Category: World at Large

Gangs of Helms Deep.

Also from Follow Me Here, Salman Rushdie compares gang violence in Two Towers and Gangs of New York to developments in Iraq. Interesting points, but did we see the same Scorsese film? In both the initial and final gangland scenes, there’s hardly any sense of moral ambiguity. To the contrary, as I noted in this post, the Irish (Neeson/DeCaprio) forces are portrayed exclusively as maligned, freedom-loving immigrants, while the Nativist (Day Lewis) gang are portrayed as racist brutes. You’d never get the sense in Scorsese’s film that it was the former group that actually unleashed virulent hatred upon the city’s African-American population in July of 1863. I suspect this reading of Gangs has more to do with the close friendship between Rushdie and “The Band that Built America.” Or perhaps Rushdie saw the longer Scorsese cut of the film, which is rumored to be more nuanced.

Not-so-Safety Dance.

“Two years ago the only places it was illegal to dance were Manhattan and Afghanistan. And now you can dance in Afghanistan.” The Village Voice delves into Manhattan’s bizarre cabaret law, used since the Giuliani era to preserve “Quality of Life” and to stop New Yorkers from spontaneously getting their groove on. Speaking as somebody with happy feet (or, in the parlance of this article, an “incidental dancer,”) I find this particularly annoying, and can think of a lot of other bar habits I’d rather see made verboten.

The Rollback begins.

An appeal court today approved broadened wiretap powers for John Ashcroft’s Justice Department. (But don’t worry…they’ll only use it on the bad people.) In loosely related news, the Dems are discovering a filibuster won’t work in stopping much of the GOP’s desired legislation, including oil and gas drilling of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Looks like things’ll be getting worse before they get better.

Speaking of big oil, I was doing some reading between classes in what passes for a student center here at Columbia and ended up sitting next to the undergraduate pro-war-in-Iraq table. (To be honest, I’m always a bit startled by the conservatism of today’s undergraduate community, although I suppose it wasn’t much different in my day – I still remember the drunken revelries all over campus that accompanied the 1994 midterms.) At any rate, I noticed the organization’s name was Students United for Victory, which would make their acronym SUV. Ah well, I presume the irony was lost on these earnest young hawks.

Fresh faces.

Despite a last minute op-ed gambit by Harold Ford (I thought he was making an interesting case until he conflated national security with the Iraq vote), Nancy Pelosi wins the Democratic leadership handily. Hopefully, she’ll make the most of it. On the GOP side, Tom DeLay moved up the ranks to take Dick Armey’s spot. I’d say a higher national profile for the Exterminator is a good thing. The more people get a sense of how creepy DeLay is, the more palatable the Dems will seem in contrast.