By Chris Eberhardt, May 31st, 2011 
A friend of mine was asking for help in downloading The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers for free. In December, I thought about downloading the book for ten dollars to my iPod, but didn’t think it was worth it. I think I was afraid it would burst me from my bubble.
This morning while watching the movie “The Truman Show” with my students, I realized that like Jim Carrey’s character, Truman Burbank, I am living in a similar scenario, “The China Show.” When someone wants to know about the history of the Communist Party, or tries to tell the difference between President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, (even the NY Times can’t), it feels like they want to know about the executive producers behind the scenes who are responsible for making sure that the show doesn’t stop.
Here on the set of “The China Show” we worry about the incredibly expensive price of apartments, and students play the Three Kingdoms game. As my Chinese teacher pointed out, the movies and the television shows in China are harmonious, befitting a harmonious society, a path set by President Hu Jintao. I tell people that the Chinese movies I watch in the United States, outside the television studio, are what might be called “art house films,” often intentionally banned within China to get more viewers in the U.S. and Europe. These movies are about people stealing police uniforms and using them to extort pedestrians on the street, or the woman who is sent to the fields and becomes a one-person brothel in an attempt to regain her old city life. Back within “The China Show,” the movies are about people from an ancient period, quite often with the ability to fly.
Last week, I had a brief moment where I felt like I was teaching, using clips of movies like “Forrest Gump” to talk about school integration and the Vietnam War draft. I asked one of my students what she would do if her friend was drafted and sent . . .
Read more: The China Show
By Michael Corey, May 30th, 2011 
On May 6th, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) announced the names of five American servicemen that were being inscribed on the black granite walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall), and will be read for the first time on this Memorial Day, at 1 p.m. In addition, the designations of eight names are being changed from missing in action, signified by a cross, to confirmed dead, symbolized by a diamond. The criteria and decisions for being included on The Wall are set by the Department of Defense. With the additions, the total number of names inscribed (killed or remaining missing in action) is 58,272.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was established in 1979 by a group of veterans led by Jan Scruggs, and, over the years, has been “dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C., promoting healing and educating about the impact of the Vietnam War.” In July 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized the Fund to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on a site near the Lincoln Memorial in Constitution Gardens. The Fund explains that the resulting monument “was built to honor all who served with the U. S. armed forces during the Vietnam War. It has become known as an international symbol of healing and is the most-visited memorial on the National Mall.”
The Memorial consists of more than the well known Wall that was designed by Maya Ying Lin. The other sites for remembrance are the Flagpole that was installed in 1983 around which the emblems of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard are displayed; the Three Servicemen Statue, designed by Frederick Hart and dedicated in 1984; the Vietnam Women’s Memorial designed by Glenna Goodacre and dedicated in 1993; and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commemorative Plaque, also called the “In Memory Plaque, ” dedicated in 2004 to honor veterans who died after the war as a direct result of injuries which were incurred in Vietnam, but do not qualify for inclusion on The Wall. An education center is being planned.
. . .
Read more: Memorial Day Reflections
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 29th, 2011 
I started to write this post at 37,000 feet, between New York and Paris, flying to see my grandson, Ludovic, and his parents Michel and Brina (my daughter). Preoccupied by the private purpose of my visit, I tried to think about recent public events and their meaning. I was looking forward to private pleasures, working on public matters.
My trip is very much a family affair, no lectures, no meetings planned with colleagues. I am not even sure we will see any sites: Paris without the Eifel Tower or the Louvre, maybe a hardware store or two as Brina and Michael are in the middle of some serious home renovations.
But as I hurtled through the sky over the Atlantic, I wondered about how the private is linked to the public, aware of the fact that generally the French and Americans, and more particularly the French and American media, have dealt with this in very different ways, revealed in recent scandals.
Americans are more likely to look for the truth of the public by examining the private. The French are more convinced that private matters are not public issues. Both have important insights and blind spots, apparent in this week’s news and in the discussions here at DC.
Gary Alan Fine welcomed the candidacy of Tim Pawlenty. Fine, who enjoys what he calls pungent political discourse of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, also recognizes the importance of serious political debate, seeing this possibility in Pawlenty. But there was another such candidate presenting serious alternatives to the Democrat’s positions, with a record of accomplishment. Many informed Republican partisans thought Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana would be an even more significant candidate. But the twice married to the same woman politician with an apparently complicated private life, chose not to run. His family, specifically his daughters, vetoed his run. Fear of public exposure of what should remain private deprived the Republicans of a candidate. Public debate and contestation has been diminished by the apparent confusion of public and private virtues.
![]( "Dominique Strauss-Kahn (official IMF portrait) © Unknown | IMF photographic archives") . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Thinking about Public and Private at 37,000 Feet
By Gary Alan Fine, May 26th, 2011 
For a dozen years I have taught a freshman seminar at Northwestern University, entitled “Scandal and Reputations.” When I first selected the topic “Bill and Monica” it was the topic du jour, filled with phallic cigars, hypocrisies and conspiracies. I had planned the course to capture that sour, if momentarily historic, time.
Over the years I have never been without subject matter. I could pick and choose among the birthers, the deniers, the earthers and the truthers. Would we discuss churchly pedophiles or Abu Ghraib? DUI or DNA? Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen, Britney, Paris or OJ Redux? Always some claim of conspiracy or scandal emerged that would capture the attention of students.
This week demonstrates that whether we run out of oil, we won’t run out of oily elites. The case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and prominent French socialist politician, is instructive. (Yes, yes, innocent until proven…). Mr. Strauss-Kahn is currently holed up in a snug government-supplied suite on Riker’s Island (a neo-socialist dream of free housing for all). Mr. Strauss-Kahn has been arrested and accused of having attempted to rape a hotel maid in his self-paid suite at New York’s Sofitel. No doubt several of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s new compatriots will be happy to turn the tables on their new friend. DSK, don’t drop your soap in the shower.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn was apparently naked in the bathroom when the maid arrived. As a prominent economist, he surely figured that since he was already naked, intercourse was simply a matter of structural efficiency. Perhaps he saw her as “my cute little Portugal.” Never having interned at the IMF, she had not been adequately educated in recognizing how the powerful organize the lifeworlds of the powerless. Metaphors gone wild.
But the tawdry events at a slick hotel reveal something more. First, they remind us that often what makes bad behavior scandalous is when it emerges outside the local domain in which “everyone knew” of its likelihood. As more evidence appears, it seems that Strauss-Kahn’s colleagues were aware that he was a sexual predator. Possibly they were surprised . . .
Read more: Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the Charmed Circle of Scandal
By Tim Rosenkranz, May 25th, 2011 
Tim Rosenkranz reports on the significance of a recent article by the German philosopher and social critic Jürgen Habermas. –Jeff
On April 7, 2011 Germany’s political news magazine “Süeddeutsche Zeitung” published a piece by Habermas in which he openly attacks Chancellor Angela Merkel for her “opinion-poll dominated opportunism.” While the article focused on the problem of European integration and the continuing democracy deficit of the institutional frame of the European Union, Jürgen Habermas points his finger at significant systemic problems of today’s democratic political process – between civil society, the public sphere, political elites and the media-sphere – the problem being the loss of larger political projects in a process driven by the short-term politics of public opinion polls.
While Habermas is still a vocal figure in the academic landscape, at least in the last decade, he limits his editorial participation in larger public debates in the media. If he does speak up, it is mostly concerning the problems of European integration and its democratic process. The recent article “Merkels von Demoskopie geleiteter Opportunismus” (“Merkel’s opinion-poll dominated opportunism”) is not an exception. What caught my attention, however, is that Habermas rarely criticizes German politicians directly in person. It is also unusual in that the article is a theoretical expansion within his larger intellectual frame of “deliberative democracy.”
Very atypical for him, Habermas condenses the larger theoretical problem in one paragraph, which I would translate accordingly:
In general, today’s politics seemingly is transforming into an aggregate condition defined by the abdication of perspective and the will to create (Gestaltungswille). The expanding complexity of issues demanding regulation compels [the political actors] to short term reactions within shrinking scopes of action. As if politicians have adopted the unmasking view of system theory, they follow without shame the opportunistic script of opinion poll dominated (demoskopiegeleitet) power pragmatism.
. . .
Read more: Jürgen Habermas on Power to the Polls
By Gary Alan Fine, May 24th, 2011 
 
I am allergic to political gatherings. You are not likely to discover me at movement rallies, rubber-chicken circuit banquets, or victory parties (more commonly weep-in-your-drink defeatathons). I treasure the quietude of the old voting booths where one could think one’s civic thoughts while surrounded by worn fabric. I enjoyed the experience so much that I annually decided to change at least one intended vote just because that choice would mean that casting a ballot was an act of deliberation.
Still, nineteen years ago on a bright September afternoon, I made my way to the train station in Norcross, Georgia, near where I resided at the time. That day Al Gore was coming to town. I no longer recall whether Gore was riding a whistle-stop train or merely using the station as a nostalgic background. Given Atlanta’s transportation mess, I imagine it was the latter. The idea of rearranging my schedule to hear Senator Gore declaim might seem an act of perversity, or at least desperation.
But it was not. It was lovely and sweet and purposive, not only because of the flags and the band and National gemeinschaft and Southern gemutlichkeit. Without yelling, Al Gore was eloquent, passionate and true. At least true enough for campaign purposes. I left persuaded that the order of the Democrats’ 1992 ticket should be reversed. I voted standing on my head.
I tell this tale because of current discussions of Indiana’s Mitch Daniels and Minnesota’s Timothy James Pawlenty, both of whom being regarded as a bit wonkish and “Gorish.” Apparently Daniels homelife was slightly Gothic, and he decided that he could miss the attentions of Perez Hilton, Gail Collins, Larry Flynt, and Matt Drudge, but T-Paw has decided to make a go of it. It is too early to trek to a local rail station, if there are any . . .
Read more: In Praise of Serious Pols
By Gershon Shafir, May 23rd, 2011 
Finally! Finally there is a row between the US and Israel over the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Obama found the steel in his backbone to tell off Prime Minister Netanyahu. The formula Obama used was not new, but, significantly, one put forth most recently as part of the Mahmoud Abbas-Salam Fayyad plan to request the recognition of the UN for a Palestinian state within the 1967 boundaries. Obama zeroed in like a hawk on the borders issue and, lo and behold, he ruined most of Netanyahu’s week in Washington.
It has already been pointed out that Obama himself mocked the Palestinian UN plan as leading to only symbolic results. Or that he left the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees to a later stage of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. And, finally, that the 1967 borders is a red herring, a non-issue, since Obama also recognized that the final Israeli-Palestinian border will involve territorial swaps. In fact, it has been suggested that by now even Netanyahu wishes to hang on only to “settlement blocs” and is ready to concede the rest of the West Bank.
This, then, appears to be no more than a spat between those who view the glass empty and those who see it as full. We seemed to be asked: should we focus on the land to be kept or ceded? Focusing on the words, however, would be misleading. It is the tune that makes the music.
Obama has been looking since his inauguration for a formula to jolt to life the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. His first, unsuccessful, formula was a settlement freeze. He received bad advice: experience has shown the settlements can either expand or shrink, but cannot be put in the freezer. This time, he wrapped the settlement issue within the borders controversy and created the possibility for real traction. Obama has broken the ice and herein resides the significance of his statement on . . .
Read more: Going Forward by Going Back to 1967
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 22nd, 2011
Because the demands of the academic cycle, because of the challenge of term papers, dissertations and dissertation proposals, I am late this week in this review. But now that I have a few moments this Sunday evening, I can make a few points, noting that all week we have been concerned about the difficult relationship between words and deeds.
If there were any deed which would be clearly and unambiguously a candidate for automatic verbal condemnation, it would seem to be slavery, but this is not the case. Narvaez shows, choosing the extreme case to make his very important point, judging the unacceptable requires a capacity for moral indignation. He worries that with the noise of infotainment, of cable television, web surfing and social networking, the capacity to express indignation is waning. On the other hand, Gary Alan Fine, in his reply to Narvaez, seems to be as concerned with the direction of such indignation as its presence or absence. Condemnations of Israel, for example, sometimes come too easily from the left and the Arab world, and they can be manufactured, as Daniel Dayan shows in his post this week.
This was an exciting and provocative exchange. I think Narvaez in his response to Fine revealed how sound public debate yields results when it is specific. Small things, details, make all the difference. Not moral indignation about Israeli atrocities, but a specific atrocity, the complicity in the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, for example. And Narvaez is surely right, democracy requires such indignation. The jaded society is a clear and present danger to democracy, explaining for example broad American acceptance of torture of political prisoners as long as it goes by the Orwellian name of “enhanced interrogation.”
And paying close attention to the relationship between words and deeds applies as well to the persistent problem of fictoids in our public life, as we discussed last year. Little tales that confirm preconceived . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Words and Deeds
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 19th, 2011 
President Barack Obama gave a powerful speech today, one of his best. The president was again eloquent, but there is concern here in the U.S. and also abroad in the Arab world, that eloquence is not enough, that it may in fact be more of the problem than the solution. The fine words don’t seem to have substance in Egypt, according to a report in The Washington Post. There appears to be a global concern that Obama’s talk is cheap. Obama’s “Cairo Speech” all over again, one Egyptian declared. Now is the time for decisive action. Now is the time for the President of the United States to put up or shut up. (Of course, what exactly is to be put up is another matter.)
This reminds me of another powerful writer-speaker, President Vaclav Havel. Havel is the other president in my lifetime that I have deeply admired. Both he and Obama are wonderful writers and principled politicians, both have been criticized for the distance between their rhetorical talents and their effectiveness in realizing their principles.
Agreeing with the criticisms of Havel, I sometimes joke about my developing assessment of him. I first knew about Vaclav Havel as a bohemian, as a very interesting absurdist playwright. I wrote my dissertation about Polish theater when this was still his primary occupation, and I avidly read his work then as I tried to understand why theater played such an important role in the opposition to Communism in Central Europe.
I then came to know him as one of the greatest political essayists and dissidents of the twentieth century. At the theoretical core of two of my books, Beyond Glasnost: The Post Totalitarian Mind and The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times are the ideas to be found in Havel’s greatest essay, “The Power of the Powerless.”
However, as president, Havel was not so accomplished. He presided over the breakup of Czechoslovakia, a development he opposed passionately, but ineffectually. He sometimes seemed to think that he could right a political problem by writing a telling . . .
Read more: Reflections on President Obama’s Speech on the Middle East and North Africa
By Gary Alan Fine, May 18th, 2011 
All influential politicians attract rumors. Like tar babies, no matter how much denied or improbable, sticky rumors do not disappear if they capture something defining about their target. They are too good to be false. For several weeks before our consumption of all things bin Laden, Americans speculated on the meaning and significance of President-elect Barack Obama’s birth certificate. There was never much evidence to suggest that the president was born outside of the United States, but it had a certain cultural cachet. Even if the rumor was not explicitly racist, Obama with a Kenyan father, schooling at a Muslim school (although not a madrassa) in Indonesia, and a globalist political stance could be seen as extra-American. The birther rumor had a political logic, even if the facts were against it.
However, Obama is not the only politician to have to confront a rumor that skips lightly over the truth but that addresses public concern, allowing us to use beliefs to reveal our hidden attitudes. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (and my former Congressperson) has announced that he will be running for Obama’s job. He would like to be discussing policy positions, but to many Americans he also brings a character deficit. To be sure, those who hold most strongly to this belief are not likely to be in the Newt camp, but the same could be said of the birthers and the president.
Gingrich is currently allied with a third wife. He is a serial adulterer, not necessarily a disqualifying trait for father of his country. However, in Newt-world the juicy rumor involves his first wife, his former high school geometry teacher whom he wed at 19. The rumor is that when his first wife was dying of cancer, Gingrich popped up cheerily and cheekily in her hospital room to ask for a divorce (perhaps he felt that she was “a little square” [I couldn’t resist a little geometric humor!]). The story, in the way it has been told, has flaws and holes. It lacks a birth certificate, but it does have legs. A quick Google search reveals that the story is all over the Internet.
. . .
Read more: Newt Gingrich and the Politics of Rumor
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