Archive for May, 2010

Who Controls the Past Controls the Future, Kent State Edition

Try as I might, I was not able to avoid entirely the media coverage surrounding the anniversary of the shootings at Kent State, coverage that was particularly intense here in nearby Cleveland. I am too young to remember the shootings, but I do remember the civil trial of the National Guardsmen who fired on the student protestors, and the reactions to that trial.

Healthcare Reformer

The empire was beset by foreign invaders and war in the Middle East. Far-flung wars meant more taxes for the provinces and an increase in poverty. Some men had to choose between feeding their families and paying for medical care. Some couldn’t afford either.

Getting Real III: Bribability Without Liability

BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to be a lead story. Naturally it has engendered polemics over who is responsible and a broader discussion of whether offshore drilling should be continued or even increased. On these great issues that agitate NPR listeners and FOX watchers, I have nothing to say. I would, however, point to two little facts with which most people who follow the news are probably familiar.

Call Me Simple . . .

But I don’t understand:

Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem.

Why the government spends billions on education and the population gets dumber and dumber.

The Harvard Way of Life

She’s more likely than not to win confirmation to the Supreme Court. Thus, the really big question about Elena Kagan is blunter: How and when does the United States as a whole get out from under the sway of an alien enterprise such as her university, Harvard?

Is the War Coming Home?

Faisal Shahzad sought to massacre scores of fellow Americans in Times Square with a bomb made of M-88 firecrackers, non-explosive fertilizer, gasoline and alarm clocks.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit with a firebomb concealed in his underpants. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot dead 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood and wounded 29.

Adopting Indecency

A sentence from a recent New York Times Magazine profile clings to the mind, like lint. The profile is of Scott Brown, whose sudden ascent to the U.S. Senate fascinated America a few months back. In 2001, the story relates, when a colleague of Brown’s, a lesbian state senator in Massachusetts, “announced that she and her partner had decided to have children, [Brown] said that such an arrangement was ‘not normal.’ (He later apologized.)”

Back in the Locker

As I write, it’s already been three weeks since the Academy Awards broadcast on March 7, and I’m still surprised that the judges for Hollywood’s annual ceremony of self-love named The Hurt Locker Best Picture of 2009, awarding it six Oscars in all. The pooh-bahs of mediocrity voted for art rather than commerce, and so the enormously profitable spectacle Avatar had to bow to a low-budget independent production.

Ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Nearly 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton conceived “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) to fulfill a campaign promise to stop the military from discriminating against homosexuals. In classic Clintonian fashion, he tried to devise a compromise that would make everyone happy.

The Disgrace of Disgrace

This film has won a major prize and is being given the big hype by all the trendy thinkers as a profound look at the “new South Africa.” That it may be, though not in the way they mean. Disgrace is one of the vilest movies ever produced for normal viewing, and I cannot recommend it for anyone. Even though I fast-forwarded through much of it, I admit it haunts me like a bad dream—a hellish tour of Western decadence.