Watersports

SPOILER ALERT: Of my very few readers, I know one hasn't read To Kill a Mockingbird and I also know he plans to read it soon. So, sweetheart, maybe you should skip this first paragraph. Other SPOILER: this is self-righteousness incarnate, so mum, please ignore the tone!

I've just finished re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird. There, the vague moral victory in the court case is that Atticus makes them doubt that a guilty plea is right. This is Alabama, in the 1930s, all too believable.

Therefore, this makes a Mississippi Supreme Court's decision in 1922 seem even more remarkable, particularly in light of Attorney General Mukasey's all too predictable sanction of waterboarding techniques. Why on earth anyone thought he'd be different from Gonzales, I really don't know. Oh, yes he is different - he doesn't come across as quite so slimy.

A (nerdy, clearly) law type has uncovered White v. State, which was a case whereby a young black man confessed to the murder of a white shopowner. Only problem - he was tortured. Well, not if you're Michael Mukasey, but yes if you're the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Just think about it - 1922, a Mississippi court orders a retrial because the confession of a black man was obtained under torture by white men. Having just seen the Kara Walker exhibition at the Whitney, I understand a little more deeply (although confusedly, it must be said) the swirling, depthless hatred and misunderstanding and misery of relationships between white and black throughout American history. Nonetheless, despite that, the Court was able to distinguish between what was right and wrong in this instance. I'll give you a few excerpts (emphases are all mine):

the hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and, while some of the men stood upon his feet, Gilbert, a very heavy man, stood with one foot entirely upon appellant's breast, and the other foot entirely upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the “water cure” was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession as to where the money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken from the dead man. The “water cure” appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession. Under these barbarous circumstances the appellant readily confessed that he knew where the money was, and told them that it was out at the “dredge ditch.” They then took the appellant to the dredge ditch to find the money, but there was no money found there or anywhere else so far as this record shows.

So in a nutshell: they tortured him AND it failed to provide the required information.
And I'll leave you with my favourite sentence from the judgment:

Confessions induced by fear, though not aroused by spoken threats, are nevertheless involuntary, because the fear which takes away, the freedom may arise solely from the conditions and circumstances surrounding the confessor.

Electioneering

I've not been posting generally on cultural differences - other than confectionery - of late. One thing that I have been intrigued by of late, however, is the huge differences between the general political campaigning in the UK and here. It is still six months until the primaries - where the Presidential candidates are chosen - and yet everyone is talking about it, constantly. Washington Weekly, a wonderful PBR programme and now, fortunately, podcast, talks about the candidates who are "ahead" - but it is almost exclusively based on cash raised, not on polling points. Whereas funding in the UK is only talked about in relation to cash for honours scandals.

It's a very strange difference indeed. On the surface I think the Anglos might think that it boils down to the brash, capitalistic nature of the US whereas our culture is about proper politics. Some of that may be true - the fact is, you have to be multi-millionaires' friends in order to run for President, or have your own personal fortune to supplement your campaign. Nonetheless, I also wonder if some of it is due to the openness and realism of the US, where it's not vulgar or crass to talk about money because it matters and does makes things happen; in the UK, we just pretend all that doesn't really need to take place, which is why you have scandals, perhaps... everything is behind closed doors and hidden away - which is why they can get away with behaving very badly indeed.

As to the primaries themselves, I cannot pretend that my heart doesn't want Obama to win. It really, really does. I don't want to be the equivalent of the wingnuts (my new favourite term) who head to the polls only to vote for Bush etc. because they are anti-abortion, yet Obama plays to my heart every time. This from the Kaiser Daily Women's Health Roundup:

Obama on Tuesday at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund forum said that he considers sex education for kindergartners appropriate if it is tailored to their age level. He has said that if a kindergartner asks a question such as where babies come from, they should be told accurate information. Obama also said warning young people about inappropriate touching is an example of the type of sex education he supports, adding that he was criticized for his position on sex education during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign as well.

"Sen. Obama is wrong if he thinks science-based sex education has any place in kindergarten," Romney said Thursday during a speech in Sparatansburg, S.C. Romney on Wednesday at a fundraising dinner in Colorado Springs, Colo., said, "How much sex education is appropriate for a five-year-old? In my mind, zero is the right number."Obama on Thursday said, "We have to deal with a coarsening of the culture and the over-sexualization of our young people," adding, "Of course, part of the coarsening of that culture is when politicians try to demagogue issues to score cheap political points" (Davenport, AP/ABC News, 6/19).

Where did Romney have that fundraiser? Colorado Springs, no surprise because that is the hotseat for all wingnuts: Focus on the Family is so big there the HQ even HAS ITS OWN POSTCODE.

I'm telling you people: WINGNUTS.

UPDATE: This unsprung post looks at this too, and good it is, too - if just for the title.

Rythsys

Cornwall is officially beautiful; it feels steeped in mythology and legend. It is very, very different to the rest of the country, and feels as if perhaps centuries haven't really gone by.

When I was teaching English in Barcelona, we did a special day about language, somewhat a sensitive topic between Catalans and the rest of Spain. The Catalans particularly go on about Catalan being an older language than Castillian; it is incredibly important to them to have history anchored before that of Spain, to be authentically in their geography. Another teacher and I - he was an Aussie - did a special session on the "other" British languages and aboriginal languages from Oz. So I learned about the different groups of Celtic languages - the "p" ones and the "k" ones, the grouping into Manx, Gaelic and Scot, and Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The traces of Cornish names we end up with are glorious - Trescothick, Trethillian... and they could only come from Celtic origins.

Identity through language is particularly intriguing to me and, I think, incredibly important, having lived in Barcelona and now seeing the debates here over whether or not it is discrimination to force people to speak in English. Moreover, it is fascinating given that I speak an almost ubiquitous language, yet there is some primordial patriotic nerve within me that feels some twinge of frustration when it turns out that people are learning Americanised phrases and that my language is becoming obscure, useless in comparison. So in a small sense I do feel that a part of my identity is threatened by having continually to translate, to not be understood unless I modify how I speak. Which does, in some sense, change me. When I was getting near fluency in Costa Rica I would think differently, because the language and structure means that you think a different way. My dear friend Xopo wrote yesterday a beautiful post about the blurring (or not) of national identities through language, and I will not attempt to write anything on that topic. Chatting with another friend the other night, whose relationship is conducted in his language but not the native tongue of his girlfriend, it did bring home an appreciation that someone's language does help to define who one is and, in a way, I can understand people's sensitivities about a nation's tongue - be it those Mexicans who refuse to speak Spanish to Xopo, or those Anglophone Americans who are upset with the prevalence of Spanish.

For me, living in Barcelona, I never really felt accepted by those locals who tried to engage me in the gym and were disappointed at my stumbling Catalan and far more fluent Castellano. Yet Catalunya has a far stronger power and autonomy than any of the other nations that have been gobbled up by Britain, and so that desperate clinging onto language and locality can seem far more important yet far more futile. Which leads to desperate measures. Which is how I started on this topic - some bloke from the National Cornish Liberation Army has attempted to threaten Rick Padstow and Jamie Oliver out of Cornwall. Now I know those Jamie Oliver Sainsbury's adverts were annoying, but still... So a desperate measure, but probably not a desperately successful one. And young rich outsiders will continue to buy up property and turn villages into ghostly echoes of their former selves. Not quite the shadows of Aciman's imagination, I presume.

Speechless

We have commemoration books for Virginia Tech at school. They're beautiful - gold and brown bound leather. I walk past them every time I go into the library (which to be fair, is not often, as it's not my workplace of choice).

I consider writing things.

But I don't know what to put.

Partly it's a religious thing. Or, rather, an irreligious thing. In that I do not want to put something I do not believe in. Yet, maybe somewhere at VT there is someone, like me, who would feel comforted by my agnosticism rather than prayers.

I don't know.

What I do know is it is pretty despicable to blame it on sexual frustration due to women's behaviour being "confusing."

Just You and Me

I got back at an indecent hour last night--a mere five in the morning UK time, luckily only one here. Why is it that all my seriously "late nights" are after travel, rather than actually going out and having fun?

Still, a later blog will feature processing of the London Town trip. My more immediate concerns are two:

1) Why do I keep falling over? I fear the snow and my glorious light blue pixie boots are incompatible, which I could have predicted, but more worrying is their inability to grip on those moving walkway thingies at airports, and also, indeed, pavement. Prize bruises indicate their fallibility which is, essentially, a tragedy.

2) The other half triumphantly announced, about six weeks ago, that he had "finally bought an electric toothbrush." I had been ignorant of this item on his to-do list, and am fairly indifferent to its existence--quite happy with the normal one. However, it appears he has somehow managed to buy something which is actually using the infinite power source. The instructions say to discharge it fully once a month, yet we haven't charged it for about two weeks AND IT'S STILL GOING. I thought about just switching it on today and letting it run down while I was out, but I was scared it might use that as an excuse to get up and annihilate the apartment. Don't ask me why. But I am now scared of being left alone with the menace in the bathroom (which lame pun / reference to a song is where the title to this post comes from... I need some sleep, clearly).