A series of vampire novels illuminates the complexities of female adolescent desire.

by Caitlin Flanagan

What Girls Want

Image credit: Adam S. Doyle

Children’s books about divorce—which are unanimously dedicated to bucking up those unfortunate little nippers whose families have gone belly-up—ask a lot of their authors. Their very premise, however laudable, so defies the nature of modern children’s literature (which, since the Victorian age, has centered on a sentimental portrayal of the happy, intact family) that the enterprise seems doomed from the title. Since the 1950s, children have delighted in the Little Bear books (Mother Bear: “I never did forget your birthday, and I never will”)—but who wants to find a copy of Cornelia Maude Spelman’s Mama and Daddy Bear’s Divorce wedged onto the shelf? Still, the volumes fill a need: helping children understand that life on the other side of the custody hearing can still be happy and hopeful, that a broken family is not a ruined one.

But pick up a novel written for adolescents in which the main character is a child of divorce, and you’re in very different waters. Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence. It also means that the protagonists must confront the sexuality of their parents at the moment they least want to think about such realities. It introduces into a household the adult passions and jealousies that have long gone to ground in most middle-aged parents, a state of affairs that is particularly difficult for girls, who have a more complicated attitude toward their own emerging sexuality than do boys, and who are far more rooted in the domestic routines and traditions of their families, which constitute the vital link between the sweet cocooning of childhood and their impending departure from it.

Who is responsible for the past eight years of dismal American governance? “George W. Bush” is a decent answer. But we should reserve some blame for the Founding Fathers, who created a presidential office that is ill-considered, vaguely defined, and ripe for abuse. Here’s how to fix what the Founders got wrong—before the next G. W. Bush enters the Oval Office.

by Garrett Epps

The Founders’ Great Mistake

Illustration by Steve Brodner

For the past eight years, George W. Bush has treated the White House much as Kenneth Grahame’s Mr. Toad treated a new automobile—like a shiny toy to be wrecked by racing the motor, spinning smoke from the tires, and smashing through farmyards until the wheels come off. Bush got to the Oval Office despite having lost the popular vote, and he governed with a fine disdain for democratic and legal norms—stonewalling congressional oversight; detaining foreigners and U.S. citizens on his “inherent authority”; using the Justice Department as a political cudgel; ordering officials to ignore statutes and treaties that he found inconvenient; and persisting in actions, such as the Iraq War, that had come to be deeply unpopular in Congress and on Main Street.

Understandably, most Americans today are primarily concerned with whether Barack Obama can clean up Bush’s mess. But as Bush leaves the White House, it’s worth asking why he was able to behave so badly for so long without being stopped by the Constitution’s famous “checks and balances.” Some of the problems with the Bush administration, in fact, have their source not in Bush’s leadership style but in the constitutional design of the presidency. Unless these problems are fixed, it will only be a matter of time before another hot-rodder gets hold of the keys and damages the country further.

The historian Jack N. Rakove has written, “The creation of the presidency was [the Framers’] most creative act.” That may be true, but it wasn’t their best work. The Framers were designing something the modern world had never seen—a republican chief executive who would owe his power to the people rather than to heredity or brute force. The wonder is not that they got so much wrong, but that they got anything right at all.

According to James Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, the executive received surprisingly little attention at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Debate over the creation and workings of the new Congress was long and lively; the presidency, by contrast, was fashioned relatively quickly, after considerably less discussion. One important reason for the delegates’ reticence was that George Washington, the most admired man in the world at that time, was the convention’s president. Every delegate knew that Washington would, if he chose, be the first president of the new federal government—and that the new government itself would likely fail without Washington at the helm. To express too much fear of executive authority might have seemed disrespectful to the man for whom the office was being tailored.

Washington’s force of personality terrified almost all of his contemporaries, and although he said little as presiding officer, he was not always quiet. Once, when an unknown delegate left a copy of some proposed provisions lying around, Washington scolded the delegates like a headmaster reproving careless prep-schoolers, and then left the document on a table, saying, “Let him who owns it take it.” No one did.

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Amusing article about Apostrophes in street sign:

Pedants' Revolt Over Street Signs
11:19am UK, Friday January 30, 2009
A local authority has caused a storm of protest - by dropping apostrophes from its road and street signs.
 
St Paul's Square before and after the apostrophe

It means St Paul's Square in Birmingham is now St Pauls Square, while Druids Heath remains Druids Heath. The City Council took the decision to biff possessive apostrophes after years of debate. It says it is to achieve consistency across the town and save money. Adding apostophes to all the signs that did not have them would have cost a fortune. The council also claims it will help emergency services who rely on satellite navigation to find addresses quickly.

It sets children a terrible example, especially when schools are doing their best to help improve grammatical standards.
Nick Seaton, Campaign for Real Education

Liberal Democrat councillor Martin Mullaney, the man behind the change, said: "I know I am opening up a can of worms. "But we have to make a decision. Either we reintroduce the apostrophe across the whole city or we don't." Campaigners have accused Birmingham Council of "dumbing down" and "absolute defeatism".

John Richards, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, said: "If you don't have apostrophes, is there any point in full stops, semi-colons or question marks?"
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "It sets children a terrible example, especially when schools are doing their best to help improve grammatical standards."

But the Plain English Society says there is no rule in Britain with regard to possessive apostrophes in place names.

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The invention of Globish and the french elitism:

New lingua franca upsets French

That the French resent the global supremacy of the English language is nothing new, but as Hugh Schofield finds out, a newly evolved business-speak version is taking over.

They were giving out the annual Prix de la Carpette Anglaise the other day. Literally it means the English Rug Prize, but doormat would be the better translation.
 
Quelle horreur! Lord Nelson is the inspiration for a French rock band

As the citation explains, the award goes to the French person or institution who has given the best display of "fawning servility" to further the insinuation into France of the accursed English language.

Among the runners-up this year: the supermarket company Carrefour ­which changed the name of its Champion chain of stores to Carrefour Market, not using the French word "marche".

Also the provocatively-named Paris band Nelson (it is the Admiral, not Mr Mandela, that they have in mind) whose frontman J.B. sings in English because, he says, French does not have the right cadences for true rock.

Worst offender

But topping the poll for grave disservices to the mother tongue is France's higher education minister, Valerie Pecresse.
 
Valerie Pecresse has decided if you cannot beat then, join them

Her crime: proclaiming to the press that she had no intention of speaking French when attending European meetings in Brussels, because, she said, it was quite obvious that English was now the easiest mode of communication.

The rise and rise of the English language is a sensitive subject for many here in France, who believe that French has every bit as much right to be considered a global tongue.

Even conceding to English victory in the war for linguistic supremacy, the French believe that the least they can do is defend their own territory and keep the ghastly invader at a decent remove.

 Personally, I sympathise greatly with defenders of the French language

The same group that sponsors the Prix de la Carpette also brings legal actions against companies that, it says, breach the law, for example, by not issuing French language versions of instructions to staff.  I think it is true that culturally the world will be diminished if one monolithic form of discourse squashes the rest. But then I am also a realist.  Recently I have spent a lot of time in French multinational companies, and what is inescapable is the stranglehold that English already has on the world of business here. French executives draft reports, send e-mails, converse with their international colleagues - and increasingly even amongst themselves - in English.

It is of course a kind of bastardised, runty form of business-speak full of words like "drivers" and "deliverables" and "outcomes" to be "valorised", but is nonetheless quite definitely not French.

New language

This brings me to Jean-Paul Nerriere.

Monsieur Nerriere is a retired French businessman who one day in the course of his work made a fascinating observation.

In a meeting with colleagues from around the world, including an Englishman, a Korean and a Brazilian, he noticed that he and the other non-native English speakers were communicating in a form of English that was completely comprehensible to them, but which left the Englishman nonplussed.

He, Jean-Paul Nerriere, could talk to the Korean and the Brazilian in this neo-language, and they could understand each other perfectly.

But the Englishman was left out because his language was too subtle, too full of meaning that could not be grasped by the others.
In other words, Monsieur Nerriere concluded, a new form of English is developing around the world, used by people for whom it is their second language.

It may not be the most beautiful of tongues, but in this day and age he says it is indispensible. He calls the language Globish and urges everyone - above all the French - to learn it tout de suite.

In his book Don't Speak English, Parlez Globish, Monsieur Nerriere sets out the rules. 
 
Globish has only 1,500 words and users must avoid humour, metaphor, abbreviation and anything else that can cause cross-cultural confusion.

They must speak slowly and in short sentences. Funnily enough, he holds up the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as an excellent exponent.

Many in France consider Monsieur Nerriere a traitor for promoting the dreaded Anglais, but he insists he is not.

He says the French have to recognise that the language war is lost.

"We're just urinating on the ashes of the fire," he says. We should look on Globish not as a triumphant cultural vehicle for les Anglo-Saxons, but as a tool, he says: essential but purely utilitarian.

For lovers of English there is another consideration, only half-serious I admit. But what if this were all a devious Gallic plot?

After all, if Globish really does take over the planet with its stunted business-speak, its bland insignificance, its cultureless access-for-all availability, then where does that leave the real English?

Will the language of Shakespeare suffer by association, leaving the field open one day for the resurgence of the other great tongues of the world ? Like French?

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 Guardian Interview with Jack Bauer, very interesting !

One hour with Kiefer Sutherland
'I haven't seen an average citizen watch 24 and have an uncontrollable urge to torture someone'

Decca Aitkenhead
The Guardian, Monday 2 February 2009

Sitting in the lobby after the interview, I look up and see that a man has stopped on his way out. "Thank you," he's saying to me, "thanks for coming by, it was good to meet you." I wonder what this stranger is talking about. Then I realise who it is. Kiefer Sutherland looks in real life so commonplace, so unlike a movie star, that it's possible not to recognise him only minutes after spending an hour in a hotel suite with him.

This must be a testament to his acting skills, because the face of Special Agent Jack Bauer is indelibly recognisable to millions of 24 fans all over the world. Like James Bond or Jason Bourne, Bauer has become less a role than a global phenomenon, a hero to everyone from Bill Clinton to Karl Rove - his popularity as inexhaustible as his ability to save America from ever more audacious terror plots. The drama series set in a fictional counter-terrorism unit screens on 236 channels to 100 million viewers worldwide. It has won Sutherland an Emmy nomination for every one of its six series to date, and made him the most highly paid television actor in the world.

The show was devised a year before 9/11, but the uncanny prescience of its plotlines foretold the Bush administration's war on terror. "Whatever it takes" is Bauer's gravelly motto - and what it takes on 24 can be highly violent, illegal and frequently involve torture. Why so many fans are in love with a man who tortures people is perhaps a disturbing puzzle - but not as troubling as the question that has dogged Sutherland and 24's creators for the last 18 months. Is admiration for Bauer confined to the escapism of make-believe - or has it had an impact on public opinion and military strategy in the real world?

"What Jack Bauer does is all in the context of a television show," Sutherland begins, very slowly and deliberately, in the grainy register of a heavy smoker. He looks unexpectedly slight, and a little tired, but his engagement is direct and considered. "I always have to remind people of this. We're making a television programme. We're utilising certain devices for drama. And it's good drama. And I love this drama! As an actor I have had an absolute blast doing it. You sit in a room and put a gun to a guy's knee and say, 'Tell me!' Oh, you feel so amazing after that!

"But I know it's not real. The other actor certainly knows it's not real. And up until a year ago, everybody else knew it wasn't real."

In 2007 it was reported that a delegation from West Point had visited the set of 24 to tell producers that their portrayal of torture was seriously affecting military training. Cadets love 24, a general explained, "and they say, 'If torture is wrong, what about 24?'" A former US army interrogator told them he'd seen soldiers in Iraq "watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they've just seen". Their claims were corroborated by a book last year by Philippe Sands about interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay, in which military officials cited 24 as an inspiration for early "brainstorming meetings". Bauer, one officer admitted, "gave people a lot of ideas".

Sutherland is a Democrat and says he longs for the day when Bauer's interrogation techniques "go back to being a figment of someone's imagination, as opposed to mirroring things that are in fact happening across the world". Authenticity, however, has always been central to 24's appeal. Just a week before President Obama announced that he was going to close Guantánamo Bay, the latest series opened with the counter-terrorism unit disbanded, and Bauer facing indictment for torture. "The world is changing," Sutherland smiles, "and season seven deals with that. It deals with Jack Bauer in a world that's changing where he is obsolete."

But the charge is that life has been imitating art, mirroring what it saw on 24. When I put it to Sutherland, the smile quickly thins, and he begins to look annoyed.
"First off, I'm just going to tell you outright, the problem is not 24. To try and correlate from what's happening on a television show to what the military is doing in the real world, I think that's ridiculous." Does he mean he doesn't believe the reports of 24's influence? "Well I haven't read all those reports. But if that's actually happening, then the problem that you have in the US military is massive. If your ethics in the military, in your training, is going to be counterminded by a one-hour weekly television show we've got a really big problem." His growl grows heavy with contempt. "If you can't tell the difference between reality and what's happening on a made-up TV show, and you're correlating that back to how to do your job in the real world, that's a big, big problem."

Although an executive producer, Sutherland didn't attend the meeting with the West Point delegation, but the generals reported talking to him briefly afterwards, and said he'd admitted the show's "unintended consequences" worried him. "Absolute bullshit," Sutherland insists. "Absolutely. I declined to meet them because I found it to be so deeply manipulative. When the entire country was looking at the US military's behaviour in places like Abu Ghraib, I found that whole thing was a real effort to slide the blame on to something else, and I wasn't going to be a part of it."

If the US army is using Bauer as an excuse for abuse, Sutherland's indignation is understandable. But if, I ask, 24's influence were demonstrably proven, would he then feel any obligation for the show to modify its depiction of torture?

"No," he says flatly. "24 and 20th Century Fox and Sky TV are not responsible for training the US military. It is not our job to do. To me this is almost as absurd as saying The Sopranos supports the mafia and by virtue of that HBO supports the mafia. Or that, you know, Sex and the City is just saying 'everybody should sleep together now'." He looks increasingly exasperated. "I have never seen anyone - and I really do not believe this - I have not seen an average citizen in the US or anywhere else who has watched an hour of 24 and after watching was struck by this uncontrollable urge to go out and torture someone. It's ludicrous.
"So when I put it like that, do you understand?"

Actually, when he puts it like that, I think he's being a little disingenuous. Sutherland is too intelligent not to know that television's influence can be more subtle than that. 24's creator, Joel Surnow, who has described himself as a "rightwing nut job", has certainly given the impression of being not unhappy if 24 impacts on public opinion, saying: "America wants the war on terror fought by Jack Bauer. He's a patriot." The Fox executive who bought the show has said candidly, "There's definitely a political attitude on the show, which is that extreme measures are sometimes necessary for the greater good. Joel's politics suffuse the whole show." The essential message of 24 is not just that torture can be morally justifiable, but, more importantly, that it works. And in the absence of other more accurate sources of information in American popular culture, it's hardly surprising if the viewing public believes it.

Sutherland repeatedly invokes the phrase "in the context of a television programme", and stresses, "this is a drama", but there are moments when exactly who is confusing TV and reality is unclear. "Jack Bauer," he asserts, "is to me an apolitical character." Really? "Well, can you tell me if Jack Bauer is a Democrat or a Republican?" I would say he's clearly a Republican. "Absolutely not!" Sutherland flashes back triumphantly. "Not a chance." Why not? "Because I'm not a Republican, and I created the character." If Bauer is supposed to be pure make-believe, then surely Sutherland's personal politics are beside the point? I get the impression that the only really consistent thread in the logic of his defence of 24 might be an intellectual motto of "Whatever it takes".

But when he talks with tender affection for his character, even quoting Chekhov at one point, I wonder if I'd half forgotten myself that Sutherland isn't a Pentagon official, or a politician, but an actor. He has nothing to do with writing 24, and for a Hollywood star his patience in the face of charges he considers absurd is remarkable. He has an unusual quality of respectful humility, and perhaps his loyalty is understandable. For it is fair to say that Sutherland owes almost everything he has today to Jack Bauer.

When 24 first screened in 2001, Sutherland was a fading bratpack name, whose fame had been eroding since the 80s on the familiar rocks of tabloid mayhem and terrible film choices. A marriage to Julia Roberts, his co-star in the unacclaimed Flatliners, was called off at the last minute in 1991 when she eloped to Europe with his best friend. By 1994 Sutherland had accumulated a string of flops, a reputation for womanising, a weakness for wild living, and 140 stitches in his head from barfights. He quit Hollywood, and went to live on a Californian ranch as a rodeo rider.

"With regards to the dips that I've taken, I think the one time that saved my life was when I went and did the rodeo. I realised that if I did something else that wasn't going to be good - and I wasn't getting offered things I liked - well, if I was to do another one of those . . ." He lets the sentence fall away.

Sutherland likes to say he has lived his life backwards, and there is some truth in that, for his youth had been precociously responsible. He was born in 1966 in London, the son of Canadian actors Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas, but his parents divorced when he was four and he grew up in Toronto with his mother. At 15 he left home to star in Bay Boy, which won him a nomination for Canada's equivalent of an Oscar, and he had made Stand By Me, The Lost Boys and Young Guns by the age of 21. By then he was already married, with a daughter, Sarah Jude, named after his friend Sarah Jessica Parker.

The marriage didn't last, though, and nor did his second in 1996 to a Canadian former model. In 2000 he returned to Hollywood from his ranch to shoot a pilot for a new show he doubted anyone would buy. "I loved 24, but I didn't think anyone else would. I had absolutely no idea."

Restored by 24 to the Hollywood stratosphere, I wonder whether the pleasure today of uber-movie star treatment is enhanced or inhibited by his experience in the industry's wilderness. "I would have to say," he grins, "it enhances it. I'm not sure I even know what uber-star treatment really is, but I certainly know the difference between being able to get a film with a certain director and not being able to get a film with a certain director 10 years ago." The memory of unanswered calls doesn't rankle? He smiles gently, shaking his head. "No, there's no resentment. Just absolute relief, and thank you for the opportunity, absolutely."

Sutherland has made more than a dozen films since beginning 24, although it must be said that his choice of scripts hasn't improved much, for only one - Phone Booth - has detained the critics' attention. He lives alone in Los Angeles with a collection of vintage guitars, working 14-hour days on 24 for 10 months of the year, and has kept out of trouble since a drink-driving conviction saw him spend the Christmas before last in prison. He was already on probation for an earlier drink-driving offence, and doesn't want to talk about the 48 days he spent in jail. But when I ask him whether he thinks acting tends to attract self-destructive hedonists, or create them, he doesn't hesitate to answer.

"I've certainly always been of the view that it attracts those people. The heroes for me were Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris - extraordinary actors, and extraordinary characters. And they were pushing the barriers of their own lives too, for whatever reasons they wanted. They were just great, I loved their stories, I loved all of that about them. But then, I also think there's a balance. Jimmy Stewart is one of my favourite actors, Tom Hanks is one of my favourite actors." He pauses for a second. Then he adds, not with the coy timing of a faux apologetic naughty boy, but with disarming honesty, "But I think Colin Farrell's funny, you know?"
If Sutherland's life is quieter these days, Bauer's is also changing. Although Sutherland resents the controversy surrounding his character, he seems pleased - possibly even relieved - to see the latest series address it.

"Jack Bauer is in a place right now of terrible questioning of all of the stuff that he's done, and that is obviously informed by a lot of things surrounding the show that had nothing to do with us. And the debate which occurs through all 24 episodes, until Jack Bauer finds some resolution for himself, is: 'I'm the guy who will do whatever it takes to save those 45 people on the bus from terrorists. And in the back of my mind I also know that upholding the laws of this land has to be more important than the 45 people on the bus. But I just can't do it. So maybe I'm not the guy to be doing this.' "He's in a terrible moral dilemma about the things that he's done. And I found it heartbreaking."

Does he ever, I ask, think the things Bauer has done are all right? Sutherland stares at me, a cartoon of astonishment.

"Absolutely not!" he exclaims. "Are you kidding me? No! Absolutely not, God no. Be really clear about that." He laughs. "Oh. My. God. NO."