Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
Peter, I'll get to your excellent questions about Ed Miliband soon. My schedule is a bit hectic today and tomorrow owing to the exciting arrival in Istanbul of Manju Jois, who will be instantly recognized by Ashtanga yoga fanatics (and only by Asthanga yoga fanatics) as the eldest son of the great departed Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the father of Ashtanga yoga. The elder Jois was the subject of this profile in the New Yorker by Rebecca Mead, which makes him sound entirely loathsome, but in fact I've yet to meet someone who didn't describe him as wonderfully amused by himself and by his curious popularity with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, whom he apparently thought was a "very tall man."
As befits an authentic and legendary utter yoga prima donna, Manju is teaching his classes at 6:30 am. We're supposed to suck it up; after all, his father made him get up at 3:30 am. I'm not happy about this, but I'll do it anyway. He's Manju Jois, after all.
So Miliband takes a back seat for today, but readers can start with this background, the key point being that he beat his own brother for the leadership of the Labour Party. Imagine what dinner conversations are like these days in that family:
The former foreign secretary was doing his best to put a brave face on it, telling BBC News: "This is Ed's day, it's a big day for the Miliband family, not quite the day for the Miliband family that I would have wanted - the Milband D family, rather than the Miliband E - but that's the way things go."
He said the party now had to rally behind his brother and there was a "strong mood" within Labour to do so.
He refused to talk about his own future, amid speculation about whether he would serve under Ed.
One more quick point from an e-mail sent to me by an old friend. (I'd credit him, but I'm not sure he wants me to, since he's active in Labour politics.)
Just in case you guys haven't yet got the memo from the Elders, the leader of the UK Labour Party is now a Jew.
And whatever you think about Ed politically (I agree with you that he's a nebbish), this cartoon in the Independent is disgusting.
They just couldn't resist the opportunity to swill around in a bit of the old blood libel, could they?
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Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
Miliband tomorrow. (Although I'm with you on the Independent cartoon. Vile. Not funny, not witty, not acute or insightful. Not even caustic. Not under any possible construction or interpretation. Just vile.) But may I raise, as it were, a point of order? How could you, Claire--really, how could you--take seriously anyone who mistook Gwyneth Paltrow for a man?
May '10
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
British political cartoons are pretty vicious. They say we're uncouth, but our cartoon figures are loveable in comparison.
Semi-OT: can we dragoon Tim Blair into dancing for our amusement? I regard Australia as far closer to the American vibe than Britain at present, and there are serious political upheavals down under. And Blair hangs out in America with fair frequency, palling around with Iowahawk and other such undesirables, so it's not like he'd refuse.
May '10
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
Peter, hast thou not seen Shakespeare in Love?
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
Cut him some slack, Peter; yoga can get quite visually confusing.
Jun '10
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
What we forget is how pervasive anti-Semitism is in Europe.
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
Claire Berlinski, Ed. Cut him some slack, Peter; yoga can get quite visually confusing. · Sep 27 at 8:11pm
Claire, that's not you, right? I mean, really. When you assume a position like that, how can you be sure you'll be able to unassume it? We can hardly permit the Queen of Comments to run such risks.
May '10
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
Claire, I've seen a lot of politicians in that very same pose lately...
May '10
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
Manju Jois, I thought. How interesting that a yoga guy is named after a Japanese food:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjū
But, alas, it's not true....
Re: Ed Miliband and Manju Jois
The real risk is not so much that I'll get stuck that way--so far, so good--but that I'll return from class so internally yogified that I won't be able to get worked up about anything. All that yoga leaves one in such a state of equanimity--and so tired--that even the Iranian nuclear weapons program just doesn't seem worth worrying about. Oh, well. I'm sure I'll be all stressed out again by Thursday.