Another take on the so-called scandal

In the past of couple of weeks, the whole democratic primary has been heavily shadowed by Barack Obama’s Pastor, Reverend Wright’s scandal. His angry remarks including the infamous “God damn America” were circulated around, specifically on YouTube, and widely played almost everywhere, from cable news to talks shows. Analysts were asking why Obama did not condemn his pastor. Some were judiciously assessing the damage to his campaign and some others, elevated the story to the level of a Greek tragedy in which Wright was subconsciously sabotaging the life and the career of his pseudo-stepson, Barack!

Amidst this festival of talking points’ repetition, one probable and rather obvious hypothesis, was apparently missed unanimously by political analysts. They failed to notice the possibility of an ingenious scheme by Obama’s campaign to design and/or fuel the whole scandal.

Like most of the conspiracy theories, it might sound crazy at first but think about it! Let’s explore the case like a professional detective by asking “Who benefits the most from the scandal?” or “What would have Obama gained or lost, had he designed the whole drama?”

Barack Obama is a highly educated politician with an almost flawless record. He is a young, handsome, impeccably eloquent and extremely charismatic, natural-born speaker who is supposed to run against an old, boring grandpa-veteran who can hardly put three sentences together, before putting everybody to sleep (let’s face it, today’s McCain is nothing like the liberal maverick he was, a decade ago). Besides, Obama’s views on economy, Iraq’s war and healthcare, to name a few, are broadly shared among Americans while those of his opponent, have been considered the continuation of the Bush’s immensely unpopular policies. Even though the magical talent of democrats in losing winnable elections shouldn’t be overlooked, it is highly unlikely that the smart, resourceful and magnetic Obama would fail to become United States next president unless…is there any way Obama could lose this election?

Well, there was one actually. According to most experts, he has been plagued by a major exposed weakness and that was his Arabic middle name, Hussein, coupled with the fact that his father was a Muslim and that he attended a “Madrasah” while he was living in Indonesia! I understand that it is shameful to even consider a mere nonconformity as a major flaw but setting idealism aside, give all those above-mentioned information to an average American while running the Bin-Laden’s picture on the background and voila, you have made yourself a winning strategy!

Stupid as it sounds; it’s not easy to do well in a presidential election when your fist name was Saddam’s last and your last name rhymes with Bin Laden’s first! (I refer all who consider the judgment of an average American underestimated in the aforementioned analogy, to poor Howard Dean’s high pitch scream and its catastrophic effect on his candidacy!)

In fact, the plan had been already started. Emphasizing on his middle name, showing Obama’s picture in traditional African outfit wearing a turban, has- according to polls- persuaded a good percentage of Americans that he was a Muslim! and to many, Muslim, terrorists, what’s the difference?!!

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if he wanted to be the next president, he would have been in desperate need to defuse this eminent threat, as soon as possible.

Back to the scandal, let’s first explore what he gained from the reverend Wright scandal?

At the moment, almost every single American, even remotely interested in politics, knows that Barak Hussein Obama is not a Muslim! They all know that despite his middle name, he is a Christian and not only in name, but he has regularly and consistently attended church, over a period of two decades. They clearly know that he has a personal and spiritual mentor name pastor Jeremiah Wright and that his children have been baptized in a Christian church by this pastor. Mission sort of accomplished, huh? (Bush has ruined this phrase forever, hasn’t he?!)

What else Barak could do to keep it going? Well, he could postpone rebutting his pastor, prolonging the whole upheaval for couple more weeks, proving that he is not quite unhappy with Americans’ brains being engraved with the fact that Obama is a Christian.

The incident helped him to substantially reinforce his weakest side; making any future republican attack from this side, practically hopeless and most importantly, he did it without spending even a dime! It even granted him the opportunity to give a historic lecture on “Race in America” that increased his popularity among young educated Americans, strengthen their robust support. Last but not least, Obama’s refusal to condemn Wright in public, accentuated his image as an honest and different politician and not a regular opportunist! (I’m talking to you Hilary! Remembering your grandfather’s memories of teaching you how to shoot, right before Pennsylvania’s primary was rather disgusting. Though not as despicable as John Kerry’s appearance on TV with a hunting rifle and a goose-hunting hat! talking about hunting down Bin Laden as if he was a migrating bird, for heaven’s sake!!!!)

Finally, let’s analyze “things Barack lost in Wright’s Fire”?

Surprisingly, almost nothing! To begin with, the democratic primary had been practically finished long before the scandal. Weeks before Pennsylvania, it would have been mathematically very improbable for Hillary to be able to fill the delegate gap, even if she had won all the remaining contents.

Besides, Obama’s support base has been mostly consist of either African-American voters (who, no matter what, would vote for the only eligible black candidate in the history of the presidential race), or white educated middle class (who are supposed to be intelligent enough to see through this phony drama).

And in practice, he finished the Pennsylvania much better than the anticipations, won Guam and North Carolina and almost tied in Indiana (the state in which he was projected to be lose badly due to the large population of blue collar workers). Could anybody forecast a better result for him, had the scandal not happened?!

The whole reverend Wright Scandal was either one of the most brilliantly executed PR maneuver in the history of the presidential elections, or Obama is just one of the luckiest men alive! Personally, I won’t go with the latter.

Lazy cat on treadmill

Some really funny cats on treadmill

Have a nice Trip!

An apparently regular scene in Tokyo’s rush hours…

I had read about it before but I couldn’t really believe it.

Kai wants a popsickie

So cute...

Jeanne Cherhal - Voilà

Listen to this song “Voila” by French singer “Jeanne Charhal”. Right at the end, it becomes surprisingly Iranian in tune. It’s quite interesting.

Joe Camel is Back!

Does anybody here remember that law, prohibiting any sort of public advertisement for tobacco, the strict and non-negotiable ban that nearly canceled one of Montreal’s most renowned events, Canadian formula one Grand-Prix?

Open any newspaper this week, from “Mirror” to “Ici”, “Hours” to “Voir”, and you’d be shocked by colorful, full pages ads for cigarettes, almost every other page!

Voila! They are back, stronger than before! Apparently, their powerful lobbies have succeeded to buy politicians while convincing the media, not to make a fuss about the whole issue!

Now, I have to admit that I am not an ardent opponent of cigarette advertisements, per say. To be honest, I would have to go with the natural selection if somebody is unable to resist a colorful picture of a box with an image of a cancerous lunge on it!

I am not even against smoking! If somebody wants to jeopardize his/her health and hence help the world’s overpopulation crisis, I do believe that the person should be left alone to do so, as long as the physical damage is solely confined to the person and the burden on the healthcare system is also being appropriately compensated by taxation on cigarettes.

What I am very much concerned about is, this apparent reversal of the law might be just a little entrée before the main course: abandonment of the prohibition on smoking in public places, the delicious fruit of more than three decades of active campaigning against tobacco companies.

Let’s stay vigilant about the subject while making some noise about it. One of these days, the “no smoking” signs might be expelled from public places, as quietly as the ads got re-invited to the pages of our newspapers.

Mike Huckabee and the glorification of Ten Commandments

Today, as the former priest and the presidential desperately-trying–to-remain hopeful, Mike Huckabee, was addressing late Jerry Farwell’s congregation in Virginia (perhaps one of the most narrow-minded and backward group of people on the planet), he pointed out an interesting issue about the relationship between law, morality and the good old ten commandments and reassured everybody that his stupidity has not been confined solely to denying evolution!

This phenomenal outcome of the American conservatism has clearly declared that all the moral laws we need can be found in Ten Commandments and the rest, is just complications we have created to pass around these eternally sufficient rules.

Since most of the people who repeat the word “commandments” have the faintest idea about what they actually are, let’s review these ancient divine rules that are supposed to keep our path illuminated till the end of time:

1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God.
3. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
4. Honor your Father and Mother.
5. You shall not murder.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife

Voila, these are the famous Ten Commandments.

Now note that based on this blatantly tribal and primitively archaic document, while we’re honoring our parents, not humping our neighbors' wives and not putting "Marduk" before "Jehovah", we are still allowed to do whatever we like to anybody who is not our neighbor! In fact, the horrendous massacring, raping and pillaging of non-Israelites, devotedly executed by the followers of Moses and enthusiastically described in the holy Bible itself (with a touch of sadism), attest to this reality.

Even if Christians intend to expand the meaning of the word “Neighbor” to the whole population of the planet (that I’m sure a good number of them are willing to do so), Ten Commandments still severely deficient of some fundamentals of human rights.

Let’s remember that a misogynist, bigot, slave owner, child abuser who destroys the environment and kills helpless animals for fun, is still firmly within the divinely marked path of Ten Commandments, as long as he is careful enough about the usage of the word God!

So dear Mr. Huckabee, if you really do put “remembering Sabbath” ahead of women and children’s protection laws, you’re not even fit to prepare the shopping list for a Picnic let alone becoming president of the United States and I’m truly sorry that in this day and age, uttering such outrageous nonsense is not inducing the appropriate outrage!

Though I do hope it’s just because that nobody takes you and your followers seriously these days...not anymore.

Panoramic view from the interior of Airbus A380, First class seat.

Bunch of Iranians in exile, who can’t locate their beloved country on a world map!

And somehow, we think we're the brightest people on earth!

Way to go guys...

Don't vote for Hilary!

Snowball is a Rockin' to the Back Street Boys Cockatoo!!

This funny parrot made my day! It is priceless!

Obviously, I was only interested in the artistic aspects of this picture!

Robert Scheer Debates Ralph Nader

A fascinating debate between Robert Scheer, one of the boldest journalists of our time and the famous Ralph Nader.

Scheer, holding a more practical stance, while admiring Nader for the brilliant thinker and social critic that he is, criticizing him for weakening the eventual democratic candidate by making the decision of participating in the presidential election , whereas Nader, defends his decision and argues why it is vital to run as presidential candidate despite the almost non-existent chance to win.

Whenever I’m down and I need a huge and spontaneous boost, there’s one website that cheers me up, every single time. This amazing little website is called “Cute Overload” and in fact, it’s a data base of cute animal’s pictures and videos.

So, if you’re an animal lover, keep the link handy. Believe me, you’ll never regret.

Here is an example:

Oh God…how cute is this?!!!

Robert Scheer’s mature, humane and astute political analysis, is one of the delightful voices of today’s media.

Listen to this week’s “Left, Right and Center” and enjoy the wise man’s marvelous comments and remarks.

Clive James

This is an excerpt from one of the world finest journalists, Clive James's interview with PBS’s Bill Moyer. I extremely recommend his latest book, Cultural Amnesia. It is a fascinating read indeed:

“In Vienna especially, because the universities weren’t fully open, the Jewish intellectuals were forced into the cafés and tended to develop a language which we are still speaking now, which is the language of the normal conversational rhythm about profound things. They took the initiative away from the academy, and in my view, it should be always taken away from the academy. I have a lot of respects for academics but academic language should not drive the conversation. The conversation should be driven from journalism. What we do in journalism is not incidental to culture but basic to it and it was demonstrated by the Jewish intellectuals in Vienna cafés. They learnt to write the article, the feuilleton, which is the whole basis of the modern culture.

I don’t believe that knowledge and understanding and wisdom are the property of a class at all. I believe they’re generally democratic things. It doesn’t mean that everyone will understand but anyone can.

It’s still my mission in life to write in a way that anyone who can read will realize that I’m talking about something. My enemy is the elevated language. When I use the word academic in a pejorative sense I mean that the language that puts a distance between the fact being talked about and any possible comprehension. That’s the enemy.

There’s a connection between writing and talking which I like to maintain, for that very reason. It’s a political stance. My political stance is that learning and humanism should not be shut off from the people. That unless you can present these things in a way that can be understood, you’re losing. The idea that you can retreat to some sort of enclave where only you and your fellow qualify people. Incidentally, this idea was rife in the early twentieth century among right wing intellectuals. T.S Elliot for example and all his friends believed that only a few people were qualified for culture. I don’t believe that. I believe even though it might be a minority, anybody can be qualified.”

McDonald with truffles!

Once, there was an adorable German movie called “Bella Martha”. A simple romantic comedy/drama, which was anything but conventional. After all, when one combines romance, cuisine and good cinematography, it would be really inappropriate for the critical mind to function critically!

Although apart from "Departed" and that TV series "Office", I don’t have any recollection of a good American remake of anything whatsoever (and I’m absolutely certain that a good number of people would even question those only examples I represented), I went to the theatre to watch “No Reservation”; the Hollywood remake of the German movie; with the minimum expectation and mostly to observe the possible socio-cultural gap between these two versions. But man! is it possible to watch this shit without every brain cell of yours would cordially wish to exchange its position with a rectum cell of a dying old man, even with one, badly damaged by hemorrhoid!

Though they even repeated a good portion of the dialogues, it was kind of masochistically amusing to see how seriously you can degrade a movie, just by Hollywoodizing it! Meaning, stripping it away from any profundity, injecting some disgraceful, tasteless humor and sentimental crap and removing almost all the subtleties, nuances and sophistication that the original version was so rich of.

In fact, there’s a command in Photoshop that does exactly what writer and director of this movie have achieved to do and it is called “Flatten Layers!”

Back to the movie, apart from the disgustingly superficial additional scenes and story lines, even those scenes which were supposed to be the exact replicate, were nothing but some hollow, flat and badly-made versions of a thoughtful and delicious masterpiece.

Where one could even cry for Martha quite frequently, I seriously doubt that anyone would feel any sympathy for her generic version, “Kate” (or whatever the hell the untalented goddess, "Catherine Zetha Jones" was pathetically trying to portray). Replace the adorable “Lina” with the annoying, smart-mouth "Zoe" and the charming “Mario” with Mr. so-full-of-himself and voila, you’ll have the tasteless, bland, crime-against-cinema, “No Reservation”.

Just as an amuses-bouche, in the German version, Martha lives in a one bedroom apartment (as any normal single person who’s not a CEO would do) and expectedly, when she is forced to take care of her niece, she offers her room to the little girl and start sleeping on the couch. I really could not understand why a single woman in Manhattan should have an extra room, fully furnished!! Maybe because the rents in downtown New York are so affordable that it is crazy not to have some spare rooms! ha?!

And by the way, an Italian chef with a lively soul who hums Italian songs when he cooks is absolutely adorable. An American who plays loud Pavarotti in a busy kitchen in Manhattan and screams horrendously with it, is not!!! Just two minutes of "Aaron Eckhart" is convincing enough to beg Kate to smash his face with a hot, heavy cast-iron saucepan, at least two thousand times until he shuts the hell up forever!!! And maybe that’s how the director and the adaptive screen writer deserve to be treated as well!

Final word, unless one wants to make the same painful socio-cultural experiment, I seriously recommend avoiding this movie at any cost and instead, I absolutely suggest renting the fantastic original German version. After all, reading subtitles for two hours is better than letting your intellect to be insulted for the same amount of time, isn’t it?

A hilarious “Reservoir Dogs” moment from the hilarious BBC comedy series, “Coupling”

iRAQ!

Now that you reduced the poor country to rubble, is it too much too ask to at least, pronounce its name correctly?!

It’s not an Apple product for God’s sake! it is a country that should be called Iraq! “E-raq”! It should be pronounced, not like ipod, not like iphone, but more like E-mail!

And by the way, the same rule applies to her eastern neighbor and the next in line for “the operation liberty and democracy”, Iran!

So, for next time you want to say Iraq, let me give you a hint. Shift your mind slowly from the word iTune to some other words like “Ignorance”, “Irresponsible", “Inexcusable” or “Irreversible”!

You never know, maybe it helps!

The Miracle of Plastic Shoes

I was about to forgive the Flip-flops for the disaster they were; only out of respect to the shear number of beautiful feet- and their corresponding legs- they carried through out these past couple of years; that suddenly another catastrophe of taste hit the market…Plastic shoes!

I’m still trying to digest the ingenuity of the marketing gurus who forced women all around the globe to match their carefully picked clothes with those blue and green rubber crap which less than a year ago, according to Bill Maher, “Only pre-schoolers and mental patients would wear!”

But on the other hand, what should we wear considering the kind of music we listen to, the sort of movie we watch, the taste of food we eat and the style of houses we inhabit?!

I mean, character-less apartments with windows facing some concrete walls, McDonald’s double cheeseburger, Hip-hop so called music and Transformers and pirate of Caribbean as entertainments! What could have possibly come next?! Well, Plastic shoes…maybe!