Fuggedaboudid
From tonight's running order:
"America is witnessing its biggest mafia trial for several years. 78 year old Joey 'the clown' Lombardo and several other elderly men stand accused of a lifetime of mob-related violence and crime. There's huge media interest in the trial. And it comes hard on the heels of the last episode of the phenomenally successful 'Sopranos' being shown on US TV. So what lies behind the enduring fascination of the mafia - in real life and in fiction.
Nils Blythe will report from Chicago - and here are some of the people he met:
"This is a picture of a young Joseph Lombardo in 1954. He's now a frail 78 year-old on trial in Chicago"
"Jim Wagner is President of the Chicago Crime Commission and has spent many years fighting organized crime"
"The Untouchable Tours of Chicago during Al Capone's era still draw in the crowds. Tour guides "Southside" and "Porkchops"."
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Southside and Porkchops? It looks more like DIWyman and Humph to me! ;o)
So, as we're talking about "organised crime" what we're really saying is little has changed...
This from Melvyn Bragg's newsletter today:
"Also in 1912 the English had a magnificent war plan
to mobilise the American Indians to rise up against the Americans, particularly in the Chicago area, while the navy took over the ports. It gets more and more wonderful. In 1930 the Americans had war
plans against the British Navy in the Far East..."
I see from your "what am I doing" box on the blog that you say you've "Just done the archbishop..."
I wonder, would you care to give us further and better particulars..?
Piper @ 3, looks a bit Bath-and-Wellsish to me, from the photograph.
Feeling very uncomfortable about this -- glamour and violence should never be part of the same sentence. Oh.
I've never seen The Sopranos. Or the Godfather films either. Do you mind if I switch off when this report comes on?
Fugged?
Is this something to do with Mohamed Fayed?
Si.
Appy, do you want to join me at the NCMB when this item's on? Like you, I've never watched The Godfather, The Sopranos, etc...
Gillian (1)
hee hee haa haa LVOL...
.........and thanks for the Vicky sandwich!!....
......yer igloo or mine?...
Piper (3)
You have to log in to see more - (I presume)
"Just done the Archbishop. He's in Hull. Said only journalists had asked him about acts of God"
Appy;
Tim Page is a British former war photographer who operated during the Vietnam War. He was terribly wounded and had to have extensive neurosurgery, from which he made an almost-full recovery.
Some anti-war protestors approached him thinking that, because of his experiences, he'd give them plenty of support. Specifically they wanted to 'take the glamour out of war'.
They left chastened, with their tails between their legs when he replied "Take the glory out of war? Ohhh, you can't do THAT!! and proceded to bleed their ears for a few minutes on why war IS glamorous.
There is a certain point of view that one is never so much alive as when one is close to imminent and violent death, challenging oneself not to run away. It was reported by many ex-Servicemen after WW2 that life in Civvy Street was drab and tedious by comparison. Whilst none of them relished the death and maiming of friends they found a strong bond, a fierce brotherhood even, in which each sustained the others through the worst times of their lives. A bond which most of them never found again in their lives.
Many of them did not fight for King and Country or some abstract notions of England/Britain and the Empire. They fought for each other and ultimately for themselves.
War is no doubt repugnant to those who have seen it. As Sherman said "War is Hell". But it is glamorous for some people. There is no denying it.
Si.
"Just done the Archbishop".
Oooh, isn't he bold!
I just hope that he didn't take the opportunity to attack the cleric. 'Cause that would have meant 'Bashing the Bishop....'
Any more of this and I'll be on the Naughty Step.
Si.
What sort of acts has YWHW been getting up to? Anything 'un-natural'?
xx
ed
jonnie (9)..
Archbishop ......Hull....is that Prescotty??
Bath & Wells...now yer talkin....all robes and sheep and fings.....nice chap....
...hee hee innit?
for those of you who haven't seen The Godfather films, you have missed two classics and one not quite so good film. My husband will never watch them because he says they are too vilent, but my counter to that is that they are not ABOUT violence, they are about how people get trapped in a tradition that they want out of beaus eof all sorts of obligations and how this is a slow corruption. Plus great direction, great score, great cinematography and more than a handful of classic performances.
On the subject of films we went to see Pireates of the caribbean 3 on Wednesday, end of term treat for teenage son, and I was very disappointed.
Si, I know I've asked you, but here goes again:
Have you recently been to the Himalayas?
Re Gillian (1) I hope that you do not think that we, DI and me, have been using our real names whilst posting on the Frog. We could tell you our real names, but then we would have to kill you. Well one of us would, anyway. I could kill you but DI is much better at it. He seems to get more fun out of that sort of thing. Be warned!
H.
Thanks for the warning, Humph. I may not be around for a while, folks....it seems there's a price on my head.....I'll go and hide amongst some very old people. That'll scare them off! ;o(
Fearless (7), sorry I missed that earlier. I'll stand you a large one now if you like?
Si (10), Horrible, horrible, horrible. I would be more articulate but I have had many cocktails, and, frankly, I don't want to. A sense of being alive due the adrenalin rush caused by the fear of death may be undeniable, and brotherhood may be one of the few postive things to come out of war, but neither is anything to do with glamour. What horrible things you write sometimes.
Push and be damned!
I replied to you last night Si (10), but it seems to have been moderated. I had drunk several cocktails but there was no swearing or suchlike, honest. I'm not going to reproduce it -- basically I don't think that the things you talk about are anything to do with glamour and I didn't like reading your post :-(
Aperitif, Si's post is not comfortable reading but it is probably an accurate picture of human behaviour, especially young-men behaviour, for a reason he doesn't actually give.
Any branch of the Forces is a sort of family group (Si used the word "brotherhood"), and when people leave it they miss it. The association of fighting and family is an unfortunate side-effect that leads to "the war (my time in the Services/family) was the best time of my life" syndrome.
The species evolved with risk to self for the good of the tribe as a factor, and the young males, being let's face it the most expendable members of a tribal group as well as the most physically strong, were always the ones who were gathered into a hunting or fighting gang and encouraged to go and do the dangerous stuff so that the females (needed for breeding) and the elders (needed for experience and/or "wisdom") didn't have to and the infants were protected and fed. If they aren't given anything else to do, young males still get together in gangs and bond like anything on street corners or the equivalent. Given half an excuse, they are going to bond for aggressive purposes, or at least for fighting, which may be defensive as well. (Hunting mostly isn't an option any more.)
In evolutionary terms, the ones who were good at the fighting-and-hunting would be the ones the young females wanted to breed with, because a good hunter-and-fighter would be a good father to have around for one's young, to feed and protect them. Likewise, the ones who were not good at the hunting-and-fighting wouldn't survive to breed, like as not. So the hunting-and-fighting genes survived where the anything-for-a-quiet-life ones didn't get as much of a chance.
Humans as a species are a sort of quasi-pack animal, tending to mob behaviour if they get rattled. We have a veneer of civilisation on top, but underneath ... well, look at the footage of the mobs who are hunting a paedophile.
Si is right: if it is channelled, it has enormous appeal and gives enormous support, and it does have glamour. The approval of one's fellows and the admiration of potential mates *is* glamourous. Glamour properly means a spell, an illusion, a delusion of importance, and is an unreal magic that doesn't hold up in ordinary circumstances, but it's a very sweet one while it lasts.
I don't have to like it, and I don't, but it's there.
All,
It might be worth mentioning that groups like the Masons, Shriners, Roundtable, Lions, etc., all are positive uses of this phenomenon in more mature men, channelling the energy into good works and community benefit.
And, for such as Wonko and I, organisations which try to provide useful, helpful, outdoor activities for young folk in the adolescent/young adult phase.
Among the groups making use of our community wood facilities are the Sea cadets and Army Cadets, welcomed even by us pacifists.
xx
ed
Ed @ 22, yes, indeed, and a good thing too.
I'm not convinced that the groups you name have the glamour element, though. That does seem to go along with a risk-of-life factor. Motor-racing clubs, dangerous sports clubs in general, the police and fire service, and others in which there is an oooh-isn't-he-brave thing going, have a glamour that somehow the Boy Scout Organisation lacks.... The human passion for in-groups with small private languages or "passwords" not known to those outside the group, and a sense of togetherness and common purpose, isn't confined to males, either: who outside the Women's Institute can truly comprehend the importance and Inwardness of Home Made Jam? (Presumably that's a left-over from the Gatherer side of Hunter-Gatherer society.)
Most people in a sane society do grow out of a preoccupation with violence, just as most people grow out of a preoccupation with sex, though in some cases either may take seventy years. I don't feel sure that anyone ever does grow out of the yearning to belong to a select group. Nor out of a sort of incoherent resentment if they feel they are being Excluded.
Chris - For someone who can talk a lot of sense at times, you ain't half good at coming out with a load of twaddle as well. Aperitif is perfectly capable of speaking for herself but as I understand it, her original objection was to associating violence with glamour.
The brotherhood, comradeship, hardships, danger and adventure that servicemen share and that Si talked about is totally understandable and quite well documented. I think he and you make a mighty big and totally unjustified jump from that fact, to identifying violence as glamorous.
I鈥檓 not sure what your meanderings on hunter/fighter and breeding was meant to prove and in any case I regard your evolutionary reasoning to be pretty dodgy. Being identified as a 鈥済ood mate鈥 is a much more complex subject than simply displaying how good a hunter/fighter one is.
I think you have either violence or glamour (or maybe both) defined in a different way to my understanding of the words.
Chris (21), I don't know why Si addressed his post to me in the first place -- I only said that violence and glamour shouldn't be in the same sentence, not that I thought they never were! I don't why why I replied either -- cocktails I suppose. And now you're pitching in with your, frankly, patronising explanantions about why young men behave the way they do (No! D'ya think???)
I don't agree with your definition of glamour.
And I think behaviour such as you describe is to be tackled rather than accepted.
Ah, posted my post at 25, and now I can see RJD's at 26, which makes much more sense than mine. Read that instead please!
Goodness me I'm all over the place tonight!
Just to be clear: Because I'd left my screen on for ages, when I posted my post at 25, the last thing I could see was Chris at 21. Since I posted Ed's 22, Chris' 23 and RJD's 24 have appeared. Ed's strikes positive note, and RJD's 24 makes much more sense than my 25!
I think I'll get me coat :-/
I just wanted to note that in p.c. human ecology society, it's now "gatherer/hunter", recognising that the women always do/did the bulk of the work while the men sat around drinking or smoking herbal delights and talking about maybe going hunting....
Nighty night.
ed
glamour noun 1 the quality of being fascinatingly, if perhaps falsely, attractive. 2 great beauty or sexual charm, especially when created by make-up, clothes, etc.
ETYMOLOGY: 18c Scots variant of gramarye, an older variant of grammar, meaning 'a spell', from the medieval association of magic with learning; introduced into literary English by Sir Walter Scott.
Malicious, of course! Doubly so, and my last post was before 9am!
Aperitif, I apologise. My post was inappropriate. In explanation, it was actually more to do with something I'm discussing elsewhere, into which your comment about glamour and violence not being proper bedfellows happened to fit rather well, and Si's post too, and I went off in the direction they led but having started in the first place from a different point and aiming at a different point as well as a different group of people.
That's not an excuse, though.
The discussion in the other place arose from fictional treatments of the Incest Tabu, (I think it started from a new translation of Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", but it has definitely got sidetracked) and involves [1] "The Exogamic Imperative", [2] "Glamorizing [sic] the Other as a Social Mechanism", and [3] "the Normalization [sic] of the Dangerous Other" ... and I am chucking in extraneous matter from the sidelines, mostly, to see where it leads them next. I wanted to suggest that another way to go about the social problem the incest tabu raises in an enclosed society is to make the ordinary young men of the tribe appear slightly more "other" than they actually are, and thus make them more attractive (spurious glamour). I think that suggestion is a valid point *there*, or at least a legitimate red herring, but it sure's fate wasn't in keeping here. I was more doing a riff on the theme than actually thinking about who I was talking to or what the point had been here. That's my explanation, even though it doesn't excuse it.
RJD, I do reckon that it isn't the argument that sucks, it's the context that was wrong. At the very least it's a kite that will fly well enough to provoke discussion in the right place, put it that way. Ed has given the 'glamour' definition already, and it's the fake nature of it that I was thinking of. In literature it is associated with Bad Lots like Morgan le Fay, and is almost invariably designed to lead people astray. (The Heathcliffe glamour is definitely dodgy -- looked at dispassionately he's a stinker -- but it seems to attract scads of people, for instance.)
Sorry all round.
Ed, if you vouch for 'gatherer/hunter' as being correct rather than 'hunter-gatherer' I'll use it, because it hasn't (yet!) been mentioned there, I don't think, so I can at least not make a fool of myself in *two* places at once! :-) Thanks.
Any non-response hereafter is not because I have slunk away to sulk or whatever, though I am ashamed of myself; it's that I'm about to leave for a holiday in the direction of Finland. By sea not air, so I'll be a while getting there. See you at the end of the month, chances are....
Chris,
I don't know how 'established' the practice is, but it was put to us in Human Ecology classes as representing the situation more accurately, and, of course, of removing yet one more embedded bit of 'soft' misogyny. Our classes were about 3:2 female to male, and the course had a definite bias towards ecofeminism, nurturing, agency for change, etc.
xx
ed
Chris (30) Thanks for that -- I was probably extra cross because it was you*, as you are usually the opposite of patronising (any appropriate word escapes me), and so the miffed factor was upped a bit!
I've just posted a "Happy Holiday" message to you and RJD on the beach, but "Happy Holiday" again, in case you don't see it there. If you're going together, send us some pictures? And if you're not, send us some pictures?...
A, x.
* I recognise the unfairness herein, but the gulf between me and perfection has been obvious for a long time...
Take an alternative view on the war/death/glamour thing.
If that kind of thing isn't glamorous then why do violent movies pull in such big crowds? Stallone, Schwarzenegger and others may be past their prime now, but their movie were amongst the biggest things going in the 80's and 90's, especially Terminator, Rambo and Rocky. All were compelling viewing, but featured death on a large scale, torture, suffering and a litany of other crimes, any of which would get you a substantial prison term if you enacted them in your street.
And Appy;
My principal point was directly quoted from a pictorial biography of Tim Page, which I own. He and his associates, especially Dana Stone and Sean Flynn (son of Errol) were attracted to Vietnam by the glamour of it, then found a way to make a living and a reputation out of it. If a man who suffered so grieviously because of war insists that it is glamorous then who am I to contradict him?
Hemingway was also attracted by the glamour and wrote very well of it in 'A farewell to arms' and 'For whom the bell tolls'. He must have had a thing about it because 'Death in the afternoon' makes bullfighting look glamorous.
You're quite right when you say that these things should not appear in the same sentence. General Sherman also had it right with the "War is Hell" quote. But it has been glamourised for the best part of a century in film and for a lot longer than that in print.
Boys in Africa become soldiers because having a rifle makes them powerful and gets them 'respect'. And power, respect and the hint of potential violence are glamorous. Bear in mind that most of them have never seen a Hollywood movie or read Hemingway, they haven't been influenced by these outside forces. There seems to be something innate in the human psyche about it all.
Si.
Without wishing to be mistaken for someone who actaully wants to engage in a dialogue about this, I am compelled to add:
Si (33), Thank you for recognising that "should not" is quite different from "are not". Re: There seems to be something innate in the human psyche about it all. If you were to replace "human" with "male" I would concur. Your own examples are strikingly illustrative.