Leaky Ships

I'm concerned that the WikiLeaks diplomacy bomb released today will lead to some sort of crackdown on Internet freedom and provide misdirection in support of anti-Net Neutrality legislation. I'm worried that the sharing of information between government agencies that began after 9/11, which was in part allowed to happen by a lack of inter-agency information exchange, will be squelched.

On the other hand, I'm loving this:

According to Le Monde (in translation), a cable relayed to Washington a conversation between the emir of Qatar and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) last February: "Based on over 30 years of experience with the Iranians, the emir concluded the meeting by saying that we shouldn't believe but one word in a hundred that the Iranians say." The prime minister of Qatar told Kerry later that trip that Ahmadinejad told him: "we beat the Americans in Iraq, the final battle will be in Iran."

The president of the Upper House of the Jordanian Parliament, Zeid Rifai, was said in a cable (translated) to have told the U.S. that "the dialogue with Iran will go 'nowhere', adding: 'bomb Iran or live with a nuclear Iran: the sanctions, the carrots, the incentives, have no importance.'"

The Omanis were similarly concerned, according to cables relayed by the New York Times, as an Omani military official told officials that he could not decide which was worse: "a strike against Iran's nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran."

The United Arab Emirates' deputy defense chief, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, called Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "Hitler" to U.S. officials, also "stressed 'that he wasn't suggesting that the first option was 'bombing' Iran,' but also warned, 'They have to be dealt with before they do something tragic.'"

The Saudis, the Bahrainis and even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were all similarly inclined, as has been widely reported -- El Pais reported that Mubarak's hatred for Iran was called "visceral" and the New York Times reported the existence of cables referring to the Saudi king's "frequent exhortations" to engage in military action against Iran. The Bahrainis, too, are said to be keen to see Iran's nuclear program halted, and King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa is said to have blamed problems in Iraq and Afghanistan on the Iranian government -- and both Kuwaiti and Yemeni officials reportedly told U.S. diplomats similar things about Iranian involvement in fomenting dissent in their own countries.

For far too long the Arab countries in the Middle East have acted like it's Israel against Iran and "Not I! Not I!" What these leaks prove is that there is certainly reason for common ground between Israel and it's neighbors, that they are not afraid of Israel but, rather, Iran, and that their hypocrisy knows no bounds on this issue.

I'm also not against the reported (by Forbes) revelations to come from WikiLeaks regarding the evil at the high end of the contemporary banking industry:

“You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” he says, refusing to characterize the coming release in more detail. “But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”

Oh, and by the way, nobody knows what they hell is really going on in North Korea.

Seriously: Dude

As tough as it was to forgo making the subject of this post the sucker-born-every-minute revelation that the Teabaggers of 2009 spent most of their political donations supporting -- what else but -- the very astroturfing, Dick Armey-led GOP organization that created them (and it appears to be a legal racket!), and as much as I wanted to tout, to my doubting friends on the left, that President Obama is moving to curb the very federal secrets policy that the secrecy-fetishizing Cheney (Bush) Administration overly strengthened, there's one story that just rises...or, shall I say, floats above the rest.

Per The New York Times, there's a new collection of erudite essays out called, I kid you not, The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies, all about, you guessed it, the Coen Brothers' cult film apex, The Big Lebowski.

Not much of a success when first released, this movie has grown in stature over the years, mainly due to how it increases in funniness over repeated viewings. (And as we know, most comedies do the reverse, disposable.) As a little background on the cult, from Wikipedia:

Steve Palopoli wrote about the film's emerging cult status in July 2002.^[57] He first realized that the film had a cult following when he attended a midnight screening in 2000 at the New Beverly Cinema in L.A. Palopoli and witnessed people quoting dialogue from the film to each other.^[58] Soon after the article appeared, the programmer for local midnight film series in Santa Cruz decided to screen The Big Lebowski and on the first weekend they had to turn away several hundred people. The theater held the film over for six weeks which had never happened before.^[59]

An annual festival, the Lebowski Fest, began in Louisville, Kentucky, United States in 2002 with 150 fans showing up, and has since expanded to several other cities.^[60] The Festival's main event each year is a night of unlimited bowling with various contests including costume, trivia, hardest- and farthest-traveled contests. Held over a weekend, events typically include a pre-fest party with bands the night before the bowling event as well as a day-long outdoor party with bands, vendor booths and games. Various celebrities from the film have even attended some of the events, including Jeff Bridges who attended the Los Angeles event.^[60] The British equivalent, inspired by Lebowski Fest, is known as The Dude Abides and is held in London.^[61]

Dudeism, an online religion devoted largely to spreading the philosophy and lifestyle of the movie's main character was founded in 2005. Also known as The Church of the Latter-Day Dude, the organization has ordained over 50,000^[62] "Dudeist Priests" all over the world via its website.

Info on the creation of this fine new scholarly tome:

Most of the essays in “The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies” began as papers presented at the 2006 Lebowski Fest in Louisville. Working at an unhurried, Dude-like crawl, it took the editors three years to wrap these papers up and usher them into print.

“When we first put out a call for papers, we received about 200 proposals,” said Mr. Comentale, an associate professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, whose previous books include “Modernism, Cultural Production and the British Avant-Garde” and “T. E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism.”

The essays sound pretty great, both fun and illuminating, and the influence of Jeff Bridges' "Dude" are growing with the college students of today:

In another of this book’s essays, “Professor Dude: An Inquiry Into the Appeal of His Dudeness for Contemporary College Students,” a bearded, longhaired and rather Dude-like associate professor of English at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., named Richard Gaughran asks this question about his students: “What is it that they see in the Dude that they find so desirable?”

One of Mr. Gaughran’s students came up with this summary, and it’s somehow appropriate for an end-of-the-year reckoning: “He doesn’t stand for what everybody thinks he should stand for, but he has his values. He just does it. He lives in a very disjointed society, but he’s gonna take things as they come, he’s gonna care about his friends, he’s gonna go to somebody’s recital, and that’s it. That’s how you respond.”

I've always said that the strongest thing in the world is a philosophy, and in the post-Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe world, that pretty much means a code. It's not about governments or ideologies, it's how you see the big picture and apply it to the small. Maybe that's best represented by an academic collection. Or maybe by a 2010 wall calendar.

In any case, when they hand Jeff Bridges the statuette for Best Actor at this next Oscars ceremony, it may say it's for Crazy Heart but we'll know the truth. Sure, there's a lifetime achievement aspect. And sure, it looks like a potentially career-best performance for this new movie, but in our heart-of-hearts, for all of us rooting everso hard for him out here in Lebowskiland, it'll be The Dude that we'll be cheering for.

For as well all know, when all is said and done, the Dude abides.

As The Stranger says, it's good knowin' he's out there.

Duets

Mad Men SPOILERS per this week's even more brutal episode than the previous four.
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Okay.

Just watched the episode again, "The Gypsy and the Hobo," and see the structure as 5 duets of varying length, not a lot of group scenes, only as backdrop for the Roger and Ex- Flame story. In terms Don's reveal with Betty it's one of two reflective subplots, this one about two mature people rediscovering each other after a quarter century and learning the truth about who the other really is. In this one the man has the upper hand over the woman, who he sees as having deceived him, or at least his heart, leaving it broken. This one ends without reconciliation, and like all the stories in the episode, it's about identity, both the idea of changing the name on a label (i.e. Whitman->Draper) and identifying the "meant to be" provider of love:

"You were the one."
"You weren't."

This one has to end up broken up so that we can finish with Don and Betty together.

The second major duet is between Joan and her psycho-baby husband, Greg. We learn that he's hid a huge part of his past from her, possibly the very thing that cripples him emotionally and vocationally, he mother having run off and his dad's subsequent nervous breakdown. Greg continues to shatter after a poor interview, his confessions continuing to mirror those of Don later in the episode, only he ends with a brand new choice of identity, joining the army to continue as a surgeon (and we surely pity those soldiers who will end up sacrificing their lives under his knife). Ironically, he's going the opposite way of Don, who left the army to assume a new identity.

Again, in this reflection the couple stays together but it looks like it could blow at any moment.

The two minor duets are Joan's call to Roger and Don's swan song with Suzanne. Joan and Roger once again get the best lines, the closest to Adam's Rib style Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn tight and brilliant 40's style dialogue. There's a real affection there (was Joanie "the one?") as between two equals, with both knowing what's going on but acting like adults, again an inversion and welcome relief from the troubled Don/Betty duet, the "positive." And Joanie once again gets an instant classic line, "Look at you figuring things out for yourself." Even Roger has to laugh and give her credit.

The Don-Suzanne plot serves to give us Dick Whitman in his most ideal state, i.e. in the bedroom being vulnerable with an understanding woman/young mother figure as was missing from his childhood. Besides the obvious suspense of her waiting in the car as he heads into his nearly twenty minute duet with Betty, Suzanne is another road not taken, most keenly represented and felt in the shot of Don framed by the doorway after his initial confession to Betty, what John Ford fans know as "The Searchers shot" that opens and most notably closes the picture, both times framing John Wayne's Ethan Edwards, a man eternally adrift. That Don chooses not to pass through it speaks to the courage that makes him a character worthy of dramatization. When Betty busts him for his big identity lie, he turns from Don to Dick but with a difference from times past. As Jon Hamm says, when Don gets in trouble, Dick runs.

Not this time.

In fact, besides the Emmy-inducing work of Hamm in his breakdown before his wife, and the extraordinary strength January Jones draws up in her confronting him, what comes through is how fragile the thread really is, that thing that holds together our identities -- family, house, job, spouse -- all a construct to weep over, weep for what was lost or denied, for the mistakes we made to get ourselves into these very traps, yet how terrifying it would be to suddenly have them stripped away. David Byrne once sang, "And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?" Don't asks Betty, "Would it have made any difference?"

The costumes for Halloween are the icing on the cake, and as Don and Betty bring the kids to a house where the father giving out candy is the same dad who discussed teacher Suzanne with Don in the lead-up to the affair, we get the emblematic line of the episode, if not the series: "And who are you supposed to be?"

Per this episode, you might have to ask your partner.