Roundhead or Cavalier (or a bit of both)?

I imagine serious historians must tear their hair out at programmes like Roundhead or Cavalier: Which One Are You? which was on BBC 4 last night (though I noticed quite a few of them among the contributors: they must have been reading this). Me, I gave up a couple of minutes in, when the presenter described Cromwell as an ‘egalitarian’. From the little I saw, the programme committed the cardinal sin of history documentaries: reading modern debates and divisions back into an era utterly unlike our own.

Nevertheless, the parlour-game format around which the programme was built – where can we see the ‘two tribes’ of Roundhead and Cavalier in contemporary Britain, and which one do you belong to? – is a bit of harmless fun. The trouble is, speaking for myself, it’s not a question I find easy to answer – not any more, anyway. Once, in my far-off youth, it was all so much simpler. Brought up a Methodist, with early stirrings of socialist sympathies, I was an instinctive Roundhead. As a child, ‘Oliver Cromwell’ was probably my favourite in the Ladbybird history series: I felt a natural sympathy for the spiritual simplicity, the political reformism, even the clean, proto-modern lines of the uniforms, clothes, hairstyles. As for the Cavaliers, they were so obviously everything we aspiring-working-class Nonconformists were against: hierarchy, pomp, ritualism, tradition.

But then, as I grew older, it became more complicated. In my early twenties, I had a short-lived flirtation with Catholicism. That’s to say, I converted, but lapsed soon afterwards, though I retained strong residual sympathies in that direction, and if I were ever to become a practising Christian again, I can’t imagine belonging to any other denomination. I was inspired by the Catholic Worker movement and the liberation theologians of Latin America, and my conversion fractured the connection within me between Protestantism and political radicalism. (It helped that evangelical protestants, the modern-day heirs of seventeenth-century Puritanism, tended to align themselves with the political right). Left-wing Catholicism offered me a way of being traditionalist and sacramentalist in religion, while supporting social justice on the political level.

Complicating things still further, my researches in family history led to the discovery that my father’s forebears had been Aberdeenshire Episcopalians who (so family tradition had it) fought for the Bonnie Prince in the ’45: indeed, my great-great-great-grandfather bore the name Charles Edward Stuart Robb in his memory. As a result, I became fascinated by the Jacobites and by extension the Stuarts: their cause seemed far more glamorous than that of their dour Presbyterian opponents, with their grim sabbatarianism and censorious kirk sessions (before which some of my ancestors were apparently hauled for various offences against purity and sobriety).

My theological and genealogical sympathies have also inspired some recent revisionist historical reading, from which I’ve learned, inter alia, that it was the Catholic Mary Stuart who tried to introduce a degree of religious tolerance to Scotland, only to be thwarted by the fanatically Calvinist and misogynist John Knox, just as it was her great grandson James II, who, for all his autocratic ways, wanted to extend religious rights to both Catholics and Dissenters, a policy that in part prompted the so-called Glorious Revolution – supposedly the foundational moment of modern liberal democracy, but from another perspective a coup by the Protestant elite. As for Charles II, he was just a lot more fun than his predecessor Cromwell: I enjoyed reading Jenny Uglow's biography, especially the unforgettable image of Charles and James rolling up their sleeves to help put out the Great Fire.

Then, last year, I read Michael Braddick’s superb revisionist account of the English Civil War, a period I’d never really studied properly before. Braddick sees the various internecine wars of the seventeenth century in these islands, not so much as the beginnings of English political radicalism, but as a continuation of the religious conflict sparked by Henry VIII’s rupture with Rome in the previous century. I found the book revealing about the religious as well as the political beliefs of those who rebelled against Charles I. I don’t think I’d realized before quite how important Calvinism was to the religious outlook of the Puritans: rather than simplicity of worship and equal access to the scriptures being their prime motivation, as the Whig version of history taught us to believe, it was their core belief in the doctrine of predestination - in the divine election for salvation of a chosen few (and therefore the uselessness of human ‘works’) - that galvanised their opposition to Church and King. Far from the Puritans being egalitarians or proto-democrats, this was about the most elitist worldview imaginable, not to mention one that tended towards a strident paternalism, a knowing-what’s-best for the unsaved and unwashed.

For all of Charles I’s many faults and missteps, Braddick’s book showed the battle for legitimacy between crown and parliament as much more finely balanced  than I remembered. And the victory of the parliamentary cause seemed, in the end, more like a military coup than a democratic revolution. In recent years, there has been a tendency to confer retrospective secular sainthood on groups like the Levellers and to throw an ahistorical social-democratic patina over the Roundheads generally. But reading Braddick’s history, Cromwell seemed more like Lenin or Mao than Attlee or Bevan. As for the New Model Army, seeking to impose their theocratic will by force of arms and (when in power) banning Christmas, closing down theatres and imposing strict dress codes, one was reminded less of the dear old Labour Party than of the Taliban or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

And if you want to see what happened when the Puritans got a chance to found their own God-bothering commonwealth, just think of New England later in the seventeenth century: the memory of what happened at Salem is a useful corrective to any notion that they foreshadowed modern egalitarian tolerance. Nearer to home, the three words ‘Cromwell in Ireland’ should be enough to undermine any simple notion of a great democratic liberator.

It goes to show that you shouldn’t try to interpret past conflicts in terms of modern categories. ‘Roundhead’ and ‘Cavalier’ aren’t timeless universals, but labels with very particular meanings in a very different historical context. The same goes for ‘Tory’ and ‘Whig’ in the next century, labels which are easily misconstrued in terms of today’s Conservative-Labour divisions, when in fact (for example) Tories began as supporters of the insurrectionist Jacobite Pretender, while the original Whigs were those dour and paternalist Presbyterians again.

Two more points. What if, rather than representing two persistent ‘tribes’ of Britons, the Cavaliers and Roundheads reflect two complementary aspects of the British spiritual and political psyche that were unnaturally split apart some time in the sixteenth century (the Reformation having a lot to do with it)? And what if, rather than representing a cleavage in society, these labels reflect a fault-line that runs through each of us? After all, it was said of Robbie Burns that he was both Jacobin and Jacobite, a paradoxical position that sounds impossible to sustain, but one with which I have an instinctive sympathy. What if there’s both a bit of the Roundhead and a bit of the Cavalier in anyone with any kind of sympathetic imagination, and the struggle isn’t to decide which one you are, or to defeat one or the other, but to reconcile the warring tendencies within oneself...?

Brody and blowback: reflections on 'Homeland'

So farewell then, Homeland: or rather, farewell Season 1, since we’re told that a second series is currently being filmed. We’ll have to wait until the autumn to find out whether Carrie’s delayed memory of Brody muttering the name of Abu Nazir’s son in his sleep has been wiped by electro-convulsive therapy. (Apologies to non-aficionados: it would take far too long to explain…)

As others have said, Homeland really has been the best thing on television for a long time: combining an original premiss, nail-biting plot, intelligent script – and superb acting. From such a stellar cast, it’s invidious to mention individual performances: though Claire Danes deserves every award she’s got for her depiction of obsessive CIA agent Carrie Mathison, while Mandy Patinkin as her grizzled colleague Saul, and Morgan Saylor as Brody’s teenage daughter Dana also stand out, and (as with The Wire) it was good to see two British actors, Damian Lewis and David Harewood, taking on key roles.

Any criticisms? To my mind, the first half of the series, which cleverly played with our suspicions about whether or not Brody had been ‘turned’ in captivity was more engaging than the later episodes, which substituted the more traditional suspense of the thriller - will he/won’t he (blow up himself and half the US government)?  And I half-agree with Ed West that Brody’s conversion to Islam, and his turning from loyal US marine to potential al Qaeda suicide bomber, was not entirely convincing. (For those with an interest in matters theological, West links to a couple of interesting articles about the show by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith – the first piece headed by a photo of three of the show’s photogenic stars which provides more, ahem, eye candy than one is used to seeing in the Catholic Herald).

My own marginal reservations about Homeland are slightly different to West's. I wonder whether, in attempting to provide a plausible reason for why a loyal US soldier would turn into a terrorist who would attack his own country, the programme-makers have failed to reflect what we know of the actual motivation of Islamist terrorists, and risked giving comfort to those who blame the West for providing the rationale for terror.

At about the half-way point in the series, we see the hostage Sergeant Brody – unwashed, long-haired, bruised and beaten – being taken from his hellish captivity, to the home of his captor, the terrorist mastermind Abu Nazir, in a remote corner of northern Iraq. Brody is allowed to wash and shave and given clean (ethnically and religiously appropriate) clothes. The experience looks like a new birth, a rising from the dead, and indeed Nazir’s house - clean, bright, book-lined – resembles a kind of paradise, after the purgatory of captivity. The picture is completed by Nazir’s cute son Issa, whom Brody is to teach English. Can this really be the hide-out of a notorious terrorist? It looks more like the retreat of a noted scholar, or a spiritual master, and indeed in this and subsequent episodes, Abu Nazir is often depicted in this way.

It could be argued that Homeland does, in fact, show another side to Nazir. After all, before being given this chance of new life, we see Brody (in scenes that are almost too gruesome to watch) being beaten, tortured and (he believes) forced to murder a fellow prisoner. But the programme fails to show any connection between Nazir the torturer and planner of terrorist outrages, and Nazir the scholar, man of God and loving father. Perhaps it’s expecting too much of as primetime thriller to get inside the mind of a terrorist, but what’s surely missing from the depiction of Abu Nazir and his world is the obsessiveness, the puritanical paranoia, the warped religiosity of the fanatic, with which we’re all too familiar from al Qaeda propaganda videos and the like.

The portrayal of Nazir is actually of a piece with Homeland’s sterling efforts to show Muslims in a favourable light. Back in the US, we see the FBI pursue Tom Walker, another ex-captive American marine who definitely has been ‘turned', into a DC mosque, where a number of innocent worshippers get killed in the crossfire. The programme goes out of its way to depict the imam and his wife (despite her traditional headscarf, shown as equal in status to her husband) as gentle, inoffensive types, with the programme-makers’ desire not to offend reflected in the Arabic greetings and general cultural sensitivity of Carrie and her colleagues. It feels like reverse or compensatory stereotyping, of the kind we’re familiar with from depictions of native Americans in anti-Westerns of the 60s and 70s, in which every Indian seemed to be of the ‘we come in peace’ variety, as if deliberately making up for decades of crude Hollywood racism. It’s not to say that such imams and such mosques don’t exist, far from it: but would a terrorist stooge like Walker, and his Saudi (and presumably Wahhabi) contact choose this kind of mosque for their rendezvous? Wouldn’t it have been more convincing – if risking accusations of more traditional negative stereotyping – to show something more like the Finsbury Park or East London mosques?

As for the explanation for Brody turning terrorist – the death of Nazir’s young son, to whom Brody has become close,  in a drone strike ordered by the programme’s one unmistakable ‘baddie’, the US vice-president - one can see why the scriptwriters hit on this, as it provides a powerful and intensely personal justification for Brody’s anger against his own government. But I think Lucie-Smith is right to question whether someone like Brody would ultimately put revenge for his captor’s son ahead of his attachment to his own children. Ed West is also right that drone strikes of this kind are hardly typical, and the episode distracts attention from the undoubted fact that almost all of the massacres of innocent men, women and children in Iraq after the fall of Saddam were carried out not by US forces but by al Qaeda and their sectarian surrogates – led by people rather like Abu Nazir - and were deliberate acts of mass murder, not accidental or ‘collateral’ damage.

Moreover, by choosing this event as Brody’s, and by extension Nazir’s motivation for a terrorist attack against the United States, the programme provides implicit support to blowback theorists, who misinterpret acts of Islamist terror as tit-for-tat repayment for western actions, rather than as the working-out of a twisted clerical-fascist ideology. As I’ve written before, blowback theory gets it back to front: the reactionary worldview comes first, and the sins of infidel westerners are mere excuses that play into an existing narrative. Even if the actions of western governments were blameless (and even when they are in support of Muslims, as in Bosnia), they would still hate us: not for what we do, but because of what we are.

By making Brody’s decision to work for Nazir a calm, rational choice based on emotions with which the viewer can identify, Homeland is certainly convincing on the superficial plot level, but in doing so it leaves no room for the role of ideology, or for the kind of brainwashing process that has always been evident in the few cases of hostages ‘turning’ to identify with their captors. There are hints earlier on in the series of Brody developing a kind of love-hate attachment to his erstwhile torturer, Nazir, but this is soon dropped in favour of the simpler motivation of revenge for Issa’s death. The only sign, on Brody’s return, of his continuing identification with his captors is his conversion to Islam, but this is kept in a kind of sealed box (literally as well as figuratively: he says his prayers in a locked garage after his wife and children have gone to bed) that is separate from his dealings with his family and friends, and the programme misses an opportunity to show how his new faith might have changed his outlook, for good or ill.

Having said all that, it’s surely a sign of Homeland’s general brilliance that, despite these cavils, I still think it’s the best television programme of the year. In its temporary absence, it’s time to settle down and watch the original Israeli version…

Comedy bore

This story (£) is so replete with opportunities for mockery that I would have dismissed it as a spoof, had it not appeared in the august pages of the Times. Apparently the 'godfathers of modern comedy', aka the team behind '80s television series The Comic Strip, are to get back together for a one-off production, scheduled for the autumn. The subject of this long-awaited comedy special? Why, it's 'Tony Blair and the aftermath of the Iraq war':

The Hunt for Tony Blair, a 1950s-style film noir spoof, sees the former prime minister charged with murder and on the run from the police.

According to Jay Hunt, chief creative officer at Channel 4, who commissioned the programme, 'it promises to be a very daring and utterly irreverent romp':

Comic Strip defined comedy for a generation and it's a real coup to have the team back tackling one of the most controversial subjects of our time in a way that only they can'.

'Daring'? 'Irreverent'? 'Controversial'? The 'Tony Blair war criminal' line has been the tired cliche of 'Comment is Free' columns and North London dinner table conversation for half a decade, as well as the stock-in-trade of the anti-Blair mandarins and Daily Mail writers who refuse to accept the conclusions of  a string of public inquiries. In other words, it's the establishment view: nothing 'controversial' about it. And nothing new about it either. The Iraq war was in 2003, for heaven's sake.

In other words, the subject is as dated and washed-up as the Comic Strip veterans themselves, who include Rik Mayall, Robbie Coltrane and Jennifer Saunders. By associating themselves with this project, the scourges of 'Thatch' now appear as outmoded as Les Dawson.

One might ask why they couldn't find a more 'controversial' focus for their comic rage in the contemporary political scene. Aren't there enough oppportunities for political satire in the u-turns and fallings-out of the Cameronians and Cleggites? And with everything that's happening in the Arab world, wouldn't it be more 'daring' and 'irreverent' to satirise Assad or Ahmadinejad, rather than the easy target of a prime minister who left office four years ago? Or is this comic targeting of Blair yet another example of the fashionable faux-left habit of responding to real abuses of power by looking in the other direction?

And what does it say about the once 'cutting-edge' Channel 4 that it's promoting this predictable project by a group of has-beens, which is designed to confirm rather than challenge the prejudices of its audience, as a major television event?

Politics on TV: US vs UK

Speaking of the Wedding…

A couple of days before the big event, my son and I happened to be in central London, and we made a special detour to Trafalgar Square, to take a peek at the temporary studio set up by the American cable channel MSNBC for their breakfast show ‘Morning Joe’, which was being broadcast from London all week. The photos I took on my iPhone (below) are rather disappointing, but if you squint you can just see the backs of Joe Scarborough’s and Mika Brzezinski's heads, and Willy Geist interviewing someone down in the square:

The actual programmes from London, which we watched in video extracts online, were less than riveting and Joe and Mika’s guests a cut below the quality usually found on their show when it's broadcast from New York or Washington. One exception was the superb Katty Kay of BBC America, who did her best to inject some realism about contemporary Britain into the discussion.

If this all sounds like the height of fandom, then you should understand that, when we visit America, we tend to leave the TV in our hotel room permanently tuned to MSNBC, and we usually wake up to ‘Morning Joe’. This was a love affair, or addiction, sealed during the 2008 presidential election. Watching the show, and others, on our recent visit to Miami, has prompted some reflections on what I would argue is the superiority of political coverage on US television, when compared to what’s served up to us in the UK.

That’s a counter-intuitive reflection of course, and it goes against everything Brits are supposed to 'know' about US television: that it’s ‘dumbed down’, superficial, dominated by airhead presenters and shockjocks. But allow me to make my case.

‘Morning Joe’ may not the best political show on US TV, and there’s a lot about it that can irritate: Joe’s egotism, Mika’s banalities, the preference for centrist commentators who don’t depart from the mainstream. But for visiting British political nerds like us, to have a whole three-hour daily breakfast show entirely devoted to politics is sheer luxury. One time on our recent visit, Carl Bernstein dropped by the studio and joined in an impromptu discussion with former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and Governor Ed Rendell on the roots of the current gridlock in Congress. The talk ranged back and forth from Watergate to Supreme Court confirmations in the '80s, dipping occasionally into the further recesses of US history, with a diversion to debate the relative merits of Jefferson and Adams - and all in a format that was relaxed, unstuffy and popular. And how can you not like a programme that plays Springsteen and the Clash over its Starbucks-sponsored credits?

And that’s just one show on one channel. Tune into MSNBC on any weekday evening, and it's wall-to-wall politics, from the likes of Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and more recently Cenk Uygur, from my son’s favourite progressive channel, The Young Turks. And I haven't even mentioned the weekly institution that is 'Meet The Press'. Liberal bias? Of course, but if that’s your view, you can always switch over to Fox, where you’ll get uninterrupted commentary from a conservative perspective.

I find this honest partisanship healthier and more dynamic than the spurious ‘balance’ of most British political coverage. For example, on another day during our recent visit, we saw Uygur devote a whole show to arguing that the Republican Party was in the pocket of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, while Schultz spent a passionate half-hour standing up for union rights, in the light of recent events in Wisconsin. If they were in Britain, they would have been cut off after five minutes, while an arbitrating presenter sought to bring in a ‘balancing’ view.

Of course, America is a big country, which may account for there being just so much more – and more diverse - political coverage on TV. But I’d maintain that the quality is better too: there’s just no equivalent in Britain to those MSNBC shows where a presenter or politician or activist is allowed to develop an argument, or a debate allowed to go on for more than five minutes at a time.

And I like the refreshing absence in the US, for the most part, of the Paxman approach to political interviews, which assumes that elected representatives are all lying bastards and appears to be aimed at catching out the interviewee. Which is not to say that US interviewers give their guests an easy ride, but they usually assume that you’re likely to get more out of a politician if you actually give them space to talk (or, to look at it another way, allow them enough rope with which to hang themselves). I also like the way US political programmes take written commentary seriously, regularly inviting on historians and biographers, and giving space to discussion of the day’s newspaper op-eds. ‘Morning Joe’ does this every day, comparing so-and-so’s latest column in the Wall Street Journal with what someone else has said in Time magazine. What do we get? A couple of minutes of headlines on the 'Today' programme, and a ten-minute review of the Sundays by viewer-friendly 'celebrities' once a week on 'Marr', supposedly our flagship political programme ('Meet The Press' it is not). Which is not to say that US television coverage is without its faults: it can be terribly parochial, focused on what's going on in Washington, but not overly concerned with the rest of the world, except as it impacts on America (there's been some excellent analysis on MSNBC of the current state of affairs in Pakistan, for example, following that other recent big event).

So what accounts for these differences, apart from the relative sizes of our two countries? Well, as a European social democrat, it goes against the grain to say this, but it may have something to do with the commercial ownership of US television stations. That famous BBC balance derives from the corporation being taxpayer-funded, and having to show that you're giving equal (which often means anodyne) space to each side. Whereas the owners of NBC, Fox, CBS and the rest know there’s a range of liberal, conservative and centrist constituencies out there they can appeal to.

But I think the most important reason – and it balances out what I said in my last post about the value of monarchical symbolism – has a lot to do with the United States being a republic. Perhaps I’m a little bit naïve and starry eyed here, but I get the feeling that in America politics is just taken a whole lot more seriously. When you have government of the people by the people, politics becomes the people's business, it's what we do among ourselves, not something that is done to us (though I admit the current anti-Washington mood stirred up by the Tea Party rather undermines this theory). A lot of what's wrong with political coverage and media debate in Britain - the Paxman sneer, the 'Have I Got New For You' cynicism, the sheer paucity of serious political programming - can be traced back to weaknesses in our political culture: to a pervasive sense that 'that lot' are out to screw us over, that at the end of the day politics is not really 'our' business. All of which, I would argue, is part of the long, weary hangover from monarchy and empire, and the consequence of never having had a proper democratic revolution.

I’ll end with a clip from that 'Morning Joe' discussion I mentioned earlier.  In some ways it's untypical – no black or female guests, unusually. And I admit it's no high-powered academic seminar - but that's part of my point. This is a popular breakfast show, for goodness' sake. When was the last time you heard this kind of serious, informed but relaxed political debate on British television, let alone on something like 'BBC Breakfast'? It gets going a couple of minutes in:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

'You should begin by reforming your own home'

Pakistani actress Veena Malik, in trouble with religious fundamentalists after her appearance on the Indian version of 'Big Brother', hits back at a cleric who accuses her of betraying Islam and her country:

If you want to do something for the glory of Islam, you have plenty of opportunities. Bribery, robbery, theft and killing in the name of Islam. There are many things to talk about. Why Veena Malik? Because Veena Malik is a woman? Because Veena Mali is a soft target for you.

There are many other things for you to deal with. There are Islamic clerics who rape the children they teach in their mosques and so much more. Pakistan is infamous for many reasons other than Veena Malik [...] You should begin by reforming your own home and only then ask me to do the same.

Most telling admission by the mullah? ‘Let me tell you that I did not watch the show…’

Be sure to watch the video through to the end.

Some Saturday morning glee

A footnote to my Bruno Mars post the other day. You know you've arrived when two of your songs get featured in the same episode of 'Glee' (note to US readers: we're quite a few episodes behind you over here). OK, it's camp and kitsch as hell, but it certainly cheers up my Monday nights. Let's hope it does the same for this rather grey Saturday morning (hey - the sun just came out...).

Rally to restore what?

I'm a regular viewer of The Daily Show (or at least, the edited, day-late version we get over here) but I sometimes think the acclaim for Jon Stewart as the liberal saviour of political television is overblown. We often find ourselves switching off at the first commercial break. Stewart's opening monologue/rant can be hilarious, but the fake news reports involving other cast members are frequently juvenile and embarrassing, allowing a single 'joke' to run on far too long. And Stewart's 'interviews' with politicians and other assorted celebrities tend to be wasted opportunities: frustratingly brief bouts of comedic joshing in the interests of book or movie promotion.

Having said all that, I wished Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's 'Rally to Restore Sanity' (held yesterday in Washington's National Mall) well, even if I agreed with some commentators that its effect on the Democratic vote, so close to the mid-term elections, might not be entirely positive. I didn't watch all of the coverage, but I found these comments on the event instructive:

Here's P.Z.Myers expressing disappointment that the rally turned into a plea for 'moderation' in political tone, rather than anything more substantial:

I don't want moderation, especially when the only people who will listen to Stewart and Colbert are the people on our shared side of the political aisle. I can understand where they're coming from; people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Andrew Breibart are poison, Fox News is a propaganda organ without bounds working for the far right-wing, we've got evangelical Christians demanding the installation of a theocracy, and on and on and on. But who, exactly, do Stewart and Colbert regard as the equivalent of Beck and Limbaugh on the left? Is it Rachel Maddow? Amy Goodman? Keith Olbermann?

In other words, the rally could be seen as reinforcing the sense that has pervaded not only this mid-term election campaign, but the first two years of the Obama administration, that Democrats and liberals haven't found the language or the courage to fight back against the lies and insinuations of the Republican right. Myers concludes:

I was left cold by the fuzziness of the event. It could have been great; instead of embracing an apolitical perspective and saying nothing at all about values, it could have been a rally for moderation that emphasized the actual values that moderates hold: we believe in tolerance for people of different ethnicities and religious views and sexual preferences, we believe in building an egalitarian social and economic infrastructure, we believe in privacy and personal freedoms, etc., etc., etc., and they could have held to the theme of the rally by advocating rational argument and unified, organised activism within the system to advance those goals...but they didn't. There was no purpose given other than a generic insistence that we all get along nicely.

As for that plea for a focus on 'tolerance', it would have helped if the rally organisers hadn't included a performer who has expressed the most outrageously intolerant opinions. Appearing onstage in the National Mall was Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, who is on record as supporting the fatwah against Salman Rushdie and wishing the author dead.

So, as well as reflecting the US left's failure to find a positive political message with which to hit back at the Tea Party movement, the rally also demonstrated characteristic liberal naivety towards Islamism (some of this naivety was on display in the rush to support the Ground Zero 'mosque' in reaction to rightist intolerance). Someone with Yusuf Islam's views should not have been invited to appear at a rally in favour of moderation and tolerance: his opinions are the exact mirror image of the rightist extremism of Glenn Beck et al that the event was organised to oppose.

Update

Also recommended: the other Martin (Meenagh) on the rally and the congressional elections.

And via Pootergeek, confirmation from Nick Cohen of the culpability and duplicity of Mr. Islam/Stevens.

Debate reax

Quick reaction to last night's first-ever prime ministerial election debate:

Brown was solid and sound, but also stodgy and unexciting. He didn't exploit his incumbent status nearly enough (but then presenter Alastair Stewart had disrespectfully chosen not to use the words 'prime minister' in introducing him). His attempts at humour, sound-bites and references to popular culture were squirm-making as usual and in future should be avoided at all costs. Brown looked pale and ghostly: he should ask David Cameron for the number of his tanning salon.

In purely stylistic terms, David Cameron was more impressive: nimble, quick-witted, and with the most succinct and memorable summing-up of the three. His main line of attack against Brown - you've been in power for 13 years, so why haven't you implemented all these proposals (on voting reform, etc) before? - was a powerful one and will be very difficult for Labour to counter in the coming weeks.

Nick Clegg may have 'won' the debate, but without taking away anything from his strong performance (he grasped the format better than the other two, responding to questioners by name, engaging directly with the TV audience), it's easy for a party with no record in office to score against present and recent incumbents. I'm not sure the Lib Dems' poll bump following this debate will last long.

My overall reaction to the debate was a fairly negative one. The big downside of this move to US-style debating is that it risks turning the election into a beauty contest between three men. But in Britain we elect a party not a person, a Parliament rather than a personality. If it had been Alan Johnson (say) debating William Hague and Chris Huhne, the outcome might have been very different. In a televisual showdown between Brown, Cameron and Clegg, the latter two - younger, more photogenic, both 'new faces' - will always come out on top.

For the upcoming debates, Labour needs to work harder to present the advantages of experience over novelty value, competence over showmanship: but saddled as it is with the tired-looking, over-familiar and under-performing Brown, this is going to be an uphill struggle.

Treme

If, like me, you admired The Wire, but sometimes wished that its creator, David Simon, would turn his considerable talents to less unrelentingly depressing subjects, then wish no more. While we were in the States, we watched the first episode of Simon’s latest production, Treme (pronounced Treh-may) which premiered on HBO on Sunday night.

Set in New Orleans three months after Katrina, Treme has some similarities with the ground-breaking Baltimore cop series: a focus on the lives of African-Americans, a sprawling cast of characters, and plot and dialogue that are initially difficult to tune into. Some of The Wire’s actors even feature: the excellent Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters (Bunk and Lester in the earlier show) have central roles.

But the main difference, at least judging by the pilot episode, is that whereas the main focus of The Wire was crime, in Treme it is music, specifically the jazz and street bands of New Orleans. And where The Wire could be accused of painting a one-sidedly grim picture of life in an American city, the underlying tone of Treme is – despite its tragic context – celebratory and even humorous.

The one false note in the first episode - at least for this viewer - was the scene depicting a local activist, boistrously played by John Goodman, being interviewed by a British TV reporter – who came off as an absurdly upper-class and insensitive caricature. To those of us who remember Jon Snow navigating his rowing boat between submerged houses, and helping to rescue stranded inhabitants, this was a travesty and an unnecessary cheap shot.

But that's a minor quibble. I don’t know if or when there are plans for Treme to air in the UK, but on the basis of what we saw on Sunday, it's going to be worth the wait.

You can read more about the programme here and here.

Eh oh

This'll make a change from all the religion and politics...

Last week I heard Simon Mayo interviewing Andrew Davenport, the creative genius behind those contemporary classics of children's television Teletubbies and In The Night Garden, who has finally begun to emerge from behind his puppets and receive some of the recognition he deserves (it was the second BBC interview with him I’d heard in the past month).

Davenport’s creations hold a special place in the hearts of anyone who was a young child (or a parent of young children) in Britain in the Nineties or early Noughties. Our own children were born in the mid-Nineties, so for them (and us) Andrew will always be, first and foremost, the voice of Tiny from Tots TV. And the question I’d ask him if I was conducting the interview would be: how on earth did someone with such a deeply resonant voice achieve the high-pitched tones of that anarchic green-haired puppet?

Everyone now associates Davenport with Teletubbies, not surprisingly since it was the first of his creations for Ragdoll to gain international recognition. (On a serious note for a moment: John Bayley informs us that, once her dementia set in, Teletubbies was the only TV programme that gave Iris Murdoch any pleasure.) But Tiny and Tom, with their echoes of Laurel and Hardy and the Marx brothers (with the French-speaking Tilly their Margaret Dumont?), are surely one of the great comic partnerships. And for all the simple, wordless brilliance of Davenport's later productions, it's a shame he no longer has the scope to deploy the knockabout verbal wit he showed in the scripts for some of those earlier shows. If you don't believe me (and you've got a few minutes to spare) take a look at this clip, but make sure you watch it through to the end:

Our shelves also contain dusty, worn-out VHS tapes of some of Davenport’s other early programmes, such as Brum and Rosie and Jim. What's more, living as we did in the Midlands when our children were young, we made frequent trips to the Ragdoll shop (sadly, no longer there) in Stratford-on-Avon. Once, we even saw the actual Rosie and Jim barge tied up on the river outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Now here’s my bid for Pseuds' Corner. If Tots TV - full of eccentric wit, but retaining a conventional narrative structure and recognisable characters - was Andrew Davenport's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, then maybe the more symbolic and mythopoeic Teletubbies is his Ulysses, and In the Night Garden, with its dreamy, half-conscious associative technique, his Finnegan's Wake. Or maybe Teletubbies is Davenport's Waste Land and In the Night Garden his Four Quartets?

I should stop now...

Something soulful for the weekend

Some Solomon Burke to see in the weekend. No particular reason, except that it's Friday afternoon, and this track has been going round in my head, ever since we watched the final episode of Season 3 of The Wire last week. It's played over a terrific montage of scenes that ties together the various narrative threads of the series.

We're now deeply into the boxed set of Season 4, which in my humble opinion is the best so far. So as not to spoil things for those of you watching the programme on BBC2, where Season 3 isn't due to end until next week, this particular video features a static backdrop. If you want to watch the original season finale, you can find it here.

Any God Will Do?

Fed up with all those conventional game shows, with their wearily predictable prizes - a new car, a dream holiday for two, a million dollars? Fancy a chance to come away with something really worthwhile - such as the prospect of eternal bliss?

According to a report in today's Guardian, Turkish TV is planning a new game show which will offer precisely that:

Contestants will ponder whether to believe or not to believe when they pit their godless convictions against the possibilities of a new relationship with the almighty on Penitents Compete (Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor in Turkish), to be broadcast by the Kanal T station. Four spiritual guides from the different religions will seek to convert at least one of the 10 atheists in each programme to their faith.

Those persuaded will be rewarded with a pilgrimage to the spiritual home of their newly chosen creed – Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for Christians and Jews, and Tibet for Buddhists.

The programme's makers say they want to promote religious belief while educating Turkey's overwhelmingly Muslim population about other faiths.

"The project aims to turn disbelievers on to God," the station's deputy director, Ahmet Ozdemir, told the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

That mission is attested to in the programme's advertising slogans, which include "We give you the biggest prize ever: we represent the belief in God" and "You will find serenity in this competition".

Apparently 'only true non-believers need apply'. But how will they tell? It seems a commission of theologians will test the 'atheist credentials' of potential contestants. And at the other end of the process, the new converts will be 'monitored to ensure their religious transformation is genuine and not simply a ruse to gain a foreign trip.'

The story raises some fascinating theological and philosophical questions. What criteria will this team of TV theologians use to assess the belief, or non-belief, of contestants? If they adhere to the conventional view that faith is a mysterious inner state, then how will they measure it? Will they assume that individuals' words are an accurate representation of their mental states, and simply take contestants' word for it? And if they adopt a more constructionist view of the relationship between speech and thought processes, how will they be sure that contestants are not 'producing' a state of faith (or lack of it) in the act of speaking? Or will the panel take a more Wittgensteinian view of religious faith as enacted in practices rather than statements, and if so, will they need to monitor contestants' behaviour for a period before the show for evidence of atheism, and for some time afterwards for proof of new-found faith? Come to think of it, the author of the the Philosophical Investigations, who viewed religion as one among many language-games, would probably have loved the whole idea of faith as a game show...

On another level, the programme throws into fascinating relief the religious and secular context of modern Turkey, dramatising the tension between state-decreed secularism and the pervasiveness of Islam. In this context, the new game show can be seen as a welcome burst of multi-faith tolerance in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, as a worrying sign of the blurring of the boundary between religion and the secular, or as a symptom of rising anxiety about the spread of atheism - or as all of the above.

In a wider context, it's interesting that the programme makers don't seem to mind which of the four religions contestants decide to convert to. In this, they are reflecting the multi-faithism that is becoming increasingly widespread elsewhere, in which believers no longer seek to persuade people of the veracity of their particular dogma, but rather to convince them of the value of 'religion', as some vital ingredient missing from modern life.

Lastly: caveat emptor. Contestants who opt to convert to Islam should be warned that the usual returns policy doesn't apply to this prize. The penalty for changing your mind is final.

Tuesday miscellany

A few random bits and pieces:

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's Daniel Florien on his disillusionment with Buddhism (echoing some of the things I wrote here and here).

Mick and Bob with contrasting views of Pete Seeger.

Kira Cochrane on the women of Mad Men. She's right: they've dominated the second series and leavened the stodgy, predictable misogyny of Don Draper et al. The last few episodes have been worth watching for January Jones' performance alone.

Finally, Martin M. with some versions of American Civil War and Liberty songs - from Marian Anderson to the Muppets. And that's all the excuse I need to feature this spine-tingling version of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, from The Last Waltz:

Miami musings

Still feeling a bit jet-lagged after our extended journey home (see previous post), so in lieu of a coherent account, here are a few unconnected comments on our recent trip to Miami Beach:

On the outward journey I watched Frost/Nixon, which was much better than expected, overcoming my resistance to movie adaptations of stage plays - and anything to do with David Frost. Michael Sheen's impersonation of Frost was typically impressive, but it was overshadowed by Frank Langella's absorbing portrayal of the disgraced president. The climax of the movie, when Nixon comes as close as he ever did to admitting guilt, was both suspenseful and genuinely moving. 

I also watched the first episode of Generation Kill, the new drama from the team behind The Wire, which tells the story of a US marine company in Iraq through the eyes of an embedded reporter. If anything, it was even more enthralling than the Baltimore cop drama. Given the length of time it's taken the latter to reach British terrestrial TV, it looks like I'll have to make Generation Kill my next DVD boxed set purchase.

And so to Miami Beach, where the temperature hovered between 80 and 90 Fahrenheit for most of our stay: on the odd day it dipped down to the 70s, locals complained about the cold. This was definitely a week for relaxation rather than sightseeing, but we made sure we took in the main attractions of South Beach. The guide books will tell you that Lincoln Road Mall is now the place to see and be seen, and that Ocean Drive is tacky and only for the tourists. But although we frequented the Italian restaurants of Lincoln Road most evenings, and enjoyed late afternoon walks to Books & Books and the Ghirardelli chocolate shop, we also brought away fond memories of strolls along the beach-side walkway (where we saw part of the triathlon in progress on a humid Sunday morning) to view the Art Deco frontages of Ocean Drive.

 

Certainly the southern end of the strip is rather touristy - you're likely to be besieged on the sidewalk by waiters brandishing menus and claiming to offer the cheapest breakfast in town. But the top end of the road is somewhat 'tonier' (as they say over there), particularly early in the morning before the crowds arrive:

While we were in Miami I read Ann Louise Bardach's Cuba Confidential, which views the relationship between the US and Cuba through the prism of the Miami exile community, with a focus on the Elian Gonzalez affair, seeing the tragic history of the past fifty years as a tale of broken family relationships. It's a gripping account, packed with revelations about everyday life in Cuba, Cold War skullduggery and the vitiating influence of exile groups on American national politics (among others, the Bush clan and Joe Lieberman come out of it rather badly). As with all good books, I was left wanting to find out more: recommendations for books on Cuba - ones that don't glorify either Castro or American Cold War policy - would be very welcome.

One of the joys of holidaying in America, for obsessive followers of US politics like ourselves, is being able to watch uninterupted cable news, rather than brief video extracts via the internet as we do at home (yes, it's sad, I know). Our hotel room TV stayed tuned to MSNBC most days: we woke every day to Morning Joe, and on getting back in the evening sat down to great dollops of Hardball, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow: sheer luxury (we were less keen on the brand new Ed Schulz Show, a liberal mirror image of Fox News / Limbaugh-style ranting). One of the myths about the States perpetuated in Britain and Europe is that its media coverage of politics is superficial and sensational, compared to the supposed old-world gravitas of our own. As with many myths about America, almost the opposite is true. While the shows mentioned above have popular and accessible formats, they give political issues much greater time, seriousness and analysis than most programmes on British TV and radio, and their presenters and guest commentators display a greater knowledge of - and genuine belief in - the political process than many of ours.

Finally, South Beach is supposed to be a top location for celebrity sightings, but I think most of them had fled before the avalanche of spring break crowds. Our only confirmed sighting was of stand-up comic turned TV presenter Steve Harvey, apparently in town for a book signing - though our Argentinian-born taxi driver claimed that the previous week he'd transported Sharon Osbourne and 'that Mr. Piers' to the local auditions for America's Got Talent.

RIP Ron Silver

Ron Silver, the actor who played Bruno Gianelli in The West Wing, and whose on-screen aisle-crossing echoed his real-life political trajectory (see this post), has died. There's a tribute from Paul Begala here.

Bush, Bartlet and last-minute pardons

Regular readers - and non West Wing fans - should feel free to yawn at this point. This blog has charted with dogged (some would say tedious) regularity the parallels between Aaron Sorkin's classic TV drama and the Obama campaign: start here and follow the links, if you're interested. But I never thought I'd come across any similarities between Presidents Bartlet and Bush....until today.

Those familiar with the final series of the programme will recall that Bartlet leaves it until the very last moments of his administration (just before he departs the Oval Office for the final time, to attend the inauguration of Matt Santos) to sign the pardon for his former communications director, Toby Ziegler, indicted for leaking government secrets (but for the best of reasons, naturally). Considerable tension is created during the episode by the efforts of other staff members, notably chief of staff C. J. Cregg, to persuade Bartlet to do the right thing.

Now it turns out that something very similar happened in the dying days of the Bush administration. Apparently Vice-President Dick Cheney repeatedly urged his boss to pardon his former chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, widely believed to have carried the can for others' misdeeds over the disgraceful outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.  Bush had kept Libby out of jail by commuting his prison sentence, but Cheney wanted a full pardon. 'He tried to make it happen right up until the very end', an associate claims.

This being real life, rather than television, Bush didn't do 'the right thing' and resisted Cheney's overtures. Or rather, given that Libby, unlike the fictional Ziegler, was acting out of base motives, perhaps that should be 'the wrong thing'. Then again, if Libby was actually covering up for Rove, and possibly Cheney and Bush too, then it would have been 'the right thing' to let him off the hook. But then the truth about the whole affair might have come out....

Oh well. Just goes to show once again that truth is stranger than fiction, and real life is a lot messier than The West Wing...

R.I.P. Oliver Postgate

So farewell then, Oliver Postgate, creator of the Clangers, Pogles Wood and Ivor the Engine, and the sound of whose voice is inseparable from memories of childhood tea-times in far-off, gentler days:

Presidential debate inspired by 'West Wing'?

In the first US presidential debate on Friday evening, moderator Jim Lehrer struggled to get the two candidates to take advantage of the agreed format, which allowed them to talk to each other directly, rather than having to address all their answers to him.

In yet another example of life imitating art in this campaign, it turns out that the idea to adopt this free-flowing format may have been inspired by The West Wing. According to Lawrence O'Donnell, who was a writer and producer on the show, he tried to persuade Lehrer to chair the fictional debate between Santos and Vinick, but his contract wouldn't allow it. However, both Lehrer and the debates commission were intrigued by the unmediated format of the debate and studied the tapes carefully. 

Of course, in the West Wing version, the decision to throw aside the usual debating rules and address each other directly was taken spontaneously by the candidates, rather than determined in advance. What's more, in the fictional version both Santos and Vinick engaged in lively, respectful debate with each other. In the real life version, one candidate (Obama) respectfully acknowledged his opponent's achievements, while the other (McCain) stubbornly refused to use his rival's name or even to look at him. Obama may have inspired the characterisation of Santos, but despite some superficial similarities, John McCain is no Arnie Vinick.

For a full list of parallels between The West Wing and the current election, see also here, here, here and here.

What would Bartlet do?

A fictional president gives Barack Obama some advice:

GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

You can read the whole Bartlet-Obama interview (via the pen of Aaron Sorkin) here.

A couple more eerie parallels between the Obama-McCain race and the fictional battle between Matt Santos and Arnie Vinick:

In the TV version, the maverick moderate Republican Vinick (sound familiar?) comes under pressure to name a populist rightwinger as his VP, to placate the conservative Christian base.

And the plans of both candidates are threatened, just before the election, by the incumbent president's decision to embark on an expensive foreign war. Vinick: 'There goes my tax cut'. Santos: 'There goes my education plan' (or words to that effect). You can imagine McCain and Obama having to make similar accommodations in the light of Bush's financial bailout.

From Studio 60 to Shakespeare in one post

Of relevance to this, this and also this: check out this excellent review by Andrew of the now sadly defunct Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Meanwhile, what's a conoisseur of US TV imports to do over the summer, now that Brothers and Sisters, Mad Men, and even the gloriously hyper-real Dirty Sexy Money have finished? We've been reduced to working our way through DVD boxed sets of Ally McBeal, which somehow passed us by first time around. Watching five series in quick succession, at a rate of about an episode per night, is strange: Christmas seems to come round every few days.

I also enjoyed Andrew's enthusiastic post on David Tennant's Hamlet. We haven't been to Stratford for ages, but Andrew's review has made me keen to see the play when it transfers to London later in the year.