Taking a Stand for Freedom

R.I. Reporter Found Guilty In Trial for Not Naming Source (washingtonpost.com)

Reporter Jim Taricani, despite living with a heart transplant, would rather go to jail than reveal the name of his source, who revealed a tape of the mayor of Providence taking a bribe. Unlike the federal judge who is holding Taricani in contempt, Taricani recognizes that the First Amendment requires that reporters be able to preserve their access to sources by promising confidentiality if a free press is to fulfill its duty to inform the public.

Having it all

MoorishGirl: Writing with Children

Writers who have children write, produce, the same way writers without children do. They find a spot, a closet, a room, and a writing tool, and they string words together on essentially borrowed time.

Randa Jarrar is matter of fact about finding time to write while raising children. Obviously, however, it is never as easy as it sounds, and it is a measure of her dedication, and accomplishment, that she can write about finishing a novel and baking cupcakes for her son's eighth birthday at the same time.

Trivia

Q. Who was Nina Simone's pianist?

A. Nina Simone.

Nina

The Nina Simone Web - Mississippi Goddam

You don't have to live next to me

Just give me my equality

Everybody knows about Mississippi

Everybody knows about Alabama

Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I have been listening to Nina Simone. She seems appropriate right about now. The old stuff is the best; I'm not too big on synthesizers. I just remind myself, "My Baby Just Cares for Me."

Quotidian

Mostly blew leaves today, after a delicious tongue sandwich at the Parkway Deli. Rachel had a kosher hot dog and was ecstatic over the tropical fish in the wall. What really made Rachel's day, however, was a trip to the supermarket and the drug store. Besides cruising the aisles, she was particularly enamored of the balloons at the Giant and the Christmas decorations at the CVS.

Mary Cheney Redux (Another Look at an Old Issue)

I ran across Andrew Sullivan's article in which he takes William Safire to task for criticizing John Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney during the debates. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review argues that Kerry is "creepy" for bringing up Mary Cheney's sexual orientation because he is "using" a family member of an opponent for political gain. Ultimately, however, Goldberg's argument still rests on the assumption that homosexuality is a stigma. He asks, for example, what would happen if George Bush brought up John Kerry's divorce. Goldberg would probably regard divorce as something to be ashamed of; the whole point of the arguments of people like Sullivan and Hillary Rosen is that homosexuality is not. As for Goldberg's asking whether Kerry would have been offended if Bush had commented on the fact that Teresa Kerry is a successful immigrant; I do not think that Kerry would have so much as blinked.

Cartograms

Andrew Sullivan points to cartograms that give a truer picture of the political composition of the country.

Moral Values

The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country. The divorce rate in Texas is nearly twice as high. How's that for family values? There's more; born again Christians have the highest divorce rates.

Learning Curve

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Voting Without the Facts

Bob Herbert of the New York Times argues that ignorance about the war may have played as great a role in the election as religious bigotry. For example, he reports that 70 percent of Bush supporters thought that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. (The 9/11 Commission found no evidence of this.) Herbert thinks we need four years of teach ins.

Kinsley Calls It

Am I Blue? (washingtonpost.com)

I mean, look at it this way. (If you don't mind, that is.) It's true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values -- as deplorable as I'm sure they are -- don't involve any direct imposition on you. We don't want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same gender, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?

Every once in a while, Michael Kinsley reminds me why he is one of my favorite writers. Kinsley cogently, and with wry humor, makes that point that opponents of George Bush need not trim out sails to the political wind of the moment just because it seems to being blowing in his direction. (Note: At this moment, this article is the most emailed article on The Washington Post.)

It's the War, Stupid

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Values-Vote Myth

[Bush] won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror.

The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.

If Brooks is right, then the interesting question becomes why do people think an unnecessary, unsuccessful war against a country that was not an immediate threat makes us safer.

Lists

I sometimes think my list of (mostly) current interests, after my friends and family, reads a bit like Borges' famous list. My list includes:

jazz, classical music, sea stories, chess, civil rights, First Amendment freedoms, historical fiction, Shakespeare, GBS, George Orwell, Morocco, Arabic, French, law, newspapers, The New Republic, Tingis, Le Nouvel Observateur, Poetry, poetry, The Odyssey, Elizabethan literature, Scotland, Walter Scott, William Butler Yeats, military history, model ships, cooking . . .

Never, Never

Never Give In, Never, Never, Never - The Churchill Centre

[N]ever give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

Sir Winston Churchill

The election is over, but the fight to save the country has just begun.

LIght a Candle

I cast my vote today. I tried. We may know how it turned out in the morning, but right now I am not too optimistic.

False Note?

The New York Times > Arts > Music > The Rap Against Rockism

Rockism isn't unrelated to older, more familiar prejudices - that's part of why it's so powerful, and so worth arguing about. The pop star, the disco diva, the lip-syncher, the "awesomely bad" hit maker: could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world? Like the anti-disco backlash of 25 years ago, the current rockist consensus seems to reflect not just an idea of how music should be made but also an idea about who should be making it.

The Times' contention that a critique of singers who cannot sing or write songs has been coopted by a shrill minority with a racial agenda is a sad commentary on popular culture. Certainly, popular music is notorious for putting a white face on other people's musical traditions. However, is there not enough genuine talent across the board to disprove easily any assertion that the only people who can really sing are straight white males? Although the search for "authenticity" in popular music may be a chimera, surely this does not mean that we should fail to distinguish talent from its lack?

The Washington Post has an overview of the smoke and mirrors that surround the production of modern popular music. The Post points out that Simpson's performance should have come as no surprise; electronic enhancement has been around for years and is pervasive in the industry. Simpson just had the misfortune to get caught in a very public and embarrassing way.

Rockism defined.

What were we thinking?

Bob Herbert excoriates the war effort in the New York Times. Herbert points out that we sent in the troops without the tools necessary to do the job, and without telling them clearly what the job was. To paraphrase Talleyrand, we have learned nothing and forgotten nothing since 1968.

My Response to "Jane Galt"

My response to Jane Galt/Megan McCardle, who was lauded by Andrew Sullivan for her "thoughtful, thorough, and cogent argument" in support of George Bush.

Bush's military adventurism in Iraq represents a failure of imagination in foreign policy, not proof of it. In light of the intense animosity we have generated in the region, the worst consequences of Bush's "quagmire" most likely have yet to unfold. We've been here before, when we needed to "stay the course" in Vietnam lest the dominoes tumble and the world be overtaken by Communism. Next thing we hear from the Bush camp will be that there is "light at the end of tunnel." Perhaps we need to have a statement of goals that will either let us ascertain when we have achieved victory or when further loss of life is pointless. However, if Bush really has made a ghastly mistake, he should not be allowed to persist in it for another four years.

On the home front, the consistent thread in Bush's policy has been to consolidate his base by institutionalizing increasing wealth for the wealthiest Americans. This is not what America is or ought to be about.

Why does it make sense to argue that since both parties are bad on civil liberties, it does not matter if the Republicans are worse?

Who seriously thinks that Bush the Texas oilman would support emissions taxes?

Bush was a mistake. Let's not repeat it.

Incidentally, I do not know the origin of the moniker "Jane Galt." However, it sounds suspiciously like a play on "John Galt," the hero of the best known novel of the shallow materialist Ayn Rand.