McCain supports legislation to protect journalists and their sources, but he cautions them saying, “The workings of America’s newsrooms are less transparent than those you cover. The press needs to work on correcting this.”
This could be good law in the making, but McCain could gain ground with many people by working against his own regulations against free political speech (McCain-Feingold).
A poem by Bill Coyle, called “Hindsight.”
I like this kind of thing, though I wish I had a better grasp of it.
Mr. Holtsberry praises Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips as light-hearted fun loosely based on Greek myths.
“Walk Hard: The Lars Walker Story.” That’s me tonight. Got my second evening walk of the year in, and it left me more winded than the one I took last week, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure why.
And it was cold. Not cold overall. The landlocked portion of the walk was pleasant. According to the thermometer on my porch, we got up to around 70° (that’s 20° for you soccer fans, though it may be an anomaly, caused by the sun beating on the Astroturf). But going past Crystal Lake, the wind was as bitter as a Pennsylvania voter. There’s still a skin of ice on the lake, and it has its effect.
I apologize for introducing a political note in a book blog, but I want to comment on Barack Obama’s “bitterness” statements. It seems as if all weekend I heard the recording over and over, in various degrees of context. And I think I caught something I haven’t heard anybody else mention.
I’m certain Obama is astonished at the response his words have raised, because he sincerely didn’t intend to say anything offensive. In fact, it’s my impression that his intention was to defend middle class Pennsylvanians, in his own fashion, and he can’t figure out how anybody could take it amiss.
Because in Obama’s world, the kindest, most uplifting thing you can do for another human being is to bestow the status of Victim on him. And what he was trying to say was that the Pennsylvanians are victims too—victims of the economy—and therefore we should cut them some slack if they’re not enlightened enough to vote for him.
What he can’t understand—what is entirely outside his conceptual framework—is the idea that there are people out there who aren’t actually pleased to be labeled victims.
The Literary Saloon is excited about a 29 word compliment of a translated crime novel in the NY Times Book Review. They can’t stop talking about it.
No doubt [reviewer Marilyn] Stasio only managed to slip this by [NYTBR] editor Tanenhaus and his eagle-eyed translation-phobic cohorts by not mentioning that Devil’s Peak was not written in English …..
(For what it’s worth: the book was written in Afrikaans and translated by K.L.Seegers — something Little, Brown doesn’t care to mention on their publicity page either (so that when Tanenhaus or one of his assistants does a quick check they won’t be scared off ?) — and which they managed to keep out of sight on the Amazon.com page for the book as well (as did the British publishers).)
Maybe excited is too strong a word, but I thought I would help The Saloon rejoice at this development.
Andree Seu riffs on a verse in Ecclesiastes, “All things are full of weariness.” She quotes C.S. Lewis’ explanation on why he doesn’t read newspapers: “Why does anyone? They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru’ such reams of verbiage and ‘write up’ to find out even what they’re saying.”
Do you think that’s accurate for today’s newspapers or other news outlets?
Blockbuster is trying to remaking itself into an major entertainment center. Today it offered to buy Circuit City at about twice its stock value. Blockbuster’s Chief Executive and Chairman Jim Keyes said the new company would be “the most convenient source for media entertainment.”
Tags: Blockbuster, Circuit City, movies, electronics
The mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is talking about the funding needed to renovate the downtown library. Private funding works well, and taxes could help if the people support it. The library system needs more money as is without any remodeling plans. Three branches, including the one closest to me, close one more day of week due to limited funds.
Naturally, I like the idea of a great looking downtown library and more of revived branch libraries, but I hope this can be accomplished through private funds. Even special purpose taxes tend to remain after their stated goal is completed. I wonder what a fund-drive would raise or if their is any grant money out there for this. I also think the horse should be before the cart in that a great book collection should precede a great library building.
Tags: books, library, Chattanooga, taxes
Pop-song writer Jean-Loup Dabadie, 69, has been admitted into “The Académie Française, France’s oldest and grandest cultural institution,” according to this TimesOnline aricle.
“For four centuries only literary stars and distinguished elders of the Establishment have been elevated to the status of ‘immortal,'” which is what the chosen are called. Allow this pop culture dude in is supposed to be keeping up with modern life. Keeping up with anything may be a problem for the Immortals.
“Seven members have died in two years and the surviving immortals, whose average age is 79, have rejected a string of literary contenders as unworthy. Six of the numbered chairs remain empty and there are not enough volunteers to attend the Thursday meetings to edit the dictionary. Work on the latest one began in 1935 and they have reached the letter R. The Second World War is blamed for the slow pace.”
Perhaps the surviving immortals should take a gander–or the French equivalent–at Bryan Appleyard’s book on living forever. It might read better than the dictionary project.
Tags: culture, pop culture, France
Terry Teachout reviews a couple strong plays, the first of which is a Soviet-styled Macbeth. “Mr. Goole’s staging is a prosy, purposefully unmagical updating of Shakespeare’s tragedy in which the action is transplanted from ancient Scotland to the Soviet Union in the darkest days of the Great Terror,” he writes, and Patrick Stewart as Macbeth delivers his role with lines which “still make you feel as though they’d just been written.”