January 20, 2009
The Obama era begins
Today is finally Inauguration Day. Is it a moving pageant of America's long political heritage, or another episode of The Circus is in Town? I guess really some of both.
For the day then, let's take advice from Peggy Noonan, thoughtful political veteran that she is. Tomorrow will be time enough for the contest of ideas to begin in earnest.
We all want to be together, to work together, we all want to be part of the history, of the time. And why not? Join in. Lightning strikes.And this has grown old, and maybe it's the last time to say it, history moving so fast, but there's something we all know so well that we are perhaps forgetting to see it in the forefront. But a long-oppressed people have raised up a president. It is moving and beautiful and speaks to the unending magic and sense of justice of our country. The other day the journalist John O'Sullivan noted that 150 years after slavery, a black man stands in the place of Lincoln in the inaugural stands, and this country has proved again that anything is possible, that if we can do this we can do anything. That is a good thing to remember at a difficult time.
What is required for full enjoyment of an inauguration, from opening prayers to speeches to marching bands is, in the great 19th-century phrase, the willing suspension of disbelief. If you don't put your skepticism aside, you will not fully absorb and experience the drama. You must allow it to be real for you. Those two young people on the stage did not really take poison and die, but Romeo and fair Juliet did, and that is the reason the audience, which knows the actors still live, says, with genuine feeling, "Oh, no!"
To believe, suspend disbelief. We have been through this before, the flags and fine speeches, the brass donkey paperweight, the glass elephant, the rise and fall of administrations, the coming and going of figures great and small. It's good to put that aside for a few days, to remove yourself from politics, partisanship and faction, to suspend your disbelief, to be grateful that the signs and symbols endure, as does the republic, and raise a toast: "To the president of the United States."
January 18, 2009
Collapsing Mexico?
Well, this is just peachy. Geez.
Indiscriminate kidnappings. Nearly daily beheadings. Gangs that mock and kill government agents.This isn’t Iraq or Pakistan. It’s Mexico, which the U.S. government and a growing number of experts say is becoming one of the world’s biggest security risks.
The prospect that America’s southern neighbor could melt into lawlessness provides an unexpected challenge to Barack Obama’s new government. In its latest report anticipating possible global security risks, the U.S. Joint Forces Command lumps Mexico and Pakistan together as being at risk of a “rapid and sudden collapse.”
“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels,” the command said in the report published Nov. 25.
“How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state.”
Retiring CIA chief Michael Hayden told reporters on Friday that Mexico could rank alongside Iran as a challenge for Obama — perhaps a greater problem than Iraq.
January 16, 2009
Patrick McGoohan, RIP
Alas, actor Patrick McGoohan has died. Both charismatic and enigmatic, he was offered the roles of both James Bond and Simon Templar, and turned them down. He'll be remembered for a long, long time.
Patrick McGoohan, who died on January 13 aged 80, starred in two of the most memorable British television series of the 1960s, Danger Man and The Prisoner.If Danger Man was somewhat typical of 1960s espionage drama and derring-do, The Prisoner was a more cerebral affair in which McGoohan played a character known only as Number Six. [...]
He won two Emmys for his guest appearances in Columbo, the detective series starring Peter Falk, who described McGoohan as “the most underrated, under-appreciated talent on the face of the globe. I have never played a scene with another actor who commanded my attention the way Pat did.”
Despite such plaudits, some in showbusiness continued to find him difficult. Not only was he fiercely protective of his private life, but his religious beliefs, rejection of the material world and condemnation of sexual liberalism sometimes chimed with the stern-minded roles in which he was cast.
