You may already be a winner: A few days ago, I posted a reply to what I initally assumed was simply the most recent update to the "Nigerian" scam. But given the flood of mail I've received on the topic -- including one from a gentleman who assumed my e-mail address was that of the "Webmasters Global Email Lottery" -- this seems to be the work of malicious code, something similar to the .sobig worm. In particular, it appears to seed its messages with random addresses, resulting in a flood of very confusing e-mails.

Why? Who knows.

 
Let's Carl the whole thing Orff: Nice to see that the Silly Season has infected even the style section, to judge by the Tom Shales piece on the NFL kickoff show run by the WaPo this morning (page C1). But as politically questionable as the yoking of professional football to military service is, as distasteful as the sight of a wartime President appearing over a massive advertising blitz to ask, "Are you ready for some football?", Shales manages to turn a bad use of the Mall into a society-shaking crisis, right down to the use of music in advertising:

[T]here was also a super-kinetic blitz of a commercial for Reebok Vector shoes, scored to the opening chorus from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," one of the most frequently appropriated pieces of 20th-century classical music.

When Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini included a bit of "Carmina Burana" in his borderline-obscene film "Salo," he explained he did so because he considered it "fascist music." We just note that in passing.

"Fascist music?" Orff's connections to the Nazis have been long debated -- he was never a member of the Nazi party, his music was alternately excoriated and praised by Nazi cultural (I use the term advisedly) critics, and composed a new score to A Midsummer Night's Dream to replace the banned Mendelssohn score (which Orff had always found lacking, but the Nazis found too Jewish). But no one has ever suggested that Orff was himself a Nazi or a fascist; at worst, he compromised one time too many.

Likewise, critics of Hegel have long pointed to his highly personal, almost Schopenhauerean criticism of Fries for that philosopher's appearance at a student revolutionary rally at Wartburg; to his enemies, Hegel was guilty of the basest kowtowing to the Prussian state, despite his longstanding antipathy to Fries, and more generally to the kind of revolutionary movements that base political thought on no more than "direct perception and random fancy." But even his enemies, who quite rightly criticize Hegel for attacking Fries when that philosopher was an old and impotent man long out of favor, acknowledge that the Hegelian world-system is a thing apart.

So, too, with Orff. Carmina Burana is a powerful piece of music that is immediately recognizable -- and, as an artistic work, it no doubt suffers for its accessibility, from the critics if not from his listeners. (His Nazi enemies accused Orff of importing American jazz in the form of classical music, which, the charge's sources notwithstanding, is actually a pretty good description of the piece.) Based on medieval poems taken from a Benedictine monastary, and set to a powerful paganistic score, Orff's work is a lot of things, but it's hardly "fascist" in any sense that gives that word meaning.

Ignoring, as Shales so carefully does, the fact that Pasolini was himself of questionable ideological cant, being a Communist disciple of Antonio Gramsci who supported the aborted revolutionary riots of 1969, it's interesting to note that those who compromise with leftist dictators and killers still escape unscathed from the judgment of those who so viciously attack Orff. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is allowed to court Castro, that longstanding friend of oppressed heroes like Saddam Hussein, with nary a word spoken. No one bothers to attack Prokofiev, despite the fact that the Russian composer spent most of his career groveling at the feet of Communist mass-murderers, most especially in his Zdravitsa, a paen to Stalin, but equally so in the turgid The Story of a Real Man. Was Prokofiev an ardent Stalinist, or even a good Communist? The historical consensus is, no, he was a great artist who often compromised with a totalitarian regime that ruled his body and demanded much of his soul. But his work, good and bad, endures beyond those compromises.

So lay off Orff, Tom. Get a grip. And just enjoy the fact that the 'Skins won the opener. As the Jets might say, O Fortuna, velut luna statu variabilis!

 
Wes-ward ho? Even The Liberal New Republic[1] is paying attention to a possible Clark campaign, showcasing a back and forth about Wes Clark and his enough-already-with-the-angst shadow campaign. (In 5-17 days, we should know whether he's going to cop a Cuomo on the Dems.)

Noam Scheiber makes some instructive points, especially in the comparison of Clark with Bob Graham, but he relies too heavily on the "Dean vs. Anti-Dean" formulation that the Democratic oddsmakers are using. As we're seeing in the polls, Dean's support is wide but shallow (something that Foer touches on briefly); it's very possible -- I'll go out on a limb and say "likely" -- that, rather than Clark emerging as an anointed Anti-Dean, he will instead soak up much of Dean's public support, taking Dean out as a viable contender.

This would give Clark the Big Mo (which, to a degree, he already has, having supplanted Dean in most magazine profiles, and even upstaging John Kerry in Boston by claiming the prize of place in the hometown paper on the same day Kerry made his own bid official), and immediately change the primary dynamics.

Needless to say, Dean is most immediately vulnerable on foreign policy matters, and that's where his primary opponents have been targeting their attacks. Right now, there is no other issue worth discussing on the campaign trail; other issues crop up (the tax cuts, drug benefits, and so on), but they are largely empty of content and context, having been co-opted by both parties before being co-opted by all candidates. The game for the Democrats is to position themselves as the best candidate who isn't Dean, which is very different from simply trying to be the best candidate.

But Clark is obviously all but invulnerable on military and foreign policy, at least for the primary. Worse yet, Clark's opposition to the war in Iraq sets him apart from all the other potential Anti-Deans, meaning that the other candidates are spending a great deal of time, energy, and money in prosecuting an argument that could -- if the electorate trusts Clark more than the field on his opposition to invading Iraq -- run into a four-star wall. The other Dems will be trying to fight, in a political sense, the last war.


[1] TNR earned this name (from Michael Kinsley) in the 1980s by exhibiting an admirably principled neoconservative tilt, which led the Reagan Administration to preface many of its neocon policy initiatives with phrases like, "As even the liberal New Republic recognizes ...."