I’ll add to the huge number of editorials and blogs on Obama’s “big speech on race.” I read the transcript and watched a bit of it, but not without some regret that it had come to this moment. Why did Obama have to give this sort of speech? Who provoked it and why? But it was provoked. No going back from that. And he gave what, to my mind, was a solid and actually quite brave account of his relation to all sorts of pain. Read the rest of this entry »
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Updated thoughts on Columbus Day…HERE.
I’ve debated whether or not to blog on Columbus Day. Not “on” this particular day – though a case can be made for a day of silence today – but “about” this day, this figure, this holiday. I’d decided not. I didn’t want to be too trite or repetitive, just rehearsing now familiar stuff about Columbus as murderer and vanguard of what became a bloody, cruel rot in the heart of European “civilization.” Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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 »
We still have some months left in 2007, so we surely haven’t heard the end of the nostalgic chit-chat about the Summer of Love. You know, how it’s been forty years since “that generation” was defined by certain rock albums, protest movements, and sexual liberation. Todd Gitlin’s fantasies have spilled out everywhere in the popular media. And so on. I’ve already talked about this stuff in a few write-ups: on the “demise of pop music,” celebration of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album, and that other anniversary, the thirty years since The Clash’s self-titled album. Let me add another critical site: the anniversary this week of the Detroit riots. 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 »