Travels through the Internets brought me a couple of stories from the Guardian in the last week, among other things. Both disturbing in their own way. But first, a story from the BBC.
Road Trip. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--who is still too cool to wear a tie when he goes out in public--is paying a visit with Hugo Chavez and other lefty Latin American leaders who hate Washington's guts. Now, I like Hugo. He seems like just a regular Jose to me. And Evo Morales in Bolivia, too. But when Hugo gets himself tied to Ahmadinejad, it just seems that Mahmoud is playing him to provoke something with the Bush administration.
Politically speaking, I can't see a whole lot of similarities--Hugo's a populist and a socialist, while Mahmoud impresses me as more of a state-control kind of guy (particularly with the religious leaders that still are at the top of the Tehran food chain). But they both got oil, and they know how to use it to scare / piss off the administration. And given what Bush said earlier this week, the White House is just looking for an excuse to pop Mahmoud in the nose. So Ahmadinejad is either really clever, or too clever by half. I don't know just yet.
Racist Ballerina w/ Multiculti Boyfriend. Simone Clarke -- who, despite being a top dancer with the English National Ballet and also being moderately attractive, is two e's away from being a really tweedy Englishman, complete with shepard's cap, a pipe and a potbelly -- was recently revealed to be a top supporter of the British National Party. Which is no big deal, except that the BNP is the far-right loony fringe in British politics. They used to be a bunch of racist skinhead thugs, but are now a bunch of middle-class, football watching thugs who have absolutely positively nothing at all whatsover to do with racist ideology.
[Phone rings.] Uh, excuse me.
[Hello? Yes. Yes. Oh. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yes. Oh. Right--good to know. Thanks, eh? Bye.]
It turns out they are still just a bit racist, according to a Guardian writer who infiltrated into the organization:
After talking about my "work for the government", Steve turned to the question of police surveillance. "The police will watch leading members, of course, but they can't watch everybody who joins. They're too busy watching Islamic terrorists these days. And it's no secret that most police officers probably support us. Certainly those working in central London know the problems we face ..."
The problems we face. I heard phrases like this uttered by BNP members many times and, after several months, came to understand their precise, nuanced meanings. "Nice areas" I quickly understood to signify predominantly white areas. "Quiet areas" are places where black and minority ethnic people live, but keep a low profile, and don't compete too hard for jobs, school places or sexual partners. "Troublesome areas" are places where black people do just the opposite. "No-go areas" are places where black and minority ethnic people are in a majority. "Ethnics" speaks for itself, as does "our people". And "the problems we face"? They are, quite simply, that there are black people living among us whites.
In my seven months as a party member I heard very few racist epithets, and no anti-semitic comments. Such language appears almost to be frowned upon in Griffin's post-makeover BNP. Perhaps it is a tribute to the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Public Order Act 1986, and to the gently shifting mores of British life, that racists rarely feel able to express themselves, even among like-minded people. But some of the fear and the hatred remains: it just emerges in code.
One of the goosesteppers has been known to be a swan from time to time. This would be Ms. Clarke. As she got ready for a new production, she had to deal with protests outside the theater (and, on the day of her first matinee performance, inside, which she reportedly handled with aplomb).
But this story goes funhouse-mirror on us when we learn that her lover is a Cuban-Chinese immigrant. This raised an undoubtedly furry eyebrow from a cohort:
Clarke attracted a high-profile supporter to the performance in the shape of Richard Barnbrook, BNP councillor for Barking and Dagenham. "I don't normally go to the ballet but I'm going to support Simone Clarke. I'm supporting her freedom of expression."
He said of the demonstrators: "They have a democratic right to protest and the right to oppose us.
"But I find it really rather crude of them to take somebody who is a professional ballet dancer and say 'You haven't got the right to do the job you're doing'.
"They are trying to get her sacked for one simple reason: her standing up for common sense and saying she doesn't support the Government.
"She's not racist - she's going out with someone who is not of her own race."
Mr Barnbrook claimed to have no objection to Clarke's relationship with Cuban-Chinese partner Yat-Sen Chang. "He works, he pays his taxes, he pays his dues, he has as much right to be here as anyone else," he said. However, he hoped the couple would not have children."I'm not opposed to mixed marriages but their children are washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people," he explained, quickly adding: "That's my view, it's not the party's view."
Nice backpeal there, Dick.
"Little Mosque on the Prairie." Also from the Guardian: a story about a new sitcom in Canada. Unconventional, to say the least:
The humour (and situations) are firmly post-9/11. The episode begins with the clean-cut lawyer-turned-imam Amaar queuing for his flight to the prairies as his mother calls to try and persuade him to stay.
"Don't put dad on. I've been planning this for months, it's not like I've dropped a bomb on him. If dad thinks this is suicide, so be it. This is Allah's plan for me."
An alarmed woman in front decides not to fly. Soon after a police officer pulls Amaar out of the queue. In police custody he attempts to explain he was joking. "Muslims around the world are known for their sense of humour," he says. "I did not know that," says the police officer, completely straight. "That was another joke," the imam fruitlessly explains.
Other than that, the situations explore the comedy of a city dweller out of his natural environment ("You don't make cappuccino? What am I doing here?") and the standard sitcom fare of misunderstanding and rivalries - in this case both between Muslims and Mercy's Muslim and non-Muslim residents. It's not the sharpest, most innovative, comedy you'll ever see, but that does not mean lines such as "It's not Canadian Idol they hate ... it's freedom" fail to raise a smile.
The pilot (embedded in the story) is, well, funny, but somewhat self-important. Of course, they have a high bar to surpass, what with the standard set by those Canucks par excellence, Bob & Doug McKenzie. Kooooo-loo-koo-koo-koo-koo-koo-koo!
David Beckham. He's going to make $50 million a year, in a sport that still won't get any ratings here in the States--at least, not after the novelty wears off. Yeah. This is going to work really well.
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