Archiv der Kategorie: almost a diary

almost a diary, compulsory reading

Alice S.

Well, I suppose it had to happen one day. And when it happened, it was not quite like you imagined it would be – sound familiar? Well, I am of course talking about meeting Alice Schwarzer, one of Simone de Beauvoir’s “groupies” and the best known German feminist.

I am quite certain that today’s event about the “Islamic headscarf as a system [of oppression]” was as much a marketing event for her feminist magazine, EMMA, as it was aggressive, intellectually, as well as personally disappointing. Details to follow – probably on afoe. Let me just say for the minute that Frau Schwarzer’s rather conciliatory television appearances of late are – and I think I can fairly judge that from having attended said talk – are not what the woman is still about. She’s still entirely immersed in the strange mythology that is radical feminism, and everyting she says has to be interpreted from this very narrow point of view.

Moreover, gentle readers, should ever encounter a feminist claiming that language is subtly biased towards the suppression of women, tell her that Ms Schwarzer’s language, including the assertion that women wearing the tchador “are not really human”, made several of the initially present veiled women leave in anger. Not that some of their statements were much less aggressive, yet it was Ms Schwarzer who pointed out that condescension has no place in this debate. When I called her on it, she simply said it was “self explanatory sarcasm.”

Well, not too self-explanatory, apparently. In general, the debate – organised by a group of Iranian exiles – revealed the political salience of the hijab issue in all possible dimensions. Sadly, for an issue that is so close to female sexuality, all that German feminism appears to have to offer are recylced labels.

Sorry mum, I know you like her, but I’m beginning to think Ms Schwarzer is one of them.

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almost a diary, oddly enough

Dis-Gus-Ting

Well, tomorrow I’m going to attend a little talk and discussion about the hijab with Germany’s most prominent feminista, Alica Schwarzer. So I’ve been reading up a little on the web about her and the history of feminism, and feminist positions on a variety of things… so – click, click, click – I find myself on the English wikipedia page on prostitution where I was stunned to read the following about certain oral under-the-table services apparently included with the price of a drink (sic!) in certain Thai clubs –

“To not make a mess, it is common that the bars require the women to swallow the sperm. It is also not uncommon for the women not to eat before coming to work on an expected busy night and expecting to be full by the end of that night on sperm alone.”

Quite frankly, there are a lot of disgusting things that can be done by consenting adults (assuming for the time being that’s what the article was in reference to) – but … ewww. I am at loss for words. Dis-gus-ting.

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almost a diary, Iraq

A little disappointment.

Did you know that, on average, it takes ten new year’s resolutions until there is even a small effect in the direction of one of them? That could be a good excuse for not posting my song tonight, but, gentle readers, I will be honest with you: I was not yet able to get it into streaming format. So you will have to bear with me and my computer for a day or so.

Not being able to present you with my musical commentary on the current American Commander in Chief is particularly unfortunate as there are new readers who have been told by a web special of the PBS foreign affairs news programme Frontline World that my blog is focusing on the US and the American elections from a German point of view.

The latter is certainly correct, I am always presenting a German point of view, which is inevitable given that I am German. I would, however, like to emphasize that it is highly unlikely that my view will actually be reflected or even taken into account by those who determine “the” German point of view, aka the German government’s foreign policy – after all, both of us, Germany and me, are entitled to our proper opinion.

With respect to the “American” focus, well, I certainly tried to put in prespective some of the political rethoric that created the alleged rift through “the West”. The rift in through the West is, in essence, a rift through the US, actually one that goes right through the Republican party along the authoritarian/libertarian axis. However, given the particularities of the American electoral math and political system the rift tends to be pronounced rather than bridged. America is a big country, some of whose regions are (for the better or worse) at the leading edge of human/technological development while others still seem to be premodern. A country where it is illegal to sell “neck-massagers” in Alabama while thousands of people gather annully for a masturbate-athon in San Francisco.

It is these differences that usually fall between the cracks of news coverage that tends to focus on labels and statements rather than fundamentals and processes. However, I wrote most of my “corrections” in 2003. So feel free to browse the archives until I present you with GW’s Blues.

And while you’re waiting, gentle new readers, why don’t you head over to afoe – a group blog focusing on European affairs, of which I am a proud (though currently rather silent) contributor.

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almost a diary, songwriting, US Politics

Mary Hodder is right

to state that not all blogs that are inactive are abandoned.

Take this one for example. See, I haven’t updated my proto diary for a month now and not even written anything over on afoe but that doesn’t imply I have given up blogging much as I haven’t stopped reading in the meantime.

I have taken breaks from blogging before over the last two years (although I have to agree that the inactive intervals have become more frequent) and I am rather sure I will do so again in the future.

However – and I am saying this particularly to the handful of faithful readers of my personal blog – should I ever stop writing here for good, I would certainly inform you about it.

And thus, gentle readers, begins the third year in the young and exciting life of www.almostadiary.de. I’m starting off with a teaser… tomorrow I will regale you with a rough pre-demo of a little song I’ve written about a certain guy from Texas whose analytical skills have already been the subject of a certain number of posts on this blog. Until then, if you haven’t yet, please go and watch this clip about rural campaigning in the US, brought to you by the only reliable US news source, Comedy Central’s Daily Show with John Stewart…

Oh, and this is what I wrote two years ago, on August 19, 2002:

Is the bottom line really chapter 32, in part VIII of volume one?

Oxford’s Niall Ferguson thinks that Marx’s thoughts about crisis prone capitalism should be given more attention in light of the not so recently past days of “CEOcracy” and increased income inequality in the US. But today, Ferguson claims, the class struggle is not waged between workers and owners but between ordinary shareholders and their CEO and controlling oligarchs, so the Marxian acculmulation theory could have a point. In the end, he somewhat loses track and the article becomes more of a summary of recent estimates of American growth prospects. And he never tells us what the consequences could be if the analogy were correct.

But anyway. Could it be true? Could Marx be headed for big comeback in the digital age? I am very sceptical. Alhtough I do think that he has created a scary seductive beast whose feared return will likely scare this planet for some decades to come.

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almost a diary, media, photoblogging

Maillot Jaune

Alright, it was a strange thing to do on a Sunday – get up at seven in the morning only to make a fool of oneself in a strangely popular “family oriented” tv programme – the “ZDF Fernsehgarten” (literally “tv garden”).

The Fernsehgarten is a show that has been running for 19 years, essentially without any format changes, and it is thus one of the very few programmes to weather the effect of audience fragmentation. They still show it all: In today’s show there was the latest German Idol, Dante Thomas (Miss California), Luka, a Brazilian singer who had a surprise hit single last year, and whose manager and I somehow thought we attended the same party on New Year’s Eve 1999, as well as Kristina Bach, a German Schlager singer, Riverdance, and an army big band. Maybe that is all just fine – given that Sunday morning may well be the only time that families are having a relaxed breakfast together. Therefore, on any given Sunday between May and September about two million people switch the telly on to watch Andrea Kiewel announce a line up very similar to the one above.

The key to understanding today’s show’s theme was the current major sports event on this continent, Le Tour de France. Given the now epic struggle between Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich for the Maillot Jaune, the show’s producers deemed it appropriate to organise a tribute by having their very own “Tour de Fernsehgarten”.

As usual with these things, the casting process was a bit more more random than anyone would imagine, and so it came that I wound up as part of the “Team Ullrich” in this Sunday’s show.

Maybe it bodes well for Mr Ullrich that we beat the team Armstrong by a margin of 300m over a distance of almost 55km. So, courtesy of the ZDF web site, I present you with a few photos of my Sunday morning effort…

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