The Press is Cleaning Itself
It was the Guardian and not the British Police that kept on investigating who knew about or had authorized the bugging of phones. The scandal already has claimed for prominent players. And now the press is turning on Rupert Murdoch has being too old to run his empire. Will he be able to survive. JEANNE WHALEN, DAVID ENRICH and NATALIA RACHLIN filed in The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper Murdoch owns, this fascinating summary of yesterday’s state o play.
Scandal’s Latest Twists Seem Tabloid-Made
LONDON—If news imitates art, the long-simmering News Corp. scandal over dubious reporting tactics suddenly seems scripted by a master of the spy genre—replete with social drama, cloak-and-dagger mystery and farce. On Tuesday, in the rarified halls of Westminster, a protester attempted to land a pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face—only to be thwarted and slapped by the media mogul’s wife. The perpetrator, covered in his own foam, was hauled off.
Continue ReadingMarried, With Infidelities
I have been struck by how badly I am able to predict who among my family and friends would stay married and who would get divorced. The couple who had the best marriage ended up having the most acrimonious divorce. Here is an article in the NY Magazine that does a great job laying out how the idea of marriage in the U.S. needs some rediscovery of what people knew over a hundred years ago. I suspect that Schwarzenegger’s wife is filing for divorce not because of the infidelity (after all she tolerated his groping for many years) but because her trust in him is irrevocably shattered after he had lied straight to her face for years. The article is a bit long but instead of me excerpting the key parts, I thought my readers would benefit from reading it all.
By MARK OPPENHEIMER
Last month, when the New York congressman Anthony Weiner finally admitted that he had lied, that his Twitter account had not been hacked, that he in fact had sent a picture of his thinly clad undercarriage to a stranger in Seattle, I asked my wife of six years, mother of our three children, what she thought. More specifically, I asked which would upset her more: to learn that I was sending racy self-portraits to random women, Weiner-style, or to discover I was having an actual affair. She paused, scrunched up her mouth as if she had just bitten a particularly sour lemon and said: “An affair is at least a normal human thing. But tweeting a picture of your crotch is just weird.”
Almanya—Welcome to Germany
When the economy took off in the 1950s, Germany experienced severe labor shortages. So employer unions and politicians hatched the idea to import guest workers from Turkey and other southern European countries. By the middle 1970s these “guest workers” were allowed to bring their families to Germany and settle there permanently. Today, about 3.5 million people of Turkish origin are living in Germany. Because for hundreds of years citizenship in Germany has been tied to blood relationship, integrating foreigners into German society has been a lot more difficult than integrating new waves off immigrants into the U.S. Children of immigrants in the U.S. see themselves by their teenage years as American wherever they come from. German society made it very difficult even for German-born children Turkish families to identify themselves foremost as Germans. During the past decade a number of films have been made by such children, chronicling the identify challenges their lives in Germany would entail. The best one to date is Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland.
Cedar Rapids
Selling insurance is one of the most boring jobs in the world. But some people’s personality seems to be uniquely suited for this line of work. Tim Lippe is one of them. The most excitement Tim has experienced in life to date is having sex with his former 7th grade teacher (Segourney Weaver) once week. But now he is sent on a road trip to Cedar Rapids. There he is introduced to the most fun insurance people you can imagine. Gorgeous women (e.g. Anne Heche) are chasing this nerd and giving us a few laughs. I enjoyed the film a lot more than the 40-year-old virgin but it definitely is not a film you must see.
Bridesmaides
Watching a teenage girl lose her boyfriend of 3 weeks is a lot less scary than watching a woman in her late 30 losing her boyfriend of three years. The film relies on the fact that as adults we all realize that the teenage girl is probably better off being “back on the market” where her twenty-year-older self enters a “bad market.” There are already many film in the Getting-Ready-for-a-Wedding genre. Except for the last 15 minutes the film is banal and boring compared to even such light fare as Four Wedding and a Funeral. If you want to see an initially funny and the deep film about marriage, see the splendid Barney’s Version. The writer Mordecai Richler uses a plot line in Barney’s Version that I once had developed but now no longer can claim as mine: Boy waits long time to marry. Has found great spouse. But at the wedding he meets someone who he instantaneously recognizes as the person he should have married. Bridesmaides never reaches such deep waters.
Postcard from Paris: It does not look good for DSK
When I first heard the news about Dominque Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, I thought there was a slim chance that he is innocent. After reading what people who know him well say about his relationship to women, DSK is likely to spend a lot of time in a room far less plush than the Soffitel in Manhattan.
Update July 1: Sensational Reversal of Fortune. Case against DSK close to collapse… Click on More and scroll down for details.
Update August 23: Case against DSK dismissed… Click on More and scroll down for details.
STRAUSS-KAHNIKOV by Philip Gourevitch (New Yorker)
In Paris the other day, a woman arrived late to a lively dinner party, accepted a glass of champagne, and, taking a seat, asked, “So? What are we talking about?” Then she let out a mirthless chuckle to signal that the question was rhetorical. Since Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in New York on charges (which he has denied) of sexually assaulting an African immigrant hotel maid, there really was no other topic of conversation in the Parisian society that had produced him, particularly among the left-of-center caste of politicians and journalists of which he and his wife, Anne Sinclair, were stars.
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Gates: Europe is not paying for its defense!
The outgoing secretary of defense gives a blunt analysis of how little Europe contributes to world security.
Gates: NATO alliance future could be ‘dim, dismal’ By ROBERT BURNS and DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press
BRUSSELS: In a stern rebuke, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Friday that the future of the historic NATO military alliance is at risk because of European penny-pinching and distaste for front-line combat. The United States won’t carry the alliance as a charity case, the outgoing Pentagon chief said.Some NATO countries bristled, but Britain quickly and heartily agreed. Gates’ assessment that NATO could face “a dim if not dismal” future echoes long-standing concern of U.S. policymakers about European defense spending. But rarely, if ever, has it been stated so directly by such a powerful American figure, widely respected in the United States and internationally. The remarks, at the close of Gates’ final overseas trip, reflect a new reality of constrained American finances and a smaller global reach.
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