Right Reason

Anthony Bourdain at The Blogs of War

 

 

Anthony Bourdain makes an appearance at The Blogs of War in which he talks about what else but travel, food, and war. Some excerpts: 

After Beirut, there was a conscious effort to tell more complicated stories . We realized that when you ask people "What do you like to eat? What do you like to cook? What makes you happy?" and are willing to spend the time necessary to hear the answers, that you are often let "in" in ways that a hard news reporter working a story might not be...

An interesting thing we noticed a while back was when we were shooting in pre-revolution Egypt. When we expressed a desire to shoot a segment at one of the ubiquitous street stands selling ful, our fixers and translators, who, no doubt also worked for some sinister department of the Interior Ministry, were absolutely adamant that we not do it. What was it about this simple, everyday, working class meal of beans and flatbread that just about everyone in Cairo was eating that was so threatening? Turns out, they knew better than us. The price of bread had been going up. The army controlled most of the bakeries and stocks of flour. There had been riots over bread elsewhere in the country. And the inescapable fact was that ful was ALL that much of the population was eating and the bastards knew it. That was an image they apparently considered sensitive , dangerous: their countrymen eating bread.

 

I used to think that basically, the whole world, that all humanity were basically bastards. I've since found that most people seem to be pretty nice--basically good people doing the best they can . There is rarely, however, a neat takeaway. You have to learn to exercise a certain moral relativity, to be a good guest first--as a guiding principle. Other wise you'd spend the rest of the world lecturing people, pissing people off, confusing them and learning nothing. Do I pipe up every time my Chinese host serves me some cute animal I may not approve of?

Should I inquire of my Masai buddies if they still practice female genital mutilation? Express revulsion in Liberia over tribal practices? Fact is, the guy who's been patting my knee all night, telling jokes, sharing favorite Seinfeld anecdotes, making sure I get the best part of the lamb, being my new bestest buddy in Saudi Arabia will very likely later, on the drive back to the hotel, guilelessly express regret over what "the Jews and the CIA" did to my city on 911. What do you say to that? Or in Anatolia, the Kurdish religious elders there who asked me for reassurance that "Obama is indeed a Muslim, yes?". I hated to disappoint them. So I didn't. My first obligation, I feel, is to be a good guest. I go to great lengths, and have had to choke down some pretty funky meals to do that. Its a strategy I highly recommend if you're looking to make friends and have a good conversation. Sometimes you have to take one for the team but its well worth it.

 

I assume I share one characteristic with a good case officer: empathy. I'm good at looking at things from the other guy's point of view. I can put myself in their shoes. I'm willing to reach out. I'm a good listener. The overlap pretty much ends there.

Bourdain on Bad Behavior in Vegas

Antony Bourdain writes over at CNN about Vegas "Bad Behavior":

You come here because Las Vegas promises, with a wink and a nudge, that "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas." That's what Vegas has always promised, implicitly -- or explicitly, as when Nick Tosches asked his hotel manager if he could smoke in his room.

"Buddy, you can kill your wife in this room," was the response.

That promise of Vegas confidentiality is not true by the way. Maybe when the mob ran things, or when an act of indiscretion might lead directly to a hole in the desert. Or when Vegas truly was a company town.

But today, I'm guessing, if Justin Bieber found himself (hypothetically) splashing around the fountain at the Bellagio with a platoon of hookers in various states of disarray, somebody would be Instagramming that shit right quick. If he (hypothetically) made a late-night call down to the concierge for a band saw, a 55-gallon drum of Astroglide, a bucket of hot wings and a tarpaulin, I doubt very much he could be assured of absolute discretion.

 

I suppose everybody wants to be king for just a little while. To be the one who calls the shots. To think one can actually become such a thing is the illusion which so much of Vegas is built around. That illusion, though, sells itself to the worst within us, to the tyrannical and the psychotic. So, is it really worth it?

I would say it's not. We ought to not kid ourselves that we can, even for a moment, become the center of the world. Such is not a role a mere human being can approgate for himself. 

Politics is About the Mundane

 

It's always political when you e sit down and eat because the fact that they're not eating much beyond rice and beans, that's already a political statement... That says more about a culture than they may want you to see. But there it is.

-Anthony Bourdain, "The Joe Rogan Experience" 1:57:10

 

Despite the importance of ideas to a well functioning political process, politics is fundamentally about the mundane. It is about whether there is bread on the table, whether there is the provision of basic publics goods like roads and sanitation, and whether people generally have the freedom to do what they want. In the Western world, it is easy to forget that, and to think that politics is about the relatively abstract battles (and inconsequential) about the justice of foreign wars, or whether there shall be a marginal increase in spending for a certain welfare program. 

However, that is largely a product of living in a country whose politics are the best in the world. For much of the world, politics can be summed up by what’s not on the dinner table and, as Bourdain noted,  such mundane experiences can be seditious political statements. 

 

The episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” Boudain was a guest in, which is definitely worth listening to in full, is attached below: