It takes either a profound devotion to the art of film, a stout sense of professional duty, an enormous exercise of willpower, or some combination of all three, for a visitor to the Istanbul International Film Festival, finding himself in one of the world’s most magnificent and inexhaustible cities, to choose to withdraw into a darkened theater for a substantial portion of the stay.

Life is short, Turkey is far, and all movie theaters are more or less the same (at least when the lights go down). With this in mind, a first look at the catalog for this year’s festival (the twenty-sixth …

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Relative Intimacy: Fathers, Adolescent Daughters, and Postwar American Culture. By Rachel Devlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. 254 pp. $19.95 paper. $49.95 cloth).

From the perspective of today’s relentless sexualization of children, especially girls, it is easy to forget that child sexual abuse has a remarkably short history as a social problem. When Florence Rush announced at a 1971 conference that "the family itself is an instrument of sexual and other forms of child abuse," even the experienced feminists in her audience were stunned. Incest was then considered, when it was considered at all, a very marginal phenomenon perpetrated by monstrous child molesters. Their predatory behavior was more likely to attract criminologists interested in a tiny minority of male offenders than scholars interested in the experiences of ordinary children, women, and families.

All of this changed quickly. Rush’s book, The Best Kept Secret, was published in 1980, followed by Father-Daughter Incest by Judith Herman and Lisa Hirschman in 1981. Together, these books revealed that incest was common rather than rare and publicized the fact that its victims, overwhelmingly female, numbered in the millions. In short order, child sexual abuse became a subject of vigorous social and medical research, a target of legislation and policy, and a focus of therapeutic interventions designed to heal a rapidly growing list of traumatic life events.

Rachel Devlin’s smart book argues that "the father-adolescent daughter relationship was the apparatus through which the sexualization of the teenage girl was envisioned" (p. 173), a conclusion as disquieting as it is provocative. Many historians, Devlin points out, have described new autonomy among teens, girls included, after World War II, and have identified the origin of the "generation gap" with the appearance of a teenage market. Rather than holding consumption chiefly responsible for sexualizing younger girls in more ways during the past half century, Devlin suggests that we consider the transformation of father-daughter relationships during the 1940s and 1950s. Ongoing sexual exchanges between adolescent girls and their fathers were profoundly eroticized in postwar culture. Typically dismissed as fluff, these relationships helped to produce the deeply troubling wave of child sexual abuse by normalizing it.

Devlin surveys plays, films, magazines, and novels in order to make this point, from "Junior Miss," the Broadway smash of 1941 to "Father of the Bride," the Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor film of 1950 to novels such as Lolita and Lie Down in Darkness. Her sensitive analyses of these examples demonstrate that, far from being liberated from parental authority by their new commercial roles, middle-class teenage girls (African-American as well as white) were actually mired in novel forms of familial dependence. With the oedipal relationship between father and daughter idealized as an experience of sexual affirmation–indeed as the launching point for mature womanhood–girls confronted a gender-specific developmental paradox. To establish independent lives beyond their families required protracted dependence within their families. The absence or weakness of sexual entanglements with fathers increased girls’ risks of delinquency and undermined their prospects of femininity, heterosexuality, and marriage. Sexual attention from fathers was not only perfectly normal. It was the necessary foundation of female psychology.

The Oedipal drama of female adolescence offered kinder, gentler opportunities to govern girls and women at a time when many Americans were grappling with the democratization of kinship, new sexual freedoms, and male flight from domestic commitments. Devlin notes that fathers as well as daughters used their erotic bonds to navigate the delicate historical metamorphosis from stern patriarchs to benevolent breadwinners who cheered on their daughters’ adolescence from a safe distance. They indulged desires for clothes and makeup, supervised dating and boyfriends, and facilitated coming-of-age rituals such as showy proms and weddings. As an expression of paternal devotion, fathers’ sexual interest was passive, benign, and positively helpful to their daughters. Sinister variations, such as Lolita’s incestuous step-father, Humbert Humbert, were only possible because of the axiomatic eroticism that pervaded father-daughter relationships at the time, according to Devlin. The harmlessness of culturally sanctioned father-daughter sexuality also contrasted sharply with the dangers of "momism," a psychiatric syndrome popularized by Philip Wylie in Generation of Vipers (1942). Moms were powerful and malevolent figures who destroyed their sons’ masculinity, thereby threatening the nation’s security during a period when military and political campaigns against communism demanded a steady supply of manly resources at home (literally) and abroad.

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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Many books and articles have extensively discussed the subject of leadership. In dealing with some of its aspects, therefore, one will likely repeat (albeit somewhat differently) what someone has already said. Basically, the essentials of good leadership in the profession of arms have changed little over the past decades. although we still hold sound leadership in high esteem, poor leadership has become much less tolerable today and much more dysfunctional than it was 0 years ago. Rapid progress made in the modern technological era demands that present-day leaders use their abilities, attitudes, and perceptions to overcome the polarity caused by the vanity of human power and the neglect of life’s pristine values.

What Is Leadership?

Leadership makes people place their faith and trust in a single leader whom they follow and for whom they are willing to give their best. Leaders must be able to inspire their followers by demonstrating superior qualities of body, mind, and character. Their success derives frominspiring their subordinates to think, feel, and act the way they do. a gift of character, leadership can be polished and improved.

Field Marshal bernard Law Montgomery of Great britain defined leadership as "the will to dominate, together with the character which inspires confidence " (emphasis in original). (1) To lead and dominate others, one must first acquire force of character tempered by energy, a sense of purpose and direction, integrity, enthusiasm, and moral courage. People look up to leaders and trust their judgement; leaders inspire and warm the hearts of their followers. Indeed, Field Marshal sir William slim of australia viewed leadership as "the projection of personality." (2) In its highest sense, leadership is the goal that all officers must continually seek if they wish to remain worthy of their rank and insignia.

Qualities of a Military Leader

The qualities that we associate with great leadership are so numerous that no one can possess all of them. The following sections briefly discuss a selection of traits typical of celebrated leaders–traits that military officers should strive to acquire.

Conspicuousness

During the period of indecisive inactivity created by an emergency, some people may begin to act doggedly and inspire others to follow them by virtue of their physical prowess, outstanding appearance, or some kind of unique attribute. such individuals may not have thought of being leaders but simply respond to situations more quickly and assertively than others. alternatively, leaders-to-be may consciously assume that role and make themselves conspicuous. In the armed forces, we do not have to adopt either of these methods because conspicuousness comes naturally to us by virtue of our uniforms and insignia on the one hand and, on the other, by the training that prompts all personnel to turn to those of higher rank for guidance. officers in the armed forces should therefore earnestly strive to acquire qualities that will mature and refine their leadership abilities.

Courage

Speaking of John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, Voltaire praises "that calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger … [which is] the greatest gift of nature for command." (3) Most people have physical courage but lack moral courage, which is indispensable for a leader. Moral courage consists in being honest and admitting one’s mistakes when things go wrong. It shows itself in the ability to make decisions, keeping interests of the service and the country in view against personal interest or self-perpetuation. Lack of moral courage can impel persons with ostensibly strong nerves and great character to make absolutely wrong decisions. Lacking moral courage and not ready to accept defeat, Adolf Hitler cost millions of people their lives. His generals, deficient in courage, turned him into an unbridled demon. by demonstrating moral courage, a leader can avoid many a wrong decision. The ability to make an unpopular decision calls for resolution, which leaders can cultivate.

Some leaders unfairly keep themselves too much in the sun and their followers too much in the dark. Under no circumstances should commanders be vague, remote, or inaccessible. When they walk unannounced into any camp, workshop, or office, people should recognize them immediately. It is more important to be recognized than to be popular.

Moral courage requires a leader or commander to report adversely on an inefficient subordinate and to differ with a superior whose actions run counter to the best interests of the service. Like Winston Churchill, who, at the beginning of World War II, offered to oppose Germany with his "blood, toil, tears, and sweat," a leader should not waver under stress and strain. (4) by cultivating the virtue of moral courage and the disposition to acknowledge one’s mistakes, a leader opens up the possibility of radical reformation. after demolishing the barrier of conceit, an officer can fully discuss any problem with his or her subordinates and may often find the solution most suited to the situation.

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Commentary

Over the past several years, the U.S. economy has enjoyed a period of record-low interest rates, low inflation, and relatively strong growth in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), corporate earnings, consumer spending, and consumer wealth. Much of this growth can be attributed to the strong housing market, which both benefited from, and contributed to, the low interest rate environment.

Over the past six months, the situation has dramatically changed. One of the most visible elements of this change is the rapid erosion in the housing market. While some were caught …

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By Cahal Milmo

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, is under growing pressure to impose rules on a hospital in north London, banning doctors from offering contraception or referring patients for abortions.

The cardinal is facing calls from a lobby group to use his position as “arbiter of ethics” at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, a private Catholic hospital in St John’s Wood, to insist on the implementation of a code of ethics which forbids any medical practices banned by the Vatican. These include IVF for infertile couples and amniocentesis tests to detect Down’s syndrome in unborn children.

Campaigners said yesterday that they intend to ask the Pope to intervene directly in the dispute if Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor does not take the action they want, which includes preventing an NHS- funded general practice due to open at the hospital in November from offering family planning services, including referrals for abortions and prescribing contraceptives.

Nicolas Bellord, secretary of the Restituta Group, which is campaigning to preserve the hospital’s Catholic identity, said: “We have not seen effective legal action from the cardinal on this issue. As the matter stands, the hospital is committed to a GP practice on the premises which will have a contractual agreement with the NHS to provide family planning services.

“We are looking to the cardinal to uphold the constitution of the hospital and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. If that does not happen then we will have no alternative but to seek to refer the matter to the Vatican and his Holiness the Pope.”

The hospital has built a reputation as the maternity unit of choice for celebrity mothers. Among those who have given birth there are Cate Blanchett, Emma Thompson, Kate Moss and the BBC Radio 1 presenter Sara Cox.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor demanded that the hospital revise its existing code of ethics two years ago after it was alleged that some staff were flouting its rules by referring patients for abortions and giving prescriptions for the contraceptive pill.

In a letter to the hospital’s chairman, Lord Bridgeman, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor wrote: “There must be clarity that the hospital, being a Catholic hospital with a distinct vision of what is truly in the interests of human persons, cannot offer its patients, non- Catholic or Catholic, the whole range of services routinely accepted by many in modern secular society as being in a patient’s best interest.”

Attempts to revise the hospital’s code of ethics led to a rebellion among staff, who refused to accept the stipulation that they could not refer patients seeking an abortion or contraception, including the morning-after pill, to another hospital or give advice on such issues. The hospital’s medical advisory committee, consisting of its most senior clinicians, wrote to the board in May telling them it expected Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor to resign his post as a patron and stating the hospital should be a “non-Catholic hospital with a Catholic heritage” .

It is understood that a new version of the code of ethics was referred back to the hospital board at the beginning of this month and is due for formal approval in the coming weeks. The key contention for medical staff is that they should be allowed to operate to the guidelines of the General Medical Council, the medical profession’s governing body, which require all clinicians to offer objective medical advice and referrals regardless of their personal or religious beliefs.

The hospital said yesterday that the revised code had been referred both to the GMC and the Nursing and Midwifery Council for approval. The Independent understands that the new version of the code recognises the requirement for medical staff to abide by the GMC guidelines. A source said: “Without that the hospital risks the withdrawal of its permission to practice.”

A spokesman for the archbishop said: “The cardinal is actively engaged in finding a solution to these important issues. He sincerely hopes the board will make the right decision.”

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