"Avatar" and the White Messiah complex

Haven't had a chance to see "Avatar" yet, a fact partly explained by snow storms and cataract surgery. Both at the same time can complicate your life. I have been reminded of the fact that Carmen really doesn't like winter on a mountaintop. Anyway, we have not been able to see the movie, though I, Carmen, Maire, Murty, and young Clovis all intend to see it soon when the weather lets up (say, April).

We are all agreed that we want to see it mainly for the stunning visual effect due to the new technology involved. None of us have heard anything good about the plot, dialogue, etc. But David Brooks offers his own commentary on the movie as a story, or myth, involving the ubiquitous "White Messiah."

This is the oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wilderness in search of thrills and profit. But, once there, he meets the native people and finds that they are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a righteous crusade against his own rotten civilization.

He then goes on to recount most of the action in "Avatar," making it sound slightly foolish and naive. Not to mention a bit racist.

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

It’s just escapism, obviously, but benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind — even when you surround it with pop-up ferns and floating mountains

Now when we actually see the movie I will write my own reaction to it. For the moment I will just say that I never thought illiteracy was a path to grace. But then, I was a Federal bureaucrat once.

but I got out after 10 months


UPDATE: Please see the comments. A reader thinks that Brooks is deriving much of his idea from this article from "Racism Review". He has a point. Check it out. If a student did this I would gig him not for plagiarism but for failure to cite the source of his inspiration.

The election before the election

There is always an election before the election and it is about money. Cold hard cash. Who has it and who is going to get it. If the money bags don't back you, forget it. Which is why this news is interesting. I am not smart enough to know if it is really a problem, or just wishful thinking on the part of The Washington Monthly. But, in politics as in every other endeavor, follow the money

As a rule, the RNC and DNC spend the year before an election retiring their debts and filling their coffers. In 2009, however, the RNC's finances got worse -- Steele started with $22.8 million in cash, and about a year later, has $8.7 million. The difference was the RNC's investments in the off-year elections, most notably New Jersey's and Virginia's gubernatorial races.

The investments paid some dividends -- Republicans lost all five of 2009's congressional special elections, though they won both gubernatorial campaigns -- but the RNC nevertheless spent more than $90 million in an off-year and doesn't start 2010 on the right financial footing.

Anyone out there with an opinion?

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Foxx News: We report, you decide

That lovable old scamp, Virginia Foxx, is once again in the news and making Tarheels everywhere proud*. From the Washington Monthly:

* Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who appears to be stark raving mad, told a conservative talk-radio show yesterday that President Obama has "not kept a single promise to the American people.... All the promises he's kept are the ones that endanger our lives."

UPDATE:
A commenter on that item about VF who IS, in fact, as near as I can tell, BSFC, says this: "To imagine Foxx as a former teacher makes another one cringe. It's impossible to imagine her treating all students fairly." She used to teach at dear old Appstate. They canned her, which explains why as a state rep she did NOTHING to support the institution. I won't comment on any of the stories I have heard about her since I can't verify them, but I can say that everyone I knw at school who ever knew her loathes her. And not just for her political career.

*For the record, I am a Virginian

Andalucian Vampires, singing

As promised, here they are, "1800 los Inmortales," from their knock-em-dead performance at the Cadiz carnaval, singing a song of deep social and political importance. There is also a lot of talk about blood, as one might imagine.

Carmen showed this to me. She found it on youtube while searching for Spanish hymns for her church (she's the piano lady there). And this is what came up on her search. Weird, but oddly compelling.


and, a vampire wanna-be. on helium

The Future is here

When I was a kid I had dreams of space travel and reaching the stars. I even read If and Analog magazines of sci-fi. known in those quaint days as "Science Fiction." And not much respected, I must say.

I also remember watching a TV show called "Truth or Consequences." No, that wasn't the code name for a government interrogation program, but a quiz show. The little town of Hot Springs, NM, was so taken with their show that they changed their town's name to - Truth or Consequences, NM. I even remember that.

Now, a half century later, the ever outside-the-box residents have voted to raise their taxes for their share of a $225 million Spaceport America project scheduled to open in 2011. The first tenant will be Virgin Galactic.

The facility, to consist of hangars, a terminal and the runway, may garner additional tenants if commercial space travel proves popular. The project is under the jurisdiction of the Spaceport Commission, a state agency.

Now there is a job I want - spokesperson for the New Mexico Spaceport Commission.

Somewhere, Arthur C. Clarke is saying, "What took you chaps do long?"

our next episode of strange Sententiae posts will be brought to you by 19th Century Singing Vampires. Really.

Bankers: our best and brightest

I have been gratified to see the torrent of end of decade retrospectives, many from newspapers and magazines on the web, pointing out how awful the decade has been on the reputations of most of our institutions and their leaders. I've been harping on that for some time now. No body's rep survived the Double Zeros.

So let's look at bankers, the super remunerated captains of finance who were so brilliant they had to be paid ka-zillions or they would go work for someone else.

Right now they are racing to beat the clock before the new banking regulations go into effect so they can replace the $50 billion they will lose when certain business practices are banned. They intend to change their rules, charge new fess, and anything else they can think of. In many cases you will pay a fee for having a credit card and another fee for having a checking account. This must be true for I read it in the Wall Street Journal.

The interesting part of this article though is this:

The changes come against a backdrop of rising anger at the nation's banks—having been largely supported by hundreds of billions of public bailout dollars in late 2008 and 2009. One recent survey by Chicago's Bank Administration Institute found that 43% of retail-bank executives feel that consumer trust in banks has eroded in the past six months.

ONLY 43% of these guys think the public is losing faith in them!!!!. What's wrong with the other 57%? Delusional? Out of touch? Vacationing in the Tuva Republic?

Or are they simply the smart ones who figured that the public faith in banks had eroded as far as it could erode long ago?

Alexander Hamilton, the rap song

Years ago, when I taught at a little school called Hamline University, two of my students wandered into my office and performed a rap song about Augustus Caesar.

In that spirit, consider this: of all the weird, unlikely, complicated life stories of all the founding fathers of our nation, none was stranger than Alexander Hamilton's. Michael Lind once wrote a book insisting that Hamilton rather than the slave owner Jefferson should be our national hero.

So, to present this epic biography, Lin-Manuel.

what next? a musical about Evita Peron?

Americans, a British take

Now that we have looked at how English sounds to Italians, let's look at how Americans seem to the English.

Not so bad, actually. We are polite, friendly, and charming without seeming to be. At least if you believe Geoff Dyer in the book review section of the NY Times. Here's one of his observations about how Americans seem to be LOUD:

Granted, these visiting Americans often seem to have loud voices, but on closer examination, it’s a little subtler than that. Americans have no fear of being overheard. Civic life in Britain is predicated on the idea that everyone just about conceals his loathing of everyone else. To open your mouth is to risk offending someone. So we mutter and mumble as if surrounded by informers or, more exactly, as if they are living in our heads. In America the right to free speech is exercised freely and cordially. The basic assumption is that nothing you say will offend anyone else because, deep down, everyone is agreed on the premise that America is better than anyplace else. No such belief animates British life. On the contrary. A couple of years ago a survey indicated that British Muslims were the most fed-up of any in Europe: a sign, paradoxically, of profound assimilation.

Having been to England a couple of times I admit I see his point. So I will dedicate this post to my friend, English Will, who will not become an American citizen even after having lived here 20 years.

He says it's so he won't have to vote for the clowns we nominate in presidential races.

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The Workshops of Languages

Here is a strange little map showing the world with relative size based on how many languages the area has produced. Notice how big Papua New Guinea is: it has 800 languages, one spoken by 5 people. Presumably baring any deaths or births since the survey was made.

Learn all about its source, the Limits of Language here. And, from the Amazon readers' comments page, what author would not kill for a review like this:

I've never smoked crack, but reading this book approximates what I imagine it would feel like -- an initial rush of pure pleasure, followed by the irresistible craving for just one more bump, yielding to that craving over and over until - six hours later - you find yourself surrounded by cats not fed, laundry not done, unwashed dishes, unpaid bills, and yet you still can't stop yourself. You want more.

Actually, I WOULD kill for a review like that.

Esperanto and Zamenhof: Happy Birthday

Who, you may say. L. L. Zamenhof, aka Dr Esperanto, the man who invented the world's most successful artificial language. Well, maybe after Elvish and Klingon. His 150th birthday was 15 December. There is an excellent article about him and his language movement, which was for him much more than a language movement, here, by Esther Schor.

To Esperantists, the man who created the language-movement is a household god, a patron saint. As for non-Esperantists who are aware of Zamenhof, he’s too unthreatening nowadays to be derided as a quixotic dreamer. Most regard him with mild condescension as a MittelEuropean, Jewish Geppetto, hammering together his little toy language in the hope that it might someday become real.

But inside this Geppetto was not only the dream of a new language, but also of something far stranger and unimagined: a new people altogether, and neither the Jews nor the Esperantists were the people he envisioned. Project by project, credo by credo, member by member, he tried to build a new people, a Geppetto with the audacity of Frankenstein.

Esperanto, here, here, and, of course, here.

By the way, he was born in Bialystock, Poland.

Think Max Bialystock.

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Iranian math

According to a pro-regime newspaper, "a maximum of 5,000" mourners showed up for Ayatollah Montazeri's funeral.

This is what 5,000 people look like.


Montazeri was a brave, devout, Muslim, and as far as I can tell, a decent human being. Dead, he may overcome yet.