Arcade Fire's Will Butler adopts the blogging method of songwriting.

He's not saying it's like blogging. I am. He's saying it's like Bob Dylan:

Arcade Fire’s Will Butler will be writing a song a day based upon a news story in the Guardian for a week from 23 February. Each original track will premiere on the Guardian’s website.

“It was partly inspired by Bob Dylan, who used to announce that certain songs were based on headlines,” Butler says of the project. “It would be a song he wrote in two weeks or something, such as The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which is one of the greatest songs ever. So I’ve set myself an impossible bar.”

Yeah, William Zantzinger could have sued Bob Dylan for the defamation in that song:

"The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll" got famous
And Bob Dylan became the most honored of rock stars
Zantzinger kept quiet and wouldn't talk to the press
He just lived through the decades with that song on his head
And he probably cried for himself and for Hattie
And what did he think of that songster Bob Dylan?
"I should have sued him," he finally said later...

Back to Will Butler:

“I’ve been reading the Guardian every day, perusing the different sections."

Oh, perusing! I've been perusing and excusing and infusing and accusing. Overusing. Now, I'm oozing, all while you sing. (All I really want to do is be friends with Will Butler.)

"Some of them possibly lend themselves to songs. It’s a cruel thing..."

An uncool thing... a damned fool thing....

"... but sometimes you read something and think, ‘Uh oh. I could make something really meaty out of that.’"

Uh oh. I could make something really meaty out of that. Uh oh. You could make something really cool and cruel out of "Uh oh. I could make something really meaty out of that." Perhaps"Uh Oh, Love Comes to Town" infused (and confused) with "Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy." I'm thinking of a graffiti entreaty in Tahiti, sweetie.

"Something like the Dominique Strauss-Kahn trial – my God, that’s the gnarliest story in the world, but it’s interesting."

See? It's like blogging. The standard is that standard of standards: interestingness. Back to Butler:

"Or you might read a science headline and think, 'The universe is so much bigger than I thought it was.' There’s something really beautiful in that."

"Big and small" is one of my favorite tags, and it's because — and I cannot figure out why — I invariably visualize everything smaller — often far smaller — than it really is. I'm a minimizer. A minimalist. So I'm with Butler, except no mere science headline can correct my mind's distortion. The universe will always be much bigger than I think it is. And "always" will always be far longer.

So, anyway, Will Butler is interested in politics, interested enough to have applied to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He got in, but he didn't go. Which says something about where he was in the development of political sophistication — a process that began when he was a teenager, when he read Dostoevsky and Kafka.

Bob Dylan has no songs with Dostoevsky and Kafka (though he does have Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower and he sneers at a man who thinks he's something for having been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books). It's hard to rhyme Kafka, who drinks vodka with his latka, not to mention Dostoevsky (are you kidding me?).

Will Butler says:

"On the one hand, the government is – in a country like America or Canada or the UK – the expression of the people. It’s not freedom from things but its freedom to govern, which is a beautiful concept. But there’s a sense that modern government almost takes the place of the Old Testament God. Things happen because governments cause them to, but people are like, 'No. This is how the world is. It’s a world of pain.' There’s something very Old Testament about that – yet we’re on our knees to them about policy as well."

After that quote, The Guardian scurries to tell us that Butler is "an Obama fan." You could write a song about the lefty newspaper's need to assure its larval readers that the artist they've been reading about and whose music they're getting primed to receive is properly on the left even though he just said that modern government almost takes the place of the Old Testament God.

"The prosecutors have basically adopted the defense arguments."

"They appear to bend over backwards to try to excuse their decision to run away from this case."

The lawyer for Nafissatou Diallo, who accused Dominque Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, complains about the prosecutor's "hatchet job on Ms. Diallo’s credibility," as Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. moves to dismiss the case.

"If it wasn't for race, if it wasn't for class, do you think [Nafissatou Diallo] would be treated this way?"

Actually, I don't. But not in the way that Diallo's lawyer thinks we shouldn't.

Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel maid in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, goes public.

"She wants to put a face to this story."

On video. So... go ahead and judge her credibility. There's a lot of crying without tears on camera.

Revenge, the Wikipedia article.

A report that the wife of Dominique Strass-Kahn is seeking "revenge" got me thinking about the specific meaning of the word. Surely, it doesn't include merely remembering who kicked you when you were down.

My curiosity about the concept was sufficient to get me to Wikipedia, where I was, first, interested that there was an article at all, and second, interested that it was as short as it was. It wasn't super-short, like a dictionary definition. If you're going to purport to cover the history of revenge and its function in society and religion plus that famous saying, how do you keep the length to 2 screens?

Presumably: editing! Wikipedia is all about editing. People load crap in. That's the easy part. The miracle of Wikipedia is in the editing.

Oh, come on, Althouse. It's not a miracle. I mean, check it out:  "A miracle is an event attributed to divine intervention."

No, no. I'm not going there. The Daily News used "revenge" to portray a specific individual in a negative light for the titillation of readers. I used hyperbole, in a complimentary sense, to refer to the behind-the-scenes work of thousands of editors who deserve some extra praise and thanks.

Both miracles and revenge play a part in human storytelling, but revenge is a much better story. "Deus ex machina" is not the most admirable plot device, as Aristotle explained:

It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance... There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy....

Revenge makes a good tragedy. See "Hamlet."  If you haven't seen it already.

Of the psychological, moral, and cultural foundation for revenge, philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written: "The primitive sense of the just—remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions ...—starts from the notion that a human life ... is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another's act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. 

For this penetration.... a good image, when we're talking about rape. But what of the false accusation of rape? That too is a penetration.

"And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment."

I think revenge asks for more.  Nussbaum explains the moral aspect of revenge, not the passionate edge that wants more than justice. There is passion, but wait...

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

That is the saying about revenge. And it doesn't suggest becoming dispassionate. You're not using your measuring spoons and cups, preparing a dish "strictly proportional to the original encroachment." The cold dish that is the best revenge is not a calibrated diet dish.

Nussbaum's Heart-Healthy Justice Salad is not revenge.

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn's ever-loyal wife is plotting her revenge."

That's the headline in the Daily News, supported by — it appears — a single text: "Let's not forget those who spit in our face." She sent that to friends, then wrote: "We were right not to have any doubts!"

If you read the whole article — it's short — you'll see that the woman's story isn't one of plotting revenge, but old-fashioned wifely dedication. But women in the news must be reshaped into entertaining characters for the fun-hungry readers.

And yes, I know, the traffic I'm giving them rewards them more than my criticism, but I am not vengeful. I am a humble observer of the web, dedicated to sharing my observations with you, doing my part, in the search for truth. Am I not a sufficiently entertaining woman for you fun-hungry readers?

"I want people to listen to me, because I have, perhaps, finally, a chance to be heard."

Tristane Banon, Dominique Strauss-Kahn's other accuser.

"I guess, in a perfect world, they would not have had to arrest him right away... They could have checked the evidence and everything."

"But I guess they figured they had to get him off the plane. It changed the circumstances quite a bit."

They could have checked the evidence and everything. So says "a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn."

The case exposes the “punish first, figure out what happened later” state of American justice that is usually visited upon “ordinary schnooks,” said Eugene J. O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan....

“I think that any high-profile case exposes routine police work, and when you get into the guts of routine police work it is often not a pretty picture,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Not all the ends tie up neatly, and when you are racing that clock, that is even more possible.”

Also in the linked article: the report that the hotel housekeeper, telling her "life story" caused "senior people... in each of the agencies" to cry. I'd like to know a lot more about why those "senior people" were so vulnerable to what was, apparently, a phony story. What was it about this particular woman that lowered their usual defenses? Why was it possible to play them?

The hotel maid as hotel hooker.

I have no idea whether this story is true... but if it is, how common is it for expensive hotels to have maids who double as prostitutes? Do the hotels provide this service intentionally, unintentionally, or somewhere in between? Is this what "turn down" service in fancy hotels is really about?

What if you soul-searched over an event that — you learn later — didn't happen?

Pity France, which self-critiqued over the Strauss-Kahn case that now seems not to have been what it once appeared to be.

His arrest... led to soul-searching about the treatment of women in France and a new assertiveness challenging male behavior. Responses to the latest news seemed to suggest that the debate had become less clear-cut.

“This is a slap in the face of the feminists,” said Marc Marciano, 53, a trader in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb....

What to do with all that insight gained? This reminds me of the old Tawana Brawley story, which led to soul-searching about racial bigotry and then turned out to be a fraud. One solution back then was to claim the insights are still good, even if the news that triggered the soul-searching was false.

In her book "The Alchemy of Race and Rights," lawprof Patricia J. Williams wrote that Brawley "has been the victim of some unspeakable crime. No matter how she got there. No matter who did it to her and even if she did it to herself."

I vividly remember a job talk at my law school in which the candidate described a racially charged incident with the police. He was questioned about whether the incident really happened that way, and his response — delivered quickly and glibly — was that the anecdote worked as an object of study from which to spin off insights whether it was true or not. The job talk was exceedingly well received.

If that seems terribly wrong to you, explain why, when we consume works of overt fiction — novels and movies and so forth — we feel that we derive insights applicable to the real world. I think some fictions resonate. They seem to speak to real life. They are not purely escapist fantasy. If it isn't wrong to use some works of fiction in our efforts to understand the real world, is it necessarily always wrong to use a news story presented as true that later turns out to be false?

UPDATE: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on Friday as the sexual assault case against him moved one step closer to dismissal after prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that they had serious problems with the case."

"The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse..."

The NYT reports on the what the prosecutor's investigators have learned about the hotel housekeeper who accused him of rape:

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.

Read the whole thing. It's quite shocking. Anyone who commented on this case should look back on what they said/wrote with serious circumspection.

"When Obama Imposed a No-Touch Zone on DSK."

Ha.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn confined to $14 million apartment in Tribeca.

"It's a three-story, 6,800-square-foot palace with a movie theater, antique French oak floors, a gym and a terrace - and $50,000-a-month rent."

Beautiful restaurants in that area. But he can't go out. Had to order in. Got $242.790 worth of "steaks and salad" delivered last night.

The bill was put on 26-year-old daughter Camille's credit card, and deliveryman Ramon Leal walked away with a handsome $25 tip.

"It's a good tip considering I just walked around the corner," Leal said, dismissing reporters' questions about serving Strauss-Kahn. "I'm just doing my job."

Actually, that's not a good tip. It's about 10%. Leal is rationalizing and refraining from bad-mouthing the rich man. And, by the way, the place may be huge and well-located, but — see the pictures at the link — it's in pretty bad taste. Aptly bad taste. Feh.

I talk to Matt Welch about freedom...

... and sex scandals, politicized media, and the meaning of various buildings:



IN THE COMMENTS: Shouting Thomas said: "One hour and two minutes. No can do. Is there a highlight reel?"

And Deborah made this clip:

"So there was never a question of whether this narcissist millionaire shirt-unbuttoner would manfully rise to the defense of his poor, underprivileged pal Dominique Strauss-Kahn..."

"... but just how thoroughly he would soil himself, his country, and his alleged professions in the course of the apologetics. Well, thanks to the editing genius of Tina Brown, we now have an answer."

Writes Matt Welch... about the loathsome French "philosopher" Bernard Henri-Levy. Those are Welch's quotes, but I'd have put them there independently.

What's with these European men — Dominique Straus-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger — and sex with the servants?

First, Arnold Schwarzenegger — though not a natural-born American and therefore not qualified to serve as the U.S. President — has been a naturalized American for a long time. But I want to call attention to his continent of origin for the purposes of discussion this week, when we are all focused on Dominique Straus-Kahn, the IMF and French presidential candidate, who was just arrested for attempted rape on a hotel maid.

Schwarzenegger, we learn today, fathered a child with a woman who had been "a member of his household staff" for 20 years. His press release says that Maria Shriver left him when he informed her about it. Like she didn't know previously?! He deliberately waited until his term as California governor was over, he says. I think it's more likely that she deliberately waited until his term as California governor was over. Or is she stupid?

Both men have committed adultery. DSK has, allegedly, attempted rape. Schwarzenegger has committed that special offense to marriage of fathering a child. But I'd like to focus on the way both of these powerful, ambitious men — who could have found willing women out in the world — went for the women who were working in their place of abode — the house and the hotel room. It's so lazy... so entitled... so unfair to the women who will be torn between the desire to run away and the need to keep her job.

If you want to maximize the likelihood that your description of a politician's sexuality will be remembered...

... include a specific animal:

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn acted like a "chimpanzee in heat" during a creepy previous grab-and-grope with a French journalist -- an incident with eerie similarities to his alleged attack on a Manhattan hotel maid Saturday, according to an explosive interview.

Other examples? The one that springs immediately to mind and hops up and down yapping until I notice it is:

I squirmed to try and get out of his grasp, telling him stop, don't, several times and I finally told him and said, 'You're being a crazed sex poodle,' hoping that he'd realize how weird he was being, yet he persisted.

"Judge denies bail to International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in sexual assault case."

Well, it makes sense. How could one be a bigger flight risk?

"Shock. Political Bomb. Thunderclap."

So read the headline in left-leaning newspaper Libération.

The deputy editor, Vincent Giret, wrote sadly on Sunday that [Dominique] Strauss-Kahn seemed “best-armed to respond to the disarray of the French, exhausted by the crisis and disoriented by the crazy reign of Sarkozy.” But Mr. Strauss-Kahn apparently believed he could win the presidency “without fighting,” Mr. Giret said, and so did not follow a path of “renunciation and abnegation.”

A path of renunciation and abnegation... Some French way to say don't rape anybody... when you're running for the highest office and the hopes of a political party are resting on you.

Socialistes pauvres!

Some of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s allies said that he must have been the victim of a setup. Christine Boutin, head of the small Christian Democratic Party, told French television: “That he could be taken in like that seems astounding, so he must have been trapped.”

Trapped... in a $3,000 a night hotel room... by the maid....

Yes. It could happen. The French are onto the machinations of the maids.

As for suggestions that Mr. Strauss-Kahn might have fallen into an elaborate sting, [Gérard Grunberg, a respected political scientist who studies the left] was dismissive. “If all this was a trap, he wouldn’t have fled in a panic”....

Dominique Straus-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and potential President of France, arrested for attempted rape, criminal sexual act and unlawful imprisonment.

The NYT reports:

[Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman] said that it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite — Room 2806 — believing it was unoccupied. Mr. Browne said that the suite, which cost $3,000 a night, had a foyer, a conference room, a living room and a bedroom, and that Mr. Strauss-Khan had checked in on Friday.

As she was in the foyer, “he came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Mr. Browne said, adding, “He grabs her, according to her account, and pulls her into the bedroom and onto the bed.” He locked the door to the suite, Mr. Browne said.

“She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaults her a second time,” Mr. Browne added.

Let's assume that the maid's story is true. When things like this happen, I suspect that this is a man who has had sexual encounters like this before, many times. He's gotten more cursory and abrupt over time, because he's been successful in the past. Here is an illustrious man, staying in an extremely expensive hotel room — a room with many amenities.  Seems you can get whatever you want. A woman appears. Is she beautiful? He imagines that the woman is another thing the hotel subtly offers to men who pay $3,000 a night for the hotel.