Battle for survival

Greece is bracing for more clashes between police and those pampered sectors of the population (students, government workers) upset that their benefits must be cut if the country is to dig itself out of its fiscal hole. Greece is in "a battle for survival," said Prime Minister George Papandreou, though I'm not sure this is the battle he had in mind.The hope is that the Germans will bail them out. Perhaps they will, but how would you like to be told, as say an autoworker in Stuttgart, that you are expected to help pay the pensions of Greek civil servants? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Remember the Cheonan

Forty-six South Korean sailors died when the Cheonan went down. Unlike the sinking of the USS Maine, which triggered the Spanish-American War and whose cause is still something of a mystery, it seems pretty clear that the Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean torpedo. This will, of course, inspire the Good People to campaign for greater tolerance of the Norks. Even the South Koreans will be inclined to take this path. After all, who in his right mind would go to war against someone who's truly insane, and who has nuclear weapons to boot? Remember this the next time we are tempted to cut the Iranian nutters some slack. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On setting an example

“An example had to be set,” said Mr. Gelb, whose salary is now $1.3 million. “As the head of the institution, I felt it necessary that it begin with me.”

So reports the NYT in the Gray Lady's heartbreaking story of how hard times have hit New York's culturaterai. Peter Gelb is head of the Metropolitan Opera, and he has cut his salary twice, though it still has two commas in it. He's not the only one: the Met is part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, whose director gets (I am reluctant to say earns) $1,180,000 a year. At the other Met--the one with paintings on the walls--the director took home $2,700,000 a couple years ago, though that included a one-time bonus and the value of his rent-free apartment next door to the museum. After two cuts, he apparently now gets something on the order of $1,300,000. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On stiffing one's friends

When the prime minister of Japan came to the U.S. recently, his handlers lobbied fiercely for that all-important face-to-face with the American president. As David Pilling reports in London's Financial Times:

Yukio Hatoyama had to settle for just 10 minutes, and even that during a banquet when the US president was presumably more interested in the appetisers and wine. These things matter in Japan. One senior politician called the put-down – as it was inevitably viewed in Tokyo – “humiliating”. He even noted that the Japanese prime minister was shunted to the edge of a group photo, the diplomatic equivalent of banishment to Siberia.

It would be wrong to read too much into these titbits of protocol (though it is always fun trying). But behind the snub lies something real. The US-Japan alliance, the cornerstone of security in east Asia since 1945, has not looked so rocky in years.

 I made fun of Mr. Obama's Fawltyesque bow to the emperor of Japan, early in his administration, but gosh, did he have to go so far in the other direction? Though Mr. Obama apparently still retains his glow with foreign populations, he doesn't seem to get along all that well with foreign leaders, and especially not with those who historically have been well-disposed to the United States. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

No mas!

The governor of Arizona has just signed the country's toughest law against illegal immigration, and the Good People are predictably upset. Hispanics of course are crying racism, and President Obama is following his recent and rather unpleasant habit of demonizing people he doesn't agree with:

... he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.”

The Arizona law, he added, threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

Of course Mr. Obama knows that that chances of Congress passing a meaningful overhaul are Slim to None--and Slim is about to leave on a Congressional junket, at taxpayer expense and with the customary military escort.

Two years ago I would have been on the other side of this argument. My mother and father, after all, were born in the County Cork, and I naturally view immigration as a good thing. There are two things very different about the situation in Arizona: first, that Hispanics in the Southwest don't seem very interested in assimilating to the English-speaking culture; and second, that millions of them are here illegally. Plus, it annoys the heck out of me to be told to press One if I want to continue the conversation in English. For a more intelligent discussion of this subject, see Sam Huntington's brilliant book, Who Are We? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On making stuff up

The New Yorker has a devastating account of how the late Stephen Ambrose simply made stuff up when writing his many books about Eisenhower, general and president. It seems that many of his meetings with Ike--hence many of their conversations, hence many of the quotes attributed to the president--just didn't happen. This comes as no great surprise, considering how Mr. Ambrose earlier plagiarized whole chunks of of Thomas Childers's book, The Wings of Morning, in order to juice up his own account of B-24 crews over Germany in World War II. (Childers wrote the better book and had 15,000 copies in print; Ambrose was given a first printing of half a million.)

But it remains a puzzle: how did Ambrose possibly think he could get away with these thefts and lies? Probably because he knew his colleagues would rally around if he did get caught, just as they rallied around the historian and Vietnam wannabe Joseph Ellis when it turned out he'd been lying to his students about his service in Vietnam (and a lot of other stuff, including his participation in the anti-war movement afterward).

And you know what else? I'll bet the major consequence of the TNY expose of Ambrose will be a spike in the sales of his books. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A North Korean torpedo

Agence France-Presse reports what most of us assumed from the start: that people in both Koreas are convinced that that South Korean warship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, "in a premeditated operation approved by Kim Jong-Il," as a Nork army officer reportedly told a contact in the South. Meanwhile, Iran is holding war games in the Straits of Hormuz, and the Iranians and the Norks are exchanging high-level visits.

A year or so ago, the Good People were convinced that all Barack Obama had to do was press the Reset Button, and all would be well with the world. Hasn't worked out that way, has it? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford