Charles Ramsey

Today was lost to autotune and Charles Ramsey. This doesn't - thank god - happen to me frequently. I lost a  day to Sarah Palin when she first came on the scene. I lost a day to the Murdoch hearings before the riots the summer of 11. There is a part of my brain that is so curious it overrides every other circuit and I guess I should just let it take over when it needs to but instead I try to whip it into shape by wheedling about my childcare and job responsibilities. To wit, I was intensely self-critical after I had seen the autotune 20 times or  so. I felt I should be working instead of listening times 21-30.

Charles Ramsey is one of the people who helped Amanda Berry try to escape from his Cleveland neighbor's house. She was one of three held in slavery there for a decade. He was interviewed by a local news guy, who cut off the interview when Charles explained that he knew something was wrong when "a pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms . . . something's wrong here." The tape of his 911 call after he successfully broke the door down with Berry and unnamed others has also been released. The operator asks him to identify the victim as white, black or Hispanic. When I left America the 911 choices were black and white. It is great that Hispanic is in there now. (Also the Salsa music reference) The operator asks Ramsey what the victim needs:

Dispatcher: Can you ask her if she needs an ambulance?

Ramsey: [TO BERRY] You need an ambulance or what? [TO DISPATCHER] She needs everything, she's in a panic bro, she's been kidnapped so you know put yourself in her shoes.

The last sentence I think is why I fell in love with Ramsey.  What perfect empathy. What effective communication.  Watching him is like watching an August Wilson play. With phrasing and delivery, he tells such a rich story.  I don't really care if he was a hero or not by rescuing Amanda Berry. I would like to think that Amanda Berry probably deserves some credit for her escape. He's a hero to me despite the rescue. His heroism is in his communication: effortlessly rich. In a few sentences, he tells me more about America than a thousand Huffington Post articles: McDonalds, the growing Hispanic influence in our culture, the entrenched racism despite a black president, the eerie American sexism (his comment that the kidnapper had big balls to pull this off, as if anyone with big balls would want to enslave women)

I was just posting my favorite of the many auto-tune mixes on Facebook when someone else in my stream posted a violently sanctimonious piece in Slate condemning affinity to Charles Ramsey as a sign of closet racism. Saying that being entertained by him, like being entertained by Antoine Dodson, is in itself racist.

As usual, Slate could not have missed the point more. The point is Ramsey's line, all his lines, tell us the refreshing and unvarnished truth about the prevalence of sexism and racism in American culture, the reality of a powerful Hispanic cultural presence: all the realities of Charles Ramsey, told from the heart, are realities I want to know about. It's information. I mean, I feel like things from the States have been indescribably grim for some time, with the drone attacks, and responsive terrorist attacks, and failure of gun control, and repeal of Wall Street reform, and repression of free expression, and money (as well as the party system) choking democracy.

But Charles Ramsey gives me hope. Because he probably displayed more intuitive intelligence and descriptive power than a lot of Ivy Leaguers. So when people like Slate are denigrating our admiration of him, I think what motivates them at a deep level is that scary but true fact that: Charles Ramsey is as smart as the white college kids over at Slate. Plus he has a moral compass. The middle class should meet some more Charles Ramseys.

When I was down at Occupy my mind was really blown. Here I was thinking that with a law degree, some years' experience in litigation, a decade of experience as general counsel of a company, mother of two, I really didn't have too much to learn from the people down there.  The first five people I had conversations with thought the whole movement would succeed or fail based on the placement of crystals. This tended to confirm my opinion going in.

 Of course, I was wrong.

You can listen and learn from people or not. When I listened, I learned . . . from everyone. Here's some news, America: Republicans and Democrats are not that different and you are not all that much smarter than Charles Ramsey.  From the casual description of the fundamental racism in the culture to the profound request for empathy-- "put yourself in her shoes"--there was a lot, and he said it well. And he said it as a free man unencumbered by politics or corporate interest, which is more than the reader can probably say.  It wasn't a marketing message, it wasn't massaged by the media (it was to be fair created by the 24-hour news cycle) but still. He said what he said. All is not lost. I don't mind that it is late and I just ordered a "Charles Ramsey Cleveland Hero" T-shirt online. I am grateful for the hope. The hope that people acquaint themselves with Charles Ramsey's reality.

The Trial is Friday

 On Friday at 1:30 p.m. in the studio at Heritage School, The Crown Court of Nursery Rhyme Crimes will convene a jury to try Goldilocks for criminal trespass and theft. I will be the judge. Other parents are playing the witnesses in the trial: the nosy neighbour with a vendetta, the astonishingly incompetent arresting officer, the defendant Goldilocks and the star witness, Papa Bear, head of the Bear Family.

My son goes to Heritage School and I can't think of a part of his actual heritage that is more important than the rule of law. Remember that idea? That old canard? The idea that individuals, those in power and even sovereign nations themselves are bound to act under a moral code.  I think this mock trial will be a decent reminder of the idea of the rule of law - constraints on behaviour in the interests of fairness - constraints that bind authorities as well as people. This is really something we could usefully get behind these days. Trials are in their best carnation paths to truth and justice given us by our Greek ancestors but preserved and embellished by Christians from Bury St. Edmond to Jackson, Mississippi. Directly from the Christian tradition sprang the idea at the heart of a criminal trial: that even the lowliest, most hated member of the community has a right to be treated fairly. This idea of rights were imbued by nothing else than God's perfect and equal love for everyone, and especially the least of us. At least I think this is really what motivated the barons who swore the oath at Bury St. Edmunds on the altar of the church to fight King John for the concessions of power that became the Magna Carta.

Some of the first concessions signed at Runnymede were the best: habeus corpus, protection of individual ownership of property, and, yes, you guessed it, jury trials. Jury trials weren't new, but they were - and to me continue to be - the best way man has devised of getting at the truth while here on earth - two sides, adversaries, presenting facts and making arguments, and the ultimate decision of guilt or innocence put to disinterested peers, who swear to be fair and try to figure out the truth.  To live in community is to all figure out the truth together, under the rule of law.  So either Goldilocks is a honey addict who has been knocking off ursine residences in the woods for years, or she is a lost little girl, hungry and alone and frightened by black clouds and thick, threatening trees into a lovely magical cottage with an open door beckoning. The jury will have to decide.

We did the same trial two years ago and Goldilocks was convicted, although I thought that one little boy, given enough time, could have pulled a 12 Angry Men. This year I predict that Goldlocks is convicted - it's a real law-and-order crowd at that school. I don't really mind, although I would like to see a Goldilocks acquittal one of these years, because there's a huge burden of proof issue you could argue for the win.

I got into this racket at Skadden when I volunteered to put on a mock trial for Take Your Daughters To Work Day. Which at Skadden was more like Let Your Employer Feed and Entertain Your Children So You Bill Hours Day.  It was so fun, and the kids were mindblowingly good. So when Owain moved to Heritage School with their Friday Enrichment Programme, I volunteered to write a new one: Crown v Goldilocks. Rest assured I know nothing of the specifics of English law. But I do know that my husband has a polar bear costume and when he wears just the head, hands and feet and a business suit, he makes a hilarious Papa Bear.

Letter to Secretary Clinton

To me the most interesting question of our time is whether Hilary Rodham Clinton will run for president in 2016. The prospect is really wonderful, so much so that women are planning and hoping in Washington right now.

I hope with my whole heart that she runs. First because she could set in motion great advances for our country by rising to the bipartisan reconciliation that I think she would be capable of. In my mind, she would be capable of running and winning as an independent, perhaps even creating a new party. Perhaps even being like the very revolutionaries she admires. She and the President already have a big place in history. There is no question they have been public servants who have earned their place in history.

But how big a piece of history can they claim? Not enough. America's greatness is being stifled by the locked-down party system and the need for voting reform. Lobbyists choke lawmaking.  The middle class is being choked out and is soon to retire. All those issues they dealt with back in Arkansas need their help again: the aging, the medical system, the schools. The people Secretary Clinton took care of her entire political career are in jeopardy because of the new slavery. The burden of our time is that corporations are people and money is speech. That is the new slavery from which she could take us.

If Hilary Rodham Clinton would step away from any political party that requires deference to banks and run a true populist campaign, the mothers would listen. The young would listen. Our elders would listen. And think if the President campaigned for her. She  more than anyone else I know could fearlessly tackle wealth inequality- grasp that freedom and change our world. If she set big ambitious goals to make our country and our world much better for our children, women would help. The young would help. She knows what she is doing. Who else has been a senator and Secretary of State? She should dream big, be an idealist, be the leader. She doesn't need to log ten million flight miles. No way. Look, W was President and he never worked more than three hours a day.  A healthy and peaceful lifestyle (hopefully free of Jay-Z) could be built into the job.

I don't know what she wants in her heart, and I respect whatever that is, but maybe she doesn't know exactly what she wants. Maybe she wants some input. Not about the gamesmanship required in political compromise (for God's sake, she was willing to listen to Dick Morris on that one), but about the big picture. The perspective of a playwright. Emile Zola would be writing to the papers with this kind of thing and since he is my hero, I'll blog, even though I do not know if Zola himself could get past the creep factor inherent in blogging.

The big picture is that the story of Hilary Rodham that started at Yale and became a warrior for children and families is not finished.  She could be the first woman president.

Book of Mormon - London - Spoilers

 I'll do something incredible that blows God's freaking mind. - Elder Price

It's just a bunch of made-up stuff, but it points to something bigger. - Elder Price to Elder Cunningham

Eternal life is super fun.  - Company
________________

Book of Mormon is not just a musical vying for your ticket money in the West End, it's a full-blown cultural event. It opened in London last week, I caught one of the last previews and since then I can't stop talking about it. Neither can a lot of people who saw it. The two protagonists, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham are young Mormon missionaries, sent to Uganda to gain converts through baptism.They succeed but the price of their success is their orthodoxy and maybe their faith. It is reverent and irreverent in the extreme. Faith is mocked and faith is admired. 

When Matt Parker and Trey Stone were working on Team America, the puppet movie, they attended Avenue Q for ideas and fell in with Robert Lopez, Avenue Q's creator. After some intense hanging out, it turns out Parker and Stone as well as Lopez were interested in creating a musical about Joseph Smith and the Mormons.  They opened in NY in 2011 and it rightfully won Tonys left and right, and with shrewd pricing, recapped the $9 million the investors had put into the show in under a year. 

Every number in that show has a huge, go-for-broke feel.  The choreography, well, thank god I can report that this choreography is big, clever and interesting. Casey Nicholaw can put together a dance that is aesthetically pleasing, impressive, feel-good, and completely post-modern. I saw Black Swann, Beyonce videos, 42nd Street, the Muppets and OK GO music videos in there. Plus serious tap dancing in an anthem to creating mental health problems called "Turn It Off". (Can anyone help me here? In our preview some of the tap dancing in that number took place in blackout - was this a mistake or intended? I think a mistake (it looked like some black out effect wasn't working) but my husband thinks it was intended. So only let me know if it was a mistake)

Here's the thing for me with the songs and this was true in Enron too. Uneven. Not like that is a bad thing. It's just that three of the songs were SO GOOD they almost transcended the musical genre. Hello!, Hasa Diga Ebowai and Turn It Off are so profound, surprising and entertaining that it was going to be impossible to maintain that standard into the wilds of Acts II and III (although I Believe and the Joseph Smith story really come close). The opening number, Hello!, is the cultural equivalent of listening to the Slash guitar solo which opens Appetite for Destruction. It is a declaration of intent, a battle cry, a staking of ground - like the young, clean-cut Mormons themselves it is ambitious and hard-working and big hearted. It is a rousing John Philip Sousa rondo with some madrigal harmonies and gospel thrown in. Then Hasa Diga Ebowai, the big Africa anthem which turns out to be, well, remember Lion King and when the puppets parade down the aisles you get chills and you are so caught up in the spectacle, and it is such an ecstatic moment? Well, this number trumps that moment by taking you down an unexpected path. And as I said, Turn It Off is a guide to suppressing unwelcome feelings, a little Chorus Line moment, when the group of Mormon missionaires share their really sad moments only to explain how they must be repressed - Turn it Off! Like a like switch. The human condition laid bare with all the insight of Shakespeare, followed by some tight tap work. What the hell else can you ask for in an evening of theatre/er?  Nothing. You can ask for nothing else. 

A Mormon family lived in our neighborhood in East Corning when I was growing up there in the 70s. Their house, or specifically their basement was famous because they kept enough food to feed the family for a Mormon-foretold apocalypse type event. So their basement had rows and rows of shelves with gallons of drinking water, cans of food and bags of flour. I remember looking at it one day - because in those days kids really did just go outside and play with other neighborhood kids and could end up in other people's houses like that - and thinking that if anything happened that seemed apocalyptic I would definitely be coming over to this house. They were just the nicest family and so clean cut. Everybody liked them. 

Elder Price and Elder Cunningham are both likeable characters. Elder Price made me nostalgic for my former faith. Sure he is conceited and vain, but he also loves virtue, and goodness and truly wants to do great things - incredible things, things that will blow God's freaking mind. We could use some people like Elder Price right about now. People with the courage of their convictions seeking to do great things.  People who really believe the creator of the universe listens to them and has their back. 

But poor Elder Price. He marches into the oppressive War Lord's camp but is brought low. His faith is not rewarded. It seems stupid as well as inspiring. 

The Telegraph was incensed by this. You cannot have a show where faith is both mocked and admired, where it is both stupid and brave. You can't have it both ways, says this reviewer. The reviewer is wrong. I think you can have it both ways. And actually, it's not just two possible ways, it's more than two. It's more like a million. Truth is complicated. 

After his disappointment, only the fear of hell stops him from throwing in the towel. The Scary Mormon Hell that scares him is populated with American serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, Genghis Kahn, Hitler and a guy who was either supposed to be Johnny Cochran or Robert Kardashian - someone on OJ Simpson's defense team. I hope it was Kardashian, because he deserves to be in hell for the tawdry consumerist distraction his children and wife became with his money. 

Elder Price sticks with his work in Uganda not because his faith is not rewarded. It is borderline delusional, and he delusionally fears a hell. To me this made the second half of the play less interesting. 

He returns to the mission to find that Elder Cunningham, who has never read the book of Mormon, has been explaining it to the Ugandans. He makes things up that he thinks may be helpful and reaches the people where they are. I personally loved a debate among the villagers about whether Salt Lake City was an actual place or just a state of mind created by godly living.

It ends with Elder Price and Elder Cunningham staying on in Uganda, even as the real Mormons reject Elder Cunningham's made-up scripture. They lead new converts, including the War Lord, in mission work. 

Note: These are the Southpark guys. There is a lot of stuff that would be considered "offensive" by whoever gets into being offended. 

I was sad that Elder Price somehow couldn't really transcend his faith, keep that love of good and light and still somehow find a way to blow God's mind. Somehow he still had to believe that the head of the Mormon church speaks directly to God who changed his mind about black people in 1978.  The Mormon doctrine seems kind of silly. As does, in my estimation, most religious doctrine. 

But what didn't seem silly to me is the love of virtue, the possibility of change, the hope, the connection to the creator force that is beyond our understanding, the huge love of working for the good of the world. Those things are not silly, they are praiseworthy. 

The bigness of Elder Price's ambitions I am sure put off the British reviewers. No one on this island can stand someone who wants to be great. And as we saw with Contact and August: Osage County, Clybourne Park - all of these - no one in Britain wants to make an American hit a hit in Britain. But here in the cold and uninviting UK, it may be that the hope, the big show, the swelling note, the outstretched hands are enough to draw the British in and warm them. I hope. Hello! 

Together - Season Finale, Season 2, Lena Dunham's Girls on HBO

I want to tell you why the season finale of the second season of Girls was an exquisite and brave half hour of television. I was so moved that I googled reviews of the episode, expecting rhapsodies of insight. Instead I read a lot of reviews that really I thought missed the point. They critiqued the show as a RomCom where the men save the women.

I don't think that was the point. The point was there on Hanna's screen, the topic sentence of the book she was about to write - that relationships between women who go to school together can be more intense and important than other relationships we have in our lives. The "Together" title of the Episode doesn't refer to Shoshana with Ray or Marnie with Charlie or Adam with Hannah. The Together of together was the women, who are lost and alone without each other, and therefore fall into what the culture has told them to want, what each has told the other is worthwhile.

Shoshana breaks up with Ray basically out of admiration for Jessa. She loves Ray, quirks and all, and would quickly admire his efforts to become a coffee house manager of some repute. She breaks up with him because she has incontrovertible evidence that he hates kittens and is grumpy all the time, and she knows this is something the other girls would not want her to countenance. Especially her sacred cousin, the enlightened and kind Jessa. Shoshana is such an interesting character but she has turned into a pile of nondescript mush. Because a lot of women when they are with a boyfriend rely on that for a lot of their identity. Not the best articulation of an enlightened human spirit, but there you go. What I see in Shoshona now is an inablity to even identify what she wants herself, rather she has imposed her friends' view of the relationship on Ray. Hence her randomly making out with some self-absorbed finance guy in the last scene. What was jarring about that last scene is that it is completely normal for a woman in her 20's to have a little fun in a bar like that, Shoshana is not normal, she aspires to greatness, and the normality of that make-out scene was almost an affront to Shoshana.

Meanwhile, Marnie. Marnie can't jettison her fledgling singing career fast enough to get back together with Charlie. His wealth and declarations of love are really exactly what she needs right now. Seduced with the quick fix that will probably last an uneasy lifetime. I feel like women collectively had really let Marnie down at that point, like she didn't have enough stories of women who didn't go Rich Husband, who lived to greatness.

And Hanna. Hanna was suffering - the boring parts, the terrible haircut, the utter self-sabotage of listlessly googling her ailments - I know people think of her as unforgivably narcissistic but I just saw someone suffering. I don't know how much the element of choice and free will came into Hanna's inability to write the book. The reviewers I read all thought she should just get down to it. And of course she should. And a person with a broken leg should bike his kids to school. He can't. She can't. That is what it is like to have bipolar or unipolar depression, to have OCD or schizophrenia or an eating disorder or anxiety or panic attacks. She can't write that book right now. In fact she is probably sitting on that bed working to fight the impulse to even greater forms of self-mutilation.

Marnie comes over to check on Hanna, yet Marnie is too intimate to help. Hanna hides behind the bed when Marnie comes to help. Our friends from college are also our competitors, and we cannot bear to be humiliated in front of them. Especially by something as demeaning and shameful as mental illness. And worse, a very bad self-inflicted haircut. (Although I have to admit to vengefully trimming my own bangs very unsuccessfully recently)

So Hanna calls Adam, her psycho ex-boyfriend, she knows full well she is at rock bottom and she is just looking for love wherever she can find it, she just needs attention. J. M. Barrie knew a thing or two when he wrote Tinkerbell's near demise, for truly some people need the clapping to survive. Hanna calls iPhone to iPhone, so the call is on face time. He sees some OCD rituals on her part and when she says she feels she is unraveling, he says he is coming to her. And like Superman, like some old shirtless Greek God, he kicks past his wooden sculpture and runs through the street to catch the subway. He excels at being the hero and she excels at needing one, just at this one completely fucked up moment in their lives. He makes it to her apartment. She won't let him in. She is hiding under the duvet and she won't get up.

He breaks down the door and then clears the detrius littering Hanna's apartment in a single bound ("leap tall buildings in a single bound"). He pulls the covers off Hanna's head. And he loves her enough to break down all the barriers she has put up against Adam, against everyone, all the barriers she has put in place to hide what is wrong with her. And he gathers her into his arms and holds her like a child. I have probably watched that scene five times in the last 24 hours. There is something about it.

I think that Adam straining to get to Hanna, his complete acceptance and love of her the way she was just then, was both a display of his dysfunctional objectification of women and a great act of love, probably the only thing that will really help Hanna. That kind of uncritical love. That kind of uncritical love that somehow people with mental illness can never quite give themselves. And you can see this on Hanna's face, how she almost can't forgive herself for him doing this, for letting the drama unfold, yet she can't quite stop herself.

Forgive me for this nutty talk but this was post-modern, right? Because as much as Adam was like Superman or Shrek in Shrek 2, as much as Marnie embodied the happy ending that people like Kim Kardashian and Arianna Huffington have lived, something came off as creepy, as not quite right, as unsettled. The tropes were subverted. They were each horribly alone in their choices, none more than Jessa, they were not in any sense Together.

Peter and Alice and The Audience

I have been looking forward to this week in March since July when I bought tickets to an unprededentedly indulgent two plays in one week: Peter and Alice and The Audience.

  Now, I am not going to poise this review as some kind of Judy Dench (Alice in Peter and Alice) versus Helen Mirren (the Queen in The Audience) smackdown, although it would totally be fun to see them in a Whatever Happened To Baby Jane situation (please can someone make that happen), but I will tell you which play had an  edge. Peter and Alice.

The Audience is incredibly amusing and sharply written - it is the story of the Queen's weekly Tuesday night at 6:30 pm meeting with the Prime Minister. From Churchill to Cameron, Queen Elizabeth has kept this up for 50 years.  It's by Peter Morgan, who wrote the screenplay for The Queen as well as the excellent play Frost/Nixon. The progression of prime ministers is non-linear, and Mirren changes wigs and dresses almost magically to play the Queen from her early 20s to her mid 80s and ages in between. A gorgeous girl plays the young princess, skulking around the castle flirting with sports equipment. Make no mistake, it is brilliantly written and remarkably entertaining.  (One of the most amazing choices is of merging Cameron into Blair into one clean shaven ball of privilege and evil). My issue with the play is this: the Queen in her conversations acts much of the time as a psychotherapist for the prime minister, asking him questions about his feelings, asking Gordon Brown about his OCD, asking John Major about his feelings of inadequacy.  We all know full well that the Queen would never. And the theatrical device somehow never lets that knowledge dissipate.

But Peter and Alice. Let me tell you about that. We went to see it on Monday, me and my stalwart expat London and Edinburgh theatre companions over the last ten years. By Thursday, they had stood in line to buy up as many tickets as possible for subsequent performances so that everyone they knew could go. (That anecdote explains why I will always in the end prefer a market economy: that can happen.)  This play is about when 30 year old real life model for Peter Pan meets 80 year old Alice, the real life model for Alice in Wonderland. The play begins with them discussing the preternatually close relationship they have with the authors, and their feelings about their characters now. This unfolds into the appearance of Barrie, the cleric who loved and created the Lost Boys and Liddell, the cleric who rewarded Alice's patient attention with a starring role (sole qualification - being curious). At the time of the meeting, Alice is on the ho stroll for money, selling manuscripts and making appearances to pay her heating bill. Peter is still much close to Peter Pan. Peter Pan and Alice appear, in their Disneyfied iconic perfection, Alice true to form not saying much, and Peter Pan showing off and spoiling for a fight. In the last act, war comes up, the war that killed two of Alice's three sons. Peter serves and is traumatized. His older brother kills himself.

I have lived in the UK for eleven years now and frequently commented on the way the British absolutely corner the market on children and children's literature: Peter Rabbit, The Gruffalo, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Narnia Chronicles, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, Mary Poppins - childhood is a fetish here, people seem to do everything to ensure that their children's is magical, even when their own lives are not that fun. I often wondered why this was the case. Peter and Alice is the richest food for thought about childhood and fiction. To be in love with Neverland or Narnia or Mary Poppins is a powerful thing, and it can weave its own magic spell of protection on the suffering that we all face in life. And that love of these fictional worlds may be one of the great things we know - one of our great loves (the novel The Magicians and the sequel The Magician King are powerful stories of this love).  But what happens? As Reverend Liddell explains to Alice, people grow up and their time is taken up with housework and business.

So when Peter and Alice face in the end death and loss and suicide, they have a prism, gleeming cleanly from the past, before the housework and business. Will this make the tragedy of their lives more or less painful?

John Logan who wrote Peter and Alice most recently wrote Skyfall. Despite this, he is a great playwright and screenwriter, and the depth of artistry he brings to Peter and Alice, the myriad of themes and insights and associations and truth, is almost overwhelming.

Make no mistake, London is magic for theatre like nowhere else I have found on earth. And theatre is like nothing else I have found for explaining life. And Peter and Alice speaks with a murky, dense, heartbreaking truth, really, the best of all.

Ah, Skadden

So last night I got into the London Stock Exchange - the security is pretty tight but I was legit!  (Although I did feel undercover-y having just been at an Occupy meeting.) Eleven years after I left Skadden, for the first time, I attended one of their alumni events.  I have changed a lot since I worked for Skadden and I wanted to see what I made of that world, that world of dark suits, expensive watches, overworked faces.  That perilous combination of sleep deprivation and self-importance.  All that basically hadn't changed.

  It was billed as a Washington Insider panel discussion, three partners from the DC office spoke, Greg Craig, Paul Oosterhuis and Sharis Pozen.  It was interesting.  Craig and Pozen are fresh from the Obama administration.  Pozen was in antitrust.  She basically confirmed that they were in the position to indict and prosecute banks for criminal behaviour but instead chose to pick off a few individuals because they were scared of the economic consequences of punishing the banks for their crimes.  She was so nice, the Lena Dunham of antitrust with big brown eyes and a fast wit, but I wish she could have heard herself talking.  Really?  Because what she said is that the banks are above the law.  What about fiat justitia ruat caelum?  Let justice be done though the heavens be torn asunder.  Nope.  The government is scared of hurting the banks.  I think this is incredibly undemocratic and a betrayal of the rule of law.  Served up with delicious free Champagne, though.

Then Craig, bizarrely, said that the priorities for the next Obama administration were going to be Syria, Egypt and Iran.  It wasn't clear what the administration was going to do about Syria and Egypt but Craig said the United States was going to be forced by Iran to work on stopping Iran making nuclear weapons because otherwise they would be forced by Iran into an arms race.  Notice how many times the phrase "forced by Iran" was ratcheted into that sentence.  I mean, I just had this mental image of a mother beating a child saying "why are you forcing me to do this?" - that is why no one thinks they are a bully, right, on a personal level, they don't think they are a bully because they think the person they are bullying is forcing them to behave this way.   Does the United States really have so little perception of its own place in the world that they feel "forced" into a nuclear arms race?  Their nuclear capacity is already exponentially greater than anyone else's.  And no one is forcing anyone's hand.  So of all the possible things to tell an international audience,  Craig picked saying that the US was au fait with some action against Iran.  Do me a favor, Mr. Craig and make sure your holiday cards don't say "peace on earth".  Because with the marvellous canapes we heard the musings of a war apologist, maybe even a warmonger (monger is an old word for peddler).  Who I am absolutely sure is just the nicest person in the world.

I think if I had heard this talk eleven years ago I would have been exhilarated by the sheer insider-y ness of it all; the intelligence and quick wit of the speakers, I would have been so caught up in that world which I thought was cool that I wouldn't have noticed those awful comments  - of course you can't prosecute banks, they might collapse -- of course we should invade Iran, Iran is making us.  It probably would have become my own opinion on the subject.  This is how conventional wisdom is born, isn't it?

Well, conventional wisdom is really letting us down.

Not a word about the Euro, the economy,  the rising inequality in the world, the plutocracy   - and that is how conventional wisdom is born, too, isn't it, in what we do not speak of.  What we do not notice.  What we do not see.

So probably no one will read this and if they do and I don't get invited to any more alumni events then I think I will survive.  Once in eleven years is good.