Monthly Archive for January, 2008

‘The Magic of the Cup’

Published
by
David Herman
on January 29, 2008
in Sport
. 1 Comment

One interesting thing about cliches is that their very deadness is often a clue to something else going on. There is no cliche in TV sport which is used as much at this time of year as ‘the magic of the Cup’. It is part of the crazy boosterism which makes sports presenters the estate agents of television. But it is also so far removed from the truth that it tells us something interesting.

We all know that the FA Cup will be dominated by the Big Four, just as the Carling Cup (three out of four semi-Finalists) and the Premier League (top three places) are. We also all know that this is just a transitional phase in the history of English football, as we move from a long history of English domestic leagues to an inevitable Super-League of a few top European clubs. Anyone who watched Arsenal outclass Keegan’s new Newcastle or a much-depleted Chelsea outplay Wigan could see the difference. Now there are only two chances of a real surprise. One, if the big club play virtually a reserve side, as Arsenal did against Tottenham or as Liverpool did against Havant. Everyone ges on about ‘the magic of the Cup’ because Havant only lost 5-2 to a team without Reina, Carragher, Gerrard and Torres, ie without the only players that Liverpool have at the moment who any of the other top teams would want to buy (in the words of Mark Lawrenson). The second chance of an upset is if one of the Big Four has a major Champions League game coming up in a few days and hold back for that AND have a few injuries/suspensions from their fixture-clogged weeks in the spring, when they are fighting for three or four trophies.

So, apart from Havant conceding only five goals against a Liverpool without their best players, what was the other great surprise this weekend? Derby losing to Preston? Hardly. Derby beating anyone (even Havant) would be a bigger surprise. Sheffield United beating Manchester City, ie a team that was in the premiership last season beating one of the teams outside the Big Four? Not quite. Now the only surprise left in the FA Cup is that if anyone else beats a full-strength member of the Big Four.

The reason the cliche about ‘the magic of the Cup’ kept getting wheeled out is because we know the opposite is true. The days of Hereford beating Newcastle are over. There are 4-6 top clubs who will eventually leave the domestic league to play every week with the big boys from Italy and Spain. They will do it because the money makes sense. The game is going global. What price ‘the magic of the Cup’, then? we won’t hear it so much for one very good reason: Lineker and Hansen will (if the BBC can afford the TV rights) be in Milan or Barcelona talking about the big match, while Mansfield play Middesbrough back at home. Which channel will be fighting to show that? The more people talk about the ‘magic’ of the past and show us sepia images of Jimmy Greaves and Dave Mackay, the more you can be sure that that history is on the way out. The future is with the big money across the channel. That’s what the cliches tell us.

Stephen Poliakoff and an odd moment in the trees of Vienna

Published
by
David Herman
on January 29, 2008
in Arts and culture, Books and Media
. 0 Comments

Here’s a strange thing. Jonathan Wilson’s novel The Hiding Room, first published in 1995, has been republished. Its most dramatic moment is when Esta Weiss, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, tells her lover what happened to her and her mother in Vienna after the Anschluss: ‘”First, they stood over us and made us eat the grass. We were animals, you see. They stood on our hands with their boots and cracked the bones. They they put a blue ladder against the trunk of a tree and made us climb into the lower branches. We had to twitter and croak like the birds.”‘

But what is intriguing is that Esta’s story is identical to a story that the Michael Gambon character tells Joe in Stephen Poliakoff’s Joe’s Palace (BBC, 2007). It is one of those classic Poliakoff scenes, when suddenly we move into pure storytelling, as a character tells a dramatic and strange story about something terrible which happened in the past.

I am not suggesting that Poliakoff stole the story from Wilson’s book, published 12 years ago. It may well be a familiar story to those who know about antisemitism in post-Anschluss Vienna, but it is a strange coincidence that the wording is so similar. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that neither writer really does very much with it. It stands out as a strange, grotesque moment in two curiously flat narratives.

Why TV needs to slow down

Published
by
William Skidelsky
on January 28, 2008
in Arts and culture and Media
. 3 Comments

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching two very different, but equally good, TV drama series on DVD: Granada’s extraordinary 1981 production of Brideshead Revisited, and HBO’s The Wire, which has been showing over the last few years on the American cable channel, and is now in its fifth season (and was described by Charlie Brooker in last Saturday’s Guardian, not unjustifiably, as “the best TV show since the invention of radio”).

In many ways, the two series couldn’t be more different: one concerns English aristocrats in the 1930s and 1940s; the other is about drug dealers, drug addicts and police in Baltimore. But it strikes me that they have one important thing in common, a quality missing from almost all British TV drama today: they take their time. Granada devoted all of 13 hours to the story of Charles Ryder’s entanglement with the Flyte family; and the novel isn’t a long one. The Wire, too, is deliciously, audaciously digressive; you can watch a whole episode and realise that, basically, nothing has happened. This is the one great advantage that television has, or should have, over cinema: time is not of the essence. But in Britain, producers have forgotten this. Costume dramas these days fly by in minutes. The idea of a 12-part adaptation of a novel seems ridiculous. If television wants to get good again, it should resume its old stately pace.

From the archive

Published
by
Susha
on January 28, 2008
in Asia
. 0 Comments

General Suharto, former president of Indonesia, died today at the age of 86. Suharto took power in 1965, officially replacing Indonesia’s first president Sukarno in 1967. He governed for 32 years before the effects of the Asian financial crisis forced him out in May 1998. In Prospect’s March 1998 issue, Charles Glass saw the end of his dictatorship approaching, and assessed his legacy to his country.

Latest from South Carolina

Published
by
Will Straw
on January 26, 2008
in United States
. 0 Comments

The news channels are reporting record turnout and everything appears up in the air. I was just canvassing a heavily African-American area in downtown Charleston. It’s the kind of neighbourhood where Obama has been banking on 75% support but he’ll get nothing like that. Many voters were returning from the polling station but still wanted Hillary stickers. It also became clear that a number of young supporters who shouted Barack’s name at us were not actually registered to vote.

Meanwhile, Republican areas are also reporting strong turnouts. There’s a rumour going round that these are actual Republicans rather than swing voters who are voting Edwards as a spoiler. Certainly the native of South Carolina is looking strong in the latest polls (which wouldn’t surprise given that he’s spent more here on TV ads than the other two combined).

Some other nuggets:
- the rain has held off which may favour Obama
- age and gender seem to be a much better predictor of voting intention that race - this may favour Clinton
- there’s a lot of tactical voting with Obama and Clinton supporters backing Edwards to keep him in the race

A black man! A woman! At the same time!

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on January 26, 2008
in United States
. 0 Comments

Compare and contrast the following comments:

I like Hillary. She’s white, and she’s a leader. I think she’s like a world leader. History will tell if Hillary is that. But what she’s trying to do is lead the world, and that’s good.

Do I support her over Barack Obama? Oh yeah, totally. It’s weird, cos I’m friends with Barack’s wife, but in baseball there’s a rule that the tie goes with the runner. You hit the ball to first base. If the ball gets there first you are out, if you get there first you are safe, but if it’s a tie, it goes to the runner.

That’s how I feel about race. If both people are qualified I’ve got to go with my girl.

and:

I like Barack. He’s black, and he’s a leader. I think he’s like a world leader. History will tell if Obama is that. But what he’s trying to do is lead the world, and that’s good.

Do I support him over Hillary Clinton? Oh yeah, totally. It’s weird, cos I’m friends with Bill, but in baseball there’s a rule that the tie goes with the runner. You hit the ball to first base. If the ball gets there first you are out, if you get there first you are safe, but if it’s a tie, it goes to the runner.

That’s how I feel about race. If both people are qualified I’ve got to go with my guy.

As you may have guessed, the second comes from a piece in the Guardian, courtesy of Chris Rock, while the first is simply an inversion of his words. And the first, I would imagine, is something few people could get away with saying in the media, while the second is read as an acceptable, even an admirable, honesty. This doesn’t mean Chris Rock shouldn’t have said the second; or that words equivalent to the first wouldn’t be said by quite a few people if they were being really honest. But it does suggest a broad gulf between what is felt and what can acceptably be said in this race for nomination.

Of course, If I were to replace the above references to race with references to gender (”If both people are qualified, I’ve got to vote for the man/woman”), my feeling is that both statements of preference sound equally otiose. Yet a century ago, the question of whether a woman could ever be preferred over a man was a real debate, while the question of whether a black person could ever be preferred over a white was so far beyond the pale it was no debate at all. It’s precisely because of this history of struggle that Chris Rock can say what he does. And, you would hope, it’s because people like him are saying what they do that such things won’t need to be said by anyone in another hundred years’ time.

Then again, would Obama thank Rock for suggesting that all he’s got going over Hillary is the colour of his skin?

(Thanks to Patrice Evans at the assimilated negro for the title).

The Clintons in Charleston

Published
by
Will Straw
on January 26, 2008
in United States
. 0 Comments

This is meant to be the the age of apathy. Politics is meant to be so managerial and technocratic, and the public so materialistic, that political participation has become the domain of the eccentric. Yet in Charleston last night - a city the same size as Crawley or Colchester - Hillary Clinton was able to attract an audience of well over a thousand at just a day’s notice. The “line” began two hours before the event: families, pensioners, students, some straight from the office giving up their Friday evening plans.

Clinton was introduced by her husband and flanked Chelsea and an impressive array of supporters including prominent Representative Charlie Rangel and former-mayor of New York David Dinkins. She spoke for 45 minutes with a positive message high on policy detail. Lines about bringing the troops home from Iraq and introducing healthcare got the crowd going. She rarely alluded to Obama but did at one point describe herself as a “workhorse not a showhorse.”

The crowd had plenty of time at the end for autographs and pictures, and they lapped it up. These politicians really know how to work a room. The polls this morning give Obama a ten-point lead but he is haemorrhaging support from whites. As with New Hampshire and Nevada, I expect a number of voters will switch from Obama or Edwards to Clinton in the privacy of the polling booth. The rain may also assist. Either way, it’s going to be close and the turnout will, once again, be on the rise.

Ken and his critics

Published
by
Tom Nuttall
on January 25, 2008
in British politics
. 1 Comment

The most thoughtful and even-handed response to Martin Bright’s Dispatches investigation into Ken Livingstone’s alleged cronyism and shady working practices—which we all missed cos we were working into the wee hours putting the February edition to bed—seems to me to be Paul Anderson’s column in Tribune.

Anderson agrees that it is slightly odd, if hardly chilling, that Ken has surrounded himself in City Hall with so many of his old Trot mates; and, more importantly, that this is a legitimate subject for journalistic inquiry—Ken’s attempts to get the programme pulled at the last-minute were absurd and clumsy. On the other hand, if you look at Ken’s record—more buses, the congestion charge, the Olympics—it hardly looks like the early shoots of worldwide proletarian revolution.

I have been very sceptical of Ken, particularly after he reneged on his promise not to stand as an independent candidate in the mayoral elections were he not to get the Labour nomination. But his record speaks for itself, and I was very impressed by the command of policy detail he displayed in his interview with Prospect last year.

Fear and loathing at the Australian Open

Published
by
David Herman
on January 25, 2008
in Sport
. 0 Comments

The best TV sports at the moment are not on BBC1 or ITV. You have to press the BBC’s red (or sometimes blue) button to watch the Africa Cup and the Australian Open. Both have offered a tantalising glimpse into the future.

First, Melbourne. Whatever happened to Australian tennis? No Australian has won the Australian Open since 1976. To younger readers, or even middle-aged readers, this may seem no deal. But remember that the Australians dominated their Open for decades. They owned it. In the 31 years after the war, 1946-76, Australians won their Open 27 times. Roy Emerson won six times, Rosewall four times, Rod Laver three times and another ten Australian players won it once or twice. Up until the mid-1960s the Open was usually an all-Australian affair: in the first 20 Opens after the war, the defeated finalist was an Australian too.

But in the last thirty years, not once has an Australian won and apart from Lleyton Hewitt no one has even reached the final in the last twenty years. Not since Pat Cash has any Australian got a look in. For such a sporting nation with a perfect climate for tennis, this is a disaster. This year was par for the course. Lleyton Hewitt squeaked through against Baghdatis and was then whupped by Djokovic in straight sets. As for Australian women, forget it. There hasn’t been an Australian winner in the Women’s Singles since the glory days of the 1970s (Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong et al).

Continue reading ‘Fear and loathing at the Australian Open’

Cooper Brown’s identity crisis

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on January 24, 2008
in Media
. 0 Comments

Spot the difference between these rival wikipedia entries on the Independent’s weekly superbrat ex-pat US columnist, Cooper Brown, who seems to be the victim of a severe crisis of self-authorship.

Would anyone care to clear up the mystery of the mask behind the man? Those people chatting to him on facebook should certainly be told…

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