How to ruin a pleasant Sunday morning...

Yesterday I read loonybird William Kristol's column in the Washington Post Outlook section. Seriously, who would the Post need to "balance" their page against this proponent of the capitalist police state? Maybe Hardt and Negri or Fredric Jameson? Fat chance of that every happening.

Kristol's paean to Bush has the unbelievable title of "Why Bush Will Be a Winner," which should be clue #1 that we are nowhere in the land of reality but rather have moved to Cloud Cuckooland with the neocons...where the "free" market fixes everything and all you have to do is explain to the benighted masses democracy at the end of a gun barrel and -- voila! -- you have tiny little idealistic Americas everywhere.

To understand just how out of touch Kristol is, you have to look at the contortions he makes to avoid telling the truth about Bush's failed Presidency:

What about terrorism? Apart from Iraq, there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001. So Bush and Vice President Cheney probably are doing some important things right. The war in Afghanistan has gone reasonably well.

Oh, yeah, "apart from Iraq." Yes, apart from the biggest blunder any President has made since Johnson trumped up the Gulf of Tonkin incident, terrorism is down. And if I discount all the miserably decrepit falling down, understaffed, failing schools in DC, DC has a top-notch school system. And what "experts" could Kristol be talking about? His own cadre of neo-imperialists, who jumped on 9-11 as an excuse to go after anyone they felt didn't toe the American line and attempted to relabel anyone operating outside the law as a terrorist (remember how people who smoked marijuana were really just terrorist sympathizers), most likely. So sure, I suppose if you count Kristol's cabal of reality-deniers as experts, you can easily arrive at the conclusion that Bush's crackdown on U.S. citizens' Constitutional rights has been an overwhelming success. And then he dares talk about the war in Afghanistan (remember that sidelight? the most notable thing to come out of that war has been the ongoing revelations of the government's cover-up of the Pat Tillman death.) as going "reasonably well." What the hell? In Afghanistan we have a pro-US government that nearly everyone sees as a puppet government with a head of state who can't venture outside a small section of Kabul without risking death from one of several tribal or religious factions around the country. I suppose if you compare it to Iraq, it is going "reasonably well." But I forgot: Kristol's trying to leave Iraq to the side...

Except he doesn't. He comes around in the end to argue that Bush's policies are finally leading the way to victory in Iraq (oooo...and what if we hadn't gone in....well Saddam would still be in charge...and then it becomes a playground of speculative bullshit that even Kristol has to admit is, well, speculative bullshit), yet he makes assertions that are so far removed from reality that you almost think you're reading The Onion. Except The Onion is funny. Just read these choice paragraphs to get a sense of how he's lost his:

With the new counterinsurgency strategy announced on Jan. 10, backed up by the troop "surge," I think the odds are finally better than 50-50 that we will prevail. We are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias and we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population.

If we sustain the surge for a year and continue to train Iraqi troops effectively, we can probably begin to draw down in mid- to late 2008. The fact is that military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected, and political progress is beginning to follow.

Where do you even begin with this lunacy? Outside the Kool-Aid drinking Bush administration lackeys, no one believes the surge has made any sort of impact on the situation in Iraq. Does he think the same people who read his column are somehow turning blind eyes to the news coming out of Iraq (another 80+ killed in car bombings today...despite Kristol's smug assertions). But I hope you also noticed his little hedge about beginning a drawdown in 2008, which just happens to be the time period that opponents of the Bush strategy are talking about drawdown. Kristol's strategy, now as always, is to tell the Big Lie but leave yourself an out.

Remember that it's bitter, blinder-addled, malicious old men like Kristol who are making the noises that this administration hears.

So a short time ago I managed to see both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (closes July 22) and Hamlet (closes July 29) in the same week. The former is playing at the Studio Theatre and the latter at the Shakespeare Theatre. While I'd seen Hamlet staged before, I had never seen Stoppard's play staged before. I'm glad we saw the Stoppard before the Shakespeare, because the Shakespeare Theatre production made a few allusions to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that would have passed right over my head, such as the coin flips executed incessantly in Stoppard's play.

It was also fun to see the central action of Hamlet pressed to the margins so the side characters and minor subplots could come out. At the Studio, the actor playing Hamlet put on a little campiness (not in a bad way) when he delivered one of Hamlet's leading and laden speeches to Polonius, and Floyd King's turn as the debauched Player is tremendous. The leads are both great, and I can only imagine how exhausting that play must be for the two of them, as they are both on stage nearly the entire time (really...the entire time, with one or two breaks that might be long enough to catch their breath).

Seriously, go see it.

The interesting thing to me about Shakespeare Theatre's production of Hamlet is that I last saw them produce Hamlet with Wallace Acton in the lead, and if you've ever seen Wallace Acton in a leading role, you tend to think he's the perfect actor for the part. He did an amazing Ariel in The Tempest several years ago, and a chilling Richard III (the most recent Shakespeare Theatre production of Richard III was so dead to me that my wife and I actually walked out of the theatre at intermission, and we've never done that before, even when she was ill with the inappropriately named "morning sickness" before our son was born), but sadly Wallace Acton is no longer in Washington, having deserted our little backwater for the bright lights of New York City.

So I was worried that I wouldn't find this Hamlet so very good in Hamlet. Not true, not true. Jeffrey Carlson's Hamlet comes across as far more disturbed than Acton's portrayal, and while Acton's Hamlet emphasized the calculating side of the Prince with occasional bursts of mania, Carlson plays the mania up with occasional bursts of calculation. It's a powerful performance, which is good, since the play is over three hours long. Michelle Beck's Ophelia is very good and in my mind highlights a recent trend at the Shakespeare Theatre: good actresses playing very solid roles with more depth than in the past. This production also brings forth the sexual interactions between the King and Queen, with one scene making it quite obvious that the two have been interrupted in the midst of lovemaking...ewww is pretty much what I thought.

Let me tell you, it's a busy month for theatre as far as I'm concerned. This weekend we're hitting the Imagination Stage production of The Araboolies of Liberty Street and then Arena Stage's EMERGENCE-See.

I can't believe I finished another book...

I just finished Continental Drift by Russell Banks. It's pretty amazing storytelling, although I'm not sure I really find the ending all that plausible. Of course, whenever I think that to myself I go back and think about how much I really really enjoy reading Faulkner, despite the relative implausibility of many of his situations (Light in August anyone?). So it isn't really that it's improbable; it's more a question of how we get from point A to point B, and I know the character was seeking atonement, but I'm not clear that point B really was the proper destination. Or better: point B may have been the proper destination but we simply hadn't arrived yet.

Banks is brilliant at evoking the competing emotions and external forces that make our lives not our own, even while giving his characters the dignity and power of making whatever choices they can to make their lives their own. As Marx argues, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." So Bob Dubois, a New Englander transplanted to Florida, finds himself caught up in a few dead end jobs, the effects of a pervasively racist society, and the difference between commitment and desire. In the novel's other storyline, Vanise Dorsinville, a Haitian refugee, finds herself, through a relative's almost trivial transgression, thrown into a chain of events that leads her through servitude, rape, and murder to Miami's Little Haiti.

Among the most disturbing aspects of the story is how little will Vanise seems to exhibit: she more or less accepts the fate supplied to her, as if she were an object that only moved when an outside force moved it, which in this case is often her nephew, Claude (whose transgression -- stealing a ham from a wrecked truck -- started their flight in motion). Her situation is harrowing, and Banks' point is well-taken: when you have nothing else to trade, your body is your sole commodity.

Bob learns as well that he has little to offer outside his own (laboring) body, first as a heating oil company repairman, then as a liquor store manager, and finally as a captain who leads recreational fishing tours on someone else's boat. He's made bad decisions by putting his faith in the promises of family and friends, and by the time he and Vanise's stories intersect, he has sacrificed his principles in a last hope to get his head above water.

The story has resonance with John Dos Passos's colossal USA Trilogy, especially the final book, The Big Money, where the characters lose their ways in pursuit of quick riches and power. It's an apt pairing, because both Banks and Dos Passos have been excellent chroniclers of the dreams and disasters of American life.

For my next book, I'm turning to the very recent The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu. It was published this year and it's set in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC, and serves as both a chronicle of the immigrant experience and a tale of gentrification.

Some careers are more exciting than others...

So I was back in my hometown last weekend for my brother's wedding, and a good time it was. During one of my many errands during those busy few days, I chanced upon this billboard in two separate locations. I took a really crappy picture of it, but I think it's clear enough for the disturbing aspects to come through:



Note that the gentleman who posed for this picture is holding a billyclub or nightstick or control bar or whatever the technical term is that cops use for the club they use. What isn't so evident from the poor photo I took is that the gentleman is also sporting a really cheesy moustache, the sort that some teenagers grow in high school.

So what's the excitement the advertisers allude to? Is it beating drunks over the head? Holding a prisoner up against the wall with your nightstick? Hmm. It may be time to think of Barthes' Mythologies to delve deeper into this mystery.

Meanwhile, across the pond...

Jonathan Jones, the Guardian's art critic, has a damning piece on British graffiti artist "Banksy," someone whose career I've followed for a few years, at first because I thought it was hilarious that he would sneak into major galleries and hang his own artwork there. More recently, I took a bit more interest in his exterior stencil work when the whole "Borf" phenomenon was happening around DC.

You remember Borf, don't you? He had a few mildly amusing stencils (more amusing for their location than anything else), but overall he was just scrawling his name on whatever surface he could find. Post-conviction, a group of people who badly need to have their own homes vandalized claimed that "Borf" was not an individual, but rather a collective or possibly a movement, and mounted an art show under the moniker of the "Borf Brigade."

Well, Borf is a pale imitation of Banksy. And when I say imitation, I should probably say that the only similarity is that they both employ stencils in their works.

Jones, apparently blind to the fact that most of the art world's history is full of mavericks who are rejected by the establishment (hello: Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain") believes that Banksy's work is nothing more than a visual gag, something that "If he had gone to college, he might be making good money in advertising by now." Meow.

Perhaps Jones is right. Perhaps Banksy is a passing fad, but I have deep doubts about the opinion of anyone who cites Cy Twombly in a positive manner.

Here's an example of Banksy's work:

For some reason Banksy's site is not loading properly, so I couldn't get a picture of some of his gallery hangings, but I'm putting my money on Banksy being more like the Dadaists, the Fauvists, and the Pop Artists than a passing fancy.

I fought the law and I won...I am the law so I won.

The beauty of being a criminal in a well-organized criminal syndicate is that you know you're protected by the people above you. Sure, they might hang you out there to take a rap or two, but they'll do what they can to make sure you're not too put upon and that you're justly rewarded for your sacrifice to the family.

And so, Scooter Libby avoided jail time when the titular head of the executive branch exercised his Constitutional right to pardon or commute convicted criminals. Every President does it, although generally not in such an obviously partisan and blatantly uncalled for way. Usually a President waits until the end of his term before turning to the business of pardons, and then the pardons are doled out to relatively obscure figures, perhaps tertiary attractions to the main show, but Bush went straight to the payback for Libby sitting there and taking it on the chin for the most corrupt administration since Richard Nixon's.

Speaking of which, the Libby commutation is perhaps even filthier than Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon for "any crimes he may have committed against the United States while President" -- about as broad a whitewashing as you can imagine.

Bonus points for anyone who can identify the origin of my post's title.

Lies Lies and More Lies. And what does it matter?

Let's try to be serious for a moment. Let's try to suspend all our fantasies, our assurances that despite all odds, it really is the 70 to 1 longshot that will win the Derby, that in fact one lone veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder could take on and defeat the entire Vietnamese Army, that we really could escape from certain death by building a jetpack from a filed-down bicycle frame, two rubber bands, and an empty tin of Port Cliff Fish Steaks...

Let's try to pretend that we still think logically.

Here's the situation. Your local mayor (remember, this is hypothetical: it could be any mayor) has requested control of the school district, and to advance his cause he hires someone to write a comprehensive strategy for the his school reform plan. Unfortunately, that person steals nearly one-third of the final plan from another school district, an act that in education circles is referred to as "plagiarism" and generally warrants a failing grade for the offender (in this case the miscreant has not only not been punished, but also he's not even interested in explaining himself).

Just pretend something that crazy happened. Then pretend that despite this early signal that the mayor was not exactly capable of overseeing such a complex operation as a real school system if he couldn't even get together a good original one on paper, the city council approves the takeover.

I know, I know. Just pretend.

Now suppose then that the mayor, having been granted power over the schools, makes a midnight appointment without consulting a panel that was to be able to give feedback on the nomination -- in violation of the specific directives of the School Takeover Act that he championed -- and that the nominee was a former classroom teacher with three years experience in the classroom and about a decade's experience as a headhunter...you'd think he was joking.

But remember...we're still in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe...so let's say everyone takes him seriously and the city council decides to hold confirmation hearings.

Then it comes out that some very very specific accomplishments listed on the nominee's resume can't be substantiated. We're not talking about whether the sun was shining on a particular day or whether she took five or six steps to reach the refrigerator from the dining room...no, we're talking about percentile numbers on student achievement tests. It sounds ludicrous, doesn't it, to make claims about something that is so concrete, so specific. Yet here we are.

Apparently, Michelle Rhee, trying to make the most of her scant three years inside a classroom, claimed on her resume that she had made remarkable improvements in the students' test scores in Baltimore. However, she didn't simply claim that the scores improved; she gave very specific numbers, as the Post story tells us:

Rhee's résumé asserts that the students made a dramatic gain: "Over a two-year period, moved students scoring on average at the 13th percentile on national standardized tests to 90 percent of students scoring at the 90th percentile or
higher."

OK. Those numbers have to come from somewhere, right? I mean, unless you're just making them up. I mean, test scores are things that school districts document, prospective parents and teachers research, and government bodies tend to track (even before the days of NCLB). Yet, Rhee either thinks we're really stupid or she quite honestly just "guessed" that her student's improved so dramatically:

"When people say, 'Do you have documentation?', I've been saying no," Rhee said yesterday. "I think this is an important thing going forward for teachers to have documents to say, 'This is what the data look like.' My lesson is: How do we set up a system so teachers can have this kind of information on their students?"

Say what? You have absolutely no evidence for a major claim on your resume, the one experience you have in direct classroom instruction, and you think the lesson is that teacher's need to have documentation? How about, "the lesson is I shouldn't lie on my resume"? Because I have news for Rhee: teachers do have that kind of information on their students, at least in DCPS, because the good ones use it to target instruction. They've had that data on my child in every teacher conference I've ever attended. So if the lesson Michelle Rhee takes from her false statements is that we need to set up a system, then she's missed the boat before she's even begun. The system is already there, and I'm not clear on how lying on your resume is related to creating another system for making teachers aware of their students' progress.

I have no faith in the DC City Council to do the right thing -- they are a pathetic lot who have almost no political backbone and their major interest lies in posturing and preening -- but what makes this entire episode so upsetting to me is that the mayor's grand plan, his revolution in education, is looking more and more like the same politics as usual.

Maybe multiple instances of dishonesty from those who would be leaders of this new education experiment inspire the faith of the Council, but not me.