Rich Lowry and the hundreds of others who becry Obama's breach of the unstated rules of Presidential conduct fail to realize that these very rules, originally initiated for outdated purposes, have to be challenged and broken in order to bring about progressive change, inside and outside of American affairs.
For persons and nations, history offers clear insights and examples of rules challenged and broken to bring about greater freedom and progress. Obama breach of the old rules is not do to ineptness, defiance, or indifference—or inexperience. Instead, his actions are part of his clear pattern of redefining the symbols and signals of American power to enhance and extend its reach and influence by a new matrix. More than any other American leader,
Obama is comfortable with power, and uses its trappings to serve purposes beyond previous limits. Obama willingly fits his actions into the new international framework; he has the keen good sense to see opportunities and prosperity for America on all shores.
In looking at the old standards and assessing change, it is important to separate appearance from actual essence, signals from real substance, form from bonafided content, puffery from sincerity. The current moral intuition of America is strongly tied to appearances. But Barack's instincts take him in another direction. He relaxes the elements of imperial behavior that have caged the conduct of American Presidents, court rites, in effect, borrowed from Europe's monarchies.
In doing so, he radically alters the sense of democratic relations and standings among world leaders.
While many at home are shocked by the bow or the smiling handshake, world leaders saw the gesture in a different light. By stepping down, Obama was actually stepping up. He signaled not weakness or disrespect, but began a new phrase of American national conduct: one of open regard; problem-solving rather than mischief-making, exchanging mutual dialogue rather than mongering in power. Simply, it's the carrot rather than the stick.
Obama is creating a new nuance in American foreign policy, separating his actions and personal gestures in meetings and conferences from his executive actsas head of state. It is a tactic Bill Richardson used successfully in international negotiation and one Ollie North attempted to use when he flew to Tehran, personally carrying a Bible and a key-shaped chocolate cake for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in a deal in which President Reagan ended up swapping guns for hostages, sending the Iraqis more than $8 million in missiles.
The difference is Obama is President, and is skilled in the politics of personal statecraft and is willing to break with conventions to advance his policy goals. And he has not offered any regime a thin dime. Don't think the world is laughing. They, are, in fact, applauding.
McClatchy Newspapers reports:
“Obama returned from his first trip overseas Tuesday confident of at least one thing: He had managed to put his face indelibly on American foreign policy for much of the rest of the world.
Using personal diplomacy to advance his broad policy goals, Obama charted a new course as he moved rapidly across the continent, attending three summits, visiting six countries and meeting at least 15 foreign leaders, wrapping up with a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday.
Everywhere he went, Obama was a figure of fascination to foreign leaders eager to take his measure, as well as to everyday citizens.
"It was so easy to work with him," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.
"He's a great, great man," said Elisabeth Vogel, a teacher from Colmar, France, who came to see Obama when he appeared in nearby Strasbourg.
"Obama No. 1," said a broadly smiling taxi driver in Istanbul, flashing a thumbs up.
Jordan's Queen Noor acknowledges and supports the potential global impact of Obama's new direction, fully endorsing Obama's commitment to ending the spread of nuclear weapons.
“I, and all of the 100-plus leaders of Global Zero, are thrilled that Presidents Obama and Medvedev are demonstrating bold and historic leadership on this agenda, and taking an approach that is fully in line with the plan we presented at the launch of Global Zero in December 2008.”
Queen Noor goes on to say: Today, nine countries have more than 23,000 nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups have been trying to buy, build, or steal nuclear weapons, and in the last two decades, there have been at least 25 instances of nuclear explosive materials being lost or stolen.
The two presidents -- the first to ever jointly commit the U.S. and Russia to work for the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide -- declared that they had "agreed to pursue new and verifiable reductions in [their] strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process . . .”
In her praise for Barack's position, Queen Noor, often criticized for not wearing a hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by women of Muslim faith, a religion and culture that also finds women shaking hands as taboo, makes no mention of the bow.
Around the globe, government and citizen leaders understand this. The content and view of his actions in world capitals is at odds with the American perception that his gesture implied obeisance.
Actually, it was Obama being Obama. He loves the quip, the vocal repartee, the exaggerated gesture, the grand overture, he is playful and mocking of symbols that he believes are empty of meaning. His essence, core, and substance come into play when he makes decisions, and Obama relishes the tough call.
I, for one, believe, imperial notions of American power and pomp need to end. Just as the social and legal rules that denied women the right to vote and denied equal opportunity have been banished. Just as its okay to work in the White House in shirt sleeves.
Rules based on intimidation and power flexing have no place in modern diplomacy.
In fact, a Nigerian pundit, Okello Oculi, writing in the Abuja Daily Trust, called Obama a “charm weapon, a diplomatic warrior.” He went on to say: “The very sprouting of Obama himself into America's presidency [begins] a dawn of hope for change, not only for Americans but for a world citizenry disgusted with arrogant criminality and morally blind impunity.”
This change of tone is an important first step to re-asserting American leadership.
Another report read, “Clearly the big stories coming out of the Trinidad Summit revolve around what is being called a “new beginning” for US relations with the hemisphere, particularly with Latin American states.”
Chinaview.com quoted one Latin American leader as saying, “the summit successfully led to a new atmosphere."
Barack's cool has given him enormous street-cred, at home and abroad. Another story offers compelling evidence of how Barack's greetings and his coolness under fire has been internalized into the behavior of inner city youth.
In Albany, NY, Sam Fullwood at Politico.com reports, middle school African-American males are peer-correcting each others behavior with the phase, “Barack's in the house.” Imagine the former extremes to which this same group might carry issues of respect for symbolic slights.
For the first time in more than a decade, the cultural connection that these young male students have with Barack has reduced the perception that “respect” is a value that must be aggressively defended at all costs, and that power is the ultimate expression and prized possession of the strongest, most intransient, unbendable will. Achievement and appropriate conduct, including reducing fights and confrontations, are the new peer generated goals. This shift in values among school aged youth is an extraordinary gain—directly connected to Barack's style.
"I believe we'll likely see a positive evolution in the relations between the United States and Latin America. It is possible to create a new dynamic of partnership and contribution," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said afterward.
While we are making the world safe for democracy, we must be careful about being attached blindly to the old ways; moving forward, Americans must not continue habits and beliefs that place us among our own worst enemies. Let's re-examine our moral intuition.
In essence, what we have to gain is far more than what we appear to be giving up.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found food for thought.
Walter Rhett posts Southern Perlo from Kudu Coffee in Charleston, SC. A Perlo is rice with local bounty, enjoyed by all. By its witness, Southern Perlo, in print and photos, connects the American experience and builds a global heritage. Please, stir the perlo, add your spice; leave a comment below.
Southern Perlo supports Water Missions International, providing safe water to more than a million people in 40 countries, at firstgiving.com.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tea Leaves and Smiling Handshakes: How Newt Gingrich Missed the Message
I am often called “old school,” and I agree. I keep alive a tradition in my writing that writers must be committed to the truth as they know it. That writers, use reason and experience, take words, and craft ideas to evaluate the acts and ideas of others. That writers compare, analyze, and argue about dramatic changes that, underneath, are often simple common sense. In this tradition, writers provide evidence when they take a point of view. As a member of the old school, I thrive to offer concrete examples. History is my supply chain, writing is my weapon; you, the reader, assess my aim.
In my old school calling, the purpose of writing is to lead to new and wider human choices, a more noble sense of freedom, and the banishment of nonsense as a frivolous waste of time.
Today, in writing about the “smiling handshake” between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, I want to achieve all three.
Let's begin first with the nonsense. I agree with Newt Gingrich that leaders must speak out with forceful courage, but when he opened his mouth, I see clear evidence, in history and by analogy, that Newt's point of view is more misleading and harmful than the handshake between Obama and Chavez that Newt stridently slammed. Newt called the handclasp “the wrong signal.” He said he was “not for deluding [himself] by handshakes and smiles.” Oh? Not deluded? Nonsense. Newt was completely tricked.
Newt, a former Speaker of the House and member of Congress from Georgia, asked rhetorically how a Head of State can greet warmly a dictator who repeatedly calls for the destruction of the other's country and makes quips that blast and disrespect its leadership? That smiling handshake, according to Newt, will become propaganda to suggest that Chavez's views and insults are magnanimous and legitimate in the court of world opinion and in the central yards, courtyards, and porches of the global masses.
Newt contends the shake acknowledged the Latin despot, Hugo Chavez, and will lead to his distorted views about America being accepted and commonplace in world opinion. The handshake symbolizes our acquiescence and acceptance of Hugo Chavez's invectives, negatives, and political mission.
First, the evidence of history, especially in looking at diplomacy, tells a different story. And history has the weight of truth.
Ah, Hitler. European indulged his aggression instead of acting decisively. True. But Hitler went to war; he moved troops, conquered nations, directed air strikes and tanks. History since then, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Georgia, and Israel, has pointed out that military expeditions must be met with firm, rapid and unwavering responses.
Will the smiling handshake lead to a grab for power, an armed invasion, a massing of troops to cross national borders, a dramatic shift in American strategic interests? No. Military actions are not “signaled” by handshakes; any leader who views a smile as a “strategic” or symbolic weakness is deluding himself.
But Chavez's words have rightly angered many Americans. Does the handshake meaning we accept, even symbolically, his disrespect? No. No more than a teacher accepts a student into a classroom the next day who was fighting and cursing, and yelling epithets at authority figures. No. No more than political opponents, including Gingrich, who label their domestic adversaries as “socialist,” or suggest that opponents were “sowing the seeds of hatred,” or pals “with terrorists,” or possess a desperate hope for current policies “to fail.” No. Although Chavez has called America “the biggest menace of the planet,” that “capitalism leads straight to hell,” and claims his “assassination is cheaper than an invasion.” Chavez has also said, “the axis of evil is Washington,” and on 9/11,“US imperial power planned and carried out this terrible attack against its own people.” He called Obama an ignoramus.
No one accuses Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, of being a wise man or careful with words. He craves attention. He pursues it relentlessly, by good and bad ends.
As the Peck's bad boy of statecraft, Chavez is a braggart, a blowhard, an idiot and class clown who seeks legitimacy through mischievous behavior. And Chavez will find none through his non-conforming political insults and taunts unless we in America give it to him by our reaction to his antics.
Don't engage the erstwhile bully. Don't show an obsession and thin skin. Don't make it obvious that Chavez has touched a nerve or gotten under the veneer. Don't govern in anger. Instead, ignore Chavez. Smother him with kindness, thereby outrageously exposing and rendering him ineffective by contrast. Be loose, but stay firm. Reveal by the example of courtesy and regard, Chavez's belittling and silliness for what it is.
I say, shake the hand, make the contrast. It can not be, by any stretch of mind, to endorse Chavez's insane views.
In fact, a number of historical examples are evidence for this approach. In Charleston, during the Revolutionary War, Mrs. Rebecca Motte hosted a thank you dinner for British and American officers who helped put out a fire at her plantation house. Despite her unwavering support of the American fight for liberty, her even-handedness toward the enemy and offer of hospitality to friend and foe won her the honor of being the namesake for Charleston's chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
But Gingrich angrily resents Obama's breach of the unwritten American rules of statecraft: silence and the back of your hand to your enemies. For Gingrich, Obama overstepped.
In Gingrich's criticism and in his logic is a hidden idea.
History lets us pull out this hidden idea. Statecraft's source of prescribed conduct is borrowed from European states led by Monarchs. The rules have been passed down from the times when Kings and Queens ruled the Western world. In the old days, the breach of the arcane labyrith of rules could enrage a Sovereign and result in a beheading, the lost of status, a forfeit of priviledge, or banishment. Kings and Queens often used imidation and fear as weapons. In monarch states, fear was a healthy sign of respect.
Newt brings this royal mindset and sense of the imperial presence into modern times. He seeks to continue its ancient role in modern-day diplomacy.
Yet the current groups that keep this tradition alive are gansters, too many legions of inner city youth, and a few dictators. For many gangsters, dictators, and lost youths, the failure to show deference or fear, justifies an aggressive indifference, and sometimes agression.
This is the heart of Newt's position. He embraces the same views as who demand “props” by increasing tension, isolation, and threats until others break in fear. His criticism implies to win election to the highest national office is to “jump in” a code of behavior that the Head of State is honor bound to maintain, lest the national “rep” be tarnished and the other “gangs/nations” get the wrong signal. He seeks to have the US pursue and aggressive indifference.
Casually thumbing through history provides abundant credible evidence that the Ginrich “rule” of statecraft, emplyed by monarchs, gangs, and dictators has been violated many times for good means and with good results.
Northern Ireland experienced a historic handshake of unity between Ian Paisley and Bertie Ahern in 2007.
Ronald Reagan shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the cold war ended. But at the time, a
Soviet leader had pounded a shoe on a New York UN conference table, promising America “we will bury you,” and the Soviet Union had tried to install missles in Cuba, and had 1000s of megaton nuclear warheads pointed at America, ready to launch.
Begin and Sadat shook hands and earned a Nobel Prize when they crafted a peace accord.
Lincoln extended extraordinary courtesies to family members from territories in rebellion. A member of Charleston's Middleton family received a handwritten pass to ensure her safety travel through troop lines.
Henry Kissinger and China's Chou En Lai shook hands and opened the door to this once coummunist arch-enemy becoming America's largest trading partner.
Nelson Mandela and F. W. De Klerk's 1992 handshake on Mr. Mandela's release from 26 years of solatary imprisonment on Robben Island marked a new chapter in South African history, when soon after, Mr. Mandela becoming the country's first universally elected African leader.
Lee and Grant's handshake at Appomattox ended a war that had left America a house divided, and begin the healing of America into one nation.
Other handshakes rocked the status quo: Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi ('04), Kim Jong-Il and Kim Dae-Jung ('00), Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak ('93), and Ireland's Gerry Adams and Bill Clinton ('95).
Only Donald Rumsfeld's handshake with Saadam Hussein is seen to have backfired.
And with the exception of Lee-Grant, Mandela-De Kerk, or Sadat-Begin, none of these handshakes, including Obama-Chavez, led to a transfer of power, or a re-assignment of policy or authority, or confused the world community about the policies, stands, and strategic interests the disparate leaders pursued.
Thirdly, seen from the Venezulan side, history again weighs in, and creates a shudder about Newt's position. From the Venezulan view, motives and issues go far beyond indignation about appearances, inappropiate signals, and the proper trappings of power. Seen plainly from the Venezulan side is a huge trap that Newt, and former Vice President Chaney, Senator Judd Gregg of NH, and Senator John Ensign, NV, in their dark bombast of temper and haste to score political points flat out missed. In their rush to dissent and to enflame public passions, they missed the trap. Not only did they miss it, by their call, they are actually urging the country to go against its strategdic interests!
Like chess, the trap begins with a simple objective and operates on a simple misdirection. Chavez's main ambition is to tighten his grip on domestic power. Ask yourself for a minute, why does Chavez consistently lash out against America? Does this somehow fit into his goal? Do his strident, off-base attacks serve his embedded agenda? Yes. Chavez asserts the nonsense claim that Venezula suffers because the US inflicts Venezula's distress.
Chavez blames the domestic pain on the unseen hand of the corrupt, greed, immoral US, the one described and colored in his rhetoric. He argues the US works against Venezula through his opposition, entering the country through the backdoors of shady subtefuge. Thus justified, this compells Venezula to turn to Chavez with fear and faith in his leadership.
By his own logic, Chavez is the only one with the strength to stand up to and turn back the consuming, insatible, morally blind dragon of the US. Disease epidemic breaks out? The US is conducting biological warfare. Building burns? US agents set the fire. Even Simon Bolivar's death is redefined as American meddling in Latin affairs.
To justify and expand his power, Chavez claims the hand of the CIA, US government, and its proxies in every problem Venezula has, in every attempt by Venezulans to break his stranglehold on power.
Under previous policy, Chavez had the perfect foil. Ignoring him played right into his hand. Untouchable, removed, and unknown, America was feared--and became an easy target for “gringo-baiting.” And Chavez perfected his anti-US rants as his prime means of widening his control of Venezula.
The handshake changed that. What appeared to be outrageous breach actually tamped down the credibility and viability of a dictator inside his own country. The smiling handshake dismantled and defeated his previous strategy. Because Obama wouldn't take the bait, Chavez is now forced to search new scapegoats. Unfortunately, many of those who disagree with him inside Venezula are now the object of his scorn and oppressive actions. But change in Venezula has advanced; that handshake deprived Chavez of one of his major weapons. That handshake was not the wrong signal, it substantially reduced the substance of a tyrant's threat.
Republican Senator Connie Mack, who attended the Summit, issued this statement about the handshake upon his return: “President Obama was right not engage in the theatrics of others and to instead deliver a message that the United States seeks to be a friend, an ally and a partner with all of the people of Latin America.”
But you wouldn't know it, listening to Newt Ginrich.
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. Please, stir the Perlo--add your comments below!
In my old school calling, the purpose of writing is to lead to new and wider human choices, a more noble sense of freedom, and the banishment of nonsense as a frivolous waste of time.
Today, in writing about the “smiling handshake” between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, I want to achieve all three.
Let's begin first with the nonsense. I agree with Newt Gingrich that leaders must speak out with forceful courage, but when he opened his mouth, I see clear evidence, in history and by analogy, that Newt's point of view is more misleading and harmful than the handshake between Obama and Chavez that Newt stridently slammed. Newt called the handclasp “the wrong signal.” He said he was “not for deluding [himself] by handshakes and smiles.” Oh? Not deluded? Nonsense. Newt was completely tricked.
Newt, a former Speaker of the House and member of Congress from Georgia, asked rhetorically how a Head of State can greet warmly a dictator who repeatedly calls for the destruction of the other's country and makes quips that blast and disrespect its leadership? That smiling handshake, according to Newt, will become propaganda to suggest that Chavez's views and insults are magnanimous and legitimate in the court of world opinion and in the central yards, courtyards, and porches of the global masses.
Newt contends the shake acknowledged the Latin despot, Hugo Chavez, and will lead to his distorted views about America being accepted and commonplace in world opinion. The handshake symbolizes our acquiescence and acceptance of Hugo Chavez's invectives, negatives, and political mission.
First, the evidence of history, especially in looking at diplomacy, tells a different story. And history has the weight of truth.
Ah, Hitler. European indulged his aggression instead of acting decisively. True. But Hitler went to war; he moved troops, conquered nations, directed air strikes and tanks. History since then, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Georgia, and Israel, has pointed out that military expeditions must be met with firm, rapid and unwavering responses.
Will the smiling handshake lead to a grab for power, an armed invasion, a massing of troops to cross national borders, a dramatic shift in American strategic interests? No. Military actions are not “signaled” by handshakes; any leader who views a smile as a “strategic” or symbolic weakness is deluding himself.
But Chavez's words have rightly angered many Americans. Does the handshake meaning we accept, even symbolically, his disrespect? No. No more than a teacher accepts a student into a classroom the next day who was fighting and cursing, and yelling epithets at authority figures. No. No more than political opponents, including Gingrich, who label their domestic adversaries as “socialist,” or suggest that opponents were “sowing the seeds of hatred,” or pals “with terrorists,” or possess a desperate hope for current policies “to fail.” No. Although Chavez has called America “the biggest menace of the planet,” that “capitalism leads straight to hell,” and claims his “assassination is cheaper than an invasion.” Chavez has also said, “the axis of evil is Washington,” and on 9/11,“US imperial power planned and carried out this terrible attack against its own people.” He called Obama an ignoramus.
No one accuses Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, of being a wise man or careful with words. He craves attention. He pursues it relentlessly, by good and bad ends.
As the Peck's bad boy of statecraft, Chavez is a braggart, a blowhard, an idiot and class clown who seeks legitimacy through mischievous behavior. And Chavez will find none through his non-conforming political insults and taunts unless we in America give it to him by our reaction to his antics.
Don't engage the erstwhile bully. Don't show an obsession and thin skin. Don't make it obvious that Chavez has touched a nerve or gotten under the veneer. Don't govern in anger. Instead, ignore Chavez. Smother him with kindness, thereby outrageously exposing and rendering him ineffective by contrast. Be loose, but stay firm. Reveal by the example of courtesy and regard, Chavez's belittling and silliness for what it is.
I say, shake the hand, make the contrast. It can not be, by any stretch of mind, to endorse Chavez's insane views.
In fact, a number of historical examples are evidence for this approach. In Charleston, during the Revolutionary War, Mrs. Rebecca Motte hosted a thank you dinner for British and American officers who helped put out a fire at her plantation house. Despite her unwavering support of the American fight for liberty, her even-handedness toward the enemy and offer of hospitality to friend and foe won her the honor of being the namesake for Charleston's chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
But Gingrich angrily resents Obama's breach of the unwritten American rules of statecraft: silence and the back of your hand to your enemies. For Gingrich, Obama overstepped.
In Gingrich's criticism and in his logic is a hidden idea.
History lets us pull out this hidden idea. Statecraft's source of prescribed conduct is borrowed from European states led by Monarchs. The rules have been passed down from the times when Kings and Queens ruled the Western world. In the old days, the breach of the arcane labyrith of rules could enrage a Sovereign and result in a beheading, the lost of status, a forfeit of priviledge, or banishment. Kings and Queens often used imidation and fear as weapons. In monarch states, fear was a healthy sign of respect.
Newt brings this royal mindset and sense of the imperial presence into modern times. He seeks to continue its ancient role in modern-day diplomacy.
Yet the current groups that keep this tradition alive are gansters, too many legions of inner city youth, and a few dictators. For many gangsters, dictators, and lost youths, the failure to show deference or fear, justifies an aggressive indifference, and sometimes agression.
This is the heart of Newt's position. He embraces the same views as who demand “props” by increasing tension, isolation, and threats until others break in fear. His criticism implies to win election to the highest national office is to “jump in” a code of behavior that the Head of State is honor bound to maintain, lest the national “rep” be tarnished and the other “gangs/nations” get the wrong signal. He seeks to have the US pursue and aggressive indifference.
Casually thumbing through history provides abundant credible evidence that the Ginrich “rule” of statecraft, emplyed by monarchs, gangs, and dictators has been violated many times for good means and with good results.
Northern Ireland experienced a historic handshake of unity between Ian Paisley and Bertie Ahern in 2007.
Ronald Reagan shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the cold war ended. But at the time, a
Soviet leader had pounded a shoe on a New York UN conference table, promising America “we will bury you,” and the Soviet Union had tried to install missles in Cuba, and had 1000s of megaton nuclear warheads pointed at America, ready to launch.
Begin and Sadat shook hands and earned a Nobel Prize when they crafted a peace accord.
Lincoln extended extraordinary courtesies to family members from territories in rebellion. A member of Charleston's Middleton family received a handwritten pass to ensure her safety travel through troop lines.
Henry Kissinger and China's Chou En Lai shook hands and opened the door to this once coummunist arch-enemy becoming America's largest trading partner.
Nelson Mandela and F. W. De Klerk's 1992 handshake on Mr. Mandela's release from 26 years of solatary imprisonment on Robben Island marked a new chapter in South African history, when soon after, Mr. Mandela becoming the country's first universally elected African leader.
Lee and Grant's handshake at Appomattox ended a war that had left America a house divided, and begin the healing of America into one nation.
Other handshakes rocked the status quo: Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi ('04), Kim Jong-Il and Kim Dae-Jung ('00), Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak ('93), and Ireland's Gerry Adams and Bill Clinton ('95).
Only Donald Rumsfeld's handshake with Saadam Hussein is seen to have backfired.
And with the exception of Lee-Grant, Mandela-De Kerk, or Sadat-Begin, none of these handshakes, including Obama-Chavez, led to a transfer of power, or a re-assignment of policy or authority, or confused the world community about the policies, stands, and strategic interests the disparate leaders pursued.
Thirdly, seen from the Venezulan side, history again weighs in, and creates a shudder about Newt's position. From the Venezulan view, motives and issues go far beyond indignation about appearances, inappropiate signals, and the proper trappings of power. Seen plainly from the Venezulan side is a huge trap that Newt, and former Vice President Chaney, Senator Judd Gregg of NH, and Senator John Ensign, NV, in their dark bombast of temper and haste to score political points flat out missed. In their rush to dissent and to enflame public passions, they missed the trap. Not only did they miss it, by their call, they are actually urging the country to go against its strategdic interests!
Like chess, the trap begins with a simple objective and operates on a simple misdirection. Chavez's main ambition is to tighten his grip on domestic power. Ask yourself for a minute, why does Chavez consistently lash out against America? Does this somehow fit into his goal? Do his strident, off-base attacks serve his embedded agenda? Yes. Chavez asserts the nonsense claim that Venezula suffers because the US inflicts Venezula's distress.
Chavez blames the domestic pain on the unseen hand of the corrupt, greed, immoral US, the one described and colored in his rhetoric. He argues the US works against Venezula through his opposition, entering the country through the backdoors of shady subtefuge. Thus justified, this compells Venezula to turn to Chavez with fear and faith in his leadership.
By his own logic, Chavez is the only one with the strength to stand up to and turn back the consuming, insatible, morally blind dragon of the US. Disease epidemic breaks out? The US is conducting biological warfare. Building burns? US agents set the fire. Even Simon Bolivar's death is redefined as American meddling in Latin affairs.
To justify and expand his power, Chavez claims the hand of the CIA, US government, and its proxies in every problem Venezula has, in every attempt by Venezulans to break his stranglehold on power.
Under previous policy, Chavez had the perfect foil. Ignoring him played right into his hand. Untouchable, removed, and unknown, America was feared--and became an easy target for “gringo-baiting.” And Chavez perfected his anti-US rants as his prime means of widening his control of Venezula.
The handshake changed that. What appeared to be outrageous breach actually tamped down the credibility and viability of a dictator inside his own country. The smiling handshake dismantled and defeated his previous strategy. Because Obama wouldn't take the bait, Chavez is now forced to search new scapegoats. Unfortunately, many of those who disagree with him inside Venezula are now the object of his scorn and oppressive actions. But change in Venezula has advanced; that handshake deprived Chavez of one of his major weapons. That handshake was not the wrong signal, it substantially reduced the substance of a tyrant's threat.
Republican Senator Connie Mack, who attended the Summit, issued this statement about the handshake upon his return: “President Obama was right not engage in the theatrics of others and to instead deliver a message that the United States seeks to be a friend, an ally and a partner with all of the people of Latin America.”
But you wouldn't know it, listening to Newt Ginrich.
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. Please, stir the Perlo--add your comments below!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
மாஸ்டர் வொர்க்ஸ்: த மிச்சிச்சிப்பி போடோக்ரப்ஸ் ஒப் டோரோதேபட்ட லங்கே, 1937
4th of July, 1937; Hillhouse, Mississippi
Two photographs taken in Mississippi in 1937 by one of America's photography masters lay in the Library of Congress archives for half a century. Today, I am proud to present these two photographs. I am excited about the remarkable story these two pictures tell.
Dorothea Lange, a woman trained as a portrait photographer in New York and who apprenticed with prominent society photographers, was the photographer for these two environmental portraits. Born Dorothea Nutzhorn in 1895, as a child she changed her name to her mother's maiden name after her father left and her parents were divorced. Two of her five photos of a Mississippi woman are overlooked master works.
A Sharecropper's Family that moved to Mississippi, 1937
Dorothea Lange took the long road to Mississippi. She traveled west to San Francisco in 1918, and opened a successful portrait studio, married a painter and gave birth to two boys. In 1935, she divorced. She married a economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the Great Depression drew near, she begin to make photographic images that documented the impact of the economy on daily lives of her subjects. Her photographs of human character find people on the edge of survival, working in poverty, standing in meal lines, alone, with their family, or in groups. Their faces are a deep study of the impact of these conditions.
A Sharecropper from Issaquena County, MS
In 1936, Dorothea Lange was hired by the federal government's Farm Security Administration's Office of War Information to travel across the South documenting a rural America. When she got to Mississippi, she photographed the sharecroppers and agriculture of the Delta. Her eye connected the relationships of work to living through the simple mechanism of image and composition. She raised these two photographic techniques to an art which at its best, is still surpassed.
Negro Children, Mississippi Delta, 1936
As a photographer, she waited on each story to appear in the faces before her lens. For Dorothea Lange, sharing was a natural action, and she valued what was within. She was not interested in matching her images to variations of external social ideals. She waited until her subjects' faces got past the apparent doom, relaxed from the usual cliches ,and finally opened a window to her and her camera that offered an inner glimpse into the expressions and emotions held dear in their inner heart. Working with spare back drops of natural settings, a porch or a field, her photos are careful documents of the hardships and hopes that lived and collided within her subjects. Her images somehow acquire and preserve an inner strength and vulnerability. Her photos are a window to the inner grace of her subjects, presenting the dignity of their real selves as they face the camera for all to see.
I think two of her best examples of image and composition are of a Mississippi women who was a field hand, working as a sharecropper in the Delta, that Lange photographed in 1937. This unnamed women has five images in the Library of Congress archives of Lange's photographs. I was absolutely astounded when I found them. Together they tell a story heard but rarely seen. Photos of Negro sharecroppers , often idyllic and stereotyped, many times expressed the values of outside views of the people and their work. Lange sought out the inner character of the persons photographed. But Lange also took herself out of the way. She knew how to look for the dignity and real vulnerability within everyone; she knew each person was a hero with a 1,000 faces, and she went beyond preconceptions to capture that moment in which the person emerged unique. She reveled in what she had not seen before. She abandoned formula or familiarity, sparked by the emerging difference that offered a look unseen before. She knew when she had this elusive quality: her photos are one with this transcendent moment.
Traveling Highway 1, 1938
The Mississippi woman she photographs offers two extraordinary instances of Lange's gifts.
First is a picture of the woman sitting alone on her porch in a wooden ladder back chair. The woman, a farm worker and sharecropper, “chops” cotton; she uses a long handled hoe to weed and turn the soil in cotton fields. She is skille in "hoe culture." She was born, by her own words, “two years before the surrender,” (the end of the Civil War in 1865). Photograph in 1937, she is likely 84 years old. Like other people Lange photographed, she is unnamed and no located is noted.
The wooden slated or cane-backed ladder chair in which she sits was the most common piece of furniture on rural porches. In the South, and in many rural locales, porches served as outdoor living rooms. From the porch, the sun cast its colors of pink and rose, leaves fell, dust rolled into the wind, wind played across the skin, and the changing light and its display of textures and signaled the swift, silent passage of time.
Master Work: A Portrait of an 84 year old Mississippi Woman
Lange's photograph elevates the chair. Its straight back rail is at an offset angle to the vertical boards rising like timbers, towering above the sitting 84 year old woman. The chair is a throne more than a place of rest. It is a fixture exalted by its function. Its special role is to be a gathering place. Sitting here, the elder woman offers silent, contemplative thanks for the immeasurable gifts of life given by an immeasurable God whose hand and will wrote the sky and colors and trees and fields seen by her living eye, restored her peace after troubles and calmed her fears, and gave her the health and strength she feels within. Look carefully at her face: her eyes are looking within; this wonder is almost too much to contemplate. Her hand supports the weight of this glorious knowledge, this lived experience.
Each day the woman sits in this chair knowing that God calls to her. Her face is etched with a light filled with bright love. She is seeing something that belongs only to her. Dust, hard work, and weariness can not diminish this place she has entered. In fact, the journey to this place is a praise song deep in the soul. This elder woman has worked and earned a living turning the ground with a long handled hoe. Her real earning shows in the promise of her face, her hand touching her cheek to affirm that this presence that stirs within her is as real as the ground she works. Yet Lange's composition makes this photo work: she photographs the woman from the side, allowing the viewer to look in. She subtly uses wood, the chair and the long, vertical house boards (rising out of view of the photo) to call to mind the altar chair in a church. Her composition frames and presents this woman's story.
The second shot is deceptive and its features easy to miss. It looks like the stereotypes often associated with this era, but close inspection offers a profound difference. This women, by her own words, born “two years before the surrender,” in 1863; in 1937, she is 84 years old!
At 84, she poses as a life-long, proud farm worker, a skilled laborer, knowing both how to tend a crop from planting to harvest, but also knowing, from long experience, how to preserve her body from the wear of sun and hand labor. Back and neck muscles and worn-out arthritic bones have often put others out to pasture, but she proudly is going on. Smiling, looking straight into the camera, her face expresses her easy confidence, a fierce pride, a lifelong way-making. This second portrait is taken at work rest.
Master Work: Portrait at Work Rest of an 84 unnamed Mississippi Woman,A Sharecropper skilled in "hoe culture," "born two years before the surrender."
The details of her long success are in the details of her stance. Her thin frame is at an angle to the hoe. The angle offsets the pulling action of chopping by torquing the pull. As she chops the ground and pulls the hoe to turn the soil, her body twists from her lower back, hips, and thighs. In fact, by the portrait, her action works exactly like a modern rotary tiller, whose curves blades lift and spin the soil—in exactly the same way she does with with the pose of her body!
Her head is elevated, raised from the neck. Keeping her neck up and her head raised staves off the painful onslaught of arthritic that field workers who bent their necks and dropped their heads suffer from.
But the signature adaption she has made is easy to miss. Look carefully at her right hand. Her palm is turned out. Her thumb is below her fingers. Pulling out prevents the muscles and tendons from becoming sore and uses the shoulder and back to pull the load as her lower back swings around, using her legs and thighs to complete the action.
This portrait is a brilliant photograph. It is an anthropological study of advanced farm worker's techniques. (I can find no other photograph of workers before or after the civil war photographed in a similar pose, showing similar techniques.)
I am glad to share both photographs with you. Enjoy this remarkable story, connecting the American experience, told by two woman, one whose life touched the 1861 war, experienced freedom as an infant, and hoed the cotton fields of the rural Mississippi Delta; the other, a polio survior, a society photographer who lived in large cities; both collaborating on a July day in 1937, before and behind a camera set up in the Delta to make these lasting images.
Sharecropper's Home, 10 Miles from Jackson, 1937
All photographs by Dorothea Lange from the Library of Congress (available with no known restrictions).
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. (A Perlo is rice enriched by local bounty, carefully crafted to enhance its pleasure and value; enjoyed by all.) You may create a permalink to Southern Perlo by clicking the permalink button. And please, stir the Perlo--below, add your comments! And thank you, Monica!
Two photographs taken in Mississippi in 1937 by one of America's photography masters lay in the Library of Congress archives for half a century. Today, I am proud to present these two photographs. I am excited about the remarkable story these two pictures tell.
Dorothea Lange, a woman trained as a portrait photographer in New York and who apprenticed with prominent society photographers, was the photographer for these two environmental portraits. Born Dorothea Nutzhorn in 1895, as a child she changed her name to her mother's maiden name after her father left and her parents were divorced. Two of her five photos of a Mississippi woman are overlooked master works.
A Sharecropper's Family that moved to Mississippi, 1937
Dorothea Lange took the long road to Mississippi. She traveled west to San Francisco in 1918, and opened a successful portrait studio, married a painter and gave birth to two boys. In 1935, she divorced. She married a economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the Great Depression drew near, she begin to make photographic images that documented the impact of the economy on daily lives of her subjects. Her photographs of human character find people on the edge of survival, working in poverty, standing in meal lines, alone, with their family, or in groups. Their faces are a deep study of the impact of these conditions.
A Sharecropper from Issaquena County, MS
In 1936, Dorothea Lange was hired by the federal government's Farm Security Administration's Office of War Information to travel across the South documenting a rural America. When she got to Mississippi, she photographed the sharecroppers and agriculture of the Delta. Her eye connected the relationships of work to living through the simple mechanism of image and composition. She raised these two photographic techniques to an art which at its best, is still surpassed.
Negro Children, Mississippi Delta, 1936
As a photographer, she waited on each story to appear in the faces before her lens. For Dorothea Lange, sharing was a natural action, and she valued what was within. She was not interested in matching her images to variations of external social ideals. She waited until her subjects' faces got past the apparent doom, relaxed from the usual cliches ,and finally opened a window to her and her camera that offered an inner glimpse into the expressions and emotions held dear in their inner heart. Working with spare back drops of natural settings, a porch or a field, her photos are careful documents of the hardships and hopes that lived and collided within her subjects. Her images somehow acquire and preserve an inner strength and vulnerability. Her photos are a window to the inner grace of her subjects, presenting the dignity of their real selves as they face the camera for all to see.
I think two of her best examples of image and composition are of a Mississippi women who was a field hand, working as a sharecropper in the Delta, that Lange photographed in 1937. This unnamed women has five images in the Library of Congress archives of Lange's photographs. I was absolutely astounded when I found them. Together they tell a story heard but rarely seen. Photos of Negro sharecroppers , often idyllic and stereotyped, many times expressed the values of outside views of the people and their work. Lange sought out the inner character of the persons photographed. But Lange also took herself out of the way. She knew how to look for the dignity and real vulnerability within everyone; she knew each person was a hero with a 1,000 faces, and she went beyond preconceptions to capture that moment in which the person emerged unique. She reveled in what she had not seen before. She abandoned formula or familiarity, sparked by the emerging difference that offered a look unseen before. She knew when she had this elusive quality: her photos are one with this transcendent moment.
Traveling Highway 1, 1938
The Mississippi woman she photographs offers two extraordinary instances of Lange's gifts.
First is a picture of the woman sitting alone on her porch in a wooden ladder back chair. The woman, a farm worker and sharecropper, “chops” cotton; she uses a long handled hoe to weed and turn the soil in cotton fields. She is skille in "hoe culture." She was born, by her own words, “two years before the surrender,” (the end of the Civil War in 1865). Photograph in 1937, she is likely 84 years old. Like other people Lange photographed, she is unnamed and no located is noted.
The wooden slated or cane-backed ladder chair in which she sits was the most common piece of furniture on rural porches. In the South, and in many rural locales, porches served as outdoor living rooms. From the porch, the sun cast its colors of pink and rose, leaves fell, dust rolled into the wind, wind played across the skin, and the changing light and its display of textures and signaled the swift, silent passage of time.
Master Work: A Portrait of an 84 year old Mississippi Woman
Lange's photograph elevates the chair. Its straight back rail is at an offset angle to the vertical boards rising like timbers, towering above the sitting 84 year old woman. The chair is a throne more than a place of rest. It is a fixture exalted by its function. Its special role is to be a gathering place. Sitting here, the elder woman offers silent, contemplative thanks for the immeasurable gifts of life given by an immeasurable God whose hand and will wrote the sky and colors and trees and fields seen by her living eye, restored her peace after troubles and calmed her fears, and gave her the health and strength she feels within. Look carefully at her face: her eyes are looking within; this wonder is almost too much to contemplate. Her hand supports the weight of this glorious knowledge, this lived experience.
Each day the woman sits in this chair knowing that God calls to her. Her face is etched with a light filled with bright love. She is seeing something that belongs only to her. Dust, hard work, and weariness can not diminish this place she has entered. In fact, the journey to this place is a praise song deep in the soul. This elder woman has worked and earned a living turning the ground with a long handled hoe. Her real earning shows in the promise of her face, her hand touching her cheek to affirm that this presence that stirs within her is as real as the ground she works. Yet Lange's composition makes this photo work: she photographs the woman from the side, allowing the viewer to look in. She subtly uses wood, the chair and the long, vertical house boards (rising out of view of the photo) to call to mind the altar chair in a church. Her composition frames and presents this woman's story.
The second shot is deceptive and its features easy to miss. It looks like the stereotypes often associated with this era, but close inspection offers a profound difference. This women, by her own words, born “two years before the surrender,” in 1863; in 1937, she is 84 years old!
At 84, she poses as a life-long, proud farm worker, a skilled laborer, knowing both how to tend a crop from planting to harvest, but also knowing, from long experience, how to preserve her body from the wear of sun and hand labor. Back and neck muscles and worn-out arthritic bones have often put others out to pasture, but she proudly is going on. Smiling, looking straight into the camera, her face expresses her easy confidence, a fierce pride, a lifelong way-making. This second portrait is taken at work rest.
Master Work: Portrait at Work Rest of an 84 unnamed Mississippi Woman,A Sharecropper skilled in "hoe culture," "born two years before the surrender."
The details of her long success are in the details of her stance. Her thin frame is at an angle to the hoe. The angle offsets the pulling action of chopping by torquing the pull. As she chops the ground and pulls the hoe to turn the soil, her body twists from her lower back, hips, and thighs. In fact, by the portrait, her action works exactly like a modern rotary tiller, whose curves blades lift and spin the soil—in exactly the same way she does with with the pose of her body!
Her head is elevated, raised from the neck. Keeping her neck up and her head raised staves off the painful onslaught of arthritic that field workers who bent their necks and dropped their heads suffer from.
But the signature adaption she has made is easy to miss. Look carefully at her right hand. Her palm is turned out. Her thumb is below her fingers. Pulling out prevents the muscles and tendons from becoming sore and uses the shoulder and back to pull the load as her lower back swings around, using her legs and thighs to complete the action.
This portrait is a brilliant photograph. It is an anthropological study of advanced farm worker's techniques. (I can find no other photograph of workers before or after the civil war photographed in a similar pose, showing similar techniques.)
I am glad to share both photographs with you. Enjoy this remarkable story, connecting the American experience, told by two woman, one whose life touched the 1861 war, experienced freedom as an infant, and hoed the cotton fields of the rural Mississippi Delta; the other, a polio survior, a society photographer who lived in large cities; both collaborating on a July day in 1937, before and behind a camera set up in the Delta to make these lasting images.
Sharecropper's Home, 10 Miles from Jackson, 1937
All photographs by Dorothea Lange from the Library of Congress (available with no known restrictions).
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. (A Perlo is rice enriched by local bounty, carefully crafted to enhance its pleasure and value; enjoyed by all.) You may create a permalink to Southern Perlo by clicking the permalink button. And please, stir the Perlo--below, add your comments! And thank you, Monica!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
