Deborah Solomon has established a popular weekly feature in the New York Times in which she snarkily interviews somebody much smarter than herself. The secret to her success: being ignorant and surly. Here’s part of her interview with Umberto Eco (with Solomon in italics):

Q: Although you’re known best as the author of the highbrow murder mystery “The Name of the Rose,” you’re also a prolific political commentator whose essays have now been collected in a book, “Turning Back the Clock,” in which you warn against the dangers of “media populism.” How would you define that term? Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.

Much of your book is an assault on Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who used his media empire to assist his political ends. From ’94 to ’95, and from 2001 to 2006, Berlusconi was the richest man in Italy, the prime minister, the owner of three TV channels and controller of the three state channels. He is a phenomenon that could happen and is maybe happening in other countries. And the mechanism will be the same. …
So why would any country besides Italy be at risk of having the media takeover you describe?

Obviously, Putin has been imitating Berlusconi’s path in Russia, and Chavez has been trying, less effectively, to do something similar in Venezuela.

Eco’s answer sets Solomon off on an exchange that Fred Willard would be proud to have improvised in a Christopher Guest comedy in one of his roles as a smugly clueless media personality:

One of the reasons why foreigners are so interested in the Italian case is that Italy was in the last century a laboratory. It started with the Futurists. Their manifesto was in 1909. Then fascism — it was tested in the Italian laboratory and then it migrated to Spain, to the Balkans, to Germany.

Are you saying that Germany got the idea of fascism from Italy? Oh, certainly. According to what the historians say, it is so.

Maybe just the Italian historians. If you don’t like it, don’t tell it. I am indifferent.

You’re saying that Italy was a trendsetter in both fashion — or art — and fascism? Yes, O.K., why not?

Earth to Deborah Solomon: trust Umberto Eco, the Italian polymath born in 1932, on this, not your own store of knowledge. See, there was this guy named Mussolini. Hard as it may be to believe, he came (as the narrator of the Time Masheen ride in “Idiocracy” says) before “the year 1939 when Charlie Chaplin and his nazi regime enslaved Europe and tried to take over the world… But then an even greater force emerged, the U.N. [pronounced "un"] and the U.N. un-nazied the world - forever.”

Eco goes on to correct Solomon’s somewhat less idiocratic misapprehension of which of his bestsellers was the inspiration for The Da Vinci Code:

I am wondering if you read’s “Da Vinci Code,” which some critics see as the pop version of your “Name of the Rose.” I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters in my novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum,” which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.

But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel. No, in “Foucault’s Pendulum” I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.

Here’s my 2006 posting on “The Da Vinci Code versus Foucault’s Pendulum.”

This is from Nidra Poller, in Paris, via Pajamas Media:

Fires are raging in the banlieue tonight. Two boys aged 15 and 16 riding on a mini-motorcycle (prohibited on the road) hit a police car this afternoon in Villiers-le-Bel. The boys, who weren’t wearing helmets, were killed. Hundreds of enraged men and boys are tearing up the neighborhood.

Le Parisien reports that they burned down a Peugeot dealership, sacked a train station and shops, tore up a McDonald’s, stole the day’s receipts and attacked customers, smashed and burned cars, and are still going strong. A police commissioner who tried to talk to the mob was attacked with iron rods; his face and skull are fractured. A police station was burned down, seven policemen were injured.

Interviewed by Le Parisien, the uncle of Moushin Souhhali, one of the victims, says he understands the rage; it’s terrible to lose a 15 year-old boy. His body, claims the uncle, was dumped at the fire station with no respect. The police who, in his opinion, caused the accident were nowhere to be seen. He heard they were speeding. His nephew was a good boy, not a delinquent.

The November 2005 riots that lasted three weeks were triggered by the death by electrocution of two teenage boys who ran away from the police and hid in an electric substation. According to the sociological interpretation of the incident, the police were guilty of pursuing the innocent boy

This is useful, but it’s wrong to refer to two teenagers who crashed their bike into a car as “the victims.” The police commissioner whose head was smashed with iron bars, and the seven injured policemen are victims. These riots, by the way, are very reminiscent of the Watts Riots and the Rodney King riots. Both of those started as a result of the “local community” reacting badly to an arrest.

Pat Buchanan’s new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart is now available. You can buy it through our Amazon story by clicking on the title, a painless way of donating. (But for those of you good people who want to take part in our fundraising drive, this is the place to go.)

Drudge has some of the details here. See also the publisher’s website here. One thing that’s interesting is that it’s available for Amazon’s new wireless ebook reader, the Kindle (TM). You can buy one of those here.

In the NYT, a story on the frustrations that African-Americans are experiencing with DNA ancestry testing services:

DNA Tests Find Branches but Few Roots

By RON NIXON

HENRY LOUIS GATES JR., whose PBS special “African American Lives” explores the ancestry of famous African-Americans using DNA testing, has done more than anyone to help popularize such tests and companies that offer them. But recently this Harvard professor has become one of the industry’s critics.

Mr. Gates says his concerns date back to 2000, when a company told him his maternal ancestry could most likely be traced back to Egypt, probably to the Nubian ethnic group. Five years later, however, a test by a second company startled him. It concluded that his maternal ancestors were not Nubian or even African, but most likely European.

Why the completely different results? Mr. Gates said the first company never told him he had multiple genetic matches, most of them in Europe. “They told me what they thought I wanted to hear,” Mr. Gates said.

Telling Gates his ancestors haled from Nubia, on the upper Nile, was a particularly clever scam for the first company since Gates is about the color of a Nubian (thus obviating the need for Gates to have European ancestors), and Gates made a PBS documentary series called “Wonders of the African World,” in which he took a camera crew around Africa looking for ancient ruins, and not finding all that many. In general, ancient Africans didn’t seem to see much point in slaving in the hot sun to put up some big structure that tourists would someday be impressed with.

But Nubia has lots of cool looking pyramids, temples, and sculptures, complete with an undeciphered written language, at Jebel Barkal, Kush, and Meroe, and conquered Egypt and ruled as the 25th Egyptian Dynasty.

How exactly Gates’ ancestors were supposed to get from Nubia (mostly in northern Sudan) to America wasn’t explained, but that’s all part of the romance of genealogy.

(more…)

Our friend, Vincent Chiarello of the Virginia-based American Council for Immigration Reform, offers this follow up on his earlier pre-election comments  regarding the future for immigration reform in Virginia.

The following is Chiarello’s assessment.

The election results throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia in November indicate that, at first blush, progress toward resolution of many of the problems created by illegal immigration took a step backwards.

However, it may be more accurate to say that it took a step sideways.

The House of Delegates remained heavily Republican, and most of the GOP nominees won re-election; further, there were also GOP first-time candidates who ran on a platform of dealing forcefully with illegal aliens, and did well.

That chamber is not the problem for, under the leadership of Dave Albo, bills will be introduced during the upcoming legislative session (Jan.-Mar.) grappling with that issue.

The loss of the GOP majority in the Virginia Senate was a setback, for Democrats picked up four seats and now have a 21 to 19 edge.

To worsen the situation in the Upper Chamber, Sen. Jay O’Brien, who campaigned on the baleful impact of illegal aliens, and has been a stalwart to the cause, lost a seat he had held for eight years. Another strong supporter of anti-illegal immigration legislation, Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, won his victory by 92 votes in an election that saw 35,000 votes cast.

Still, there is room for some optimism, for many of the Democratic candidates, recognizing the volatility of the issue, were not shy about saying that something had to be done in the Commonwealth to deal with the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who currently reside here.

Of the GOP candidates who lost in the Senate, several had been consistently hostile to legislation aimed at controlling illegal immigration; hence the GOP loss may not be as serious as originally thought.

If the Black Caucus in the two chambers, which has slowly been modifying its stance of voting against bills controlling illegal immigration continues, our side may see some useful legislation come out of the legislative session.

The real question of what will be done rests with Democratic Governor Tim Kaine.

The late John F. Kennedy  was once asked if he was, “… an optimist or a pessimist?”

Kennedy replied that he was a “realist.” In that light, there is little hope that Kaine will drop his mantra that, “Immigration is a Federal problem,” and deal with the issue directly. The victory of his party in the Virginia Senate conveniently lets him off the hook, unless some calamitous immigration-related incident takes place. More likely than not, the realistic approach is that the cause of immigration reform depends on Democratic Party support, and if the past is prologue, we should not hold our collective breath. But stranger things have been known to happen.

It is the long-term prospects that are the most challenging. In the legislative elections in suburban northern Virginia, the population center and cash cow of the Commonwealth, 11 candidates ran unopposed: 10 Democrats and one Republican – the aforementioned Albo.

As the area fills increasingly with more and more immigrants, as well as transplanted Yankees, the more conservative aspects of Virginia’s political landscape may shift increasingly toward liberal and Democratic perspectives.

The day of the elections, one local newspaper carried the headline, “Virginia is Turning Blue,” i.e., increasingly Democratic.

If so, that puts extra importance on dealing with immigration in the short run since our opponents are playing a waiting game and are counting on time being on their side.

A report from the World Bank entitled “Education Quality and Economic Growth” begins:

“Schooling has not delivered fully on its promise as the driver of economic success. Expanding school attainment, at the center of most development strategies, has not guaranteed better economic conditions. What’s been missing is attention to the quality of education—ensuring that students actually learn. There is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population, rather than mere school enrollment, are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. And the magnitude of the challenge is clear—international comparisons reveal even larger deficits in cognitive skills than in school enrollment and attainment in developing countries.”