East - West

Laugh at the clever Aljazeera headline for this story about Wal-Mart in China ("Walmart Hosts Communist Party"), cry at the sad irony that none of the chain's U.S. stores are unionized.

Aljazeera's English-language cable TV channel launched a short time ago, with all the media junkies and critics keeping a close eye. Never mind that they've had an English-language website for a while - one would think in the age of bloggers and ubiquity of the net, that would've garnered more and earlier attention. The website relaunched when the TV channel went live; the colors are less jarring now, but the page is too busy, like too many of its contemporaries; I liked how the old version stuck to basics (including linking to their Code of Ethics on the frontpage, unlike others, which are buried half a dozen clicks into to obscure pages, if they exist at all). One thing that the website is still doing, though, along with the TV channel, is not always starting with the same predictable slew of top international stories that CNN and other competitors run. Aljazeera is covering news as if the world doesn't start and end in the West.

The Evangelist

I read last month that there is talk of making Ayn Rand's tome Atlas Shrugged into a film. And I remembered that, despite my bona fide teenage obsession with Rand's work (I'm pretty sure I read it all, and went to Objectivist meetings too boot for a while), I had never seen The Fountainhead on film. Netflix rectified that over the Thanksgiving weekend. I also recently picked up a (mericifully) cheap copy of the book.

I can see why The Fountainhead appealed to my teenage self: all the iconoclasm, all the idealism, all the homage to human creativity and freedom (I managed to overlook the ideological and economic implications of Rand's work at the time). I'm here to report that the film (for which Rand wrote the screenplay) is oh-so-very true to the book, but not for the qualities that attracted me to the story as an adolescent: it's overwrought, histrionic, and lacking all subtley. My adult self cringed and giggled all the way through the film, and cringed and giggled all over again when I opened up the book. It's not that I don't still find aspects of Rand's basic take on what makes people tick useful or accurate to some degree. It's the evangelical hypercapitalism that gets me - along with all the drama.

P.S. Ha - one of the external links on the Rand wiki page takes you to The Atlasphere, a dating and networking site "Connecting the admirers of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged" ! - I'm just not sure why Anthem didn't make the cut?

If you would like to comment on my choice of image, just note this was the only commons image I could find....

Inventory

I just noticed how long a lapse I've had here. Rest assured I've been thinking about writing, but potential posts are in various stages of edits. Too many things seemed interesting to me in the last month, which is a good thing. But now I have to get around to finishing up my thoughts in some semi-tidy packaging for posting here. Until then, here's a summary of topics of works in progress:

The passage of what would have been the 100th birthday of Hannah Arendt, and what she really meant - not what most of us think she meant - when she coined the phrase The Banality of Evil - and all kinds of heavy stuff about the nature of human freedom.

The announcement that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged will be made into a film ( I've got the old Patricia Neal * Gary Cooper Fountainhead on the way to me via Netflix), and my adolescent foray into the inner sanctums of the Objectivists. Also included: how I somehow squared this with my burgeoning socialistic views.

George Orwell: we all must read his nonfiction, as well as fiction, from a very early age. If his undiluted moral sense didn't permeate our collective consciousness and make the world a far better place, most of the English-speaking parts of the world would at least write much better.

An inventory of a recent visit to San Francisco, including wondering just why cars appear parked in the middle of the street there, ostensibly for church. Double parking in NYC is nothing compared to this. Plus a comparison the Public Libaries of Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, NYC, and SF. And maybe something about how New Yorkers are spoiled by having so many Great Public Spaces.

Polar Bears are shrinking, along with the polar ice caps.

When We Were Kings (the film) and how Muhammad Ali is, unlike most of the people we so easily bestow the title upon, an actual hero, and why. And how I coincidentally ended up watching Street Fight, about Corey Booker's first mayoral campaign in Newark, right after Kings, and therefore must compare one old school black american hero with one new school black american hero-in-the-making.

My cab ride coming home late from work tonight, during which the young Turkish driver showed me it is possible to be both supremely cynical and idealistic at the same time, and with grace.

The Useful and the Beautiful - Meet Here

Once more, Art, meet Wonk...Wonk, meet Art.

See?! HERE’s what I mean about The Municipal Art Society (MAS).

MAS, in conjunction with Brooklyn Speaks , has just reminded us about their June call for Forest City Ratner to revamp its plans for the Atlantic Yards Project (16 skyscrapers, 18,000 seat arena), citing 5 design and planning principles:

1. Respect the character of existing nabes (i.e. reduce the density of the project and don’t build megaskyscrapers).
2. Public streets should not be eliminated (keep 5th Ave open)
3. Create a real public park (don’t pretend that strip of green behind the skycrapers is going to be geographically inviting for locals who don’t have access to proposed skyscrapers)
4. Promote lively streets ( by promoting the small businesses that characterized the area, and not overshadowing them with skyscrapers)
5. Deal with the traffic increase that will be created (by actually coming up with a plan for it, including improving public transit).

Check out the featured Brooklyn Speaks slideshow contrasting the current Ratner “vision” with what is and could be. You can also add your name to those who support the Brooklyn Speaks.

I keep the 2003-04 Annual Report for MAS on my desk, because in addition to being the most useful and beautiful (my two principles for anything) annual report/ advocacy tool combination ever, it quotes, over a photo of the lawn at Bryant Park, their founding members from 1893:

“To make us love our city, we must make our city lovely.”

Volunteerism

I find it interesting and disturbing that when the BBC asks its readers How to Stop School Shootings (in response to the PA Amish killings), virtually all of the responses focus on gun control.

I agree that the U.S. prediliction for guns is a big piece of the puzzle. But what no one seems to acknowledge is that in so many of these cases, the killers turn the guns on themselves. That suggests to me that these acts are about desperate attention seeking, and like more straightforward forms of suicides, when covered by the press in ad nauseum, this post-mortem attention encourages similar acts.

The public has our Right To Know, but i'm not sure we always need to know about things moments after they happen. My First Amendment Fundamentalist status notwithstanding, I propose press organizations voluntarily (no gov't compulsion involved here) simply stop covering school shootings on a breaking news basis. Don't descend en masse, and don't take satellite feeds. Maybe leave it to the local old-fashioned print media to send a few reporters out. Leave the cameras behind. Then, in a few days or a week, put it on page 2 as a post-event analysis. Or don't cover it at all. It seems plain that all that media doesn't prevent these things from happening, and I really think it may be part of what prompts others to act similarly. There are plenty of violent events that don't get any coverage. Why shouldn't school shootings be the same way?

The Polar Bear Post

When I first read about this guy who decided to get really close to a captive panda, I thought the guy gave the Panda a gash that required stitches. Thankfully, it was the other way around. And, the facility (not a zoo, but more like a breeding facility) says it won't punish the perp (i.e., the guy, not the bear).

This interests me because in my long-delayed post about the 1987 polar bear attack on a 12-year old who'd taken a swim in the bear's moat in Brooklyn's Prospect Zoo, the bear was most definitely punished with a swift death by responding emergency services officers (the Gothamist panda bit links to the Times Select articles about that event). The kid *was* killed, mind you, but he was also messing around after dark in a zoo full of wild animals that was off limits, and entered the bear's moat on a dare, suggesting that the 3 kids involved knew they were flirting with danger. Don't think that I'm some animals-should-have-the-same-rights-as-humans type, or that I'm not sympathetic to a terrible result of the oh-so-typical behavior of a 12- year old kid.

But polar bears are easily the largest, most aggressive, most defensive, strongest, toughest mofos among mammalian carnivores. Barry Lopez's chapter on the bear in his book Artic Dreams is highly recommended. It's practically a love letter - a deep appreciation for what is an astounding being. Auugh. He describes the bear from behavior to physiology, including the amazing and efficient hairs that keep in warm in its chilly home, and the reprehensible record of man's interaction with the bear. It's an homage that helps you understand why the Inuit traditionally respect and fear the bear in equal measure, without ever having to visit up north. (Lopez' book is fascinating even if you aren't interested in the Artic).

Most of us don't get drunk or dared and climb into zoo enclosures to, for whatever reason, be nearer the animals. But I still have to wonder what zoos actually teach us about wild animals, and especially what they teach us about our place in relation to them. I grew up with the zoo and wild animal parks in San Diego as my main form of weekend entertainment; my mother has Super-8 footage of me gleefully cavorting with the goats in the petting zoo as a toddler. I had a stuffed raccoon until I was 8 or 9. I got as close as the chainlink fence and 6 inch glasses permitted me to see the tigers (always my favorite) at the wild animal park. I have a natural fear and awe of things that are bigger than I, and owed at least in part to the zoo, an appreciation. But I wonder how much that natural fear - and therefore, appreciation - is diminished when, after watching Gus (pictured here) at Central Park Zoo mellow and swimming, an 8 or 10 or 12 year walks into the gift shop at the zoo to see a dozen cutified and stuffed versions of Gus there for the purchase.

The Impoverished Competition

I've been very good about not pouting that no one else here appreciates the star power of Shahrukh Khan.

But I did notice the other day that around the corner from SRK's billboard sits another billboard with another famous bollywood face for another shi-shi brand of watch - and it's the son of Amitabh, Abhishek Bachchan, pictured here.

I must say, though he might have daddy's classic good looks, as for charisma....he doesn't come close to Khan, and the face on that billboard may as well be of any reasonably handsome mortal walking the streets below. I can't imagine what the ad folks who thought he could vie with SRK had in mind. Sorry, Abhishek. You're no match for Shahrukh.

Art Meets Wonk

The Architectural League is one of those many places in my adopted hometown that so consistently and constantly produces fascinating projects that I’m often overwhelmed by its opportunities. Of all the Don’t Miss exhibitions, competitions, panels, and projects they are always offering, Architecture and Justice: Criminal Justice as Urban Exostructure is Definitely Don’t Miss.


This particular exhibition and program look at mapping incarceration and return rates in different American cities, and the policy implications of those patterns.

But it also reminds me of other policy implications in the relationship between architecture and incarceration. My work sometimes takes me to a small town upstate; the big shiny new high school is built on a site originally meant for a prison. When the town's NIMBY elements managed to block the prision, to save money the municipal authorities used the same blueprints for the prison to build the school, changing key features but also keeping the cellblock system in place. The shape of a building - at least in theory - says everything about its function, and the message to the kids who attend is obvious. That’s some policy implication.

And-
The Architectural League is housed in a gorgeous building at 457 Madison Avenue that is The Urban Center with another of my favorite NYC art-meets-wonk agencies, the Municipal Art Society, which champions urban design and planning and “believes that the physical city -- its light, air, land and open spaces -- and its sensible development are critical to New York's continued economic health and social well-being.” Check it out.

More Rx for Dubya: More Deep Breaths

I am shocked! Simply shocked, I tell you, to learn that
the U.S. may have distorted its report on Iran's nuclear program.

I shouldn't make light....but....eh. At least they didn't send poor Colin Powell out with a Power Point as Exhibit A this time round.

No response yet from DC.....

UPDATE: I'm a bad blogger and posted after reading the BBC report but not reading the U.S. report or the IAEA's reply. Let me start over.....

I am shocked, simply shocked, to learn that the U.S. DID distort its report on Iran's nuclear program. Here's the IAEA reply to the U.S. Report. Read it - it's short, and quite informative.

Do-Gooders

The cynic in me says, "Eh, right, next comes the corporate logo!" But the cule in me says, "I'm so down with Barca's new UNICEF logo!".






Plus, discovery: it's not the action photos that make coach Frank a hottie. It's the suits!

Tee Hee

From the j-school's blog, I wish I had half the attitude and half the aplomb this child sports.

Rx for Dubya: Deep Breaths

Fareed Zakaria is so f&#%ing smart, not to mention
reasonable, especially on Iran.


3 words: Secretary of State. It’s not a new idea, but Senator Obama? Senator Clinton? Are you listening?

Links are working now.

[TK: Da Bears]

stay tuned....by special request from nightgrapefuit

SRK

I can't get away from Shahrukh Khan because he's all over my nabe: most recently he's appeared on a billboard for some shi-shi brand of watch, decked out in black leather, slicked back hair, and familiar brooding pout. He's crouching, I presume to make himself slightly more accessible to the mortals he looks down upon. The ad asks: what are you made of?

Shahrukh Khan is made of about 100% charisma, but my thing for him started as distaste. Not only am I too old for and was never really prone to worshipping superstars (til futbol, that is), but I used to get intermittently and somewhat unwillingly dragged to Bollywood films. These were almost always too long, too musical, and too melodramatic for me to really enjoy. And for melodrama, Shahrukh seemed to me the worst. It's as if he studied all the subtle facial gestures of classical Indian dance forms and interpreted each as impishly, even vulgarly, as possible. Too far away and over the top for me. So relegated to a regular diet of Bollywood, I took a little solace in the more elegant, lowkey, and mature Amitabh Bachan. Classically handsome, understated - Amitabh (who was just in town, kind of) was the opposite of Shahrukh's histrionic prettyboy.

I don't remember when this changed - maybe the black combat pullover worn in Mian Hoon Na did it, or maybe the dancing in the streets of Flushing, from Kal Ho Naa Ho. Whenever. I cringe to admit it, but at some point, all the invisible, cumulative power of SRK finally got to me.

That I would like to think I'm too grown-up and above getting all distracted by some supposed hottie superstar on celluloid makes me all the more appalled when I find myself pretending not to be looking at all the SRK posters in all the video shops down the street. And this recent Guardian interview makes him all the more appealing. Not many other megastars would, in contrast to complaining about sacrificing their privacy or ability to travel in peace, admit to loving that they need 6 bodyguards everywhere they go (but only 2 in most parts of the UK and US), and that they live for the adulation and attention of their one billion fans. Also, evidence of: smarts (Econ degree!), progressive-ness (he's Muslim, married to a Hindu), and generous (contributes a great deal of the ridiculous amounts of money he makes to charitable causes)!

SRK claims there are tons of better-looking Bollywood actors than him. But it's not true: take an already ridiculously handsome or beautiful person, add that much of the invisible, omnipotent ingredient that is charisma, and you've got what gods are made of.

Obit

Everyone's probably heard by now, but Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin was killed yesterday by a (usually docile) stingray while shooting a documentary.

When I had cable, his show was don't miss TV. Sure, he seemed to get too close too easily to really dangerous animals a lot of the time, but I loved his dorky and infinite sense of wonder and awe in the face of all those crocs, deadly snakes, and other creatures as only a former wanna-be zoologist, or maybe a child, could.

Proving that there's an obit ready to go for anyone who is anyone, the Beebs' Irwin obit is here, but doesn't mention how he died.

UPDATE: Here's a much better obit/tribute to the man, and it's from one of my least favorite news sources, The New York Times.

More on Prior (Self-) Restraint

About the NYT blocking Brit web access to that terror suspect story yesterday, Poynter's oneliner from Chris Floyd put it better than I did, in less space.

British Due Process v. The American First Amendment

I'm feeling very First Amendment Fundamentalist tonight. Hence, a rant.

Should I not have been surprised to learn, while perusing Foreign Policy's blog, that The New York Times has blocked British users from accessing a story that details evidence against those being prosecuted for the airline bomb plots that resulted in this most recent wave of heightened airport security?

I'm not familiar enough with Brit press law and whatever their equivalent of federal law is, so I could be missing something. But blocking access to information that a few enterprising reporters - or enterprising others - are able to gather just never seems like a good idea to me. While I understand that the Times' explanation basically says the paper is covering its legal arse, FP hints at why it is probably not such a good idea for this sort of thing to be enforced:

"The Internet frequently collides with Britain's phenomenally restrictive press laws. In 1997, Jack Straw's son was busted selling cannabis to an undercover reporter. But because he was a minor, his name could not be revealed in British papers. It was, however, all over the Internet and the London gossip scene."

Yup.....gossip and rumor are likely to fly far too freely in the absence of substantiated facts. And while part of the intent of the Brit restrictions might be to limit prejudice against the defendants, seems to me that rumor is far more likely to taint opinion than reporting that is based in fact.

Since the Times is an American paper, I don't understand how it might be subject to British press law; and I can't ever imagine the Times of the NYT v. Sullivan or the Pentagon Papers cases subjecting itself to what to me amounts to a form of prior restraint. Or, in this case, prior self-restraint.

Barcelonista

Sick cats and vet bills preclude crosscountry travel, so I hadn't yet realized that my vacation, scheduled to start last Sunday, actually started the previous Saturday evening. And it started not in Seattle but New Jersey - a bad sign had I been anywhere but Giants Stadium.

I'd been drawn into Barca unwillingly by Franklin Foer's praise, and no sooner had my newly adopted team won the Champions League than a friend, a regular Virgil of futbol, pointed out they'd be here for this friendly in August against the Red Bulls.

It wasn't Camp Nou, but in our case that was another good thing, because we'd never get 6th row seats there like we had here. I hadn't realized how close the 6th row goalside really is - it's *right there*, and I see could all Puyol's messy locks bouncing up and down as a trainer led him through pre-game warmups (later I figured out he was injured, and as captain, and a Catalan local, he's a crowd favorite, and couldn't not make a showing). Gio looks just as much a little kid in real life as he does on bigscreen bar TV, possessed of the unselfconscious sangfroid of a 10-year-old. Except, that is, when his own team's goalie yelled at him for invading his territory, and Gio tried to pretend he wasn't bothered (as when you didn't want to admit your parents were rightly admonishing you for torturing the neighbor's cat). I finally realized that my soft spot for Gio is not actually a la the hottie kind of soft spot, but because he actually reminds me of a friend's nephew, who is (objectively) the sweetest and most darling 10-year-old ever. Unlike Deco, Gio doesn't sport any haught in his attitude, hence he comes off more 10-year-old than worldly futbol player with athletic charisma to burn.

That said, Deco's slightly haughty athletic charisma suits him well, and Marquez is in the same category. Giuly I just like because it's fun to say his name over and over in my faux French accent, and because he's more than solid. Favored star child Ronaldinho would normally bore me as the overdog, except he smiles too much and has too much fun the whole time - he's all joy, plus all talent. (Towards game's end, when it was time to vote for the player of the game, his name showed up on the board as Ronlahdo de Assisi....eventually fixed). Eto'o - love his compact efficiency, even if he didn't have the greatest of nights. And, while Messi is great fun to watch with his longhair wonderboy partner on the pitch, I was a little annoyed with the ungraciousness of the large Argentinian contingent in the crowd who more or less "Messi-ed" Eto'o off the field. I know that in reality this was coach Frank Rykaard's decision, but Eto'o put up an excellent effort and just ended up having a bit of a crappy night.

I never got a good enough look at Rykaard to see if looks in life, as he does in still photos, a bit shaggy and not very attractive, or looks as dashingly handsome as he does in moving pictures. But in any instance, his exuberance when his team performs beautifully is arresting. When there's any decent reason to explode into a smile, Rykaard easily throws off the serious look that other coaches often envelope themselves in. Better yet, he transforms into Brother of Gio, as he did during what I think was Barca's 2nd and winning goal in the Champions' League game: running 'round with arms out, like a kid who's imagination and ecstasy (natural, not synthetic) transformed him into a airplane on a runway, about to take off. Contrast this with the tight, controlled downward pumping fist and dour face of Arsenal's head coach (I'm not a real futbol fan, so I don't know the guy's name) and it's easy to prefer Rykaard. I also love the noncomittal, everything is everything, zen attitiude about his team that comes across in the few interviews I've read. All that relaxed control equates to something close to mastery.

The evening's 4-1 victory was made all the sweeter by the happy accident of having found the Nevada Smith's Barcelona contingent right above us, next level up, keeping the spirit. Not that more spirit was needed in the sold out crowd that seemed to be about 95% Barca supporters, home turf for the Red Bulls notwithstanding. And when finally we made our way out ensconced between cadres of Brazilian and Argentinian fans trying to out-do each other in post-game chants the bubbling panic in my gut told me that no matter how much fun it might be to squeeze into popular bar matches between sweaty futbol boys, I probably do not have what it takes to get through a match outside the U.S. (So funny that Ronaldihno and Messi compliment one another so well on the field, but their respective national fans haven't found the way to translate that cooperation to their fandoms.) We made it out to the outrageous bus line, and got lucky to find a friend of futbol's virgil to let us cut the line. Hours later back at the Port Authority, I stumbled my way to the E train back to Queens, futbol-star-crossed and half asleep, surrounded (judging from all the jerseys) by lots of other Barca fans.

Also, I make no apologies for naive or ignorant omissions or misstatements above. I'm new at this, and gaffes are permitted and necessary.

Now, which way to Camp Nou?

Detour

I was about to post my big list of Things I'm Going To Do In Seattle, where I was supposed to spend two weeks. However, due to circumstances beyond my control, it looks like I'll be spending my summer vacation right here in NYC.

I'm still adjusting, but it's not a bad place to spend a vacation. Perhaps I will pretend to be a tourist and at last check out the view from the top of the Empire State Building.

Namesake & First Amendment Fundamentalist

Lenny Bruce was found dead 30 years ago last week. I suppose I named the cat after this guy because I could then pretend that the spirit of Lenny Bruce was always near. Not the overdosing, lawsuit-obsessive, betrayer-of-friends part of him, but the part of him that would keep up his routine city after city, knowing he was more likely than not to be hauled away to jail again and again, just for using the f-word. I'm not sure he's a First Amendment martyr, as some would cast him, but he was definitely a First Amendment Fundmentalist (I'm so making the t-shirt), the only kind of fundamentalist I can appreciate.



If I attribute this photo to Getty Images via the BBC, does that make it okay to use here? I hope so.

In the future: fewer photos of people, especially icons.

Speculation & Succession

Oh, the flurry of speculation about whether or not Fidel Castro is dead now that Cuba has announced the handing over of temporary power to his brother Raul! And then there's the flurry of speculation about how Cuba will change with Fidel out of power or dead. Will the Miami exiles return en masse and reclaim their posh homes and sugar cane plantations? Will capitalism overnight quash decades of the red menace that festered in the backyard of the U.S.?

I don't think Castro is dead, and while I'm pretty sure there's lots of talk in Havana today about the (temporary or not?) hand-off, I also don't think it's the shocker for Cubans there that the U.S. government would like it to be. During rallies on Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion the crowd for years has alternated between chants of "Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!" with "Raul! Raul! Raul!"...that's some seriously strategic succession planning.

Addiction or Compulsion?

On Monday I walked into the campus bookstore for file folders and I walked out with file folders and 2 new books:

The Journalist and The Murderer by Janet Malcolm & Public Editor #1, by Daniel Okrent

I don't need any more books.My stack of Books To Read was 41 books high Monday morning. Now there are 43. I've read only 3 books since April. Plus months of barely touched New Yorkers, forsaken for the Paris Review, which I've half-read both issues, but then, that's only quarterly so you see I have a problem. I started in on a collection of Orwell essays on Monday and am still not done with the first.

Some of my lack of reading time can be attributed to a very dense summer session course, the reading for which was the equivalent of at least a few volumes.

But I'm about to start work on my masters project again and I'm not sure how I'll be able to get to any of these books.

Just picking out a few for my impending vacation seems daunting.

I avoid bookstores for this reason. Libraries are also dangerous places, but on my list of things to do while I am in Seattle is to Be In the New Central Library At Least Once Every Day. That's the "Living Room" of the library pictured above. I'm in love with Koolhaas' building, and perhaps I will take many books and curl up in one of the big nerf chairs and read lots and lots.

The Longest To Do List Ever

In lieu of harassing my friends by sending them “we have to eat here” “and here” “and here” e-mails and then forgetting or being overwhelmed by all the great options we have when it’s time to chart new dining out territory - kind of how I used to walk into video rental places pre-Netflix - I’m dedicating this post as the To Do List: Places I Must Eat in NYC Before I Die.

Here's something I came across via gothamist today. There are so many reasons to be in love with this city, and a 24-hour Belarussian deli is one of them:

Belarus II, 495-497 Neptune Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-373-5595

New Food To Dos will appear (probably very) regularly in the comments here - feel free to share recommendations.

And if you wanna get serious about it, check this out.

This Arendtian Thing

When co-conspirator nightgrapefruit talked about being a bit bored with her blog recently - "it's not really *about* anything" - and pursuing a trash blog, I panicked. I'm down with the trash blog - I'm angling for the sr. trash reporter position - but what I like about the slight random-ness of the current incarnation of nightgrapefruit is that when she's far away, or when weeks in the busy city go by without real time meetings, I can still visit and maybe see what's up, where she's been, or what she's been thinking about. I'm not a big fan of the more exhibitionist forms of personal blogs - I have this Arendtian thing about what belongs in public and what belongs in private....but I do like how ng's blog reflects her trajectory without indulging in exhibitionist declarations that amount to TMI.

I started here wanting to take public radio to task specifically and taking the idea of objectivity in journalism to task more generally. Instead WIWITB has been an intermittent mish mash of all kinds of stuff. I like the idea that my own blog could reflect my trajectory without subjecting friends and the idly curious to the more prurient details of my private life. I'm less interested now in critiquing what I love and hate about public radio. I'm far more interested in building a critique of the idea of journalistic objectivity and collecting examples of why and how the field can and should abandon its quest for balance and do its work much much better. For one thing, it's a quixotic quest, and not in a good way. More importantly, to paraphrase what someone once said to Tucker Carlson, it's hurting America.

But, I like that wall between public, and, well, semi-private. And since there is so much media criticism out there that takes on the broad spectrum of journalism, I very much like the idea of focusing on one aspect, especially outside the overly simplified context of right v. left, or Fox v. CNN.

So, bifurcation it is to be. This semi-private place remains Whatever I Want it to Be. So if I feel like pretending that cheese grows underground like potatoes, or want to write about how I am simultaneously repelled and attracted to all the posters of ShahRukh Khan that dot my nabe, or be outraged when the Bush Administration accuses the New York Times (not my favorite paper) of treason, or review my restaurant week experience at The Mercer Kitchen, that's here.

Personal Equations will be over at:

http://personalequations.blogspot.com

and will be up and running shortly. And since it is important to have a grand ambition - nothing half-assed about it this time around - it will take on the mission of Exploding the Myth of Objectivity in Journalism. Bookmark, visit often, and comment.

Nonaligned News Service Launches

From Al Jazeera -

"Developing countries have introduced an internet-based news service intended to provide an alternative to the Western media that they say is biased."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0689B772-774D-4C0B-A223-A3A9FE70393D.htm

Rx, in Memoriam

"Listen: You don’t feel well, so you go to see the psychiatrist. And the doctor listens to your story. And, if he’s a good doctor, he’s listening for the parts of the story that are making you feel sick. His job is then to help you tell a new story about yourself, especially one that will make you well. Newspapers are the same way. Journalists are telling each other stories about themselves that are making them sick. So the remedy is to tell a new story about journalism that will help make journalism healthy again."

Roy Peter Clark posted this and many other snapshot quotes and stories that he heard from James Carey over the years. Carey, among many other things, was a preminent communications scholar and professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and passed away May 23rd. RPC's tribute is here:

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=101795

Carey was a charming, eloquent, and thoughtful little old man with bright twinkly blue eyes. I sat rapt in the front row of the last Critical Issues course he taught at Columbia in the Fall of 2004. I should have taken the evening course with another prof, made convenient for part-time students, but it was easy enough for me to take long Friday lunch hours to sit in with the full-timers. I made a point of sitting front row right, the better to watch and wait for Carey to take his turn with co-teacher, Steve Isaacs. Because while Isaacs could hold the room alternating between soliliquy and bullying commentary out of us, Carey's spare and wise words were the punctuation that made meaning out of Isaac's passion.

A Beautiful Fairy Tale

OR - A Random Off-Topic Theory


I'm pretty sure that cheese grows underground, like potatoes, fertilized by olive oil.


Right now I'm particularly obsessed with the variety of ways we have to savor food. Underground cheese was a theory I developed in a very quotidian e-mail exchange with a co-worker about our favorite foods. She suggested that this theory sounded like a beautiful fairy tale. Doesn't it?

They throw up their hands, then wring them.

Four or five years ago the New York Press was one of the better weekly reads in the city. The old writing corps - the ones who almost all had a bit of an edge with little pretension, and whose pieces I mostly wanted to read beyond the first graf no matter what their political persuasion or subject matter- they've been gone for a while. And Steve Weinstein provided me with yet another reason not to pick up the The New York Press on a regular basis. Factchecking isn't an important part of the Press' editorial process:

http://www.nypress.com/19/11/pagetwo/conterfeit1.cfm

It's SW commenting on the Nick Sylvester brouhaha at the Village Voice (a weekly that, with a couple of exceptions, I'm sorry, has mostly bored me beyond tears forever despite its storied history). When Weinstein says that editors can't be held responsible when their reporters fake the news, I've got to ask, what is the point?

I had to laugh especially loud when he bemoaned the Press' inability to hire fact-checkers - because they can't afford them. Ummmm - ain't getting the facts right kind of a basic principal of the practice? If your readers can't trust you to make a reasonable effort at accuracy beyond trusting your reporters, why should they read your paper at all when they can visit the fiction section of B&N? Since Jayson Blair, lots of publications have come up with ways of tracking their reporter's work, for example, with random deep fact checking missions. The Press is a WEEKLY even. It's not like they've got a phalanx of ambitious cub reporters in the city room clamoring for A1 and shoving supposed scoops in Weinstein's face at 2 am every morning, or whatever time of day those types clamor in the metro editor's face. And Weinstein is a BOSS, right? That means oversight rests with him, and he takes responsibility - or should - when something goes wrong.

This reminds me of the Times' internal report on the Blair fiasco. You read more, it seems, about how embarassing it was for the paper than what a betrayal to its readers it was that all those editors allowed Blair to continue writing. I don't think it's idealistic or unrealistic to expect level A pros to step back and just say they're responsible, and figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Lewis Lapham wrote an an essay in the July 1981 issue of Harpers called Gilding the News, about the Janet Cooke incident at the Washington Post. Cooke won a Pulitzer for a story about herion-addicted kids. After the prize, we learned that the lead character in the peice, Jimmy, was a composite of several characters, and that Cooke lied on her resume. Gilding The News still holds up today and it's still a better piece about what's wrong with journalism than any other commentary I've read since Blair, Glass, or Sylvester. I'll dig around to see if it is online.

It's an interesting book, but I'm a slow reader

Three quarters through the book and I'm still not sure what Foer is up to. I'm not sure how one makes a case for globalization by demonstrating how global capitalism has kind of fucked, or at least not really fixed, football.

The top Italian clubs throw the umpires. The Ukranians import Nigerian players, who are then treated poorly and whose playing style is unappreciated and stifled. The Serbs worship a war criminal who runs their key club, and he's eventually assassinated. The Brazilian football barons of yesterday co-opt Pele until he is bankrupt, who remakes himself only to make new financial mistakes with the barons of today. If this is how great globalization is for football, I'm becoming convinced that Foer must be making the case against. Or else he's making the case that it's just such a great sport that no amount of whack corruption can ever hinder its popularity.

More Sheltered

But not from Europeans, conspiracy theory, police intervention, or death threats... A story in tomorrow's Guardian about a Pittsburgh area school board that dropped the International Baccalaureate (IB) for being too foreign:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1730530,00.html

(I'm using Safari and last time I checked I can't link any other way. I'm too lazy to see if that has changed).

It's just one more thing Republicans seem to be disagreeing about lately. From the article:

"The irony for Upper St Clair is that the Republican district board members who have banned the IB are going against the views of the president. Despite his disdain for the UN, the Kyoto protocol, the International Criminal Court and many other international institutions, Bush specifically called, in this year's state of the union address in January, for expansion of the IB programme.

Despite the cost of the Iraq war and America's ballooning deficit, which is robbing social, health and educational programmes of funding, he announced an extra $380m to boost IB initiatives and a homegrown alternative called Advanced Placement."

A similar recent effort in Fairfax , VA failed. Maybe the Virginia contingent didn't call their opponents Marxists enough times as did the Upper St. Clair anti-IB camp.

To be fair, the guy who received death threats was in the anti-IB camp.

And I just noticed...BBC uses the term "The American President" - at least in its radio programs. The Guardian does not. Hmm. I guess they haven't got the the AP style guide, eh? Anyway, I wonder what the rational is at the BBC v the Guardian. I have to say, I like the British press more and more the American press less and less. The brits still have a healthy adversarial tone to their reporting and their commentary that is more and more rare here.

Sheltered

That's me.

The week before last I was near Sarasota on a visit to family. I'll skip much of the whining I've done to friends and just relate two things.

I took a few runs through the subdivision and - creepy - simply sensed that if i didn't say hello to everyone i came across, I stood a good chance of being reported by the Neighborhood Watch. And because I wanted to run more than I didn't want to greet strangers, I said hello to all of them. Running in Central Park, I love being around all those thousands of other people but what I love just as much is that I'm not obligated to be fake nice to a single one of 'em. Also, while my nabe does not have Neighborhood Watch signs and I'm sure there's no group here, I've come home at 4 a.m. to plenty of civilians also coming in. I feel much safer back here. Perhaps for southerners its not about fake nice, but for me, it was.


Did i mention the giant confederate flag flying at one of the houses at the end of one of the cul de sacs in the next subdivision over? I just don't understand. It didn't comfort me that there was an equally giant American flag flying above it. I just don't know what to make of it, and I didn't have to guts to keep running right up to the middle-aged man sitting out on the well-manicured lawn and ask about it all. I turned right around before i got to end of the cul de sac, and kept running.

Typical liberal reaction.


Less seriously, and not Florida specific, but it was one of the first things that I heard off the plane and it still makes me laugh:

Overheard at the airport:

Grandmother (yanking her little grandson out of the path of the oncoming car at the terminals' curb): Do you WANT to get hit by a car? Is that what you want?

Grandson: ...yeeeeees?


Many a time in the city I've wanted to ask the grandmother's question to my fellow nyc pedestrians.

Football, and All Kinds of Enterprise

I have made some headway into How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer, my first leisure reading since I took the term off school. It was sitting at the top of my very tall pile of books To Read since sometime last Fall.

Foer undermines his own premise, I think, when he says that dislocation and economic conditions can only do so much to explain the more virulent forms of soccer hooliganism (and I do hope he is going to get past the hooliganism parts). So, he discards the arguments a lot of the key critics of globalization (in its institutionalized form; I’ll make a distinction about this later) have made (so we expect he's going to end up as an apoligist for globalization and I'm pretty sure that's what he's after). But in the very next graf, he says the football hooligans in Yugoslavia took more cues from African American gangster rap than their material condition, ignoring that gangster rap very much developed, if not exclusively certainly in large part, as a response to dislocation and economic deprivation. He also seriously misuses what Hannah Arendt meant when she described the banality of evil, but I promise to go off on that later.

The book reads like sophisticated historical Cliff Notes for ignorant Americans who don’t want to feel as if we’re being ignorant – it’s an easy read without being a dumb read. I’m learning stuff and he’s a very good writer to boot.

Finally, the book is mistitled. The book is much more about how geopolitics explains the popularity of soccer and how vociferous many of its clubs’ fans are. It should be called How International Politics Explain Soccer. At least so far. I am only one third in.

So institutional globalization vs. De facto globalization. De facto globalization is my own little conception – it’s just that aspect of the human condition in which societies are mixing, trading, and colliding. Certain trends and ideas ebb, others recede. It is inevitable for political geography and economic geography to heave and groan as we shift ourselves around forever and ever. People both prosper and founder under it, but there is nothing inherent in de facto globalization that undermines the human enterprise.

Institutional globalization, on the other hand, is problematic, because with NAFTA and FTAA and their global equivalents there’s a pretty insidious assumption that markets and the right to create and reap profit trump democratic institutions and their rules. And that’s important. Markets and democracy need at the very least to be balanced, and if I had my way, the democratic enterprise would always be given the edge over economic enterprise. The problem with institutional globalization is that the profit motive is given institutionalized favor over self-determination. That’s bad.

one way to work with personal equations

I'm looking for the longer reference, but as I've been reminded a few times by co-conspirator nightgrapefruit, i've been away too long.

David Nord, who has done a lot of writing about how citizens here in the U.S. engage with the press, has suggested one way print journalism could work to counter both pseudo-objectivity and the tendency most of us have to read only stuff we already agree with.

As most ideas approaching or inhabiting brilliance tend to be, it's a pretty simple idea.

Place opinion pieces, commentary, letters to the editor, and news pieces about a given topic - from various writers of various positions - all on the same page or pages in the paper. It's convenient for your reader- now she can find multiple related bits about Iran or post-Katrina events or how the Bush administration is hounding Goddard Institute head James Hansen on the same page. And it challenges your reader - now she has to read multiple points of view (at least in the form of scanning headlines and ledes). And because op-ed bits are included, it also has the paper setting an example of how to have - gasp - a civil, articulate debate in a public forum.