"What Nazis?"

I was just listening to Episode 751 of "This American Life," Act One, "Many a Thing She Ought to Understand," by Diane Wu:

I watched The Sound of Music all the time as a kid.... And a few years ago, I was talking with a friend about how much I loved the movie growing up. And he said, me too, though the Nazis scared me. And I said, what Nazis? 

And that's when I learned I'd never seen the second half of the film. 

"Donald Trump is to appoint a Sound of Music-obsessed concert pianist as the new ambassador to Austria."

"Really, I've seen it like 75 times," said Patrick Park. "I know every single word and song by heart. I've always wanted to live in the Von Trapp house."

'I'm flying to Vienna to check out the embassy, and then I'm going to Salzburg to see if the Von Trapp house is for rent,' he said. 'And then I'm going to learn to like schnitzel and sachertorte.'

The German news in German: "Kölns OB Reker erntet Shitstorm wegen 'Armlänge'-Tipp."

I'm trying to read about the sexual assaults that took place in Cologne and what the Mayor Henriette Reker has said about them. Yesterday's post on the subject took off on her saying that the attackers might suffer from "confusion about what constitutes celebratory behavior in Cologne, which has nothing to do with a sexual frankness." Today, I'd like to talk about what's getting reported as her advice to German women that they follow a "code of conduct" to avoid attacks. But this is all translation into English. I don't know whether the German sounded the way "sexual frankness" and "code of conduct" come across in English.

Unfortunately, I don't read German. But that headline! "Kölns OB Reker erntet Shitstorm wegen 'Armlänge'-Tipp." One word jumps out. And it kind of proves my point in reverse. I know how "Shitstorm" sounds to me, but I've got to doubt that German readers are feeling it the same way. A search at the same news site shows that Germans seem to have accepted the English migrant "Shitstorm" without any serious scrutiny:


(Click to enlarge.)

"Shitstorm" is in the OED, defined as "a frenetic or disastrous event; a commotion, a tumult," with the oldest usage going back to 1948, Norman Mailer's book about WWII "The Naked and the Dead": "The hell with Brown... He's been missing all the shit storms. It's his turn." It's also in Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962): "They finally got to arguing with each other and created such a shitstorm...." A good substitute for "shitstorm" is: "clusterfuck." "Clusterfuck" is also in the OED. It's first in-print sighting was in a 1969 Vietnam account: "These are the screwups that the American public rarely hears about. They happen often enough over here that we have a term for them—‘cluster-fuck’!"

Now, back to what I was looking for, the news about Henriette Reker's advice to women. In English. The Guardian has "Cologne attacks: mayor lambasted for telling women to keep men at arm's length":

Asked by a journalist how women could protect themselves, Henriette Reker said: “There’s always the possibility of keeping a certain distance of more than an arm’s length – that is to say to make sure yourself you don’t look to be too close to people who are not known to you, and to whom you don’t have a trusting relationship.”... Reker also advised women to “stick together in groups, don’t get split up, even if you’re in a party mood.”

We're told Reker seemed caught off guard and groped for an answer. There's perhaps unintended revelation in unprepared blurtings, but something this unplanned isn't really a "code of conduct." The shitstorm in social media has the hashtag #einarmlaenge (which means "an arm’s length"). Example:

Christopher Lauer, a politician, tweeted: “Man: 'I had intended to mug this woman and molest her, but shit! She’s an arm’s length away from me!'”

Alles geklärt oder.. #einearmlänge pic.twitter.com/3q3PqOmXWU

— S. Wintschnig (@SWintschnig) January 5, 2016

IN THE COMMENTS: Discussion of the shitstorm/clusterfuck distinction.

Carrie Underwood as...

... Maria in "The Sound of Music."

So k*thy said "It’s good to see the tone of this post turning to suggestions to just ignore him."

"I was reading this, last night, had started to post, but got interrupted. My initial response was in the voice of talking to a close friend. Saying with all the sincerity, clarity and love I could muster, 'Generally, folks are more worried about their own shit and really not at all that interested in yours. You’re not at the center of their universe, they are. Anyway, it’s all a bunch of snark. Really. Let it go.' Anyway, enjoy this instead."

("Centraal Station Antwerpen gaat uit zijn dak!" Translation?) AND: It occurs to me that this is exactly the sort of thing Andrew Sullivan frequently posts under the heading "Mental Health Break." Like this one, posted at 4:20 p.m. yesterday, just a few hours after he demonstrated — at my expense — his need for one. Oh, sorry, k*thy, I couldn't resist. I know. "Let it go." But... is that my approach to blogging? I don't think so. See that quote in the banner? "Althouse digs in." You know who tried to push me back with that observation, don't you? I'm not pushable back. Althouse digs in. By the way, my mother's stock response was "just ignore him." Usually, punched up with: "You'll only encourage him." And I know it's true. Sullivan digs in.
Bah! It will never end. Blog on, bloggers.

Movie aftereffects.

Sometimes a movie leaves an incongruous aspect of itself in your head. On Sunday, after the accident, we watched "Serial Mom" to cheer us up. This is a black comedy about a squeaky clean suburban mom -- a veritable June Cleaver -- who turns out to be a serial murderer. (Hmmm ... June Cleaver would be an appropriate name for a murderer!) In one scene, a victim is taken by surprise while happily watching a videotape of "Annie." Four days after watching the movie, I'm still hearing "The sun'll come out tomorrow..."

I'm not really sure why I thought "Serial Mom" would be a good post-car-crash movie -- surely not because the first murder we see Mom commit is running down someone with her car! There's nothing cheerful about murder, though perhaps there's something cheering about laughing at death. But the movie -- which I've seen many times -- does embed the world's most optimistic song in the minds of the sort of jaded, cynical people who watch black comedies. Days later, the film is out of my consciousness, and that song, which I'd never have sought out, is still playing in my head, still "clear[ing] away the cobwebs and the sorrow."

ADDED: Maybe you think there's a more optimistic song. "Some Day My Prince Will Come"? Let me know.

UPDATE: A reader suggests two other songs which are also prominent in movies: "We'll Meet Again" (used at the end of "Dr. Strangelove") and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (from "The Wizard of Oz"). While both of these songs express hope, they are quite wistful and really rather sad. Does the singer really think things will work out well? Obviously, in "Dr. Strangelove," all hope is over when the song plays, but that is very much like the use of "Tomorrow" in "Serial Mom" (as opposed to the original use in "Annie"). The character in "Serial Mom" dies and has no shot at any tomorrow, sunny or cloudy. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" ends with "why, oh, why can't I?" and expresses the characters feeling of helplessness. There's the dreamy wish for a land somewhere else, which seems beautiful but feeble and unlikely to come true.

By the way, I first head "We'll Meet Again" -- and loved it -- on The Byrds' first album "Mr. Tambourine Man." The Byrds sang it because of "Dr. Strangelove," but I did not see "Dr. Strangelove" until years later. The Byrds did a nice job of using phrasing to convey the irony that accompanied the song in the movie.

ANOTHER UPDATE: For the most optimistic rock song, I'm going to suggest The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love."

Let me note that it isn't just the lyrics that makes the song optimistic, it's the music and the way a singer sings it. "Tomorrow," on the lyrics alone, could be seen as depressingly pessimistic: good times are "always a day away," which means they never actually get here.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: One reader says the best answer is "What a Wonderful World" -- the Louis Armstrong song. I always think of the Sam Cooke song when I read that title, but the "Don't know much about history" Sam Cooke song is called "Wonderful World." Another reader offers religious lyrics as the most optimistic -- "The Messiah" is suggested -- and pooh-poohs the delusional optimism of "All You Need Is Love." But it's the delusion of "All You Need Is Love" that I find so optimistic.

Another reader poses the question: What is optimism? Define your terms! Where does mistaken cheeriness fit in? "What a Wonderful World" is a great example of looking at the world that exists now and perceiving it as beautiful. There's no reliance on future events that may not happen as in "Tomorrow" and "We'll Meet Again" (and in "The Messiah" for that matter). "All You Need Is Love" also finds the present situation sufficient, but it makes assertions about the present that are quite simply not true and futility is presented as a good thing.

But let's look up "optimism" in the dictionary:

1. A tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation: “There is a touch of optimism in every worry about one's own moral cleanliness” (Victoria Ocampo). 2. Philosophy a. The doctrine, asserted by Leibnitz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds. b. The belief that the universe is improving and that good will ultimately triumph over evil.

So, maybe we need three songs to cover the three definitions.

AND MORE: A reader offers "You'll Never Walk Alone," from "The Sound of Music": "At the end of the storm is a golden sky/And the sweet silver song of a lark." That suggestion made me think of "My Melancholy Baby": "Every cloud must have a silver lining/Wait until the sun shines through." And what a beautiful song that is! It's a bit like "All You Need Is Love," but instead of the abstraction "love," the solution for everything is cuddling. That's damn sweet!

AND EVEN MORE: Wait. "You'll Never Walk Alone" is the big finale song by Rodgers and Hammerstein in "Carousel." I was thinking of "Climb Every Mountain," the big finale song by Rodgers and Hammerstein in "The Sound of Music": "Climb every mountain, ford every stream/Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream." Walking, climbing ... life is a journey. At least in "You'll Never Walk Alone," you have help. In "Climb Every Mountain," you're pretty much on your own. And it's not even a level surface!