Pope's Wedding

An earthy man with jumbo, Dumbo ears. Even as he raises the unleavened bread for it to become God incarnate, the body of Christ, it is not hard to imagine him at table – enjoying his food; also at stool afterwards – with similar satisfaction.

Pope Francis is performing a miracle – bread into body. Don’t be surprised: he does it all the time. Another one will be along in minute – wine into blood; and here are two he prepared earlier – the dead popes (John Paul II and John XXIII) which he transformed into saints before going on to celebrate mass.

Yes, it is easy to reveal the pope and his retinue for what they partly are: men with feet of clay and an appetite for repairing the sullied reputation of the ‘holy’ Church, host to all their privileges.

And then there is that gesture, performed by popes and priests alike, held throughout the process of consecration except when the celebrant is required to fiddle with bits of bodily bread and the carafe of bloody wine.

They all do it – this gesture; and no one else is allowed to. Elbows tucked in; hands raised to shoulder height, held sideways on; palms open – facing each other.

In the space between the celebrant’s two palms – about the length of his forearm, there is room for all the men and women in the world. With all of us included in this space, there is God – in the instant. There is God, the moment all humanity is here.

Then again, not. Nothing but a rhetorical posture which grossly distorts the universal relation between human beings – you and me and anyone who reads this and everyone who never does, never did, never will. But by trying and even by failing to formulate this relation in the prescribed gesture of a designated individual, at least the relation itself is acknowledged.

It’s not heaven – we must know that; but surely better than the interpersonal purgatory in which nothing exceeds networking.

Two months before the World Cup opens in Brazil (and three months earlier and four months before that), an excess of violence. In Rio, what else would they do but riot? N.B. In the relation outlined above, ‘they’ is really some of us. Denied entry to the forthcoming festival of futebol; pacified – occupied – by military police presence. Meanwhile the Catholic mass – the holdall – is simply not big enough to hold them all, all the time.

Of course we always knew as much: that is why football in the first place, and why it matters more than mortal life.

One night in Rio, a few blocks from the Maracana, a man hurls a long wooden pole at police lines, his body a perfect arc of strength, movement, completion. But Robocop is a long way off; the missile will fall far short. Between its trajectory and the line of police, a middle aged woman walks unperturbed, carrying her shopping.

The woman is solid, earthy: she might be the pope’s sister…….or his wife.

XXXXX XXXXX Has Left The Club

Forlorn, fatalistic, farewell. Just the one hand raised – splayed fingers, flat palm facing camera – says all of these. A gallery of many, further images shows him variously driven, distraught, rueful, resourceful, far-sighted, near-sighted.

Clear blue eyes surely clouded with regret? Doesn’t show; you wouldn’t know. No mean face – Glasgow-born; leafy suburb – labour aristocracy. Built to take hard knocks and stay in shape (composure’s for keeping not losing). Regular features; teeth now more regular than they ought to be, going by early photos from playing days. Winning smile – that’s a laugh – may always have lacked conviction; or this may be reading history backwards.

Was there a moment when you lost them; more accurately, when you lost yourself and couldn’t keep hold of the squad? I know nothing of your sort of dressing room. Showers and towels and all kinds of shenanigans back in the 1970s – stock pictures are all I’ve got to go on. On stage I know it can happen in the space of a drum beat, all because you didn’t leave enough space between one beat and the next. But even the instant – the moment of failure – is not simply instantaneous. Ever the before and after: continuously unfolding; never predetermined.

None of them pre-set, a series of defeats beat David Moyes, former Manchester United manager as of 8.30am Tues 22 April 2014. 

The Magician's Moustache

David Axelrod’s moustache is much the same as Peter Mandelson’s, as worn by ‘Mandy’ in the pre-New Labour days when he was trying and failing to turn Neil Kinnock into the stuff of legend.

Axelrod, the communications strategist who helped Barack Obama win two US presidential elections, has just signed a consultancy contract with current UK Labour leader Ed Miliband – a boyish figure who hardly seems old enough to grow a moustache.

Mandelson, you may recall, was Tony Blair’s secret weapon in his successful bid for the Labour leadership in 1994. Mandy disguised himself by shaving off his moustache and going by the name ‘Bobby’. Re-re-named ‘the Prince of Darkness’, he led New Labour’s team of spin doctors in the run-up to the 1997 general election landslide in which he himself was elected MP for Hartlepool; he went on to be a controversial cabinet minister and European commissioner.

Although Axelrod is the man most closely associated with Obama’s successive election victories, even his moustache bristles with the stuff that sloughs off successful candidates. In Blair and especially in Obama, the electorate saw and identified with an ethereal quality which both connects with the world and leaves worldliness behind. Exactly the kind of contradictory magic which a moustache is made to dispel; as Marcel Duchamp must have known when he drew one on the Mona Lisa.

Not the Mother of God, but (damaged) God himself: in post-ideological politics, the electorate consecrates its favoured candidate, who is both put on a pedestal and prepared for crucifixion later. The reason for this is straightforward: without a meaningful battle of substantial ideas, there is no other way for politics to rise above horse trading.

The real mystery is the role of men with moustaches. How do they fit in to a quasi-religious experience? Perhaps part of their achievement is to keep all incoming out of the way, so that nothing need impede the moment of transcendence which is variously described as Hope, Change or Social Justice. Acting as feet of clay they also drain their candidate of responsibility, leaving him gravity-free to exist as proto-holy spirit.

Without his man of the moustache, Obama could never have seemed so clean shaven; would not have been deemed acceptable to so many white voters.

Will Axelrod now enable Miliband to become equally magical – who knows?

Putin's Mother

How does he do it? On both sides of the Atlantic Western leaders can only marvel at Vladimir Putin’s positioning. All week he has outsmarted them over Ukraine. Throughout three hours of Q&A, broadcast live from the Kremlin earlier today, he more than held his own with a domestic audience.

Where Putin is concerned, foreign policy success is not just a pretty face saver for failure at home. The Russian president is simply firing on all fronts.

Is it all down to appearances? Judging by today's performance, indeed there are iconic elements in the way Putin presents himself; such as the starched white shirt (the more effective because we have previously seen the bare torso underneath), and chillingly blue-grey eyes. Yet his Yul Brynner bone structure is countered by, of all things, a comb-over, linking Putin to various downtrodden husbands from a spate of late twentieth century sitcoms. The studio set didn’t help much, either. The ice-blue background was meant to be cool; instead, of all things, it looked like leftovers from a UK Aids-awareness campaign of the 1980s.

But none of this matters much because with Putin, appearance is not what’s paramount. This is not a man of whom you would dream of saying, he is a brand. Of course by now his reputation precedes him, but only because, long before any concern for brand building or reputational enhancement, he first of all addresses the question – any question – in and of itself. This approach allows Putin to appropriate the situations in which he finds himself; in other words, he grasps the nettle instead of being stung by it.

While British politicians and even Barack Obama are afflicted by an unbearable lightness of being, Putin’s actualité has allowed him to develop a successful realpolitik. He personally may pine for films about KGB men in the Soviet era, or dream of returning to the womb of Mother Russia, but it’s Mother Thatcher he resembles in his address to the world as it really is.

Blanket Coverage

I slept with a Banksy. After it had been prized off the external wall and brought inside a Bristol boys’ club for safe keeping, youth worker Jordan Powell stayed the night with the stencilled image of a man and woman embracing while checking their phones; or, checking their phones while embracing – just as long as they both saw it the same way.

The mural is thought to be the work of graffiti artist Banksy.  There were clear skies across England overnight, and temperatures fell towards freezing. Mr Powell may have snuggled up to the couple to stay warm (assuming they hadn’t turned cold towards each other).

Winched to safety in wire baskets (like pets on the way to the vet), survivors of the South Korean ferry disaster are wrapped in checkered blankets, pink and blue. Their faces are inscrutable. Yes, I said it; but this is not to continue the Occidental caricature of Orientals. The young woman stepping out of the basket and into the helicopter, is so busy taking the crucial step to safety she cannot also make the leap to her own emotions. Similarly, high school students in matching red life-jackets – looks like they all made the team, sitting on the upturned hull of the stricken ship, calmly await their turn for the winch. On the face of it, there’s more trauma at the average adventure playground.

Nearly 300 passengers still unaccounted for. Back at Danwon High School in Ansan, near Seoul, more blankets are issued as parents and relatives prepare for a long night.

A mother’s profile, head tilted back on her husband’s shoulder, eyes aligned upwards. She isn’t, they’re not; but you could hardly blame them for checking their phones.
Beyond Banksy, Henri Matisse could not have made her more beautiful; but if he wanted to make her feel better, he should have cut out her heart.

Humanity abhors the icon

Instead of prompt resolution, i.e. Crimea Annexed, this time the fomentation of civil unrest, i.e. Crisis Deepens. With a light touch light the touch paper and retire, only in order to re-appear as peacekeepers – reducing ethnic tension; curtailing civil war.

That’s the plan, but which side is being talked about here – Russia or the West? The same could be said of either: they've both been stirring up strong emotions; then stealing away with faces covered or wearing well-rehearsed expressions.

Note from the Fashion Police: if you can’t go for the Balaclava round here, where can you be seen in one?

In the realm of realpolitik, the plot is always thickening, bubbling away like Bisto. Meanwhile in Liverpool on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, or in Boston a year after the bombing, there is only the absence of guile; abdication of self-interest in memory of the dead; the transparency of innocence.

I think not. Rather, after loss of son or daughter, I suspect every step out of bed has to be negotiated. Rounds of diplomacy are required to answer the question of self-determination:

Why should I be, when my child is not (to be)?

Recurring question, secret diplomacy, successive rounds – all this before you’re out the door.

Be advised: there are no absolutes of innocence or experience. Behind the balaclavas, even the veterans wear both of these. Hence the mask: to hide the other side.

And the line about Fashion Police? Only something silly to undermine the iconography.

Hero in the Hood

Second time around, it’s farce. At Fort Hood, a US Army shooter shoots at his own side in a four-minute tantrum. Before turning his gun on himself, Specialist Ivan Lopez chalks up a ludicrously low number of casualties – three dead and 16 wounded; 10 fewer fatalities than the first time this Texas army base became a shoot-to-kill firing range, back in 2009.

As George Bush Jnr is to artist, so the second shooter is to psycho-killer (from photos, only his nose looks like Robert de Niro’s in Taxi Driver – nothing else). If not for previous form – (a) former president with a reputation for poor taste and matching intelligence, i.e. the dumb dauber; (b) the military base already blighted by human tragedy, i.e. uncanny echo – neither one would fit across the Front Page.

Forget farcical: the Fort Worth sequel should be up there, anyway. Not for the tawdry shooting spree, possibly sparked by a dispute about leave days and work rotas among Uncle Sam’s truck drivers; but for the truly headline heroism of Sergeant First Class Danny Ferguson. According to local sources, Ferguson held shut the door which kept the shooter away from a roomful of innocent occupants – and got himself shot up instead.

He even looked like Tom Hanks, for chrissake.

For all I know, Ferguson might have frowned upon ‘chrissake’ for taking the name of the Lord in vain; or he may have been a blaspheming sonofabitch. Either way, his courageous action – Jeez, he chose to go From Here To Eternity – requires hero worship from the rest of us.