Yesterday was the second anniversary of the disaster we call Katrina. I was surprised that there was no reading of names, no pause for a moment to remember each soul lost, as there is when we remember so many other tragedies. Read the rest of this entry »
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It had to happen. The problem of outsourcing is very real for the United States, and puts us all in such a precarious political and social space. Politically, outsourcing is bad for us because it chooses cheaper labor at the expense of our national interest in reasonable (full?) employment for our fellow citizens. Socially, outsourcing is good for the consumer self, providing cheap goods and services for a lot of us. I’ll skip the familiar reflection on how this is capitalism’s endgame, etc., and just underscore the fact that all of it is just so precarious. We’re off-balance when balance might really help. Outsourcing. Sigh.
This is for Quanita.
I like coincidences. A lot. Not really because they say something about how fate would have it (not my thing), but instead because coincidences so often instruct us just by chance. That’s why I found two stories – one so sad and serious, the other so sad and satirical – on Iraq compelling. And just today I came across two stories about changing neighborhoods. One is a musing on a lost sense of home in Washington, D.C., the other is about activist work against new residents.
I was driving home and listening to one of my least favorite shows on National Public Radio – Marketplace – when they did a short feature on history-buff tourism in the United States. A nice break from endless musings on the meaning of housing markets, loan rates, control of inflation, etc. The sort of stuff that bores me, but that’s just me. Also a nice break from the idea of tourism as simply blanking out one’s mind at a beach or amusement park. People going somewhere to learn something or see something they were taught about. Or, better, something about which they taught themselves. I like that. Read the rest of this entry »
Genarlow Wilson is in prison for having oral sex with a fifteen year-old girl when he was seventeen years-old. The sex was consensual. Those are the facts, not my interpretation. There was no rape charge. I hope everyone who reads this will spend some time at $3.60 in order to catch up on the details of the case, including ongoing movement. As well, that site has some fabulous analysis. I’ve wanted to write on the case for quite some time, so here are a few thoughts… Read the rest of this entry »
Sean “Diddy” Combs is making another band. Last season he made this band, Danity Kane. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve already written here a bit on how The Beatles carry a thin, largely fictitious politics through music history and, at Cypher & Syllable, how The Clash might offer another kind of politics of music. Now this piece by David Shumway – apparently a precis of sorts for his forthcoming book on (rock) music icons – brings the issue back with another question: what has happened to music stars as culture and politics makers? And so I’m brought back to my question: how did this whole myth of political rock stars get started, and how does it continue to be read as true? Read the rest of this entry »
What curious things we do with history, no? On the one hand, the United States (by no means an exception, here) is so much a culture of forgetting. We’d rather imagine the pain of the past to be from another world entirely (it’s not) than engage in a difficult conversation. On the other hand, there is stuff like this: the (re-) sailing of the Amistad, retracing the old slave trade route. That seems like a desire to remember. How couldn’t that (re-) sailing remember? Forgetfulness and the desire to remember. Both typical and unexpected. At the same time. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week, Charles P. Pierce at Slate.com wrote up some thoughts on LeBron James as “the next Michael Jordan.” Well-timed, of course, given his spectacular take-down of Detroit – honestly, it was a single-handed take-down – and the first visit to the NBA Finals starting last night. I don’t much disagree with the author on assessing The Bron as bluntly non-political, but the very question is quirky. I’ve been trying to sort out my thoughts… Read the rest of this entry »
So, Alabama has joined Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia in offering official state apologies for slavery. Very interesting. It is easy to be snarky about these sorts of gestures or read in them cynical aims, etc., but I think apology deserves a serious bit of consideration. Apology is no small thing. The fact that no Republican supported this apology reminds us that there is real symbolic something to public apology. More directly, as we know from our personal lives, a sincere apology can transform a friendship or love relationship by reckoning with a hurtful past event or events. How this translates into the political realm, however, is where things get even more complicated. Read the rest of this entry »