Another Great Gatsby + Egan's Twitterature Experiment

Some people have too much money handy. What am I talking about? Baz Luhrman's initial trailer for his version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Watching this, I have one question, whose answers I already know (A: "Because he can; because the producers imagine dollars flowing in based on the name, stars, style; because Hollywood is intellectually bankrupt and seems to have forgotten that there are countless novels written since The Great Gatsby that might make interesting films; because etc."). Why?



***  

Jennifer Egan, who received the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, has decided to share the beginning of her new novel, Black Box, via Twitter, as a series of Tweets via The New Yorker's feed @NYerFiction. She began doing so on Thursday night, and the first section is up on the magazine's site, as "Black Box." More than anything it reads to me less like Egan's other prose fiction that I've read--and she does write in a variety of voices, as A Visit from the Goon Squad exemplified--than a poetic experiment, the enforced concision of the 140 character pushing her towards a condensation whose result is aphorism, or something akin to it.  Think G. C. Lichtenberg, or E. M. Cioran. Were she wrapping these nuggets in ampler verbiage, I'd even cite the Walter Benjamin of One Way Street.

Take the opening lines:

People rarely look the way you expect them
to, even when you’ve seen pictures.

The first thirty seconds in a person’s
presence are the most important.

If you’re having trouble perceiving and
projecting, focus on projecting.

Unlike a prior experimenter in this microserialist format, Rick Moody, who in the late fall of 2009 tweeted a 153-tweet story, over 3 days, entitled "Some Contemporary Characters" for Electric Literature, she isn't allowing the sentences to run past the 140-character (Twitter's) limit, which is to say, to enjamb them. Or is the verb for sentences flowing past their technologically-enforced boundary "superlineate"? I asked on Twitter earlier whether "Twitterature" itself was a word (I imagine it is), and whether this text by Egan might not be a noteworthy contribution to it.

Japan has an entire fictional genre born of text messages; others, beyond Moody, like John Wray, have written stories and novels on Twitter; and our most recent inaugural poet, Elizabeth Alexander, like many predecessors, conceived of using the platform as a means for poetry.  Its asseverative quality seems especially apt for that oldest of literary forms. If Egan plans to proceed stylistically like this, I find it hard to believe she'll sustain this beyond a chapter or two. But she's as talented a writer as you'll find out there, so she probably has a larger design up her sleeve. I will certainly read the final version.

Blogs vs. Term Papers

Thank the gods it's Friday afternoon, which means a little respite from classes, at least once the afternoon rolls around. I often feel like I've just emerged from a threshing machine by Friday morning, and today was no different, but by the end of class I felt as I often do when I finish teaching, mentally and intellectually energized, and I even after some student meetings, capable of completing and launching a few new blogposts. So here goes!

***

Often these days I am late in coming to various interesting online conversations, so I only just stumbled over Matt Richtel's article in last week's New York Times, "Blogs vs. Term Papers," on how some faculty members are rethinking ways of sparking student interest in writing essays and critical thinking.  I won't restate his piece but he does explore some of the strategies and new tools, including blogs, categorized by some under the rubric of the "new literacy," that literature and other humanities faculty are using in place of or in addition to the standard short and long-form essays. Among his examples are Cathy Davidson at Duke University, who in the course he cites has jettisoned term papers for internal and external, extensive blogging, and Andrea Lunsford at Stanford University, who has second-year writing students produce a 15-page essay quickly, then expand it into a range of new media forms. As Richtel notes, the students connect well with these alternative forms but, in the case of Lunsford's course, also seek to revise their essay.

Richtel's piece got me thinking about my own use of blogs in a few courses; one of the most successful efforts, I think, was a few years back, in 2009, when I asked students in my aesthetic theory course to post their thoughts on a public blog, "Thinking Aesthetics," and, as you'll see, they often wrote quite thoughtful, sometimes very insightful short responses to the often difficult reading. (One student later told me that this was one of the most difficult courses he had ever taken at Northwestern, but he appreciated it tremendously.) These posts did not preclude essays, but I saw them as another way for the students to wrestle with the material outside of the class, and in preparation for their essays, and most really took to it. I tried from time to time to cite some of their comments in my in-class remarks, though I realize now I could have been more systematic about doing so to integrate these musings more completely.

Here's a snippet on an essay on horror, by one of my former students, George S.--this is an undergraduate writing, mind you:

The theory put forth by Kendall Walton and Alex Neill [in Berys Gaut's article "The Paradox of Horror"] on why people may enjoy horror films and other experiences which provoke negative emotions is absolutely fascinating. It essentially separates the emotion from what it is actually happening, thus it is not the emotion which is negative but occurrence which prompted it. In the case of the death of a loved one, it is not that we are sorrowful because we feel sorrow, but rather because we have lost someone close to us. “That is, it’s the situations rather than the emotions which are distasteful or undesirable, which we (metaphorically?) describe as painful or unpleasant.” (Gaut, 323) The idea of separation of emotion and event is interesting in that it inherently questions the meaning of any emotion. Perhaps we have been conditioned to feel certain ways after certain events, through witnessing other people go through them or simply through pop culture, but who is to say that the emotions of sadness or grief are objectively the correct emotions to feel after an event like the loss of a loved one?

I have also utilized blogs in my creative writing classes in the past, one time in lieu of the journals I ask the students to keep, and I learned this probably wasn't so good, because rather than these online journals being a place where the students really could put anything down--and be writing, by hand, or cutting and pasting things in, or drawing, or all sorts of things that weren't possible in the way they are now on touchscreens and tablet computers--they  became for some a public performance above all. I still do allow blogs and word-processed journals, but most students, I've found, like the physicality of bound paper, codex journals. They like the freedom and challenge of writing or doing whatever they want in them, and they realize that they're portable--and so they can repeat their "eavesdropping" exercise in a way they would have a harder time doing with a laptop, tablet or phone (without using a microphoned recording device).  Some of them, I hope, take up the habit permanently if they already have not.

In the introductory undergraduate creative writing classes I also use threaded conversations, divided up according to groups.  I have found that since the quarter class lengths often do not afford enough time for all the students to comment on the readings on technical and theoretical aspects of writing or by established writers, the threaded conversations offer another means for them to do this. With the graduate fiction students, I ask them to post annotations--short 1-2 page long commentaries--on the critical or creative texts we're reading, and again, I always come across wonderful insights they make as they're working through the texts; often they do cite these commentaries in our in-class discussions.  These annotations are a requirement of the MA/MFA program, and I think about how the online posting method means that not only I but their classmates will have an opportunity to peruse and comment on--or at least mull over--what they're writing and thinking about outside the workshop discussions.

In the fall of 2010, after repeatedly setting up and then not really being able to implement wiki-related projects for my classes, I had all the students in my African-American literature course sign up for Wikipedia in the first week of the course, and one of their requirements was to develop a new entry or revise an existing entry for a writer we discussed in the course or whose work, even if not discussed, would be germane to what we were exploring. They had to use scholarly sources from the library, and produce the citations, which they would then enter on the Wiki page. Nearly all the students produced real advances on the pages that existed, and I felt this was one of the most important projects they undertook given how readily people, even faculty colleagues, who were once disdainful or at least more skeptical, cite Wikipedia as the first and sometimes the final authority. (I have one good friend who frequently sends Wiki links in place of his own commentary; I always want to say, but you can't trust Wikipedia so fully, though I know that many people now do.)

With my current LGBTQ literature class I am requiring all of the undergraduate students (the graduate students have other projects underway) to undertake a Wiki revamp, but I also have assigned two short response papers (I am reading the first set this weekend, and they are quite strong) and a final term paper. Short response papers are to me a very good diagnostic in terms of gauging where students are, how thoroughly they're able to analyze and understand the material, and what sorts of larger inferences they can make based on what they've read. This is officially a theory course, satisfying the department's literature major theory course requirement, but I've also learned that in general, students find theory--and this course includes some exciting theoretical materials from the early post-Stonewall era to the contemporary "post-gay"/"post-Queer"--much more palatable when coupled with creative texts, so their response papers proceed from that pairing.

Lastly, as J's Theater readers know, I have incorporated my beloved Twitter into at least one class. I am always trying to think of more ways to use it, but thus far, I've only been able to slot it into the "Situation of Writing" course for senior-year majors. Their feed, @GetItWrite392: The Situation, runs throughout the length of the course.  This last time I gather from casual conversations that the students were not so impressed, but previous attempts have gone better, and it has provided a spur for the students to seek out  material on writing and publishing and promote it to the wider world, to contact writers they admire directly, and to start conversations with each other and their followers in a way they couldn't within the confines of the classroom or in a closed, Blackboard Course Management System-type space. Twitter makes nearly the entire world open to them. I am less of a fan of Facebook, which I see as having erected very clear walls around itself, so I have not undertaken any Facebook-related projects, but scholars like Jeff Nunokawa have, and they appear quite successful. Maybe I will try out Facebook, or perhaps Google+, which I'm on and which I notice has decided, creepily, to integrate everything in a more Facebook-like manner (to quantify those algorithms to sell to advertisers!), but which also offers the possibility of using Google Docs and Google Books in interesting ways.

In the end I don't think it's good to eschew critical essays, short or long, completely; they require modes of thinking and writing that are valuable to students for many reasons. I do grasp the need for other approaches, however, and as I continue to teach I'm going to continue to examine what others are doing and experiment in my own classes to learn what works and what doesn't so that my students will have the best learning experience I can make possible.

Illinois: Can't Touch This + Some Lit Links

(Updated with YouTube video below)

One of the big non-Super Bowl buzzes yesterday was the suggestion that New York governor David Paterson was going to resign, because of a sex-related scandal, which the New York Times was set to reveal today, only Paterson denied he was resigning, he met with the NY state Democratic caucus in a closed-door session to tell them he wasn't resigning or something like that, and no Times article appeared. My thought was, if the man did not commit a crime and his actions involved his private life, why should anyone care? Evidently some in the media are still hot and bothered by, as the British wonderfully call them, "sex romps" and
"sex rows," but given all the other crises this country faces, and the Woods/Sanford/Ensign/Spitzer/Craig, etc. scandals, does anyone really care about Paterson's love life or who he shtups, especially if his wife doesn't? At least for now, no, it seems, and so Love Gov #2 will remain in office, until he loses his primary to Andrew Cuomo, and heads off for fun and assignations in the sunset.

But--New York has nothing on Illinois. As I told C today, yesterday, political theater unfolded in a Chicago bar during the Super Bowl half-time when Illinois's newly elected Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor, Scott Lee Cohen offered his "resignation"--let me stop there, and repeat, "nominee" for Lt. Gov.--by which I mean, he was dropping out of the race, leaving his slot open for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, current governor Pat Quinn, to replace him. Quinn had replaced the impeached Rod Blagojevich, aka Blago, who tried to sell Barack Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Blago, remember, was elected twice after the departure of George Ryan, who is now in jail on multiple corruption charges.

Now, you may ask, why did Scott Lee Cohen, who was only selected for his candidate slot by voters over several different party-annointed hacks a few weeks ago, decide to "resign"? Why was he in tears, at the Hop Haus bar, with his family around him and son lying in his lap, announcing in the midst of the 44th Super Bowl, that for the good of the "people of Illinois" and the "Democratic Party," that he was stepping down? Why did most of the Congressional Democrats, and many other party brokers, want this millionaire pawnbroker (I'm not making this up), to remove himself so as not to sink Quinn's chances in the general election (against who knows which Republican, since that race has still not been declared)?

My Recent Webwhereabouts, or Twitter

It's been eons since I last posted. I do have some unfinished stubs to complete, but I've found--naturally enough--that since I mentioned Twitter some posts ago, that's become one of my mainstays for offering up my thoughts to the Net.

Twitter's 140-word limit doesn't encourage deep or exhaustive thinking or posting, but then again, it does seem to provoke Wit-tering, and it's a great way to direct people to links, sites and other tweets you find of interest. (Which is probably why so many corporations have jumped in its flatbed.)

It also, I must say, has proved to be a quick way to reach certain institutions, like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. For every fawning or semi-informative Tweet they post, someone comes right back to let them know about service problems, the wind-tunnel quality of certain stations, and so on. And they do respond. Quickly. (On the other hand, an old-fashioned letter I sent to the director of the Incinerator Authority, my City Councilperson, and the not-yet-indicted mayor did spark very quick action in the neighborhood. So sometimes the old methods are as or even more effective. Email, I think, is a wash.)

Since I've been too lazy--though not idle; I have completed at least one project so far and have finished reading several books for a change--to post my Twitter feed (it's jstheater) address, here's some of what has appeared there if not here. Or, "Aspects of my recent life in 60 tweets."

1. http://tinyurl.com/nnhnxn http://tinyurl.com/mqyym5 One word: projection!9 minutes ago from web
2. now that MEN & women & children r being raped in the Congo will the world take notice?about 1 hour ago from web
3. Can I say SCOTUS Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor yet?about 1 hour ago from web
4. Reading Sontag's journals is like visiting France for the first; it is both similar 2 & more amazing than you imagined.about 1 hour ago from web
5. If only the new Lispector bio weren't as big as a boulder, I'd carry it w me everywhere.about 1 hour ago from web
6. Twitter's back, ttg! Can't do without folks' bursts of whatever comes 2 mind or fingertip...about 2 hours ago from web
7. Agua frescas @ Doma are still the bomb!about 21 hours ago from web
8. Do the Mets regret firing Willie Randolph yet?1:16 PM Aug 5th from web
9. Why won't someone pay me to go act a fool on behalf of single-payer universal health care?1:15 PM Aug 5th from web
10. Why are former Democratic presidents addressing humanitarian needs & crises while GOP ex-prezes just play golf?1:13 PM Aug 5th from web
11. Happy Barack Obama Day!1:44 PM Aug 4th from web
12. Why do I always expect books I want 2 be in the bookstore (cf new Lispector bio)?6:08 PM Aug 3rd from web
13. @PATHtweet Was just on 33rd-Jsq 604 / a huge sardine can was that car / riders cd barely get in the door / glad we didn't run out of air!6:04 PM Aug 3rd from web
14. @Blabbeando Not at all surprising. He's such a lowlife.5:59 PM Aug 3rd from web
15. King Lear is far stranger, more gory and more complex than I recall. I cd easily see an African filmic version.2:01 PM Aug 3rd from web
16. Having cut the backyard lawn this morning, I'll pick some more blackberries this evening. What to do with them, tho?1:58 PM Aug 3rd from web
17. this morning felt like September, but now it feels like August.4:15 PM Aug 2nd from web
18. @tayari I http://twurl.nl/fssqh3 This book is getting a LOT of play...why?4:25 PM Aug 1st from web
19. @Atrios And yet I still read it every day!1:18 PM Jul 31st from web
20. It's a steambath out here. Rain would be great.1:16 PM Jul 31st from web

21. Was so into what I was writing 2day I forgot what time it was. Back 2 the world...5:54 PM Jul 30th from web
22. Humid 2day but so sunny, so I love it.2:10 PM Jul 30th from web
23. @Blabbeando where is nn?2:05 PM Jul 30th from web
24. @zeenakoda yes works 2 jsq but not 2 nwk it's a mess @ jsq upstairs6:48 PM Jul 29th from web
25. @PATHtweet no jsq 2 nwk trains! of course conflicting info; loudspeaker says take jersey trans, conductor says buses @ jsq--????6:40 PM Jul 29th from web
26. New Jersey's news these days is very wild wild West or NYC circa 1980!1:30 PM Jul 29th from web
27. http://twurl.nl/kviati@tayari Horrendous! Bloomberg should be ousted for this act alone. BTW where's the churches' outcry?1:26 PM Jul 29th from web
28. @tayari mendi o has the perfect ending-the-chain-letter letter.6:06 PM Jul 28th from web
29. http://tinyurl.com/l59qog@r... a fine tribute1:32 PM Jul 28th from web
30. @tayari it's atrocious but not surprising. all my students have read her work & she's often a fave.1:29 PM Jul 28th from web
31. Sometimes I think 3GS = 3 good sentences b4 AT&T's network craps out.5:47 PM Jul 27th from web
32. @blackgriot It does @ the holiday inn Viking in St. Louis1:58 PM Jul 27th from web
33. I thought Merce Cunningham was immortal.1:57 PM Jul 27th from web
34. I had a mifi but gave it up. Why oh why did I ever do that?4:15 PM Jul 24th from web
35. @glenngreenwald It's disgraceful, really.2:37 PM Jul 24th from web
36. So very sorry to learn about E Lynn Harris's death!2:36 PM Jul 24th from web
37. Thinking about Sara Ahmed's ideas as a way to consider blackness and queerness2:35 PM Jul 24th from web
38. @AllenGallery all of em except Corzine Corey B & Randall P lol5:21 PM Jul 23rd from web
39. Go new jersey down & dirty run by crooked & the crazy!5:18 PM Jul 23rd from web
40. @PATHtweet 3rd car in my Hob-33rd St car has no AC, like a grill inside. Come on, PATH!9:44 AM Jul 23rd from web

41. Caught Soledad's BIA 2 last night; better than first installment but so much still left out. & yes we know bourgies exist!8:53 AM Jul 23rd from web
42. Watched Prez O last night, so-so salesman. It's the baseline that must be reformed.8:51 AM Jul 23rd from web
43. @PATHtweet On a new train, finally!5:25 PM Jul 22nd from web
44. First flight can canceled 2nd 2 hrs late lord just get me home to NJ!7:29 PM Jul 21st from web
45. Very sorry to hear about Frank McCourt's passing. He was a master storyteller.8:32 PM Jul 20th from web
46. @tayari You can do it!1:00 PM Jul 19th from web
47. http://twitpic.com/arxnp Happy birthday to Nelson Mandela!12:59 PM Jul 18th from web
48. It's so mild here in st. Louis; I thought it would be hotter11:27 AM Jul 18th from web
49. my plane is snowing inside but I'm not worried. :-|5:39 PM Jul 17th from web
50. @glenngreenwald We should demand that it happen before the recess2:56 PM Jul 17th from web
51. @PATHtweet thanks it always feels like 20-25 and the trip to Newark is glacial but NJ Transit train 2 EWR did arrive!2:34 PM Jul 17th from web
52. @PATHtweet @ Newark Penn Some escalators, monitors, track board broken, station like an obstacle course2:27 PM Jul 17th from web
53. @PATHtweet Waiting as always long time for Newark train @ JSQ - why PATH???1:57 PM Jul 17th from web
54. @PATHtweet Just saw 1 of the new trains natch it was No Passengers for Newark direction 1:56 PM Jul 17th from web
55. Great work by Senate to attach Shepard Hates Crimes bill to DOD bill - will Obama sign?1:54 PM Jul 17th from web
56. @TLDEF So glad about the verdict!1:52 PM Jul 17th from web
57. @Blabbeando Buchanan was stone kkkold kleagle tonight. Rachel was good but enough is enough!11:17 PM Jul 16th from web
58. Wendy Williams's tv show is all about the audience howudoin?11:15 PM Jul 16th from web
59. Don't the chirren run "child please" every five seconds? OchoCinco...hmm....7:30 PM Jul 16th from web
60. @charlesfstephen best wishes with the writers' group!5:04 PM Jul 16th from web

---

Following

---

(Associate) Justice Sotomayor + Michael Moreci + Twitteration

On the Cave Canem listserve, one of the poets asked about impressions of the US Senate hearings to confirm Justice Sonia Sotomayor (right, Charles Dharapak / Associated Press) as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, and here's my response:

Based on the little of her testimony I've heard or seen, I've found Justice Sotomayor very impressive. She's incredibly smart, knowledgeable, cool under fire, and charming. I want her on the nation's highest court. Unfortunately during the hearings she's had to deal with lots of nonsense and some outright racist crap from several Republicans (Tom Coburn quoting Desi Arnaz's Ricky Ricardo character in dialect today; Jeff Sessions, a well known racist, asking her why she didn't vote the same way as a conservative Puerto Rican judge because they were both Puerto Rican; John Kyl ranting at her for 10 minutes before she could get a word in at all; etc.). It's disgraceful. I really do hope Latinos and everyone else is taking note of this stuff. On top of this, GOP-related entities are running ads calling the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund a "terrorist" organization, and various high profile Republicans have trashed Sotomayor in a way they'd never do even for a white liberal judge they disliked.

Why on earth is Frank Ricci being brought in at all? Why not bring in all the winning and losing plaintiffs in cases she's adjudicated? It's just more nonsense.

One thing I wish someone in the media would just articulate concerning her "Wise Latina" comment is that most people in this country--i.e., the vast majority of us--who are not straight upper-middle-class and rich white males--the people who still run and control the majority of everything in this society (and many others)--must learn to see the world as they do, at some point, to advance in the society while also developing our own perspectives. As a working-class woman of Latino heritage who has risen all the way to an appellate court judge now on the cusp of joining the Supreme Court of the United States, she would have had to learn to see the world, and apply many of those lessons, in ways that many of the people currently on the courts do and cannot not. I don't see her statement as controversial at all, but I also don't understand why more people don't break it down, perhaps even more simply than I have.

It is a form of bad Kabuki theater, of course. The GOP knows she will be confirmed. They know they are turning off latinos, other people of color, women, Obama supporters, anyone with any sense of decency. But the point is to create a spectacle that warms their base, roughs up Obama and the ever timorous Democrats a bit, and wounds her if possible. It's also catnip for the media, who live for this sort of thing, as it gives them an opportunity to pontificate ad nauseam using whatever talking points, shreds of cocktail party chatter, and vaguely digested commentariat and blog postings they've come across. And they also get to justify trotting out real nuts like Pat "Putzi" Buchanan, an avowed white supremacist who should have been retired a long time ago.

This is what I wrote on the CC listserve about Putzi, who is once again at its highest pitch. I'm going to ask this, though I already know the answer: could any black person, any latino, any asian american, even any woman, go on like this man does year after year and still be given a public platform as MSNBC does with him?

Randall H., I don't know if you recall when Pat Buchanan ran for the presidency, but he was basically running a Nazi-esque annex for the GOP. Years ago he propagandized for J. Edgar Hoover and circulated smears against Martin Luther King Jr. The man wrote speeches for Richard Nixon and has always been a notorious race baiter, anti-Semite, and white supremacist. Over the years his comments about black folks, latinos, Jews, feminists and women in general, and LGBTQ folks have gone beyond hateful. He has often spewed his racist crap to major journalists and media outlets, without penalty. It never ceases to astonish me that someone who is such an outright, virulent white supremacist is given carte-blanche to appear at will on a major cable TV station, but he is, and the hosts just smile and wink and act like he's not so horrendous. At this point I can't imagine what he might do that would lead to his banning, but then again, whatever that is, it would have to be beyond the pale. Literally.

I look forward to the day, very soon, when Justice Sotomayor is confirmed. Perhaps Buchanan will do us all a favor and spontaneously combust before, if not then.

+++

On another note, I wanted to give props to one of my former graduate students, Michael Moreci. I know Michael primarily as a fiction writer and journalist, but it turns out that he's also a talent of considerable note in the comics/graphic writing world, especially, as he says on his blog, in the UK. His forthcoming graphic novel, with art by Monty Borror, is entitled Quarantine, and will be published by Insomnia Publications in the UK. Insomnia's website describes the book like this:

Quarantine follows a group of survivors trapped in a small town in the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan shortly after a biological plague is released into the water supply. This plague turns a person into a homicidal war machine, which forces the borders to close, leaving our band of survivors to fight for their lives.

If you go to his blog, you can see some of the work itself. Congratulations to him.

+++

I remarked about Twitter about a week ago, but I can say that I got the fastest response ever based on a recent tweet. I noted that the PATH system usually reserves the cleaner, less crowded trains for Hoboken-bound travelers during rush hour, sending two for every one of the dirtier, more sardine-packed trains to Journal Square and Newark (of course). This is nothing new, and I've complained about it for years now. It was especially maddening during the years I commuted daily into New York City. But all it took was one tweet stating this, out into the vast and ever growing upper canopy of twittersong out there (and mind you, I had exactly 5 followers at the time, 3 of whom are marketing Twitterbots), and the PATH folks responded. Not of course by promising to improve service or doing so, but with a tweet urging me to sign up for their tweet feeds.

Perhaps if I complain a bit more or organize a mass tweet, they might take note? I hear it is working for airline travelers, so why not public transportation corporations or public utilities?

Protests in Iran + Twitter-Aid to the Pro-Reformers

I've been loathe to comment on the unfolding events in Iran in part because I know so little about the country beyond the general contours of its 20th (Mossadegh, the Shah, his fall, the Revolution, etc.) and 21st century history, and even then, my sense of what's going inside the country today is hazy at best. What also clouds my impressions are questions about possibly ongoing US involvement, directly and indirectly, in what's unfolding in Iran. I don't think anyone should forget that we have over 150,000+ troops both to the east (Afghanistan) and west (Iraq) of Iran, and for 8 years (still?) we had (have?) an administration that was determined not only to foment upheaval in Iran, in part to blunt its nuclear ambitions but also to replace its true leadership, which is to say, the mullahs who really rule the place. According to reliable reporters like the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, this only increased after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, defeating former president and important cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. This is one reason I think President Barack Obama's public stance is the right one; while criticism of the brutal crackdown and praise of the protesters' courage and desire for democracy are appropriate, Obama and the US have to studiously avoid meddling, or even appearing to be doing so, as this can be used as a means to dismiss the legitimate concerns of the reform camps, and even to punish them as foreign agents or puppets. (Not that the US's public and official caution will stop them, but the US need not give them any ammunition.)

For most of the years that Mohammad Khatami, who now stands behind the leading reform candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi [photo above, tonbak.wordpress.com], was president (1997-2005), I was under the misimpression that the country's establishment would embrace the political and social liberalization that his initial election augured. While the public rhetoric during Khatami's tenure continued to point towards liberalization and he made repeated overtures towards the West, the clerics remained firmly in control. Yet I also recall that during Khatami's second term, even Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei supposedly was willing to make a deal with the US, yet after the Bush administration rejected the cleric's offer, infamously labeling Iran one member (end?) of the "Axis of Evil," the Iranian regime tightened its line, externally and internally, and has been resolutely firm--at least from what I can tell--ever since. This approach has coincided with the election, and now alleged re-election, of the extremely politically and religiously conservative Ahmadinejad and with the change from the Bush administration to Obama and his team.

The leadup to the election seemed to harken a shift in terms of Iran's politics, or at least this is how I viewed the openness and public nature of the debate between the contrasting candidates and their supporters (Mousavi and Karroubi on the reformist side; Ahmadinejad and Rezaie on the conservative side). But perhaps this was all through the lens of the Western media. I cannot say, but it appeared to be more vibrant than I remembered back in 2005. Then came the vote, and...what looks increasingly like a coup to ensure Ahmadinejad and the ruling ideology stayed in office. Up through today I've read all sorts of analyses of the election last week, and many suggest that there were serious irregularities in the vote tallies. What struck me on the evening of the vote was how quickly Khamenei declared Ahmadinejad the winner, and how dismissive Ahmadinejad's comments were towards Mousavi, Karroubi, and even Rezaie and their supporters. It was as if he knew he had the election in the bag and that his opponents, defeated, would simply accept it as given.

Instead, what the entire world has seen is an ongoing protest, throughout Iran, with massive rallies at first, mostly peaceful on the protesters' part, that have now turned into bloodbaths as the regime cracks down with ravenous brutality to impose its will and order. Yesterday, after following the advice I posted below, and while keeping an eye on the pipe repair here at the house, I was following the #iranelection thread on Twitter. I've followed a number of blogs, news reports (on HuffingtonPost.com especially), and so on, and the Twitter feeds proved an enlightening complement. Many of the posts were repetitive, some led to bad links, others felt like disinfo, but there were quite a few that were giving up to date reports on the state of things, not just in Tehran, but from what I could tell, in some other cities in Iran as well. A number of the tweets led to horrifying YouTube clips; in addition to the now iconic and tragic video of 27 year old Neda Agha Soltan's murder, there were links to attacks on a wide array of protesters, including a clip of the security forces (Basiji? I don't know) torturing one man, another of two wounded students being dragged into a university hallway, where one died, and protesters encountering live ammunition. (The tallies of those killed so far have varied considerably.) Other tweets have focused on the general strike(s), protests by Iranians and others outside Iran, ways to avoid the security apparatus's e-clampdown, links to other pro-reformist (and pro-government) sites, and so on. Just following these tweets and observing the role that Twitter, Facebook and other sites, along with the more widespread SMS technology, are playing, has been fascinating. Once these technologies enter the picture and become more diffuse, not only the Iranian government, but no government will be able to respond as it had in the past.

How will things end? I have no idea. Despite Ahmadinejad's more measured language and near apology this weekend, the clerics' line as of today is even more rigid; Ayatollah Khamenei's sermon on Friday was as firm as a guillotine, as if to assert not only that he wasn't going to back down, but that he was in total control. Countless pro-reformers from all strata of Iranian society and domestic journalists have been arrested, and some have disappeared. The regime has also restricted the work of foreign journalists, and has begun verbally attacking foreign governments. The government today announced that there would be no annulment of the election, that fallen protesters' families would be charged for their burials, and so on. Yet major figures like Khatami and Rafsanjani have cast their lot with the reformers, and millions of Iranians, women and men, are refusing to back down. (I am not sure what's really going on with Rafsanjani, how much power he truly wields, and what this will mean for Khamenei's rule, and I'm still trying to sort all these elements out.) The fly has escaped the flybottle and it cannot be returned. If the clerics and Ahmadinejad do somehow remain in power, however, I cannot but imagine that they control has been severely weakened--whether irreparably remains to be seen.

Related:

I'm not on barely on Twitter (and as far back as last spring [2008] was urging students not to use it during class), but I received this from Tisa B. and am passing it on in order to help those trying to stand up for freedom and democracy there:

If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. "Security" forces are hunting for people blogging about the current abuses of pro-democracy protesters using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Please cut & paste & pass it on

I did this. Please do it if you can, and take other action to support the pro-reform movement in Iran!