Dispatches
A Cousin in the White House
"I don't want to live in a country that will elect Sarah Palin."
Fragments of a conversation between two grey-blonde ladies, sitting a few rows down, drift above the racket of the unlit airport coach that bounces and grinds towards Manhattan on Halloween.
"And can you imagine: Cindy McCain, that Stepford wife?"
Sarah Palin scares people. John, and evidently Cindy McCain too, scare people. The drawing on the cover of the current New Yorker shows a group of terrified ghouls fleeing a pair of toddlers in McCain and Palin masks. Barack and Michelle Obama definitely scare people, too, although any shivers their names send down the spines of New Yorkers are mostly of a pleasurable kind. It's as if Halloween, a meaningless relic kept in our calendar for its commercial value alone, once again serves a ritual purpose ahead of the 4 November election.
Photographs by Fred CassavettiNever Say Never Again
Just past midnight on 11 November, the Menin Gate of Ypres is quiet and still. Even the rain, a constant companion on any winter visit to Flanders, falls silently. The peace is disturbed only by an occasional passer-by trotting past, collar upturned against the weather, or a car slipping quickly through the gate, wipers working overtime.
The heart of the night is a good time to arrive at one of the greatest memorials of the Great War. In a few hours, it will be impossible to get close as the town commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Armistice.
Although officially this is a gate, it is so broad many visitors consider it a tunnel. The reason the Menin Gate is so deep is to accommodate the names of 54,896 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who lost their lives in the Ypres Salient, a Dantean hell of noise, mud, blood and slaughter from 1914-1918.
Previous columns
New York Diary
JONATHAN FOREMANNovember 2008
‘New York feels much calmer than London about the financial crisis. It's not clear if this attitude is a product of resignation or sheer denial, schadenfreude against wealthy financiers, or perhaps a kind of emotional hardiness born of the 9/11 attacks.’
Caucasus Diary: August-September, 2008
BEN JUDAHOctober 2008
‘It was days after the ceasefire had been signed and the facts on the ground went square against what President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had intended’
Panic at the Palace
JUSTIN MAROZZI FROM DARFURSeptember 2008
Rarely have expectations and realistic possibilities been so ill-matched as in Sudan
Arrivederci Roma
TOPAZ AMOORE FROM ROMESeptember 2008
The public and government mood towards immigrants, whether legal or illegal, is increasingly ugly
Recycling the French Model
WILLIAM TUCKER FROM LA HAGUEAugust 2008
France's slogan “We may not have any oil, but we have ideas" has proved to be the winning hand when compared with Britain
No Via Media for Anglicans
TRAVIS KAVULLA FROM JERUSALEMAugust 2008
Gafcon's message: that churches must return to the plain meaning of scripture, even at the risk of institutions
Courage and Cowardice in Scandinavia
BRUCE BAWER FROM OSLOJuly 2008
The cartoon controversy has cowed all the Nordic countries except Denmark
How Kosovo Created its Own Liberal Islam
MICHAEL J. TOTTEN FROM PRISTINAJuly 2008
Claims that Kosovo is a nest of radical Islam are baseless
A ‘Post-racial’ American vs an Old Coot
JAY NORDLINGER FROM NEW YORKJune 2008
‘The Obama campaign will be touted as “historic,” and how do you run against history?’
Hariri: An Assassination Too Far
MICHAEL YOUNG FROM BEIRUTJune 2008
‘Few opinion-shapers in the West feel outraged enough to condemn it, let alone grasp what is at stake in the Hariri tribunal’
