Uh eh, so I rolled there and hoped it made me look good. Fresh cyberink at hommelette.com.
By now it's already all over the news: exiting US President George W. Bush visited Iraq and at a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a furious Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President Bush. Scratch that, the journalist practically pitched the shoes like a pro-baseballer would at a climatic World Series finals. I'd imagine everyone watching the video mouth the accompanying 'thud!' as the shoes flew passed the President and finally smacked onto the wall. That is how it was.
Oddly enough, my thoughts didn't go all "media-frenzy-time!" watching the video. Instead, I thought of football. Specifically Manchester United football. Specifically then-Man United's Eric Cantona's famed 'flying kick' in 1995 and the less dramatic (since no 'live' footage was ever made available) dressing room incident in 2003 where Alex Ferguson accidentally kicked a boot against David Beckham's face and left Beck's pretty mug with a clear cut right above his eye. Now Cantona and Ferguson are not known to be the most gentle people around but still we didn't really expect outbursts - as if we had always cut them some slack. But for the shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist, it is as if we expected it.
After President Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003... and all the controversies in and out of America that his administration is mired in, there is without a single doubt America's Commander-in-Chief has very much polarized opinions about himself, albeit that the public perception bell-curve skews heavily on one side. Yet for the most part, there seems nothing worthy anyone has done that has curbed his administration. As President-Elect Barack Obama gears up to take over the White House, media outlets report that still-President Bush is seriously milking his last days at the Oval Office by legislating "controversial" bills that are either ideologically-weighted (undermining civil liberties to favor social conservatives) or cronyism-charged (granting big oil companies that have supported him more immunity in green issues). For too long, it seems the only murmurs of a movement to actually curtail an administration that centrists and some Republicans increasingly object came from the few calls to impeach President Bush. And those never took off.
So when the Democrats took back both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2006, some pressure eased off the need for, shall we say an "offensive" counter-move. Uprightly efforts went into uprightly governance, as they always should have been. But should-have-beens rarely translate to as-they-are. Even with both Houses under their control, Democrats appear to only invite mocking for their failure to proper executive, political and legislative issues. And even as President Bush continued to plunge on the approval rating scales, the exciting campaigning of Hillary Rodham Clinton and eventual nominee Barack Obama faced formidable challenges from the Republicans. To largely some extent, it was because President Bush's administration was deemed as too undesirable that Obama was elected over the once-respected John McCain (I seriously do think McCain's a nice guy although we would have serious differences in some affairs). McCain lost because he could not shake off the ubiquitious shadows of President Bush. It was an impossible task - allowing a Republican administration so much leeway across so many planes only means its successor must inherit the same unchecked and broken administration that, while still curiously powerful, is impossible to rebrand or disassociate from without switching camps entirely.
Which begs the question - did we expect the Iraqi journalist who is now held in questioning to throw both his shoes at the still-powerful President, the Commander-in-Chief, the Sovereign body of America - a country in economic trouble but a superforce no less? In Arabic customs, to show one's feet/soles of shoes to another is to show contempt and disrespect for the other. For a moment there, just for a moment - imagine what if the shoes had hit the President - in the face/head no less either. Will there be condemnation from politically-correct messengers? Will Iraqis rioting and burning the Star-Spangled flag at this moment rejoice instead? The feet of a humble Iraqi journalist and the head of the most powerful man who invaded his country make very strange parts in the same sentence indeed.
Just last year, the British fictional documentary 'Death of a President' by Gabriel Range was released. The film imagines and visualizes the assassination of President Bush through the use of special effects, archived records and hired actors. The critical reception and responses oscillated both ends - but still it was make-pretend. The shoe incident, however, is very real. President Bush managed to duck in time and make a joke about it ("The shoes were size-10.") but unlike the documentary, it has happened and we watched it splashed and repeated across news mediums. But isn't it strange that we watched it as if we expected such an incident to occur? As if we were told eventually somewhere someone would be furious enough to fling his shoe at the elected President of the United States and all we simply had to do was wait for it to happen.
Perhaps the reason for that would be President Bush still remains the President Bush - still the Chief of the United State and still wields enormous power and still he continues his highly questionable policies. It is less an attempt at accountability since one wrong doesn't right another, but more an attempt to grab the ones still coasting on the high of Obama's victory by their shoulders and shake furiously. So as days count down, we all are furious inside but with eight years of Bush administration and repeated failures both to keep the administration in check and protect the spheres of our world (in economy, in social development, in global security) we have learned to internalize it. It is however, one thing to internalize for self-preservation, and quite another to grow tired, fall asleep and not remember how to wake up in having done so. Least we forget, there were signs before September 11th. At the bare minimum we owe it to ourselves to ask if the shoe is back on the other foot again.
Now Richard, tell me why not the iPhone 3G? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
I mean, enter Jo and we'll get to "pong-ng-ng-ng" all day until the irritatingly short battery juice runs out.
Seriously, I can't make up my mind here - there's the Blackberry Bold and touchscreen Storm, Nokia's E71, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, and the painfully shiny and pretty iPhone 3G with white back cover. Now a friend in Hong Kong just recommended HTC Diamond... Great, add another entry to the list.
An historical night, as it were.
An historical night, if it were, and it will, and why it was.
- Jon Stewart on The Daily Show Election Night with Stephen Colbert
Barack Obama is the President Elect, the 44th President-to-be of the United States of America. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report put out an one-hour 'live' election special to track the voting and Stephen Colbert launches Barack Obama as the first.... Hawaiian (Hawaii-born, actually) President of the United States. For too long, Obama, his campaign and supporters, even his opponents, everyone, dealt carefully with the issue of race - Obama is the black candidate. Obama as possibly the first African American President. And of course, the earlier contention of whether "is America and the world ready for a black President Elect."
This was the same way the question of suitable subjectivities and appropriate identities (and I'm using both suitable and appropriate really loosely and kindly here) evolved and revolved when Hillary Rodham Clinton was still in the race to the White House. The question "is America ready for a woman president / is the world ready for a woman American President" rose when she made her intentions to race known, and the question had long died by the time Sarah Palin was thrown into the election spotlight. So when did "a" subjectivity became "the" subjectivity? And what happened to the "the" subjectivity?
Perhaps I can ask this differently. Who am I? And who are you? And, well, who are we? Until we have some subjectivity attached to us, we have nothing to say about ourselves - and everything to ask. So now we learned America has voted, Obama is in, the Bradley Effect didn't materialize in this election. But will the Bradley Effect, and the countless other stigmatizing subjectifications, still play? I leave that as an open-ended question for now.
Then what now? So Obama has won. What next? What happens? More specifically, what has changed? Well, in a material way nothing has changed. Until things are done, everything remains the same. Until policies are made, plans implemented, schemes executed and results witnessed and failed - nothing has changed.
In 2002, Halle Berry cried in her acceptance speech for winning the Academy Award for Best Actress, being the first and to-date only African American woman to win the coveted crown jewel in Hollywood acting. Proclaiming in between tears of joy and disbelief, "the door has finally opened," I believed she had, as the common adage go, hoped for the best but expected the worst. This election night, we hoped and expected the best - and we got them. So on another level when I ask again, what has changed - do we get the same non-answer that nothing has changed?
Sure, American politics and hence foreign policies are feeling the forthcoming tensions of change and newness. And after eight years of partisan Republicanism, a subjectivity left to grow so strong in its own assurances it now undermines any single identity of being American, change is exciting and made all the more welcome with the economic crisis tied to Republican monetary politics.
On one hand, it is time to celebrate - the transcript released by the White House shows still-President George Bush congratulating Obama and advising him to "now, enjoy yourself." On the other, it is crystal clear that times are tumultuous and the tough issues of new policies that yet are truly sustainable can easily spin us farther out of control. And the non-answer to the question of subjectivities (will racial relations really be better now? how about other hot-button issues - oil/renewable energy, religion/progressive rights, capitalism/intervention?) reveals abundently in its own conundrum the oscillating nature of our subjectification and ways of dealing with ourselves.
I support Obama wholeheartedly. I have my objections with him on a few matters but I disagree so much more with McCain's propositions. Now Obama has done the expected and necessary reaching-out to McCain for holistic measures to fix and change what was and is now broke and broken. The Daily Show election special ended the night announcing Obama's victory and then introducing an insight into what life is post-election, staff and key correspondents confused and comically wailing to bring back the two-year long election campaign trail - unsure and uncertain of the new. The message: buckle up, life doesn't stop with this, the hard part may have only just started. Yet in another sense, this journey has not began in our time, it began before - for History was there before anything made sense. And so it goes, an historical moment, as it were. Our historical life, if it were, and the questioning of the new and change it will, and the difficulty in answering why it was.
Über cool trailer for upcoming sci-fi action trailer Push starring Chris Evans as a telekinetic, Dakota Fanning as a clairvoyant, and Camilla Belle and Djimon Hounsou as telepathics. The storyline is a beaten one, not unlike X-Men 2, Jumper or NBC's Heroes, where a select number of human beings possess supernatural powers and a sinister organization is looming in the background, pursuing the protagonists and concocting some devious plot or machinery to dominate and oppress the world. But I'm easily amused by awesome choreography of super powers throwdown while decked in expensive-looking threads so I'm definitely on the lookout for the release.
Only complaint? The movie is set in Hong Kong but why must the lone Chinese who gets that bit of airtime on the trailer be blessed with such a sucky power - according to Wikipedia, he's a Bleeder (emits a high pitch noise that can disable or even kill people). Screeching away with bulging eyeballs looking like you are getting a stroke is nowhere near awesome. You're just like some banshee demon killed every other week on Supernatural.
Evans and Neil Jackson (villian telekinetic) obviously have the cooler weapon of choice in such sci-fi action movies, shielding bullets and attacks by merely holding up their left palms while blasting away on their semi-automatics with their right hands. Little Dakota Fanning carries a little attitude to match her little chalkboard for her Fido-Dido sketches ("I haven't got to the bad part yet - we die"). The coolest move in the trailer belongs to Camilla Belle in a blink-and-you-miss-it scene where she walks right into the middle of a group of armed men and literally "turns" them with her mind and movement. If this trailer is any indication of the feature film's production values, then Push is blowing Heroes Season 3 out of the water.
(The HD trailers are available at Apple - Movie Trailers)
