Fingered

purple finger
Originally uploaded by ukplc.

Robert Mugabe demonstrating that dying millions of peoples' fingers purple is no guarantee that democracy is on the march...
Other similarities with recent elections in Iraq include reports that "Independent election monitors and international agencies contend - and the government denies - that food has been widely used as a political weapon." (NYT)

Hotel Rwanda again

Jonathan Freedland, in a Guardian column today, has confirmed my fears (see "Hotel Rwanda," March 23rd, below) that a movie - not a documentary film, but a movie - has become a central element of the historical record of the genocide in Rwanda. Rather than referring to any of the enormous English-language literature that has amassed over the last decade (I'm sure there's a great deal in other languages too, but I have not had the occasion to seek it out) Freedland describes scenes from "Hotel Rwanda" to emphasise the urgency of the "international community" (whatever that is) launching a "humanitarian intervention" (whatever that is) in Darfur. (If you think my uncertainty about those two phrases is flippant, take a look at some of the scholarly literature on humanitarian intervention and international society, and you'll quickly realise how different the various definitions - implicit and explicit - are. Nicholas Wheeler's "Saving Strangers" wouldn't be a bad start, if compared with the sources cited.)
I won't dwell on what seems to me a not-very-apt comparison, because I don't know enough about either conflict (I can only repeat my recommendation of Alex de Waal's August 2004 LRB piece on Darfur). Nor will I take issue Freedland's lamentation that Iraq "tainted" the notion of humanitarian intervention in the UK, so that "the public" will never "accept the moral case" to "wage a Kosovo-style war ever again." In the narrow sense that he has a point (that the public are a little more sceptical now than 6 years ago about Britain's overseas adventures) I cannot accept that this can be a bad thing. When a politician asks the public to trust them, there can be only one correct response.
I simply want to point out that History as a discipline and as a crucial element of our culture, is under threat. The notion that everyone knows what happened in Rwanda now because they have seen - or heard accounts of - "Hotel Rwanda" is horrifying. If that film shames people in to investigating a matter they ignored 11 years ago, or leads them to find out more about the DRC, Sudan, or other areas of current crisis, it will have been a triumph. If it becomes the defining cultural representation of the Rwandan genocide - even temporarily - it will not be the film's fault (it's actually a very good film that has no definitive pretensions) but it will be an extremely worrying sign.
Imagine discussions about violence in society centering around "A Clockwork Orange." Imagine "The Shawshank Redemption" being invoked by advocates of prison reform.
We should not expect Hollywood to give us anything more than what it delivers - entertainment. If entertainment makes us think, it can only be a positive thing. If we expect it to do our thinking for us, we are in very grave trouble indeed.

The spectre of Maggie

As you may know, a general election looms here in the UK; Tony Blair is expected to announce on Monday that it will be held on May the 5th. The so-called pre-campaign has been moving in to high gear in the last couple of weeks, and it's almost as boring as the last (2001) one - for a taster of which you can check out the special sub-site the FT have put up with all their stories and analysis from the last election.
The place of policy proposals in the campaign was indicated on Tuesday by Alun Milburn, Labour's campaign co-ordinator, when he "set out the broad themes of the party's forthcoming manifesto, arguing the government was committed to creating an “open, mobile, classless society” that made the UK more economically competitive," the FT reports.
The Labour manifesto will be a "prospectus for the progressive modernisation of Britain" apparently. If you're struggling to make head or tail of this, you're not alone - doubtless the intention. Let's take it one step at a time. First, an "open" society - "open" to those previously excluded from equal participation in society? The UK's prison population rate, which, according to a Home Office report, by 2003 had risen to 139 per 100,000 - the highest in the European Union - under "New" Labour - hardly supports this interpretation. "Open" to those from outside the country? The proposal hardly merits comment, given that the key element of the election campaign thus far has been a Labour-Tory contest over who will crackdown on asylum seekers harder.
A "mobile" society? One's mind turns first to transport - again, such a calamity under New Labour so far that comment seems not superfluous, but faintly ridiculous, as anyone who has tried travelling from London to Leeds on the ground (either by rail or by road) will understand. How about labour mobility? Can unemployed people in Newcastle easily move to Surrey, where they stand a better chance of getting a job? Not a chance. Mobility of labour from areas with too few job to those where labour is needed (i.e. from the North East to the South East) is heavily inhibited by a housing crisis - the unemployed northerners could not for a moment consider buying or even renting property around Greater London, and despite the rhetoric, nothing has been done to seriously address the problem. Social mobility? More complex to analyse and dependent on how you look at things (in a "classless" society, social mobility is impossible by definition). But in terms of access to education and skills, to take an obvious example of a means by which people might move from a low-income social position to a higher-income position, betrayed promises on university tuition fees and the debacle of the training and skills programmes proposed for the long-term unemployed under the "New Deal" (how many Labour voters have heard of Roosevelt?) illustrate the progress (or lack of it) on this front.
And "classless"? Well let's just put it this way: Milburn's speech yesterday was delivered to the Fabian society in London and not to a workers' meeting in Darlington.

What does all of this empty rhetoric mean? I've been interested by the fact that Thatcher has been invoked a couple of times in the last few days - in a Guardian opinion piece by Peter Hain warning readers that voting for the Lib Dems as a protest against the government's role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq risked a Tory victory, and also by Milburn yesterday. Hain told Guardian readers Labour had to win to ward off the lingering danger of the "extreme right" and that the Lib Dems had "crypto-Thatcherite policies" involving "abolishing the New Deal" and "promoting privatisation of health services." Milburn proclaimed that re-electing "New" Labour represented a "once-in-a-lifetime chance to “see off the last hurrah of Thatcherism.”"
That the Tories are now to be identified as the "extreme" right, and identified with Thatcher implies that elements of "New" Labour are beginning to recognise their own position as centre-right (not "centre-left" as was widely claimed a few years ago), thus requiring some means of differentiation between the remarkably similar sets of policy proposals produced by the two main parties. The differentiation must necessarily be almost entirely rhetorical, ignoring actual policy or matters which concern ordinary people, simply because the basis of both parties' policies is identical - hence the enormous difficulty experienced by most people in telling them apart, and the boredom induced by petty squabbling over minute details (how to go about imprisoning people without trial, rather than whether to do it at all; tactical errors in the invasion of Iraq rather than whether to invade at all etc etc. ad nauseam).

It also indicates a realisation on Labour's part that could be of greater significance than the shift to the right of the last decade or so: that after countless broken pledges and promises (no university tuition fees, proportional representation in parliament, no plans to increase taxes to name but three), "swing" voters are unlikely to trust them a third time. This means that Labour can not come up with any number of wild (or even sensible, reserved) promises and proposals that it has no intention of keeping in order to get voted in to office, as, like the boy who cried wolf, they find that the third time around, no one is listening any longer. Campaigning then, is reduced to empty, meaningless rhetoric and digging up long-lost relics. Is it any wonder people complain that politics is boring?

The UN in Sudan

This was written as a comment to a post on this blog, but it turned out to be so lengthy I thought I would re-post it here. It concerns the news that the UN are to send 10,000 peacekeepers to Southern Sudan.

Tragically, for those who live there, there are two conflicts in Sudan. There has been ongoing conflict between forces in the South of the country and the government for the last 20 years or so. In January, the two sides signed a peace agreement. The UN has decided to send 10,000 peacekeepers to enforce the agreement.
In most respects, this is seperate from the ongoing conflict between the government and the rebels in Darfur, a region in the North West of the country. There's a good map of Sudan here.

The best information I know about concerning the civil war in the South of the country is Douglas Johnson's book "The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars" (see here).
The best commentary I've read on what is happening in Darfur is a piece by Alex de Waal in the London Review of Books from August last year, online here.

Briefly, as with previous conflicts in Africa, the UN is happy enough to send in troops to KEEP an agreed peace, but not to send in troops to intervene in an ongoing conflict. Working out the best course of action is troubling, and there are no easy answers, but it seems to me that a UN force could significantly reduce the level of violence in Darfur.

Searching for info just now, I came across this blog, which looks like a very good source of news and analysis about Sudan and particularly about Darfur.

Blair and the World Bank

I would like all to bear in mind that on Thursday, Blair was pictured wearing a "Make Poverty History" wristband.

I find this to be worth reproducing in full. All rights reserved. Copyrights etc., Financial Times, 2005.

Beforehand, however, I would like to make the following comments: Wolfowitz's qualifications for the job have been widely noted, particularly in the New York Times. The most significant, it is claimed, is Wolfowitz's role in the Reagan administration as US ambassador to Indonesia. I would encourage everyone to take a look at "The United States and East Timor" in Noam Chomsky, "Towards a New Cold War" (New York: Pantheon, 1982/ London: Sinclair Browne, 1982/ New York/London: The New Press, 2003) to examine the consequences.

Blair kept quiet on Wolfowitz candidacy
>By FT Reporters
>Published: March 25 2005 22:01 | Last updated: March 25 2005 22:01
>>
Tony Blair was sounded out on the candidacy of Paul Wolfowitz to lead the World Bank before the White House announced his nomination but did not share the controversial proposal with cabinet colleagues or fellow European leaders.

The British prime minister was informed about Mr Wolfowitz's possible candidacy and relayed to Washington that he would not oppose him. The issue was raised with Mr Blair when Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, visited London last month, according to two senior US officials close to the proceedings. Mr Blair's discreet support gave President George W. Bush the confidence to know that Mr Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary and an advocate of the war in Iraq, would not face united opposition from the World Bank's European shareholders.

But by honouring Mr Bush's wishes, Mr Blair chose to keep the candidacy from Gordon Brown, the UK chancellor, who is chairman of the International Monetary Fund's governing body and the European finance minister most closely identified with the development agenda.

A Downing Street official said: “We had a number of discussions with a number of different countries over possible candidates over a period of time. Like others, we were first notified of the decision to nominate Paul Wolfowitz on the day of the president's announcement.” Treasury officials declined to comment.

While the details of Ms Rice's private conversations with Mr Blair remain tightly held, officials and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic have said they were aware of Mr Bush's effort to secure the support of his chief European ally. The UK Treasury, the British foreign office and officials in other European capitals remained in the dark, according to UK officials.

Following a report in the Financial Times on March 1 that Mr Wolfowitz was a leading candidate for the US nomination, a senior UK Treasury official telephoned his US counterpart.

The US Treasury dismissed the story, according to British officials. A British diplomat, who contacted the administration, was told Mr Wolfowitz was not in the running.

The World Bank presidential nomination is seen by Washington as a White House decision and it chose to garner support for Mr Bush's choice by contacting European leaders directly rather than lobbying finance ministries and development agencies.

Unlike Mr Blair, some European leaders were not given advance warning. Jacques Chirac, the French president, and Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, only spoke to Mr Bush after the announcement. But European leaders have made clear they will not stand in the way of the Wolfowitz candidacy.

By James Harding, Andrew Balls and Edward Alden in Washington and James Blitz in London

Anyone can be wise in retrospect

Tragedies like that which occurred in Minnesota this week are properly a cause for reflection on what might have led to them and what might be done to avoid similar things happening in the future. It is hard to know how to react to such superficial discussions as that which appeared prominently in the New York Times today. On the one hand, journalism is superficiality. The roots of wars are summed up in a few paragraphs precisely because no one has the time to read a book on the background to every media article they see.
On the other hand, sometimes the point is missed to such a degree that it should be the cause of great concern to those who care about where our societies are heading.
After the event, the newspapers can do little but wonder why no one saw the (retrospectively) "obvious warning signs." Of course, if one looks hard enough, one will always conclude that "The clues were all there."
The reason such a treatment is worrying is twofold. Firstly, the isolation, depression, loneliness and general failure to "fit in" experienced by so many (most?) teenagers at one time or another increasingly becomes viewed not as a function of the necessarily difficult process of adjusting to and coping with dramatic changes in ones social environment and physical and psychological state, but as an indicator that someone is so different, so "anti-social," so incompatible with the world around them that they are dangerous, and must be restrained to protect themselves and others.
Of course, there are extreme cases in which this is true, which is why such tragedies happen. But by identifying any behaviour which falls outside the realm of "normality" as a "warning sign" of imminent danger, it is easy to induce such fear - hysteria? paranoia? - among concerned parents that they are moved to monitor every moment of their child's life, every interaction, everything they write, draw and say and to read grave messages in to anything they do not percieve to conform to normal behaviour.
Such a process, I would venture, can be as harmful, on an individual and (perhaps more importantly) collective scale, as total neglect and disinterest.
The second reason we should be worried by such stories is that they limit their enquiry in the strictest terms. For consumers of this kind of journalism, no consideration may be made of the implications of a general pattern of, say, gun violence that indicates far higher levels in the USA than in other societies. Because everything is individualised and personalised, the wider factors which encourage a growing trend of violence are ignored. By this process, there can be no consideration of the possibility that a less invasive concern for adolescents might reduce the overall level of violent crimes. The possibility that socio-cultural developments in a particular society make such tragedies more likely to occur can never be considered within this framework of inquiry.
There is of course, a natural aversion to "letting criminals off the hook" by allowing them that cliched escape-clause "but it's society's fault." This is understandable enough, as designation of responsibility is important, in both moral and social terms. But none of this can mean that if we are interested in reducing the levels of crime we have to suffer (from burglary to terrorist attacks) then it is a good idea to extend our explorations of what causes it as widely as we can, and acting on the results. Nor should we so easily dismiss the possibility that a crime-free world is top of the agenda for those who we entrust to manage our social affairs. Other considerations come in to play, and can only be stopped by close examination of the hierarchies of power, what drives decision-making in society, and demands for radical change if we find (and I have a feeling that most of us will) that we don't like the look of what we uncover.

Hotel Rwanda

When I saw the trailer for this film a couple of months ago, I really expected it to be terrible, ill-informed and exploitative; it appeared to be combining the worst elements of Behind Enemy Lines and Schindler's List. Happily, not so - actually this is a very good film, well worth watching, very good acting and a well told story.
My fear is that people might regard watching it as equally value to reading a book or even watching a documentary about it. The same danger that watching Schindler's List might be mistaken for an understanding of the Nazi Holocaust.
This does not mean of course that these films have no value, but that it is a mistake to think that they are something more than they are.
I was a little disappointed by one of the captions at the end of the film that read "The genocide ended in July 1994, when the Tutsi rebels drove the Hutu army and Interhamwe militia across the border into the Congo." Fine, but how about what happened next?

Cinema can be powerful, intense and moving. But we must see it as a complement to, no subsititute for, more detailed analyses.

Only in Italy

The utterly mindblowing aspect of this story is not betrayed by its headline, which reveals that the Vatican has appointed an "official" Da Vinci Code debunker, but rather that the archbishop in question, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone is "a former football commentator."

Amid the Terri Schiavo-based hullabaloo, one commentary one would not expect to be coming from the American Left suggests that Million Dollar Baby is all a product of Clint Eastwood's disability prejudice, and is helping corrupt society. Abandoning my usual "no enemies to the left" policy, I'm inclined to agree with the comments the author quotes from decidedly moderate New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. I didn't think it was a particularly good film, and as I said previously, don't think it deserved any Oscars, but I certainly didn't find it offensive. Perhaps that reveals sub-concious prejudices I hold towards those with disabilities, but I don't think so; I don't approve of anyone shooting people, or taking heroin, but I'm not offended by Pulp Fiction, and don't feel the story should have been changed to indicate any reluctance on Vincent Vega's (John Travolta's) part to engage in these activities, or to have him suffering from the consequences of engaging in them (he does get shot, but the lesson conveyed by this development is as much "don't leave your handgun on the side in the kitchen while you go to the toilet" as "a life of crime doesn't pay"). To be fair to Davis, at least he isn't trying to censor Million Dollar Baby.

I don't suppose it will come as any great surprise, but I feel I must register my absolute disgust at the fact that the general election campaign is being fought over racial issues this week, with the Tories on the march against Gypsies. We might take comfort from the thought that an election strategy consisting of threats to overturn the Human Rights Act is unlikely to be successful; but by politicising racial issues (especially Gypsies and immigration) the Tories make it politically more risky for the Labour government to address these issues sensibly. Further, when the main opposition party starts off on such rants, racist extremism in political discourse becomes normalised - something which should worry everyone.

And finally, further vindication of my assertions that Iran won't be getting attacked by the hegemon and its junior partner, or even its regional lackey any time soon; Iran, then Syria, now North Korea again. Such incoherent attacks only indicate that the Bush administration isn't sure quite who to hate at the moment. Sanctions will likely have a similar effect as they did in Iraq - strengthen a brutal dictator's hold on power whilst impoverishing an already suffering population. Things don't look bright for the North Koreans, but war does not seem to loom on the horizon either.

Maintaining fear

Al-Qaeda - its leadership under pressure from a Pakistani army keen to find scalps to pass along to the master, its cells in the "West" being hunted by the police - has happily not been heard from for a while. Elements have joined the insurgency in Iraq of course, but that is hardly enough to keep people over here fearing for their lives, and so long as Iraqi - not American or British - soldiers and police are the victims of their despicable acts of terror (car bombs and all the rest of it) it is a matter attracting little attention. Headlines like "Bomb Killls 3 Iraqi Policemen in Procession" are by now so familiar that the only means by which they might induce shock would be by their disappearance. This is handy for those who have an interest in ensuring that headlines like "Insurgency is Fading Fast, Top Marine in Iraq Says" can be taken seriously. Less American troops are dying, the story explains, withuot noting that Iraqi troops have displaced Americans in the firing line, with predictable effects - the Iraqis are dying, not the Americans.
But if the insurgency is fading fast, then by whom are we to be terrified? That all-purpose safety net for stoking up fear in the UK, the IRA. They're coming back, so get frightened, and be sure to vote for the party most likely to save us all with "anti-terror" and "serious organised crime" legislation. Because after all, people protesting in Parliament Square could lead to political awareness. And we really wouldn't want that now, would we?

May possibly raise a smile

With the daily Newsnight email often comes a bad joke. Occasionally they're mildly diverting, even if still pretty awful. Here's todays:

Customer: Worcester sauce crisps please.

Shopkeeper: Sorry, can't, it's off the shelves - cancer scare.

Customer: Oh right, Chinese chicken wings?

Shopkeeper: Ah, that's the same, cancer scare.

Customer: Hamburger Relish?

Shopkeeper: Cancer scare.

Customer: Sausage and mash?

Shopkeeper: Cancer scare.

Customer: Cottage pie?

Shopkeeper: Yes. ...no wait, cancer scare.

Customer: So, they're all off the shelves because of a cancer scare?

Shopkeeper: Yes.

Customer: (Sigh) Just give me a packet of fags then.

Shopkeeper: Certainly. £4.50 please.

SpongeBob SquarePants and life after Pixar

I saw the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie recently, and it got me thinking. It's a truism that The Simpsons popularised mainstream animation that adults could watch too. Part of the show's great appeal was that there really was something for everyone - it could make adults laugh without being "unsuitable" for or unintelligible to children. But making it ok for adults to watch cartoons opened other possibilities and room for more innovation that was not immeadiately explored. South Park was perhaps a natural development - far more cutting edge, although its appeal to kids was in my opinion no smaller than that of The Simpsons; the kids just had to hope their parents weren't watching. But although South Park was far ruder and often much darker than The Simpsons, however inventive it was, and is, it never really stepped outside the boundaries laid down by The Simpsons and its siblings (Futurama, Family Guy etc.).
Adult Swim, I would venture, achieved this move, becoming "cult" rather than mainstream as a result - initially at least; a New York Times feature surely indicates mainstream acceptance. For my money, Adult Swim and its growing popularity is a very welcome development indeed. Its great merit in my view is that it embraces absurdity and doesn't bother too much about convention - deliberately rejecting it at times.
Rejecting convention and exploring what can be done outside of established norms is what drives artistic innovation and in my view not only what keeps art interesting, but what makes is interesting. It also carries great risks though. By refusing to follow "the rules" you take the risk of producing something awful in the hope of producing something spectacular. This is why, in this instance at least, innovation in television (cheap to produce) is feeding in to innovation in cinema (expensive to produce) - specifically, the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, which is absolutely triumphant in incorporating utter absurdity back in to animation that has a direct and primary appeal to kids. This makes for far more enjoyable viewing than what I've seen of Pixar, which for adult-appealing humour offers little beyond slapstick and "witty" referencing (the running joke of Shrek was retelling countless traditional children's stories, but with a donkey...). Pixar is fine for what it is, and the efforts to include "something for adults" do make the films far more watchable for an older audience than the nauseating Disney "classics". But by making a film for children and inserting jokes for their parents, Pixar missed out on a form of humour that appeals to everyone: the absurd. The triumph of SpongeBob SquarePants is that it utilizes absurdity within the context of a children's film, producing something that does not raise a smile, but rather makes you fall out of your seat.
Of course, The Incredibles grossed much higher than SpongeBob, but I very much hope that a precedent has been set, and wouldn't be surprised to find Pixar and others drawing lessons from the film; I certainly hope so.

Wolfowitz to head World Bank

If one had to select two men who exemplify the extremes of the limits of acceptable discourse (the "bounds of the expressible" as Chomsky once put it) in US politics, Joseph Stiglitz (former World Bank chief during Clinton era, now fierce critic of US-led "liberalization" and privatization in developing countries) and Paul Wolfowitz would be ideal candidates. The announcement that President Bush is nominating Wolfowitz to head the World Bank brought a great many questions to mind. One is how on earth the authority to make the appointment got given to the US President in the first place - it was news to me, but perhaps should not be surprising for an organisation in which the US holds a de facto veto on any decisions made (it's 1 dollar, 1 vote).
But a more pressing question, I feel - and harder to answer, for me anyway - is: what does the appointment of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN and of Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank signify for the Bush Administration and the neoconservatives in and around it? Is it part of a strategy to integrate neo-conservative favourites in to the powerful global institutions for ideological reasons, or does it have to do with in-fighting within the administration. In other words, if the US government largely ignores decisions made in the UN and the World Bank, is giving Bolton and Wolfowitz those important-sounding but not-very-influential posts a means by which Condaleeza Rice and her allies can dominate the foreign policy establishment, perhaps other branches of government. I don't know enough about in-fighting in the Bush administration to answer, but if anyone thinks they have an answer, let's hear it!

The real meaning of the Iran warnings

From Seymour Hersh's article on covert operations to openly aggressive rhetoric, the pressure has been on Iran in the last couple of months. But if, as I believe, and attack is highly unlikely, what is the real meaning of it all? A clue, perhaps, from the New York Times.

Films films films

Been watching many lately. Here are my thoughts:
Kinsey isn't as good as everyone says. Million Dollar Baby didn't deserve any oscars (but passes the time) and the central premise of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (ie that all human interaction can be summed up in material posessions) is very disturbing indeed. Interesting kind of film though, and arguably a far more interesting take on amnesia than Memento was. After all, most people fall in love, but only a few are plotting revenge-murders. Not that I want to bash Memento particularly. It was enjoyable enough.

An extended meditation on what the Spongebob Squarepants film tells us about the current state of animation (I think we're on the edge of a post-Pixar cinematic era, or at least I hope we are) will follow when I have a bit more time...

Dylan & Cash

This is very cool indeed. Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash in a 1969 CBS session that was never released. Check it out.

Gmail

If you don't know, Gmail is a free email service from Google that gives you 1GB of storage space and lets you send/recieve 10 MB attatchments. Still in trials, you need to get an "invitation" to get an account. I have 50 invites. If anyone wants one, leave your current email address and I'll send one.

Right-wing maniacs and the sophistry of gastrointestinal health

Well I never thought I'd be writing a post with that as the title, but here we are.
For those of you who are fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with Ann Coulter, she is a "conservative" pundit (or, Right-wing maniac, if you prefer) in the USA with a column syndicated by the United Press Syndicate. I've heard she's supposed to be attractive, but evidence suggests to me that plastic surgery has done her face only slightly less disservice than it did Jacko. If the image in question was merely photo-shopped, we can be sure the IT expert responsible has a pretty good sense of humour.
Anyway, "Editor and Publisher" has a story today concerning the editing of one of her columns by the aforementioned United Press Syndicate. It suggests that a description of a reporter as "that old Arab Helen Thomas" was modified to "that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas" to avoid offending Arabs. This rather confused me. Reporters with indigestion shouldn't be allowed near the president? And should the editors in question have been more careful to avoid offending those who suffer from digestive problems, taking care not to imply that their journalistic capacities might be impaired as a result of this affliction? If the story suggests Coulter may not be responsible for peppering her columns with obscure but erudite language, it also suggests she might not be entirely responsible if they make no sense whatsoever.