You say Obaaama...

I wonder why Jon Snow insists on pronouncing the Democratic presidential candidate's surname as 'ObAMMA', as in Alabama, rather than 'ObAAMA', as in drama, like everyone else? He was at it again last night, on Channel 4 News, and most distracting it was too.

I once had a Sunday school teacher who pronounced Esau as 'Esoo', and at university I knew someone who repeatedly pronounced Evelyn Waugh as 'Evelyn Woe', even when everyone else in the room was using the correct pronunciation.

I've often wondered how people with this idiosyncrasy manage not to be swayed by those around them. Does it signify a failure in listening skills (unlikely in Snow's case) or a supreme self-confidence, perhaps deriving from a certain kind of class background (which does ring true for Jon)?

One day to change the world

On the eve of the US election, Andrew Sullivan sets out at length why those who believe in American democracy, and take seriously the internal and external threats ranged against it, should support Barack Obama for president. Closing quote:

(T)here is something about his rise that is...supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.

And the world needs that America now as much as it ever has. Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?

Yes. We. Can.

Know hope:

Wear your poppy with pride - but not too early

Is it just me, or are Remembrance Day poppies appearing earlier every year? We're still a week away from the actual day, but politicians and newsreaders have been sporting poppies in their lapels since mid-October. In fact, there seems to be a kind of more-patriotic-than-thou competition among public figures, to see who can be first with their display of nationalistic pride.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not knocking the Poppy Appeal itself. Quite the opposite. Despite a brief youthful dalliance with the white poppy crowd, I'm a firm believer in this expression of remembrance for those who served their country in the past, and gratitude to those who are still doing so, particularly in the frontline of the difficult fight against Islamist terror in Afghanistan. It's just that I think extending the period when poppies are worn runs the risk of cheapening the occasion, rather like (if you'll forgive the trivial comparison) those Comic Relief red noses you used to see on cars months after the event.

So let's reclaim this important national ritual from the look-at-how-serious-and-patriotic-I-am brigade and resolve, while donating generously to the appeal, to wear our poppies only in the few days leading up to Remembrance Sunday, thus preserving its sombre uniqueness.

Did 'SNL' show us the 'real' John McCain?

John McCain was genuinely funny in his Saturday Night Live appearance (alongside Tina Fey, reprising her Sarah Palin impression, one hopes for the last time) at the weekend. He demonstrated that if (as I fervently hope) this presidential thing doesn't work out for him, he could have an alternative career as a comedian, or at the very least as a genial chat-show host.

Perhaps it's simply that McCain performs well when he's given a good script, and the role allotted to him in this campaign by Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis is one that runs counter to his real strengths. Anyway, as Andrew Sullivan wrote after McCain's equally hilarious performance at the Al Smith Dinner, it's of no consequence: this amiable, self-mocking version of John McCain isn't running for office this year. Instead, the American people have been presented with an increasingly erratic, impulsive and shameless politician who doesn't deserve to win.

Five Days in San Francisco: Part Four: MOMA, MLK, Maupin, 'Milk' - and Pelosi

Tuesday, our last full day in San Francisco, began with a visit to the Yerba Buena Arts complex, just south of Market Street. We walked past the stunning new Contemporary Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind (about whom I wrote here):

We then crossed the gardens to view the Martin Luther King memorial:

But our main destination this morning was the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The guide books are right to say that the gallery's permanent collection struggles to live up to the building in which it's housed. SF MOMA's main strength lies in mid-twentieth century pop art, though the famous Jeff Koons sculpture of Michael Jackson and his chimp wasn't on display when we visited. I was more interested in the small selection of Post-Impressionist and Expressionist works on view, including a temporary exhibition of Paul Klee's sketchbooks. There were also some good pieces by Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and I liked this Vermeer-ish work by Gerhard Richter:

In the afternoon we decided to visit Telegraph Hill and the Coit Tower, going via Battery Street so that our fifteen-year-old son could make a pilgrimage to Linden Lab, home of Second Life. Then it was a steep climb up the Filbert Steps, accompanied by parrots chirping in the trees above, passing hillside houses that could have served as locations for Tales Of The City (Maupin lived around here while writing the books). 

We didn't actually go up the Coit Tower, but the views from the surrounding gardens were breathtaking, and it was good to see the Rivera-inspired murals around the base of the tower, their social realism a reminder of San Francisco's radical heritage.

Returning to our hotel, we found ourselves mingling with security men in shades and earpieces, as limousines drew up and disgorged guests arriving for that evening's world premiere of Milk at the Castro Theater. The movie is based on Randy Shilts' biography of Harvey Milk, the gay San Franciscan district supervisor who was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, in 1978. I had brought the book along to read on the flight, having already seen the brilliant documentary film by Rob Epstein.  We retreated to the relative quiet of the hotel lounge, seating ourselves in a strategic position so we could see any celebrities who might happen to stroll through the lobby.

As we sat there, I noticed a familiar face, not to mention a familiar cream pantsuit, at a nearby table. It was none other than Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, taking afternoon tea with a couple of associates. She may have been there for the premiere, or simply passing through her home congressional district. Either way, it took a long time for us to catch the attention of the waitress, who was understandably preoccupied attending to the needs of the most powerful female politician in the country.

That evening, as we set out for a meal downtown, the Milk guests were assembling in the hotel lobby, waiting for their transport to the movie. Unfortunately the premiere had been sold out weeks before, so we were unable to join them. We didn't spot any more celebrities, but we did notice a large number of 'No on 8' badges.

On Wednesday morning, we did some last-minute shopping in Union Square before a final lunch at Scala's, and then got ready to leave for the airport. As we sped down the freeway, the driver had the car radio tuned to KCSM, the Bay Area jazz station that I often listen to via the internet when I'm working at home. Then there was one final celebrity sighting before take-off: in the departure lounge we saw a man and woman being filmed as they walked backwards along the moving walkway. I was informed by my son that the man was Tay Zonday, who apparently is some kind of Youtube star, probably recording his new video.

And so it was farewell to sunny San Francisco, and back to the wind and snow of England. We hadn't managed to do everything we wanted in our brief visit - Golden Gate Park, Haight-Ashbury and the Civic Center will have to be on the itinerary for a future visit. At the end of the day, H. and I are probably more East Coast than West Coast kind of people, but the five days we spent in this sparklingly diverse muddle of a city had been enormously enjoyable and endlessly stimulating.

Five Days in San Francisco: Part Three: the Guardian/NYRB event

A few weeks before our visit to San Francisco, we found out that the Commonwealth Club would be hosting a panel discussion of the presidential election in the city during our stay, in association with the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, to mark the new collaborative arrangement between the two publications. The panel was to be chaired by Bob Silvers, founder and co-editor of the NYRB, and would include NYRB regular contributor Thomas Powers,  New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Guardian journalist Martin Kettle, and the editor of Guardian America, Michael Tomasky (whose work I praised in this post). For US political obsessives like us, this was just too good to be true, and we wasted no time in booking tickets for the event online.

So last Monday evening we joined about 250 others in the ballroom of the JW Marriott, just off Union Square, to hear what these commentators had to say about the state of the race, with just a week to go before election day. It was an illuminating if frustratingly short discussion: the event was being recorded for a radio programme and had a one-hour cut-off time, which meant that it ended just as it started to get interesting. This being a left-ish panel, and a fairly liberal audience, there was eager, but nervous anticipation of an Obama victory, and much cautious use of the subjunctive: 'If the polls turn out to be accurate, if he should win ...' etc.

A few highlights: Tom Powers believed that the main problem facing a new president would be Afghanistan, which he thought had the potential to turn into a military and political quagmire, comparable to Russia's experience in that country, or to Vietnam. He made the interesting conjecture that, since John McCain spent most of the Vietnam war in a Hanoi gaol, he failed to experience at firsthand either the deep opposition to the war back home, or the huge social changes that took place in his absence.

Martin Kettle spoke about the reaction to the election abroad, claiming that if the rest of the world had a vote, it would have already elected Barack Obama. He talked about the depth of anti-American sentiment in Europe and elsewhere, arguing that it predated the Bush administration, and seemed to suggest that one of the new president's responsibilities would be to counter this negative attitude. In my opinion, Kettle failed to acknowledge that anti-Americanism might not be solely the fault of the US, or the role of publications like his own in stoking its flames.

Answering a question about the so-called Bradley effect, as to whether white voters would support a black candidate in the secrecy of the polling booth, Frank Rich cited the evidence of the primaries and asked rhetorically, why won't people take 'yes' for an answer? Michael Tomasky said that the Obama campaign was the most disciplined political operation he had witnessed in his many years of covering elections, and drew applause with his response to the question as to what would be his first act if he were the new president. Obama-like, he said he would immediately travel to the state where he had won he fewest votes and give a speech in which he stated that he was their president too and that he would be be a president for all Americans.

You can hear the podcast of the event here, see Michael Tomasky and Frank Rich in conversation after the event in this 'Tomasky Talk' on the Guardian website (I know it was the same evening, since they're wearing the same clothes as when we saw them), watch Tomasky and Kettle in conversation at one of their next stops here, and read Kettle making some of the points he made in the discussion in this article.

It was fascinating to be in America in pre-election week, and to watch the wall-to-wall TV coverage 'live', rather than served up in predigested extracts via the internet. There was perhaps less evidence of election fever on the streets than we had expected, though I overheard a few tantalising snatches of conversation in shops and on street corners, and it was interesting to see at firsthand the way national and local issues mingle in American elections. For every Obama-Biden sign in an apartment window (this being San Francisco, there were very few McCain-Palin ones), there were as many appeals to vote for X for district supervisor, or to support or oppose this or that proposition. The number of propositions on which Californians were being asked to express an opinion seemed endless: while we were there, the San Francisco Chronicle helpfully listed them for its readers, and I seem to recall there were about a dozen numbered propositions and as many denoted by letters. The most contentious, of course, is Proposition 8, which aims to ban gay marriage, and about which liberal San Francisco is much exercised.

We failed miserably in our attempt to bring back any Obama memorabilia from our trip, unable in the short time we were there to find out where everyone was getting their badges and bumper stickers. The nearest we came was this display of election trivia in Borders, which included a McCain doll and Obama playing-cards:

And I liked this creative defacing of the new iPod ad which we came across on Chestnut Street:

Five Days in San Francisco: Part Two

On Monday, our second full day in San Francisco, we were determined to get a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge. The morning fog hung over the tops of buildings as we made our way up Nob Hill, past the city's smartest hotels and past Grace Cathedral, a vast, perfect replica of a medieval Gothic cathedral (as with the fake Porziuncula, my reaction was: impressive, but why bother?). We then turned into Hyde Street, which runs north all the way to the waterfront. The route was more up and down than we had bargained for, but it was interesting to walk through laid-back Russian Hill, and to pass by the zig-zag bends of Lombard Street. 

It was still misty and cool when we reached Ghirardelli Square, a former chocolate factory turned into an upscale shopping centre, where we stopped for coffee. We then traced a route westward around Fort Mason until we came to the Marina district, from which we got our first views of the bridge, its rust-red towers shimmering in the pale blue sky, as the fog finally cleared away. 

It being a working day, the area was quiet, with just the odd dog walker and guy with a fishing rod on the waterside path. Seeing us struggling with the map, a local cyclist stopped and pointed out the way to the nearest shops and restaurants. So we turned inland, gawping at the exclusive residences lining the streets back from the marina, until we hit Chestnut Street, with its attractive mix of affluence and edginess: this neighbourhood shopping street has its own Apple Store and two branches of Gap, not to mention a glut of trendy eateries. Purely by chance, we hit on the Grove cafe for lunch, and once again found we had made the right choice.

Rather recklessly, we decided to walk back through Pacific Heights, climbing the precipitously steep hill of Filmore Street as far as the intersection with California Street, then up and down all the way back to Nob Hill and onward to our hotel. The effort was worth it: on the way, we passed some attractive examples of San Francisco Victoriana, many of them extravagantly decked out for Halloween. Many of these buildings would have made an ideal location for a horror movie about the deserted house at the end of the street.

We returned early to our hotel, to prepare ourselves for the evening's excursion to the Commonwealth Club of California: about which more in the next post.