Tag Archives: World Domination

Mondovino: globalization and terroir, Robert Parker versus your good taste

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American wine cowboy conquest with tankFor those with a curiosity for how wine terroir is holding up against the onslaught of wine factory farming, the 10-hour miniseries version of MONDOVINO is finally available on DVD. For viewers curious about viniculture globalization under Californian colonial domination, the original feature length documentary delivers, with a long finish. Any time critics accuse a film of being one sided, you know it’s about class war.

I had my first lesson in vineyard terroir when my college-aged aunt visited my family in Alsace and spent a season picking grapes. She informed us to our horreur that everything gets stomped in that barrel, bugs and all. I didn’t drink wine then, so what did I care, but it was easy to decide that such was the artistry that probably made French wines great.

But as I said, Mondovino was about much more than wine, and now I’ll get to the point. We may lament the new commercialization of wine, but historically the occupation has always had its strictly-business types. Vintners were rarely agriculturalists who subsisted, they were wine lovers subsidized. We can wince at the Napa Valley nouveau gauche, but even Bordeaux’s great chateaus, and especially all the Premiers Crus, are owned and have been owned by businessmen money lenders, going back centuries.

The modernization and standardization which is destroying contemporary wines is simply the evolution of production control. At last, technology and the ascent of a gilded age have brought vintners to believe they’ve bested nature. It’s true if you don’t care about wine, if you’re content to bottle a soft drink as opposed to allowing wine the breathing space to develop personality. Basically this documentary demonstrates that these gentlemen hobbyists, now plaintively bourgeois about profit, welcome the new global fascism.

Old World Fascists
Of course it is no stretch to imagine that the Mondovino filmmakers are going to ask, how did your father or grandfather like Fascism under the Nazis? They point the question at an Italian family who date their wealth back 900 years as bankers.

Any European documentary delving into family histories will always ask particularly about the war years. In America it’s what did you do during the war Daddy? In Europe it’s about weathering the occupation. Most working class French want to tell you what they did in the Resistance. Rich people you don’t ask because of course they were collaborateurs.

Mondovino’s subjects are the perpetually wealthy, who don’t even register the affront. Of course their families thrived under Fascism, quelle betise to imagine it would be otherwise. How curious it is we are surprised they embrace it so again.

Such moments are the highlights of Mondovino, rich folk posing in elaborate foyers, plaintively matter of fact about Fascism.

One opulent reception room in Florence is packed with ancient paintings, among them a painting of the very room full of paintings, you imagine if you peered closely enough you would see the infinity of mirrors scheme, a Baroque era black velvet number. The Grande Dame mentions that Prince Charles inquired about that painting at breakfast.

Let me add, critics have held Jonathan Nossiter’s camera work to be unstable. Actually he was very easily distracted by momentously relevant tchotchkes and biographical details few commoners are granted audience to encounter.

Fascists in the New World
Mondovino allowed the Napa Valley entrepreneurs to hang themselves. Open mouth, insert vacuous blather, often racist. These nouveau riches landscaped new vineyard for themselves, praising the terrain like it was classic architecture, their aesthetic tributes could only reference the National Mall. That classic.

Over at Mondavi, talk fixated of expansion and conquest. The film’s main plot addressed the Mondavi’s ongoing acquisition of the world’s most treasured appelations. For the worse of course, because what do they know about wine but that it should all taste the same? Son Mondavi dreams of someday having a vineyard on the moon, for no other reason than he thought of it. Wouldn’t it be exciting, he asks, to be able to say: “hey, let’s open a bottle from the moon,” my paraphrase.

The issue of terroir, English readers, has entirely to do with terre which is French for “earth.” Terre with a capital T is “Earth.” Of course the earthbound distinction was lost on this Californian.

Yes, Mondavi is surely alone in pondering what earth, sun and elements would have feed his moon vines.

Most vile of all the New World vintners was a family outfit in Argentina. They sit on a spacious veranda and explain how every boy in the family is named for founding father, the original title holder. Their wealth goes back to the early Spanish settlers and they express the perennial colonizer’s lament, that Los Indios of the regions have no work ethic. Centuries ago the Spaniard had to devise cruel torments to drive their slave laborers to produce. It was an inefficient system to impose on the indigenous and transplanted tribes, unaccustomed to a hierarchical workforce supporting do-nothings at the top.

Globalization
Key to Mondavi’s quest for wine world domination, is a market that has standardized the consumer’s taste. No longer are customers hopping in their car for a Sunday drive, to stop by a neighboring chateau to sample a vintage take a case home. Today the global consumption of wine has meant having to market it without being able to taste it. For that consumers have come to follow the ratings of critics. It was inevitable of course, but Mondovino reveals how hilariously flawed and phony the system is.

Mondovino focuses on two celebrity tasters who make or break wines. Robert Parker and James Suckling. Let’s dispatch the latter quickly.

James Suckling
James Suckling made a niche for himself nurturing Italian wines and coined the term “Super Tuscan.” I didn’t know that, but Mondovino records Suckling attributing the phenomena to the ether before being made to admit that the meme was his own.

More hilarious was a hypothetical question posed to the critic after confessing in an unguarded moment that he might have been too generous with the rating he gave a friend’s wine. The friend, a wealthy vintner, was letting Suckling a villa, which meant he was also his landlord. Naturally Mondovino asked if a discount on the rent would move Suckling to consider a more favorable rating. Suckling took the bait, laughingly nodding, of course, his friend under his breath suggested in such case he could have the villa for free.

It’s not corruption, merely a gentleman’s game. Can we even assert that the ordinary consumer suffers? Taste is subjective. Suckling’s ultimate rating is of negligible consequence to wine drinkers, except to commerce.

Robert Parker
I’m sorry to be getting around to Parker’s scheme so late in this article, because he plays such a profound part in the homogenizing of world wine production. The mechanism is beyond the pale, but it’s simple. Parker is influential and has a distinctive appetite, he has a best friend who consults with vintners about how to make their wine to Parker’s taste. The result has been devastating. Vines that have for ages had their own distinctive gouts have now been McParkered. The consultant charges a large fee to monitor an increasing stable of wines, for the camera his preoccupation was “micro-oxygenate,” and after it’s bottled parker comes around and bestows the high marks. The more they pay, the higher the score.

Mondovino underscores this plot by filming a Burger King billboard as Parker drives past it, while he sings the praises of uniform quality. The filmmakers notice an FBI cap on Parker’s desk and make sure to keep it in the frame. Parker is quite candid and friendly in Mondovino, probably because he had no inkling they did not share his eagerness to see viniculture’s eccentricities ironed to a uniform flat.

When the film was released and Robert Parker emerged as enterprising accomplice to Mondavi’s villain, Parker was enraged. He wrote rant after rant against the film and its makers. I’m not sure he’s over it yet. I wanted to be sure to document what I thought was Mondovino’s most brilliant assault on the witless benefit the Parker-Mondavi venture think they’re bequeathing with their anschluss of world wine. It’s about the subjectivity of taste. Robert Parker’s.

A recurring motif of Mondovino’s interviews was a fascination with dogs. It’s cute, and often we give ourselves leave to believe we have learned something about the owner by just looking at their dog.

In one memorable scene, we’ve met a quite unassuming South American vintner who has only one hectar, but is none the less generous with his wine, his time and friendship. He has a black dog, and when the filmmaker asks his name, the vintner laughs such that the revelation is self-effacing. “Luther King” is his name, because, he tells us in Spanish, he’s “negro.” Mondovino’s dark hats are so distasteful, it’s important that the heroic characters aren’t too pearly clean.

All the asides with the dogs were entertaining in their own right, but could have served entirely to set up Robert Parker’s scene. We’re invited to Parkers home and immediately discover he has something for bulldogs.

Do you like bulldogs? Taste is of course subjective. Robert Parker and his wife love their bulldogs, two, and their home is festooned with Bulldogephemera, statuettes, paintings, the camera frame’s worth. Imagine a wall covered with watercolors and oil portraits of bulldogs as you consider the subjectivity of taste.

Then just as Parker is prompted to discuss that his nose is ensured for a million dollars, we discover that one of the dogs has become incontinent, and there’s the near unbearable dog flatulence from which not even conversation can escape. Imagine Robert Parker’s nose not ensured against that. The interview concludes with Parker rambling about something as a bulldog sits sneering on the carpet forcing the filmmaker to keep a safe distance, and so he focuses in close capturing the ugly, perhaps infirm, definitely defensive, unlikable mug.

The next time you chose a wine because it has a high Parker score, ask yourself how it integrates an atmosphere of dog.

Tea-Baggers plan another silly-ass costume party for 9/11

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Actually that’s their staging date. The heavily funded by un-named Corporate Big-Pig sources, so-called “Grass-roots” movement against the Corporate Big-Pigs finally being forced to pay the bills they ran up over the past 2 centuries but ESPECIALLY the past 30 years, are once again going to be prancing around in their Capri pants, silk stockings and buckle shoes and try to look Macho while doing it. Good Luck on that. But it’s set for Sept 12 in Washing Tundy Sea. Not like I have much cause to sympathize with the Right Wing Dumbasses but…
WARNING, though, DANGER!

You Fascists disguised as “patriots” ought to remember something Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly and Rush and Michelle Malkin have been saying on their Crap Shows and websites.

That “America needs to have Another 9/11 in order to” and here I’ll paraphrase, Allow The Dictatorial Regime to once again spend Our Blood, (not those of the Tea-Baggers, you’re a bunch of ChickenHawks anyway) Our Money and Our Rights to use actual quote “as much violence as necessary” back to paraphrasing to subjugate all those naughty people in the world who don’t Obey The Mighty Lord Darth Cheney (or his Surrogates like Sarah Palin) and his commandments.

All in the name of “Freedom”.

That’s right, Right Winger Freaks, YOUR prophets have been calling for Americans to die in coordinated Terrorist Attacks to fulfill the political ambitions of their Masters.

What would be more appropriate to their desires than if they CREATE a couple thousand or so Martyrs from the slain bodies of you Modern Day Horst Wessels?

And even though YOU nor your leaders would give me the title of “American” I’ll be better and nobler than them.
not that it’s damnably difficult to do that…

Think your “leaders” give a Damn about you? They don’t even care about people who were brave enough to actually enlist in the Army, the coward punk ChickenHawk Regime has had more than 5000 American SOLDIERS murdered in order to achieve their goal of World Domination.

They still haven’t achieved their goals. So, do you REALLY think, after that, they would so much as blink at the thought of killing a few thousand of YOU worthless chickenshit bums?

No, no, Seriously, do you actually believe in the “good intentions” of (for want of a more apt description) “people” like Cheney and Rove and Wolfowicz and The Former Commander In CHIMP?

Maybe you stupid bastards ought to look at that Highly Symbolic Date again.

What Bush and Osama together have taught the world

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September 11 was important in world history, because Osama bin Laden taught the world that resistance to US domination was most effectively fought on US soil, and not the soil of the world’s oppressed nations.

Seems simple enough, but most victims of US foreign policy up to then had fought back directly against their own US propped-up puppet governments. Osama bin Laden globalized the resistance to US imperial policies by taking the fight to US soil. His message? Not to let D.C. fight the war solely on your home territories.

The 9/11 attacks might have not alone taught the world much of anything, if there had not been the Bush Adminstration team in office. That was the genius of Osama. He knew how elite American arrogance would most likely respond, being of elite lineage himself. He knew that the US ruling class would tend to try to destroy this new resistance against their world domination by using pure and total violence, much as the ruling class in Osama’s native Saudi Arabia does when threatened. But pure violence is dangerous since it tends to overheat like a nuclear meltdown occurring within the core of a reactor.

At present glance, it appears that nothing much has changed. The response of the Bush Administration to 9/11 was to up the level of violence against the peoples of the Third World states of Afghanistan, then Iraq, and next Lebanon No new attacks have occurred on American soil meanwhile. And as usual, there have been yet new hundreds of thousands of victims of the US military and its ME Frankenstein, the state of Israel’s IDF. The European governments have done their part, as junior cheerleaders of the US mandated blood bath outside their own continent.

But what will be the ultimate cost that the American people will eventually pay for sitting by and silently allowing its corporate-run government to go bezerk after 9/11? I talk not of the trillions of dollars in national debt that is being run off, but rather of the fact that the Bush Adminstration has practically guaranteed that Osama’s message did take root in the populations of the world.

Osama said let’s start a dirty war of attrition against the US rulers on their home soil. Osama had the ability to give the lesson that this was the Achille’s heel of US imperialism, but he didn’t have the organization to do much more than just explode one big bonfire or two for the passive and impoverished crowd he was trying to wake up to see. Bush has now given this previously dormant crowd the knowledge of the technique to create one, two, a thousand mini or maximum 9/11s in the years ahead.

It does not involve airports nor planes, And the world is more awake now. It is probably only a matter of weeks, or months at best, before the war stirs once again on the US mainland soil, but this time with newer techniques learned on Afghan and Iraqi soil. The ultimate price to be paid by Americans for their acceptance of this carnage, is that the carnage will most likely hit our soil once again, just like it hit New York previously.

So let’s look some at the new techniques to wage war on American soil. Let’s look at the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), which is close cousin to the cluster bomb. The IED has accounted for about 1/3 of the US casualties in Iraq. The components of an IED are cheap and its materials easily found. And let us not think that only Muslims can use these devices within the US. Anybody can.

Ex- US soldiers can come back and construct them. Hispanics tired of the US messing with their countries can put them together. Gang members trafficking in illegal substances and human flesh can do the same. That’s what a dirty war is all about. The weak use weaker weapons against the more powerful, but weapons they do begin to use. Iraq plus 9/11 = the ability and desire by yet more people, to use cheap weapons against the US government on US soil. Bush has given that little shove that was needed to make Osama’s lesson to the world more effective.

These IEDs are what has been giving the Iraqi resistance its sharpening edge. But where might this dirty war of attrition begin to play out in yet another battlefield? See William S. Lind’s commentary, The Boomerang Effect that shows how one scenario most likely might occur.

Osama taught us that what goes around comes around. Americans have just yet to learn that lesson, though the Bush Klan is determined that we certainly will. Dubya, Dick, and Donald helped the world find the most hard to stop weapon that could be used against the American people. The IED. The lesson was learned in Iraq, but the whole world has been watching.