PETER KADZIS

China, Tibet, and the Olympics

PETER KADZIS — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:17:57 GMT

Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman explains the Dalai Lama’s political wisdom, the myopia of the Chinese, and the essence of the Olympics
It is difficult to imagine an American — perhaps any Westerner — with a greater sympathy for, and understanding of, Tibet than scholar-activist Robert Thurman.

Thanks to the Olympics, the world’s attention is trained as it never has been before on China, the superpower that many believe will economically and politically dominate the 21st century, just as the United States dominated the 20th. For those, such as myself, with deep misgivings about what this international transformation of power and influence will entail, the plight of Tibet — its people, its environment, its religious and cultural traditions — provides a sobering lesson in reality.

Beijing 2008: Special issue

It is difficult to imagine an American — perhaps any Westerner — with a greater sympathy for, and understanding of, Tibet than scholar-activist Robert Thurman, a Columbia University professor who also happens to be the first American ever to be ordained a Buddhist monk. Presiding over Thurman’s ordination was the Dalai Lama, then as now the spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet, who has lived in exile for the past 49 years, following a failed uprising against the Chinese, who entered the nation in the 1950s.

Thurman’s most recent book, Why the Dalai Lama Matters (Atria/Beyond Words), is the fruit of a 45-year-long friendship between the two men. A week before the beginning of the Olympics, I spent an hour on the phone with Thurman discussing intersecting issues that concern China, Tibet, and the world. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

When you speak, can readers assume that you are speaking for the Dalai Lama?
Not precisely. I quote the Dalai Lama frequently to support many of my points. I also have other inspirations. I want him to have plausible deniability in terms of his formal relations with the Chinese. The Chinese, however, do not seem interested in negotiation. They like to preach and to scold — it is hard to get a word in edgewise. My aim is to explain to people what the Dalai Lama wants without making the Dalai Lama responsible for my explanation. For example, take the case of [the Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China] Hu Jintao. When I say that the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu would nominate Hu Jintao for a Nobel Peace Prize if he or any other Chinese leader had the balls to stop acting like a 19th-century imperial power or a 20th-century superpower wannabe, I am explaining a course of action that would quite naturally result if the Chinese began acting in a humane way and granted the Tibetan people autonomy. I’m suggesting what the Dalai Lama might do, could do, and what would follow.

Beyond the spin

PETER KADZIS — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:40:45 GMT

Why Clinton's commanding West Virginia win is more show than substance
The day after Barack Obama inched ahead of challenger Hillary Clinton in the superdelegate count, the indefatigable Clinton won the West Virginia primary.

The day after Barack Obama, the Democratic leader in terms of primary votes and convention delegates, inched ahead of challenger Hillary Clinton in the superdelegate count, the indefatigable Clinton won the West Virginia primary. This, of course, was no surprise. Her commanding margin of victory was extremely impressive, but to what end? The perversity of the West Virginia aftermath is that the Clinton campaign is approximately $20 million in debt and, assuming she splits the remaining primaries relatively evenly with Obama, she needs to win more than 90 percent of the uncommitted superdelegates to best her opponent.

Clinton’s West Virginia victory did win her some interesting bragging rights. Since 1916, no Democratic president has won the White House without also winning West Virginia in the general election. Clinton cited this in her gracious and powerful victory speech. And it made for some swell post-speech chatter among cable TV’s talking heads.

More emotionally persuasive, even historically redolent, is the analogy that Clinton drew between her West Virginia victory and John Kennedy’s. Catholic Kennedy’s victory in Protestant West Virginia was a key step in his road to the nomination. The problem with the analogy is that JFK stole the West Virginia primary. The Wall Street Journal had the goods, but editor Barney Kilgore, in those primitive days when the press thought twice about upsetting the national apple cart, killed the report. Clinton’s very real and very big win may amount to little. JFK’s bogus victory is now the stuff of legend. History is even crueler than politics.

West Virginia is largely poor, uneducated, and old. Clinton’s lopsided victory certainly underscores the rift among Democrats relative to income, education, and age. The more affluent, Internet-oriented, new-economy voters are with Obama. The less well-off, retired daily-newspaper readers truck with Clinton. The difference may be uncomfortable, but the rift is not hard to comprehend.

Close encounters
A lot of hot air has gone into pondering the deep meaning and apocalyptic implications of the narrow margin of votes separating Democratic front-runner Obama from Clinton. I’m not sure the situation is all that complicated.

Thin (even razor thin) margins are common currency in presidential politics. Consider the record for the past 48 years, and never mind the electoral votes: Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by just 0.2 percent of the popular vote (1960); Nixon trumped Hubert Humphrey by just 0.7 percent (1968); Al Gore edged George W. Bush by 0.5 percent but “lost” when the US Supreme Court awarded victory to Dubya (2000); and Bush triumphed over John Kerry with 2.4 percent (2004), a victory that was much narrower — in retrospect — than most pundits would have us believe. Narrow, however, is in the eye of the beholder.

The player

PETER KADZIS — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:31:40 GMT

Trying to find some meaning in ace biz-boy columnist Steve Bailey’s move to London
The exit of Boston Globe business columnist Steve Bailey this past week to take a post in London as a general-interest news editor with Bloomberg signifies the exhaustion of a tradition.

The exit of Boston Globe business columnist Steve Bailey this past week to take a post in London as a general-interest news editor with Bloomberg punctuates not so much the end of an era as it signifies the exhaustion of a tradition — of favored reporters, columnists, and editors being granted the latitude needed so that they could become insiders, or “players,” within the spheres they covered.

Time, in various guises (death, retirement, controversy, the need for new challenges, buyouts — especially buyouts), conspired to make the Globe — a paper where the “insider” was once the star — into something less than a constellation and more of a professional guild.

Gone are Bob Healy, Muriel Cohen, Marty Nolan, Loretta MacLaughlin, David Nyhan, Curtis Wilkie, Gerry O’Neill, Tom Oliphant, H.D.S. Greenway, Mike Barnicle, Walter Robinson, Will McDonough, and (now) Bailey. No doubt, more than a few readers, competitors, and colleagues thanked God when some of these folks left. And this catalogue in no way suggests that this crew held a monopoly on Globe talent. But this crowd — to the unfair extent to which they can be ganged together — did tend to dominate, and in a few cases hog, the spotlight.

That this list comprises mostly men owes much to the fact that it reflects the intersection of almost ancient newspaper history with something closer to current events. Eileen McNamara, a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist, now also gone, was too independent a soul to play — or pretend to play — inside baseball with anyone. Ellen Goodman, another Pulitzer winner, was more inspired by issues, causes, and analysis than shoe leather.

Joan Vennochi, who in effect wrote the “Bailey” column before she moved onto the Op-Ed page, is a bit harder to pigeonhole. Vennochi is as influential a force as any at the Globe. Ask an informed reader — or even a power broker — who had more clout, Vennochi or Bailey, and the answer would usually depend on a coin toss. I’ll hazard a guess and say that Bailey cared a bit more than Vennochi does about the whole “player” aspect of column writing. To the extent that the inside game is interesting, it depends a lot on a pose, a style of operating.

The inside-player style of operating, of course, was never exclusive to the Globe. Back when journalism was far more circumspect, many big-city dailies had a staffer or two who enjoyed more freedom than the pack. Even the New York Times — which, before its discovery of flirty summer sandals and anonymous downtown nightspots, was once a paragon of monochromatic virtue — had its favored sons: Arthur Krock, James Reston, and Tom Wicker, to name just three.

Iraq: Five years later

PETER KADZIS — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:35:17 GMT

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains the punishing cost of staying any longer
Five years later, President George Bush and his minions were wrong about the need to fight in Iraq, wrong about the way to fight in Iraq, and wrong about what the war in Iraq would ultimately cost.

What's going on? Never mind the information age. When it comes to the war, we’re still in the dark. By Vanessa Czarnecki.

Five years later, President George Bush and his minions were wrong about the need to fight in Iraq, wrong about the way to fight in Iraq, and wrong about what the war in Iraq would ultimately cost. Original estimates of between $50 to $60 billion were, at best, optimistic guesses.

In a startling and persuasive new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, and Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, calculate that the war has cost the United States as much as $5 trillion to date. The $3 trillion of their title is, to say the least, a conservative estimate.

There is nothing wild-eyed about the methodology Stiglitz and Bilmes employ. The Three Trillion Dollar War is the work of two very smart and experienced experts who have put their learning at the service of the general-reading public. It is hard to imagine anyone capable of independent thought reading this book and not coming to the conclusion that the war in Iraq is a political, strategic, and financial blunder of staggering proportions.

We caught up with Stiglitz by phone in New Zealand recently. What follows is an edited transcript of our hour-long conversation.

Let’s start at the beginning: why did the Bush Administration go to war in Iraq? And why did Congress and the American people go along with it?
Those are hard questions to answer. The alleged reasons don’t make any sense. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There were not, until the United States invaded, any connections with Al Qaeda. Anyone familiar with the highly secular nature of Hussein’s Baathist regime would have known that a connection with Al Qaeda would have been inconsistent with Saddam’s political views. The irony, of course, is that while we were worrying about weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist in Iraq, North Korea became a nuclear power. While we were focusing on a country where there was no connection with 9/11, things went terribly wrong in Afghanistan, a nation strongly connected to the New York and Washington attacks.

Lloyd Schwartz: the beat goes on

PETER KADZIS — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:16:44 GMT

Letter from the Executive Editor
Classical-music critic Lloyd Schwartz recently marked his 30th year as a Phoenix contributor.

Salman speaks

PETER KADZIS — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:31:44 GMT

Rushdie's new novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, is a work of epic ambition that fuses myth with rock-and-roll reality
This article originally appeared in the May 6, 1999 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

Rushdie's courage: The Phoenix editorial

This article originally appeared in the May 6, 1999 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

As a young man, Salman Rushdie considered becoming an actor. But he stayed true to a more primal ambition and became a writer. Today the world is his stage, and ― although he may have wished otherwise ― he has become perhaps the most famous writer in the world. That distinction was thrust upon him 10 years ago, when the Iranian government placed a bounty ― a fatwa ― on his head after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses.

Although some Islamic fundamentalist groups would still like to see him dead, the Iranian government backed away from its fatwa last fall. In the wake of that decision, life for Rushdie has become more relaxed, yet hardly casual. He still travels with armed guards. But even though his movements are still cloaked in a degree of secrecy, he moves more freely than he has in years.

In recent weeks Rushdie has indeed been on the move, publicizing his most recent novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was simultaneously published in 12 nations ― an act of creative (not to mention commercial) affirmation that clearly pleases Rushdie.

Even for this most protean of talents, TheGround Beneath Her Feet is a startling and sprawling novel. To simplify: it is a rock-and-roll story. To amplify: it is a retelling of the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. To sum up: its ambition is epic.

Perhaps the most succinct summary of the story comes from Publishers Weekly: "Ormus Cama, a supernaturally gifted musician, and his beloved, Vina Apsara, a half-Indian woman with a soul-thrilling voice, meet in Bombay in the late '50s, discover rock and roll, and form a band that goes on to become the world's most popular musical act. Narrator Rai Merchant, their lifelong friend, is a world-famous photographer and Vina's `back-door man.' Rai tells the story of their great abiding love (both are named for love gods: Cama as in Kama Sutra, and Vina for Venus)."

Rushdie's fame as a controversialist is, as he explains below, unwarranted and unwelcome. Before the publication of The Satanic Verses, he already enjoyed an international reputation as the man who, said the New York Times, "redrew the literary map of India" with the publication of his 1981 novel Midnight's Children.

All about Allen

PETER KADZIS — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:56:38 GMT

Celebrating Ginsberg’s life
Clean-shaven and dressed in a sport coat and tie, 28-year-old Allen Ginsberg, stood in front of an enthusiastic and energetic audience at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street to read from a new poem — “Howl” — that he had begun writing 44 days before.

Allen Ginsberg (right) and Peter Orlovsky

October 7, 1955. Clean-shaven and dressed in a sport coat and tie, 28-year-old Allen Ginsberg, recently liberated from his market-research job at a San Francisco advertising agency, stood in front of an enthusiastic and energetic audience at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street to read from a new poem — “Howl” — that he had begun writing 44 days before.

“Howl” was not a virgin effort. If Ginsberg’s Collected Poems 1947-1980 is any indication, he had 83 poems to his credit by that time — or at least 83 that he considered worth saving. Since he was by nature a hoarder, a collector, a pack rat, that number is significant. By clearly defining one parameter of his life (I almost wrote “professional life,” but for Ginsberg there was precious little separation between the personal and the professional), he established the base line — that of “poet” from the start — against which he would be measured.

For most of us, however, Ginsberg began — and begins — with “Howl,” a ferociously intimate song, the opening lines of which are no less powerful today, even as they are well known:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
angelheaded hipsters burning for the heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night . . .

As was true of so many potential readers, my idea of Ginsberg was much more concrete than the fact of his poems. Or at least that was the case when, sometime in 1967 or 1968, I set out on what is today called the Red Line from my parents’ house in Dorchester for Harvard Square. I don’t remember what prompted my interest. Beatniks, hipsters, hippies — the natural Ginsberg constituency — were in short supply in St. Gregory’s Parish. Perhaps it was an appearance on William Buckley’s Firing Line, a political-and-cultural discussion show that was popular back in the days when PBS was known as educational television.

Whatever the spur, my destination was clear: Plympton Street’s all-poetry Grolier Bookstore, around the corner from Bartley’s Burger Cottage and down the street from the now-disappeared (but then 24-hour) Hayes Bickford cafeteria. Several years later, when I was beyond the parameters of parental supervision, I saw Ginsberg gently strumming his dulcimer at Hayes while presiding — he wasn’t actually holding court — over a table of what appeared to be friends. (I wonder if Elsa Dorfman, who took the portraits of Ginsberg reproduced here, was among them.)

An icon’s icon

PETER KADZIS — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:57:55 GMT

Death becomes all superstars
He was Andrew Warhola on his birth certificate.

He was Andrew Warhola on his birth certificate, son of Andrej and Julia, Ruthenian immigrants from Czechoslovakia who spoke Slovak at home and worshiped every Sunday at the Eastern Rite Byzantine Catholic Church in a gritty Western Pennsylvania mill and mining community of the sort portrayed in the opening scenes of The Deer Hunter.

Throughout the 1950s, he was “Raggedy Andy” to the art directors of magazines (Vogue, Mademoiselle, Harper’s Bazaar) and posh stores (Tiffany, Bergdorf Goodman) and shoe lines (I. Miller) who commissioned his work — often blotted ink-line drawings that, when mechanically mass-produced on newsprint or on slick paper, suggested an intimate spontaneity — and, in the process, made Warhol (he had dropped the “a” by this time) affluent and (perhaps) New York’s most successful commercial artist.

During the 1960s, when Warhol turned to fine art and established the first of his three “factories” in an industrial loft in the then-fallow southern precincts of midtown, he was known as “Drella” to the assortment of street people, speed freaks, transvestites, poets, fellow artists, underground filmmakers, gallery owners, collectors, curators, socialites, and celebrities who worked in, hung around at, and passed through his studio. By then, aspects of Warhol’s chameleon-like persona had emerged sufficiently to be recognized and catalogued by his associates. He was, in turns, perversely pixie-like, passively aggressive, casually workaholic, blandly intense, promiscuously manipulative, and monumentally ambitious.

By the 1970s, he was Andy or Ahn-dy or Ahn-deeee, pronunciation depending on the speaker’s nation of origin or pretense to intimacy. Andy was an international celebrity, as famous for being himself at parties, in gossip pages, in commercials, and as the subject of magazine articles as he was for his large and still growing body of work: paintings, ready-mades, silk-screened portraits, films, books, and his magazine, Interview.

Like America’s first true pop-cultural heroes, Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Lindberg, and like the first international darling of the art world, Pablo Picasso, Warhol was more than iconic; he was and remains a brand — a medium through which one could transform one’s everyday self (if just a little) into someone more enhanced — perhaps, if the imagination was strong enough, into a superstar. The kind of superstar who gets a 15-pound book about him — Andy Warhol “Giant” Size (Phaidon) — published 19 years after his death.