Bild: The New Yorker. Fler skämtteckningar med politiska teman finns här.
Archive for mars, 2013
Humor: Politikerförakt!
Posted in Humor, Politik, tagged Humor, Skämtteckning, Teckning, The New Yorker on 30 mars, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Kampanj: Ed Koch – borgmästaren i Crazytown!
Posted in Politik, tagged Bill Clinton, Borgmästare, Chris Smith, David Garth, Ed Koch, Evan Cornog, Hillary Clinton, Larry Celona, Mark Penn, Mike Bloomberg, New York, New York Post, Newsday, Rudy Giuliani, Valkampanj on 27 mars, 2013| Leave a Comment »
NEW YORK | Ed Koch, som var borgmästare under tre perioder (1978-1989) i New York, avled i februari i år.
Chris Smith, tidskriften New York, skriver:
Egomania is a requirement in politics. Ed Koch turned the condition into an art form. He was far more interesting, and more complicated, than the common narcissist. His towering self-confidence was central to his triumphs and failures as mayor, because it enabled Koch to do what ever he thought necessary to save the city, whether that meant clowning for the cameras or betraying allies or berating political bullies. He was smart and funny and tough. But Koch’s real power was that he poured his selfishness into a wholly unselfish devotion to his city.
He started out as a reformer with conventionally leftish views: against the Vietnam War, in favor of civil rights. But Koch understood, and agreed with, the growing centrist Democratic revulsion against government bloat, drugs, and crime. He had no time for victimology. As the city careered toward chaos during Abe Beame’s term at City Hall, Koch saw his chance: Dubbing himself “a liberal with sanity,” he ran for mayor in 1977 and beat Mario Cuomo, on the strength of his personality and by appealing to the white outer-borough ethnic voters who were angry and scared. Koch had core beliefs and principles, but the ’77 campaign also established a template: To win, the former reformer was willing to embrace both corrupt Brooklyn political boss Meade Esposito and beauty queen Bess Myerson, the latter in the service of a fake romance concocted by his campaign wizard, David Garth.
[…]
Eventually, though, his confidence metastasized into arrogance, with tragic costs: Koch’s nasty reaction to criticism from AIDS activists weakened the city’s response to the fatal epidemic. And his long-running hostility toward black leaders, coupled with the murder of teenager Yusuf Hawkins, helped Koch lose the 1989 election.
[…]
The scars of seventies New York are invoked every campaign season, with each candidate promising he or she won’t let us slide back to those bad old days. The crucially effective parts of Koch’s tough-love response to New York’s troubles, particularly his never-back-down-to-criticism attitude, became, for better and worse, fundamental pages in the playbooks of Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg. Koch rescued the city in his first term and nearly split it in his third. He will forever be an object lesson in the cold-blooded calculations necessary to thrive in New York politics, and of the joys and dangers of personality-driven politics.
Koch var också en förnyare av politiska valkampanjer.
På 1970-talet kunde kampanjstaberna inte använda egna datorer för att analysera resultaten från opinionsundersökningar och reklamkampanjer. Man fick istället gå via datorena på olika universitet.
För att råda bot på detta köpte och monterade Mark Penn, som anlitats av Kochs politiska konsult David Garth, en egen dator för att kunde få feedback redan dagen efter en undersökning.
Penn skulle senare komma att arbeta för både Bill Clinton och Hillary Clintons presidentvalskampanj.
Läs mer: Evan Cornog, en av Kochs pressekreterare skrev artikeln “Ed Koch sweated the details” för Newsday.
”Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch dead at age 88” av Larry Celona (New York Post).
“61 “Memorable quotes (and Tweets!) from late New York mayor Ed Koch”.
Kommunikation: Vad signalerar namnet Franciskus?
Posted in Analys, Image, Kommunikation, tagged Candida Moss, Franciskus, Heliga Stolen, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Katolska kyrkan, Kommunikation, Kyrkans tidning, Newsweek, Rom, Ulla Gudmundson on 24 mars, 2013| Leave a Comment »
ROM | Att försöka förstå katolska kyrkan är inte det lättaste ens för personer som gjort det till sin livsuppgift.
Ibland påminner kyrkan om äldre målningar vars symbolspråk inte längre är helt lätt att tolka för den moderna människan.
Mer träffande är kanske en jämförelse med ritualerna i monarkier. Här är regalier, kläder och poser aldrig valda slumpmässigt. Idag skulle vi säga att allt kommunicerar.
Professor Candida Moss har skrivit en intressant artikel i Newsweek där hon försöker utröna varför kardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio valde just namnet Franciskus som påve.
Namnet förknippas kanske främst med helgonet Franciskus av Assisi och hans arbete bland fattiga och utslagna.
Men minst lika viktig signal är att namnet också indikerar ett ökat intresse för att evangelisera och sprida det kristna budskapet.
Papal names chart a course for the future by summoning up the past. The new pope assumes either the mantle of religious heroes and leaders from days gone by or the virtues of the Innocents and the Piuses. The selection of the name both forges a new identity and signals how the pope wishes to be seen and remembered. It is, in essence, not only the answer to the classic question “Who do you want to be when you grow up?’ but also a way of preemptively writing one’s own reviews.
[…]
St. Francis of Assisi himself is one of the more famous and beloved saints. The son of a medieval cloth merchant, he joined the military after the clichéd misspent and hedonistic adolescence of the type favored by wealthy young Italian men of the era. Having left the military after a period of imprisonment and sickness, Francis underwent a spiritual conversion. He had a famous vision in the Church of St. Damian in which Christ came to life three times on the cross and instructed Francis to repair his ruined church. The commission was, according to Benedict XVI, an instruction to rebuild a church undermined by “superficial faith.”
Francis of Assisi is known for his stigmata—the wounds on his body that mimicked the wounds suffered by Jesus during the crucifixion—but even more so for his humility and assistance to the sick and poor.
[…]
It is precisely to this history of care for the poor coupled with cultivated humility and deliberate evangelization that Pope Francis appeals. According to Vatican spokesman Thomas Rosica, Pope Francis selected his new name because he “had a special place in his heart and his ministry for the poor, for the disenfranchised,” and “for those living on the fringes and facing injustice.” His episcopal motto while in Buenos Aires was “Lowly, but chosen.” Perhaps the selection of the name Francis says that though chosen, he remains lowly.
[…]
Saints have many sides, however. St. Francis is less renowned for his pioneering interfaith dialogue and bold efforts to evangelize, but given attrition in the Catholic churches in Europe and the pressing need for conversations with non-Christian political regimes, this aspect of his biography is at least as relevant as any other. Legend maintains that St. Francis traveled to Egypt during the Fifth Crusade in a brazen (and unsuccessful) attempt to convert the sultan.
The same interest in courageous witness to God is evident in some of Cardinal Bergoglio’s views. In 2001 he stated that the witness of the encounter with God was the critical element in communicating the central components of Christianity. Persuasion, he said, would never be able to achieve the same results. A real encounter with Catholicism and God is required. His opening speech as pontiff struck the same chord. He restated his belief in the need for Catholic evangelization, saying that he hoped the journey begun with his ascension to the papacy would be “fruitful for the evangelization of [Rome].” Such statements are very much in keeping with the New Evangelization movement of John Paul II, of which Pope Francis is a proven leader, and would place him in continuity with the mission of his two immediate predecessors. That both Benedict XVI and Francis selected the names of the founders of religious orders suggests that they both see the need for religious reform and renewal.
Läs mer: ”Social rättvisa bärande tema för Fraciskus” av Ulla Gudmundson, Sveriges ambassadör vid den Heliga Stolen (Kyrkans Tidning).
Bild: ©iStockphoto.com/Mark Strozier
Historia: Winston Churchills svarta hund!
Posted in Historia, Image, Information, Politik, Tidskriftsomslag, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Anthony Storr, Black Dog, Charles Darwin, Depression, Elizabeth Wakely, Florence Nightingale, History Today, Jerome Carson, Lord Moran, Margaret Bourke-White, Psykisk ohälsa, Svarta hund, Tidskriftsomslag, Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill on 23 mars, 2013| Leave a Comment »
SJUKDOM | Det är ingen hemlighet att Winston Churchill led av återkommande perioder av depression. Han t.o.m. döpte dem till ”The Black Dog”.
Men Churchill är naturligtvis inte den enda personen i historien med någon form av psykisk ohälsa. Andra berömdheter är Florence Nightingale, Charles Darwin och Abraham Lincoln.
Frågan är om det idag skulle vara möjligt för någon att bli vald till president eller regeringschef om han eller hon led av någon forma av psykisk ohälsa, oavsett hur lindrigt.
Ett avslöjande skulle i USA genast sätta igång diskussioner om lämpligheten av att t.ex. ansvara för USA:s kärvapensystem.
Men som Jerome Carson och Elizabeth Wakely skriver i History Today är det inte bara elände:
[I]t may also be that, despite some hindrances and setbacks, the mental suffering experienced by Lincoln, Darwin, Nightingale and Churchill actually facilitated and contributed to many of their successes and achievements. Such a theory of a creative malady is well known in its application to those in the creative arts but less so for those in other disciplines and in public life. At the outset it is important to bear in mind the caveat expressed by the psychiatrist Anthony Storr: ‘In a subject in which so much is controversial, it behoves the psychiatrist and the historian to be modest in their claims to psychological understanding.’
In a conversation with his personal physician, Lord Moran, during the war years, Churchill commented:
Black depression settled on me … I didn’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train was passing through … I don’t like to stand by the edge of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything.
Lord Moran in turn informed Churchill:
The Black Dog business you get from your forebears. You have fought against it all your life … You always avoid anything that is depressing.
Rather like Lincoln, Churchill was also quite successful in battling his depression episodes. His coping strategies included cerebral and artistic pursuits, such as writing and painting, and more physical ones, such as bricklaying, along with over-indulgence in food, alcohol and cigars.
While there is little disagreement that Churchill suffered from depression, there is more dispute over whether he may have had bipolar disorder.
[…]
Resentment of authority and difficulty in dealing with hostility or animosity often leads depressives to seek out opponents in the external world and Hitler was the man upon whom Churchill could release his aggression. He had, too, an unwavering belief in his own invincibility and his own destiny:
This cannot be accident, it must be design. I was kept for this job.
This is perhaps a bipolar blurring of the line between fantasy and reality. As Lord Moran said:
It was the inner world of make-believe in which Winston found reality.
When Churchill told Lady Violet Bonham Carter, ‘We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm’, he encapsulated self-abasement and self-glorification in a single phrase.
Seemingly never given to introspection, it may also be that Churchill’s own experience of depression enabled him to understand and sympathise with the deprivation and hardships the people suffered during the war years. His radio broadcasts to he nation certainly appear, on the whole, to have given hope and the will to endure. However Anthony Storr is convinced that it was manic aspects of Churchill’s mental illness that were critical to his success:
Had Churchill been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgement might well have concluded we were finished.
Bild: Tidskriftsomslaget är History Today, februari 2013. Fotot på Churchill är taget av den berömda fotografen Margaret Bourke-White.
PR: Kampanjen ”Imagine a World Without Hate”!
Posted in Film, Kampanj, Kommunikation, Media, PR, Reklam, tagged ADL, Anne Frank, Anti-Defamation League, Daniel Pearl, Kampanjvideo, Martin Luther King Jr., Matthew Shepard, PR, Yitzhak Rabin on 22 mars, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Så här skall en kampanjvideo se ut! Bättre än så här kan det inte bli.
Många organisationer vill väl men få lyckas slå igenom i mediebruset.
In honor of our Centennial Year in 2013, the Anti-Defamation League launched the “Imagine a World Without Hate” video and action campaign, and we invite you to participate.
Take just 80 seconds of your time to watch this powerful video, which imagines a world without racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism — a world in which the hate violence that took the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Anne Frank, Daniel Pearl, Matthew Shepard and others did not happen. Imagine what these individuals could have continued to contribute to society if bigotry, hate and extremism had not cut their lives tragically short.
After 100 years of fighting bigotry and fostering respect, we are celebrating our successes, while at the same time recognizing that we still have a long way to go to achieve the reality of a world without hate. Join us by watching, sharing and taking steps every day to create a world without hate. Thank you for stepping up to create a world without hate as an individual, community, school or corporation.
ADL is most grateful to the families of those featured in the video, whose commitment and participation made this campaign possible, and to the Estate of John Lennon for granting us the rights to use his beautiful and iconic song.
Imagine a World Without Hate™. We do. Join us.
Mer: Läs om Anne Frank, Yitzhak Rabin och de övriga personerna i videon.