May 2008 Archives

Slate has published the police report on a teacher-led vote to banish an autistic five-year-old from his elementary school class.

Bob Herbert points out that Washington regards the real scandal over Scott McClellan's book not as the fact that the Iraq War was waged under false pretenses (we knew that) but as the fact that a White House insider has turned on his boss.

O.K, I guess I do not understand what the hue and cry is all about. Father Pfleger basically makes three points 1) that white America today is the beneficiary of several centuries of oppression of black Americans (i.e. slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, lynching); 2) that Hillary Clinton felt she was entitled to the White House as a former first lady, and 3) that Clinton has a sense of entitlement because of her race. The first of these propositions strikes me as undeniable. The second seems debatable but plausible. Only the last point seems questionable to me, but even on that last point Clinton has opened herself to the criticism by her claims to be more electable than Barack Obama because she appeals to hard working white people with no education. Frankly, we need to continue the debate in this country to which Father Pfleger has contributed, rather than sweeping it under the rug because an uneducated white majority cannot bear to confront the crimes in this otherwise great country's past.

The Washington Post writes:

Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace. But at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave.

The study apparently show that smokers very often quit in groups in response to changing social pressures in a kind of wave or chain reaction. At the same time, die-hard smokers can become quite isolated.

The New York Times heralds a new browser war as Firefox reaches 18 percent market share and plans a new release in June.

In a race where Barack Obama's safety is a particular concern, Hillary Clinton's remark that by June 1968, Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated was appalling. As one commenter put it, the remark was eerily reminiscent of Henry II's "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"



The fact that she later, in the face of popular outrage, apologized to the Kennedy's but apparently not the Obama's is bizarre. See Clinton Sorry For Remark About RFK Assassination, The Washington Post (Friday, May 23, 2008).

Update: Keith Olbermann's commentary.

Eugene Robinson explains why Hillary keeps going, and going, and going.

Credit: Andrew Sullivan

The Washington Post thinks it is possible to have too many "friends." No kidding?

Ruth Marcus has a good assessment of the Clinton campaign.

"Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Clinton won Kentucky by a double digit margin among "white working class voters who have been her biggest supporters." New York Times

The family and I just got back from a rockin' concert by Dan Zanes and Friends at Strathmore Hall. Besides playing such favorites as Wabash Cannonball, House Party Time, and All Around the Kitchen, Zanes announced his new album Nueva York!, which will be available in June. Styled a "pro-immigration" album, Nueva York! is a collaboration celebrating the rich variety of Latino music in New York City, where Zanes is based. Zanes' offhand anecdote about listening to Pete Seeger at an anti-war rally in Brooklyn left no doubt as to where his politics lie, but kids and parents of any political background cannot fail to enjoy Zanes' infectious brand of family-friendly folk rock.

That our current president is beneath contempt almost goes without saying, but his comparison of Democrats to Nazi sympathizers marks a new low.

As Hillary plays the race card, Barack Obama has a tough night.

After tonight, it does not appear likely that Hillary can win, but it still seems possible that she can ensure that we and Barack lose.

. . . that the two-year-old said jump, or that the four-year-old did it.

I am half way through Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone, which I purloined from my wife before she had a chance to read it. The prose is crisp, but the writing has a nightmarish quality both because of the horror of its subject matter and its remove from ordinary experience. Watching a man's eyes give up hope before they roll back into his head as you cut his throat, seeing the mud shift and bubble as a man buried alive struggles to free himself, or viewing the ashes of the house in which your family was burned alive are scenes most of us will not have to face and which it would be easier not to imagine. The obverse of our privileged lives is all too easy to ignore, but it commands our attention.