Putting the Red in Red States

Yglesias notes the right's recent infatuation with "____-o-fascism" labels, and finds it strange that they would appropriate what was once a common rhetorical tactic of the left: call anyone you disagree with a fascist.

That the right would take a page from the old communist playbook isn't really surprising, though, when you consider that Conservatism's whole grand stratgey over the past 20 years comes right out of Gramsci -- a war of position, a long-term struggle to alter the ideological terrain to the point where actual victory is a, um, cakewalk.

It's all there in Gramsci: the goal is not a quick political victory but to shift the dominant ideology to your own. To do this, build alliances with target groups and classes; devote resources to "education" i.e. convincing groups that their real interests are best represented by your ideology; create or co-opt civil society institutions that will reinforce your ideology; above all, bill your ideology as "anti-hegemonic", i.e. a brave casting off of a dominant, dishonest, and disastrous world-view in favor of a bright, true future.

The American right has done all of this, and well. In fact, it may be one of the most successful communist revolutions in history. By the 80s, deregulation was seen as vanguard thinking. By 1992, "liberal" and "welfare" were dirty words, and all non-military spending could be summed up by the pejorative "big spending". By 1996 Heritage Foundation and the like were being treated as real research institutions. And, lo and behold, by 2000 the right had captured all branches of government.

Too bad for them they handed that victory over to a Stalinist administration hell-bent on seizing absolute power for the thrill of it, and about as committed to the founding ideology as ol' Uncle Joe himself.

All the King's Ghurkas

More on the situation in Nepal in this good Times op-ed.

Fat Tuesday

'Coincidence is not germane to a work of art', authoritatively declares my Taschen coffeetable book, but timing is the heart of comedy. Thus it was with great pleasure that after 18 hours of drunken, costumed cavorting through the streets of Rio de Janeiro (I wore a Pakistani kurta, mirrored John Lennon sunglasses, and a giant headpiece crowned with a big plastic ruby -- when people asked me what I was, I simply replied, "A Potentate"), I arrived home, turned on the TV to watch the big Samba School parades at the Sambadrome, and realized that it was Super Bowl Sunday.

So, while Americans were busy not being traumatized by any number of securely clothed breasts, Brazilians were enjoying live-from-the-Sambadrome interviews with the madrinhas de bateria -- the gorgeous women who dance just in front of the schools' drum troupes, enticingly out of reach, 'heating up the drums' as they say. This is a prized position in the school, some of Brazil's most beautiful women are chosen as madrinhas. But it is not just any type of beauty. No milk-pale waifs here: madrinhas are usually brown-skinned, big, buxom, and with plenty of bunda. They wear elaborate feathered head- and tail-pieces, and little else. Usually just a tapa-sexo, a little triangle of plastic or cardboard wedgied up in there to cover the pubes, sometimes painted and glittered over so you can't even see it. Less chance of a wardrobe malfunction...

And there they are, gyrating, glittering, glistening, being interviewed on national TV in all their monumental glory. The interviewers seem a little sheepish, giving a peck on the cheek to these towering amazons, but they keep their cool and don't oggle. Unlike me: I know I sound like a slavering adolescent here, but these women are truly awe-inspiring. This is my 5th carnaval here, I know the ropes, but moments of pure cultural expression like this, I just find so moving.

Seriously, though. Here you have one extreme of feminine beauty, exalted for all to see, with nobody offended or grossed out, an integral part of a major national celebration that is mostly about singing, dancing, and being happy. Meanwhile, in Jacksonville...

Each country gets the entertainment it deserves, I suppose, so Up With People it is, until 2008 at least. It will be dull, but I am sure we'll reap the benefits in ten or fifteen years or so when we have a brood of hale healthy adolescents with no idea what a human breast looks like, while Brazil's youth descend into a sea of titty-crazed depravity.

And what about the event itself? I could not care less about the Super Bowl, but I do find it interesting the degree to which it penetrates the general consciousness. Not even the World Series (when the yanks were in it) gets so much play in the Times. With the Super Bowl, it's not just the game. There are stories about the advertisers, the half time show, the locale... what gives?

I don't know, but it does strike me that if sports, and football in particular, are metaphors for war (to borrow a bit from M*A*S*H* and Rollerball) then the Super Bowl is something like WWII, the kind of war we can all agree on, the kind of war they used to have. The long, drawn-out 7-game series of baseball and basketball are too eerily like our protracted engagements in places like Vietnam and Iraq (where we came on strong, taking the first two games, but seem to be set to lose the series now that the insurgents have the home court advantage). Worse still are those infuriating Europeans with their interminable, uneventful soccer matches that end in ties (like, say, WWI). I mean, hello? The score is 0-0 when the buzzer sounds, so you just go home and call it a day?! Fucking communists.

No, for us what could be better than 22 men grounding each other into the dirt for one hour of regulation time, with salesmen and pretty girls to fill in every last gap, and at the end the victor is declared, the trophy carried off, mission accomplished, and no pesky congressional committee or video replay to come along and tell you you didn't win after all.

And no titties either, thank the Lord. Now if you'll excuse me, it is Fat Tuesday and I have some more drunken cavorting to do...

K-K-K-K-Katmandu, where democracy is through...

A sad piece of news that few will notice today and perhpas even fewer will care about, that nonetheless means months and maybe years of conflict in an otherwise beautiful and peaceful country. The King of Nepal has sacked the government and assumed power. From the Times:

For the second time in three years, Nepal's king has dismissed the government and declared a state of emergency, plunging the conflict-plagued Himalayan nation into further crisis.

[...] The Associated Press reported that soldiers had surrounded the houses of the prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, and other government leaders, and that armored military vehicles were patrolling the streets of Katmandu, the capital. [...] Land and mobile phones in the capital were not working, and officials with Jet Airways and Indian Airlines in New Delhi said flights were not being allowed into or out of the city. A Thai Airways flight, unable to land, returned to Bangkok.

The city, once a famed tourist destination, was essentially cut off from the outside world, much as it has been under recent blockades mounted by Maoist rebels the government is fighting.

Two of my strongest memories of Kathmandu: flower-strewn Ganeshes, Vishnus, and Hanumans (Hindu gods) decorating the courtyard of Buddhist temples, and a squatting monkey, stroking the fur of a happy dog in the failing evening light. An outsider's idealiztion of anecdotal evidence? Surely. But examples of real tolerance and peaceful cohabitation are few enough; we must save them where we can, and remember them where we cannot.

The more things change...

I'm as happy about the elections in Iraq as the next guy. But let's not lose our sense of historical perspective. From the Times, dateline September 3, 1967 (courtesy of Kevin Drum):

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

Of course, we all know that times have changed. (For one thing, torture is now legal.) But even our gaily optimistic president says the fighting will continue. And when he says fighting will continue, you better believe him.

Dick Cheney: Dick

OK, so maybe deep down nobody likes to go to concentration camp liberation memorials. And maybe it is hard to know what to wear. But what, for the love of God, is up with this this?

You can't quite make it out in the photo, but according to the Washington Post, the Veep's oversize parka was embroidered with his name. And his nice ski cap had the words "Staff 2001" written on it, as in, "Check out this cool hat I got for free!"

Quid cogitas, Dick? We all knew about your quadruple bypass, but until now you've kept the Alzheimer's pretty well under wraps...

I mean, what other explanation is there? Cheney's a hard-liner on Israel, and no enemy to the Jews. He wouldn't purposefully offend them. So what gives? I can only think of a few possibilities:

1. Likes Jews well enough, but couldn't resist temptation to offend gays, who were also killed at Auschwitz.
2. Had date with Justice Scalia to go duck hunting afterwards in the Oswieçem woods out back behind Birkenau, didn't feel like going all the way back to hotel.

or, what seems most likely,

3. is total dick.

Come to think of it, an embroidered parka pretty much makes you a dick whatever the reason.

The Divka z Ipanema

That's czech for 'girl from', folks. Turns out the fat Brazilian women pictured in Larry Rohter's recent article about fat Brazilians (notice no more photos) were not, in fact, Brazilians. They were Czech. According to O Globo, the women in the photo will sue the Times. Perhaps that contributed to the Times' decision to run this editor's note today...

In all fairness, this wasn't Rohter's fault: he had no control over the picture, and probably none over the piece's title or even its emphasis on the Girl From Ipanema angle. It was, however, the fault of the photographer, John Meier. I'm not totally unbiased on the subject of John (less than full disclosure here: let's just say we have friends in common), so I won't delve into the ethics of getting paid a bundle for snapping an unauthorized picture of somebody on the beach which you intend to caption "a fat Brazilian". Suffice it to say that I got a good deal of pleasure from the following description of him from Milena Suchopárková, one of the women in the photos:

"um homem que lá pelas tantas se aproximou de nós trazendo vários cachorros, na verdade, estava disfarçando, que o que ele queria mesmo era fazer umas fotos nossas."

("this guy slowly came up on us, bringing some dogs, but he was really dissembling; he was really trying to take a picture of us.")

A ridiculous end to a ridiculous story. Here, of course, it was front page news. Imagine people's relief: NYT proved wrong: Brazilian women hot after all!

Carioca's Revenge

My girlfriend called it: As soon as that Times piece about fat Brazilians came out, she said "somebody is going to sacanear (take the piss out of) that guy during Carnaval." Lo and behold, this year's samba for the bloco (neighborhood samba band) Imprensa que Eu Gamo: "Larry Rohter, será que ele é?":

Não gosta de cachaça
Não entende de mulher
O Larry Rohter, será que ele é?

Rough Translation: He don't like booze, he don't understand women, that Larry Rohter, you think he might be, you know, funny?

(Cultural disclaimer for non-Brazilians/connoisseurs: Actually, "funny" doesn't appear in the original, but is implicit. For better or worse, the P.inC.ness of the lyrics draws on a long tradition of gay jokes associated with Carnaval songs, in particular the old favorite "Olha a cabeleira do Zezé, será que ela é? será que ela é?" -- "look at Zezé's haircut, you think he might be...etc" Is this homophobic / morally wrong? Please. It's Carnaval. I've seen huge crowds of gay men at the infamous Banda de Ipanema sing 'Zezé', some even shouting 'bi-cha!' to complete the question. If bloco lyrics had to be PC, the whole holiday would grind to a screeching halt. And we would never have gems like this, from the great bloco Que Merda é Essa? (What is this Shit?) in 2002, on the brink of the Iraq invasion:

Que merda é essa, seu Bush?
Você só quer saber de brigar.
Arranje um estagiára,
Não vem aqui perturbar.

What is this shit, mistah Bush?
You're just spoiling for a fight.
Go find yourself a nice intern,
and stop making trouble.

Besides, in all fairness to Larry, he was given partial songwriting credits. Along with Harry Potter.)