January 2010
12 posts
"a conversation - rather than a shouting match...
I just watched about an hour of President Obama taking questions from House Republicans. Not watched, really. Mostly, I listened while I cleaned up the kitchen. Not everyone will have a kitchen to clean or an hour to spare. So let me just tell you why I think this Q&A mattered and why the president and congressional Republicans should literally be in the same room more often. This event...
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Distractions that explain — but do not excuse — me...
1) Running. Lots of running. Our new dog — dog number two — is younger, faster, bigger than dog number one. So I’m getting a lot of good exercise. It’s wonderful. Maybe there are ways to blog while you run. I’m not interested in discovering them.
2) I’m 37. I had never read Tolstoy. I tried War and Peace once. I gave up. Blame my slow reading speed. Then, a week or so ago,...
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“If this patronizing agenda were promulgated in the Jim Crow South by a white man...”
– from “Cultivating Failure” in the January issue of The Atlantic.
Caitlin Flanagan might merely have used her Atlantic article to question the educational value of incorporating veggie gardens into the public school curriculum. But no. Alice Waters, renowned chef and leading proponent of...
Contingencies For Revised Edition of "A Happier...
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Rudy Giuliani, NYC mayor on 9/11/01
TO: Revisionist & Sons Publishing Co.
RE: contingency plans for revised second edition of my forthcoming textbook, A Happier History of America
Dear Sirs:
As we continue to lock in pre-orders from school districts all across the country for the first edition of my uplifting American history textbook, I want to thank you for standing...
“There were people who knew what Al Qaeda could do, and what it was capable of...”
– from “The First 3,650 Days” by Charles P. Pierce in Esquire.
I learned of this piece — and of Pierce’s existence — thanks to this interview that Nieman Storyboard did about narrative journalism. Nieman Storyboard is on Twitter and they link to stuff that’s consistently...
Cheney's Stenographer: Can Politico's editor...
Since I’m trying not to assume the worst in people, I won’t be accusing Politico editor John Harris of being disingenuous. With “disingenuous” off the table, we’re left with “clueless” to explain his justification for his web site’s decision to write up its Dick Cheney interviews without including distracting extraneous stuff like fact-checking,...
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“An axe-wielding Somali extremist broke into the home of Kurt Westergaard on...”
– from “Panic room saved artist Kurt Westergaard from Islamist assassin” (1/3/2010 in The Sunday Times)
I hesitate to judge, having never been in this situation. But please feel free to slap me hard if I ever speak the words “we did it” to describe the survival of a little kid...
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Sex, Alienation, and the New York Times Book...
Consider averting your glance. For reasons that are strictly legitimate, I’m about to quote a passage from a novel that includes blunt sexual terminology. There will be crass synonyms. A synonym, for example, for the body part that starts with a P and ends with an ENIS. So if you’d rather avoid that, please stop reading.
Meaghan O’Connell’s blogged denunciation of a piece...
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““It’s just that she feels so fragile yet. It’s something you...”
– from Alice Munro’s story “Fiction,” published in Harper’s in August ‘07 and now part of Munro’s collection Too Much Happiness
Munro really gets at something in those few paragraphs, really sees through to the core of how lives flow sometimes. I heard this passage...