DEMINT: The president has downplayed the threat of terror since he took office, and he waited eight months to even nominate Mr. Southers for this position. And then he wanted him approved in secret with no debate and no recorded vote in the Senate.
And this is all in the context of the president promising the unions that he will submit our airport security to collective bargaining with union bosses.
Complete Fox interview here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581499,00.html
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
In the aftermath of 9/11, it was recognized that airline safety — and by extension, the safety of American civilians — was not being well-served by the private security services employed exclusively by airlines and airports in the years leading up to 9/11. As cut-throat as the third-party contractors who notoriously locked their employees in Walmart overnight, private security was maybe one step more dignified than outsourced janitorial services, just not as well paid.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
[Launch the video below for your musical accompaniment to this post]
Joseph Turner, Westminster Abbey interior
What? You wanted Christmas without a little agita? You must have mistaken me for somebody else.
Three little Jewish choir boys. A Lutheran from Berlin named Mendelssohn; a Catholic from Vienna named Mahler; an Episcopalian from New York named Fleisig. Mendelssohn, who among other perhaps more important gifts of timeless sacred Christian music, is responsible for the seasonal earworm known as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Mahler, whose “Resurrection” and Eighth Symphonies manifest musically the tensions in his own life between the sacred and profane, the earthly and the ethereal, the flesh and the spirit; between mud and sky; who for all the world seemed to have renounced his disengaged Jewish identity in favor of Catholicism out of purely career motives, but who nevertheless discovered in this very act of renunciation a creative dialectic that drove his greatest works.
And me who, rescued, so to speak, at the age of nine, from the banalities of a lower-middle class upbringing in New York City’s most perpetually striving borough of Queens, to sing with what The New Yorker calls “the best Anglican choir in the country,” a commitment that involved leaving home and living instead at the church’s choir school, a world enwombed by a church in the first throes of the identity crisis that today threatens to tear it asunder. St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in 1968 was in many ways the same place it is today: a cathedral in all but name, the crowning accomplishment of the neo-gothic architect Ralph Adams Cram, the wealthiest Episcopal parish in the United States. It is a place, as the New York Times describes it, of:
But in other ways, the church in 1968 was in the midst of profound institutional crisis and change. The studied liberalism that has become synonymous with mainstream Protestant churches — including, now, St. Thomas itself — was little in evidence then, especially in contrast to the parish’s own diocesan cathedral, its notoriously liberal and social activist uptown brother, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. At St. Thomas in 1968, despite a constantly declining congregration, Jeans, facial hair and the poor, generally, were greatly discouraged. Negroes were tolerated up to the point that they manifested a more or less de rigeur middle class church-lady affect (or were the mothers or aunts of fellow choristers). St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue was such a well-known symbol of what remained of America’s East Coast WASP establishment, that as the late 60s progressed, evacuating under bomb threat during a service or concert became almost routine. (Today, ironically, African-American and gay congregants, warmly received now, are the new backbone and lifeblood of the parish.)
And in this milieu, in this place, a child, a curious little Jewish New Yorker from the wrong side of the Queensborough Bridge who, for four performances and six rehearsals a week, literally sang for his supper: I, made my spiritual and physical home. And no time of the year was more uplifting, yet fraught with hard work and spiritual and intellectual misgivings, than Christmas. The most daunting service and concert schedule, several performances a day sometimes, with little time for presents or even sleep. Shot through with my own religious conflicts, and a burgeoning awareness — and a longing to join in, of course — of the social disruptions racing around the nearby streets; Moondog and Janish Joplin talking on the corner of 6th Avenue; Sly Stone staying at the Warwick hotel, limousine liberalism ascendant, a mad dash to man some invisible barricade. Still, joyous too, with the hope of family and a week’s vacation to come at the end.
Quite divorced from any contemplation of the Christ child as either sacred object or historical artifact, to me the meaning not just of Christmas, but of spirit, faith, mystery — of very life itself — was then and still is today most magnificently expressed in the sacred choral music in the German and English traditions. The voices of boy choristers are, then, to me, like the voice of g*d herself. And that can come anytime, if I put myself in the place to receive it — a recent winter’s evensong at Westminster Abbey, notably, where a weak white winter sun shone on the famous chiaruscuro floor, and two boy sopranos sang a Mendelssohn duet, the spirit of that most-Jewish-and-yet-not composer once again giving voice to … what, exactly? And without being able to frame it intellectually there wells up in me what I can only describe as a living spirit — what for me stands for the true meaning of Christmas; neither sacred nor profane, but a nativity of both spirit and body without conflict or contour. And it has a purity — in the liturgical analogy, while the Christmas story carries a hint of tragedy, the coming passion of the Christ as the controlling metaphor for the human condition never completely out of sight — it brings, like every birth and rebirth, a hope that is the hope of Christians at Christmas, as it is the hope of the Jews on the New Year, as it is the hope of the world. That off chance that, just this one time, we won’t screw it all up.
And there it is — my wish for all this Christmas season — let’s try together, one more time, to not screw it up. To sing just the right notes. To get through the score. To hit all the high notes. To cheat tragedy and death together, or at least, if we cannot defeat them, to face them (as I said to a dear friend recently) with dignity and integrity.
One last note: this was going to be a post about the question of whether Mendelssohn’s, Mahler’s and my experiences of being, in effect, Jewish musicians in these dominantly Christian cultures was ultimately examples of an invidious and centuries-old processs of conversion and assimilation, opportunities for social mobility, or merely selfishness on the part of a couple of perfidious and ambitious “bad” Jews. I leave that for your contemplation — and perhaps a future post.
Meanwhile, Christmas breakfast is waiting on this tardy blogger, so off we must go.
I’m one of those guys that love shopping. My wife can throw her hands up and declare, “there’s just nothing for me here,” but set me loose in Loehmann’s or Neiman Marcus Last Call and I’ll come back to her within half an hour with a year’s worth of must-have wardrobe pieces.
Radio Shack’s — sorry, that’s “The Shack” to you buster — improbably clever new multi-channel ad campaign.
The Shack is unexpectedly well positioned as a retailer of the less expensive electronics that are flying off the shelves this year — smartphones, PDAs, netbooks, Flips, cheap cameras. Why drag all the way down to the mall for something that only costs $99? Your retrograde Shack store is in some low-rent strip mall near you. And as we all keep our electronic devices just a little longer and longer, they’re also positioned as a reliable source for replacement parts, upgrades and repairs.
So it’s no accident that The Shack has suddenly emerged all over TV, with a very clever series of :15s. And no accident either that they’ve created a YouTube channel with all the executions. (We are hoping they were following Alan’s first rule of emarketing: Even if your Internet ad buy doesn’t cost a lot of money, you still have to bring your A game.) Cisco’s own Flip rebranding don’t hold a candle. From what I can glean from exactly ten seconds of Googling, The Shack’s new (as of April 2009) agency of record is Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners. While still not a Susan Boyle-level viral marketing home run, this is first-rate work, dudes.
Lance What's-His-Name Previews the Team Radio Shack Jersey
And don’t forget, either, that The Shack is now the inheritor — as name sponsor — of the US Postal Service/Discovery Channel cycling team that will feature at least 2 of the favorites for the 2010 Tour de France and other major cycling races — Lance What’s-His-Name and Levi Leipheimer. It will be interesting if they can leverage the ongoing Lance saga — especially if Lance outperforms athletically in the coming season — in ways that the USPS and Discovery Channel never did, and continue to revive a brand that until very recently was deeply mired in the past. Or worse, subject to the cruelest form of slacker ridicule.
Since she’s in the photo business, “Oh Snap,” below, is my wife’s favorite Shack execution:
Posted in Cycling, The American Experience
One for the good guys!
Despicable Mandeville Canyon/ER doctor road rager (see our earlier coverage here) who purposefully rode down two cyclists earlier this year was found guilty on all counts yesterday in a California courtroom.
Full coverage in Velonation is here. Dr. Christopher Thompson is being held without bail, and faces up to 10 years in jail. Cyclist Ron Peterson, who still has no sensation on his nose and other parts of his face which were severed in the incident, is quoted as saying he’s “happy justice has been served,” and hopes the case will highlight “how vulnerable cyclists are out there.” For these quotes, and an excellent overview of this whole case, see last night’s NPR All Things Considered coverage here.
For too long, the notion that one could, with complete legal impunity, cause all kinds of murder and mayhem behind the wheel of a car, then simply call it an “accident,” has left cyclists and pedestrians vulnerable and legally powerless. Bus ran over your head? Oops, sorry, it was just an accident!
This case will hopefully set a national precedent, that anger behind the wheel does not translate into a license to kill. One can only hope courts in New York State are listening.
Posted in Cycling, The American Experience
O’REILLY: …Let me be very bold and fresh again. Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world [President of the United States]?
PALIN: I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the kind of a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fact resume that’s based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I’m not saying that has to be me.
Complete interview here.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, today promised to wage “holy war” against health care reform, and urged Americans to “rebel” against the U.S. Congress if health care reform passes the Senate.
This is what pases for the mainstream Republican “alternative” to the Democratic health care legislation?
Senator Hatch should take heart, though, that if his plans for holy war and rebellion do materialize, he is likely to be tried in an American court, and won’t be subject to special rendition or indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
It wasn’t about “radical Islam.” It was about Palestine.
Americans have often pondered how we would respond if we were subjected to the types of low-grade terrorist attacks Israelis face on a daily basis. When we wake up from the 24-hour news cycle brain-numbing that always takes place in the immediate aftermath of this type of incident, we will begin to have an answer.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience, Uncategorized
Inspirations and Aspirations 