Josephus's Jumble, 21st Century Edition: September 2007

Josephus’s Jumble, the 21st Century Edition: September 2007

Aside from writing his seminal histories at the end of the 1st century, Flavius Josephus wrote a column for The Titus Times, named after the famed emperor. The Titus Times, in fact, spread Josephus’s column – called “Josephus’s Jumble” – across Pax Romana, from Britain south to Carthage east to Jerusalem and north to Cappadocia. In his first column of every month, Josephus drew up a list of memorable moments of the past month. Josephus did not limit himself to chronological order. In fact, he tended to jump around a bit – thus the Jumble part of the title. As the reader might note from my family name, I am a direct descendant of Josephus. It is therefore my honor and privilege – and some might argue, my birthright – to recreate “Josephus’s Jumble.”

KATIE COURIC’S WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM

Katie Couric began the month with a trip to Iraq. After ABC’s Bob Woodruff’s near fatality last year, Couric’s trip generated headlines, particularly for a single mother. According to the Washington Post, Couric responded to the security threat, “I discussed it with my daughters and my parents a little bit, after I made the decision, and assured them I was going to be smart. All my friends e-mailed me, saying, ‘No heroics.’ That’s not what this trip is about.”
     Indeed. Couric’s trek to Iraq included a cozy interview with President Bush in the extremely volatile Anbar province. The two seemed to genuinely enjoy their time together outside of the United States. They both appeared tanned and relaxed. They both wore short-sleeves. Katie had her hair in bobby pins, not exactly the conservative look of a national news anchor. At one point in the interview, President Bush remarked, “You look beautiful. It seems that Iraq agrees with you.”
     Katie answered, “Thank you, Mr. President. Truth be told, I’ve lost ten pounds in four days.” She then placed her hand on the president’s bare arm. “I think maybe I should take these kinds of trips more often,” she said.
     Does that mean she’ll be in Afghanistan next? Or Iran? With her head covered and her chador down a few dress sizes?

BENAZIR BHUTTO MEETS HER MATCH

Speaking of the chador (the formless garment specific to Iran that covers the length of the female body), while the media gathered in New York City to view the spectrum known as the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Publicity Tour (for more, see my last post), one of Ahmadinejad’s neighbors arrived in Washington, D.C. No, not Hamid Karzai. He wears a chopan (the cape), not a chador.
     The former, and perhaps future, prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, spoke at the Russell Senate Building. She was the only woman in the room dressed in the Islamic code of the hijab. She wore a headscarf. She wore a burq’a. Her burq’a did not include a face veil. Benazir Bhutto can be a bit of a rebel.
     In her speech, Bhutto strongly criticized the United States for supporting President Musharraf, according to the Christian Science Monitor. “My country faces a critical choice between dictatorship and democracy and the U.S. should support the forces of democracy,” Bhutto raged. “Instead, Mr. Bush supports General Musharraf. Under the General’s rule, Pakistan has become the Petri dish of the international extremist movement.”
     Trained as a scientist, Benazir Bhutto knows a thing or two about Petri dishes.
     Her strong language continued, “Military rule is the cause of the anarchic situation in Pakistan…. I’m returning to Pakistan on October 18 to coalesce the forces of moderation against extremism. Quite literally to save democracy in Pakistan.”
     The Urdu word bhutto translates into English as lightning. The woman certainly likes to strike.
     Following Bhutto’s speech, a personal correspondent for this column stood in the receiving line. Kay, who works for a securities firm in Annapolis as a Pakistan observer, shook hands with the former prime minister of Pakistan. She offered this close range reflection of Bhutto, “She’s beautiful. She’s smart. I just wonder if she isn’t living in the past. When she was prime minister [1988-90, 1993-96], that part of the world wasn’t run by extremism.”
     “She certainly talked tough,” I replied.
     “Yeah, well, she has to,” Kay said. “Doesn’t mean she’s a tough leader.”
     “Do you think you could beat her in kick boxing?” I asked.
     Kay is the very definition of petite. Maybe five foot three on her tip toes. Maybe one hundred and ten pounds after a cheeseburger and onion rings. On the other hand, though it’s hard to tell in her burq’a, Benazir Bhutto resembles the professional boxer Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad. The boxer, not the prophet.
     On paper, the fight wouldn’t be worth the price of admission.
     “I don’t kick box anymore,” Kay answered, laughing.
     “What do you do for exercise then?” I asked.
     “I spin.”
     “Well, do you think you could outspin her?” I asked.
     She answered my question with a question. “Do you think you could outrun the president?”
     “Of course,” I replied.
     “Of course,” she replied.

JENNA’S STORY

The daughter of President and Laura Bush, Jenna, asked if there were any questions. The scene was a packed Borders bookstore in Annapolis, Maryland. There were film crews from both the local and the national networks present. There were print journalists representing the wire services. A New York Times correspondent made the trip down. A reporter for the local newspaper, The Capital, covered the event. A few hundred customers showed up, too.
     The event was Jenna’s first stop on a 25-city publicity tour in support of her first book, Ana’s Story. Ana’s Story chronicles the life of a 17-year-old, H.I.V.-positive, single mother in Panama. It’s a biography, written for teenagers, sort of.
     Jenna’s representative at HarperCollins, the renowned editor Kate Jackson, explained Jenna’s reason for writing, “I think she’s bothered that people have made judgments about her without knowing much about her. But that is not her reason for doing this. She has continually said, ‘This is not about me; this is about Ana.’”
     This statement set off my internal skepticism mechanism. Kate Jackson’s first declaration – “I think she’s bothered that people have made judgments about her without knowing much about her. But that is not her reason for doing this.” – translates as, “So she decided to write a book, for a demographic that doesn’t read, under the guidance of a star editor, to show the world that she indeed has a brain.” Remember, the world knows Jenna Bush as the “blonde, chubby one, twice cited for underage drinking.” Her twin sister went to Yale. Jenna went to… the University of Texas.
     Kate Jackson’s second declaration – “She has continually said, ‘This is not about me; this is about Ana.’” – translates as, “This is all about me. Fortunately I found a perfect subject during my days as an intern at Unicef to demonstrate what my dad likes to call compassionate conservativism.”
     George Bush’s “compassionate conservativism” translates as “Nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq and perhaps 100,000 Iraqis killed during the war and 2.2 million Iraqi refugees fleeing the country, with another 2 million refugees locked inside, and the United States of America opening its doors to 202 Iraqi refugees in the year 2006.”
     Jenna Bush’s “compassionate conservativism” translates as “a quarter of a million dollar book advance and a first print run of 500,000 copies.”
     The questions thrown at Jenna Bush at the Annapolis Borders covered a wide range of topics. What do you think of the war in Iraq, she was asked. “It’s a complicated subject,” she answered. What do you think of your father’s presidency, she was asked. “He’s doing a great job, and he’s hanging in there,” she said, as if Bush/Cheney resigning and leaving the job to Nancy Pelosi was a viable option. Can we see your wedding ring, she was asked. “Of course,” she responded, showing her hand to the crowd. “It’s a diamond surrounded by blue sapphires,” she said. The sapphires matched her eye color.
     Near the end of the question-and-answer period, a reporter in the crowd asked, “Whom do you most admire among presidential children?”
     “Chelsea Clinton,” Jenna answered, without much hesitation. “I always thought that she had poise.”
     Something about that answer set off my internal skepticism mechanism. Remember, this is Jenna Bush. What does she know about Patti Reagan or Amy Carter or Patricia Nixon or Lynda Bird Johnson or Caroline Kennedy? This is the Paris Hilton of the First Daughters set. If she had any sense of humor, or a sharp intelligence, she would have answered, “My father” or “My Uncle Neil.”
     Still, she deserves some credit for her political dexterity. She certainly is a Bush.

THE CREDIBILITY OF SALLY FIELD

And speaking of Paris Hilton, what was she doing at the Emmy’s? I spoke to her longtime representative, Elliot Mintz. “Our aim with Paris is to put her career on a more serious trajectory,” he said. “Appearing at the Emmy’s, and presenting an award, puts her on stage with some incredibly talented and credible actors.”
     Paris Hilton presented the Emmy for best actress to Sally Field. In the hubbub of Sally Field’s acceptance speech, the juxtaposition of these two women has been lost. One wore a strapless dress, showed as much cleavage as she could muster, had the dress hem hiked into near mini-skirt range. The other wore a dress that could only be described as burq’a, Byblos style. Indeed, Paris Hilton looked like she was channeling Benazir Bhutto. No face veil either.
     I asked Elliot Mintz about the dress. “Paris wants to show the world that her talent is as strong as her sex appeal,” he said. “Trust me, ten years from now, reviewers will compare her to Audrey Hepburn and this part of her career will just be considered a developmental stage.”
     As outrageous as that statement sounds today, consider Sally Field’s acceptance speech. After offering up the necessary acknowledgements, she cut to the war in Iraq. She spoke about “the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait… wait for their children to come home… from danger… and from war. I am proud to be one of those women. And let’s face it, if mothers ruled the world, there would be no god…”
     Nobody in television land heard the rest of her sentence (“god-damned war”). Fox executives, calling her word choice “irresponsible,” decided to drop sound. Fox executives of course did not address any of Sally Field’s irresponsible acting choices throughout her career. But by choosing to star in one film, Not Without My Daughter, Sally Field put a pin in the balloon known as credibility.
     You might remember the story. An American wife, played by Sally Field, an Iranian father and their daughter travel from their home in America to Tehran. While there, the father and his relatives decide to abduct the child. The story then segues into the mother’s attempt to escape Iran with her daughter. The film is based on a true story.
     “A true story?” the Iranian journalist Firouzeh Khofidian responded. “How many thousands of international families are there, with the father originating from the Middle East and the mother from America? And how many times has this kind of event occurred? It’s tokenism and it’s absurd.”
     I met Firouzeh Khofidian during my research for a book on Iran. Khofidian is herself a columnist, writing the long-running “Khofidian’s Kayhaan,” or Khofidian’s World. She wasn’t finished with Not Without My Daughter. “You must understand the harm done,” she told me. “This film played in Iran. At a time when the Khomeini revolution was faltering – the Iran-Iraq war had taken a huge toll and there was actually a growing cry among Iranians for a constitutional monarchy, with the Shah’s son put back on the Peacock Throne – the government used this film as propaganda. This is how America sees us, the government advertised. Dangerous. Despicable. Ugly. And you know what? Because of this film, we believed. We thought, if the great American actress Sally Field sees us this way, then all of America sees us this way. Not Without My Daughter reinvigorated the Khomeini revolution.”
     Firouzeh Khofidian asked an important question, “What is the actress’s accountability? Sally Field chose this role. A star, she could have chosen any role. But she chose to promote a destructive stereotype. There should be a price.”
     There is. Sally Field has less credibility than Paris Hilton.

ABSURDITY DRIVES ABSURDITY

If mothers ruled the world, would nations go to war? The top three female leaders of the 20th century offered a hint:

1) Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, in an effort to consolidate her own power, inserted herself in Pakistan’s internal struggle between West Pakistan and East Pakistan, known as the Bangladesh Liberation War. The Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 ensued. Not only did India win that war and not only did Gandhi gain mass appeal but East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh, as Indira Gandhi had campaigned for. Indira Gandhi was a mother of two.

2) Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel pressed for a preemptive strike in the days leading up to October 1973. She was called off her warhorse by a war criminal named Henry Kissinger. Kissinger argued that Israel would lose allies if Golda went ballistic. History shows that Israel nearly lost the Yom Kippur War, as its known in Israel, and Golda lost power. Golda Meir was a mother of two.

3) In 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent her navy to the Falkland Islands, a British territory off the coast of Argentina. By going to war, Thatcher enamored herself with her nation’s electorate. Margaret Thatcher was a mother of two.

With these three cases in mind, consider some women positioned to assume power in the near future. Is Hillary Clinton, mother of one, the next Maggie Thatcher? Is Tzipi Livni, mother of two, the next Golda Meir? Will Benazir Bhutto, mother of three, follow the war machinations of Indira Gandhi in her efforts to consolidate power? And what about Katie Couric, mother of two? How far will she go in her battle for ratings? Does a war with Brian Williams loom?

HOPE AND HAILE

In the Women’s World Cup played in China, Brazil beat the United States 4-0 in the semi-finals. Right before the game, U.S. coach Greg Ryan replaced his goalkeeper, Hope Solo, with a goalkeeper of glory gone by, Briana Scurry. He was playing a hunch. An upset Solo responded after the game, “It was the wrong decision and I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that. There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves. And the fact of the matter is it’s not 2004 anymore…. It’s 2007 and I think you have to live in the present…. It doesn’t matter what somebody did in an Olympic gold medal game three years ago. Now is what matters…”
     Hope Solo was right: Greg Ryan made a terrible coaching decision. The world cup is a cut-throat tournament and Ryan should be fired. There has to be a better soccer mind, perhaps Michelle Akers, available.
     Hope Solo was terribly wrong. To kick a teammate after a horrible loss? To throw all the blame at Briana Scurry’s goal? Brazil scored its first goal when an American player accidentally headed the ball into her own net. Hope Solo doesn’t make that save. No goalkeeper in the world makes that save.
     Hope Solo needs to learn a thing or two from Haile Gebrselassie, Ethiopia’s great distance runner. At the Berlin marathon on September 30, Gebrselassie set the world record. He ran the 26.2-mile course in two hours, four minutes and 26 seconds. That’s four minutes, 45 seconds per mile.
     If that doesn’t make your mouth drop, consider Haile Gebrselassie’s statement after the marathon. He apologized to his competitor, Paul Tergat. Haile Gebrselassie had just eclipsed Tergat’s world record by 29 seconds.
     At the celebratory news conference following the marathon, Gebrselassie didn’t feel so celebratory. “I am sorry,” he said. “This record belongs to Paul Tergat. Paul is my friend.”
     Haile Gebrselassie is the greatest distance runner in the history of the sport. But of even more significance? His talent is rooted in humility.

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The Gonzo Journalism of Brian Josepher

Josephus's Jumble, 21st Century Edition: September 2007