Saturday, October 09, 2004

"It is not acceptable in college culture right now to not be registered to vote." -- Lee V., UVA first year (that's freshman to those of you at colleges not founded by Mr. Jefferson). 5:33:37 PM    comment []

The competence of the Bush administration should be a bottom line issue even for full-bore supporters of the Iraq adventure. Incompetence is the verdict rendered by James Fallows in a highly-detailed, 10,000-word article in The Atlantic, "Bush's Lost Year." Fallows: "'Let me tell you my gut feeling,' a senior figure at a military-sponsored think tank told me recently. 'In my view we are much, much worse off now than when we went into Iraq. That is not a partisan position. I voted for these guys.'" Fallows: "I have sat through arguments among soldiers and scholars about whether the invasion of Iraq should be considered the worst strategic error in American history-or only the worst since Vietnam. Some of these people argue that the United States had no choice but to fight, given a pre-war consensus among its intelligence agencies that Iraq actually had WMD supplies. Many say that things in Iraq will eventually look much better than they do now. But about the conduct and effect of the war in Iraq one view prevails: it has increased the threats America faces, and has reduced the military, financial, and diplomatic tools with which we can respond." Read the whole thing. More Fallows: "Before America went to war in Iraq, its military power seemed limitless. There was less need to actually apply it when all adversaries knew that any time we did so we would win. Now the limits on our military's manpower and sustainability are all too obvious..." "Worst of all, the government-wide effort to wage war in Iraq crowded out efforts to design a broader strategy against Islamic extremists and terrorists; to this day the Administration has articulated no comprehensive long-term plan...And here is the startling part. There is no evidence that the President and those closest to him ever talked systematically about the "opportunity costs" and tradeoffs in their decision to invade Iraq. No one has pointed to a meeting, a memo, a full set of discussions, about what America would gain and lose..." "(N)o one disputes that the United States needed to move immediately against al-Qaeda, and in the most complete and decisive way possible. And there is little disagreement about what happened next. The military and diplomatic effort in Afghanistan was handicapped from the start because the Administration had other concerns, and it ended badly even though it started well." 4:37:38 PM    comment []

I saw the "Matisse, Picasso, and the School of Paris" show last night at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Go. As often as you can. We put on our evening clothes and boarded a bus with about two-dozen Cones and rode down to Raleigh for a preview party. There was champagne in large bottles, and then there was no champagne in the large bottles. By the time we arrived I was nursing just the slightest buzz and this is a very good way to go through an art exhibit. The museum was made beautiful by flowers and the cunning of decorators. Tonight's opening gala should be quite nice. The dinner was suitably elegant. But the art had the starring role. The pieces are spread across six rooms. You walk in, there's a very nice Monet on one wall, and across from that this Van Gogh: Vincent Van Gogh, Landscape with Figures, 1889 The Cone Collection BMA This is going to be something special, you think. Next room, some Picassos, not my favorites Picassos, but still, you know, Picassos. Sculpture dominates room three. And then, bliss. In the fourth room, the Pink Nude, and a wall panel showing the iterative process that led Matisse to his final version. Maybe the best moment was standing so close to the beauty pictured below, the colors more vivid than any reproduction shows, the brushwork visible, it's like a living thing. Tom Kenan, who did so much to bring this show to North Carolina, stood there with us and we just grooved on the painting for a while.   Henri Matisse, Purple Robe and Anemones 1937 Oil on canvas. The Cone Collection BMA In the next room, more bliss. This painting is smaller than I wanted it to be, but it almost glows on the wall. Henri Matisse, Seated Odalisque, Left Knee Bent, Ornamental Background and Checkerboard 1928 Oil on canvas. The Cone Collection. BMA The last room was full of surrealist stuff that I'm sure fits the art-historical narrative of the show and which under any other circumstance I would probably enjoy, but which seemed discordant after what preceded. Hats off to NCMA director Larry Wheeler and curator of European art David Steel. I'll be back. 10:18:23 AM    comment []

Jay Rosen on the famous truth-telling email from WSJ reporter Farnaz Fassihi: "(W)hy can't this be the journalism, this testifying e-mail? Why can't reporters on the ground occasionally speak to the 'public' like this one occasionally spoke to her friends?" 9:47:28 AM    comment []