Category: Current Affairs

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‘Viva il Papa’

The New York Times’s coverage of the pope’s death features an obituary by Robert D. McFadden. To call it an obituary is somewhat misleading. It’s a mini-biography that takes up most of an eight-page special section in the paper and 21 pages online. McFadden is what I would call a rewrite man extraordinaire. He works nearly exclusively in the newsroom and writes stories based on his own reporting and research, almost always on deadline, sometimes wrapping in contributions from others. His command of the rewrite craft — his ability to assemble and marshal the important facts in a story, his ability to convey a sense of scenes and personalities he’s never witnessed or encountered directly, the lucidity of his prose, his speed and encyclopedic general knowledge — means he gets to write some of the biggest stories. He’s so good with them that he won the Pulitzer Prize one year — not for any particular story, but for what he did day in and day out to create sound, well-reported, and readable stories. Although I’ve never met McFadden and don’t know exactly how the Times newsroom works, I’m confident of all of the above because we had our own extraordinary rewrite guy at The Examiner when I was there, Larry D. Hatfield, who would bail the desk out on deadline nearly every day. But that’s another story.

Back to the John Paul II piece in today’s paper. Here’s how it starts:

“On the night of Oct. 16, 1978, a vast, impatient throng in floodlit St. Peter’s Square cheered wildly as white smoke curled from a chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, signaling the election of a new pope. A long wait had ended, but the enthusiasm was somewhat premature.

“Cardinal Pericle Felici emerged minutes later to introduce Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland, the first non-Italian pope since 1523. But even he had trouble pronouncing the name – voy-TEE-wah. Hardly anyone, it seemed, knew who he was. Murmurs and questions rippled through the predominantly Roman crowd.

“Then a powerfully built man with slightly stooped shoulders and a small smile on his angular face stepped onto the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Cheers faded into silence. The crowd waited.

“He stood at the balcony rail, looking out, a Polish stranger in the fresh white robes of the pope. And there were tears in his eyes as he began to speak.

” ‘I have come,’ he said in lightly accented Italian, ‘from a faraway country – far away, but always so close in the communion of faith.’

“There were scattered cheers, and they grew louder as he went on.

” ‘I do not know whether I can express myself in your – in our – Italian language,’ he said, pausing.

“The crowd roared appreciatively, and the laughter swelled into resounding cheers.

” ‘If I make mistakes,’ he added, beaming suddenly, ‘you will correct me.’

“Tumult erupted.

“The cheers went on and on, and then grew into rhythmic waves that broke on the basilica facade and echoed across the square in a thundering crescendo:

” ‘Viva il Papa!’ Viva il Papa! Viva il Papa!’ ”

That’s enough to make me want to read the whole thing.

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Il Papa

Briefly: Just happened to look at The New York Times site, and see reports there and elsewhere that the pope is near death. No surprise there — he’s been very sick for a long time. But still: The pope is dying. What’s odd is that, despite not having gone to Mass or taken any of the sacraments except on very rare occasions for nearly 40 years, I can be so quickly carried back to Catholic school days and the sense of gravity surrounding the death of a pope.

I’m thinking of Pope John XXIII (I can probably thank him for my early knowledge of Roman numerals) when I write that. He was a sort of kindly old guy who came after Pius XII, who was a cipher in my pre-school appreciation of matters ecclesiastical. I remember Mom liked J23, and thought he was doing good things in the church. I didn’t really understand what things he was doing, but there was the feeling he was a little looser and less formal than people were used to. The Wikipedia article on him has a great anecdote:

“When the First Lady of the United States, Jacqueline Kennedy, arrived in the Vatican to see him, he began nervously rehearsing the two methods of address he had been advised to use when she entered: ‘Mrs. Kennedy, Madame’ or ‘Madame, Mrs. Kennedy’. When she did arrive, however, to the amusement of the press corps, he abandoned both and rushed to her saying, ‘Jackie!’

Then he died, in 1963, in the summer between third and fourth grade for me. In Chicago, Catholic as it is — or was then, anyway — it was a big deal, and I remember a big black headline on the Daily News, which has, like all the popes except one, expired, too.

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Over There

Iraq — let us not forget Iraq.

Is the news good or bad? Well, it depends. In March 2005, fewer U.S. troops have been killed (32, 35, as of this writing) than in any month since February 2004, when 20 died. That’s good, and I list it first only because the impression one gets is that there are few hard, dependable facts in the Land Between Two Rivers. Our casualty list is one.

Most days, I still scan the headlines on the Iraq Coalition Casualties site. Maybe that’s part of the reason I have an ongoing unease about what’s happening over there even as the war has been pushed into the background here. The current lineup of items starts with this news from the Pentagon:

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

“Pfc. Samuel S. Lee, 19, of Anaheim, Calif., died March 28 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, from non-combat related injuries. Lee was assigned to 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, Camp Greaves, Korea.”

The rest of today’s headlines from the page:

–Reuters: U.S. Citizen Kidnapped in Iraq with Three Romanians

–AP: Mississippi soldier loses legs, three others wounded in Iraq

–Ark City Traveler: Winfield soldier still recovering

–DOD: Troop-Strength Assessment in Iraq Expected This Summer

–KUNA: U.S. questions UN conclusions on malnutrition among Iraqi children

–CENTCOM: MARINE KILLED IN ACTION

–KUNA: Four killed, three wounded in booby-trapped car in Mosul

–MEMRI: Kirkuk: Between Kurdish Separatism and Iraqi Federalism

–CENTCOM: MQ-1 PREDATOR CRASHES IN IRAQ

–AP: Accused Soldier Has Hearing Postponed

–KUNA: Two Iraqis killed in separate incidents

–DOD: Joint Repair Facility Extends Robot Lives

–Reuters: Syria demands Iraq release two accused of spying

–Reuters: Six Iraqis killed as insurgents battle US troops

–DemocracyNow: Halliburton Employee Says He Was Gang-Beaten By Co-Workers

–Anatolia: 36 Iraqis In Baghdad have AIDS – Health Ministry

–Stars and Stripes: 31st MEU arriving in Okinawa Saturday

–KUNA: Two Iraqis killed in blast

–AP: Nearly twice as many Iraqi children going hungry since Saddam’s ouster

–MOD: British soldier was found dead

–AP: Car bomb in Baghdad kills one; attackers fire on Shiite pilgrims

–National Guard and Reserve Mobilized as of March 30, 2005

–USA TODAY: Tanks take a beating in Iraq

–AP: Number of prisoners held by U-S in Iraq doubled in five months

–AFP: Seven Iraqis killed in attacks

–Beacon News: Wounded GI gets much-needed help

–aljazeerah: One American, Three Romanians Kidnapped

–WorldNow: Local Soldier Severely Injured

–KUNA: Up to 2,000 soldiers join Iraqi army in Khout

–irib: US Forces Wound Iraqi Basketball Federation Head

–newstandardnews: Rise of Extremism, Islamic Law Threaten Iraqi Women

–RFE: Iraqi Army More Visible On Baghdad Streets

–iribnews: Iraq closes border checkpoint

Whatever the reality is, all that accounts for just a fragment. Not a comforting fragment, though. (And, of all the stories above, here’s the one I’d check out first: The tale of the Halliburton worker from New Mexico who was reportedly beaten so badly by fellow employees that he’ll need to be evacuated to an Army facility in Germany for treatment. The story suggests the motive was racial — the victim is Latino, the assailants are part of a group from Louisiana that the story refers to as a “redneck Mafia.”)

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Making Up for Good Intentions

I, and many other bloggers, wrote earlier this year about an incident in which a U.S. Army patrol fired on a car in Iraq that carried a mother, father, and six children. The parents were killed and one of the kids was badly wounded. What made this incident different from many other accidental (or reckless) shootings during the course of the war was the presence of a press photographer, Chris Hondros of Getty Images, who recorded the horror of the scene. Newsweek has a story in its current issue on the shooting’s extraordinarily unhappy aftermath.

I see this evening, by way of Mark Frauenfelder on BoingBoing, that a group of people in the Seattle area has set up a relief fund for the family, the Hassans (the parents left nine children behind; the boy wounded in the attack suffered spinal injuries and could be permanently paralyzed unless he gets access to expensive medical treatment unavailable in Iraq). The fund has been organized under the auspices of an Anglican church group and a tech consulting firm, and is taking donations by mail or via PayPal. Check out the relief fund page for yourself.

Perhaps the fund is just our typical Yank gesture: We’re so sorry we killed your parents; let us give you some cash. On the other hand, it’s a small way of trying to set right the damage wrought by all our highly principled, well-intentioned violence.

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Making Friends, Influencing People: Iraq Edition

A friend and fellow Land of Lincoln native, Ayla Jean Yackley (she hails from Ottawa, on the banks of the mighty Illinois River), has been working as a correspondent for Reuters in Turkey (her mom’s family is Turkish, I think, and Ayla speaks the language) for several years. She passed on a press release yesterday from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists about an ugly incident involving U.S. soldiers, three Reuters employees, and an NBC photographer near Fallujah last year. According to the release (and Reuters offers a similar account, too):

“The three Reuters employees, along with Ali Mohammed Hussein al-Badrani, a cameraman working for NBC, were covering the aftermath of the downing of a U.S. helicopter when they were detained by U.S. troops on Jan. 2, 2004. The four were taken to a U.S. base near Fallujah and released three days later without charge.

“The Reuters employees allege that while detained, they were beaten and deprived of sleep. They said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them, and took photographs, Reuters has reported. Two alleged they were forced to put shoes in their mouths, and to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it.”

The news from both Reuters and the CPJ release was that the Pentagon, which never interviewed the men who made the allegations, has decided that it’s satisfied with its investigation and is dropping the matter.

Now, in a place where so many have died such awful deaths, this is not an example of the worst savagery of the Iraq war. But what’s just as disturbing as the original allegations is the Pentagon’s apparent complacency about this kind of behavior in the ranks.

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Jerry Brown, Blogger

My friend Ted Shelton did something pretty cool a couple months back: He got in touch with Jerry Brown — mayor of Oakland, former California governor and presidential candidate, aspiring state attorney general — and talked to him about how to use the Net to speak to the people. The result is that Brown started his own blog. It exhibits everything I like and dislike about Brown, who is well into his fourth decade as an elected official. The part I like: The guy’s smart and quick and communicates ideas beautifully. The part I dislike? Well, I said it in a response (below) to a recent post he wrote on all he’s done for the Oakland schools: Brown’s got a razor-sharp sense for telling the story that casts him in the most glowing light. As to the unhappy scene that may lie just outside the frame of his self-portrait — that’s someone else’s problem. But that’s another thing I like about the blog — I can tell him just that, and there’s some evidence he’s actually reading what his audience has to say.


My comments to Mayor Brown:

Jerry, any public education success story is to be applauded, and the Oakland School for the Arts is no exception. It’s also refreshing to hear someone in a position of responsibility say the schools need both innovation AND money; cash isn’t a panacea for our public schools’ problems, but used wisely it’s a crucial part of the solution. You also mentioned "freedom" as a necessary ingredient for success; I’ll get to that in a minute.

But I have to say that your post is full of the kind of attitude and omission that long ago led me to conclude that while your intellect is a couple cuts above the average pol’s and you occasionally seem to be moved by the most noble motives, you’re at bottom a self-promoter and opportunist. …

Continue reading “Jerry Brown, Blogger”

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In Re: Terri Schiavo

Even in the Fifth Year of Bush II, the mind maintains its capacity for bogglement. Beyond observing the basic irony — that the right is committed to making the government keep its cotton-picking hands off you, except when your personal life is involved — what can you say? Just this, I guess: Woe betide you if your personal convictions don’t fall in line with the right/right-to-life/wacko Religion R Us agenda, because there’s no constitution or law or court or popular majority or concept of others’ privacy and freedom that will deter these folks from trying to substitute the alleged word of their god for all of the above. That’s all — I’m headed out to the ashes and sackcloth section of the local Seven-11 now.

(That’s all, actually, except for this interesting note on Schiavo from my brother John, received last night via the magic of the Internet:

“Dan: A small trivia fact: “schiavo” is the Italian word for “slave”. I was looking at an article about that poor woman in Florida and recognized the word from my days in Italy. I had met an old guy in Bibbiena, I still remember his name (Giuseppe Feri). Anyway, he was a WW2 vet that who had been sent into Yugoslavia as part of Mussolini’s star crossed invasion. He said –in Italian– that it really sucked, they starved and froze their asses off in 1940-41 until Hitler finally stepped to end the humiliation. But his troubles didn’t end there. He and his buddies were pressed-ganged

into the service of the Germans doing all their shit jobs. He said, ‘we were all schiave,’ the Italian plural for the word slave. He survived the war in this condition, making it back to his little town in Tuscany in 1945.

“Anyway, there seems to be a small bit of irony in the name of that woman, who is being tugged at by so many interested parties. Also, the Italians pronounce the word: ski-a-vo, not sha-vo. Exciting stuff, I’m sure.”)

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Anniversary

Happy anniversary, Shock and Awe. What I remember about the first day of the Iraq War — it was early the morning of the 20th in Baghdad, really — is the attempt to kill Saddam Hussein with a massive opening strike. In a way, it’s an episode that’s emblematic of the whole course of the war: The CIA reported it had good inside information about Saddam’s whereabouts, and President Bush decided to try to “decapitate” Iraq’s government and perhaps abbreviate the war. Initially, rumors flew that the strike had narrowly missed Hussein — reports circulated that a grievously injured Saddam had been pulled from the rubble of a bunker. But that, like so much that was perhaps wishfully reported about the war, turned out to be untrue. Three weeks later, a U.S. air strike flattened a Baghdad apartment block that housed a restaurant where Saddam was supposed to be. After an intensive effort to identify the remains of the score or so of people killed in the attack, the conclusion was that if Saddam had been there, he was gone by the time the bombs struck.

Maybe we’re past all the illusions we had about Iraq at the beginning, all the shaky information about the threat Saddam and his henchmen posed, the premature projections of victory, the shortsighted decisions about how to handle the occupation. Maybe we have given an elected government a precious opportunity to take root, and maybe Iraq will flourish even after U.S. troops are no longer there to maintain a semblance of order. All I can be sure of is that, after spending two years, tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, Iraq and the United States are different from what they were when we launched that first strike, and it’s far too early to tell what all the consequences will be.

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Numbers

Not that numbers ever tell the whole story, one view of the U.S. killed and wounded in Iraq:

Killed

Year 1 (March 20, 2003-March 19, 2004): 583

Year 2: (March 20, 2004-March 19, 2005): 938

Wounded

Year 1: (March 19, 2003-April 2, 2004): 2,988

Year 2: (April 3, 2004-March 14, 2005): 8,256

(Source: Iraq Coalition Casualties)

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Friday Notebook

Welcome to a probable one-time installment of a weekly Infospigot feature, the Friday Notebook. It is Friday, right?

Actual quote heard in my household: “Do you even want to reckon with my muscular ass?” The context was G-rated, but still, to protect the innocent I’d rather not identify the speaker.

He’s your what? “Barry’s our figurehead. He’s our man.” Giant’s pitcher Matt Herges talking about Barry Bonds’s impact on San Francisco’s National League nine. On the misdemeanor level, the figurehead, the carved figure at the prow of old-time ships, was usually (but not always) a woman. On a felony level, a figurehead is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Herges proposes. Quoting a work with the word Webster’s in the title: “a person put in a position of leadership because of name, rank, etc., but having no real power, authority, or responsibility.” The living example in baseball is Bud Selig, the man who couldn’t figure out how to untie a game.

That’s enough snottiness for now.