Two Corners, Many Shades

I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes:
Through it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and Aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it. --Measure for Measure (1.1.67-72)

Foster's forgettable reticence is interesting. Fathomable? This is something that has preoccupied me for the two and half thankless years I have had a blogging account. She is not merely my contemporary, of course, and would not be the actor she is if her talent did not in some sense speak to the American soul. The pretty tomboy, the man girl who dares to transmute a vibrant sexuality, a fast-paced self-reliance that flows with her wit. I tend to think the media backlash she received over Hinckley was a form of moral castigation otherwise unfair to the woman. Taxi Driver was a Scorsese vehicle thick as thieves with Actors Studio methodology and experimentation that doesn't quite pan. Let me put it this way: I have been socially inappropriate with men in order to get laid, and the end result is I am alone with weak legs and a colon which has a mind of its own. Bickle's disturbed mind just doesn't seem consistent with his action of taking a golden girl to a sex education movie. It is akin to me rolling down to the lobby naked after I had enticed the husband, and that isn't an end game, even for a war veteran who is a wounded lone wolf. I have not approached Foster's publicist yet, and perhaps there is no way I could get around the formulaic industry promotional interview to do something different, and this includes the fact that I do not give a flying fuck what she thinks about Hinckley, an assassin of pretend who is notorious for attempting to murder a B-grade actor who had a chimpanzee side kick, an actor who believed in the blacklist during the tenure of his presidency of the screen actors guild before he was senile in the office currently held by a law student who needs to dismiss our highest federal law enforcement official.

I do not agree with McCain about much, but he is an astute politician enough to know when Principals mortally wound themselves. Did you notice Holder's hand shaking in his recent congressional testimony? I did, but in fairness to the Clintonian, I cannot remember any attorney general who was capable of running the DOJ. Holder's competence has been a steady spear in Barack's side since those giddy post-election days in 09 when he opened his mouth about race relations. He just doesn't embody the command and the ability to administer, to adjudicate terrorism, to hold his officers accountable for mismanaged operations.

Near midnight defecation disaster fortunately avoided, I did consider killing myself during the turn of the century. I am not quite sure what force of will stops me, what belief. Defiance has a great deal to do with it. My mind is focused on my leg strength. The level of pretense surrounding Hinckley's nearly successful attempt almost places us in Chesterton's landscape, now that I focus on it. Young Foster was pretending to be Martin's Lolita; Hinckley was pretending anarchy for the pretend kiddie hooker, and Reagan pretended his mettle had solid foundation. I wrote an essay supporting Reagan over Carter and bumped my GPA up significantly. 

Emily Yoffe: White House Procopius

Now David Plotz will never accept a future piece from me, though this does not deter my brain from its Slate bracket file (and much as anything, my Slate byline aspirations need fieldwork), but I shall raise my voice, gently, on the moderate left rollback of the Petraeus imbroglio: If the neo-Eisenhower moderates, a species with no political home to call their own, exhibit character flaws, journalists like Yoffe roll out the tape measure and say let's be adults. Eh. Not so simple. People get hurt, and even if sex that violates commitments to monogamy is no longer criminalized, the state still has an interest in containing adultery. My fling was inconsequential. All of them were, but that does not mean I could not have gotten killed, and I did immerse myself in a pathological marriage between a draft dodger and his wife, unwittingly. Young and stupid, I wanted the thrill of romance, and married men, I discovered, were not afraid of me, and if I was not florid, cranky, and breast fallen, I'd do it all again, but more coolly, smarter. There is a huge difference between the thrill of forbidden pleasure, however, and illicit affairs that damage employment and productivity. And my former supervisor traumatized me, even if she did not mean to do so, by throwing me off my guard, in an email, about her orgasm intensity, and this in spite of the fact that I sought her confidence. I concede that. I enjoyed her company and was lonely and needed work again, but putting all that together became combustible. I did ask her things I feared asking my mother, and that was my mistake, because Linda is an alpha, and like any alpha, her dominance took over, and I became anxious, and the rest is history. That damage will never go away, and I doubt it will for Holly Petraeus either, and her grief is more salient than mine.

Men with power seem to need that urgency inherent in the impetus to spread their seed. We get that, but Petraeus and Broadwell were military officers. The Bush Administration did a great deal of damage creating Homeland Security, adding additional layers to a security apparatus that may not have made us any safer. Obama will not roll it back, but he is more visionary, and as president he should care that intelligence vital to the nation is well managed; it damages his legacy otherwise, carrying over bad ideas from a corrupt and inefficient administration, like Holder being out to lunch with Fast and Furious. Petraeus and Broadwell are human, and Paula was not nuts. She was enamored, and intense, but neither she nor the general are children, and Emily, perhaps Milbank as well, in a more nuanced fashion, treat them as if they were. We joke about the CIA, but we sober up real fast if, say, China takes North Korea off the leash and Seoul finds itself hit with a warhead, si? To serve within the top echelons of power is a privilege, and that should come with certain restrictions on indulgence. Unlike my former boss, Petraeus did take responsibility for his behavior, and then hired a lawyer, which is seemingly at odds with the idea that there are no extraneous legality issues remaining.

Rehabilitating his reputation is one thing, but whisking him back into executive authority is foolhardy, especially if he could not see the implications of having something necessary to conceal before he and Broadwell became lovers.

We tend to believe our republic does a bit more than mirror that Politburo in the east, but what Petraeus and Broadwell did is equivalent to the Communist Party corruption that makes the west feel so superior.