What a face. Afghanistan: Faces of Hope.
Orson Welles was always embarrassed by Rosebud. “It’s a gimmick, really,” he told interviewers, “and rather dollar book Freud.” The mystery of “the great man’s last words” was, like the reporter Thompson charged with solving it, “a piece of machinery” designed to lead the audience through the fragmented plot.The solution to the mystery is supposed to be that we, like Kane’s friends, lovers, and confidantes, discover that “the great man” is actually hollow inside. There is nothing there — no lost love, no moral truths, no imparted wisdom. “Rosebud” is just a missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle. It has no special value other than that it is missing. Kane the man, like Kane the film, is what Borges called it: a labyrinth without a center.
Where does it come from? How does a nation of 632,000 people — roughly a quarter the size of the borough of Queens — produce an anthem that … I mean, if a mountain range woke up one day, unfolded itself into a race of giant stone men, and marched off to war, each step crushing houses and splintering the Earth’s crust, this is what they would sing while they marched. Are you planning to kill Superman? THIS IS YOUR LAIR MUSIC.Quick intuitive translation of the lyrics:
The seething hot magma at the core of the world —
Bring us our tankards, we want to drink some for breakfast!
We wean our babies on lava, and they can’t get enough.
By the time they’re 6, they could beat an oak tree at wrestling.
Everyone! Do you understand that we are ferocious?
We have ventured down among the bones of the mountains,
Where we killed like 50 or 60 dragons,
We didn’t even keep track, that’s how easy it was.
My beard is the moss that binds the stone of God’s fury.
Drink with us! Drink with all of us! Be welcome!
We will wipe the floor with you and leave you for dead.
I’m in a good mood! I may dismember a bear.
Question. Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are a member of a tour visiting Greece. The group goes to the Parthenon. It is a bore. Few people even bother to look — it looked better in the brochure. So people take half a look, mostly take pictures, remark on the serious erosion by acid rain. You are puzzled. Why should one of the glories and fonts of Western civilization, viewed under pleasant conditions — good weather, good hotel room, good food, good guide — be a bore? Now imagine under what set of circumstances a viewing of the Parthenon would not be a bore. For example, you are a NATO colonel defending Greece against a Soviet assault. You are in a bunker in dowtown Athens, binoculars propped on sandbags. It is dawn. A medium-range missile attack is under way. Half a million Greeks are dead. Two missiles bracket the Parthenon. The next will surely be a hit. Between columns of smoke, a ray of golden light catches the portico.
Are you bored? Can you see the Parthenon?
Domosławski lists many other veracity problems. Kapuściński’s agency stuff is fairly straightforward reporting, salted only with analysis and opinion. It’s in his long feature articles, and in the anecdotes he tells in his books, that he habitually exaggerated, often changing details for effect. It seems to be untrue, for instance, that he was awaiting execution by Belgian mercenaries at the Usumbura airfield; other journalists tracked down by Domosławski say nothing of the sort happened. When Kapuściński told him he was in Mexico City for the massacre in 1968 or in Santiago for the Pinochet coup in 1973, the truth was he was in Mexico ‘a month later’ and in Chile a couple of years earlier. In Bolivia, he wrote a scandalous, colourful but quite untrue story about a rebel editor; he could easily have checked it with the man himself but – he isn’t the only journalist to do this – didn’t want facts to get in the way of a great story. When a friend pointed out that a Tanzanian riot he described had happened in a different place in a different way, Kapuściński shouted at her: ‘You don’t understand a thing! I’m not writing so the details add up: the point is the essence of the matter!’ And sometimes this works. In Amin’s Uganda, he described the horror among a group of Africans who had caught a gigantic fish, swollen to monstrous size by devouring the corpses thrown into Lake Victoria. Kapuściński knew this wasn’t true: the fish was an introduced Nile perch bloated by eating the native species. And yet the story captures exactly the terrified atmosphere of those nightmare times. Again, well-founded doubts about whether he really did interview all those Ethiopian courtiers in The Emperor, and whether they really spoke to him in that melancholy, philosophical way, don’t prevent that book from being a revelatory account of the way a ‘medieval’ court felt and functioned.
I have another question: How can we be so sure that The Emperor is “a revelatory account of the way a ‘medieval’ court felt and functioned” if the very stories that constitute that account are made up? The only people who could make that judgment are people who know Idi Amin’s “court” from the inside: if we were to ask them and they replied, yes, Kapuściński got it essentially right even if he made up the dialogue, then that would count for something. But how does Ascherson know that Kapuściński’s account is “revelatory”? Was he there? Can he corroborate Kapuściński’s take on Amin’s Uganda? If not, then he’s in the same boat the rest of us are in: we have no idea whether Kapuściński’s narrative is “essentially” accurate or total fantasy. No idea.
Absent further revelations, though, I find it an unfair double-standard that something Lehrer falsely attributed to Bob Dylan—which is essentially accurate, even if it isn’t technically—has cost him his job, and that his publisher is yanking his book. It’s not as if he quoted Dylan as saying, “I’m a Wiccan,” or “Wallace Stevens was a sucky poet.” He wrote, “‘It’s a hard thing to describe,’ Mr. Dylan said. ‘It’s just this sense that you got something to say.’” Here’s Dylan, to Ed Bradley on “60 Minutes” (according to the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog): “It came from, like, right out of that wellspring of creativity…I don’t know how I got to write those songs.”
Why won’t companies that provide online services take my money? As a mere consumer of such services, and someone not privy to any of the discussions that go on inside tech companies, I have no inside information that would help me answer this question. But I have a guess: many companies don’t want to take on the obligations to the customer that come from selling a service.
If you’ve been watching NBC in prime time the past few nights, you’ve probably noticed how, night in, night out, we’ve been wrecking the Olympics for you. All we can say is, our bad. At NBC we’re just not used to broadcasting things that people want to watch.But all that’s about to change.
Tonight, for those of you who like watching the Olympics without having every moment drained of its entertainment value, we are launching a new premium service called NBCFree: the Olympics without any contributions from NBC whatsoever.
For only $29.95 you can watch the Olympics with no spoilers, no maudlin “personal narratives,” and no promos for NBC’s new fall shows like that egregious one with the doctor and the monkey we show like every five minutes. And for $39.95, no Ryan Seacrest.
To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island.Gentlemen,
While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.
The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and happy people.
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.
G. Washington
Letter to Touro Synagogue, 1790. Emphasis added.
Two years ago, during the controversy about the so-called Ground Zero mosque, I suggested that people, like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrinch, who wanted the government to intervene to prevent the creation of a mosque in lower Manhattan ought to read these words by our first President. Now I’d like to suggest that people, like Rahm Emmanuel and Thomas Menino, who want to ban businesses from their cities whose owners hold views they dislike should read them also. The words in boldface are especially relevant, and should be tattooed on the foreheads of ignorant and intolerant politicians.