Belated U.S. Open Reflections

Roger Federer continued his assault on tennis history by winning his 12th grand slam title in New York this past September. The final was a patchy affair: neither Federer nor Djokovic managed to summon their best for any sustained period of the match. In Djokovic's case one could assume that the nervousness attendant on gaining his first grand slam final, against arguably the best player of all time, had overwhelmed him. What was interesting was that Federer acknowledged after the match that he had been wracked by his nerves as well. This ought not to surprise us as he faces enormous challenges in his quest, not all of his own making. At the most obvious level, he competes with the enormously high standards which he himself has set (in this respect he is just like his friend, Tiger Woods). We all have a raft of memories of sublime shot-making and movement from a previous match of his, where he gave every impression of having descended from another plane, undoubtedly a higher one than this, for the length of the contest to befuddle his outmatched opponent. I have noticed that in his last couple of major wins, this shocking ease has not been in evidence. His ratio of unforced errors to winners has been unusually high, and he has appeared frazzled at times. One well remembers his forlorn entreaty of the Wimbledon umpire to turn off the camera that covered the lines. This brings me to the second element of pressure that imposes itself on the maestro, the youth of his challengers. Federer is six years older than either Nadal or Djokovic. While he is now in his athletic prime, he is decidedly nearer to the end of his best years than is either of them. His game which rests principally on speed, on daring his foe to hit to the apparently open forehand court inviting blistering rispostes, will diminish as he loses that proverbial step. Both Nadal and Djokovic, though principally Nadal, have been ingenious in utilising this fact to their psychological advantage. They infer that victory for Federer is only to be expected given their youth and the greatness of the man, Nadal even does this at the French Open where this is patently a lie. The effect is to rachet up the ante that much more on Roger. That he still performs at such an astonishingly high level (two years in a row of reaching the final of every single grand slam, in an era of infinitely more dangerous players than ever) speaks volumes to his professionalism and preparation. What is worth considering is that he realises that he is in a real race with time to eclipse Sampras, and anyone who saw this year's Wimbledon final will understand how right he is. Djokovic has now served notice that he will challenge strongly at future Australian and U.S. Opens. So, we have some excellent matches in store, as a majestic champion pursues his place in history in the face of dogged opposition from youthful antagonists with little to lose.

apologia

To that small coterie of you that have turned to this space on occasion to read my feeble entries, I offer my apologies for the dearth of posts for the past little while. I confess to a crash in my levels of motivation after the excitement that attended the launch. I deluded myself into thinking that things would have gotten off to a better start vis-a-vis the number of readers. My folly was in perceiving the development of a large readership as a sprint rather than a marathon. Anyway, disabused as I now am of such errors, I return to what I hope will be a reasonably regular schedule of postings.

Down Dominican Republic way

As I mentioned before, the reason for my southern sojourn was to attend the wedding of two dear friends. A group of us, about fifteen in number excluding the blessed couple, decided to join them on this happy venture. Of the guests/wedding party, I knew two people well: one of my very best friends and his girlfriend. We three embarked for the airport together, commencing our journey of a couple of thousand miles with a brief drive. How entertaining it was too! On the radio in my friend's sister's van was a most intriguing programme, one which provided gossip on the lives of the various personages of Toronto's charismatic religious community. One marvels at the sheer insatiability of the public's appetite for this kind of thing...vivat Perez Hilton! In any event, there were juicy tidbits about the pastor who had been smuggling drugs internally and had not availed himself of the chance to make a full breast of things to the authorities. The poor fellow subsequently died when some of the bags ruptured. More excitingly, there was the unnamed female evangelist whose husband delivered a sound beating to her prior to vacating the family home as he requested a divorce. How sad it seemed that the almighty did not spare his leading acolytes from the more tawdry vicissitudes of life in this mortal plane!
With our minds full of these considerations, we arrived at the airport some three hours prior to scheduled departure, as per the instructions on our itineraries. This turned out to be absurdly early and we cleared immigration and were seated at the gate in rapid order. We were alone in the general vicinity of our assigned gate for some time, until we met up with others in the party and began the process of solidifying previously perfunctory contacts that would need to be in place to make the coming week bearable. In short order the star couple arrived, exuding the glow of impending connubial bliss, and we boarded our aircraft. It was on doing so that we gained a valuable insight into the working of the package holiday business. To make the numbers work, the carriers have to convert the aircraft from regular seating configurations into flying sardine cans. If one at all deviates from the most svelte dimensions, a comfortable flight will be largely a dream. Your correspondent is far from svelte, indeed, he borders on the elephantine. With the greatest of difficulty, I crammed myself into my assigned seat, in the process placing the nice African gentleman seated next to me in the greatest discomfort. Perhaps his greatest challenge was the wedging of my shoulder directly into his neck, jeopardising his ability to breathe. Observant cabin staff, perhaps dreading the prospect of a 4 hour flight with a dead corpse in the fuselage, elected to move me into first class. There one encountered seats of typical economy-class size along with the usual felicities of higher class travel: halfway-decent food and the liberal provision of alcohol. I found myself sitting next to an engaging couple who were en route to the Dom Rep for their honeymoon. Neither of them had ever been in first class, and the husband had never even flown before. I could not resist the temptation of playing the sophisticate; unfolding the mysteries of first-class with just the right note of blase resignation. Entirely too pleased with myself, the flight passed rather quickly and we disembarked in Punta Cana in rapid order. The airport itself was breathtaking. Try to conceive of Taino huts writ large and you have an idea of what the buildings look like: wooden structures, largely open to the elements, with coconut leaf roofs. What to make of this? A tribute to the island's original inhabitants, who were the first New World victims of Spanish rapacity? Perhaps so, with the attendant value of being relatively easy to replace in the event of hurricane damage, as well as striking a different note from the range of similar airports in tourist areas across the region. Not for the first time on this trip, I found myself thinking that Jamaica has much to learn from this country.
Much to the delight of sleazy men like me, upon entering into the main terminal, one then was required, or very nearly so, to take pictures with two local lovelies in native costume. The deal was that the picture could be collected, at a cost, on the way out. I summoned up an enormous smile, while straining to keep my hands in respectable places, and took my snapshot. The national costume is very similar to that of Jamaica, with the colours red and blue predominating in the Dominicana case. After retrieving our baggage, which was handled in the roughest possible fashion, we were ushered to our waiting bus for conveyance to our resort, the Sol Melia Caribe.
The drive out to the hotel was very interesting to me as one passed through a region that was clearly in the throes of a huge transition. At present, Punta Cana seems rather underpopulated and undeveloped. To the Jamaican traveller it looked a lot like the region around Hellshire in vegetation and relative sparsity of population, with evidence of grandiose construction projects everywhere. Punta Cana will be booming in the matter of a couple of years, almost unrecognisable to the visitor of 2007. Our resort was beautiful: everything that we were led to expect from the pictures online. The checking-in process was shambolic though, and seemed to take an inordinately long time. Part of the reason for this was that the complex was very large and each party was given a rather detailed explanation of the map of the property, with the relevant places pointed out, the schedule of the local transportation options, etc. Eventually, we all checked in and got to our rooms, which were quite nice and, crucially, were very near the sea!
We arrived on a Sunday and with the main event, the wedding, not occurring until Tuesday, we were left much to our own devices until then.
The ceremony itself, once it got underway, was simple but lovely. The presiding magistrate, a local judge, the only one in the Punta Cana region, was late in arriving and further headaches ensued from the fact that the wedding-planner had been replaced late in the game, and the new one seemed not entirely au fait with previous arrangements inter alia. In the end, the wedding was done and scarcely has there ever been a happier, better-looking, couple, more deserving of posterity's blessings.
The other highlight of the trip for me was an excursion that we made into Santo Domingo. This was, literally, a whole-day affair with the drive being about 3.5 hours each way, not allowing for stops on the way and back. We were transported in comfort in two air-conditioned minibuses by two moonlighting policemen. All along the way much of the scenery was redolent of Jamaica for me, with some important differences. Somehow, despite the fact that the D.R. is actually worse-off than Jamaica in terms of income inequality, there seemed to be less abject poverty in evidence, better organised and maintained towns, replete with colourful buildings. Was this merely serendipity? Had we simply been passing through a relatively more prosperous part of the country? Very likely of course, but these were my impressions on this admittedly thin evidence. One interesting difference with Jamaica was in the number of female motorcyclists. Women tend overwhelmingly to be adornments on the backs of motorcycles in the J, in the D.R. many were in evidence as riders, transporting families and goods as they went on their way. We arrived in the old colonial section of Santo Domingo at around 12:30 in the afternoon and were immediately aware of the beauty of the old buildings and the dynamism of the local tourist guides and purveyors of goods to tourists. We had scarcely set foot on the ground before we were besieged by CD merchants, placing headphones on to our heads! We decided to lunch first before doing our walking tour, so we were taken to an excellent local restaurant. The local food was quite good; familiar ingredients for the most part, employed in different ways. One national dish was a goat stew, as distinct from our curry, another was fried chicken with rice and a dish of beans on the side...analagous to chicken and rice and peas. One difference was the prevalence of pork in the local diet, in the form of chops and a variety of sausages. Perhaps this is more evidence of the Spanish legacy.
The tour was breathtaking for me. Not only was the old city beautifully laid out and pedestrian-friendly, but there was much evidence that it remains a vital part of the life of the modern city. Our guide told us that weekly parties and festivals are held in the old plazas. It is striking that the municipal buildings erected in Columbus's lifetime, by his son Diego, remain in daily use five centuries after their construction. Our guide made mention of the fact that there might be as many as two million Haitians in the Dominican Republic. There was some bitterness in the reference as he made the typical lament about the immigrant, that they were suppressing wages, etc. This led me to reflect on the endlessly painful history of that unhappy country. Heroically breaking the chains of bondage, thrusting themselves proudly on to the world stage as the first independent Black republic only to face daunting challenges at every turn. So arduous was this path, so appalling its recent leaders, that Haiti's citizens now look at a country with a per capita income of $2,400 dollars as paradise. In the end the splendour of the buildings and the cobbled streets pulled me out of these depressing reflections. I was also taken by the national Pantheon, where the remains of Dominican heroes are interred, though, pointedly, not those of Trujillo! The idea is rather wonderful, I think, in keeping with French revolutionary principles in their resurrection of classical themes. There was an impressive changing of the guards with suitably statuesque and impassive soldiers. I feel Jamaica could do worse than to emulate this idea. I did think to myself, having seen the pantheon, that there is a new addition to the list of the world's most difficult parlour games: Name a famous Dominican! In the end, I was deeply impressed by the old city of Santo Domingo and wondered again whether the Spaniards had been superior urban planners to the British? Had they been at least as concerned about the livability of their colonial cities as they were with their proximity to the sea? Was the fact that Spain's climate was nearer to that of the tropics relevant in any way? Kudos to the Dominicans for preserving their heritage. In Jamaica too many of the historic parts of Kingston are simply not in any condition to invite visitation, and are in fact in appalling states of disrepair.
Another thing we might well emulate is the Dominican system of little stores selling various mementoes, in which tourists can get free drinks, including the local aphrodisiac mamajuana, and bathroom facilities.They seemed to have a really seamless set-up between the bus operators, tour guides and these shops. So back we went to the resort, laden with various goods and happy memories.
In the end the best aspects of the resort were the weather and the sea. The food, though plentiful, was not that great in the buffets. The a la carte restaurants were better, with the Japanese one and the Dominican one standing out particularly in my mind. The staff were wonderful, skillfully staying on the right side of the divide between maximal hospitality and obsequiousness. No one had anything stolen and in our trips to local nightclubs off the hotel property we felt entirely safe. A word of caution to the conservative traveler. There is a particularly relaxed attitude to homosexuality in Punta Cana. As such, the nightclub I went to, Mangu, had an entire 2nd floor, erroneously described as their 'house music' section, dedicated to gay performers/acts of various types. The women in our group enjoyed this enormously, as we men beat a hasty retreat to the ground floor. Another cultural divide was in evidence on the beaches. European and Latin American tourists, in contrast to their North American fellows, maintain their love affair with the speedo. For a visitor from Canada this created a pervasive impression of having been dropped off in the midst of a gathering of men smuggling bags of marbles. All of these quibbles aside, this was a splendid trip celebrating an event of transcendent importance, two wonderful people committing their lives to each other. On top of it all, one could scarcely have gathered a nicer group of people. I feel confident that my circle of friends-for-life has been expanded following my week in the Dom Rep.
And so, like all good things, the week came to an end and it was back to the lovely Punta Cana Airport. I bought my picture, taken on arrival, with me and the two local beauties. It was rather funny. There I was smiling broadly while both ladies looked as if they had just forcibly imbibed a litre of cod liver oil each. Then it was on to the flying sardine can, which, incredibly, left about 45 minutes early. The flight was uneventful, just as we like them, and we were back in the big smoke. Clearing immigration was a snap and all of our luggage seemed to come off rather quickly. As a final footnote, I saw the African chap who had had the misfortune of sitting next to me briefly on the way down. He assured me that he had suffered no permanent brain damage from the restricted flow of oxygen to his brain while my shoulder was wedged into his throat.

Black Monkey

Well, the verdict of the Jamaican voter has been heard, and it cannot have been received by either party with undiluted pleasure. As things stand, and it has to be pointed out that the PNP has refused to concede and has promised to engage in recounts and to register complaints regarding malpractice by the other side in some constituencies, the JLP has won the popular vote by a margin of about 3,000 and has won 31 of the 50 seats in the House of Representatives. On the face of it though, this seems like a pyrrhic victory, one which flew in the face of the burgeoning optimism which the party had begun to feel in the run-up to the election. With such a razor-thin majority, government will be difficult with the job of managing the house being next to impossible. A single absence could scupper a vital government initiative, this is all the more so given the necessity of selecting a speaker. The ambitious agenda outlined in the JLP's election manifesto looks unattainable in this term. It would not be surprising then if Mr. Golding and his colleagues looked upon this result with some bitterness. They have been given stewardship of the offices of state without being given the ability to wield the attendant powers effectively. In truth, they have achieved a lot. On Mrs. Simpson-Miller's ascension to power, she seemed unbeatable. Indeed, had she called an election at the time, she would now be well into her own mandate. Mr. Golding played an important role in whittling down her image and in frustrating the attempt by the PNP to run away from its legacy and running as the annointed Portia's acolytes.
The PNP will of course be confronting the sting of defeat, the need to vacate offices held for nearly two decades, and the process of re-examination that ought to attend any unsuccessful enterprise. Mrs. Simpson-Miller, the trump card, did not quite pull it off and one imagines that knives will come out for her. In truth, "Mamma P" spared many a Party blush as, following a litany of scandals and generally poor government, the PNP has still managed to hold on to 29 seats, a position of considerable influence, with the likelihood that the JLP government will not be able to last for a full term. The prospect of office is still detectable in the air! Whether she is the right sort of Leader of the Opposition in a context in which manoeuvres in the House of Representatives will be immensely important, will need to be decided quickly. This will have to be undertaken while always bearing in mind that many Jamaicans regard attacks on Mrs. Simpson-Miller as attacks on their social stratum as a whole. The other note of caution for the PNP is that this election result can be interpreted as an entreaty from the populace for the political parties to attempt to work together for the good of the country. Too much politicking, done too soon, could be very off-putting for many voters.
At the end of the day, I am not a democratista. Like Churchill, I can only make a negative case for democracy, as being the worst of all possible systems but for the rest. One heard in the coverage of the Jamaican Election that many people had probably not bothered to turn up to vote because they assumed that their party had things sewn up. Others couldn't rise to casting a ballot because they wished to go in to work early. It seems unfortunate that such vital decisions as those inherent in elections are in the hands of such uninterested persons, but there it is. If both parties rise to the challenge, the next five years could signal a maturation of our politics in which the tenuous balance of parliament required cooperation by both parties in the formulation of policy. One is mindful that this was the forlorn hope in 2002, when the margin was a comparatively large 34-26 for the PNP, I seem to recall. Perhaps things are now so close that there will be no way of avoiding concerted, intelligent, action on the part of the political class, in service of the country as a whole. In closing though, one wonders what is to be done with all of those who talked of Portia as God's choice and brought our politics lower still by talking in terms of 'lucky' numbers and dates inter alia. I sincerely hope that they can be permanently excluded from meaningful future participation in our public life.

A Break

Having just embarked on this journey I find myself having to take a week's pause. A dear friend is getting married in the Dominican Republic and I am going along to participate in the joyous event. I anticipate that my internet access will be intermittent at best, likely non-existent. I will return to posting on the 2nd of September. Thanks to all who have visited the site, whether they have commented or not. It is humbling that you would use up some of your valuable time on me!

Out of Many One People?

I can think of few mottoes that express a more noble sentiment. From the melange of peoples cast upon her shores, by means foul and fair, Jamaica commits herself to forging a united nation. It will surprise very few people to learn that a considerable lacuna exists between the aspiration and the comtemporary reality. Sadly, we have a very limited view of the degree to which the notion of Jamaicanness ought to be extended to the majority of our supposed fellow citizens. We have evolved a political structure that extracts the votes of the poor through the provision of goodies at election time and then abandons them to face unconscionable violence and privations of every sort immediately thereafter. The sort of sustained improvements in access to education and jobs which might ameliorate the lot of the Jamaican majority have simply not been forthcoming from the governments formed by either political party. What is more, the security organs of the state, supposedly the servants of the Jamaican people, often function as a sort of colonial gendarmerie, subjecting the masses to the cruellest and most peremptory treatment. In short, the experience of most Jamaicans for the 45 years of the country's independent life, has confirmed the old paradigm of the plantation: only a small number of the whole really counts. This subset is now larger than it was in the past, and the importance placed on gradations in colouration, whilst not entirely disappeared, is thankfully much diminished. The Jamaican leader that performed the vital task of healing this divide would earn the justified approbation of posterity, for they would have given real meaning to the aspiration inherent in our motto. It was due to her apparent suitability for this role that I, and many other Jamaicans, entertained such high hopes for Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller.
Not only was she the island's first female Prime Minister, an important reflection of the enormous importance of women in the national life, Mrs. Simpson-Miller arose from the long-neglected majority, bringing them, literally, to the centre of Jamaican affairs. Given the latter fact, much of the opposition to her ascent to the posts of President of the People's National Party and Prime Minister rested on middle-class prejudice. This category is wonderfully elastic in Jamaica, including the very rich alongside the traditional sort of white-collar professionals, etc. In general the dividing line can be discerned by certain linguistic markers: middle-class Jamaicans are comfortable in English, they speak it freely, without a need to concentrate to get it right. They also do not have a capricious relationship with the letter 'h', for example, dropping it in some instances and adding it in others where it does not belong. Much hilarity ensues for members of the middle-class when these and other malapropisms are committed by members of the lower orders. Arising from this ridiculous vestige of the colonial past, many fretted about the supposed embarrassment that would result from having the lady represent us in international forums. Her more hopeful supporters hoped that, with the requisite effort on her part, Mrs. Simpson-Miller could finally overturn the paradigm of the plantation by making her goverment one that truly served the majority.
Her inaugural address on becoming Prime Minister was extremely encouraging. She dedicated herself to ensuring that the rights of the majority would be respected, and that prejudice against persons based on their colour, or their degree of education, would be ended. The roughly eighteen months of her tenure were instead marked by a sort of torpor in which there was a real perception that no one was at the helm. Very little was achieved, and what one saw was a government that was exhausted, out of ideas after nearly two decades in power. As far as her personal performance was concerned, the Prime Minister seemed not to have worked sufficiently hard to be adequately informed to function effectively at her job. This failure, wedded to her acknowledged weakness as a debater, made her a poor leader of her party in the House of Representatives.
In the election campaign that had been meant to lead up to an original poll date of the 27th of August, since delayed to the 3rd of September by Hurricane Dean, the Prime Minister and her party have often seemed to be on the wrong foot. Shifting messages, poor debate performances and an overriding desire for change on the part of the electorate have put the PNP in jeopardy of defeat. Their lone salvation is an abiding personal fondness for Mrs. Simpson-Miller on the part of the majority and some doubts about the Leader of the Opposition, Bruce Golding, arising from the fact that he had left the Jamaica Labour Party to establish the New Democratic Movement due, in considerable part to the frustration of his leadership aspirations and his desire for reform of the national constitution. Jamaicans, who often bequeath political allegiances to their offspring, find the notion of leaving one's party, and returning to it, anathema. No Winston Churchill for them! Up until the arrival of Hurricane Dean polls were suggesting a wave of support for the JLP, placing them either within the margin for error, or perhaps moving clearly ahead of the PNP. It remains to be seen whether the pause induced by the hurricane will have caused this wave to crest, or whether the shambolic performance of the government, including a botched state of emergency (more about which later) will cement their fate and no amount of appeals that "Mamma P" is on the way, nor claims that her premiership is divinely ordained will save the PNP.
The job of uniting the Jamaican people lies undone. Our first female Prime Minister has made the task harder by raising and dashing the expectations of some and by apparently justifying the prejudices of others,

Dog nyam him supper

Michael Vick is the most supremely gifted athlete that I have ever seen. I mean this in purely physical terms. He combined phenomenal speed and strength with a golden arm, allowing him to make throws that other quarterbacks could only dream of. All of us who have watched the NFL in the past few years will recall instances in which he transformed a broken play into a 50-yard run, or threw an absolute laser-beam to a teammate which could not help but be caught, as failure to do so might have led to physical damage to the receiver. Vick, while tantalising us with moments of sublime brilliance, never put everything together into a truly special season. Indeed, I don't believe that he evinced signs of genuine improvement in his throwing. This was a sticking point with coaches and fans alike and when combined with a less- than- ideal off-field persona, created a reservoir of disenchantment that has now broken over him in such spectacular fashion.
As I write, days after his legal team entered into a plea-bargain with the government on the array of charges facing him, the scuttlebut is that Vick may face as much as a year to eighteen months of a maximum five year sentence for having run an illegal dog-fighting operation inter alia. What has struck me is the sheer delight that is evident at this spectacular fall. Indeed, schadenfreude has seldom been more in the ascendant than it is in this case.
It is incumbent on me to state right away that I hold no brief for those who engage in the revolting practice of dog-fighting, with all its myriad cruelties. I have been sickened by the accounts of what actually transpires at these events. The preferred breed, the pit bull, is so tenacious that it will literally fight on until it collapses in exhaustion. There were reported instances in which animals continued to fight after having a leg gnawed off. Animals that fail to meet such standards are killed off. Vick and his associates appear to have taken a particular delight in this process. Shooting, drowning and hanging were among their preferred means of despatch. One can imagine the atmosphere surrounding these appalling deeds, as these men meted out their judgments on these poor animals: machismo run amok. I cleave firmly to a basic measure of civilisation, both for a culture and for persons. This is determined by how the society and/or the person treats beings that are in their charge. It goes without saying that, for me, Vick cannot be considered civilised, on the contrary, his behaviour was redolent of a vile barbarism.
American professional sports all have an off-season, a time in which athletes unwind from the rigours of the season past, spend time with their families, and begin to train for the season to come. In recent years it has often seemed that a new tradition has emerged for this period, now very much in the ascendant. This sees athletes finding what time they can for the activities outlined immediately above, subject to the time-constraint of being arrested on a wide variety of charges. Indeed, the off-season must now be a favourite time for defence attorneys across the US. Shootings, DUIs, assault of spouses, narcotics charges, and much else besides, perpetrated by pro athletes, dot police blotters across the country. The problem has become so severe that the leagues, particularly the NFL, have made moves to protect their brand by suspending players guilty of such conduct. What is interesting is that the most odious conduct, spousal abuse, has never raised a comparable degree of wrath to that stirred up by Vick's crimes.
What can we infer from this?
I believe that the Atlanta Falcons, having given Vick a stratospheric contract, and having not seen the requisite progression of his skills, have seized upon a chance to renege on it. The NFL is positively iniquitous in this regard. All of its contracts are fictions and the teams delight in cutting players the instant that they show a hint of decline. There is also the degree to which this episode has underlined the enormously important place that pets, and particularly dogs, have in North American life. Dog-fighting might be a regional sub-culture, but it runs seriously afoul of the overall mores regarding animals. Finally, there is the question of the quarterback, and its position as an American archetype. It is a moniker that communicates a great deal: leadership, a vital rung on the road to a lifetime of success, the quintessence of 'all-americanness'. Vick, with his image straight out of hip hop culture, complete with the dodgy retainers, who ratted him out fulsomely, was an affront to these perceptions. He had not made the effort that other black quarterbacks have made to be pliant, to conform themselves to the expectations of the wider culture. When disaster struck, nobody was there to assist him and instead many celebrated his demise.

Damon, Matt Damon.

Our relationship with celebrity is as curious as it is multi-faceted. Just as we consume every morsel about their romantic lives and are conversant to an unprecedented degree with their every career manoeuvre, we also appear to award them a privileged position within our political spaces. Few important areas of public policy, chief amongst which are health and the environment, are bereft of the involvement of celebrities as advocates. Indeed, in many respects, it appears as if certain issues do not achieve traction in the minds of the public until they are attached to a celebrity spokesman/woman. I find this particularly curious as celebrities are often amongst the least-educated members of our society. It has always puzzled me that we have opted not to consult, say, plumbers, on their views on the environment, but we are keen to have one celebrity or another descend from their Olympian heights to set us mortals to right on environmentally-friendly conduct, inter alia. One would be hard-pressed to discover a more pampered elite, or one less personally involved in the issues that they seem to champion. Hollywood, by its very nature, engenders in its luminaries a degree of narcissism that simply leaves no room for detailed engagement with important issues for most of its denizens. Enter Matt Damon, an exception to our rule. Mr. Damon and his writing partner, and friend, Ben Affleck, have both exhibited a formidable commitment to a variety of issues over the years, including deep knowledge of, and participation in, the political process.
Given these facts, I was particularly surprised to learn of his recent comments on the James Bond films. On a promotional tour of England, for the third installment of the Bourne franchise, Damon described the Bond films as being redolent of the values of the 1960s and 1980s and poured withering scorn on the character James Bond as a misogynist, draped in Prada suits, who really did not like women and served his country unquestioningly. He contrasted his own realisation, Jason Bourne, favourably with Bond, as someone who questioned his superiors and the tasks which they had set him, and as a one-woman man. What is one to make of all this? It is possible that the mercilessly repetitive nature of the film junket had worn Mr. Damon down. The barrage of the same questions, over and over again, may simply have rubbed him raw. It is an acknowledged fact that the first Bourne films were instrumental in causing the Bond producers to decide to relaunch the Bond series, with a new lead and with diminished scope for the gadgets for which the Bond films had become infamous. Mr. Damon may simply have had enough of the questions which invited comparisons between the franchises. In the end, I think he gets things badly wrong.
The values which underpin Bond are actually those of a much earlier time, that of the intrepid Victorian adventurer, perhaps in the mould of Sir Richard Burton, when British sang froid and derring do triumphed over all before it. Fleming, in tapping into this, was attempting to offer a palliative to a country that was in the throes of the painful transition from imperial hegemon to mid-rank power. It is arguable that his character was a manifestation of a widely-held contemporaneous view in the 1950s that somehow Britain could play Greece to America's Rome. Retaining an importance out of all proportion to its actual power. So we have Bond leading the efforts to protect the "Free World" with Americans appearing merely as his functionaries. Given the genesis of the character, and Fleming's impeccably upper-middle class background, complete with wartime service in intelligence, Bond could not possibly have been other than a loyal servant of the Crown. On this charge, and that of being a misogynist, it is impossible to gainsay Damon. Where he loses the plot is in ascribing the underlying values of this immortal character to the 1960s and 1980s. As we have seen, Bond was wrought of earlier stuff.
What is more, Fleming vastly expanded the spy genre with his creation, indeed it hardly seems likely that Robert Ludlum was not influenced in some way by the Bond novels in his work. His spy, as depicted in the films, certainly, is the true exponent of 1960s values, exhibiting a real counter-cultural edge, so appealing to Mr. Damon. His service to his country has been extracted through deception and worse, and salvation is to be found in eliminating former superiors. In his cinematic form, Bourne is every bit as fantastical as Bond: capable of inhuman feats of athleticism and so skilled in the martial arts as to render him invulnerable. That the Bourne films affect a more 'serious' posture than those of the Bond series, though perhaps not the latest installment, Casino Royale, cannot be denied. This does not in any way diminish the need to suspend our disbelief upon seeing one. Damon is being ungenerous when he attacks the progenitor of his own franchise and his grasp of the history to which he attempts to resort is shaky. What is more, he fails to acknowledge the degree to which the Bond films have come over to his view of things. The Bond of 'Casino Royale' has none of the class-markers that existed in the books, he snarls his indifference to a bartender who dared to ask him whether he preferred his martinis shaken or stirred and he is clad throughout the film in Prada, the historic Bond would never have been seen in such frippery, indeed his clothes would all have come from Savile Row. In the end, these two least secret of agents are on convergent paths. Take a bow, Mr. Damon and spare us the snivelling!

Dean's Wake

It can now be said that, mercifully, Dean's eye never made landfall in Jamaica and that, while the South coast has been battered with heavy winds and rain, the actual effects were considerably less than was feared. What lies before Jamaica is a massive clean-up job and for us the diversion of our prayers and best wishes to the people of Mexico, as the hurricane is likely to hit there with full fury.

Crying for the Beloved Country

As I write, a concentrated form of Nature's malevolence is bearing down on Jamaica promising to sow death and destruction across the island. Hurricane Dean has already wrought havoc across the Eastern Caribbean and has only gained in strength since. Expectations are that it will hit Jamaica early on Monday morning. I invite you all to join me in directing your best wishes and prayers to the long-suffering people of Jamaica who stand again on the brink of catastrophe. Dean is currently stronger than were Gilbert and Ivan, who were both enormously destructive, so one can only contemplate, with dread, its likely effects. Until being overtaken by events, it had been my intention to write about the impending Jamaican election, the latest installment in the country's periodic Hobsonian choice between, as Jamaican wags would have it, black dog and monkey, or, more properly, between the Jamaica Labour Party and the incumbent People's National Party. It seems improper to engage with this matter at this juncture. Indeed, the impact of Dean might necessitate the postponement of the ballot. I will conclude this post by indicting both parties for the abject failures of their respective administrations. Far too many Jamaicans live in conditions of such appalling poverty that they will be unable to make the basic preparations to face the disaster, and they will tenaciously refuse to evacuate their premises, however parlously situated, for fear of losing their modest possessions in the aftermath when the inevitable looters emerge. As a consequence, many will lose their lives. For this, and many other reasons beside, our beautiful island is a cause of many tears.

Obama '08?

Resorting to the proverbial crystal ball is always a risky exercise. The future has the maddening habit of always frustrating our most informed speculations. But, dear reader, fools rush in where angels fear to tread! It seems to me that there are about three things that we can say with reasonable certainty about the American elections of 2008. First, the Bush-Cheney era will, mercifully, draw to a close. Second, the task facing their successors will be enormous and multi-faceted. Analagous in many ways to a Herculean labour (I think the cleaning of the Augean stables is the apposite one here): frayed alliances have to be mended and an urgent effort has to be made to restore America's good name. The third and perhaps related postulate to be made is that the issue-environment is spectacularly to the advantage of the Democratic Party. Indeed, the nominee of that party ought to be a prohibitive favourite against whichever candidate emerges from the Republican dunghill.
Enter the intelligent, telegenic Junior Senator from Illinois. Barack Obama comes from a compelling and improbable background. The son of a Muslim Kenyan father and a White American Mother, Obama spent his formative years in Indonesia and Hawaii before going on to an illustrious academic career which saw him being selected as the first Afro-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Most people, with such a credential on their resume, would have beat a hurried path to a career with one of the big law firms with a life of enormous remuneration and attendant luxury in prospect. The Senator was cut from different cloth. While he did summer at such a firm, where he met his formidable wife Michelle, he went on to be a civil rights attorney and activist as well as a municipal and state politician. When he emerged as the Democratic candidate for an Illinois Senate seat, Obama had the good fortune of seeing his Republican opponent's candidacy implode in the throes of a messy divorce. At the last minute the GOP parachuted in a highly controversial black Republican called Alan Keyes, who turned out to be no competition at all. The only remarkable feature of this campaign was Barack Obama's strongly stated opposition to the Iraq war at a time when more senior Democrats were falling over themselves to ensure that they could not be portrayed as being 'unpatriotic'. In his short time in the Senate, Obama showed himself to be a deft operator, able to work across the aisles and get things done. His status as a political shooting star probably began with his speech to the Democratic Convention in 2004, but it reached a crescendo with an appearance that he made on the Oprah show in 2006. It was here that we saw that he had begun to think of making a run at the White House. Oprah was unbridled in her enthusiasm for such a move, and has become a vital backer of his. His candidacy, launched with substantial echoes of Lincoln, has been marked by a huge amount of enthusiasm and a spectacular ability to raise money. Obama has articulated a vision of a new politics in which positive appeals ought to trump character assassination. Facing interest groups, the Senator has not shied away from speaking frankly, abandoning the ususal political practice of pandering furiously. Teachers groups have been told that there are needs for greater accountability and higher standards, Black groups have been told of the need to prioritise education and of the need for increased responsibility on the part of parents. In short, this candidacy appears to be the substantiation of a dream, Bobby Kennedy reborn. Of course, RFK was trailing the front-runner in the 1968 Democratic race. This is the position that Obama finds himself in vis-a-vis Hilary Clinton. She enjoys a substantial lead over him and competes strongly with Obama for the black vote, where he is hurt both by his aforementioned frankness and a preposterous and abiding view that he is not really 'black'. Her particular asset has been the 'experience' card. This has been a real difficulty for Obama to overcome and has led him to make intemperate remarks, such as his stated willingness to attack terrorists located in Pakistan. His inability to sew up the black vote and the simmering tensions between blacks and latinos, which make it highly problematic for a black candidate to get a substantial portion of the hispanic vote, are all huge obstacles for Obama to overcome. Another difficulty which faces him is of his own making. In announcing himself as a proponent of a new, enlightened form of politics, he makes the necessary task of drawing unflattering contrasts between himself and his opponents all the more difficult. The minute he attempts to do so, his own earlier words are thrown back at him. How he manouevres out of this strait-jacket will go a long way towards determining whether he can close the gap with Mrs. Clinton. There are other unseen factors that are yet to make themselves known. How will his race factor in? The history in America has been of people telling pollsters of their willingness to support minority candidates and of their voting patterns ultimately revealing a contrary stance. It is my sincere hope that he manages to pull this off. He would represent a refreshing break from the dynastic slug-fest between the Bushes and the Clintons. And his biography, in and of itself, suggests that he might be that rarest of Americans who, despite mouthing the typical rubbish about American singularity, might actually have an understanding of the basic humanity of us all. This is really important as the American President, in some real sense, is actually the head of the world. Readers, your views?

The Belated Launch

For years I have contemplated inflicting my "thoughts' on a wider public by way of a blog and have not done so through a combination of procrastination and deep respect for what people like my brethren, Jdid, have done with the medium. Nevertheless, I sally forth, at a time when many, including the aforementioned Jdid, are inclined to the view that blogging is past its sell-by date. What am I offering here? Thoughts on Jamaica, Canada, Politics, History, Books, Sports, Entertainment, Culture and much else beside from a reasonably intelligent observer of eclectic tastes and background. Inevitably, I will offer insights into myself in the course of this journey but I will try to keep self-indulgence to minimal levels! A tall order, I know! Well, dear readers, let us embark together!