What if ...

"One of the hardest things to is to realise that your fantasies are just that — fantasies. And before we all get too excited let me clarify that I’m not talking here about imagining Hillary Clinton dressed in Highway Patrol leathers and swinging a night-stick, or any such run-of-the-mill sexual reverie. I’m talking about what we imagine without clear evidence to be true, such as the causes of our illnesses or what might have happened if it hadn’t been for X or Y."

Read all David Aaronovitch's article in The Times

Reading David's piece (some of which I'm persuaded by, some of which I'm not) I was struck by the force of the vitriol directed at David personally. I wrote the brief contribution below. It was posted to the comment response section of the original article. I believe we need to re-discover constructive debate if the nihilists and adventurists are to be resisted successfully.

I have exchanged views with David about the invasion of Iraq for all the years it has been a live issue. We share an anti-Saddam past (going back over 25 years) but we disagree about the war.

I do agree with David, however, about the redundancy of 'what-if' or 'if-only' analyses of histories that never actually took place. I would rather contribute to debate that seeks a progressive and hopeful way forward through the most difficult period of my fifty years on the planet. It seems to me the world is complex enough in its real form.

I'm about as opposed to Dick Cheney's world view as I can imagine but I truly don't want to subscribe to poisonous polemics based on the arithmetic of his death and my life's too short to speculate now on what might have happened four years ago in Iraq if something different had happened six years ago in Florida. That's the politics of luxurious delusion.

Don't those of us with opinions for or against the war need to engage with questions such as those David poses? In the real world, what do we do now and next?

Reading Billy Collins in search of inspiration

The infuriating former Poet Laureate of America

I suppose if I could write like Billy Collins,
Poet Laureate of the United States
of America
and a Professor of English Literature
(all of which need their capital letters)

I suppose I'd worry more than Billy Collins
about the lack of worth of these few lines
of poetry
and maybe mind the way they neither rhyme
nor scan as one might hope or fear.

But none of us can be like Billy Collins
as we try to read or write or speak
of imagery
and of ideas we thought to capture or profess
in such, not wholly vain, attempts as these.

But the truth is simply this; that Billy Collins,
poet laureate, American professor
of English
and a guiding light in my creative darkness,
is one of a kind: as all of us must strive to be.

Hillary and Barak visit Selma

Am I alone in thinking that if you alter your plans at less than a week's notice and bring your husband out of campaigning retirement you must be more worried about the other guy than you claim?

Read the BBC web site story: Clinton and Obama woo black votes

Jumpers

Arthur Miller wrote:

"And yet one cannot forever stand on the shore; at some point, filled with indecision, scepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere."

I jump in.

Dreamgirls

I felt it was slighly less than the sum of its parts. It's as if the director couldn't quite decide whose story would carry us to the final curtain. So in the end no one's story truly grabbed me. Good performaces, though; especially Eddie Murphy (more of him would have been good, particularly more on his decline), Beyonce and Jenifer Hudson. Terrific frocks. My real dislike for the piece though is the great injustice done to Florence Ballard by the script. If it's supposed to be Dreamgirls aka The Supremes, the Dreamgirls finale just won't do. She died guys. Tell us that story.

As posted to Gaurdian Unlimited Film

Florence Ballard

Debra Dickerson goes mad in Salon.com

Debra Dickerson wrote a deeply depressing article in Salon.com to expalin why Barack Obama isn't truly black. I wrote this in response, posting it on Salon's letters' page:

Wow, I have seldom read a more misbegotten, self-serving absence of analysis than Ms Dickerson's piece. You know, with 'friends' like Debra not one of us who yearns for progress need look far to see who'll hold us back. Dear Lord ... Let us all be so 'pure': of political (and actual) colour; of origin; of path to self-righteousness. Let no part of our being, social or physical, be diluted by the complexities of this mixed-up world. Let us serve our time and pay our dues, lest some tell us we are impatient for change. Then, when we've attained such necessary 'purity' as Debra defines, the three true believers of the modern world can meet in a phone booth somewhere to discuss just how wrong and stupid the rest of the world has been. If we're lucky, one of them will get round to writing an article about it ... like we've all had nothing better to to do than wait for it to apear.

Opera Australia's first night of Sweeeny Todd

Sharp. Thunderous applause.

Travelling out of the Opera House after the show, Susi asked Edward, the lift operator, if he'd caught the show. No, he replied, although he'd seen the show "some years ago when they first did it [in Sydney]." He went on to tell us how much he had enjoyed seeing Angela Lansbury sing Mrs Lovett in the original on Broadway. Touche! Tonight, nevertheless, Judi Connelli was brilliant in the role.

Not that I know heaps about music but it does seem to me that only a genius could give us A Little Priest and get away with it, e.g.

LOVETT: (spoken) Now let's see, here... We've got tinker.
TODD: Something... pinker.

LOVETT: Tailor?
TODD: Paler.
LOVETT: Butler?
TODD: Subtler.
LOVETT: Potter?
TODD: Hotter.

LOVETT: Locksmith?
Lovely bit of clerk.
TODD: Maybe for a lark.
LOVETT: Then again there's sweep
If you want it cheap
And you like it dark!
Try the financier,
Peak of his career!

TODD: That looks pretty rank.
LOVETT: Well, he drank,
It's a bank Cashier.
Never really sold.
Maybe it was old.

TODD: Have you any Beadle?
LOVETT: Next week, so I'm told!
Beadle isn't bad till you smell it and
Notice 'ow well it's been greased...
Stick to priest!

Opera Australia