IRAQ: ONE YEAR ON
by Mark Steyn
On April 12th 2003, after the fall of Baghdad, I wrote a column in The Daily Telegraph discussing the latest predictions of doom and making my own observations on how things would look a year ahead. Well, that time is almost up, so here’s how it stands. I wasn’t 100% right, but the naysayers were close to 100% wrong. The original column and predictions appear in black. The updated assessment of the situation is in red:
On to the next quagmire! Don't get mired in the bog of yesterday's conventional wisdom, when the movers and shakers have already moved on to new disasters. America may have won the war but it's already losing the peace! Here's your at-a-glance guide to what the experts who got everything wrong last week will be getting wrong next week:
1) "Iraq's slide into violent anarchy" (The Guardian, April 11). Say what you like about Saddam, but he ran a tight ship and you didn't have to nail down your nest of tables: since the Brits took over, Basra's property crime is heading in an alarmingly Cheltenhamesque direction.
MBITRW (Meanwhile Back In The Real World): A year from now, Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs.
ONE YEAR ON: Close enough. According to the BBC, Basra is booming and its citizens are flush with new spending power. In February, British authorities reported that crime in the city has fallen by 70%.
2) "The head of the World Food Programme has warned that Iraq could spiral into a massive humanitarian disaster" (The Australian, April 11).
MBITRW: No such disaster will occur, any more than it did during the mythical "brutal Afghan winter" and its attendant humanitarian scaremongering. ("The UN Children's Fund has estimated that as many as 100,000 Afghan children could die of cold, disease and hunger." They didn't.)
ONE YEAR ON: No humanitarian disaster. Indeed, no “humanitarians”. The NGOs fled Iraq in August and nobody noticed, confirming what some of us have suspected since Afghanistan – the permanent floating crap game of the humanitarian lobby has a vastly inflated sense of its own importance and is prone to massive distortion in the cause of self-promotion.
3) "Iraqis Now Waiting for Americans to Leave" (AP, April 10).
MBITRW: There will be terrible acts of suicide-bomber depravity in the months ahead, but no widespread resentment at or resistance of the Western military presence.
ONE YEAR ON: Correct. The suicide-bomber depravity is getting more depraved even as it gets more impotent. Unable to do any real damage to key targets, the terrorists flail around unable to do more than randomly kill their fellow Muslims. These attacks will decline as the attacks on coalition forces have declined. But there remains no widespread popular “resistance” except in the minds of John Pilger, George Galloway and the other armchair insurgents. According to an anniversary poll, only 15% of Iraqis want an immediate withdrawal of coalition troops.
4) "If Saddam is not found dead, or caught alive, it will be the worst of all possible closures for the war against Iraq. Bin Laden himself continues to elude capture" (Roland Flamini, UPI)
MBITRW: Obviously, it would be preferable if the late Saddam's future media appearances were confined to guest-hosting “Good Morning, Hell!” with Osama. But if he's reduced to bin Laden's current schedule - mailing in bi-monthly audio cassettes of Islamist boilerplate - what's the difference? Even if he'd escaped to Syria, he'd be spending the rest of his days as a Bedouin goat-herd. Right now, Boy Assad is doing his best not to attract Rummy's attention.
ONE YEAR ON: Saddam is in gaol. His sons are dead. Most of the rest of the “deck of cards” have folded. As to bin Laden continuing “to elude capture”, when there’s been no verifiable proof of the man’s existence for two-and-a-quarter years, chances are he’s “lying low” due to an inability to get up again.
5) "Iraq was a new country cobbled together from several former Ottoman provinces, its lines drawn by the Europeans" (Mark Mazower, The Independent, April 7). It's a phony state, you can never make a go of it.
MBITRW: There's nothing in the least bit "cobbled" about it. The three Ottoman vilayets of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra have been bound together by geography and trade for millennia. As a coherent jurisdiction, it makes more sense than, say, Belgium. As long as you respect its inherently confederal nature, it'll work fine: think St Kitts and Nevis writ large.
ONE YEAR ON: Seems to be happening. The coalition transition and the new Constitution both respect the realities on the ground.
6) "Turkey is concerned that a Kurdish capture of Kirkuk could help bankroll moves to establish an independent Kurdistan" (Agence France-Presse, April 9).
MBITRW: Nothing to worry about. The Kurds are the only part of the indigenous population that were part of the liberation force from the start. They're not going anywhere now. They'll settle for being Scotland or Quebec rather than Pakistan.
ONE YEAR ON: Correct. Indeed, the new Constitution formally enshrines them in the same relationship to Baghdad as Quebec is to Ottawa.
7) "Rather than reforming the Muslim world, the conquest of Iraq will inflame it" (Jeffrey Simpson, Toronto Globe and Mail, April 10).
MBITRW: Effective immediately, Palestinian suicide bombers are no longer subsidized by Baghdad; in Jordan, the Saddamite boot is off the Hashemite windpipe; Syria is under notice to behave and in the unusual position, for an Arab dictatorship, of being ringed by relatively civilized states -- Turkey, Free Iraq, Jordan and Israel. Despite the best efforts of Western doom-mongers to rouse the Arab street, its attitude will remain: Start the jihad without me.
ONE YEAR ON: Correct. In Iran and Syria, it’s the thug regimes who are under pressure. In the Palestinian Authority, Yasser’s broke and the suicide bombers have lost their sugar daddy. In Libya, Colonel Gaddafy’s thrown in the towel.
8) "Looting is always unsavoury. Let's hope the Americans don't pilfer the oil" (Brenda Linane, The Age of Melbourne, April 11).
MBITRW: The pilfering of Iraq's oil has just ended. Saddam parcelled his country's wealth out to those companies willing to cosy up to him. The oil business will now be opened up to competitive tender. The only North American politician with a personal stake in any of this is not Bush, Cheney or any of their Texan oilpatch pals, but the Prime Minister of Canada, whose daughter is married to TotalFinaElf's biggest shareholder. The liberation of Iraq is a victory for real markets over French cronyism.
ONE YEAR ON: The only folks pilfering the oil were those officials and cronies living high off the hog from the UN’s disgusting Oil-For-Food program, a sewer of corruption that ought to force the resignation of Kofi Affan, who’s either a fool or a crook.
9) "Weapons of Mass Destruction. Remember them? Not a single one has yet been found" (Bill Neely, ITV, April 10).
MBITRW: Actually, I almost wish this one were true. Anything that turns up now will be assumed to have been planted. If I were Washington, I'd consider burying anything I found. After all, an America that feels no need to bother faking justifications for invasion would be far more alarming to most Europeans. Instead, horrible things will turn up, but will never be "conclusive" enough for the French, who've got all the receipts anyway.
ONE YEAR ON: They were found. In Libya. Close enough for me. We also know a lot more about A Q Khan’s role to disperse Pakistani nuclear technology throughout the Muslim world.
10) America is already losing the peace!
MBITRW: In a year's time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks' work.
ONE YEAR ON: Iraq’s provisional constitution is the most progressive in the Arab world. Business is booming. Oil production is up. The historic marshlands of southern Iraq, environmentally devastated by Saddam, are being restored. In February, attacks on coalition forces fell to the lowest level since the liberation. Attacks on the oil pipelines have fallen by 75% since the autumn. In a BBC poll, some 60% of Iraqis say their lives are much better or somewhat better than a year ago; under 20% say they’re worse. Seventy per cent expect their lives to be better still a year from now, and only five per cent say worse. Eighty per cent of the country is pleasant and civilised, and the Sunni Triangle will follow. Not a bad year’s work.
Document copyright Steynonline.com. All rights reserved.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Gibson’s Icon
On The Passion...
[John Mark Reynolds] 3/1/04
Mel Gibson has always been a sensitive subject at my house. I love action movies. No one is going to confused them with great art, and I don’t, but sometimes you just want a diet Coke, popcorn, and a good car chase. Without making generalizations about the gender, my particular wife does not view this as a great date. She keeps unreasonably demanding things from films such as good dialog and female characters that are not just physically well rounded. And then I noticed an odd thing. We kept going to a certain sort of action movie. My darling wife would always say agree to a particular date film. This was good, but I had a startling observation, Mel Gibson was in all these films. This was not just startling, it was disturbing. Finally, I worked up the nerve to ask her about what I hoped was an accidental circumstance. “It is his eyes. Those eyes.” my faithful, conservative wife sighed.
Having overcome my initial irrational resentment, I was forced to concede something I had not noticed up to the point. Gibson has expressive eyes. Now the power of eyes is something I understand. My job may not be driving fast cars or defending Scotland from English tyranny, but I am a philosopher who specializes in Plato. (Though it is not quite comparable when it comes to meeting people and impressing them.) Ancient philosophy knew that eyes can be a window to the soul of a man. If someone connects with you, looking you in the eyes, it can have a powerful impact.
I began to look at Gibson, the person, in his movies. If the eyes were a window to his soul, I wondered what I would find there. There seemed to be a bright-eyed sterility to the Mad Max Gibson. He did not seem to be there, just acting out a part. Lethal Weapon Gibson seemed trapped by roles that grew progressively more paint by numbers. The impressive performance in the too little watched Hamlet showed a Gibson who wanted more, but was being (once again) let down by a script that butchered the Bard. Then Gibson began to make his own movies, to get more control over their content, and his vision seemed to change. There was both pain and passion in his gaze in the nearly perfect movie Braveheart. None of his later films quite matched this intensity, almost as if Mr. Gibson had gone on to something else and was making films to pay for it. Now we know what that something else is.
I was fortunate to see Gibson’s film several months ago. It is far and away the best film about any portion of the life of Christ ever made. This is faint praise indeed, because with exception of the made for television Jesus of Nazareth, which plods but has powerful moments, most of the films are very bad indeed. There is the over-blown and pretentious Last Temptation of Christ which had the unique ability to be both blasphemous and boring. There is The Greatest Story Ever Told which managed to include every breathing Hollywood star, but which only clicks when Heston is on the screen as John the Baptist. The casting of Jesus is so bizarre and the score so overdone that it is hard to take the entire movie seriously. Gibson easily defeats all of those films by having a good script, great actors, and a steady directorial hand. He also tells one portion of the life of Christ and does not fall into the last temptation of all directors dealing with Jesus to work in all the good material.
Assaults on the film seem to come in three ways. The film is: too Christian, or anti-Semite, or too violent. Let’s get those out of the way before talking about The Passion as a movie.
Is Gibson’s movie too Christian? One can hardly turn on the television without seeing some apostate Christian leader proclaiming that Gibson was naïve for basing his film on the Bible. With ever decreasing membership, these “mainstream” pastors have nothing better to do than allow their parishioner envy full reign on cable talk shows. These Church leaders seem worried that their own pet vices are condemned by “literal” reading of the Bible. If the life of Jesus has to be mythologized to save sodomy, then so be it. Empty pews don’t bother them have as much as the fear of Biblical literalism on film. Occasionally, they can even find an odd Catholic bishop or two who mystically believes that following the Episcopal Church to theological destruction will save Christianity. For the most part, these Christian leaders are the leaders of the Christians who don’t go to church. Existing on endowments from better times, they worry most about the growth of more orthodox communities.
What these sheepless shepherds mean by Gibson’s fearful “literal reading of the Bible” is Gibson having the audacity to read the text for authorial intent. Mel Gibson made the mistake of reading the Bible the way one reads, say, any other book. Of course, if one did that then most of present Episcopal bishops would be out of work. Lightly educated, their only function is to find ever more convoluted explanations of how the Bible actually reflects a worldview to the left of Dennis Kucinich. Actually dealing with Greek texts, interpreting them, understanding the Church fathers and the creeds are far more daunting tasks. Better to label their actual job “old fashioned” and “unnecessary,” so they can attend another well-lubricated business meeting to deal with church investments.
If one wants to find the roots for the liberal political affection for a “living constitution,” one can find it in most seminaries. Utterly marginal to academic life most of the time, these Bible “scholars” have but one mission. They are allowed to exist by the secular academy only so long as they make periodic denunciations of actual Christian scholarship. Sadly, the only remnant of the Victorian era to survive at schools like Harvard is Victorian Biblical criticism. Members of the “Jesus Seminar,” who know nothing about Jesus and are not a seminar, exist only to be brought out to denounce Easter every Easter. Year by year, they try to replace their imaginary, up-to-date Jesus for the Jesus of the historical Gospel accounts. They predictably hate Gibson’s film, because they hate the Jesus every else loves. People interested in actual scholarship on the subject of Jesus should read the excellent collection of articles in Jesus Under Fire.
The Passion is not at all the work of an anti-Semite. Jewish characters are on both sides of the Jesus question. Roman characters, with the possible exception of Pilate’s wife, are all bad guys. Gibson could have been more sensitive in his dealings with the Jewish community. Faithfulness to the gospels in a wooden way is not a sufficient justification for some of the film’s decisions. The Gospels have an axe to grind in an era before pogroms and the Holocaust. They portray the Jewish leaders in unflattering ways using the general term “Jews.” Such were the normal conventions of ancient historical writings. Check out Tacitus if you want to see this sort of generalizing raised to a propaganda art form. This has to be handled with care in a modern context in order to give the reader of a translation of the Bible the message the author intended and not an overly strong one. For example, translating the common New Testament Greek term for “the Jews” when the Jewish leaders are being condemned for their attacks on Jesus as “the Jews” in English sounds more accurate, but misses important historical context. As odd as it might seem, “Jewish leaders” is more accurate and much less inflammatory. The version of the film I saw missed this point. In any case, Gibson never seemed to grasp the pain that centuries of anti-Semite persecution has caused. He was not well served by his early statements on this topic. However, there is nothing in the film or about Gibson personally that justifies any broader conclusion than that he was insensitive. Given that persons of Gibson’s certified genius are routinely forgiven much greater sins in Hollywood, the passion directed at Gibson’s early fumbles is inexcusable.
Some of my favorite writers, including the luminous Frederica Mathewes-Greene, find the movie too violent. They rightly point out that the Gospels themselves are sparing in their accounts of the crucifixion. Do we really need the gore?
The historical context of the Gospels provides the answer. Readers of the day were intimates of violent death. Any Jew or Greek in Palestine would have seen numerous crucifixions in a given year. Nobody needed to describe the details. Just as they needed no translator for the Greek of the text, they needed no blow by blow account of what the victim of a Roman beating looked like. Americans and other Westerners, thanks to Judeo-Christian culture, are insulated from those times. Most of us have never seen a beating, let alone the victim of expert torture. We don’t get it.
The reaction to Saddam’s torture proves the point. We cannot imagine what torture is really life. In fact, movies have served us badly here. They show cartoonish violence against stock orcs pulled from cgi hell. The camera blinks when the violence becomes too real with judicious cutaways. Gibson gives us what any ancient person would have had burned into his bones: a clear vision of what it means to be tortured by the power of a government without moral restraint. The Christians of the catacombs did not need this lesson, the Christians who go to Disneyland do.
It is impossible to comment about other reviews of the film from more liberal pundits who routinely give slasher movies a pass, but find their stomach turned by The Passion. Unlike most Hollywood films, violence is not glorified in The Passion. It is essential to the story being told. It is done realistically, which is the actual complaint of the critics. They prefer cartoonish violence that does not force them to face hard questions. Violence that lowers the cultural bar does not threaten the industry. Instead, Gibson has used Hollywood’s tools to force a modern culture to ask ancients questions about life and death, sacrifice and redemption. No one can watch The Passion without asking, “What about this man Jesus?”
Gibson’s really unpardonable sin is being brilliant and creative in an industry that rewards conformity to its own skewed community standards. A man who defies the powers that be and makes a film they know no one will watch and then has the temerity to succeed despite their attacks is dangerous. He has not bowed down to their golden calf.
But is it a good movie? It is a great movie. Every element of the film combines to tell the story. The script is well balanced and moves rapidly to the climax of the film. Oddly, the acting is not limited by the “foreign” language. The story is well known and could be followed by any literate without reference to the sub-titles. Though some of the technique is familiar to fans of Braveheart, Gibson has matured as a director. This is must see film, regardless of the subject matter. If there is justice, it will win “Best Picture” next year. If there is no justice, it will be vindicated by history. It is the movie made this year most likely to be watched in one hundred years. Like an ancient icon, it is spare with no extra details allowing all the focus to be on the central character: Jesus Christ. In a culture that prefers His name to be a profanity, this is the film’s great achievement. It is the only movie ever to capture the humanity and the divinity of the God-Man.
Gibson named his production company “Icon.” I have always wondered at this name. My own Church is the Church of the Holy Icon, the window to Heaven. These artistic images, which had to be defended at great cost against haters of images, provide mystical and profound theological insight to the man who approaches them. It is a heady ambition for a man to try to learn to write icons in celluloid. It has never been done, and perhaps has yet to be done. At the end of the film, I was emotionally moved, but the feeling was deeper still. Could it have been the Spirit of God? Who can say? Gibson may have provided a window, cloudy but real, to the sufferings of the Savior of the World.
It may have been too much even for Gibson to meet his goal, but Gibson’s film is close, very close. It is unlikely that Mr. Gibson will ever read this review. But if he does, I hope it brightens those eyes of his. If true icons are a window to heaven, then Gibson’s movie is at the very least a window into one brilliant man’s true vision and real relationship with Jesus Christ.
copyright 2004 John Mark Reynolds
On The Passion...
[John Mark Reynolds] 3/1/04
Mel Gibson has always been a sensitive subject at my house. I love action movies. No one is going to confused them with great art, and I don’t, but sometimes you just want a diet Coke, popcorn, and a good car chase. Without making generalizations about the gender, my particular wife does not view this as a great date. She keeps unreasonably demanding things from films such as good dialog and female characters that are not just physically well rounded. And then I noticed an odd thing. We kept going to a certain sort of action movie. My darling wife would always say agree to a particular date film. This was good, but I had a startling observation, Mel Gibson was in all these films. This was not just startling, it was disturbing. Finally, I worked up the nerve to ask her about what I hoped was an accidental circumstance. “It is his eyes. Those eyes.” my faithful, conservative wife sighed.
Having overcome my initial irrational resentment, I was forced to concede something I had not noticed up to the point. Gibson has expressive eyes. Now the power of eyes is something I understand. My job may not be driving fast cars or defending Scotland from English tyranny, but I am a philosopher who specializes in Plato. (Though it is not quite comparable when it comes to meeting people and impressing them.) Ancient philosophy knew that eyes can be a window to the soul of a man. If someone connects with you, looking you in the eyes, it can have a powerful impact.
I began to look at Gibson, the person, in his movies. If the eyes were a window to his soul, I wondered what I would find there. There seemed to be a bright-eyed sterility to the Mad Max Gibson. He did not seem to be there, just acting out a part. Lethal Weapon Gibson seemed trapped by roles that grew progressively more paint by numbers. The impressive performance in the too little watched Hamlet showed a Gibson who wanted more, but was being (once again) let down by a script that butchered the Bard. Then Gibson began to make his own movies, to get more control over their content, and his vision seemed to change. There was both pain and passion in his gaze in the nearly perfect movie Braveheart. None of his later films quite matched this intensity, almost as if Mr. Gibson had gone on to something else and was making films to pay for it. Now we know what that something else is.
I was fortunate to see Gibson’s film several months ago. It is far and away the best film about any portion of the life of Christ ever made. This is faint praise indeed, because with exception of the made for television Jesus of Nazareth, which plods but has powerful moments, most of the films are very bad indeed. There is the over-blown and pretentious Last Temptation of Christ which had the unique ability to be both blasphemous and boring. There is The Greatest Story Ever Told which managed to include every breathing Hollywood star, but which only clicks when Heston is on the screen as John the Baptist. The casting of Jesus is so bizarre and the score so overdone that it is hard to take the entire movie seriously. Gibson easily defeats all of those films by having a good script, great actors, and a steady directorial hand. He also tells one portion of the life of Christ and does not fall into the last temptation of all directors dealing with Jesus to work in all the good material.
Assaults on the film seem to come in three ways. The film is: too Christian, or anti-Semite, or too violent. Let’s get those out of the way before talking about The Passion as a movie.
Is Gibson’s movie too Christian? One can hardly turn on the television without seeing some apostate Christian leader proclaiming that Gibson was naïve for basing his film on the Bible. With ever decreasing membership, these “mainstream” pastors have nothing better to do than allow their parishioner envy full reign on cable talk shows. These Church leaders seem worried that their own pet vices are condemned by “literal” reading of the Bible. If the life of Jesus has to be mythologized to save sodomy, then so be it. Empty pews don’t bother them have as much as the fear of Biblical literalism on film. Occasionally, they can even find an odd Catholic bishop or two who mystically believes that following the Episcopal Church to theological destruction will save Christianity. For the most part, these Christian leaders are the leaders of the Christians who don’t go to church. Existing on endowments from better times, they worry most about the growth of more orthodox communities.
What these sheepless shepherds mean by Gibson’s fearful “literal reading of the Bible” is Gibson having the audacity to read the text for authorial intent. Mel Gibson made the mistake of reading the Bible the way one reads, say, any other book. Of course, if one did that then most of present Episcopal bishops would be out of work. Lightly educated, their only function is to find ever more convoluted explanations of how the Bible actually reflects a worldview to the left of Dennis Kucinich. Actually dealing with Greek texts, interpreting them, understanding the Church fathers and the creeds are far more daunting tasks. Better to label their actual job “old fashioned” and “unnecessary,” so they can attend another well-lubricated business meeting to deal with church investments.
If one wants to find the roots for the liberal political affection for a “living constitution,” one can find it in most seminaries. Utterly marginal to academic life most of the time, these Bible “scholars” have but one mission. They are allowed to exist by the secular academy only so long as they make periodic denunciations of actual Christian scholarship. Sadly, the only remnant of the Victorian era to survive at schools like Harvard is Victorian Biblical criticism. Members of the “Jesus Seminar,” who know nothing about Jesus and are not a seminar, exist only to be brought out to denounce Easter every Easter. Year by year, they try to replace their imaginary, up-to-date Jesus for the Jesus of the historical Gospel accounts. They predictably hate Gibson’s film, because they hate the Jesus every else loves. People interested in actual scholarship on the subject of Jesus should read the excellent collection of articles in Jesus Under Fire.
The Passion is not at all the work of an anti-Semite. Jewish characters are on both sides of the Jesus question. Roman characters, with the possible exception of Pilate’s wife, are all bad guys. Gibson could have been more sensitive in his dealings with the Jewish community. Faithfulness to the gospels in a wooden way is not a sufficient justification for some of the film’s decisions. The Gospels have an axe to grind in an era before pogroms and the Holocaust. They portray the Jewish leaders in unflattering ways using the general term “Jews.” Such were the normal conventions of ancient historical writings. Check out Tacitus if you want to see this sort of generalizing raised to a propaganda art form. This has to be handled with care in a modern context in order to give the reader of a translation of the Bible the message the author intended and not an overly strong one. For example, translating the common New Testament Greek term for “the Jews” when the Jewish leaders are being condemned for their attacks on Jesus as “the Jews” in English sounds more accurate, but misses important historical context. As odd as it might seem, “Jewish leaders” is more accurate and much less inflammatory. The version of the film I saw missed this point. In any case, Gibson never seemed to grasp the pain that centuries of anti-Semite persecution has caused. He was not well served by his early statements on this topic. However, there is nothing in the film or about Gibson personally that justifies any broader conclusion than that he was insensitive. Given that persons of Gibson’s certified genius are routinely forgiven much greater sins in Hollywood, the passion directed at Gibson’s early fumbles is inexcusable.
Some of my favorite writers, including the luminous Frederica Mathewes-Greene, find the movie too violent. They rightly point out that the Gospels themselves are sparing in their accounts of the crucifixion. Do we really need the gore?
The historical context of the Gospels provides the answer. Readers of the day were intimates of violent death. Any Jew or Greek in Palestine would have seen numerous crucifixions in a given year. Nobody needed to describe the details. Just as they needed no translator for the Greek of the text, they needed no blow by blow account of what the victim of a Roman beating looked like. Americans and other Westerners, thanks to Judeo-Christian culture, are insulated from those times. Most of us have never seen a beating, let alone the victim of expert torture. We don’t get it.
The reaction to Saddam’s torture proves the point. We cannot imagine what torture is really life. In fact, movies have served us badly here. They show cartoonish violence against stock orcs pulled from cgi hell. The camera blinks when the violence becomes too real with judicious cutaways. Gibson gives us what any ancient person would have had burned into his bones: a clear vision of what it means to be tortured by the power of a government without moral restraint. The Christians of the catacombs did not need this lesson, the Christians who go to Disneyland do.
It is impossible to comment about other reviews of the film from more liberal pundits who routinely give slasher movies a pass, but find their stomach turned by The Passion. Unlike most Hollywood films, violence is not glorified in The Passion. It is essential to the story being told. It is done realistically, which is the actual complaint of the critics. They prefer cartoonish violence that does not force them to face hard questions. Violence that lowers the cultural bar does not threaten the industry. Instead, Gibson has used Hollywood’s tools to force a modern culture to ask ancients questions about life and death, sacrifice and redemption. No one can watch The Passion without asking, “What about this man Jesus?”
Gibson’s really unpardonable sin is being brilliant and creative in an industry that rewards conformity to its own skewed community standards. A man who defies the powers that be and makes a film they know no one will watch and then has the temerity to succeed despite their attacks is dangerous. He has not bowed down to their golden calf.
But is it a good movie? It is a great movie. Every element of the film combines to tell the story. The script is well balanced and moves rapidly to the climax of the film. Oddly, the acting is not limited by the “foreign” language. The story is well known and could be followed by any literate without reference to the sub-titles. Though some of the technique is familiar to fans of Braveheart, Gibson has matured as a director. This is must see film, regardless of the subject matter. If there is justice, it will win “Best Picture” next year. If there is no justice, it will be vindicated by history. It is the movie made this year most likely to be watched in one hundred years. Like an ancient icon, it is spare with no extra details allowing all the focus to be on the central character: Jesus Christ. In a culture that prefers His name to be a profanity, this is the film’s great achievement. It is the only movie ever to capture the humanity and the divinity of the God-Man.
Gibson named his production company “Icon.” I have always wondered at this name. My own Church is the Church of the Holy Icon, the window to Heaven. These artistic images, which had to be defended at great cost against haters of images, provide mystical and profound theological insight to the man who approaches them. It is a heady ambition for a man to try to learn to write icons in celluloid. It has never been done, and perhaps has yet to be done. At the end of the film, I was emotionally moved, but the feeling was deeper still. Could it have been the Spirit of God? Who can say? Gibson may have provided a window, cloudy but real, to the sufferings of the Savior of the World.
It may have been too much even for Gibson to meet his goal, but Gibson’s film is close, very close. It is unlikely that Mr. Gibson will ever read this review. But if he does, I hope it brightens those eyes of his. If true icons are a window to heaven, then Gibson’s movie is at the very least a window into one brilliant man’s true vision and real relationship with Jesus Christ.
copyright 2004 John Mark Reynolds
Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Profile: Jackson Browne
By Melinda Newman
On March 15, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will induct its 19th class -- Jackson Browne, the Dells, George Harrison, Prince, Bob Seger, Traffic and ZZ Top. Highlights of the ceremony will air March 21 on VH1.
As one of seven performing members of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's class of 2004, Jackson Browne is thrilled with the company he's keeping. "Bob Seger, Prince, ZZ Top, Traffic... I'm so happy to be going in with these people. They're all people I've listened to and enjoyed and have influenced me. I just think it's a great class to be in."
The induction validates years of hard work. "To have what I do and the values that I hold honored in this way is an affirmation," Browne says. "I'm really honored by the attention that's been given my music by listeners. That's the context in which I think of all this. There are people that have listened to me for their whole life."
And yet, he admits that the whole induction process is a bit of a mystery to him. "It's not clear to me that [how] the voting is [done] and I don't really care. I've only met three or four people who can vote. Bruce Hornsby told me he votes and I was like 'You vote?' Tom Petty told me he votes. I didn't make an attempt to find out how to vote. I didn't vote for myself!"
But it's easy to see why so many others did. With the release of his first self-titled album in 1972 (also known as "Saturate Before Using") it was clear that a new, fresh voice with much to say had arrived. As one of the pioneers of the '70s Southern California sound that blended rock and country, he ushered in a new age of sensitive storytellers.
Lyrics stood side by side with acoustic-based melodies, and often delved into deeply private subjects on such albums as 1974's "Late for the Sky" or the classic life-on-the road opus 1978's "Running on Empty" or on his No. 1 album 1980's "Hold Out." No topic was too personal for Browne, but he also wasn't afraid to tackle political subjects either, including taking on Ronald Reagan on 1986's "Lives in the Balance."
For Browne, it's hard to believe he's eligible: the clock's steady march forward has often taken him and his fans aback. "People have asked me about my son," whose photo as a toddler appears on `The Pretender.' When I tell them my son is 30, everybody's always taken by surprise by how much time has passed."
Browne, who has parted ways with longtime home Elektra Entertainment, continues to work on new music, but is also looking back. He is preparing to release three of his titles in 5.1 surround sound through Warner Strategic Marketing, including a two disc collection titled "The Very Best of Jackson Browne."
He is most excited about an extra feature that will appear on the DVD-A for his last studio album "Naked Ride Home" that documents his songwriting process. "I'd thought how great it would be if I could see some of my fave songwriters write their songs. There has to be a lot of pacing around, getting another cup of coffee or remembering to take the trash out."
But surprisingly, one of rock music's most revealing songwriters has one last confession: "I always envied people who didn't write their own material. I had to write them myself. And to tell you the truth, I know that any number of people could sing them better."
INDUCTEE CHART BEAT
By Fred Bronson
Two weeks before he made his debut as an artist on The Billboard Hot 100, Jackson Browne made his first appearance on the chart as a songwriter.
Linda Ronstadt's version of Browne's "Rock Me on the Water" was a new entry the week of March 4, 1972. On the chart dated March 18 of that year, "Rock Me on the Water" peaked at No. 85, while Browne's own "Doctor My Eyes" opened at No. 80.
"Doctor My Eyes" peaked at No. 8 the week of May 6, 1972, and spent its final week on the Hot 100 dated June 3. In another coincidence, that was the week the Eagles made its chart debut with "Take It Easy," written by Browne and the Eagles' Glenn Frey.
"Take It Easy" peaked at No. 12, denying Browne a second top 10 hit as a songwriter.
His label, Asylum, followed "Doctor My Eyes" with Browne's own recording of "Rock Me on the Water," but the single could only find its way to No. 48.
Browne didn't return to the top 10 as an artist for another 10 years. His single "Somebody's Baby," from the soundtrack to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," peaked at No. 7 the week of Oct. 16, 1982, giving him the highest-charting single of his career.
In the U.K., where Browne's biggest hit as an artist was his cover of Maurice Williams and the Zodiac's "Stay" (No. 12 in 1978), he did have a top 10 single as a songwriter. The Jackson 5's cover of "Doctor My Eyes" was an album track in the U.S. and as a British single peaked at No. 9 in 1973.
On The Billboard 200, Browne's highest-ranking entry is his 1980 LP, "Hold Out," which spent one week at No. 1. A self-titled album was his first chart entry, peaking at No. 53 in 1972.
As he did on the Hot 100, Browne first appeared on the album chart as a songwriter when Tom Rush included Browne's "These Days" on his eponymous 1970 LP.
By Melinda Newman
On March 15, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will induct its 19th class -- Jackson Browne, the Dells, George Harrison, Prince, Bob Seger, Traffic and ZZ Top. Highlights of the ceremony will air March 21 on VH1.
As one of seven performing members of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's class of 2004, Jackson Browne is thrilled with the company he's keeping. "Bob Seger, Prince, ZZ Top, Traffic... I'm so happy to be going in with these people. They're all people I've listened to and enjoyed and have influenced me. I just think it's a great class to be in."
The induction validates years of hard work. "To have what I do and the values that I hold honored in this way is an affirmation," Browne says. "I'm really honored by the attention that's been given my music by listeners. That's the context in which I think of all this. There are people that have listened to me for their whole life."
And yet, he admits that the whole induction process is a bit of a mystery to him. "It's not clear to me that [how] the voting is [done] and I don't really care. I've only met three or four people who can vote. Bruce Hornsby told me he votes and I was like 'You vote?' Tom Petty told me he votes. I didn't make an attempt to find out how to vote. I didn't vote for myself!"
But it's easy to see why so many others did. With the release of his first self-titled album in 1972 (also known as "Saturate Before Using") it was clear that a new, fresh voice with much to say had arrived. As one of the pioneers of the '70s Southern California sound that blended rock and country, he ushered in a new age of sensitive storytellers.
Lyrics stood side by side with acoustic-based melodies, and often delved into deeply private subjects on such albums as 1974's "Late for the Sky" or the classic life-on-the road opus 1978's "Running on Empty" or on his No. 1 album 1980's "Hold Out." No topic was too personal for Browne, but he also wasn't afraid to tackle political subjects either, including taking on Ronald Reagan on 1986's "Lives in the Balance."
For Browne, it's hard to believe he's eligible: the clock's steady march forward has often taken him and his fans aback. "People have asked me about my son," whose photo as a toddler appears on `The Pretender.' When I tell them my son is 30, everybody's always taken by surprise by how much time has passed."
Browne, who has parted ways with longtime home Elektra Entertainment, continues to work on new music, but is also looking back. He is preparing to release three of his titles in 5.1 surround sound through Warner Strategic Marketing, including a two disc collection titled "The Very Best of Jackson Browne."
He is most excited about an extra feature that will appear on the DVD-A for his last studio album "Naked Ride Home" that documents his songwriting process. "I'd thought how great it would be if I could see some of my fave songwriters write their songs. There has to be a lot of pacing around, getting another cup of coffee or remembering to take the trash out."
But surprisingly, one of rock music's most revealing songwriters has one last confession: "I always envied people who didn't write their own material. I had to write them myself. And to tell you the truth, I know that any number of people could sing them better."
INDUCTEE CHART BEAT
By Fred Bronson
Two weeks before he made his debut as an artist on The Billboard Hot 100, Jackson Browne made his first appearance on the chart as a songwriter.
Linda Ronstadt's version of Browne's "Rock Me on the Water" was a new entry the week of March 4, 1972. On the chart dated March 18 of that year, "Rock Me on the Water" peaked at No. 85, while Browne's own "Doctor My Eyes" opened at No. 80.
"Doctor My Eyes" peaked at No. 8 the week of May 6, 1972, and spent its final week on the Hot 100 dated June 3. In another coincidence, that was the week the Eagles made its chart debut with "Take It Easy," written by Browne and the Eagles' Glenn Frey.
"Take It Easy" peaked at No. 12, denying Browne a second top 10 hit as a songwriter.
His label, Asylum, followed "Doctor My Eyes" with Browne's own recording of "Rock Me on the Water," but the single could only find its way to No. 48.
Browne didn't return to the top 10 as an artist for another 10 years. His single "Somebody's Baby," from the soundtrack to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," peaked at No. 7 the week of Oct. 16, 1982, giving him the highest-charting single of his career.
In the U.K., where Browne's biggest hit as an artist was his cover of Maurice Williams and the Zodiac's "Stay" (No. 12 in 1978), he did have a top 10 single as a songwriter. The Jackson 5's cover of "Doctor My Eyes" was an album track in the U.S. and as a British single peaked at No. 9 in 1973.
On The Billboard 200, Browne's highest-ranking entry is his 1980 LP, "Hold Out," which spent one week at No. 1. A self-titled album was his first chart entry, peaking at No. 53 in 1972.
As he did on the Hot 100, Browne first appeared on the album chart as a songwriter when Tom Rush included Browne's "These Days" on his eponymous 1970 LP.
Monday, March 15, 2004
Melody maker
For the first time fortysomethings are buying more albums than teenagers and it's all down to the '50-quid man' - the middle-aged bloke (or even woman) who is happy to splash out on a fistful of CDs. Tim de Lisle investigates the cultural phenomenon that is really shaping the music charts
Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian
One of the ancient laws of rock concerts states that there is always someone directly in front of you who has big hair. Lately this phenomenon has come with a twist: increasingly, the big hair in front of you is grey, or even white. The gig-going habit no longer fades at 40 or 50. And it's not just the comfy-cardie acts who appeal to the older fan. At the Cambridge Corn Exchange last week, the two gentlemen blocking my view of Damien Rice were about 55. Rice, a 30-year-old troubadour from Dublin, is still making his name, but already has fans who are old enough to be his parents.
In the shops, the trend is much more pronounced. For the first time, people in their 40s are buying more albums than teenagers. According to recent figures from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the 12-to-19 age group accounted for 16.4% of album sales in 2002, a sharp fall on 2000 (22.1%), while 40- to-49-year-olds went the other way, rising from 16.5% to 19.1%. Buyers in their 50s (14.3%) are not far behind. Soon, half of albums will be bought by people who have passed their 40th birthday.
This month's ABC figures for the music magazines tell the same story. Uncut and Mojo, the mags that put dead legends on the cover and compile epic accounts of the making of Pet Sounds, keep going up; Smash Hits and Top of the Pops, which give pre-teens their fix of Busted and Blue, are plunging. Smash Hits, once close to a million, is down to 114,000, only 3,000 ahead of Uncut. Q, the original grown-up rock glossy, is on the slide too, despite, or perhaps because of, taking drastic steps to get younger with cover lines such as "Raw! Crazy! Hot!" and a helpful A-Z of sex (A is for auto-asphyxiation). A young title called Bang, from the makers of Classic Rock, closed without a whimper. "It's easier," the publisher told Music Week, "to sell to the old gits."
Old gits, of course, are nothing new. Rock'n'roll itself turns 50 this year and its first wave of fans are pensioners. The term "adult oriented rock", meaning the Eagles if you were lucky and Boston if you weren't, was common currency 30 years ago. Live Aid in 1985 was dominated by seasoned acts such as Queen, and the arrival of the CD persuaded Beatles fans to buy half their record collection all over again. Nostalgia has had its niche in pop ever since 70s stars such as Showaddywaddy and the late Les Gray of Mud cheerfully recycled the rhythms and quiffs of the 50s. What has changed is that the older fan, rather than being a bonus, is fast becoming the music industry's best customer. And he - it is usually a he - has acquired a name: the 50-Quid Bloke.
The 50-Quid Bloke was defined last July in a speech to the BPI's AGM by David Hepworth of Development Hell, an independent magazine company. You may not know the name but the chances are you have come across Hepworth's work. His career is a microcosm of the entertainment media over the past 25 years. He wrote for the NME in the late 70s and then edited Smash Hits before becoming an executive at Emap and supervising the birth of Q, Empire, Mojo and Heat. He presented Whistle Test in the days when it was the only alternative to Top of the Pops, anchored the BBC's coverage of Live Aid, and later turned up on VH1, the older branch of MTV. And now he has launched Word magazine.
On a hot day at County Hall in London, Hepworth stood up and gave Britain's record-company bosses a lecture about their own customers, concentrating on "the 50-quid guy", a term he had picked up from friends in retail. "This is the guy we've all seen in Borders or HMV on a Friday afternoon, possibly after a drink or two, tie slightly undone, buying two CDs, a DVD and maybe a book - fifty quid's worth - and frantically computing how he's going to convince his partner that this is a really, really worthwhile investment."
The 50-quid bloke is a big user of the web, Hepworth says, but unlike his children, he wants to own things. He shops at Amazon as well as the high street. He loathes Pop Idol, telling the kids it devalues everything rock music stands for (the kids reply that it's only a TV show, dad). But he is defined more by his likes than his dislikes and, crucially, he wants to keep up. He likes the White Stripes, Coldplay and Blur and has persevered with Radiohead through the difficult last three albums. His latest buys are the debut albums from the Stands, who remind him of the Byrds, and Franz Ferdinand, who remind him of the Glasgow art-school bands of 1982. The fact that most of the new bands sound old is a definite help.
He has given up on Radio 1 and listens to Radio 4 more than any music station, though he likes the less cosy bits of Radio 2, such as Jonathan Ross on Saturday morning. If he had a digital radio, he would love BBC6 Music, with its slogan "the great, the new and no fill" and its habit of playing Franz Ferdinand alongside the Clash. He adores DVD: "It's impossible to overestimate what a transformational medium DVD is in all this," Hepworth says. "Videos seemed like a waste of money. DVDs are investments."
The 50-quid bloke probably has an iPod but uses it as a radio rather than a substitute for his CDs. His favourite recent film is Lost in Translation, in which Bill Murray shows his own 50-quid tendencies by crooning a karaoke version of the Roxy Music song More Than This.
He has been in love with music all his life - "He's got the High Fidelity chip embedded in his brain," says Jerry Perkins, publisher of Word magazine - but his interests have broadened along the way. He is university-educated, reads a broadsheet, of whatever size, and raved about Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad. He is not a great telly-watcher but loves The Simpsons and The Office and will miss Friends. And yes, he may be a she. Women bought 41% of albums in 2002, up from 38% the year before. "But frankly," says Hepworth, "blokes get the same giddy rush from buying CDs and DVDs that most women get from shoes. It's a spiritual thing."
At HMV, the BPI statistics confirmed what they already knew. "These people are baby-boomers for whom music has always been a central passion, and they have the disposable income," says Gennaro Castaldo, HMV's head of press. "A long time ago we stopped defining our target audience by age, because it's more about how much music means to them. A 50- or 60-year-old is very different from maybe 10 years ago. They have a very contemporary outlook. Bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes are not just the preserve of teenage NME readers."
The generation gap, once about content, has shifted to modes of consumption. For the under-30s, music is something to be shared and swapped and downloaded, legally or otherwise. It doesn't need to be owned because it's everywhere. If they do buy it, it may be in a form as slight as a mobile ringtone. This terrifies the music business, which can see itself slipping beneath the waves.
With Dido and Norah Jones ruling the album chart, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin selling plenty of DVDs, Duran Duran and Tears for Fears suddenly returning from oblivion and Franz Ferdinand achieving instant success, it looks as if the fifty-quid bloke is keeping the music business afloat. "There's a lot of evidence," Hepworth says. "Radio 2, Norah Jones, even The Darkness - these things appeal to an older demographic."
All these strands come together in the pages of Word. It is edited by Hepworth's mate Mark Ellen, whose career has followed a similar path except for being in the same rock band as Tony Blair at Oxford, Ugly Rumours. His magazine, launched last year on a hunch and a shoestring, covers music, but not just music - it will interview Matt Groening or Anthony Beevor or the creator of the iPod alongside rock stars chosen for their articulacy rather than their looks, such as Morrissey, Elvis Costello and Neil Tennant (who once worked with Hepworth and Ellen at Smash Hits).
The founders consciously went against the grain of formatted, processed magazines. "What inspired us," says Perkins, "was the idea that there were people who were desperate for substance. The current crop of magazines were either becoming more and more retro or dumbing down to appeal to some notional 19-year-old. The marketing tail was wagging the editorial dog."
The record companies are beginning to wise up to the change in the landscape. A recent edition of Music Week had a piece from Brian Berg, boss of Universal Music's UMTV arm, saying the industry had been under-serving the 40-plus market and the opportunities were "enormous". The Word gang, who have been out talking to record companies, report that "everyone's wising up to it". Castaldo confirms that the older consumer is "very, very important".
The 50-quid bloke has a special appeal to harassed record-company executives; unlike most stereotypes, he is defined not by his age or taste or membership of a cult, but by the amount he spends. And he is male, getting on a bit, and well off - so he is just like them.
It seems that the 50-quid bloke is doing for the record companies what Diane Keaton has just done for Jack Nicholson: after decades of running after the under-30s, they are ruefully taking an interest in people of their own age.
For the first time fortysomethings are buying more albums than teenagers and it's all down to the '50-quid man' - the middle-aged bloke (or even woman) who is happy to splash out on a fistful of CDs. Tim de Lisle investigates the cultural phenomenon that is really shaping the music charts
Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian
One of the ancient laws of rock concerts states that there is always someone directly in front of you who has big hair. Lately this phenomenon has come with a twist: increasingly, the big hair in front of you is grey, or even white. The gig-going habit no longer fades at 40 or 50. And it's not just the comfy-cardie acts who appeal to the older fan. At the Cambridge Corn Exchange last week, the two gentlemen blocking my view of Damien Rice were about 55. Rice, a 30-year-old troubadour from Dublin, is still making his name, but already has fans who are old enough to be his parents.
In the shops, the trend is much more pronounced. For the first time, people in their 40s are buying more albums than teenagers. According to recent figures from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the 12-to-19 age group accounted for 16.4% of album sales in 2002, a sharp fall on 2000 (22.1%), while 40- to-49-year-olds went the other way, rising from 16.5% to 19.1%. Buyers in their 50s (14.3%) are not far behind. Soon, half of albums will be bought by people who have passed their 40th birthday.
This month's ABC figures for the music magazines tell the same story. Uncut and Mojo, the mags that put dead legends on the cover and compile epic accounts of the making of Pet Sounds, keep going up; Smash Hits and Top of the Pops, which give pre-teens their fix of Busted and Blue, are plunging. Smash Hits, once close to a million, is down to 114,000, only 3,000 ahead of Uncut. Q, the original grown-up rock glossy, is on the slide too, despite, or perhaps because of, taking drastic steps to get younger with cover lines such as "Raw! Crazy! Hot!" and a helpful A-Z of sex (A is for auto-asphyxiation). A young title called Bang, from the makers of Classic Rock, closed without a whimper. "It's easier," the publisher told Music Week, "to sell to the old gits."
Old gits, of course, are nothing new. Rock'n'roll itself turns 50 this year and its first wave of fans are pensioners. The term "adult oriented rock", meaning the Eagles if you were lucky and Boston if you weren't, was common currency 30 years ago. Live Aid in 1985 was dominated by seasoned acts such as Queen, and the arrival of the CD persuaded Beatles fans to buy half their record collection all over again. Nostalgia has had its niche in pop ever since 70s stars such as Showaddywaddy and the late Les Gray of Mud cheerfully recycled the rhythms and quiffs of the 50s. What has changed is that the older fan, rather than being a bonus, is fast becoming the music industry's best customer. And he - it is usually a he - has acquired a name: the 50-Quid Bloke.
The 50-Quid Bloke was defined last July in a speech to the BPI's AGM by David Hepworth of Development Hell, an independent magazine company. You may not know the name but the chances are you have come across Hepworth's work. His career is a microcosm of the entertainment media over the past 25 years. He wrote for the NME in the late 70s and then edited Smash Hits before becoming an executive at Emap and supervising the birth of Q, Empire, Mojo and Heat. He presented Whistle Test in the days when it was the only alternative to Top of the Pops, anchored the BBC's coverage of Live Aid, and later turned up on VH1, the older branch of MTV. And now he has launched Word magazine.
On a hot day at County Hall in London, Hepworth stood up and gave Britain's record-company bosses a lecture about their own customers, concentrating on "the 50-quid guy", a term he had picked up from friends in retail. "This is the guy we've all seen in Borders or HMV on a Friday afternoon, possibly after a drink or two, tie slightly undone, buying two CDs, a DVD and maybe a book - fifty quid's worth - and frantically computing how he's going to convince his partner that this is a really, really worthwhile investment."
The 50-quid bloke is a big user of the web, Hepworth says, but unlike his children, he wants to own things. He shops at Amazon as well as the high street. He loathes Pop Idol, telling the kids it devalues everything rock music stands for (the kids reply that it's only a TV show, dad). But he is defined more by his likes than his dislikes and, crucially, he wants to keep up. He likes the White Stripes, Coldplay and Blur and has persevered with Radiohead through the difficult last three albums. His latest buys are the debut albums from the Stands, who remind him of the Byrds, and Franz Ferdinand, who remind him of the Glasgow art-school bands of 1982. The fact that most of the new bands sound old is a definite help.
He has given up on Radio 1 and listens to Radio 4 more than any music station, though he likes the less cosy bits of Radio 2, such as Jonathan Ross on Saturday morning. If he had a digital radio, he would love BBC6 Music, with its slogan "the great, the new and no fill" and its habit of playing Franz Ferdinand alongside the Clash. He adores DVD: "It's impossible to overestimate what a transformational medium DVD is in all this," Hepworth says. "Videos seemed like a waste of money. DVDs are investments."
The 50-quid bloke probably has an iPod but uses it as a radio rather than a substitute for his CDs. His favourite recent film is Lost in Translation, in which Bill Murray shows his own 50-quid tendencies by crooning a karaoke version of the Roxy Music song More Than This.
He has been in love with music all his life - "He's got the High Fidelity chip embedded in his brain," says Jerry Perkins, publisher of Word magazine - but his interests have broadened along the way. He is university-educated, reads a broadsheet, of whatever size, and raved about Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad. He is not a great telly-watcher but loves The Simpsons and The Office and will miss Friends. And yes, he may be a she. Women bought 41% of albums in 2002, up from 38% the year before. "But frankly," says Hepworth, "blokes get the same giddy rush from buying CDs and DVDs that most women get from shoes. It's a spiritual thing."
At HMV, the BPI statistics confirmed what they already knew. "These people are baby-boomers for whom music has always been a central passion, and they have the disposable income," says Gennaro Castaldo, HMV's head of press. "A long time ago we stopped defining our target audience by age, because it's more about how much music means to them. A 50- or 60-year-old is very different from maybe 10 years ago. They have a very contemporary outlook. Bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes are not just the preserve of teenage NME readers."
The generation gap, once about content, has shifted to modes of consumption. For the under-30s, music is something to be shared and swapped and downloaded, legally or otherwise. It doesn't need to be owned because it's everywhere. If they do buy it, it may be in a form as slight as a mobile ringtone. This terrifies the music business, which can see itself slipping beneath the waves.
With Dido and Norah Jones ruling the album chart, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin selling plenty of DVDs, Duran Duran and Tears for Fears suddenly returning from oblivion and Franz Ferdinand achieving instant success, it looks as if the fifty-quid bloke is keeping the music business afloat. "There's a lot of evidence," Hepworth says. "Radio 2, Norah Jones, even The Darkness - these things appeal to an older demographic."
All these strands come together in the pages of Word. It is edited by Hepworth's mate Mark Ellen, whose career has followed a similar path except for being in the same rock band as Tony Blair at Oxford, Ugly Rumours. His magazine, launched last year on a hunch and a shoestring, covers music, but not just music - it will interview Matt Groening or Anthony Beevor or the creator of the iPod alongside rock stars chosen for their articulacy rather than their looks, such as Morrissey, Elvis Costello and Neil Tennant (who once worked with Hepworth and Ellen at Smash Hits).
The founders consciously went against the grain of formatted, processed magazines. "What inspired us," says Perkins, "was the idea that there were people who were desperate for substance. The current crop of magazines were either becoming more and more retro or dumbing down to appeal to some notional 19-year-old. The marketing tail was wagging the editorial dog."
The record companies are beginning to wise up to the change in the landscape. A recent edition of Music Week had a piece from Brian Berg, boss of Universal Music's UMTV arm, saying the industry had been under-serving the 40-plus market and the opportunities were "enormous". The Word gang, who have been out talking to record companies, report that "everyone's wising up to it". Castaldo confirms that the older consumer is "very, very important".
The 50-quid bloke has a special appeal to harassed record-company executives; unlike most stereotypes, he is defined not by his age or taste or membership of a cult, but by the amount he spends. And he is male, getting on a bit, and well off - so he is just like them.
It seems that the 50-quid bloke is doing for the record companies what Diane Keaton has just done for Jack Nicholson: after decades of running after the under-30s, they are ruefully taking an interest in people of their own age.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Iraqi spy case shows media at it again
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Anyone who wants to understand why the media are held in such low regard by the public -- in polls of the most respected professions we usually come somewhere between Nigerian e-mail scammers and serial pedophiles -- should consider the following headline from an Associated Press story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week:
''Accused Spy Is Cousin Of Bush Staffer''
The accused spy is Susan Lindauer, who is accused of working for Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency. She describes herself merely as an "anti-war activist,'' though, as the daily rummage through the Baathists' scrupulous paperwork indicates more clearly every day, being an anti-war activist and on the Saddamite payroll are by no means mutually exclusive.
Before she allegedly became an Iraqi agent, Lindauer spent a decade in Washington working for four members of Congress: Peter DeFazio, Ron Wyden, Carol Moseley Braun and Zoe Lofgren. What do these four legislators have in common?
Answer: They all have a ''D'' after their name.
But to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's headline writer the salient fact about Lindauer is not her 10 years of work for the Democratic Party but the amazing revelation that she is a second cousin of Bush chief of staff Andrew Card.
A second cousin! Hold the front page!
Here's an easy test for the publisher, editor and news staff of the paper:
1. Name all your second cousins.
2. Where do they live?
3. When did you last see them?
It's one thing for the press to be anti-war and feel Saddam should be given another decade or two to come into compliance with Security Council resolutions. It's quite another to be so smitten with the old butcher that your copy editors internally absorb Baath Party tribal politics and assume that mere second cousinship with members of the Bush clan automatically puts you in the inner circle. To be fair to the Associated Press, they sent the story out on the wires with the headline, ''Woman Named In Spy Case Worked As Journalist, Congressional Aide.''
What's that? ''Worked As Journalist''? Well, there's an angle the Seattle guys unaccountably missed. Before she went to work for the Democratic Party, Lindauer worked for . . . the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Instead of the cousin thing, the headline writer might more usefully have written:
''Accused Spy Used To Sit At Desk Next To Mine; I Made Clumsy Pass At Her At 1992 Office Party.''
I'd love to see these headline writers working in Hollywood: ''Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me''? ''Well, to be honest we thought it sounded punchier as 'Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Someone Who Used To Go To School With Someone Who Was A Cousin Of Someone Who Was Briefly Married To A Receptionist At Halliburton. When Cheney Worked There!' ''
Look, these are serious times. Week after week, more details emerge of the extraordinary number of influential Westerners, from French government ministers to the head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, who appear to have been in the pay of Saddam. That's, among other things, what Susan Lindauer is accused of.
But we don't have a serious press for these serious times. Boring and self-important is not the same as serious. But one reason why John Kerry calculates he can get away with damning the Bush administration as ''crooks'' and ''liars'' is because he figures he can count on the mainstream media doing what the Post-Intelligencer did -- instinctively framing every issue in anti-Bush terms, no matter how ludicrously. I suppose it's not entirely impossible that one reason the Post-Intelligencer guys went with their spy-Bush linkage is because Lindauer has been accused of betraying her country and Al Gore accused Bush of ''betraying'' the country, too. But that's one more reason why Bush will win in November: The media and the Democrats are sustaining each other in their delusions.
Sen. Kerry thinks the Bush administration are ''crooked'' and ''lying.'' The Bush ''lie'' boils down to this: The president believes there's a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things. And they think Bush is ''lying'' by insisting on playing it as a war.
As it happens, the only big political ''lie'' in recent days came from Kerry, who told a meeting in Florida, ''I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy.' '' The senator has spent most of the last year in Iowa and New Hampshire, which, for all their charms, are not where one goes to rub shoulders with ''foreign leaders.'' Jacques Chirac could have driven over the Granite State border from Quebec's Eastern Townships, where he was vacationing last summer. But he didn't. Kerry does not appear to have ''looked at'' any foreign leaders since he began his campaign.
And, if he had, he'd find them far less well-disposed to him than he imagines. Last Thursday, March 11, 2-1/2 years to the day after Sept. 11, nearly 200 people were murdered by terrorists in Spain. Like Britain, Australia and Poland, Spain is a member of what John Kerry calls Bush's ''fraudulent coalition.''
You can disagree with the administration on this war. I have. A few days after 9/11, I called for resignations from the agencies that failed on that day -- FAA, FBI, CIA, INS. Didn't happen. Still hasn't happened. It should. A couple of weeks after 9/11, I called for a total upheaval of America's relationship with Saudi Arabia. Didn't happen then. There are a few subtle hints that things are changing, but far too slowly. Anyone who took the war seriously can certainly find fault with the administration. But not if you stand there like a 5-year-old boy and never get beyond pointing your fingers and sticking your tongue out: ''Ooh, Bush lied. And Ashcroft's a big bully. And Cheney's stealing it all for his oil buddies. And you shouldn't mention the war in your campaign ads, because it's not fair. Nyaa-nyaa!''
Two hundred people died in Madrid because of a war Democrats refuse to admit exists. But, hey, you never know: Maybe the guy who did it will be a third cousin twice removed of Karl Rove.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Anyone who wants to understand why the media are held in such low regard by the public -- in polls of the most respected professions we usually come somewhere between Nigerian e-mail scammers and serial pedophiles -- should consider the following headline from an Associated Press story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week:
''Accused Spy Is Cousin Of Bush Staffer''
The accused spy is Susan Lindauer, who is accused of working for Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency. She describes herself merely as an "anti-war activist,'' though, as the daily rummage through the Baathists' scrupulous paperwork indicates more clearly every day, being an anti-war activist and on the Saddamite payroll are by no means mutually exclusive.
Before she allegedly became an Iraqi agent, Lindauer spent a decade in Washington working for four members of Congress: Peter DeFazio, Ron Wyden, Carol Moseley Braun and Zoe Lofgren. What do these four legislators have in common?
Answer: They all have a ''D'' after their name.
But to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's headline writer the salient fact about Lindauer is not her 10 years of work for the Democratic Party but the amazing revelation that she is a second cousin of Bush chief of staff Andrew Card.
A second cousin! Hold the front page!
Here's an easy test for the publisher, editor and news staff of the paper:
1. Name all your second cousins.
2. Where do they live?
3. When did you last see them?
It's one thing for the press to be anti-war and feel Saddam should be given another decade or two to come into compliance with Security Council resolutions. It's quite another to be so smitten with the old butcher that your copy editors internally absorb Baath Party tribal politics and assume that mere second cousinship with members of the Bush clan automatically puts you in the inner circle. To be fair to the Associated Press, they sent the story out on the wires with the headline, ''Woman Named In Spy Case Worked As Journalist, Congressional Aide.''
What's that? ''Worked As Journalist''? Well, there's an angle the Seattle guys unaccountably missed. Before she went to work for the Democratic Party, Lindauer worked for . . . the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Instead of the cousin thing, the headline writer might more usefully have written:
''Accused Spy Used To Sit At Desk Next To Mine; I Made Clumsy Pass At Her At 1992 Office Party.''
I'd love to see these headline writers working in Hollywood: ''Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me''? ''Well, to be honest we thought it sounded punchier as 'Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Someone Who Used To Go To School With Someone Who Was A Cousin Of Someone Who Was Briefly Married To A Receptionist At Halliburton. When Cheney Worked There!' ''
Look, these are serious times. Week after week, more details emerge of the extraordinary number of influential Westerners, from French government ministers to the head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, who appear to have been in the pay of Saddam. That's, among other things, what Susan Lindauer is accused of.
But we don't have a serious press for these serious times. Boring and self-important is not the same as serious. But one reason why John Kerry calculates he can get away with damning the Bush administration as ''crooks'' and ''liars'' is because he figures he can count on the mainstream media doing what the Post-Intelligencer did -- instinctively framing every issue in anti-Bush terms, no matter how ludicrously. I suppose it's not entirely impossible that one reason the Post-Intelligencer guys went with their spy-Bush linkage is because Lindauer has been accused of betraying her country and Al Gore accused Bush of ''betraying'' the country, too. But that's one more reason why Bush will win in November: The media and the Democrats are sustaining each other in their delusions.
Sen. Kerry thinks the Bush administration are ''crooked'' and ''lying.'' The Bush ''lie'' boils down to this: The president believes there's a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things. And they think Bush is ''lying'' by insisting on playing it as a war.
As it happens, the only big political ''lie'' in recent days came from Kerry, who told a meeting in Florida, ''I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy.' '' The senator has spent most of the last year in Iowa and New Hampshire, which, for all their charms, are not where one goes to rub shoulders with ''foreign leaders.'' Jacques Chirac could have driven over the Granite State border from Quebec's Eastern Townships, where he was vacationing last summer. But he didn't. Kerry does not appear to have ''looked at'' any foreign leaders since he began his campaign.
And, if he had, he'd find them far less well-disposed to him than he imagines. Last Thursday, March 11, 2-1/2 years to the day after Sept. 11, nearly 200 people were murdered by terrorists in Spain. Like Britain, Australia and Poland, Spain is a member of what John Kerry calls Bush's ''fraudulent coalition.''
You can disagree with the administration on this war. I have. A few days after 9/11, I called for resignations from the agencies that failed on that day -- FAA, FBI, CIA, INS. Didn't happen. Still hasn't happened. It should. A couple of weeks after 9/11, I called for a total upheaval of America's relationship with Saudi Arabia. Didn't happen then. There are a few subtle hints that things are changing, but far too slowly. Anyone who took the war seriously can certainly find fault with the administration. But not if you stand there like a 5-year-old boy and never get beyond pointing your fingers and sticking your tongue out: ''Ooh, Bush lied. And Ashcroft's a big bully. And Cheney's stealing it all for his oil buddies. And you shouldn't mention the war in your campaign ads, because it's not fair. Nyaa-nyaa!''
Two hundred people died in Madrid because of a war Democrats refuse to admit exists. But, hey, you never know: Maybe the guy who did it will be a third cousin twice removed of Karl Rove.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Secular Absolutism
The irreligious left tries to impose its religious views on everyone else.
Sunday, March 14, Wall Street Journal
Secular absolutism is becoming the most potent religious force in America. Just ask the Boy Scouts and Catholic Charities, which both fell afoul of secular orthodoxy and then found judges willing to punish them for it.
Start with Catholic Charities. The California Supreme Court just ruled that the social-services arm of the Roman Catholic Church must include contraceptives coverage to women as part of any prescription drug benefit it extends to employees. When Catholic Charities insisted that as an avowedly Catholic organization it fit the religious exemption provided by the law in question, the court simply said it was not a religious organization. Catholic Charities?
Leave aside the irony that of all America's Catholic institutions, Catholic Charities is arguably the most liberal and sympathetic to secular crusades. Even that didn't protect them. Nor did its practice of employing people outside the Catholic faith--which was used here as reason for denying its religious claims. If the state can order a Catholic organization to include contraceptive coverage as part of its health benefits or drop all drug coverage, it's not hard to see where that's leading. This is what passes for civil liberties now.
The lone dissent in this 6-1 decision came from Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Judge Brown, nominated by President Bush for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, has been pilloried for refusing to bow before this increasingly stifling liberal orthodoxy. As she tartly noted in her decision here, the California high court has "such a crabbed and constricted view of religion that it would define the ministry of Jesus Christ as a secular activity."
Compare this ruling with what's going on with the Boy Scouts. On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the Scouts' appeal of a Connecticut decision to kick them off a list of charities on its state-worker voluntary-donation plan. Meanwhile the American Civil Liberties Union has routed the Scouts in San Diego.
In a settlement reached earlier this year with the ACLU, San Diego agreed to revoke a Scouts lease for public campgrounds, where the Scouts have had a presence since 1918 and a formal lease since 1957. The city also agreed to pay the ACLU a whopping $950,000 for its efforts.
The Boy Scouts are suing, and they will not actually be evicted until the courts have ruled on all the outstanding issues and the litigation has been settled. But their opponents cite previous briefs in which the Scouts used the words "religious organization" to describe themselves as an association of believers and explain why they could not admit atheists. Never mind that by this broad definition, the Continental Congress that signed the Declaration of Independence would be a "religious organization."
Twisting these words, the ACLU contends that leasing the Scouts public lands is tantamount to the public establishment of religion. Silly as that might sound--and the civil rights division of the Justice Department agrees with the Scouts here--the argument received a huge boost when a federal judge decreed that the Scouts are a religious organization and that the leases do raise Establishment Clause concerns, a decision that no doubt led to the city's decision to settle.
Never mind that the Scouts have not discriminated against, or even been accused of discriminating against, anyone who has sought to use the campgrounds they maintain. Their real crime is to have won the Supreme Court case involving their First Amendment right not to admit an openly homosexual Scoutmaster. Ever since, a liberal jihad has been launched to strip them of any public association. As another federal judge put it in that Connecticut case the Supremes have just refused to hear, the Scouts "pay a price" for exercising their First Amendment rights.
All this is being done notwithstanding that the results will leave people worse off than they were before. The easiest way for Catholic Charities to comply, for example, would be by withdrawing all its prescription drug benefits. Its female employees will end up with fewer benefits than now. And you can bet the people of San Diego will be worse off with the Scouts no longer maintaining those campgrounds.
What's going on here is an effort by liberal activists and their judiciary enablers to turn one set of personal mores into a public orthodoxy from which there can be no dissent, even if that means trampling the First Amendment. Any voluntary association that doesn't comply--the same little platoons once considered the bedrock of American freedom--will be driven from the public square. Meet the new face of intolerance.
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The irreligious left tries to impose its religious views on everyone else.
Sunday, March 14, Wall Street Journal
Secular absolutism is becoming the most potent religious force in America. Just ask the Boy Scouts and Catholic Charities, which both fell afoul of secular orthodoxy and then found judges willing to punish them for it.
Start with Catholic Charities. The California Supreme Court just ruled that the social-services arm of the Roman Catholic Church must include contraceptives coverage to women as part of any prescription drug benefit it extends to employees. When Catholic Charities insisted that as an avowedly Catholic organization it fit the religious exemption provided by the law in question, the court simply said it was not a religious organization. Catholic Charities?
Leave aside the irony that of all America's Catholic institutions, Catholic Charities is arguably the most liberal and sympathetic to secular crusades. Even that didn't protect them. Nor did its practice of employing people outside the Catholic faith--which was used here as reason for denying its religious claims. If the state can order a Catholic organization to include contraceptive coverage as part of its health benefits or drop all drug coverage, it's not hard to see where that's leading. This is what passes for civil liberties now.
The lone dissent in this 6-1 decision came from Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Judge Brown, nominated by President Bush for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, has been pilloried for refusing to bow before this increasingly stifling liberal orthodoxy. As she tartly noted in her decision here, the California high court has "such a crabbed and constricted view of religion that it would define the ministry of Jesus Christ as a secular activity."
Compare this ruling with what's going on with the Boy Scouts. On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the Scouts' appeal of a Connecticut decision to kick them off a list of charities on its state-worker voluntary-donation plan. Meanwhile the American Civil Liberties Union has routed the Scouts in San Diego.
In a settlement reached earlier this year with the ACLU, San Diego agreed to revoke a Scouts lease for public campgrounds, where the Scouts have had a presence since 1918 and a formal lease since 1957. The city also agreed to pay the ACLU a whopping $950,000 for its efforts.
The Boy Scouts are suing, and they will not actually be evicted until the courts have ruled on all the outstanding issues and the litigation has been settled. But their opponents cite previous briefs in which the Scouts used the words "religious organization" to describe themselves as an association of believers and explain why they could not admit atheists. Never mind that by this broad definition, the Continental Congress that signed the Declaration of Independence would be a "religious organization."
Twisting these words, the ACLU contends that leasing the Scouts public lands is tantamount to the public establishment of religion. Silly as that might sound--and the civil rights division of the Justice Department agrees with the Scouts here--the argument received a huge boost when a federal judge decreed that the Scouts are a religious organization and that the leases do raise Establishment Clause concerns, a decision that no doubt led to the city's decision to settle.
Never mind that the Scouts have not discriminated against, or even been accused of discriminating against, anyone who has sought to use the campgrounds they maintain. Their real crime is to have won the Supreme Court case involving their First Amendment right not to admit an openly homosexual Scoutmaster. Ever since, a liberal jihad has been launched to strip them of any public association. As another federal judge put it in that Connecticut case the Supremes have just refused to hear, the Scouts "pay a price" for exercising their First Amendment rights.
All this is being done notwithstanding that the results will leave people worse off than they were before. The easiest way for Catholic Charities to comply, for example, would be by withdrawing all its prescription drug benefits. Its female employees will end up with fewer benefits than now. And you can bet the people of San Diego will be worse off with the Scouts no longer maintaining those campgrounds.
What's going on here is an effort by liberal activists and their judiciary enablers to turn one set of personal mores into a public orthodoxy from which there can be no dissent, even if that means trampling the First Amendment. Any voluntary association that doesn't comply--the same little platoons once considered the bedrock of American freedom--will be driven from the public square. Meet the new face of intolerance.
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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