T-giving weekend update

11-29/30-08—Bill Cosby says comedians need time to develop their Obama routines. “It’s too soon,” he says. “They not finished with the last guy yet.” WSJ W3.

11-29-08--Europe Says Drug Makers Unfairly Block Generics, Driving up Health Costs. NYT B3

11-27-08---A “lack of moderation discernible on all fronts,” is how Dwight D. Eisenhower assessed Sweden in 1960, seeing Scandinavia in general and as a cautionary tale about extended social welfare.

11-27-08—Lawmakers in Baghdad Delay Vote on US Pact. NYT A6

11-27-08—Afghan Leader, Showing Impatience with War, Demands Timetable from NATO NYT A6

November 27, 2008--Randy Scandinavia? A “lack of moderation discernible on all fronts” is how Dwight D. Eisenhower assessed Sweden in 1960, seeing Scandinavia in general as a cautionary tale about extended social welfare. “We don’t sin any more than other people, but we probably sin more openly,” responded an irate Swedish baker, when approached by a journalist. ...As the columnist C. L. Sulzberger observed in The New York Times after Denmark, the most libertine of the Scandinavian constellation, legalized pornography, “There is nothing in the least bit either unwholesome or immoral about the Danes who simply share with Benjamin Franklin, an American never renowned for excessive Puritanism, a belief that honesty is the best policy.”

But calling out American criticism of Scandinavia for its hypocrisy missed one point: to many Americans, procreation aside, sex was supposed to be naughty. Making it wholesome spoiled the fun. Anyone who has had to acclimate to the obligatory nakedness (supposedly for health reasons) of saunas in this part of the world knows that to be true. There is nothing sexy, believe me, I know, about sweating in a small, dark sauna with a half dozen large, middle-aged Germans.

But I digress. ... Now dimly recalled for the censorship ruckus caused by its full-frontal male nudity, “I Am Curious (Yellow)” became the ultimate Scandinavian sex film. Its naked couplings, involving notably ordinary lovers, were punctuated by ponderous disquisitions on Swedish labor law, interviews with Olaf Palme, the Swedish labor minister, and a section with the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Norman Mailer championed it as “one of the most important pictures.” There you go. Even “Bonanza” was sexier, in retrospect. How did Scandinavia turn from “Maid in Sweden” to Ikea, from the purveyor of earnest free love into the purveyor of affordable love seats, from the home of Christina Lindberg (the maid) into the home of Abba? .... Berge Ragnar Furre, a Norwegian historian, theologian and a politician in the Socialist Left Party, now on the Nobel Committee, offered this thought: “You have to remember that here in Norway we have also had a strong tradition of liberal democracy that is against sexuality, so we are historically divided as a liberal society.” In other words, Norwegians have long split between being sexually liberated and puritanical, while remaining politically liberal in both cases. ....“Suddenly we are very proud of our native prostitutes,” Ms. Mühleisen said, shaking her head. “They’re supposedly cleaner, more law-abiding, they stay out of the tourist center in Oslo. So a whole new discussion about good Norwegian sexuality — which, this being Scandinavia, includes equal rights for women — has arisen in contrast to bad sexuality, which is now the sexuality of the ‘other.’ ” NYTC1, C8