Dear Arnaldo,
One of the things that I have always liked and admired about you is your continuing youthful outlook (in spite of your obvious weariness of lambasting Brazilian politicians and other thugs). And, of course it is true that we are all strongly affected by the experiences of our youth, which in your case you spent in St. Augustine during a period in U.S. history when events loomed large in the collective imagination.
But, don't forget that you lived in the South, and there are other regions in the U.S. with vastly different ways of doing things.
And, although I hate to remind you of this, your generation is not the same as the present generation. Many Americans are proud and pleased to see a black American well on his way to becoming President, as this has the effect of letting them off the guilt hook somewhat.
Personally, I don't believe Obama's skin color leaves him more at risk of being shot -- we have had lots of U.S. presidents shot -- and all of them were white, as I recall.
The only thing Obama really has going against him is the impression he makes of being a snooty intellectual. Lately, Americans have preferred to look down on their presidents, not up to them (well, except for Monica, that is).
Times have sure changed since you went to high school in Florida.
quarta-feira, 3 de setembro de 2008
sábado, 26 de julho de 2008
BOLETIM FEBRACTA: Controladores de Tráfego Aéreo Brasileiros
BOLETIM FEBRACTA
Controladores de Tráfego Aéreo Brasileiros,
Há alguns dias que nossos colegas de Manaus ouviram a sentença condenatória da Justiça Militar. É apropriado revelar que, dos membros votantes nesta causa (4 oficiais militares, JUÍZES NÃO TOGADOS, e um único Juiz de Direito, TOGADO), o membro civil, O JUIZ TOGADO isentou aos controladores de tais acusações, o que nos anima a acreditar que, em instâncias superiores à militar, lograremos êxito. Estamos articulando os próximos passos, juntamente com os Controladores de Manaus.
Lamentamos, também, informar que o Carlos Trifílio, Presidente da FEBRACTA, foi preso em flagrante, na quarta-feira, acusado de insubordinação (Art. 163 do CPM). O Dr. Tadeu, protamene atuou para para desfazer mais este ato, contra o Presidente da FEBRACTA. Ontem, Quinta-feira, dia 24 de julho de 2008, foi determinada sua liberação, tendo sido considerada abusiva tal atitude.
Há uma longa história que culminou nesta prisão em flagrante, levando-o à condição de preso de justiça e recolhido a uma cela da Base Aérea de São Paulo. Tudo isto por ter se deslocado da Base Aérea de São Paulo ao SRPV SP, aparentemente, contrariando seu chefe. Imagine, estamos no século 21, a maioria das 'Polícias' já aboliram esta prática. No entanto...
O Trifílio está afastado desde dezembro de 2006. Ele e o Alves, da Bahia, são os precursores neste processo de perseguição que se estabeleceu contra os diretores de Associações de Controladores por todo o país, exceto, logicamente, a associação de Curitiba. Depois deles muitos outros se encontram 'soltos' em diversas organizações militares e setores diversos da burocracia. Em torno deste evento há muito o que ser explicado, o que um dia, certamente, iremos poder falar abertamente. Toda esta história já está sendo registrada por diversas pessoas.
Nós temos muito a lamentar. Entretanto, confiantes nos princípios constitucionais contemplados, principalmente no artigo 5º da CF - DOS DIREITOS E DEVERES INDIVIDUAIS E COLETIVOS, sabemos que chegará a hora em que todas as 'autoridades e instituições' responderão pelos seus atos, sejam pelas ações judiciais impetradas pela FEBRACTA e seus Diretores, seja pelo inevitável do infortúnio, das conseqüências dos muito equívocos que se cometem em tantas medidas desencontradas no ATC brasileiro. Infelizmente, um grave acidente aéreo amadurece nos porões do intangível mundo do ATC. E, nesse momento, inevitavelmente, mudanças acontecerão. Isto não é uma profecia e nem constitui vontade desta instituição, que é de privada, sendo nada mais do que uma perspectiva lógica, fruto de muitas medidas que enfraqueceram tecnicamente a competência técnica geral no ATC brasileiro.
Lembramos, também, que o Trifilio encontra-se ABANDONADO pelos controladores de São Paulo, a quem imputamos responsabilidade pela omissão e egoísmo, além de seriamente ADOENTADO (apresenta um quadro de debilitação fisiológica preocupante). Mas tudo isto não é o mais importante diante da missão que todos nós aceitamos, diante do senso de que, antes de qualquer qualificação de condição funcional, militar ou civil, somos todos SERVIDORES DO PAÍS, com o DEVER de fazer o que é correto fazer, independente das conseqüências imediatas, que podem ser desde a incompreensão DOS PRÓPRIOS CONTROLADORES de nossas equipes operacionais, mas também de quem mantém este estado de coisas. Atualmente, nas Organizações Militares, muito se fala que, antes de controladores, são militares. Nós concordamos com essa afirmação, acrescentando que é exatamente por isto inevitável mudar esta verdade. Quem controla os céus do país com tanta dedicação e entrega precisa de DEDICAÇÃO EXCLUSIVA, não significando, objetivamente, uma melhora ou piora das condições, mas é necessário DESMILITARIZAR o ATC, inclusive na INFRAERO. Não é possível conciliar escalas operacionais beirando o absurdo com atividades colegiais militares (marchas, escalas e formaturas militares, por exemplo).
O que nos move nisso tudo, é a lembrança do sofrimento daqueles que ficam sem seus parentes que se vão em cada acidente aéreo. Imaginem vocês, por um pequeno instante, o que significa perder a vida àqueles que pagam por um Serviço Essencial, esperando decolar e pousar com SEGURANÇA. Não podemos permitir que se esqueçam dos rostos daqueles que ficam consternados pelos aeroportos, esperando uma informação, esperando por uma explicação plausível sobre o que aconteceu. Mães e pais, amigos e toda a sociedade brasileira sofre. Quem se omite de atuar, de fazer o que é certo, pensando, tão somente, em resolver seus próprios problemas, de fato, contribui com a manutenção do atual sistema e semeia conseqüências a si mesmo ou ao colega que estiver ocupando uma Posição Operacional num dia desses.
Não queremos polemizar, mas contribuir para uma reflexão sincera sobre o que acontece no ATC brasileiro. Pensem, pois, um pouco mais no que você tem feito para melhorar a SEGURANÇA no ATC aí no seu órgão ATC onde trabalha. Pensem no que nós, PROFISSIONAIS, temos feito pelo sustento desta luta.
Será que temos feito o que, REALMENTE, podemos?
Procure uma associação ligada à federação e ofereça recursos intelectuais e financeiros. Atue com coragem, cumpra o seu verdadeiro DEVER!
AGÊNCIA FEBRACTA
Controladores de Tráfego Aéreo Brasileiros,
Há alguns dias que nossos colegas de Manaus ouviram a sentença condenatória da Justiça Militar. É apropriado revelar que, dos membros votantes nesta causa (4 oficiais militares, JUÍZES NÃO TOGADOS, e um único Juiz de Direito, TOGADO), o membro civil, O JUIZ TOGADO isentou aos controladores de tais acusações, o que nos anima a acreditar que, em instâncias superiores à militar, lograremos êxito. Estamos articulando os próximos passos, juntamente com os Controladores de Manaus.
Lamentamos, também, informar que o Carlos Trifílio, Presidente da FEBRACTA, foi preso em flagrante, na quarta-feira, acusado de insubordinação (Art. 163 do CPM). O Dr. Tadeu, protamene atuou para para desfazer mais este ato, contra o Presidente da FEBRACTA. Ontem, Quinta-feira, dia 24 de julho de 2008, foi determinada sua liberação, tendo sido considerada abusiva tal atitude.
Há uma longa história que culminou nesta prisão em flagrante, levando-o à condição de preso de justiça e recolhido a uma cela da Base Aérea de São Paulo. Tudo isto por ter se deslocado da Base Aérea de São Paulo ao SRPV SP, aparentemente, contrariando seu chefe. Imagine, estamos no século 21, a maioria das 'Polícias' já aboliram esta prática. No entanto...
O Trifílio está afastado desde dezembro de 2006. Ele e o Alves, da Bahia, são os precursores neste processo de perseguição que se estabeleceu contra os diretores de Associações de Controladores por todo o país, exceto, logicamente, a associação de Curitiba. Depois deles muitos outros se encontram 'soltos' em diversas organizações militares e setores diversos da burocracia. Em torno deste evento há muito o que ser explicado, o que um dia, certamente, iremos poder falar abertamente. Toda esta história já está sendo registrada por diversas pessoas.
Nós temos muito a lamentar. Entretanto, confiantes nos princípios constitucionais contemplados, principalmente no artigo 5º da CF - DOS DIREITOS E DEVERES INDIVIDUAIS E COLETIVOS, sabemos que chegará a hora em que todas as 'autoridades e instituições' responderão pelos seus atos, sejam pelas ações judiciais impetradas pela FEBRACTA e seus Diretores, seja pelo inevitável do infortúnio, das conseqüências dos muito equívocos que se cometem em tantas medidas desencontradas no ATC brasileiro. Infelizmente, um grave acidente aéreo amadurece nos porões do intangível mundo do ATC. E, nesse momento, inevitavelmente, mudanças acontecerão. Isto não é uma profecia e nem constitui vontade desta instituição, que é de privada, sendo nada mais do que uma perspectiva lógica, fruto de muitas medidas que enfraqueceram tecnicamente a competência técnica geral no ATC brasileiro.
Lembramos, também, que o Trifilio encontra-se ABANDONADO pelos controladores de São Paulo, a quem imputamos responsabilidade pela omissão e egoísmo, além de seriamente ADOENTADO (apresenta um quadro de debilitação fisiológica preocupante). Mas tudo isto não é o mais importante diante da missão que todos nós aceitamos, diante do senso de que, antes de qualquer qualificação de condição funcional, militar ou civil, somos todos SERVIDORES DO PAÍS, com o DEVER de fazer o que é correto fazer, independente das conseqüências imediatas, que podem ser desde a incompreensão DOS PRÓPRIOS CONTROLADORES de nossas equipes operacionais, mas também de quem mantém este estado de coisas. Atualmente, nas Organizações Militares, muito se fala que, antes de controladores, são militares. Nós concordamos com essa afirmação, acrescentando que é exatamente por isto inevitável mudar esta verdade. Quem controla os céus do país com tanta dedicação e entrega precisa de DEDICAÇÃO EXCLUSIVA, não significando, objetivamente, uma melhora ou piora das condições, mas é necessário DESMILITARIZAR o ATC, inclusive na INFRAERO. Não é possível conciliar escalas operacionais beirando o absurdo com atividades colegiais militares (marchas, escalas e formaturas militares, por exemplo).
O que nos move nisso tudo, é a lembrança do sofrimento daqueles que ficam sem seus parentes que se vão em cada acidente aéreo. Imaginem vocês, por um pequeno instante, o que significa perder a vida àqueles que pagam por um Serviço Essencial, esperando decolar e pousar com SEGURANÇA. Não podemos permitir que se esqueçam dos rostos daqueles que ficam consternados pelos aeroportos, esperando uma informação, esperando por uma explicação plausível sobre o que aconteceu. Mães e pais, amigos e toda a sociedade brasileira sofre. Quem se omite de atuar, de fazer o que é certo, pensando, tão somente, em resolver seus próprios problemas, de fato, contribui com a manutenção do atual sistema e semeia conseqüências a si mesmo ou ao colega que estiver ocupando uma Posição Operacional num dia desses.
Não queremos polemizar, mas contribuir para uma reflexão sincera sobre o que acontece no ATC brasileiro. Pensem, pois, um pouco mais no que você tem feito para melhorar a SEGURANÇA no ATC aí no seu órgão ATC onde trabalha. Pensem no que nós, PROFISSIONAIS, temos feito pelo sustento desta luta.
Será que temos feito o que, REALMENTE, podemos?
Procure uma associação ligada à federação e ofereça recursos intelectuais e financeiros. Atue com coragem, cumpra o seu verdadeiro DEVER!
AGÊNCIA FEBRACTA
segunda-feira, 21 de julho de 2008
Caetano Veloso: Between Fidel and the CIA (or, "The Thrill Is Gone" -- long gone!)
BLOG DO NOBLAT, enviado por Caetano Veloso, 21.7.2008, 11.03 h
Entre Fidel e a CIA
Eu disse que voltava ao assunto: na Europa todos os jornalistas me perguntam sobre o caso Fidel. Eles sabem apenas que Fidel ralhou comigo por causa de uma canção sobre Guatánamo.
Fico um tanto triste. Na verdade acho que Fidel não foi político ao me acusar de pedir perdão ao imperialismo americano e ao chamar a atenção para um trecho de entrevista onde aparece crítica a Cuba (e reconhecimento dos conseguimentos civilizatórios dos Estados Unidos), em detrimento da canção em si, que é o que devia contar mais.
Afinal, uma canção é imediatamente ouvida e assimilada por muitos; uma entrevista, mal e mal por poucos. No nosso caso, a canção mostrou-se forte, arrancando aplausos entusiasmados em todos os shows do Obra em Progresso e repercussão na imprensa e um forte boca-a-boca. Com o evidente potencial de, uma vez gravada, tornar-se enormemente conhecida e mesmo amada.
Já a entrevista nem era boa. Tive pequenos problemas com o modo como ela foi editada (sobretudo no que diz respeito à sucessão presidencial e à ausência de crédito a uma frase de Mangabeira Unger), mas não especialmente no que se refere ao caso Fidel/Base de Guantánamo. Quanto a isso, sei que fui eu a me expressar de modo afobado e daí obscuro.
Eu não queria receber aplausos fáceis da esquerda e ser tomado por um anti-americanista recém-saído do armário. Não sou Neil Young. Nem quero ser o Mick Jagger de "Sweet New Con Or Something": um inteligente neo-liberal (no sentido nobre do termo) como Jagger jogando para a galera num tom que, a despeito do acerto básico na apreciação da questão, soa demagógico. Minha "Guantánamo" não tem nada disso.
O próprio estilo despido e enxuto (diferente aliás, quanto a isso, embora não quanto à sinceridade, do de "Haiti", com que alguém aí, erradamente, a identificou) atesta uma atitude direta nascida de observação simples que levou a um estado de espanto indignado. Pareço um poeta concreto, fazendo boa crítica positiva do próprio trabalho? Ótimo. Adoro parecer um poeta concreto.
Se o risco de a crítica estar muito aquém da que os pobres produtores das obras podem apresentar, para quê falsa modéstia? Fidel poderia ter sido aconselhado por aqueles que, perto dele, ouvem música e pensam em cultura a calar o bico e deixar a canção fazer sua parte, com a entrevista relegada ao esquecimento. O resultado seria um renascimento da força afetivo-simbólica que a revolução cubana tem na mente da minha geração de latino-americanos. E até da imorredoura simpatia que a própria figura de Fidel arranca do nosso cerebelo. (Ou hipotálamo?)
Mas não. Ele transformou o episódio numa manifestação anti-Cuba. Os europeus não conhecem a canção, só a fofoca de celebridades velhas do folclore político da América Latina: o Comandante contra o "ex-revolucionário" tropicalista. A ignorância! Mas insisto em que um país onde as pessoas precisam de permissão especial para viajar ao exterior não é o melhor exemplo de respeito aos direitos humanos. Ir e vir é simplesmente o mais básico destes.
Deixa os frankfurtianos dizerem que a "busca da felicidade" é mais cruel do que o nazismo. Tou fora. Só espero que com essas declarações sinceras de amor (mesmo meio morto) pela revolução cubana, não venha agora ser a CIA a anotar que pedi perdão ao ditador. Mas acho que a CIA é menos grossa do que isso.
Blog post here: http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/noblat/#115169
sexta-feira, 18 de julho de 2008
Thomas L. Friedman on Mugabe, Mbeki, Putin, and China
So Popular and So Spineless
by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, July 16, 2008
Much ink has been spilled lately decrying the decline in American popularity around the world under President Bush. Polls tell us how China is now more popular in Asia than America and how few Europeans say they identify with the United States. I am sure there is truth to these polls. We should have done better in Iraq. An America that presides over Abu Ghraib, torture and Guantánamo Bay deserves a thumbs-down.
But America is not and never has been just about those things, which is why I also find some of these poll results self-indulgent, knee-jerk and borderline silly. Friday’s vote at the U.N. on Zimbabwe reminded me why.
Maybe Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans don’t like a world of too much American power — “Mr. Big” got a little too big for them. But how would they like a world of too little American power? With America’s overextended military and overextended banks, that is the world into which we may be heading.
Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power.
I am neither a Russia-basher nor a China-basher. But there was something truly filthy about Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the American-led U.N. Security Council effort to impose targeted sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s ruling clique in Zimbabwe.
The U.S. put forward a simple Security Council resolution, calling for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, the appointment of a U.N. mediator, plus travel and financial restrictions on the dictator Mugabe and 13 top military and government officials for stealing the Zimbabwe election and essentially mugging an entire country in broad daylight.
In the first round of Zimbabwe’s elections, on March 29, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won nearly 48 percent of the vote compared with 42 percent for Mugabe. This prompted Mugabe and his henchmen to begin a campaign of killing and intimidation against Tsvangirai supporters that eventually forced the opposition to pull out of the second-round runoff vote just to stay alive.
Even before the runoff, Mugabe declared that he would disregard the results if his ZANU-PF party lost. Or as he put it: “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X” on some paper ballot.
And so, of course, Mugabe “won” in one of the most blatantly stolen elections ever — in a country already mired in misrule, unemployment, hunger and inflation. Some 25 percent of Zimbabwe’s people have now taken refuge in neighboring states. (I have close friends from Zimbabwe, and one of my daughters worked there in an H.I.V.-AIDS community center in January.) The Associated Press reported in May from Zimbabwe “that annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent, based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs.” Zimbabwe’s currency has become so devalued, the A.P. explained, that “a loaf of bread now costs what 12 new cars did a decade ago.”
No matter. Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, argued that the targeted sanctions that the U.S. and others wanted to impose on Mugabe’s clique exceeded the Security Council’s mandate. “We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous,” he said, describing the resolution as one more obvious “attempt to take the Council beyond its charter prerogatives.” Veto!
Mugabe’s campaign of murder and intimidation didn’t strike Churkin as “illegitimate and dangerous” — only the U.N. resolution to bring a halt to it was “illegitimate and dangerous.” Shameful. Meanwhile, China is hosting the Olympics, a celebration of the human spirit, while defending Mugabe’s right to crush his own people’s spirit.
But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.
As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.
So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks, any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.
Which brings me back to America. Perfect we are not, but America still has some moral backbone. There are travesties we will not tolerate. The U.N. vote on Zimbabwe demonstrates that this is not true for these “popular” countries — called Russia or China or South Africa — that have no problem siding with a man who is pulverizing his own people.
So, yes, we’re not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up.
Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/opinion/16friedman.html
by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, July 16, 2008
Much ink has been spilled lately decrying the decline in American popularity around the world under President Bush. Polls tell us how China is now more popular in Asia than America and how few Europeans say they identify with the United States. I am sure there is truth to these polls. We should have done better in Iraq. An America that presides over Abu Ghraib, torture and Guantánamo Bay deserves a thumbs-down.
But America is not and never has been just about those things, which is why I also find some of these poll results self-indulgent, knee-jerk and borderline silly. Friday’s vote at the U.N. on Zimbabwe reminded me why.
Maybe Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans don’t like a world of too much American power — “Mr. Big” got a little too big for them. But how would they like a world of too little American power? With America’s overextended military and overextended banks, that is the world into which we may be heading.
Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power.
I am neither a Russia-basher nor a China-basher. But there was something truly filthy about Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the American-led U.N. Security Council effort to impose targeted sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s ruling clique in Zimbabwe.
The U.S. put forward a simple Security Council resolution, calling for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, the appointment of a U.N. mediator, plus travel and financial restrictions on the dictator Mugabe and 13 top military and government officials for stealing the Zimbabwe election and essentially mugging an entire country in broad daylight.
In the first round of Zimbabwe’s elections, on March 29, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won nearly 48 percent of the vote compared with 42 percent for Mugabe. This prompted Mugabe and his henchmen to begin a campaign of killing and intimidation against Tsvangirai supporters that eventually forced the opposition to pull out of the second-round runoff vote just to stay alive.
Even before the runoff, Mugabe declared that he would disregard the results if his ZANU-PF party lost. Or as he put it: “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X” on some paper ballot.
And so, of course, Mugabe “won” in one of the most blatantly stolen elections ever — in a country already mired in misrule, unemployment, hunger and inflation. Some 25 percent of Zimbabwe’s people have now taken refuge in neighboring states. (I have close friends from Zimbabwe, and one of my daughters worked there in an H.I.V.-AIDS community center in January.) The Associated Press reported in May from Zimbabwe “that annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent, based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs.” Zimbabwe’s currency has become so devalued, the A.P. explained, that “a loaf of bread now costs what 12 new cars did a decade ago.”
No matter. Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, argued that the targeted sanctions that the U.S. and others wanted to impose on Mugabe’s clique exceeded the Security Council’s mandate. “We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous,” he said, describing the resolution as one more obvious “attempt to take the Council beyond its charter prerogatives.” Veto!
Mugabe’s campaign of murder and intimidation didn’t strike Churkin as “illegitimate and dangerous” — only the U.N. resolution to bring a halt to it was “illegitimate and dangerous.” Shameful. Meanwhile, China is hosting the Olympics, a celebration of the human spirit, while defending Mugabe’s right to crush his own people’s spirit.
But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.
As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.
So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks, any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.
Which brings me back to America. Perfect we are not, but America still has some moral backbone. There are travesties we will not tolerate. The U.N. vote on Zimbabwe demonstrates that this is not true for these “popular” countries — called Russia or China or South Africa — that have no problem siding with a man who is pulverizing his own people.
So, yes, we’re not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up.
Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/opinion/16friedman.html
sábado, 12 de julho de 2008
Um Heroi Brasileiro -- o Juiz Fausto Martin de Sanctis puts Daniel Dantas behind bars twice
A major row has broken out among Brazil's judiciary over a corruption probe that has seen a businessman arrested and freed twice in two days.
Each time, prominent businessman Daniel Dantas was ordered released by the president of Brazil's Supreme Court.
At least 130 members of the judiciary have signed a letter in support of the judge who ordered both arrests and who is himself now under investigation.
The Supreme Court chief said there was not enough evidence for the arrests.
The decision by Gilmar Mendes, the president of the Supreme Court, has also been criticised by the association of senior officers in the Federal Police and dozens of public prosecutors.
Bribery allegations
Mr Dantas was arrested earlier this week along with a number of other people as part of a wide-ranging corruption investigation.
Following an application by defence lawyers for habeas corpus, Mr Mendes ordered his release.
Mr Dantas was detained for a second time just a few hours later, amid allegations that some of his associates had tried to pay a bribe to interfere with the continuing police operation.
However, within 24 hours Mr Mendes again ruled that Mr Dantas should be freed.
The businessman was driven away from the Sao Paulo police station where he was being held.
Mr Mendes said in his ruling that he believed there was insufficient grounds for the arrest.
He also made clear he regarded the decision by a judge in a lower court that Mr Dantas should be detained a second time was an act of disrespect, and said copies of the judge's ruling should be passed on to the relevant legal authorities.
That decision caused considerable anger in legal circles, and at least 130 judges have now put their names to a statement in support of Judge Fausto Martin de Sanctis, who ordered both arrests.
The Federal Association of Judges of Brazil said Judge de Sanctis had done nothing more than exercise the role assigned to him by the constitution.
In a further bizarre development the office of the president of the Supreme Court was checked for listening devices after claims that the same judge had ordered the police to carry out surveillance.
Nothing was found, and Judge de Sanctis has denied this allegation.
The original police investigation is continuing, but of the 17 people arrested earlier in the week only one is still in custody.
For the moment the investigation's objectives seem overshadowed by the controversy which has engulfed the judiciary.
Link to BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7503600.stm
sábado, 5 de julho de 2008
Bob Herbert: Cause for Alarm
Beaches, barbecues and flags as big as baseball fields. Fireworks as loud as thunder lighting the nighttime sky. Hot fun, as Sly & the Family Stone would say, in the summertime.
Friday was the 232nd anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Celebrations were ubiquitous. HBO offered a marathon telecast of its John Adams series. Bands of wildly varying quality, from one coast to the other, let loose with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
It was a July Fourth like many others. There was nothing overt to signal anything was wrong. The Red Sox had traveled from Boston to play a weekend series against the Yankees in the Bronx. In Washington, the National Independence Day Parade made its way along Constitution Avenue.
And yet, there was an undercurrent of anxiety in the land. Vacations have been curtailed because of the price of fuel. Since the holiday fell on a Friday, the monthly unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were released a day early, on Thursday. They weren’t good. The Times summed things up with a Page 1 headline:
“Outlook Darker as Jobs Are Lost and Wages Stall.”
The high and the low were being buffeted. The bad news bears were loose on Wall Street, and the prospects for the summer employment of teenagers were abysmal. The national employment rate for teens in June was the lowest in 60 years.
But the anxiety seems more intense than the usual concern for a cyclical economic downturn. Something fundamental seems to have gone haywire. David Boren, a former U.S. senator who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, has written a short book that he called, “A Letter to America.”
His sense of alarm in the opening paragraph could not have been clearer. “The country we love is in trouble,” he said. “In truth, we are in grave danger of declining as a nation. If we do not act quickly, that decline will become dramatic.”
I couldn’t agree more. The symbols of patriotism — bumper stickers and those flags the size of baseball fields — have taken the place of the hard work and sacrifice required to keep a great nation great.
You know that matters have gotten out of hand when, as we learned this week, American instructors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, gave classes on torture techniques used by the Communists to extract false testimony from American prisoners during the Korean War.
Talk about defining deviancy down! As Al Gore reminds us, this is the first time in American history that “the executive branch of the government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by Gen. George Washington during the Revolutionary War.”
There are signs galore of the nation’s turn for the worse. We are fighting a debilitating war in Iraq without any idea of how to pay for it — or how to end it. No one has any real idea about how to cope with the devastating energy crisis, or how to turn the economy around.
The airline industry is a first-class mess and the knees of the General Motors colossus have buckled. Locks are being changed on foreclosed homes across the country and working families lucky enough to meet their mortgages are watching the value of their homes decline.
We can build spectacular new stadiums for football and baseball teams (the Yanks, the Mets, the Giants and the Jets are all getting ready to move into staggeringly expensive new homes) but we can’t rebuild New Orleans or reconstruct the World Trade Center site destroyed almost seven years ago.
This year’s presidential election is the perfect opportunity to place the truth before the American public in the form of a realistic examination of the state of the nation, and an honest consideration of creative ideas for moving forward. Instead, we’re getting hour after hour and day after day of trivia: Who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s patriotic? Who’s not?
Mr. Boren believes that the combination of unrestrained partisanship and the corrosive influence of big money have all but paralyzed the political process. He worries about the neglect of the nation’s infrastructure, about the growing divide between the very wealthy and everyone else, and about “the catastrophic drop in the way the rest of the world views us.”
The U.S., with its enormous economic and military power, is still better-positioned than any other country to set the standards for the 21st century. But that power and leadership potential were not granted by divine right and cannot be wasted indefinitely.
Patriotism has its place. But waving a flag is never a good substitute for serious thought and rolling up one’s sleeves.
Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/opinion/05herbert.html
quarta-feira, 25 de junho de 2008
Sen. Hillary Clinton returns to the Senate and Sen. Pelosi praises her -- too little, too late
Day 2 on the Hill for Clinton
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, June 25, 2008
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
[BLOGGER'S NOTE: A picture is worth a thousand words -- here is Sen. Clinton being praised to the skies by Sen. Pelosi -- the same Sen. Pelosi who was one of the first politicians to call for Sen. Clinton to withdraw from the race.]
On her second day back to work at the Capitol, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton met with the House Democratic caucus, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed her as “the most respected political figure in America” drawing a huge round of applause.
The visit with House Democrats, the single largest pool of superdelegates, could not have been easy for Mrs. Clinton given how party insiders increasingly turned away from her in support of Barack Obama throughout the long Democratic primary campaign.
But House leaders eased the way, showering her with praise. And Mrs. Clinton herself acknowledged how tough her loss had been, while pledging to do every thing she can to help Mr. Obama.
“This was a very difficult campaign, let’s be honest,” Mrs. Clinton said at the end of her 10-minute remarks, according to Democrats who were present. “It caused some heartburn … but we are a family; we are the Democratic Party and we are on the same team. So let’s go out and win and November!”
She got a standing ovation.
Mrs. Pelosi said Senator Clinton’s campaign could be summed up best by one word: respect.
“She has emerged from this campaign as the most respected political figure in America.”
Mrs. Clinton returned the praise with a joke at the expense of the Senate where the Democrats’ slim majority has struggled against Repiblican opposition.
“Madam Speaker, it’s wonderful to be here in the body that can actually pass legislation.”
Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois opened the session saying, “The Senate is a club, the Democratic House caucus is your family.”
And Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York said: “She is no longer Bill Clinton’s wife, she is a national and international leader in her own right.”
At one point, Mrs. Clinton said; “It’s good to be back in the Senate as “just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill superdelegate,” and added, “I will do everything I can to make sure Senator Obama is elected president.”
Link to article: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/day-2-on-the-hill-for-clinton/
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, June 25, 2008
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
[BLOGGER'S NOTE: A picture is worth a thousand words -- here is Sen. Clinton being praised to the skies by Sen. Pelosi -- the same Sen. Pelosi who was one of the first politicians to call for Sen. Clinton to withdraw from the race.]
On her second day back to work at the Capitol, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton met with the House Democratic caucus, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed her as “the most respected political figure in America” drawing a huge round of applause.
The visit with House Democrats, the single largest pool of superdelegates, could not have been easy for Mrs. Clinton given how party insiders increasingly turned away from her in support of Barack Obama throughout the long Democratic primary campaign.
But House leaders eased the way, showering her with praise. And Mrs. Clinton herself acknowledged how tough her loss had been, while pledging to do every thing she can to help Mr. Obama.
“This was a very difficult campaign, let’s be honest,” Mrs. Clinton said at the end of her 10-minute remarks, according to Democrats who were present. “It caused some heartburn … but we are a family; we are the Democratic Party and we are on the same team. So let’s go out and win and November!”
She got a standing ovation.
Mrs. Pelosi said Senator Clinton’s campaign could be summed up best by one word: respect.
“She has emerged from this campaign as the most respected political figure in America.”
Mrs. Clinton returned the praise with a joke at the expense of the Senate where the Democrats’ slim majority has struggled against Repiblican opposition.
“Madam Speaker, it’s wonderful to be here in the body that can actually pass legislation.”
Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois opened the session saying, “The Senate is a club, the Democratic House caucus is your family.”
And Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York said: “She is no longer Bill Clinton’s wife, she is a national and international leader in her own right.”
At one point, Mrs. Clinton said; “It’s good to be back in the Senate as “just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill superdelegate,” and added, “I will do everything I can to make sure Senator Obama is elected president.”
Link to article: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/day-2-on-the-hill-for-clinton/
sábado, 14 de junho de 2008
Tornado in Orchard, Iowa, June 10, 2008
A huge tornado funnel cloud touches down in Orchard, Iowa, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:04 p.m. The Globe Gazette and Mitchell County Press News reported that Lori Mehmen of Orchard, took the photo from outside her front door. Mehmen said the funnel cloud came near the ground and then went back up into the clouds. Besides tree and crop damage, no human injuries were reported. (AP Photo/Lori Mehmen)
Text and photo from this site: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Midwest-Storms-huge-tornado-funnel-cloud-touches-down-Orchard-Iowa-
Tuesday-June/ss/events/us/050208midweststorms/im:/080613/480/e06645fc489a4e70987e27c3d9f6e4cc/
terça-feira, 10 de junho de 2008
Katha Pollitt on Hillary Clinton and Iron My Skirt
Hillary Clinton came this close. In fact, as of this writing, she hasn't formally conceded. Nobody really understands why: why she stuck it out this long, given the math, and why she gave such a grudging, graceless version of her stump speech after the South Dakota primary clinched the nomination for Barack Obama. Suggestions I've heard are not very flattering: she hopes to whittle down her multimillion-dollar campaign debt with donations from the deluded die-hards screaming Denver! Denver! She wants the number-two spot. She's a crazy narcissistic rhymes-with-rich. Maybe she's just ticked off because pundits have been trying to hustle her off the stage ever since her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
There's another reason to be grateful to her. Clinton's run has put to rest the myth that we are living in a postfeminist wonderland in which all that stands in women's path is women themselves. Like a magnet--was it the pantsuit?--Clinton drew out the nation's misogyny in all its jeering glory and put it where we could all get a good look at it. "Iron my shirt" hecklers. Wearers of Bros Over Hos T-shirts and buyers of Hillary nutcrackers. Fans of the Citizens United Not Timid website (check the acronym). Vats of sexist nastiness splattered across the Comments section of hundreds of blogs and websites. It's as if every obscene phone caller and every exhibitionist in America decided to become an amateur political pundit.
As for the real pundits, thank you, Hillary, for showing us the snickering belittling of women that passes for media commentary: Rush Limbaugh, no Adonis, wondering out loud if "the country" was ready to watch a woman age in the White House; Chris Matthews, Don Imus and Tucker Carlson with their litany of insults--she-devil, Satan, witch, Antichrist, Lady Macbeth. NPR's Ken Rudin compared her to Glenn Close's indestructible bunny-boiler character in Fatal Attraction. And surely a special prize goes to Keith Olbermann for his indignant, hysterical bombast after Clinton's ham-handed reference to RFK's assassination. Rarely has men's terror of women with more brains than a Bratz doll been on such public display. And, of course, men were what we mostly saw up there on the small screen, yakking and blathering away.
It wasn't just men, though. Thank you, Hillary, for letting us get a good look at female sexism: the catty fashionistas and Style page dingbats obsessing over her clothes, her hair, her weight, her cleavage, her laugh. Air America's Randi Rhodes calling her a "big fucking whore," Maureen Dowd offering up her twice-weekly dose of vinegar and dozens of women writers musing prettily about why they and their friends all hate Hillary. Could it be they're jealous? Not, as novelist Mary Gordon has suggested, of Hillary's bagging of sexy Bill (yuck) but of her unsinkable ambition and drive. Hillary's run upset the carefully balanced apple cart of trade-off and resignation and semi-suppressed frustration that is how women of the professional class accommodate to patriarchy lite.
Please note: I don't claim Clinton lost because she's a woman. (I think it was her Iraq vote, which she could never justify or renounce; assorted strategic mistakes; the bumptious interventions of her husband; and, most of all, that Barack Obama, a prodigiously gifted, charismatic politician, took the banner of change away from her.) The attacks on her may even have helped by making women voters identify with her. In New Hampshire, pols' and pundits' sexist mockery of her "misting" made women rally to her side and revitalized her campaign.
Now those women, not all white and not all working class, are on the political map, and so are the issues that made them identify with Clinton: the glass ceiling and the sticky floor, the inequality built into marriage and family life, sexual harassment and assault, lack of support for caring work--paid or unpaid--and, underlying them all, a fundamental lack of respect that over the years can make a woman feel fed up to here. It's an irony of this campaign that Clinton was seen by the pundit class as a kind of über-diva whose attempts to reach out were transparently phony (beer and Canadian Club, anyone?) and yet millions of ordinary women--white, Latino and black--saw their struggles mirrored in hers. I won't deny that there's racism and xenophobia in the mix for some--hatred of Obama as affirmative action trickster and secret Muslim. It's incredibly important for Clinton to do the right thing and rally these women to Obama, and I wish I felt surer that she would rise to the occasion.
She could begin by pointing out that Obama is pro-woman and prochoice and as President will pursue policies to benefit all women--on labor, healthcare, sexual violence and many other issues. She could tell her supporters a vote for McCain is crazy. She could even tell them that a biracial man in the White House will make it easier for voters to imagine other nontraditional kinds of Presidents--like the next woman who decides to run.
Whoever that woman is, though, she'd better have the hide of a rhinoceros.
Link to article: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080623/pollitt/
Other:
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Katha Pollitt: From campus to courtroom, longstanding gains for women are being eroded everywhere you look.
segunda-feira, 9 de junho de 2008
The Pleasure of Being William Shatner
Blogger's note to William Shatner: please don't pass on before I do -- I could not take the loss.
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The SUV pulls to an abrupt stop on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. In the middle of the westbound lane is a man in a loud shirt, his body coiled with energy, darting across traffic toward a strip mall.
William Shatner sinks his teeth deep into life, reveling in acting -- and everything else.
The driver jumps visibly, and not merely at the presence of a human being on the pavement. It's who that human is: Without the hasty application of power brakes, one of the most recognizable faces in the history of American television would have become one with the road.
But it's lunchtime, after all. Good sushi is across the street. And a guy like William Shatner is not about to be stopped by something as mundane as traffic.
Why did William Shatner cross the road? Why has he ever? To get to the other side. To see what's out there. To find out stuff and inhale the universe in his singular Shatnerian way. It's the story of his life -- and the lives of the characters he has breathed, spoken and shouted into existence over a 50-year performing career.
It's the story of "Boston Legal" bombast Denny Crane, racing to experience all life's pleasures before Alzheimer's drags him not-so-gentle into that good night. It's the story of the Priceline Negotiator, that discount-travel maniac who barnstorms across the planet to get us better deals on hotels and flights. It's the story of James T. Kirk, the wise and womanizing starship captain who led a crew of 23rd-century explorers across interstellar backroads.
And it's the story of Shatner himself -- a man governed by his passions and interests, a man who crosses new roads every day, gleefully ignoring those who dismiss him and conquering frontiers he never dreamed possible. A cultural phenomenon who, despite tales of his galactic ego, seems strikingly down to Earth as he shapes and basks in the third golden age of his career. 
"I'm trying to fill the cracks in the bricks that have been written. I'm the mortar," he says. "That's what an actor should be doing."
Yes, he's been pilloried over the years -- perhaps justifiably here and there -- for his roundhouse method-actor style, for his apparent obliviousness of his own over-the-topitude, for his primal, all-encompassing Shatnerness.
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But being snide about William Shatner is so 1997. He is 77 now, post-post ironic, doing precisely what he wants to -- and, finally, no longer terrified about making a living. "Live life like you're gonna die, because you're gonna," he sang a few years ago. And he does: "There is so much going on with me right now, it's difficult to believe all of it," he says.
After the brutally honest 2004 album "Has Been" with Ben Folds, after the Emmy in 2004 and the second Emmy in 2005 and the new autobiography this spring, if you're still stuck parodying Shatner's staccato delivery and making T.J. Hooker toupee cracks, the joke, friend, is on you.
* * * * *
Things William Alan Shatner has done that you haven't:
- Released a live lemur from a baby carriage to help three women book cheaper travel online.
- Broken up a road-rage argument on a Los Angeles street on his way to the Academy Awards.
- Portrayed himself as a pickled severed head in "Futurama."
- Lent his face to psychopath Michael Myers of the original "Halloween," whose producers bought a Captain Kirk mask and painted it white.
- Cracked a fart joke in a "Star Trek" movie.
- Simulated copulation with a Candice Bergen doll on prime-time network TV.
* * * * *
"Lemurs," William Shatner is explaining through mouthfuls of sushi, "are primitive animals of many varieties."
You name the subject, he's fascinated. Global warming. Asian soap operas. The sentience of fish. Afghan politics. The turkeys he deep-fries in a "multimedia show" every Thanksgiving. And his timeless loves -- his wife Elizabeth, his three daughters and his racehorses.
Shatner is an excellent host, encouraging his guests -- a reporter, a photographer, the marketing chief of Priceline -- to consume every kind of raw fish on the menu. "Are you enjoying this?" he says more than once. "No -- really. I want you to enjoy this." In the background, John Denver is singing "Annie's Song": "You fill up my senses."
To sit and talk with Shatner over a meal is its own multimedia show. You start by marveling about the familiar voice you're hearing. By and by, you begin paying attention to what he's saying, which is a theme park of topics. This is a guy who, in his new autobiography "Up Till Now," rhapsodizes about a gas station where he found "the finest tire air I've ever encountered."
We often think of performers' roles as secret decoder rings -- that if you put everyone ever portrayed by Shatner into a blender and pressed frappe, you'd have Shatner the man. That's absurd. But being around Shatner, the debt that the characters owe the man is clear.
He has a conversational style -- a cognitive style, even -- of starting slowly, navigating his way into a topic and, in the course of a single sentence, transforming from cool introspection to full-on oratory.
This much-scorned, steam-gaining delivery is the product of a man thinking something through and finding conviction along the way. With Captain Kirk, it went like this: "Risk -- RISK is our business. THAT'S what this starship is all about. That's why we're a-BOARD her!"
With Shatner, it goes like this: "We can't wait for something dire to happen before this democracy decides to gird up and FIGHT global warming. We're on ... a collision course ... with HIStory!" (This is followed quickly by, "Shall we order something else?")
Joining us for lunch is Brett Keller, chief marketing officer at Priceline.com, where Shatner has been frontman for a decade, urging people to name their own price. Both sides have benefited: Priceline got an iconic figure to shape its brand, and Shatner got stock options and a forum upon which to surf back into the collective consciousness.
In the latest Priceline ads, Shatner bursts forth as the Priceline Negotiator, a mashup of James Bond and Ron Popeil who will do anything to help people broker better deals. Like most of us, Keller is both amused by and in awe of this star who came to a commercial shoot and started developing the character.
"You're a celebrity (and) you're asked to do a 30-second television spot. It's not the most glamorous thing in the world. But he dives in," Keller says. Market research, Priceline says, has shown an affinity for Shatner across age groups and demographics.
"Everyone knows William Shatner," Keller says. "You either love him or you hate him, and I think most people love him."
For the hecklers, Shatner has a message. Decades after his much-maligned album, "The Transformed Man," boldly took "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" into strange new worlds, Shatner performed songs from "Has Been" before 4,000 cheering fans. He closed with "Lucy" and thrust a meaty digit skyward during the duration of the song.
It wasn't his forefinger. It wasn't his ring finger. It wasn't his pinky, either.
* * * * *
"Now is everything." -- Denny Crane
* * * * *
He has always favored unusual paths. You don't make an entire horror movie in Esperanto ("Incubus," 1964) otherwise. You don't open an equestrian camp to help disabled Israeli and Arab children get along. And you certainly don't serenade George Lucas by dancing with stormtroopers while singing a personalized version of "My Way."
Let's even put this on the table: William Shatner is vulnerable.
Stop smirking. Do you have the guts to get out there and whisper gently to the public about the night you found your wife dead in your swimming pool? Do you possess the chops to portray a lawyer who's slowly losing his mind? Would you record a dramatic reading of Exodus backed by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra while knowing full well you'll be heckled by guys who, 40 years later, are still maligning your version of "Mr. Tambourine Man"?
With these choices, Shatner has carved himself a unique place in the culture through a complicated blend of sincerity, bombast, wink-nudge irony and self-parody. Hate him or love him, rarely has an entertainer straddled giggles and glory so adeptly. And rarely does a performer have three distinct and separate careers, each building on the last:
- Shatner No. 1: I'm a Very Serious Actor. This one played tortured men in two "Twilight Zone" installments, a slick racist in 1962's "The Intruder" and created the role of the iconic Captain Kirk in the original "Star Trek." This Shatner was drama on steroids, and he endured through the 1980s with the tough-as-nails "Hooker" and a Captain-Kirk reprise in seven "Star Trek" movies.
- Shatner No. 2: I Laugh At Myself And You Can Too. Emerged around 1997. There were hints of this Shatner earlier -- well-played comedy in a couple "Trek" episodes and a deadpan cameo in "Airplane II." But Shatner really jumped into self-parody in a 1997 film called "Free Enterprise," in which he played a heightened version of himself. Then came his appearance as the alien leader on "Third Rock From The Sun" and his first Priceline ads, which cast him as a zeitgeisty, lounge-lizard joker.
"Something's happened out there," he told me a decade ago in the middle of this period. "People are perceiving me as funny, and they want funny things from me." He laughed all the way to the bank, and we marveled at his ability to reinvent himself.
- Shatner No. 3: We Laughed Until We Cried. The most sophisticated Shatner of all.
For years, it was assumed that Shatner equaled Kirk. Then came Denny Crane, a Boston law firm's rainmaker enduring the beginning of "the mad cow." Denny is loudmouthed, sexist, self-obsessed and terrified at what age is stealing. Only his much younger colleague, Alan Shore, understands the panic behind the bluster.
This Shatner combined the serious and the comic in the most unusual way. "I've obviously had those instruments at my call," he says, "but the opportunity to use them wasn't there."
Denny Crane offered that, but so did something else. As he was winning Emmys, Shatner ventured back into the admittedly narrow niche of spoken-word singing -- a pantheon in which he had been roundly denounced -- and paired up with Folds for the audaciously named "Has Been."
In what's best described as aging white-guy rap, Shatner joined musical stalwarts like Henry Rollins and Joe Jackson to sing -- and sometimes write -- a concept album about age and regret. People, skeptical people, called it honest and moving.
In one song, "Real," Shatner joined Brad Paisley for this lyric: "I'd love to help the world in all its problems. But I'm an entertainer -- and that's all."
No, he's not the captain of the Enterprise. But he shortchanges himself with that statement. Something's going on with Shatner, some odd alchemy.
He's mined a vein of cultural coal that transcends ubiquity. He's been pitchman, legend, action figure, in-joke, cover boy, game-show host, cultural signpost, embodiment of a bright future. The cultural transaction has become so intricate that even a 2006 Comedy Central roast in which everyone from Betty White to Ron Howard's baby brother raised a leg in his direction seemed somehow forced, as if pimply teenage delinquents were shooting BBs at the cast-iron statue of a Civil War general.
"Shatner is THE epitome of the post-ironic, 21st-century American cultural attitude," says Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University television and pop-culture historian.
"He's completely taken the entire history of American mass entertainment from radio days to the present and melded it into a character that's completely contemporary," Thompson says, his cadence growing Shatnerlike. "I'm going to be teaching that guy 50 years from now in my history of television classes if I'm still alive."
Or put it another way. One of Shatner's daughters and her husband like to play a game: Get through an entire day without seeing an image of Dad somewhere in public and you win.
Usually, no one does.
* * * * *
"Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young." -- an aging James T. Kirk in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"
* * * * *
Midmorning on the "Boston Legal" set, where Denny Crane is proposing marriage to a sexy Montana cattle rancher. She'll think about it, she says.
With each take, more dimensions emerge in Shatner's performance. This is not a man known for subtlety, but he should be. He lends personality to Denny's nose, eyes, lips as he tries to release the ache of a fading giant trying to get the girl. By the final take, the scene is heart-wrenching.
The mutual devotion between Denny and James Spader's Alan Shore is extraordinary. Rare is the honest male TV friendship; most buddy scenes are dispatched with testosterone and awkwardness. But Denny and Alan are like lovers without the attraction; they share everything and work to understand each other -- not unlike another deep friendship, that of Kirk and Spock.
"I personally have never had a friend in reality like the ones I have chosen to act in fiction -- the total honesty, the total commiseration," Shatner says. "I would suggest that that kind of male friendship doesn't exist very much."
Shatner makes acting choices that hammer home the depth of the Denny-Alan bond -- like gazing directly at Spader during their balcony scenes at show's end and speaking gently rather than deploying Denny's usual bluster.
"There's no toxic sexuality involved. It's a friendship based entirely on communication and empathy," Shatner says. "It's this emotional attachment -- this looking into the eyes and saying, `Tell me."'
Why does Denny Crane work so well? Some of it is David E. Kelley's writing, but some is sheer Shatnerness.
"He brings to the moment everything you know about him," says David Fisher, who collaborated with Shatner on the new autobiography. "He's not a fresh face. We know who William Shatner is, as an audience. We know what he's been through. We know the ridicule he's received, we know the plaudits he's received. He's been part of our lives for so long."
Shatner as Kirk may be a memory. While Leonard Nimoy will be featured as an aging Spock in J.J. Abrams' reboot of the "Trek" franchise next year, Shatner isn't coming aboard; his character died in 1994's "Star Trek Generations" and will be played in the new film by the young actor Chris Pine.
Other than that, all things seem possible, from racing horses to developing a pet project called "Shiva Club," which follows two young comedian wannabes who, trying to network, crash the wake of an old-school Jewish comic.
"I have all of the hungers and passions and desires of when I was 20," Shatner says. "There's nothing I can't do."
Back in Shatner's office post-sushi, I ask about the paths he has chosen, about how his professional life became this unique seriocomic balance and how he manages to be a performer who is lampooned yet still respected deeply. He smiles, then frowns. "I just did what was necessary," he says.
Shatner plays with a new iPhone his assistant has procured for him. The Google Maps coordinates for his office are keyed in and he marvels, impressed at yet another fascinating thing the world has coughed up. "This is really fun," he says, tapping away. "I'll figure it out." Which, these days, you could say about anything in his world.
After all this time, he lives life like he's gonna die, because he's gonna. But when the time finally comes to take that trip, don't be surprised if William Shatner tries to name his own price.Link to article: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/09/shatner.the.inimitable.ap/index.html
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