists who were put to death by the US government in June, 1953, for conspiracy to commit espionage (the case involved the passing of atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union). 

This week the FT has a short but affecting interview with their son, Robert Meeropol. Here's an extract:

I don’t remember exactly when I learnt my parents had been executed. My older brother, Michael, who was seven, told me they were dead, but I pretended not to understand. There’s a point in a kid’s life where he thinks if he wants something to be true, he can make it true, just because he wants it bad enough. I was at that age where I still had that kind of magical thinking. I’d say to Michael, “When are we going to visit Mommy and Daddy again?” And he’d look at me and say, “We can’t. They’re dead.” But about six months after their execution, I knew I was never going to see them again.

Full interview here, do read.

a journey

Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty.

Alastair Campbell has a new job: he's joining Portland, the public relations agency, on a permanent, part-time basis. His new boss is Tim Allan, the founder of the agency, and Campbell's deputy at Number 10 (and before that for the Labour Party in opposition).

This isn't the biggest or most important story of the week, and nor is it surprising - the route from politics to PR is well-travelled - but it's interesting, because it marks an important stage in the decontamination of the Alastair Campbell brand.

When Campbell left Downing St, in 2003, I suspect that he wouldn't have been by employable by Portland or any other public relations agency, despite his obvious expertise and experience. His name had been poisoned by association with an unpopular and highly controversial war; by his fight with the BBC over Kelly (though he was of course exonerated of any wrong-doing); and more generally because he seemed to embody "spin", which has become a byword for shallow and shabby dishonesty. Quite simply, no company would have wanted it to be known that they were being advised by Alastair Campbell. His very name had become bad PR.

Fast-forward nine years, and we can assume that plenty of businesses will be willing to pay Portland a lot of money for Campbell's advice. Although he still has plenty of critics and enemies, Campbell has become a relatively uncontroversial, respected and even popular figure in business and media circles, and in the country at large. This is partly just a function of the passage of time, as we all become more distant from the controversies of the Blair years. But it's also because Campbell has shown remarkable skill in navigating his way to calmer waters from the storms of his political years, while keeping himself in the public eye.

After a difficult period post-government when he struggled to work out what he wanted to do, Campbell eventually decided he wanted to do everything. He threw himself into the editing and marketing of his diaries, into charitable campaigning, into broadcasting, journalism, punditry and novel-writing. Across these disparate activities he has been resolutely himself: forceful, shamelessly self-promoting, candid about his own problems, aggressively unrepentant about his time in government, and always blunt, sometimes to the point of charmlessness, in argument. He has also revelled in the freedoms of social media, which allowed him to communicate directly with the public.

As a result, Campbell has become a far more three-dimensional figure than he was during the first stage of his fame, without compromising his authenticity. Even those who still don't like him have learnt a wary respect for his loyalty to the causes and people he cares about, for the astuteness of his analyses, and for his apparent lack of fear.

He will have plenty of stories from his Downing St years to share with Portland's clients. But Campbell's best case study may be himself.

touch the hair, dude

This photo, taken by the White House's official photographer Pete Souza, has become what may be the most loved image of the Obama administration. It is a fixture in the White House itself, and David Axelrod has a framed copy in his Chicago office. As well as being irresistibly cute, it seems to capture something about what having a black president means to African-Americans.

The young boy in the picture is the gloriously named Jacob Philadelphia. Jacob's father, Carlton, was leaving the White House after a two-year stint on the National Security Council, and took up the chance offered to all departing staff members to have a family photograph taken with the president.

Mr and Mrs Philadelphia suggested to their two sons, Isaac and Jacob, that they should each prepare one question for the president, though they didn't know what the questions were until the boys asked them. The New York Times tells this lovely story well:

Jacob spoke first.

“I want to know if my hair is just like yours,” he told Mr. Obama, so quietly that the president asked him to speak again.

Jacob did, and Mr. Obama replied, “Why don’t you touch it and see for yourself?” He brought his head level with Jacob, who hesitated.

“Touch it, dude!” Mr. Obama said.

Click here for the full story.

(Brilliantly, Isaac's question was "Why did you cancel the F-22 fighter jet?")

the m word

George and Lenore Romney visit Chicago, September 1967 (Photo: Edward Kitch/AP).

As Marbury has noted before, Mitt Romney's political persona was formed in the shadow of his father's. George Romney was a popular governor of Michigan and ran for the presidency in 1968, but self-destructed after describing himself as having been 'brainwashed' by the generals over Vietnam.

Mitt, the youngest of four Romney children, worshipped George, and the cheap but irresistible psychological narrative of his career is that it's an attempt to surpass his father and put right George's failure.

In the current edition of New York magazine Benjamin Wallace-Wells has written a wonderfully vivid and detailed portrait of George, centring on his presidential run. It's full of the sound and fury of America in the late 1960s.

Romney was no ordinary Republican. In 1967, in the wake of the Detroit riots, he embarked on a rather quixotic tour of the American ghetto, visiting seventeen cities and meeting with black leaders - including Saul Alinsky, the father of modern community organising, an inspiration to Obama, and now a bogeyman for the American right. I didn't know that.

Among many great paragraphs, this one:

In Watts one day, Romney and Lenore were sitting in the back of a sedan, being chauffeured to the airport by a local driver, with Romney’s bodyguard riding shotgun. According to a story that circulated all through the campaign, Romney leaned forward: “Say, what is that word they keep saying to me? I don’t understand, it begins with an M…” The driver and the bodyguard racked their brains as Romney tried to pronounce it, working his western consonants around an inner-city accent. Then the driver straightened up and said, “Governor, I think what they’re saying is”—and here he let his voice get kind of ghetto—“mo’fucka.” And then, because Romney was legendarily a Mormon and these vulgarities may have been somewhat beyond him, the driver clarified: “Motherfucker, sir.” And Romney sank back into his seat, like a part of the car that had been mechanically retracted.

Read the whole thing here.

world champions

The G8 leaders, captured at the moment that Chelsea scored the winning goal on Saturday night:

Photo: White House/flickr

Cameron: At last, something to take my government off the front page!

Obama: Boy am I glad that's over. That game makes a conversation with Francois Hollande sound like an alluring prospect.

Merkel: Well, at least the Brits will have something else to crow about for the next fifty years.

Barroso: This was Mourinho's victory.

Hollande: Quel est-il, la victoire? N'est-ce pas une tragédie qui devait arriver?

Aftermath here.

romney stands by himself

The Obama campaign must feel constantly grateful to Mitt Romney, who just keeps on giving...

Reminds me of this.

Full story - worth reading - here.

liberal education

The Obama administration has set a goal of adding 8 million college graduates by 2020. There are, of course, good policy reasons to do so (whatever Rick Santorum says). But as Leo Drutman points out, if you are of a Machiavellian mindset you might discern an ulterior motive too:

Drutman (of the Progressive Policy Institute, a liberal think-tank) has a series of similar charts, showing the opposite relationship between graduates and Republican voters, and an even more significant relationship between college education and self-identifying as 'liberal' (or 'conservative'):

So, in short, the more college graduates in a state, the more Democratic and liberal it is.

Why is this? Liberals would smugly say that it's a simple function of learning more about the world. Conservatives would argue that it's a function of social and ideological indoctrination. The truth is likely to be more complex than either narrative allows, but the relationship is substantial and striking. 

These are just correlations, of course; it's not certain that if you create more graduates, you create more Democrats. But if the relationship is causal, then - Drutman calculates - creating another 8 million graduates would give the Democrats an incremental 3% edge over their Republican adversaries.

Full analysis here.

mummy owns your eggs

 

Apologies for non-existent posting, I've been on holiday in Sicily. Now I'm back in London, and wondering why on earth there is water dripping from the sky of all places.

While away I noticed this extraordinary report in the New York Times. In the States, more and more women are choosing to freeze their eggs for later use (just stick them in the microwave to defrost) and it turns out that they are often being encouraged to do so by parents, keen to increase their chances of becoming grandparents:

“By the time Allison was 35, I felt the clock was tick-tick-ticking,” said Candace Kramer, 61, whose daughter took her up on the suggestion to freeze her eggs — and her offer to pay half the bill. “I viewed it as opening up an opportunity for her.”

Such arrangements are not unusual, said Dr. Daniel Shapiro... He estimated that at least three quarters of his center’s egg-freezing patients — more than 100 over the past two years — have parents who paid part or all of the bill.

“I was surprised at first about the parental involvement, but now I expect it to be the case,” said Dr. Shapiro, adding that many patients tell him, “My parents want me to have this as a gift.”

His center, along with an offshoot called My Egg Bank North America, are trying to make it easier, and less uncomfortable, for family members to pay for the procedure, marketing the “Gift of Hope”: a gift certificate and a silver charm bracelet for the recipients.

Perhaps this is touching evidence of parent-child collaboration. Or perhaps it's just icky. Medical science is increasingly good at posing such questions. Here's a quote from another family:

Mrs. Hayes and her husband offered to pay for the procedure, but Jennifer Hayes was initially reluctant to accept the money.

“My mom said to me, ‘Do you think we’d rather have this money sitting in an account or have a potential grandchild someday?’ ” she recalled. “When she positioned it that way, it somehow just changed the way I felt.”

I can see that.

Do the parents then get to choose who fertilises the eggs? Seems like a reasonable enough demand, given their investment.

Full report here.

what will happen when gays can marry?

Seems like a good time to remind ourselves of the data:

dept. of only in america

In Wisconsin, Democrats are fighting a campaign to 'recall' Scott Walker, the state's controversial Republican governor. Walker, in his first term, has taken some draconian anti-union measures; the Democrats and unions have responded by collecting 900,000 signatures on recall papers, triggering a ballot. On Tuesday, Democrats held a primary to select the candidate who will go up against Walker.

Anyway, it seems that things are getting pretty intense:

A Chippewa Falls man who repeatedly tried to block his estranged wife from driving to the polls Tuesday was hospitalized with head, neck and back injuries when she struck him with her sport utility vehicle.

Jeffrey Radle, a Gov. Scott Walker supporter, was on foot.

Amanda Radle, a recall proponent, was in a Dodge Durango.

The pair had been arguing early Tuesday afternoon over who she was going to vote for in the gubernatorial recall election primary, said Chippewa Falls Police Chief Wendy L. Stelter.

"She was planning on voting for a certain candidate, and it wasn't the candidate he wanted her to vote for," Stelter said.

When Amanda Radle, 30, attempted to pull out, Jeffrey Radle, 36, stood in front of her, according to a police department statement. She nudged him with the vehicle several times.

Each time he would "retreat and re-establish his ground," the release said. "At one point he climbed onto the hood."

When she finally attempted to drive around him, Jeffrey Radle jumped in front of the vehicle and was hit. Aman da Radle left the scene and went to the police department to report the incident, the release said.

"These crazy liberal nuts are always pulling this crap," said Radle's brother, Mike Radle, describing himself and his brother as firm supporters of Walker, the subject of the recall.

The couple have previous. Full report here.

clinton on caro on lbj

 

LBJ was very much a dog man.

In short story called On Exactitude in Science, Jorge Luis Borges (after Lewis Carroll) imagines a map of the world that is on exactly the same scale as the world itself. Robert Caro, for his multi-volume, insanely detailed life of Lyndon Johnson, seems to have adapted that concept to biography. I am ashamed to say that I haven't read any of it, yet, but I intend to, and fully expect it to be as marvellous as everyone says.

To review Caro's latest volume, The Passage of Power, the New York Times has hired one of its occasional reviewers, a chap called Bill Clinton. Young Clinton does a great job, as you would expect. His review breathes admiration for LBJ, in particular for his unrivalled skills of personal persuasion:

In sparkling detail, Caro shows the new president’s genius for getting to people — friends, foes and everyone in between — and how he used it to achieve his goals. We’ve all seen the iconic photos of L.B.J. leaning into a conversation, poking his thick finger into a confidant’s chest or wrapping his long arm around a shoulder. At 6 foot 4, he towered over most men, but even seated Johnson commanded from on high. Caro relates how during a conversation about civil rights, he placed Roy Wilkins and his N.A.A.C.P. entourage on one of the couches in the Oval Office, yet still towered over them as he sat up close in his rocking chair. And he didn’t need to be in the same room — he was great at manipulating, cajoling and even bullying over the phone.

He knew just how to get to you, and he was relentless in doing it.

If you were a partisan, he’d call on your patriotism; if a traditionalist, he’d make his proposal seem to be the Establishment choice. His flattery was minutely detailed, finely tuned and perfectly modulated. So was his bombast — whatever worked.

Part of the fun of reading the review is the sense of Clinton measuring himself against LBJ; after all, Bill was pretty good at this stuff too. And perhaps there is an implicit contrast with the current incumbent of the White House, who has nothing like the same 'in-the-room' ability to win hearts and minds - and votes.

double time

Fascinating piece by Kathryn Schulz about chronobiology, the science of internal body clocks. Here is just a snippet:

Roenneberg cites experiments in which subjects were confined to bunkers and deprived of all temporal cues. While most subjects maintained a day-night periodicity of roughly 24 hours (circa one day: hence, “circadian”), some people’s cycle doubled, to about 48 hours. Amazingly, they were oblivious to the change. They continued to eat three meals a “day,” and their sense of smaller time units doubled, too. Asked to estimate an hour, they estimated two instead.