Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Sen. Strangemove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obama

From our UK edition

Marc Ambinder says Obama's foreign policy speech today demonstrates just how the campaign believes it is going to challenge the way Washington does these things. The headline announcement may beObama's desire for a nuclear-free world which is, yes, something that has been gaining traction in foreign policy circles for some time and also the sort of optimistic "transformational" (if we are still allowed to use that word?) policy Obama likes to think typifies his campaign. Barring a miracle of course, it's also not going to happen. The Obama campaign says these talking points demonstrate just how their candidate would "challenge Washington's conventional thinking" by: 1. Ending the war in Iraq 2. Ensuring there is no safe haven for Al Qaeda 3.

Alex Massie

Pulitzer Bait

From our UK edition

This post reminded me of a terrific piece Sarah Lyall (one of the NYT's under-appreciated stars) wrote for Slate a couple of years ago. She made the mistake of attending the British Press Awards dinner. The Pulitzers these are not. Most papers crow about their own successes while failing to even report the existence of winners from other titles. Happily, however, there are enough award ceremonies for almost everyone to claim the title "Newspaper of the Year". In their own way, the hacks treat these awards with the proper level of contempt and, since no-one spends all year dreaming of ways to win them we are at least spared the epic, 17-part thumb-sucking series on "Life" or "Death" or "Being a Deaf Quadraplegic" the American papers publish in a bid to win Pulitzers...

Alex Massie

Prime Minister Cameron?

From our UK edition

David Cameron has just given a remarkable speech to the Tory party conference in Blackpool. A week ago it looked as though the Tories were done and Project Cameron an embarrassing fiasco. Now, after a successful conference, Cameron may have wrong-footed Labour himself. In other words, these remain febrile times. Cameron's task was to demonstrate that he had the ability to rise above party, persuading his television audience (and the doubters in his own party) that he has it in him to be Prime Minister. My sense was that he succeeded and that he did so in part because of the bold, even fresh, approach he took. This was not your ordinary pre-election stem-winder. In fact it wasn't much of a stem-winder at all (which in turn makes it harder to gauge its effectiveness).

Alex Massie

Not even kissing cousins anymore…

From our UK edition

One other thing about David Cameron's speech: there was quite a lot in it that mainstream Democrats in the United States would have had little problem endorsing - the environment, the anxiety many people feel about a fast-changing world, the breaking of the military covenant etc etc. Then again, the Tories have little desire to be associated with the current Republican party.  You can tell how enamoured the Tories are with the GOP by the Republicans who have been in Blackpool this week. Arnold Schwarzenegger was supposed to give a keynote address (he pulled out at the last minute) but Mike Bloomberg was present and given a prominent speaking position (and praised by Cameron this afternoon).

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Hold the Front Page: Morals Uncorrupted by Sensible, Liberal Policy

From our UK edition

Credit where credit's due, Labour's attitude towards gambling has been vastly more sensible than one had any right to expect. The Economist reports: New laws which came into force in Britain at the beginning of September allow the creation of licensed internet casinos where people can gamble on games such as poker and blackjack. Until now, gamblers could try their luck at them only on servers located offshore. The change is aimed squarely at encouraging the development of an internationally competitive internet gambling industry in Britain. The government reckons that online casino operators will be willing to come under the watchful eye of its regulators (and tax collectors) in exchange for more legitimacy with their customers.

Alex Massie

How do you solve a problem like… Liliana?

From our UK edition

Intro of the Day: A convent in Italy is being shut down after a fight between its last three remaining nuns. So badly did relations deteriorate between the sisters of Santa Clara in Bari that the Mother Superior ended up in hospital with scratches to her face. Read the rest here.

Alex Massie

The Unbearable Melancholy of Ping Pong

From our UK edition

There's a delightful piece by Howard Jacobsen in the latest edition of The New Republic in which the author mourns the sad decline of table tennis. I don't know why the magazine hasn't promoted it more. The problem, you see, is the sponge bat. It has changed everything, and not, you will be unsurprised to discover for the better. Sponge ushered in the era of Asian supremacy, thanks in no small part to an athletic revolution that, well, changed the game forever... The single exception to Asian dominance, provided by Sweden, is only to be explained, I think, by that aspect of table tennis which no technology has ever been able to affect--its introversion.

Alex Massie

Jeanne Campbell, RIP: Forget Not

From our UK edition

John F Kennedy, Nikita Kruschev, Fidel Castro, Lord Beaverbrook, Oswald Moseley, Claus von Bulow, Norman Mailer, J Paul Getty, Randolph Churchill, Henry Luce, Gore Vidal, the Beatles and Napoleon Bonaparte... Just some of the names appearing in this Daily Telegraph obituary of a remarkable and entertaining (yet oddly melancholy) life: Lady Jeanne Campbell , who has died aged 78, was a journalist who reported for the Evening Standard from New York for many years; she was also the former wife of Norman Mailer, the daughter of the reprobate 11th Duke of Argyll and the favourite granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook.

Alex Massie

Gordon Brown spins his web little too obviously

From our UK edition

David Cameron gives his crucial speech to the Tory party conference tomorrow - a speech that will go some way towards deciding whether he has a real shot at becoming the next British Prime Minister. Despite the rotten polls and the talk of a snap election next month I'm unconvinced (albeit from a distance) that the Tories are toast yet. Still, it's good to see that Gordon Brown's commitment to a "new politics" remains rock-solid. Matt d'Ancona explains: So Gordon Brown, having brought forward his trip to Iraq, says that more than 1,000 troops will be home by Christmas. Is this the same Gordon Brown who said at Camp David that no announcement on troop drawdown would be made until he delivered his Commons statement, set for next week?

Alex Massie

The shock is what is not considered shocking…

From our UK edition

A friend emails to ask for ideas he can pitch to an editor for a populist column designed to appeal to - and shock and outrage! - middle America. Ideally, he says, you'd want some example or combination of: 1. Kids endangered somehow2. Taxpayer money wasted3. Fat cats bilking the little guy4. Government out of control5. Decency/common sense gone out the window Well, the Ethanol Boondoggle satisfies 2, 3, 4 and 5 while the War on Drugs manages to go one better, mmeeting each and every one of these requirements. Somehow however I doubt this is the message my friend's editor wants to hear.

Alex Massie

Better a jaguar than a cougar…

From our UK edition

Grist and Outside magazines have been running a series of interviews with the Presidential candidates on environmental issues. So far they've done all the Democrats but just McCain and Mike Huckabee from the GOP side of the aisle. Presumably the others will make time for this interview too? Anyway, there's plenty of interesting stuff. But, attached to trivia as this blog is, I was struck by John McCain's answer to the throwaway question, "What kind of animal would you be?" I think I'd like to be a jaguar That seems a good answer.

Monday

Alex Massie

Is Don Giovanni really the greatest?

From our UK edition

Just received an email from Washington National Opera touting their new production of Don Giovanni in which they claim that it's "widely regarded as the greatest opera ever composed". Is this true? I suppose it could be, but as with novels it had never occurred to me that there was a clear or obvious "Number 1 Opera". Still, parlour-game time: if you had to nominate an opera for "Greatest Ever" status, what would you select and, secondly, what opera would you choose to see if it was understood that this would be the last opera you'd ever see? UPDATE: Meanwhile, the Lyric Opera of Chicago calls La Boheme "the world's most popular opera". Make of that what you will.

Alex Massie

Swedes 1 Turnips 0 (Again).

From our UK edition

It's a question I've asked before, but it's worth revisiting: if school choice is a nefarious right-wing plot to keep poor people poor and uneducated why is it that Sweden - Sweden! - has a nationwide school voucher programme that is supported by all political parties? Now clearly this doesn't in and of itself demonstrate that open access school choice programmes are necessarily a magic bullet, but it might - or rather ought to - quieten some of the hysterical shrieking one hears from defenders of the status quo in both the USA and the UK. If school choice can be embraced by left-wing Swedes it's just about possible it won't cause the sky to fall tomorrow... A new paper from the Adam Smith Institute (unsurprisingly!

Alex Massie

Public Service Announcement

From our UK edition

If you haven't been tempted to use Amazon.com's new MP3 download service may I point out that Clemens Krauss's 1953 Ring Cycle is currently available for $13.98. That's $13.98 for the entire cycle. That's insane and almost enough to make me think we live in a pretty dandy world.

Friday

Alex Massie

In search of a Golden Age…

From our UK edition

When I saw that The Atlantic had a feature on "The Greatest Sports Book Ever Written" in its October edition I thought, well, that's nice but I daresay they really mean "The Greatest Sports Book Ever Written That Isn't About Cricket." Be wary of your assumptions. turns out I underestimated the Atlantic's taste and perspicacity. For, lo, there it is: a fine piece by Joseph O'Neill explaining why CLR James' Beyond A Boundary is an important work - though a mystifying one should you have no knowledge of the greatest game of them all. O'Neill concludes that it's sad that Beyond A Boundary is off-limits to Americans. But I'm not so sure that's the case. I'm generally a fan of globalisation, but I draw a line in the sand when it comes to cricket.

Thursday

Alex Massie

So, Mr (or Mrs) Candidate…

From our UK edition

Radley Balko has some questions he'd like to ask the Presidential candidates. I particularly liked: Do you think an atheist could be president? Do you think an atheist should be? Assuming you generally agreed with an atheist on more issues than the alternative candidates in a given election, would you vote for one? and America by far and away has the highest prison population in the world. Does this concern you? Are there any federal crimes you feel should be repealed from the books, or devolved to the states? and Would you support a sunset provision requiring Congress to revisit and re-pass each law after five years? Chances of these issues coming up in the next in the endless stream of candidate "debates"? Practically zero.

Alex Massie

Department of Reaping What You Sow

From our UK edition

I hadn't paid any attention to the women's World Cup until the US manager Greg Ryan decided it was a sensible notion to switch goalkeepers before yesterday's semi-final against Brazil, dropping first choice Hope Solo (great name!) and recalling the 36 year old Briana Scurry. Off-hand I can't think of any comparable goalie switch. When Alex Ferguson famously dropped Jim Leighton and promoted Les Sealey for an FA Cup final replay his decision was at least based on what her perceived as Leighton's loss of confidence. But Ryan had no such excuse since no-one, not even the manager, pretended that Solo had done anything wrong. Instead what seems to have happened is that Ryan forgot that he was picking a football team, not managing a baseball game.

Alex Massie

If she had chosen to support the Washington Nationals she wouldn’t embarrass herself in this fashion…

From our UK edition

This is why people hate politicians. Just when you start thinking that it might not be terrible if Hillary Clinton becomes the next President of the United States you, hear stuff like this. Sure, it's trivial in one sense but it tells us more about her than the details of whatever health care plan she's punting these days. She even ducked the question of which team she'd root for if her hometown Chicago Cubs met the New York Yankees in next month's World Series. "I'd have to switch back and forth," she said.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Brown does a Biden

From our UK edition

Danny Finkelstein notices what I should have noticed. Curses. Anyway, the Hand of Shrum was all over the Great Clunking Fist's speech to the Labour party conference: How could I have missed this? The heavy influence of Bob Shrum on Gordon Brown's speech. How could I have missed it? First of all there are plenty of phrases pretty directly lifted from speeches made by Shrum clients, many of which he admits he wrote. Here are just a few, there may well be many more: Al Gore 2000 nomination acceptance speech: I know my own imperfections. I know that sometimes people say I'm too serious, that I talk too much substance and policy. Gordon Brown: Sometimes people say I am too serious and I fight too hard and maybe that's true......