Saturday, May 28, 2011

Jury Duty

Here's an interesting story that provides contrast to the case of DSK.
Two New York City police officers have been acquitted of raping a drunk woman in her apartment. They brought her home, put her to bed, and then came back several times, apparently to rape her. A surveillance camera captured the two officers going back to her apartment several times after their official posted call. However, because she was so drunk, there were lapses in her memory and the jury could not find enough reasons to convict them. There was no DNA evidence. Apparently, one of the officers used a condom. They have been fired.
Ladies, when you go out and drink in NYC, do yourselves a favor and learn to hold your liquor. You have to have your wits about you.
I wonder if DSK, who has the best lawyers money can buy, and who are already saying sex was consensual (!), will be also acquitted. His case is much harder. The woman wasn't drunk, she was doing her job. Plus, he has a reputation for being a satyr. He is also powerful and white, while his accuser is an African widow with a child. DSK arrived at the Sofitel and there was no female in the staff he didn't accost. I don't know how he could possibly get out of this pickle.
The issue is whether men can still get away with this kind of thing because a woman's word has less value than theirs. Or because in rape cases, men think that women find them so irresistible that they will do anything to get into their pants. One would have thought that the police officers' case was pretty obvious, but if they say that she instigated it, and she is drunk, then that is that.  In the case of DSK, the idea that this poor woman was so hot for him she desperately wanted to have his dick in her mouth as she was doing her job (or at any time) is risible, but that may be what the defense will present. I think DSK is indefensible, and he should have pleaded guilty. But he is probably so entitled and has been coddled for so long in France that it didn't even occur to him that someone would seek punishment for what he's been doing to women for so long. The only thing that occurs to me is the insanity defense (since the French notion of a political conspiracy is rather hard to prove). If I were him, I would claim sexual compulsion, satyriasis, sex addiction, that is, an illness over which I have no control, to try to get a reduced sentence. But that would mean admitting weakness, and this bastard would rather humiliate himself, his family, the French, and worst of all, his victim, in order to avoid that. What hubris.

All this is to say that I got a summons for Jury Duty a couple of months ago and I postponed it because of work reasons (dang!). I actually want to serve on a jury.  I've been told that I do not know what I'm talking about, but I love this stuff.

Today On I've Had It With Hollywood

An excellent Romanian movie: Tuesday, After Christmas.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Today On I've Had It With Hollywood

The Lars Von Trier Show.

Le Perp Walk

How about the reaction of the French media to the arrest of IMF president and former French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn! They are appalled, they are horrified... at how harshly the NYPD treated him, fishing him out of first class on a departing plane and oo la la, the violence and the humiliation of le perp walk.
Quel horreur!
They have not shown that much sympathy for the chambermaid who accused him or the many women he has apparently groped and humiliated throughout the years. He comes with a reputation for randiness. Mesdames et monsieurs, if the guy is innocent, he will be exonerated. If he isn't, he deserves to be behind bars. Knowing the French, they may even vote for him in solidarity with his irrepressible joie de vivre. Stephen Clarke, the guy who wrote the very funny A Year in the Merde, explains how French society really works. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, mon cul.
What the French don't understand is that we are a country of puritans and the perp walk is our morality play. We collapse as a nation if someone shows an accidental nipple in the Superbowl, so actual sex scandals really do scandalize us. In contrast to the laissez faire attitude of Pepe le Pew, we don't believe that you should be the leader of a country, a party, a state, or a world bank if you can't keep your dick safely inside your pants. And usually we're talking mostly pecadilloes, like cheating on your spouse, having secret children out of wedlock and getting bjs under the table, not rape.
The French also don't understand that in this country the wealthy can try to get acquittal with the help of very good, expensive lawyers. But if you are arrested, and particularly if you are notorious, you'll get the perp walk (remember Bernie Madoff, O.J Simpson, etc). The perp walk is unfair and perhaps it should be abolished, but it's not a guilty sentence either. Some people are championing the perp walk as an equalizer, although I suspect that the perp walks of the rich and famous get much more attention than those of anonymous criminals. Supposedly, in America everybody gets treated equally (thanks to some ideas we actually borrowed from the French). However, this sentence made my eyebrows rise to the ceiling:
Mr. Strauss-Kahn was being held in protective custody in the West Facility at Rikers because there was room there to give him a wing to himself, an official said.
Do all presumed rapists get a wing to themselves in Rikers? Je ne croi pas.
In this world there is no such thing as 100% equal justice and there will never be. It's simply not in human nature.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Crazy Tuesday News Digest

Whoa there, Tuesday!

Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion.
Will we have to open our C drives to skype?

The Chinese government has declared war on... jasmine. You heard right. Because revolutionaries in Tunisia used the fragrant flower as a symbol, the reliably heavy handed, paternalistic, capriciously and none too brightly authoritarian Chinese authorities are now bent on discrediting a flower, which is as far as I can tell, a huge part of their culture (all that fragrant tea!).  It's like that souvenir royal wedding commemmorative dish set made in China that had the wrong prince on it (millions of them): embarrassingly clueless.

 • The Governator and Maria Shriver are calling it quits. NOOOOOO!
Actually, who cares?
He is also going back to the movies, which is too meta for me to understand. 

Newt Gingrich is running for president. This guarantees an awful circus I don't really want to know about.

• Today is Mexican Mother's Day, which is mostly characterized by hellish lunchtime gridlock in Mexico City.  Felíz Día de las Madres, madres, Mexican and otherwise.

Don't Do Israel No Favors

There are some self-righteous Jews out there, who, thinking that Israel can't survive without their help, end up causing more harm than good. These are the people who scream when a movie like Miral* is screened at the UN, hereby causing it to gain far more attention not only than it deserves, but that it would have ever gotten if they had not raised a stink in the first place. Or like this guy on the board of CUNY, who decides that playwright Tony Kushner does not deserve a honorary degree because he doesn't happen to agree with Kushner's views on Israel. I'm sure Kushner is no Netanyahu, but he is not Ahmadinejad either. And unless he is cheerleading for the wholesale destruction of Israel, which I'm sure he isn't, what does that have anything to do with his making the list for an honorary degree?  This is, contrary to its intended effect, bad for the Jews. Because it gives ammunition to those idiots who think we indeed control everything.
So use your seichel (brain) before you open your mouth. Also, there is such a thing as freedom of thought and expression. They happen to have it in Israel. You may want to look it up.

*The Jews who are so ashamed of Israel that they make it look worse than it is, also deserve a zets in kop.

Monday, May 09, 2011

Due To Popular Demand

My dear readers: We are so technologically advanced that we hereby introduce subscription by email (better than the NYT and free to boot!) If you want to be advised of new posts, just type your email address on the space provided at left and presto, you will get a discreet email message alerting you. If you don't, then don't. No hard feelings.
(I know someone who's going to be very happy).

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Anything Goes

Yesterday, as I was wiping tears of joy looking at all that spirited tap dancing going on in Anything Goes, I was thinking, this is what is truly American. Cole Porter is truly American. Putting on a Broadway show and hoofing gloriously is unabashedly, uniquely American. So I thought that a much more meaningful display of patriotism, rather than cheer for the death of that evil bastard (I am thrilled that he died, I just don't think I should erupt in pom poms and rah rahs in public), is to listen to the songs of Cole Porter, sing and dance to the songs of Cole Porter, learn tap dancing to the songs of Cole Porter, and fall in love to the songs of Cole Porter. If none of this is possible, go see Anything Goes on Broadway and you'll get a pass.
One should not be overly nostalgic for past eras, although the gorgeous costumes by Martin Pakledinaz (so rooting for a Tony for him) are so absolutely stunning that they made me pine for the days of the great depression and the Nazis. But that is the point of glamor. Those gorgeous bias cut satin silhouettes, all that art deco make one forget that 1934 was not a bed of roses by any stretch of the imagination.
Still, listening to the work of genius that is "You're the Top", and wallowing in misery at what passes for songwriting today, one does pine for the days of when Americans were as sophisticated, urbane, witty, elegant, smart and delightful as Cole Porter.
The guy was from Peru, Indiana, so there is no excuse.
Whatever happened to us? Couldn't we have enacted civil rights, gone to the moon, vanquished the Nazis, ushered in women's lib and all that jazz, without losing our joie de vivre and panache? Without becoming ignorant, holier than thou, vulgar and uncouth?
Anything Goes is a little musty, even with a spiffy new book the jokes are gently quaint, but it is enormously charming. This is the first time I see it and it is the very first time I hear the songs of Cole Porter in a play onstage, as part of a dramatic story. I can see why he is a favorite of jazz musicians (think Sinatra, Bennett, Ella), because those songs are so good they deserve not so much to be belted out, but whispered, with the utmost articulation, in one's ear. As much as I enjoyed the show, I felt there was far too much belting going on. A song like "I Get a Kick out of You" was so much more powerful when Sutton Foster sang it quietly.  Sometimes words were lost in the belting. And Porter's words cannot ever be lost, because that is a crime.
Also, today we have amplification. The most sophisticated microphones still make good singers sound tinny. So it's hard for me to imagine, when this show was staged before, was it amplified as if with a loudspeaker, or did people belt them out au naturel? Sitting way up in the heights, I could tell Sutton Foster is a total trouper. She is also like seven feet tall. I loved Joel Grey, even with all that shtick, he was super sweet and has perfect comic timing. John McMartin was great as Elisha Whitney, the lush, I particularly loved Jessica Stone as Erma the bombshell and the wonderful Adam Godley as Lord Evelyn Oakley.

He can say it better than I ever could:

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.
Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose,
Anything goes.
The world has gone mad today,
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
And that gent today
You gave a cent today
Once had several chateaux.
When folks who still can ride in jitneys
Find out Vanderbilts and Whitneys
Lack baby clo'es,
Anything goes!

Monday, May 02, 2011

Revenge is Sweet

I am not talking about the USA's revenge against Osama Bin Laden, who was finally killed by US forces. Nobody really knows what this act will bring in terms of foreign policy or domestic security in the long run. 
My instincts are that it's better that it happened now, when the notion and the power of Islamic terrorism seems to have been greatly diminished, not only by the pounding they've been getting ever since 9/11, but more significantly, I believe, by the recent popular uprisings in the Arab world, that seem to distance the majority of Arab citizens from a desire to live in darkness under brutal, stone age theocracies. The Islamonazis have become highly irrelevant.
To see idiots celebrating in front of the White House as if they were cheering for a winning sports team, made my stomach turn. If they are really so proudly invested in this victory, the lazy asses should be serving their country in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, instead of beating their hollow chests from the sidelines.
But for President Barack H. Obama, this is a great vindication and hopefully (one can dream) an opportunity to end the demeaning discourse from his detractors and professional insulters once and for all. As a symbolic act, it is highly meaningful, making the former Bush administration's silly victory theater and pathetic posturing even more stupid and incompetent in retrospect, if that is possible. But for all those Republicans who fan the flames against the president with their insidious accusations of displaced loyalty, lack of patriotism, the wrong religion, and no citizenship, I wonder what are they going to say now. It was interesting that while the three major networks were covering the news last night since 10:30, only at the very last minute did Fox News start their coverage. Is John Boehner going to erupt in tears of joy and gratitude to Obama? At the very least I would hope that this will make Donald Trump go back to his filthy hole and stay there. 
I could have done without the heavy handed mawkishness at the beginning of the speech, even as I understand it is an attempt to temper, rhetorically, an action that is nothing but stone cold, almost Biblical, revenge (and hence not all that civilized, but some things have to be done). Would it have been better to capture the guy alive and start a whole new legal, media and political circus? With the horrible legal issues that we are still mired in with KSM and other terrorists in our hands, probably not. I bet the calculation was, better that Bin Laden be a stupid martyr than for us to have to treat him well and clothe him and feed him for years. Just wipe the bastard out. (Now go get Al-Zawahiri).
But what was important, besides the President's clarification to the Muslim world, which for the most part seems to understand Al Qaeda as an insane distorsion of their religion, is that Obama placed himself at the front and center of this decision process. It was not narcissism that prompted Obama to make clear that it was HIM as the Commander in Chief, who gave the orders to go ahead with the action. And it was HIM who has been involved in its planning and execution (far more impressive that putting on a bomber jacket and behaving like a child on the deck of a ship).
It was a timely show of leadership, and a huge domestic political victory. Hopefully a line has been drawn to stop the rhetoric of humiliation and show the POTUS some well deserved respect.

Today On I've Had It With Hollywood

A barrel of laughs, it isn't: Incendies.