Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Sunday

Alex Massie

The Life and Times and Death of Jade Goody

From our UK edition

At some time in the future, historians will view the Jade Goody Affair with the same kind of bewilderment and revulsion that we reserve for the excesses of Victorian Britain. But of course Goody's celebrity - absurd and mawkish and repellent as it was - demonstrates how little human nature changes and reminds us that we're much closer to the past than we sometimes like to think. And that, of course, is just another way of observing that the sky is always falling. To wit, here's the Telegraph's (lengthy) obituary, which also serves as a commentary on the marvellous monstrosity that is the British tabloid press: The first time she was mentioned in the press, in May 2002, Jade Goody was described as a "pretty dental nurse, 20, from London".

Friday

Alex Massie

Valery Gergiev: Pawn of Putin?

From our UK edition

There was an interesting, if occasionally frustrating, profile of Valery Gergiev in last week's New York Times magazine. Frustrating because the article was headlined "The Loyalist" (the cover line was "An Overture to Russian Nationalism") that seemed to want to condemn Gergiev for being a) proud of being Russian and b) far too close to the Kremlin. The former charge seems perverse unless, that is, any expression of Russian patriotism is inherently threatening and the latter seems, in some ways, almost inescapable if the Mariinsky Theatre (formerly the Kirov) wants to be able to do business and thrive in Russia.

Alex Massie

The Flower of Scotland Lies Cold in Flanders Clay

From our UK edition

Back in the days when the Edinbugh Evening News printed a "Saturday Pink" edition, it used to be said that there were two headlines on hand for whenever Scotland played England for the Calcutta Cup. Occasionally the sub-editors could scream "It's Bannockburn!"; more often they were left to lament "It's Flodden". The latter, as always when the game is played at Twickenham, seems the more probable result tomorrow. Still, talk of ancient battles is merely tabloid hyperbole. Other conflicts loom larger. Frank Keating had a characteristically lovely piece in the Guardian this week, recalling the terror of the First World War and the calamitous toll it took on rugby: The war had left rugby with a grievous inventory.

Alex Massie

So Long Lynton Crosby

From our UK edition

Man responsible for Tories disastrous 2005 campaign now likely to have nothing to do with their 2010 effort. That's the Lynton Crosby story, right? Surely this is excellent news for the Tories? What am I missing? Standard caveat: the influence of political consultants and strategists is, generally speaking, over-hyped. I think. But they are fun to write about.

Alex Massie

The Hermit Bugle: News from North Korea

From our UK edition

Good to see that the North Korean Central News Agency is offering a different view of life inside the gulag that balances the imperlalist propaganda to which we are otherwise subjected. Among the top stories at their revamped website: Punishment of War Maniacs by Arms Urged U.S. Undisguised Scenario for Hegemony Flayed Minju Joson Snubs Traitors' Anti-Reunification Ruckus Nice, punchy, tabloid style their sub-editors have too. It's like everyone were still communicating by cables and cleft sticks..

Alex Massie

Damien Hirst & Art for Toddlers

From our UK edition

There's an "Artist Rooms" exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art that features some of Damien Hirst's work. Cue much excitement. Especially from his target audience: two year olds. Specifically, my niece: My companion Florence (aged two and a half), was really into it all. She is famous for her total disregard for art galleries, so is perhaps fitting that she admire Hirst. And she did, having sprinted (literally) past all the fabulous Auerbach, Kokoshka and Soutine paintings upstairs she stopped and stared at Dots and Pickles. She was fascinated by the sheep but her fascination incurred the wrath of eager guards who scolded her for touching the exhibit. "There's formaldehyde in there". Behind about four inches of reinforced glass there is.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Selkirkshire

From our UK edition

Selkirkshire: looking north from Harehead hill in the late afternoon sunshine. There are, risky though it is to say this, tentative signs of spring arriving...

Alex Massie

Jeeves and Foreign Policy

From our UK edition

Timothy Garton Ash tries to explain the Anglo-American relationship in terms of another great partnership: Jeeves and Wooster. Here, in miniature, is a classic example of that whole British approach to our relationship with the US, which I call the Jeeves school of diplomacy. Impeccable manners; a discreet smile; always perfect loyalty in public; but privately murmuring insistently, "Is that wise, Sir?" And back home in Jeeves's own club, frequented - as devotees of PG Wodehouse will recall - only by gentlemen's gentlemen (ie butlers), you tut-tut about the foolish conduct of the masters. This has, in some measure, been a British approach for more than 60 years, ever since hegemony passed across the Atlantic. (For this Jeeves was himself a master once.

Alex Massie

France’s Spring

From our UK edition

People protest during France's second nationwide strike in two months, to demand a boost to wages and greater protection form the crisis, on March 19, 2009, in Marseille, southern France. Photo: GERARD JULIEN/AFP/Getty Images It's springtime which means that even if there weren't an econmic crisis our friends in France would be taking to the streets. This is as it should be. My one year old godson, I'm pleased to say, is already a veteran of street action, having been wheeled out to protest against proposals for primary school reforms. Even rites of passage happen earlier these days. Anyway, the good news for Sarkozy is that the Socialists are in no position to benefit from the public's sour, fretful mood.

Alex Massie

The Gordon Brown Style

From our UK edition

A couple of revealing entries from Chris Mullin's diaries that reveal the Prime Minister to be some ungodly (and unhealthy) combination of Uriah Heep and Lyndon Baines Johnson: Wednesday July 4th, 2001: Later, sitting on the terrace, I was joined by a member of the Blair inner circle*. Conversation soon turned to Gordon. I mentioned that following my departure from government, I had received a handwritten letter saying how much he had enjoyed working with me. It seems that every ex-Minister has received an identical letter. All the new Members have received letters too. He must have been up half the night writing them. No stone is left unturned. Gordon's machine churns night and day. My friend was scathing. "He's mad, quite mad.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Obama and Genocide

From our UK edition

It's nearly April which means it's nearly Armenia time too. That is, we are approaching the latest edition of Washington's reluctance to call the Armenian genocide what it is and was: genocide. On the campaign trail, of course, everyone says how important this is; in power such concerns melt away. My friend Matt Welch points out that, unsurprisingly, the Obama administration is no different to any of its predecessors in discovering that the responsibilities of power require a degree of historical trimming. The Los Angeles Times reports that the administration is "hesitating" about making any presidential statement affirming the genocide or, presumably, endorsing the annual effort to have Congress call a genocide, you know, genocide. Apparently...

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Debating Larry Summers

From our UK edition

Terrifying news. Terrifying that is for anyone reared in the free-wheeling yet genial and sensible world of British parliamentary style debate. It turns out that Larry Summers, erstwhile Saviour of the Universe, was a policy debater while he was an undergraduate. Noam Scheiber reveals all in his informative profile of Mr Summers: Personality aside, Summers has long been associated with a certain tactical and strategic brashness. "I'm somebody who wants their errors to be of trying to do too much rather than trying to do too little," he told Portfolio magazine last September. One early outlet for this instinct was the college debate circuit, which Summers joined while an undergrad at MIT. Policy debate was a labor-intensive activity.

Alex Massie

A Lib Dem future? Not so fast my friends!

From our UK edition

Tom Harris doesn't much care for the Liberal Democrats: Having seen the damage done to the Labour Party through its association with the Liberals in the Scottish Parliament in previous years, there is, if anything, more hostility among MPs to the idea of power sharing than ever. On the other hand, if the Liberal Party want to sign up to the implementation of Labour’s manifesto in the aftermath of the election, fine. So long as they don’t expect either Labour or Tory MPs to agree to a change in the electoral system so that every possible outcome in future would result in the Liberals being in government.

Alex Massie

Corporate hari-kiri

From our UK edition

Things could be worse for RBS executives. They could be AIG executives receiving advice from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): "The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them is if they would follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry and then either do one of two things: resign or commit suicide." Grassley added, "In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology." Happily, "An aide later explained he does not actually want executives to kill themselves." Well, that's ok then!

Alex Massie

The Advantage of Being a Confederate

From our UK edition

Henrick Hertzberg writes: Most of Europe’s individual “states” have governments that are not just democratic but also energetic and powerful. Hence the “European socialism”—i.e., universal health care, greater economic equality, low crime rates, fast trains, good road signage, excellent broadband—that American conservatives are so scared of. But Europe’s federal government—the European Union—is like the post-independence U.S. government under the Articles of Confederation: it’s weak, it’s atomized, it has feeble powers of taxation, and it can’t act without unanimity or something close to it among its several states.

Alex Massie

The Horrors of St Patrick’s Day

From our UK edition

Eammon Forde doesn't much care for St Patrick's Day: It says everything about what it means to be Irish these days that the biggest parades take place hundreds of miles from Irish soil where a once-proud diaspora's celebration of its past has been hijacked by anyone who has seen The Quiet Man and wants to get noisily bladdered. They may as well wear their heart on their sleeves and pay a gaggle of pale-faced colleens with pigs under their arms to spray the streets with whiskey and potatoes.In Alan Partridge's phrase, “de big oidea” behind St Patrick's Day today is to amplify every cultural cliché to the point where it is impossible to tell if it is parody, pastiche or homage. Good for him. The plastic Paddery on display today is wearisome.

Alex Massie

Mullin on Cameron

From our UK edition

I've been reading Chris Mullin's entertaining diaries and was interested to be reminded that David Cameron was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Mullin. The Tory leader doesn't feature often in the diaries, but here's what Mullin has to say: November 15, 2001: "We have an impressive new Tory on the committee - David Cameron, a young, bright libertarian* who can be relied upon to follow his own instincts rather than the party line." April 9th, 2002: "More than once, when we reached an impasse, David Cameron came to the rescue. The more I see of him, the more I like. He's bright, personable and refreshingly open-minded. No doubt he'll soon be whisked away to the Tory front bench.

Sunday

Alex Massie

The New Threat to America: Europe

From our UK edition

Mark Steyn weighs in on the alleged (that is, non-existent) plot to "europeanise" America: "Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you've spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory." If one considers Mr Steyn as an entertainer or a mischievous bomb-thrower (a sort of high-class Coulter if you like) then this is just a bit of fun, right? Then again, Mr Steyn likes to think of himself as a Serious Commentator. Which in this instance seems to risk making him seem an ass. Never mind that, according to the most recent World Values Survey, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden each reported higher levels of happiness and "life satisfaction" than the United States.

Alex Massie

The American-led “Peace Process”?

From our UK edition

John F Burns is a great reporter, but did he really write this or did some sub-editor in New York alter his copy? The relative prosperity that peace has brought, the respite from the anguished cycle of killings and revenge, has built a constituency for the power-sharing government in Belfast. That arrangement, which has worked awkwardly but steadily for 22 months, has given practical form to the reconciliation envisaged in the Good Friday agreement of 1998, which was brokered by the United States. [Emphasis added.] Outside the Clinton family, no-one in their right mind can consider the Good Friday Agreement to have been "brokered" by Washington. Mr Burns, who is English, must know this. So how did this line appear in the "paper of record"?