Montgomery Bush

Reading today of the US government's idea to build giant mirrors in space, to reflect back the sun's rays and so reduce global warning, I wondered three things. A) whether this is April Fool's Day; b) why Americans prefer doing something, however barmy, to doing something else less, however easy; and c) where I'd heard this plan before. Finally I answered the last question. It was on The Simpsons. The dramatic two-parter where Mr Burns built a device which blocked out the sun from the town of Springfield.

His motives were similar to George Bush's, though less ambitious. Monty Burns wanted to increase dependence on his horribly unsafe power plant. Bush wishes to protect the rights of all polluters everywhere. I also wonder if the President is considering some of the other radical eco-solutions from The Simpsons. In another episode, Springfield got so horribly polluted that they just packed the whole town up and moved it somewhere else. Is Bush already scouting out other planets and collecting tugships and an awful lot of rope?

Mr Burns was eventually thwarted when he was shot by the Simpsons' baby, Maggie. I'm not, of course, suggesting that America's toddlers take such a radical step. But the current climate in Washington is so surreal, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens anyway.

Blinding Faith

So much for having the coolest Archbishop in England. When John Sentamu came to York, I thought we were getting something. The man from Uganda was a former victim of Idi Amin, a campaigner against racism and capitalism's more brutal excesses. He started well too, speaking wisely about faith and compassionately about job losses in the city. But he seems to be stumbling on the subject which trips up most of his church. Homosexuality.

The government is finally looking to bring Catholic adoption agencies into something resembling the modern era. These agencies have been freely excluding couples who can provide a happy, supportive home to orphans but happen to be of a shared sex. It's ludicrous that they have been allowed to do this for so long. As Harriet Harman said in an uncharacteristic moment of insight, "You can't be a little bit against discrimination." Labour has been hitherto largely because of a sustained lobbying campaign by church members, including some in the Cabinet. In one of those heart-warming examples of how bigotry can unite rival churches, the Anglicans have sided with their former Catholic enemies.

The Catholic defence is the usual one. Homosexuality is against the teachings of their church, full stop. Essentially each man is pointing up the hierarchy and saying "It's his fault," until the chain of guilt leads all the way to the man in Rome. Who could, I suppose, say he's just following lessons learnt when he was a young lad in the Hitler Youth. Protestants never have that excuse. So, in eerily similar statements, John Sentamu and Rowan Williams are citing freedom of conscience. Personal ethics are at stake, they say, and these should never be a matter of legislation.

Williams has caved in so often on the matter of homosexuality that the Health & Safety Executive now warn people not to stand too close to him. But, as said, I expected more of Sentamu. Never mind that all freedoms are always going to have parameters set by the government, that some individual consciences are basically evil, that Idi Amin probably thought he was following his when he locked up Sentamu. That's obvious enough, though possibly not to the Archbishop. What Sentamu maybe should have considered was whether his conscience was telling him the right thing.

What exactly is the defence anyway? It isn't the Canal Street cruisers which the adoption agencies are excluding. It is couples who can prove they are in a stable relationship and can provide a prosperous home. This isn't fair on the children being denied that, never mind the couples themselves. And what the hell is the issue with homosexuality anyway? It's condemned in the Bible a couple of times. Many things are and are freely indulged now, even by churchmen. It prevents the couples from breeding naturally. Well, the days when the human race needed to go forth and multiply are over. With over 6.5 billion of us in the world, perhaps we've multiplied a little too much. Some details in the Bible are antiquated. It's time to stop clinging onto them and focus on the main message. Gay couples can show devotion and fidelity, to each other and their families, and that's in line with God's teachings. He didn't say He was the God of Love, only to add "Oh, except for these kinds…"

The steps should be: work out if your conscience is correct. Then defend its freedom. Sentamu needs to be careful. Soon he'll be saying that government policies are political correctness gone mad, and then there will really be no hope for him.

'Nighthawks'

Can you be a great artist without leading a classic artist's life? Edward Hopper thought so. He had perhaps the least eventful existence of any successful painter. It was entirely spent in the same city, New York, and mostly even in the same studio. He started as a commercial artist and made the transition to an independent one with absurd tranquillity. He married his wife Jo in 1924 and saw no reason not to stay married to her until his death forty three years later. There was no apparent turmoil, no flamboyance and no self-destruction.

Of course you don't need any of that if you're brilliant – which Hopper certainly was. Its absence, though, might influence the sort of art you create. Hopper became known as a 'neo-realist.' His scenes, apparently only one stage away from photography, are of mundane little nooks and corners, the unremarkable sidestreets of the modern world. A better word for him is actually a 'hyper-realist;. There is nothing dramatic or beautiful to distract us from his visions of normality. We are forced to focus on the real world as it is – and see the truths he has subtly placed inside.

Nighthawks is effectively a picture of two halves. The left hand side gives a classic Hopper image. Though he painted some pastorals too, he tended to focus on towns or cities. And they are urban landscapes from which all trace of nature has been removed. Take The City, where the flat tops of the buildings compose a new form of terrain which stretches to the horizon. His cityscapes lack something else too. Namely people, the things for which they were supposedly created. The shops in Drug Store and Early Sunday Morning apparently serve nobody and are served by nobody. They have no function. Likewise the dark street in Nighthawks. It could have been made picturesque or menacing. But it is simply empty in every sense, a place without a soul, and so becomes almost pitiful.

The other half of the painting is dominated by the harsh glare of the coffee house. Hopper could do light and shade better than anyone since Caravaggio. He used them quite differently, however. Caravaggio was theatrical, his striking beams of light piercing thick pools of gloom and illuminating every wrinkle of his actors. Hopper's lights are generally weak little beacons standing alone. The lamps of the petrol station in Gas, struggling to keep at bay the threatening shadows of the night forest. And those of Nighthawks' coffee shop, which is revealed to be almost as empty as the street outside. It is the epitome of bleakness. Blank walls, an unpainted door, the only adornments the two water heaters and a few scattered utensils. If we saw this place in real life, we would walk straight past. But now we are forced to stare inside.

Four figures are there, a surprisingly high number for Hopper. More typical is how he has placed them. None are looking at each other. Nobody ever does in his works, not even the young lovers on a Summer Evening. One man is turned away, half his body and apparently all of his mood swallowed by gloom. The couple in the middle may be together but there is no connection between them. The woman examines her fingernails in a classic posture of boredom. She seems thoroughly uninterested in her partner, who in turn gazes out at us with disappointment on his sharp features. The only figure who is at all animated is the bartender, pausing in a task to stare out of the window. Follow his gaze, though, and you see he is looking at nothing at all – just the empty street.

This purposelessness is everywhere in the scene. These are not nighthawks engaged in illegal pleasures or depraved hedonism. They sit in this drab little room because they have nowhere else to go. They are alienated even from each other; their loneliness emphasised cruelly by the line of empty bar stools in the foreground. Each one, you feel, comes here every night to sit in silence. And when the place closes they walk home alone through the empty streets.

What can you do if you're an artist who has never experienced true tragedy? You can try to do this if you choose. Create horribly believable visions of explicable, everyday misery.

Another Galaxy

David Beckham has never really fitted in. He emerged with a batch of talented young players at Man Utd in the mid 1990's but was never quite part of the gang. 'Fergie's Fledglings' (and journalists were rummaging frantically through thesauruses to find an alliterative collective name to match The Busby Babes) were mainly local lads with sensible haircuts. They scurried about a lot and played short passes. Nicky Butt was a fine example, a tireless perpetrator of actions tactically critical but invisible to the naked eye. Beckham was always too southern and too flash. From his ludicrous lob of Neil Sullivan in 1995 to his juvenile red card in the 1998 World Cup to his Spice Girl marriage and bewildering array of hairstyles, his career was a constant scream for attention. Nobody was surprised that he became the first of the brood to flee the nest – or possibly be ferociously kicked out of it by Alex Ferguson.

At Real Madrid, though, he went to the opposite extreme at the wrong time. His 'private' life briefly supplanted the most tiresome of soap operas, largely thanks to an imperfect understanding of how a mobile phone text function works. He rarely shone on the pitch, however. Beckham arrived during the era of the galacticos, superannuated stars who did absolutely nothing of value but looked great while failing to do it. Here the epitome was Roberto Carlos, a hilariously inept defender whose sole function was to violently thump free kicks 50 yards over the bar. Beckham just couldn't compete. Shunted from his favourite right midfield slot, he tried proving his worth by scurrying about and playing short passes. Even his hair grew more rational. He turned himself into Nicky Butt.

Hopefully he will find a proper home at LA Galaxy. It hasn't started well, however. When news of his contract - £70,000 a day, a virgin sacrifice tied to the rocks each month and all the ambrosia he can drink – came out, Beckham assured us he wasn't moving for the money. He was attracted by the massive potential of the club and the massive potential of football in America and so on. And who in his new homeland was he trying to convince here? Fans of LA Galaxy, a team which sounds like an especially annoying nightclub, and the rest of the MLS will react like everyone in the football world – a sceptical roll of the eyes so violent it risks straining a muscle. They are only a small group, however. Most US football fanatics care solely about the Latin American countries where they were born or the high school team which their daughter plays for.

Many Americans do like money, however. They like celebrities too, and they especially like celebrities who flaunt their money shamelessly. Beckham needs to go for this market if he wants to make himself a genuine star in the States. He should wave his contract like a talisman and pretend that being the highest paid player in history magically makes him the best. He should cruise the chat show circuits, he should build a Beverley Hills mansion which makes Beckingham Palace look tasteful and humble. It's likely to help football in America. Previously a stunted, stigmatised immigrant, the sport is suddenly offering the absurd salaries of basketball and attracting the corresponding attention. LA Galaxy's attendances will surge, part of the new crowd being enthusiastic teams of auditors wondering how the hell they can afford it. And if Beckham really gives it his best, if he pushes his image to the max, perhaps nobody will notice that he's an ageing trundler who can manage about three half-decent crosses per game.

Speak Softly And Carry A Big Neocon

I knew it couldn't last. From the start, George Bush's presidency has been marked by a refusal to compromise. To enemies, to different viewpoints, to the basic framework of common sense. Undeterred by the fact that he won his first election through methods which would have embarrassed the yellowest of banana republics, he instantly purged Washington of liberals and replaced them with fanatical, often barely sane right wingers. That set a tone which rarely altered. Whether invading Iraq because he wanted to, refusing to rebuild New Orleans because most of the people made homeless were black or trying to appoint to the Supreme Court a woman with little judicial experience but who used to dangle him on his knee when he was a wee wee boy, Bush's shamelessness has been almost breathtaking.

Last November, though, the tone abruptly changed. The White House was embracing centrist policies, we heard. It was embracing the forbidden delights of bipartisan policies with both arms. It really, really loved the Democratic Party. This sudden passion possibly came because said party now controlled the Senate and could, if it wished, starve Bush of all funding and put his friends on trial for an astonishing array of misdemeanours.

For some Republicans, the conversion appears permanent. Arnold Scharzenegger, for example, has convincingly reinvented himself as a liberal eco-warrior. (Though the wording of his latest announcements, where he compared himself to Saul on the road to Damascus, hints that he may have damaged more than his legs in his recent skiing accident). Perhaps Bush also meant what he said for a while. Something inside him seems to have snapped, however. He listened to James Baker's recommendation for a rapid troop withdrawal from Iraq and negotiations with Iran and Syria. He listened and laughed quite a lot in private and is now preparing an alternative Blueprint For Peace. We don't, as yet, know for definite that Bush intends throwing pretty much the entire American army into the Middle East. But there are clues in Friday's reshuffling of the top military personnel. The two generals currently in Iraq, both sympathetic to Baker's report, are being withdrawn. In their place comes David 'Ripper' Petraeus and William 'Fallout' Fallon (I may have made these nicknames up myself), men renowned for tearing their enemies to bits and dancing on the fragments.

I knew it couldn't last and I'm quite glad it hasn't. In today's grey world, with identical parties battling over miniscule issues and careerist politicians propelled entirely by image, we need people who refuse to taint their beliefs. The American neocons, together with the Muslim fundamentalists, are one of the few significant groups left who are driven by ideology. Both have overlooked a few small points – that the aim should be to build a utopia rather than a dystopia, that the destruction of the world is not actually a good thing. But nobody's perfect.