Virginia Postrel and her collaborators’ new blog is now live for real. Interestingly, if not surprisingly, they chose a purple color scheme. (I wonder what cemented purple in the imaginations of so many world cultures as the color of royal exclusivity and aspiration.) For some reason, the blog reminded me of this Kylie video:

The video isn’t dominated by purple–though it is shocking pink + blue, so it’s one shade of purple split into its components. But it does have a female aviator suspended in glamourous unattainability, and it has dreamy wisps of smoke in the external shots of the spaceship. And it’s an excuse to post about Kylie, which I can never resist anyway.

Time to leave for dinner, but I can’t let the day go by without saying…

Happy birthday, Madge. You drive us all bonkers, but we still love you anyway.

Madonna’s frequently been dismissed as someone who couldn’t have gotten attention without frantically courting controversy, but many of her best songs have actually been unassuming and warmly casual.

I’m such a fag I still listen to the Who’s That Girl? soundtrack:

There was more to American Life than goofy rhymes about Pilates and hotties:

Romeo and Juliet / They never felt this way, I bet:

And if I were exiled to a desert island and only allowed one pop song, it would be…

Virginia Postrel has started a new blog about glamour, in cooperation with L.A.-based journalist Kate Coe. Virginia has an excerpt from her forthcoming book in the first post.

Title reference:

So I was waiting for the train and saw on the BBC that Olympics fans the world over had apparently gotten themselves Ashlee Simpsoned by the PRC:

A pretty girl who won national fame after singing at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was only miming.

Wearing a red dress and pigtails, Lin Miaoke charmed a worldwide audience with a rendition of “Ode to the Motherland”.

But the singer was Yang Peiyi, who was not allowed to appear because she is not as “flawless” as nine-year-old Lin.

*******

This is the second “fake” story about the opening ceremony

Viewers around the world saw a display in which 29 firework “footprints” travelled across Beijing from south to north.

But a senior official from the Beijing organising committee (Bocog) confirmed on Tuesday that footage of the display had been produced before the big night.

This was provided to broadcasters for “convenience and theatrical effects”, according to Wang Wei, Bocog’s executive vice-president.

“Because of poor visibility, some previously recorded footage may have been used,” he told a daily press conference.

I realize that the birthrate in China is not what it once was, but could a country with 1.3 billion people seriously not find a little girl with both a world-captivating voice and teeth that exceeded bureaucratic standards?

9 August is now over in Japan; mayor of Nagasaki Tomihisa Taue gave the expected speech on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing:

This year is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dr. Takashi Nagai, a physician who dedicated himself to caring for victims of the bombing. Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue cited Nagai’s words in his peace address: “In war there is neither victory nor defeat. What there is is only destruction.” He also addressed the world: “Without the abolition of nuclear weapons, there is no future for humankind.” As he did last year, he sought from the Japanese government leadership toward the abolition of nuclear weapons and the codification in law of the three principles of non-nuclearization.

The three principles are that Japan will not (1) possess, (2) create, or (3) import nuclear armaments.

I know I harp on this every year, but the fact–in this case as in so many others–is that suffering does not necessarily confer wisdom. The image of Japanese people as innocent burn victims and saintly doctors running about trying to alleviate suffering is not inaccurate in and of itself, but it does lack context. By the time of the Nagasaki bombing, the Japanese Empire had executed its plan of overrunning as much of East and Southeast Asia as it could get its hands on, figuring that if and when it lost the war, it could expect to bargain to retain at least some of its occupied territories. It rejected the Potsdam Declaration, even when it was clear that it could not possibly win the Pacific War. It tried to see whether it could leverage itself a more advantageous deal by approaching Moscow. It balked at surrendering even after the Hiroshima bombing. The suicidal belligerence of the Japanese in combat was well known, as was their egregious treatment of conquered peoples and prisoners of war, so a ground invasion promised to expend even more men and resources on a war that the Japanese knew they had already lost. Japan in 1945 was an extremely tenacious enemy that warranted an extreme response; that it is now peaceably integrated into the world economy as an industrial and consumer powerhouse does not change that.

Added on 11 August: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse posted yesterday at Pajamas Media:

The stories of survivors are harrowing — flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.

But once –just once– I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.

Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps — surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.

While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.

Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.

Yes. He also has much more background about the decision to use the atom bombs.

My, reporters can be uncritical. The Asahi reports that this year, the mayor of Nagasaki will cite the opinions of prominent Americans in calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons:

In calling for peace at the memorial ceremony, Taue will discuss proposals by Kissinger and three other key U.S. figures who, concerned by nuclear proliferation, have done an about-turn and called for the abolition of the (world’s) “deadliest weapons.”

“In the United States, the largest nuclear power, those who formerly led nuclear policies are speaking out (against such weapons),” Taue says. “I have decided to take it up so I can more strongly appeal to the United States for what Nagasaki has long sought.”

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world’s only cities to experience atomic bombing, are trying to press the nuclear powers more aggressively for action to eliminate their arsenals.

Okay, fine. But then there’s this:

The Bush administration has refused to ratify the CTBT.

But the two men vying to replace him have both made clear they have different goals.

“We’ll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy,” Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said July 16.

Earlier on May 27, Republican Sen. John McCain said former President Ronald Reagan’s dream of seeing nuclear weapons banished from the Earth “is my dream, too.”

You remember Ronald Reagan, right? He helped hasten the collapse of the U.S.S.R. by dramatically cutting back the U.S. defense program.

I mean, yeah, sure, a world without nuclear weapons was Reagan’s dream. I’m sure it’s McCain’s. It’s mine, too. We all have plenty of dreams. But reality is where we live, and the McCain speech referred to by the Asahi reporters does not indicate that the mayors can expect much from him:

Our highest priority must be to reduce the danger that nuclear weapons will ever be used. Such weapons, while still important to deter an attack with weapons of mass destruction against us and our allies, represent the most abhorrent and indiscriminate form of warfare known to man. We do, quite literally, possess the means to destroy all of mankind. We must seek to do all we can to ensure that nuclear weapons will never again be used.

While working closely with allies who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security, I would ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to engage in a comprehensive review of all aspects of our nuclear strategy and policy. I would keep an open mind on all responsible proposals. At the same time, we must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies. But I will seek to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal to the lowest number possible consistent with our security requirements and global commitments. Today we deploy thousands of nuclear warheads. It is my hope to move as rapidly as possible to a significantly smaller force.

I’m sure Obama recognizes this, too, BTW–I’m just not focusing on him because no one tried to demonstrate that he was a nuclear abolitionist by comparing him with Ronald Reagan. Sheesh.

The fact is that nuclear weapons now exist, and we need to maintain them as one of our options in case we again encounter an enemy that’s like, well, the Japanese Empire.

Yes, Japan knew that it could no longer win the war by August; but it had flouted the Potsdam Declaration and continued to figure that, if it held out, it would be allowed to retain some of the territories it occupied (and perhaps avoid being occupied itself). Who knows how many more Allied personnel would have died if it had come down to a ground invasion? Japan is now a peaceable society; back then it was not.

The anniversaries are a good opportunity to think about the unprecedented destruction the bombings caused and the agonizing ethical and moral decisions that led up to them. Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered horribly–but that doesn’t make Japan the victim in the war; nor does it make complete nuclear disarmament practicable.

Interesting news in the case of the tainted gyoza:

An unknown number of Chinese suffered serious pesticide poisoning in mid-June after eating frozen gyoza dumplings made by a Chinese firm that recalled the products after identical cases were reported in Japan earlier this year, according to sources.

Chinese authorities have determined that methamidophos in the gyoza, produced by Tianyang Food, based in Hebei Province, was the source of the poisonings, which matched those in Japan.

With the likelihood the gyoza were contaminated in China having increased, Chinese investigators are expected to step up efforts once more to determine whether the poisonings were deliberate or accidental. According to the sources, it is unknown how many people were poisoned in China, their exact symptoms, or why products that had already been recalled were marketed again. They said the distribution route of the gyoza also was unclear.

It had been starting to look as if the gyoza in Japan may have been tampered with, most likely to make Chinese food processors look bad. The poisonings are not, of course, being reported widely in China.

Connie writes about something that gets on my nerves something fierce:

You see, I don’t want a leader in a president. I don’t want someone to shore up my resolve or reduce my fears and anxiety. I don’t want someone to remind me that patriotism (not nationalism) is a good thing, regardless of what country you’re proud to be part of. I know that Capitalism is better than Communism or Socialism. I know that more freedom is better than no freedom. A president is not a civics teacher.

I don’t want a great communicator. I want an efficient, quiet, and capable representative who leaves me (and everyone else) alone to be captains of our own industry and champions of our own causes, and responsible for our own resolve shoring up. I don’t believe that government should intrude in the psycho-babble of message-sending that we’re all good and capable, or engage in a never-ending marketing campaign of which program is better than that program. I know that and what really scares me, frightens me, and gives me nothing but anxiety is when people want a person to act as a kind of spiritual leader and mentor…in our government.

That’s OUR job!

I’m slightly less nettled than Connie is, I think, at the president’s explaining his reasoning behind a given policy in order to help get the people to back it. He may be basing his decisions on previously unreleased intelligence reports, or he may be pursuing a policy I support but would have justified differently. But she’s right that things get way out of hand when the president makes like one of the guest experts on Oprah–twinkling with telegenic goodwill, explaining things in very easy words and memorable little turns of phrase, and using plenty of pauses so we can keep up–all to ensure we’ll be comfy with what he thinks is best for the nationwide family.

Connie is writing about Reagan, and I think the point is fair to apply to him. I have to say, though, that I’m not sure he himself wanted to stoke people’s idolatrous fervor. Obama, who’s the obvious politician to view through this lens in our current context, does strike me as getting off on being idolized; but even if he didn’t, it would behove his more intemperate fans to get a grip on themselves.

Politics is a business that involves deal-making, prioritizing, and compromise on principles that affect millions of people. It’s possible to distinguish more principled from less principled politicians, of course; but lionizing someone who will have to start getting his hands dirty the moment he actually assumes the job you want to elect him to is a set-up for guaranteed heartache. If you feel spiritually empty, go to church–or if you’d then be embarrassed to tell your Sunday brunch companions where you’d spent your morning, become a Buddhist. Or delve into ancient literature. Or move to a farm and busy yourself as a faux-earthy faux-peasant extolling the faux-simple life. Or satisfy your impulse toward worship by falling promiscuously in love with movie or rock stars. Do anything except project your spiritual yearnings onto politicians, who are exactly the wrong people to give performance assessments based on vague, emotion-based criteria.

Added on 6 August: How could I have missed an excuse to post the video?

See? These are the things you’re supposed to swoon over: bubble baths, satin against the skin, and champagne. Politicians, not so much.

It’s already 6 August in Japan; that makes it the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. One Japanese man thinks the Germans are insufficiently aware of how awful the U.S. was to Japan at the end of the war. No, really:

Before the anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, Japanese former president of a company, now residing in Hamburg, Shigemi Kawakatsu (79) completed the manuscript of a book that includes the German translation of his friends’ accounts of their experience of the bombing and a compilation of the bombing victims’ drawings. The book is called The Hell of Atomic Bombing: Sketches of Hell by Those Who Are Living Proof of the Hiroshima A-Bombing; Tracing the Fates of the Bombing Victims (A4; 200 pp).

…

“I want to sear the hell of the atomic bombings into the reader’s vision,” [Kawakatsu said, explaining why] he incorporated approximately two hundred drawings of the bombing made by citizens and preserved in the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. The poet Sankichi Tooge’s piece about the bombing is also included. Kawakatsu said, “The sensitivities of the Germans are similar to those of the Japanese. They are sure to understand the cruelty of the bombing.”

Kawakatsu was motivated by a close friend, a bombing survivor who didn’t write about his experiences until a few years ago:

Kawakatsu put himself into [his friend] Okada’s place, translating how the black ran fell on him as he fled from the violent fires, how he saw people drifting around like ghosts crying out, “Water…water,” and how he collapsed from exhaustion and slept among charred corpses.

The accounts of the atomic bombings are, indeed, horrific; but I fail to be convinced that the lesson to be drawn from them is that the Germans and Japanese should feel a heightened sense of kinship over their shared suffering. In this context, a sentence like “The sensitivities of the Germans are similar to those of the Japanese” strikes me as chilling rather than touching. No one expects Japan (or Germany) to spend the rest of civilized eternity groveling for forgiveness because of the war; but it does seem reasonable to expect it not to strike a flat, uncomplicated victim pose. Kawakatsu is not some kind of official spokesperson for Japan–I realize that–but his attitude is, in many ways, representative. How often do you hear Japanese people who undertake war-related documentary projects of this magnitude publicly expressing the hope that Unit 731 or the Nanking Massacre will never be repeated?

Added on 11 August: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse posted yesterday at Pajamas Media:

The stories of survivors are harrowing — flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.

But once –just once– I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.

Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps — surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.

While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.

Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.

I already linked Moran’s piece on another post, but because a lot of the people who land here come through searches about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the Tokyo firebombings, I think it’s important to have it available here, too.

My friend Maria asked me a few weeks ago–all right, maybe it’s a few months ago by this point–to explain why I was against electing Obama president. Since she just posted a comment to a post I made the other day and raised several points I think need to be considered, I’ll respond here. Maria wrote the following:

As an Obama supporter, I don’t take it as a “given” that Obama can change Washington. I like his tagline. I like it because it’s true, and those of us who have had enough of Cheney and Bush with their arrogant blatant disregard for the rule of law–trampling on the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions–do need to be reminded of the power we have every four years. Four years ago when Bush was “re”-elected, if I would have had the nest egg necessary, I would have been “outta here.” (Canada, Costa Rica…) I had serious doubts about our country lasting another four years. I thought I would get out before the flames of Rome engulfed me… And, now we have the chance to take our back our country, reinstate the Constitution, restore our reputation, etc., etc. I know you don’t share my thoughts, Sean. I’m just sharing a little bit of why it’s good that Obama is calling us to a larger service rather than just saying he is the answer to everything. He is just one man. But, look out, Sean, there’s a whole lot more of us… 😉

A lot more of whom? This is what I don’t get. I don’t really mean to single out Maria–since what she’s saying is no different from what I’ve been hearing in New York since returning home–but what political principles are we using to justify the idea that Obama would make a good president? If people like his policies, fine. Expecting “change,” though? This is a man who decided to decamp from law school to a city that has possibly the most famously corrupt political machine in America; he’s clearly flourished there. And we believe he’s going to change things in Washington?

The Obama supporters I encounter are full of enthusiasm for the ends he’ll supposedly accomplish. They’re a bit less clear on how he’ll do it–and no wonder.

The “restore our reputation” line really tends to set me off, so I’ll tackle it first. Most people dithering about our rep “abroad” are really worried about Western Europe. Yeah, occasionally, the head of state of Brazil or Malaysia will get off a zinger about Bush or “consumerism” and be quoted a lot for a few days; but the countries people consistently express anxiety about by name tend to be the U.K., Germany, France, and sometimes the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. (Everyone else in the “global community” usually gets dumped into some broader category such as “the Arab street” or “Latin America.”)

The states of Western Europe are our allies and trading partners, and it’s reasonable for them to ask us to consider their interests when we’re hammering out our geopolitical strategies. Fine. But sitting still while European officials sermonize at us about harmony among peoples? Give me a break. The idea that we should be humoring them, much less yielding to them, is preposterous. Europeans have been waging war on one another for centuries; World Wars I and II were egregious in their scope and bloodiness, but they were hardly out of character. During World War II, most of Western Europe that wasn’t run by the Nazis themselves was run by fascist buddies of the Nazis, Vichy collaborators with the Nazis, or enthusiastic fillers of orders for the Nazis. After being liberated by the Allies, then being put under our defense umbrella when the Soviet Union started getting expansionist, Western Europe soothed its stinging humiliation by repackaging itself as a champion, jointly and singly, of non-violent conflict resolution.

So how’s that working out? Not too badly, in many ways. The European Union makes us Yanks snigger with its bureaucratic antics, but it has, in fact, helped to cement the sorts of economic ties that make aggression less likely. Modern nations such as Germany and even Belgium seem unlikely to splinter, depsite comprising multiple states with individual histories and cultural identities. Fine. But European societies are having much less integrating the Turks, North Africans, and South Asians who’ve poured in over the last few decades. Violence against Jews has increased.

American internal and external race relations are not perfect, certainly, but that doesn’t mean we have anything helpful to learn from Europe about how to improve them. About engineering, art and architecture, and making good coffee, yes, but not about ethic harmony. And if that weren’t enough of a reason not to suck up to Europe, there’s also the fact that it won’t work. Anti-Americanism did not start with the Bush administration, regardless of what those with selective amnesia may maintain, and the election of Obama would put paid to only its most superficial manifestations.

The rest gets me exercised less than it makes me shrug. I’m aware that a lot of people think the Bush administration is populated by nasty, nasty, NASTY people–but we’ve had a Democratic majority in both houses of congress since last midterm election, so talk about the need to “take back our country” seems just a bit excessive. The need to “reinstate the Constitution” sounds rousing, but it means different things to, say, anti-war leftists thinking about the Patriot Act and strict-constructionist conservatives thinking about the U.S. Supreme Court. Besides which, all this is assuming that Obama never has to make hard choices after another terrorist attack or other major crisis. Obama is very like Clinton: he’s good at winning people over with his feel-good domestic policy bromides, but many suspect he’s not man enough to be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he knows it. The Clinton administration overcompensated time and again. Would Obama? It’s impossible to predict. But he has no military or foreign policy background, and while he’s adjusting shrewdly as he goes, I’m not sure I want to see what happens when he gives it the old college try during an emergency while simultaneously laboring to prove he can get tough.