No sooner had the previous post come off the press than the American hawks erupted anew over the latest Super Evil Hitler to be sighted; Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While in New York for this week's United Nations Summit, Ahmadinejad was booked to speak at Columbia University, and the outrage machine went into overdrive at the audacity of an American university to give a platform for an Enemy of the State to hypnotize our college kids with his Super Evil Voodoo spells. (Front page splash in Rupert's New York Post, "The Evil has Landed")
Glenn Greenwald (again) has a thorough collection of the ludicrous posturing that surrounded Ahmadinejad's visit, including a laughable interview on 60 Minutes, in which Scott Pelley discovers his journalistic cajones when he's not interviewing a member of the United States government. Rick Perlstein compares the reaction to Big A's visit with a different world leader many years ago who once possessed a significantly greater threat to American existence.
Ahmadinejad is certainly a bit kooky, but not much more than your average Midwestern Republican. Attempts to portray him as a murderous dictator are exaggerated on both counts; he was popularly elected, though barely, and doesn't hold the power in the Iranian government to make the kind of radical foreign policy decisions attributed to him by the hawks and the American press. That ultimately rests with the Supreme Leader. That is who the hawks want a war with, anyway; Ahmadinejad has just made enough of a fool of himself to give them a public face to make a target of hate for the American public.
While at Columbia, Ahmadinejad made the since-endlessly-riffed-upon claim that there are no homosexuals in Iraq, which has sent the hawks on a new and curious road of persuasion. While we welcome their sudden concern about equal rights for queer folks, we do have to wonder if we can't think of a nation closer to our own shores where we might agitate for this problem. Besides, in the matter of bombing the hell out of people to liberate them, I generally take the notion that it's noticeably harder to enjoy all that freedom and equality when you're fucking dead.
I dunno, just me.
At Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte wonders what's driving the Ahmadinejad Fear Machine. In light of the dismissive reaction of the Big A at Columbia she mentioned, I think it might be mistaken to categorize the censorship impulse as actual fear on the part of the hawks. At least, not fear of Ahmadinejad himself, but rather the fear that the public will see Ahmadinejad unfiltered and recognize he is small and silly rather than the bloodthirsty New Hitler they are being sold by the hawks and the media. That's not an outcome they can tolerate.
28 September 2007
24 September 2007
Burns, Burns, Burns
"You know, you look back over our history, and it doesn't take you long to realize that our people have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world."
-Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson
Watched the first chapter of the new Ken Burns epic "The War" on PBS last night. While it's true that the USA needs another back-slapping hagiography of the Second World War like I need a massive acne breakout, I was interested enough in seeing how Burns would handle it that I tuned in anyway. To say I'm a huge fan of Baseball, despite it's flaws, is an understatement; watching it again several years ago nearly reignited my interest in the game singlehandedly, though, I admit, much of the credit should probably go to the chilling narration of the late, great John Chancellor, whose voice is inseparable from the film itself.
The chief problem with depictions of World War II in American media is the ease at which they slip in to the comfortable narrative of America as the last beacon of defense against the Nazis and Imperial Japan, swooping in to save the day from the other ineffectual, soft-bellied Allies. Burns has elected to remove the international context almost completely, paring down the scope of the film to war stories from four mid-sized American towns. The results, so far, seem mixed. While this has thankfully much of the grandstanding about the great global Crusade of Freedom, the tales of the hardships of war can ring a little hollow. As the film acknowledges in the first few frames, the United States suffered the fewest combat casualties of any of the major powers in the war, and American civilian casualties were negligible, a far cry from every other theater. It's an odd choice to mention this, as it essentially frames the rest of your movie as an overwrought melodrama, but it reinforces the idea that everything becomes so much more special when it happens to America.
But I was presently surprised to see even a token acknowledgment to the comparatively low number of American casualties in the war, as it's likely as close as you can come to the heresy that the comic-book jingoistic narrative of America as World Superhero is greatly overstated, and that America's work to liberate Western Europe did not subsequently buy us endless moral capital to recklessly throw our weight around the globe on a similar pretext. The Allied landings at Normandy in June 1944 were intended to liberate France, all right, but not from the Nazis. The outcome of the European war was already decided by then; the Red Army was already rolling back the Wehrmacht after gumming up its tracks with millions upon millions of dead Russians.
That's another common flaw with American portrayals of the war; the downplaying of the vastness of the Eastern Front which, for all intents and purposes, was the whole war in Europe, or at least big enough to make the rest of it look like flag football by comparison. There are reasons for this, of course, some more obvious than others. The United States was already effectively an enemy of the Soviet Union, and deemphasizing the Soviets' role was the expected result of the Cold War. But acknowledging it also casts a cloud on the popular illusion of the Second World War as the great clear struggle of Good and Evil; the alliance of convenience with a different evil to combat the one you're both fighting makes things much less wonderfully Tolkienesque.
I hope and suspect that this will be one of Burns' strong points. The United States has cloaked its legacy in World War II in the haughty ideas of freedom and fairness, in which it sent African-Americans to fight prejudice abroad while abetting de facto and de jure discrimination at home, and rounded up west coast Japanese-Americans for fear their inherent Japanese-ness gave them the inclination for treason.
If World War II hadn't happened, it would be necessary for the modern neocons, hawks, and imperialists to invent it. Given how frequently they appeal to it, a vital understanding of the war from a global perspective is necessary for the common citizen. Every petty tyrant who's sitting on some of our oil is the next Hitler, and anyone who doubts the wisdom of unilateral military action to remove him would have twiddled their thumbs during the Holocaust. I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh on the Burns film because it doesn't provide this. If the myth of America as benevolent intercessor has survived Vietnam and Iraq, among numerous others, breaking it isn't something any film can accomplish.
-Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson
Watched the first chapter of the new Ken Burns epic "The War" on PBS last night. While it's true that the USA needs another back-slapping hagiography of the Second World War like I need a massive acne breakout, I was interested enough in seeing how Burns would handle it that I tuned in anyway. To say I'm a huge fan of Baseball, despite it's flaws, is an understatement; watching it again several years ago nearly reignited my interest in the game singlehandedly, though, I admit, much of the credit should probably go to the chilling narration of the late, great John Chancellor, whose voice is inseparable from the film itself.
The chief problem with depictions of World War II in American media is the ease at which they slip in to the comfortable narrative of America as the last beacon of defense against the Nazis and Imperial Japan, swooping in to save the day from the other ineffectual, soft-bellied Allies. Burns has elected to remove the international context almost completely, paring down the scope of the film to war stories from four mid-sized American towns. The results, so far, seem mixed. While this has thankfully much of the grandstanding about the great global Crusade of Freedom, the tales of the hardships of war can ring a little hollow. As the film acknowledges in the first few frames, the United States suffered the fewest combat casualties of any of the major powers in the war, and American civilian casualties were negligible, a far cry from every other theater. It's an odd choice to mention this, as it essentially frames the rest of your movie as an overwrought melodrama, but it reinforces the idea that everything becomes so much more special when it happens to America.
But I was presently surprised to see even a token acknowledgment to the comparatively low number of American casualties in the war, as it's likely as close as you can come to the heresy that the comic-book jingoistic narrative of America as World Superhero is greatly overstated, and that America's work to liberate Western Europe did not subsequently buy us endless moral capital to recklessly throw our weight around the globe on a similar pretext. The Allied landings at Normandy in June 1944 were intended to liberate France, all right, but not from the Nazis. The outcome of the European war was already decided by then; the Red Army was already rolling back the Wehrmacht after gumming up its tracks with millions upon millions of dead Russians.
That's another common flaw with American portrayals of the war; the downplaying of the vastness of the Eastern Front which, for all intents and purposes, was the whole war in Europe, or at least big enough to make the rest of it look like flag football by comparison. There are reasons for this, of course, some more obvious than others. The United States was already effectively an enemy of the Soviet Union, and deemphasizing the Soviets' role was the expected result of the Cold War. But acknowledging it also casts a cloud on the popular illusion of the Second World War as the great clear struggle of Good and Evil; the alliance of convenience with a different evil to combat the one you're both fighting makes things much less wonderfully Tolkienesque.
I hope and suspect that this will be one of Burns' strong points. The United States has cloaked its legacy in World War II in the haughty ideas of freedom and fairness, in which it sent African-Americans to fight prejudice abroad while abetting de facto and de jure discrimination at home, and rounded up west coast Japanese-Americans for fear their inherent Japanese-ness gave them the inclination for treason.
If World War II hadn't happened, it would be necessary for the modern neocons, hawks, and imperialists to invent it. Given how frequently they appeal to it, a vital understanding of the war from a global perspective is necessary for the common citizen. Every petty tyrant who's sitting on some of our oil is the next Hitler, and anyone who doubts the wisdom of unilateral military action to remove him would have twiddled their thumbs during the Holocaust. I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh on the Burns film because it doesn't provide this. If the myth of America as benevolent intercessor has survived Vietnam and Iraq, among numerous others, breaking it isn't something any film can accomplish.
19 September 2007
Caliphate rising
I should have used this as a footnote to my earlier post, but I had lost track of the posts I was going to riff from (and I thought the material was located inside posts it wasn't). Anyway.
Slacktivist last week linked to this post from Glenn Greenwald about the amount of sincerity contained in right-wing fears of a rising Caliphate overthrowing Western democracies if we should fail in our goal to out-populate them.
Fred responds;
Let's consider what the "War on Terror" is fundamentally designed to do; specifically to pick up in the aftermath of the Cold War as a cash-cow for the military-industrial complex and a grand cosmic conflict fantasy for the protofascist right. Unfortunately the upgrade to "Cold War 2.0," required more careful planning than simply inserting "terrorist" into every sentence where the word "Communist" used to go.
For much of the Cold War, for example, it was at least theoretically possible that the Soviet Union could have infiltrated the American government to the extent of making serious mayhem, though any attempts at a coup would have lacked any popular support to have staying power (and the degree of Soviet espionage has probably been grossly exaggerated.) And they certainly had enough nuclear weaponry to turn the United States into a radioactive crater if the whole government subterfuge didn't work out.
So that fear, at least, wasn't entirely unfounded. It's unknown to me whether there's been any straight-faced attempts at rationally explaining how they imagine such a social transformation might come about. I assume it has something to do with skeered lib'ruls handing over the keys to the Senate to Al Qaeda, though it seems to me the only people living in perpetual terror are paranoid righties.
One of the newest contraptions fresh off the fear factory assembly lines is a theory by a Canadian fellow named Mark Steyn, whose claims of a brown horde seizing control of Europe by out-populating the white defenders of Western Civilization is gaining some traction with the intellectual set. It's mostly racist fearmongering that again provides more of an insight into the accuser than the accused ("We want to take control of the government by outbirthing urban liberals, so why doesn't everybody?"). But even that doesn't explain how the USA is doomed to become an auxiliary member of the Global Caliphate.
Slacktivist last week linked to this post from Glenn Greenwald about the amount of sincerity contained in right-wing fears of a rising Caliphate overthrowing Western democracies if we should fail in our goal to out-populate them.
Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States -- the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain -- actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and "our women" will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have -- not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview
Fred responds;
I hate to look like a fool by disagreeing with people way smarter than me, and Fred's further post gives a compelling explanation for how this could come about, but I'm not sure I fully buy into the idea of this being an "actual fear."
It is astonishing that anyone would think that. So astonishing that my first reaction is to think maybe Greenwald is overstating his case. But then I read the Roger Simon article that prompted Greenwald's post and the frantic recommendation of it by Glenn Reynolds, and then I read as much as I can bear of the Fox/Malkin/Limbaugh strain Greenwald cites and have to admit that he's right -- "This is an actual fear they have."
Let's consider what the "War on Terror" is fundamentally designed to do; specifically to pick up in the aftermath of the Cold War as a cash-cow for the military-industrial complex and a grand cosmic conflict fantasy for the protofascist right. Unfortunately the upgrade to "Cold War 2.0," required more careful planning than simply inserting "terrorist" into every sentence where the word "Communist" used to go.
For much of the Cold War, for example, it was at least theoretically possible that the Soviet Union could have infiltrated the American government to the extent of making serious mayhem, though any attempts at a coup would have lacked any popular support to have staying power (and the degree of Soviet espionage has probably been grossly exaggerated.) And they certainly had enough nuclear weaponry to turn the United States into a radioactive crater if the whole government subterfuge didn't work out.
So that fear, at least, wasn't entirely unfounded. It's unknown to me whether there's been any straight-faced attempts at rationally explaining how they imagine such a social transformation might come about. I assume it has something to do with skeered lib'ruls handing over the keys to the Senate to Al Qaeda, though it seems to me the only people living in perpetual terror are paranoid righties.
One of the newest contraptions fresh off the fear factory assembly lines is a theory by a Canadian fellow named Mark Steyn, whose claims of a brown horde seizing control of Europe by out-populating the white defenders of Western Civilization is gaining some traction with the intellectual set. It's mostly racist fearmongering that again provides more of an insight into the accuser than the accused ("We want to take control of the government by outbirthing urban liberals, so why doesn't everybody?"). But even that doesn't explain how the USA is doomed to become an auxiliary member of the Global Caliphate.
14 September 2007
Do unto others
Often after I watch a film I poke over to Rotten Tomatoes (now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Teh Rupert!) to see what the Important Critics (mainly A.O. Scott and David Edelstein) had to say about it. But occasionally I will find a gem from some lesser-known critic, like this one.
I am a bit skeptical of the presence of films like this and the 2003 Afghani movie "Osama," both films about Islamic fundamentalists' treatment of women that scratch a certain American itch to feel smugly superior to to backward Orientals. This shouldn't take anything away from the quality of both films; despite my reservations I actually like "Offside" better than Rhodes. Perhaps he resented having to sit and listen to not-English for 90 minutes (which is, admittedly, a problem for this picture if you don't understand the language as it's very dialogue-heavy and some of the more comic touches will be lost to them).**
If you listen to right-wing blather about Teh Mooslim Menace for very long, the appeal to the degradation of women in these societies, such as the given example, will likely be the first, and possibly the only, thing that will be beaten into your head. The image of your sisters and daughters tied down and forced into burkas is regularly evoked as the price you'll have to pay for a lack of vigilance against the Islamunistonazifascist hordes. This is curious in that Western societies are not all that far removed from having similar attitudes, which were generally enforced by the same traditionalist prudes and their intellectual heirs now so outraged about Muslim subjugation of women that it's enough to justify an imperial crusade to liberate them.
This story persists so much because the American right and conservative Christians in particular understand it as a social issue in which they believe they are demonstrably different from the fundamentalist Muslims in the funhouse mirror (and they are even wrong about that, as I'll argue shortly). On most of the other social causes the Christian Right bathes itself in, from homosexuality to abortion, child rearing, pornography, censorship and others, there's hardly any substantive difference. (A cat the unfortunate wingnut Dinesh D'Souza infamously let out of the bag last year.) If you could drag Jerry Falwell and the Ayatollah Khomeini out of Hell long enough to have a conversation--and keep the topic away from religion--they would find a lot to agree upon.
But I don't think the current American rightists deserve even the small amount of credit they believe their self-piously liberal attitude toward women should get them. Even in this case, the difference between Christian and Muslim fundamentalists is one of degree, not of premise; that premise being that women must cover themselves up and keep out of sight so as not to tempt the uncontrollable lust raging in the soul of a man and cause him to stumble out of favor with God. They have already decided it's the women's fault; the rest is just haggling over how much they ought to be punished. (I appeal to my own experience here. Modesty, ladies!)
*Glenn Greenwald had an excellent post yesterday debunking the notion that "speaking against Muslims" somehow sets one up as a unique target for reprisal than remarks about other religions.
**I have the feeling watching a lot of foreign films that the subtitles aren't catching as much of the dialogue as I would like. They are always much cleaner and lacking in inflections than I'm willing to believe. Try watching a film in English and imagine how it might be subtitled (or even put on Spanish subtitles if you like) and see what the difference is between what you hear and what you read. Maybe I'm paranoid about this, though.
It's too bad that Hollywood, which is always interested in making another anti-That's a fellow named Steve Rhodes, writing about the latest film by Iranian director Jafar Panahi. The "Islamic oppression" on display here is the practice of barring women from attending male sporting events, and the movie tells a fictionalized adventure of several resourceful fans of the Iranian national football team who try to slip through the security net to watch the team clinch a place in the 2006 World Cup.American picture, couldn't make a few showing the consequences of Islamic oppression. OFFSIDE isn't much of a movie, but it at least tackles subjects that Western studios avoid lest they upset Islamic fundamentalists.*
I am a bit skeptical of the presence of films like this and the 2003 Afghani movie "Osama," both films about Islamic fundamentalists' treatment of women that scratch a certain American itch to feel smugly superior to to backward Orientals. This shouldn't take anything away from the quality of both films; despite my reservations I actually like "Offside" better than Rhodes. Perhaps he resented having to sit and listen to not-English for 90 minutes (which is, admittedly, a problem for this picture if you don't understand the language as it's very dialogue-heavy and some of the more comic touches will be lost to them).**
If you listen to right-wing blather about Teh Mooslim Menace for very long, the appeal to the degradation of women in these societies, such as the given example, will likely be the first, and possibly the only, thing that will be beaten into your head. The image of your sisters and daughters tied down and forced into burkas is regularly evoked as the price you'll have to pay for a lack of vigilance against the Islamunistonazifascist hordes. This is curious in that Western societies are not all that far removed from having similar attitudes, which were generally enforced by the same traditionalist prudes and their intellectual heirs now so outraged about Muslim subjugation of women that it's enough to justify an imperial crusade to liberate them.
This story persists so much because the American right and conservative Christians in particular understand it as a social issue in which they believe they are demonstrably different from the fundamentalist Muslims in the funhouse mirror (and they are even wrong about that, as I'll argue shortly). On most of the other social causes the Christian Right bathes itself in, from homosexuality to abortion, child rearing, pornography, censorship and others, there's hardly any substantive difference. (A cat the unfortunate wingnut Dinesh D'Souza infamously let out of the bag last year.) If you could drag Jerry Falwell and the Ayatollah Khomeini out of Hell long enough to have a conversation--and keep the topic away from religion--they would find a lot to agree upon.
But I don't think the current American rightists deserve even the small amount of credit they believe their self-piously liberal attitude toward women should get them. Even in this case, the difference between Christian and Muslim fundamentalists is one of degree, not of premise; that premise being that women must cover themselves up and keep out of sight so as not to tempt the uncontrollable lust raging in the soul of a man and cause him to stumble out of favor with God. They have already decided it's the women's fault; the rest is just haggling over how much they ought to be punished. (I appeal to my own experience here. Modesty, ladies!)
*Glenn Greenwald had an excellent post yesterday debunking the notion that "speaking against Muslims" somehow sets one up as a unique target for reprisal than remarks about other religions.
**I have the feeling watching a lot of foreign films that the subtitles aren't catching as much of the dialogue as I would like. They are always much cleaner and lacking in inflections than I'm willing to believe. Try watching a film in English and imagine how it might be subtitled (or even put on Spanish subtitles if you like) and see what the difference is between what you hear and what you read. Maybe I'm paranoid about this, though.
06 September 2007
Demologos
An entrepreneur in England is recruiting members to buy into a scheme to purchase a lower-league football club and turn it into a fan-run organization.
You can probably see where I'm going with this. I am something of a democratic absolutists, an, while I don't think people have an inalienable right to democratically operating a sports franchise, I also don't see why it's such a terrible idea given that we ostensibly let them democratically run a government. The ridicule of the former should give us a telling idea about their commitment to the latter. Or perhaps it's that they are fine with the notion of allowing the proles to elect politicians, just not anyone who might make an actual important decision.
For similar reasons, I'm somewhat mystified and worried by the liberal fascination with H.L. Mencken, who famously warned "on some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." As disastrous as Genghis Bush's presidency may be, the solution to preventing a repeat performance isn't stripping away the democratic rights of those "plain folks," but educating and persuading them. Unfortunately this is beyond the pale for many urban liberals, who feel their intellectual superiority should grant them more political clout (in a similar way capitalists feel about personal wealth, I suppose).
I found this story through the BTF Newsblog, and the reaction there is quite interesting in its dismissiveness. They seem convinced that, given the chance to make actual important decisions in the running of a sports team, impulsive fans would immediately wreck the team by making rash, emotional decisions about buying and selling players that should be better left to the experts.Once a club is snapped up the members will each receive one vote-carrying share.
"Every decision that is made will be a joint decision and all along the way members will be guided by the respective experts at the club...
"Every decision that is taken, people will be happy with because they'll realise that's what the majority of members want to happen," Brooks said.
Emphasising the members' influence in their club, Brooks noted that fans would have a say in team formations and transfers into and out of the club.
This in turn would help, rather than hinder the coach, he argued.
"We do think he'll have a lot of influence. He will brief the members on suggestions for formations... He will have a very big input in guiding the members towards the team selection.
You can probably see where I'm going with this. I am something of a democratic absolutists, an, while I don't think people have an inalienable right to democratically operating a sports franchise, I also don't see why it's such a terrible idea given that we ostensibly let them democratically run a government. The ridicule of the former should give us a telling idea about their commitment to the latter. Or perhaps it's that they are fine with the notion of allowing the proles to elect politicians, just not anyone who might make an actual important decision.
For similar reasons, I'm somewhat mystified and worried by the liberal fascination with H.L. Mencken, who famously warned "on some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." As disastrous as Genghis Bush's presidency may be, the solution to preventing a repeat performance isn't stripping away the democratic rights of those "plain folks," but educating and persuading them. Unfortunately this is beyond the pale for many urban liberals, who feel their intellectual superiority should grant them more political clout (in a similar way capitalists feel about personal wealth, I suppose).
One by one
The slow die-off of this generation's pantheon of religious right icons continued yesterday as D. James Kennedy followed his colleague Jerry Falwell to the grave. Kennedy was slightly less well-known among mainstream circles, choosing instead to focus his ubiquitous bleating on Christian radio.
Rob Boston of Americans United has a collection of some of Kennedy's greatest hits. Most delightfully, Kennedy had an erstwhile habit of seeing Reds under every rock and bush.
*I'm particularly fond of this trinket, and would like to do a post on this general idea someday.
Rob Boston of Americans United has a collection of some of Kennedy's greatest hits. Most delightfully, Kennedy had an erstwhile habit of seeing Reds under every rock and bush.
"Just a few years ago, there were as many as ten thousand Communist professors in American universities. The average person never saw any of them, and many would doubt the truth of that statistic. But I can assure you it is true."It will be interesting to see how the Christian Right, which is largely built around a cult of personality surrounding its leaders, reacts in the wake of the Old Guard fading away (Robertson and Dobson will likely follow within a few years). The younger generation is considered less politically extreme, but there is resistance.
"Not all the educators in our public schools and universities are deliberately deceitful, not all of them want to destroy this nation, but many do. The major teachers' unions certainly do."
"Modern secularists and agnostics do not want to admit that the Christian religion is true, because that would mean that they are sinners; and they have no intention of giving up their right to sin."*
*I'm particularly fond of this trinket, and would like to do a post on this general idea someday.
03 September 2007
Balls of fury
Ok, I've been out for awhile again. This means it's time for a US Open tennis post.
Let's start at the top. Roger Federer is, in light of his 2004-06 record, having something of an off year losing a whole six matches so far in 2007. This week he's dropped the first set in both his third and fourth round matches to unseeded players. A chink in the armor? Perhaps, though he did go on to win both of those matches easily, the eventual Federer victory seems less inevitable this week than in recent times.
Part of that doubt arises from the emergence of some better challengers. Though Rafa Nadal is still seeking a breakout performance on a hardcourt major and is fighting two soft knees, he has looked solid and has bought some time by staying out of long grueling matches. The real rising star of the summer has been 20-year old Serb Novak Djokavic, who beat both Federer and Nadal in Montreal last month on his way to firmly establishing himself as the No. 3 player in the world. I thought Djokavic would win the tournament at the start of last week, and I'll stick by that pick, although he's played a lot in the last few weeks and may be starting to wear down. Djokavic should have it fairly easy against Juan Monaco, a nondescript Argentine in the 4th round, while Nadal faces David Ferrer, a good battler who could give him problems if the knees start giving out.
Federer, meanwhile, faces another matchup in the quarterfinals with the perennial Great American Hope, Andy Roddick. From Hell's heart Roddick stabs at Federer, to no avail; nine straight defeats, 13 of 14 overall. Despite that I never feel completely confident of a matchup against Roddick, who is capable of serving well enough to turn the match into, at best, a series of tiebreakers.
One player left to watch in the men's draw is Ernests Gulbis, a 19-year old from the tennis hotbed of Latvia. Gulbis just destroyed No. 8 Tommy Robredo in the third round, and while Robredo would much rather be playing on clay, a demolition of that magnitude is nothing to sneeze at. Gulbis has another very winnable match in the fourth round Tuesday against 31-year old Carlos Moya.
The women's draw has been a tale of two halves heading into the final eight; the top half containing both Williams, top-seed Justine Henin and No. 3 Jelena Jankovic, while the bottom half features the 2004 champ Svetlana Kuzmetsova and three young players looking at the deep end of a major for the first time in their careers. Venus Williams looks to have the edge here, after drubbing my personal choice Ana Ivanovic out in the fourth round Sunday. Filling the "lovable longshot" role is 18-year old Agnes Szavay from Budapest.
This is normally the point at which I rant about television and media coverage of individual sports which grabs at any and all American players and thrusts them into the spotlight at the expense of virtually everyone else in the world with the exception of likes of Federer, Nadal, or Henin. I'm beginning to make my peace with this losing battle, though, with the reflexive compensation of merely rooting for all the Americans to lose out of spite. Less stress that way.
As far as I can tell, this is a worldwide phenomenon. What's different about the United States is that we have enough depth to squeeze everyone else off the page, while most countries would love to have just a single top-10 player in either draw. Across many sports, this has led to the general American attitude that merely winning occasionally isn't enough, the only acceptable outcome is complete hegemony.
The expectation behind this, I suppose, is that I am supposed to cheer for the hometown players in the same way I might cheer for the hometown team. I find both of these assumptions mystifying, actually, but the former especially so. Would I be expected to cheer for white players over black players, or for the Aryans against the Slavs? If not, why should I care about arbitrary national distinctions? I tend to gravitate toward players whom I think would be interesting people to know in real life. Not in a pious, moral adjudicating "role model" sort of way, but I like to see that you have a brain and a heart and you're an honest sportsman who notices and respects the other players. Of course, this is not a perfect system either, as I admittedly don't know anyone beyond on-court demeanor and the press, but it's a far sight better than blind national homerism.
Let's start at the top. Roger Federer is, in light of his 2004-06 record, having something of an off year losing a whole six matches so far in 2007. This week he's dropped the first set in both his third and fourth round matches to unseeded players. A chink in the armor? Perhaps, though he did go on to win both of those matches easily, the eventual Federer victory seems less inevitable this week than in recent times.
Part of that doubt arises from the emergence of some better challengers. Though Rafa Nadal is still seeking a breakout performance on a hardcourt major and is fighting two soft knees, he has looked solid and has bought some time by staying out of long grueling matches. The real rising star of the summer has been 20-year old Serb Novak Djokavic, who beat both Federer and Nadal in Montreal last month on his way to firmly establishing himself as the No. 3 player in the world. I thought Djokavic would win the tournament at the start of last week, and I'll stick by that pick, although he's played a lot in the last few weeks and may be starting to wear down. Djokavic should have it fairly easy against Juan Monaco, a nondescript Argentine in the 4th round, while Nadal faces David Ferrer, a good battler who could give him problems if the knees start giving out.
Federer, meanwhile, faces another matchup in the quarterfinals with the perennial Great American Hope, Andy Roddick. From Hell's heart Roddick stabs at Federer, to no avail; nine straight defeats, 13 of 14 overall. Despite that I never feel completely confident of a matchup against Roddick, who is capable of serving well enough to turn the match into, at best, a series of tiebreakers.
One player left to watch in the men's draw is Ernests Gulbis, a 19-year old from the tennis hotbed of Latvia. Gulbis just destroyed No. 8 Tommy Robredo in the third round, and while Robredo would much rather be playing on clay, a demolition of that magnitude is nothing to sneeze at. Gulbis has another very winnable match in the fourth round Tuesday against 31-year old Carlos Moya.
The women's draw has been a tale of two halves heading into the final eight; the top half containing both Williams, top-seed Justine Henin and No. 3 Jelena Jankovic, while the bottom half features the 2004 champ Svetlana Kuzmetsova and three young players looking at the deep end of a major for the first time in their careers. Venus Williams looks to have the edge here, after drubbing my personal choice Ana Ivanovic out in the fourth round Sunday. Filling the "lovable longshot" role is 18-year old Agnes Szavay from Budapest.
This is normally the point at which I rant about television and media coverage of individual sports which grabs at any and all American players and thrusts them into the spotlight at the expense of virtually everyone else in the world with the exception of likes of Federer, Nadal, or Henin. I'm beginning to make my peace with this losing battle, though, with the reflexive compensation of merely rooting for all the Americans to lose out of spite. Less stress that way.
As far as I can tell, this is a worldwide phenomenon. What's different about the United States is that we have enough depth to squeeze everyone else off the page, while most countries would love to have just a single top-10 player in either draw. Across many sports, this has led to the general American attitude that merely winning occasionally isn't enough, the only acceptable outcome is complete hegemony.
The expectation behind this, I suppose, is that I am supposed to cheer for the hometown players in the same way I might cheer for the hometown team. I find both of these assumptions mystifying, actually, but the former especially so. Would I be expected to cheer for white players over black players, or for the Aryans against the Slavs? If not, why should I care about arbitrary national distinctions? I tend to gravitate toward players whom I think would be interesting people to know in real life. Not in a pious, moral adjudicating "role model" sort of way, but I like to see that you have a brain and a heart and you're an honest sportsman who notices and respects the other players. Of course, this is not a perfect system either, as I admittedly don't know anyone beyond on-court demeanor and the press, but it's a far sight better than blind national homerism.
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