Monthly Archives: October 2008

The Penelopiad

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I wrote a series about my US trip with many references to Homer’s Odyssey, called the Windiad. The story of Odysseus is from the perspective of Odysseus. Penelope, his wife, is largely presented as a symbolic figure of a long-suffering and faithful wife.

The Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, wrote a sardonic novel from Penelope’s perspective, called The Penelopiad. She was struck by the off-hand reference to Penelope’s 12 maids who were killed by Odysseus to punish them for being involved with the suitors who threatened to take away his wife and kingdom.

Throughout the novel, the 12 maids speak and interrupt through a variety of literary forms. There are children’s rhymes, a court case, an anthropology lecture, a shanty, a lament, and songs. They harangue the royal couple for their roles in the hangings, speaking as a burlesque Greek chorus.

Penelope’s narrative is full of regret but it could be the self-aggrandizement of a self-professed liar. Penelope and Odysseus are survivors. They survive through guile, wit and trickery. They are also expert PR agents, with an eye to their legacies, spinning history to make themselves more sympathetic.

The most intriguing maid harangue is the anthropological tract that speculates that the 12 maids were priestesses, with Penelope as their high priestess, overseeing a matriarchal society over-run by the wave of patrilocal culture that swept through the Mediterranean.

Other well-known characters are re-imagined through Penelope’s eyes. Her cousin Helen is the popular girl, casually cruel, self-absorbed. Her son, Telemachus, is a surly teenager with abandonment issues. Her mother, a sea nymph, is aloof. Her father, who tried to kill her in infancy, is in cheery self-denial. While these mythical figures are contemporized into quirky soap opera characters, they also are presented as people next door. Insofar as a Greek demi-god sovereign could be a next door neighbor.

The novel is a breezy read, meant to be sipped like a strong mixed drink. It’s easy to drink, but the buzz is immediate.

The Obama-McCain Comedy Team

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Instead of presidential debates, we should have had more comedy roasts, like the one at the Alfred Smith Memorial Dinner. It’s the first I’d heard of it, but apparently, it’s been a tradition for presidential candidates to attend this New York fundraiser and prepare a stand-up comedy act.

It was refreshing to watch McCain, then Obama, take turns to make fun of themselves, each other, and bring levity to the seriousness of the elections. I was laughing the whole time. Voters would carry on political discourse with more mutual respect, and less fear, if the candidates communicate with self-effacing humor. At the end of each of their talks, they honor each other by praising each other.

So here are the clips. Enjoy.

The Global Electoral College

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At the Economist.com, they’re conducting a global internet election on the US Presidential election. They’ve assigned electoral votes for each country, and so far Obama has 8,842 electoral votes to McCain’s 32. It’s a landslide. Obama seems to be averaging about 80% of the vote in most countries. Only Georgia is strongly in favor of McCain, with Cuba as leaning towards him. I guess McCain’s pledge to help rebuild Georgia worked. As for Cuba, I don’t understand the attraction.

I’m surprised at the results. I’ve always seen readers of the Economist as conservative. Maybe they are. But for whatever reason, they’re feeling Obama fever.

I’ve often heard my non-American friends lament that the US elections should be open to the world, since it impacts their countries as well. It’s an interesting notion.  And a sentiment I completely understand.

Yet, I don’t know if the results would change much. Even after a deeply unpopular Iraq War began, leaders around the world who supported the war got re-elected, and leaders who were against the war were not. In particular, Australia, the UK, Italy, Japan all retained their pro-war governments, while the anti-war German Chancellor was replaced by a hawk. Then as the war continued, the French and the Canadians went further right.

Bush has been abysmal, and polls show that nearly all the Americans who voted for him regret their choice. But here’s the thing. Before you start complaining about how you want to get in on my country’s elections, why don’t you make sure to elect a progressive government in your own country first?

The Seedy Bars of Kabukicho

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kenzo's bar

When you ask Japanese people what the most dangerous neighborhoods in Tokyo are, they invariably mention Kabukicho, an area in Shinjuku known for clubs, bars, and gangsters. I’ve only visited a few times and compared to dodgy neighborhoods in other countries, it’s like Disneyland. It shows you how safe Tokyo is, that the sketchiest neighborhood is still nearly crime free. In fact, it’s quite lively. I imagine a 1950′s Vegas to be like this, with young men in shiny suits and hypnotic lights flashing everywhere.
euphoria

My Dutch friend, Laurens, who’s fascinated with all things seedy and edgy, first took me there. My favorite area is a hovel of alleys crammed with claptrap bars with narrow doors. Since it was daylight I took pictures of some of the more interesting doors. At night, many of them are open, with low-key drinkers looking out at you with curious eyes.

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Most of the bars charge a 500 yen fee just to sit down, which is how a lot of traditional bars in Japan work. Each bar has a theme. But it’s mostly the doors that are different. Inside is the usual smoky stench of body odor and liquor. Though, I admit, I’ve never actually set foot in one. I’ll have to wait for Laurens to visit for that adventure. For more pictures of the doors, I put them all in my flickr site.

Racism and Other Electoral Narratives

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“I’m not saying he’s dishonest, but in terms of judgment, in terms of being able to answer a question forthrightly, it has two different parts to this. The judgment and the truthfulness and just being able to answer very candidly a simple question about when did you know him, how did you know him, is there still — has there been an association continued since ’02 or ’05, I know I’ve read a couple different stories. I think it’s relevant.”

-Sarah Palin

Porcine Cosmetics

Ahhh Sarah Palin. She’s really the best thing to happen to this election. Because of her, Democrats became alarmed and the Obama campaign raised more money that month than at any other time during his campaign. Obama supporters had a sense of renewed urgency.

For Republicans, the choice became almost comically clear. Vote for someone who can’t put together a proper sentence, and the man who chose her as his running mate, or vote for anyone who can speak English.

The good news is that the Obama campaign is the best well-organized campaign I’ve ever observed. They don’t take anything for granted. They are canvassing in states that the previous two Democratic candidates conceded. The volunteers are passionate and hopeful. And they’ve helped register the largest number of voters in US electoral history. Not bad. Now we just need those people to vote.

An Election Reader

I’ve been getting most of my election info from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Most of the articles are spins and platitudes. But I’ve found a few that I recommend.

  • This New York Times article talks about the role of racism in the election. It claims that Obama would get an additional 6% of support if he were a white man. It describes the psychology of aversive racism. To read more click on “Racism without Racists”.

Research suggests that whites are particularly likely to discriminate against blacks when choices are not clear-cut and competing arguments are flying about — in other words, in ambiguous circumstances rather like an electoral campaign.

For example, when the black job candidate is highly qualified, there is no discrimination. Yet in a more muddled gray area where reasonable people could disagree, unconscious discrimination plays a major role.

White participants recommend hiring a white applicant with borderline qualifications 76 percent of the time, while recommending an identically qualified black applicant only 45 percent of the time.

John Dovidio, a psychologist at Yale University who has conducted this study over many years, noted that conscious prejudice as measured in surveys has declined over time. But unconscious discrimination — what psychologists call aversive racism — has stayed fairly constant.

  • To get an on-the-ground look at the role of race in the elections, read this Los Angeles Times article about a white Appalachian community in Virginia. Even though, it’s a heavily Democratic area, many voters will abstain from voting because they can’t get over the idea of a black President. The article looks into how local leaders are trying to get people to vote in their interest rather than their prejudices.
  • For a more cerebral look at the underlying narrative of the election, read “The Real Americans”. This opinion piece describes how the idea of an authentic and inauthentic American has been exploited throughout US electoral history.

By constantly promoting the notion that Republicans are just a bunch of NASCAR fans and that Democrats are effete, the GOP has successfully divided the country not between red and blue politics but between one version of America and another, between the allegedly authentic and the allegedly inauthentic. But in reality, Republicans have only been exploiting a vein deep within the American consciousness. And who can blame them? What Republicans realize is that most Americans always have been desperately afraid of being seen as phony, and they are actively hostile toward anyone with airs

  • I also found this biography of John McCain’s subpar military career very illuminating. Were it not for the fact that his father and grandfather were distinguished admirals, his naval career would probably have ended much earlier. Not only did he finish almost last in his military academy class, he had crashed three planes during training. Here’s a description of one of them.

In his most serious lapse, McCain was “clowning” around in a Skyraider over southern Spain about December 1961 and flew into electrical wires, causing a blackout, according to McCain’s own account as well as those of naval officers and enlistees aboard the carrier Intrepid.

I get the feeling that he has been trying to live up to the lofty expectations of his family name. Much like Bush 2. And he’s shown the same kind of impetuous hubris of a spoiled underachieving rich kid. I’d rather be led by the kid who worked his way up from poverty.