Intl Affairs: Trump is the first "Dancehall President"

Bill Clinton was described as the first "black" President, for the supposed diversity in his appointments. Almost two decades later, the country got a literal "black President" - not just an African-American, but an American-born son of an African man (and white mother).

Barack Obama, who remains in office until January, has made an indelible mark upon the office and the world, largely for his adroit political manoeuvring, his unflappable demeanour in the face of stern test (like the 2008 financial meltdown) and outstanding diplomacy.

Obama leaves, as virtually all Presidents do, with a legacy open to questions - with an agenda not nearly as advanced as he would have hoped, with social progress on several fronts, but with a rising tide of racially-motivated violence against blacks by law enforcement and other quarters.

His "successor" already creates history just by his appearance at the White House. Not merely the oldest person (70) ever elected tot he nation's highest office, Trump is also the first to have been elected President without ever holding a previous political office. Barack Obama campaigned - successfully - against a chorus of "inexperience!"when he became Leader of the Free World in 2008, but even he had previously been a Senator.

But even more than an outsider, Trump is the first "dancehall President". NOT the first hip-hop, but the first "dancehall President". Allow me to justify. Actor- writer-director Warren Beatty (who's probably more dismayed than many at a Trump victory) cast himself as a hip-hop friendly, ultra-liberal candidate in the prescient 1998 comedy Bulworth.

But Trump's ascendancy brings to Presidential politics a previously inconceivable level of boorishness, an obsession with celebrity, of disdain for establishment, of obsession with money and wealth (and without a corresponding track record of supporting development beyond physical infrastructure), and just a level of personal braggadoccio - including the willingness to settle differences with his fists - that can only be linked with the dancehall genre.

The above image shows then media darling Trump with 90s dancehall legends Shabba Ranks (Grammy winner) and Super Cat (feautred on several pop hit collabs). I don't know the exact date or the provenance, but the image has been making the rounds on social media and struck me as very telling. Donald Trump is happiest when he is in the news and the spotlight is on him. He would undoubtedly prefer favourable coverage, but his media game is now so complete that he was able to swing the torrent of unfavourable reactions to the 2005 outtake from "Access Hollywood" in whgich he boasted, inter alia, of being able to grab women by the pussy (vaginal mound) because of his celebrity status.

In a  Jamaica where such boasts are commonplace, and ingrained in the dancehall canon, the revelation of the Access Hollywood clip undoubtedly further burnished Trump's cult hero status. While rural and suburban poor (Hillary's unfortunate "basket of deplorables") accounted for Trump's victory at the US polls, His Jamaican "base" is solidly urban, working class, less educated and infinitely more materialistic in outlook. Indeed, Trump's closest reference point form the Jamaican perspective in jailed dancehall kingpin Vybz Kartel, whose murder trial attracted international attention. Were the Jamaican political system to create space for Kartel in a manner similar to what the US has created for Trump, the "World Boss" would almost certainly trounce the leaders of the two major political parties - a daunting prospect indeed.

As the US and the rest of the world prepares for the beginning of this chapter of the Trump Era, it will be interesting to see how much of his  tough guy, straight capitalist, "grab 'em by the p---" ethos he retains. Already, in the tense and tumultuous days since his poll victory, Trump has already sounded a more conciliatory tone, one I expect him to keep and refine all the way to the Inauguration.

But once in office, don't be at all surprised to see a return to at least some of the eyebrow-raising words and antics that he used to vanquish some 16 Republican challengers and the entrenched Democratic insider, Hillary Clinton.

If the presidential race can be likened to a DJ (toaster) clash, then Trump, in the words of oyung star Alkaline is the "Champion Boy".

Don't blink over the next four years

National Affairs: Jamaica Farewell, my perspective on the Presidential visit

Leonard Thomas photo

Leonard Thomas photo

It was not the largest public turnout, nor even the most robust; greater crowds greeted the then newly freed Nelson Madela when he and (then) wife Winnie made Jamaica one of their first post-Apartheid stops. Jamaica's own Usain Bolt, returning after smashing his own world records in Berlin, had to crawl through molasses-thick crowds that amassed at the international airport in Kingston and stayed with his mini-motorcade all the way to New Kingston's Pegasus Hotel.

Yet there was a discernibly different energy to this visit, a sense of history that set it apart from the two foregoing examples. It was more than the interval - 33 years - between the the previous Presidential visit and this one, more even than the fact that this was a Black president coming to a predominantly Black country, and the country which offered to the world the greatest Black nationalist/Pan-Africanist yet seen, in the person of Marcus Garvey (more on him later)

Much of what made the Obama visit unforgettable can be encapsulated in two moments, one

NY HeraldRecorder/AP

"unscheduled" and the other organized almost to the minute. As hard as it is to believe that none of the Jamaican co-ordinators even suggested it, the visit to the Bob Marley Museum was the kind of communications and social masterstroke n which Obama built his two successful election campaigns and even his administration as a whole. Eschewing the kind of formal gathering in Government halls or ritzy hotel ball rooms, the President made a point of paying public homage to the man billed as the "first Third World superstar" Leaving himself, ostensibly in the hands of the tour guide, Obama seemed genuinely awed and gratified to be in the 'House that Bob Built". It was, by any measure, magic and the international media picked up on this aspect of the visit as if the coming deliberations with Jamaican PM Simpson-Miller and the visiting CARICOM heads was all hogwash and hot air.

"Beast Mode" the Obama vehicle makes its way up Hope Road

His next triumph came the next day, further up the long dual carriageway (and minutes above the US Embassy complex. On the campus of the University of the West Indies, the President held court with arguably his natural and most sympathetic audience: students and young adults. Before enduring all manner of questions (from the inane to the inspired), Obama gave a typically polished yet relaxed preamble and announced two significant initiatives: the Young Leaders of America project -a regional initiative aimed at offering young social entrepreneurs and others opportunities to intern with companies in the US among other activities, and an energy fund to support clean energy initiatives. The latter is interesting as the President's visit put him just outside the worst effects of the  disgusting  and calamitous fire at the Riverton landfill, the latest - but largest - in a long series of mishaps at the city's major refuse dump.

The visit yielded the expected communiques and joint statements of the kind that the general public absorb next to nothing from even as they observed in rapt attention from bars, banks and supermarkets. It also served up controversy, none initiated by Obama himself, but one episode which continues to simmer even as the President enjoys the Panamanian hospitality (hard to ignore the irony that Jamaicans, as detailed by Olive Senior in her book "Dying to Better Themselves" were an integral part of the labour force that built the Panama Canal, now being expanded).

In preparation for the visit, the Jamaican Government embarked on the kind of infrastructural "sprucing up" - road-repair and other urban beautification - that typically attends the impending arrival of important foreign visitors. It seems to be the Jamaican way, never mind that aid roads had lain unattended and threatening the life, limb and undercarriage of many Jamaican motorists. But in this case, an extra step of "sanitization" was taken. Crab vendors at the southern end of the broad ring around the National Heroes park (itself formerly a horse racing park, still known to older residents as "Race Course") were high-handedly and unceremoniously removed, their livelihoods disrupted, and their dignities assailed in public view.

A large, but sadly not well-sustained outcry ensued, with some quarters countering that the vendors - some established for over 40 years and counting local politicians among their customers - were there without formal permit and without the kind of sanitary conveniences and inputs that might make the granting of such permits moot. The latest on that situation is that Kingston Mayor Angella Brown-Burke has publicly informed the vendors that they may, in the wake of the President's jet trailed departure, they may return to their "Race Course" roost.

Another controversy still emitting some heat concerns the remarks from "New Reggae Revolutionary" Chronixx. In an Instagram post, the already revered singjay led with a reminder of the ongoing issue of a full pardon for the aforementioned Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey who was found guilty of mail fraud and deported from the United States at the height of the global growth of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Against an image of Garvey in his famous regalia, Chronixx opined "this man still have a criminal in the United States, and we glorifying some waste man!"       The term is roughly equivalent to "punk" or even to "scoundrel" or "wastrel".

This time a resounding chorus of disagreement across social media and a public rebuke from Jamaican Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna, with whom Chronixx has previously exchanged some not too pleasant words. Though the singer, as he pointed out, never referred to anyone directly in his "waste man" remark, the timing the background and the general flow of sentiment made a strong case for the inference, and many expressed disappointment with the artiste, viewed as part of the new revolutionary yet progressive element that had been sorely missing from the island's globally-adored popular music.

Like the Riverton fire, the President escaped personal presence in this last firestorm (a former Jamaican Senator has, suprisingly, sprung to Chronixx' defence), but no doubt he will have been apprised by his aides, and no doubt the US Embassy will be taking a new, harder look at future visa applications from the singer and his Zinc Fence Redemption band. this is not meant to be mean-spirited, it is merely the truth informed by experience.

But for all these factors, President Obama's visit to Jamaica remains a watershed, a brief but deeply affecting experience for both visitor and host. with the end of his term just a little more than a year away, there are certainly moments from this trip that he will ponder long into private life, and likewise, the populace is universally agreed that even if the interval between this and future Presidential visits is shorter (there is already much private anticipation of the expected candidacy - historic if it proves successful - of Hilary Clinton), we shall not again see the like of Barack Obama on our shores, at least not as leader of the free world

Let's Get [bin] Laden: Zero Dark Thirty

Jessica Chastain is the sexiest ugly woman in Hollywood.

to the immediate hue and cry of "sexism!" I say, "get stuffed!"

To the matter of her character in this typically intense, well-paced thriller from kathryn Bigelow - CIA operative Mya is the pounding heart of the piece. Sheh as no boyfriend, very little in the way of a social life; she has ahrdly any possessions or hobbies or toher interests.
All she has is a passion to catch the most wanted man and most elusive master-terrorist on earth: Usama bin-Laden, or UBL, as she frequently refers to him. But Mys is, in one sense even more faceless than UBL. Her superiors, including boss (James Gandolfini) at the Agency don't know her, though they certainly know of her; the terrorists who are shielding and carrying out the orders of UBL dont know her though they know she's onto his trail that no one else has ever been. Even her partner in the field dont truly know her.

But thanks to Bigelow, and screenwriter Mark Boal, the audience gets to know her, even if its in little bits Eschewing the kind of easy through-line that might conceivably have shown by cause and effect how American forces finally captured and killed bin Laden, Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (who wrote Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker) instead dramatise how fraught with difficulty and uncertainty each line of inquiry was as administrations changed and the means for achieving their objectives altered.

Based on first-hand accounts, but necessarily fictionalised, Zero Dark Thirty does not – as some have claimed – definitively conclude that torture facilitated bin Laden’s capture. Rather, the scenes depicting so-called “enhanced interrogation” provide important context. Because these techniques were used, the film seems to be saying, we don’t know how this story might have turned out had they not been part of the Bush administration’s immediate post-9/11 anti-terrorism strategy. Thus not to show them would have risked whitewashing the tale and turning it into a jingoistic slice of American triumphalism.

Nevertheless, part of the reason these scenes have such an impact is the forthright way Bigelow introduces them. Zero Dark Thirty begins with a blank screen and the harrowing sound of anguished, real-life, emergency phone calls from the World Trade Center on 11 September, 2001. For close to two minutes that’s all we get and the effect is devastating.

Those making and receiving the calls are the first distressed inhabitants of a new world and when Bigelow cuts to her first scene, the revenge-tinged ugliness of the American response to this new world becomes plain to see. Suddenly we’re in a CIA “black site” two years later with a bearded American agent by the name of Dan (Jason Clarke) attempting to extract information from a Muslim prisoner strung up by his arms from the roof of a jail cell. What follows is brutal. Beaten, waterboarded and humiliated, the prisoner is thoroughly dehumanised by his American captors and Bigelow’s camera, framing the action simply and without judgment, doesn’t flinch.

But, back to Chastain. She's astonishing in the role, not because it’s a particularly showy part (although she is in almost every scene), but because she remains such an enigma. Here, the chameleon-like quality that has made Chastain  - with her ski-jump nose - simultaneously the most in-demand and the most inconspicuous actress of the last two years works to her advantage. Her character is defined by ruthlessly executed action and, as such, the film becomes an almost fetishistic tribute to her and her colleagues’ relentless professionalism.

The persistent, low-level tension is, of course, jacked up several notches during the climactic assault on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. As with the combat scenes in The Hurt Locker, Bigelow doesn’t use gung-ho theatrics. Shot mostly in night vision, it’s depicted matter-of-factly without swelling music or Hollywood heroics, with an ambiguous final shot that hints at the unknowable cost of revenge. Zero Dark Thirty is a deftly made, intelligently handled and serious piece of film-making that again stamps Bigelow's class as the pre-emeinent explorer of that thin line between wholesale action and the dark shards of the psyche. 

Whoopi Plays God, Obama Plays Matchmaker: Review Double-Bill

Unfortunately, Whoopi Goldberg playing God, the setting of New Orleans (still in recovery mode, but vibrant), and the addition of Gael Garica Bernal do not quite add up to 'A Little Bit of Heaven'.

The Kate Hudson vehicle is a pleasant enough diversion, but neither the comedy nor the romance have sufficient intensity or zing to really pull the viewer in until almost at the end. Kate plays a successful ad exec and commitment-phobe who is suddenly diagnosed with colon cancer (yes, we'll strive to avoid the cliche). The bearer of this bad news is a "terminally" (okay, we're weak) stiff but ambitious oncologist (Bernal) who's torn between his decidedly unprofessional stirrings for his new patient and his desire to progress in a special advance programme run by an even stiffer senior doctor.

In fairness, Bernal's performance becomes more appreciable once he and Hudson's character become "invovled"  as does that of Kathy Bates, who plays the mom with the victim mentality. And of course, we could not help but mention a few of the other support players: Lucy Punch as the pixieish, "down for whatever co-worker, Romany Malco doing both the token Black (sorry, Whoopi) and token gay male friend roles, and Peter Dinklage (no role is too small for him to blow up) as the "blind date/pick-me-up" recommended by said gay male friend (that encounter is a genuine hoot).

That said, its not a crowning achievement for writer/co-producer Gren Wells or director Nicole Kassell and - most disappointingly - this is a contemporary film set in New Orleans, and there are only two minute scenes involving live music/performance.

They may have been trying to escape formula, but sometimes knowing what you'll get beforehand increases the enjoyment.

Not so the case with the "aspiring" political romantic comedy "The Politics of Love". While the multiple conflicts engendered by the impending election of Barack Obama in 2008 seems fertile ground for the genre, The Politics of Love has all the flavour of an English sausage (apologies to our British friends). Jock-turned-actor Brian White (son of former NFL great Jo Jo White) reps for the Republicans, while straight-from-Bollywood hottie Mallika Sherawat is his bit of "Obama Massala".

The problem? Well, let's let's start with the acting gap. White is competent, and has presence, while the undoubtedly gorgeous Sherawat has all the effective range of my high-school spitballs. Watching them together is almost painful. Thankfully leaven comes in several forms: Anil Raman as the Dem's pothead, ne'er do well younger brother, and Loretta Devine (what hasn't she done?) Trinidad-born Gerry Bednob as her parents who, when they're not fighting, and splitting, and making up, run a restaurant.

The rest is an all-too predictable mish-mash (we're aware of our previous rubric) of movie cliches: bikini car wash, would-be Hooters girls, an obsessed TV news reporter smelling a big story, a manufactured scandal(guess which side is behind it) and so on and so forth.

Its already history of course - Barack wins. And love overcomes all hurts, the "bad guy" gets decked and even Indian and Soul Food learn to live together in harmony. All in one neat little 90-minute package. Yeah, riiiight. Republican Vice-Presidential running mate (and now occasional media gadfly) Sarah Palin inspired some far less insipid and testosterone-raising films than this - they just won't be filed under "family entertainment."