In the News: Bush Family Profiteering

The AP reports that former first lady Barbara Bush gave relief money to a hurricane relief fund on the condition that it be spent to buy educational software from her son Neil’s company.

She’s not the only do-gooder in the family. Neil himself also raised money for a Houston school district, the only condition being that the district buy his software.

It did.

Fukuyama Mama

No need to buy Francis Fukuyama’s new book to enjoy his repudiation of hard-earned neo-con bona fides: Louis Menand gets to the heart of things here. http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/060327crbo_books

Money snip from Fukuyama himself (which Menand later expounds on in depth):
 

But conceiving the larger struggle [so-called GWOT] as a global war comparable to the world wars or the Cold War vastly overstates the scope of the problem, suggesting that we are taking on a large part of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Before the Iraq war, we were probably at war with no more than a few thousand people around the world who would consider martyring themselves and causing nihilistic damage to the United States. The scale of the problem has grown because we have unleashed a maelstrom.

Superman, the only son

In the trailer for the new Superman, the following voice-over is intoned in deep earnestness: “For them I sent my only son.” Lord, save me from your followers. 

V for … what?

Initial thoughts on what some would anoint as the grand political statement we need now.

1) Natalie Portman, quite fetching for a time in ringlets and fitted blouses, is reminiscent in ways of Audrey Hepburn but with an earnest gravitas more suitable to our times. (We’ll also take the SNL hip-hop vid: We love you Natalie!)

2) Stephen Rea does a good Little Steven/Silvio impersonation as a hunched, self-recriminating investigating officer, but kills whatever meager momentum the narrative struggles to build

3) Dominoes? Butter? An account at a Fed-Ex like courier service? Quite a resourceful freedom fighter. Or terrorist. Evil-doer? Hero? 4) Stephen Fry, the talk-show host whose Benny Hill inspired parody of the chancellor gets him executed, was good–holding up on his own a minor story line that ended up being most compelling, especially for the relative subtlety in its dramatization.

In fact, it’s the overall bluntness of the movie that kills off whatever good ideas and intentions inspired it.

The Stoic Speaks, or, Is This Thing On?

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast…

Control thy passions, lest they take vengeance on thee…

Greek philosophers can get away with conflicting statements, which means they’re never technically wrong. Welcome to Epictetus. We know that sometimes the feast offers slim pickings, and that sometimes passions get the better of things. But recognizing the need to make best use of what is in our power, and taking the rest as it happens, we’ll forge on–after all, the good or ill of a person lies within his or her own will. And only the educated are free.