Alma Mater Hoops Update

Good weekend so far for the alma mater men's hoop teams.

Yesterday Ohio smacked Georgetown around as if their seeds were reversed, running away with a 97-83 victory. Georgetown only managed to come as close as 7 at about the five-minute mark of the second, but OU responded with a three and controlled the game the whole time. I don't want to count chickens, but there is a better-than-outside chance that OU could end up facing Ohio State, which might well qualify as the biggest sporting event in OU history. The Bobcats beat Kentucky in the tournament in 1964, but given that Ohio State is the big in-state bully, and given how much bigger the NCAA's are now, a Sweet Sixteen matchup with the Buckeyes would surpass anything I know about in Athens.

Closer to my heart, Williams defeated Guilford today in the DIII national semis 97-88 in a game that was a nailbiter until the end. Williams was actually down eight at the half but shot the lights out in the second half. Williams won the national championship in 2003 and has gone to one other championship game. The Ephs will face the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point tomorrow.

Remaking Memory or Getting it Right

At the Michigan War Studies Review Tom Bruscino has a great article, "Remaking Memory or Getting It Right? Saving Private Ryan and the World War II Generation." I am teaching a US history through film class for our Maymester this year that will cover the US since 1945 but I may well start with Saving Private Ryan (and Tom's essay) before moving on to The Best Years of Our Lives (one of my favorite movies of all time) and the twin pillars of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement that so defined American life in the generation and more after World War II.

I suspect that Tom likes Saving Private Ryan more than I do, but I think he does a really good job of placing the movie within the larger filmography of which it is a part and in putting forward a useful argument about the ways in which memory and history interact and how we think of World War II as a result.

Rahabilitating Grant

I hope you've all seen Sean Wilentz's New York Times op-ed piece in which he debunks the myth that Ulysses S. Grant was a bad president. A representative paragraph:

In reality, what fueled the personal defamation of Grant was contempt for his Reconstruction policies, which supposedly sacrificed a prostrate South, as one critic put it, “on the altar of Radicalism.” That he accomplished as much for freed slaves as he did within the constitutional limits of the presidency was remarkable. Without question, his was the most impressive record on civil rights and equality of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Revisiting the Greatest Idea Ever

As long as I am discussing the NCAA tournament, I may as well throw out one of the ideas that I have long put forward. I may as well pull it out again as I watch the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff defeat Winthrop in this year's "play-in game" to continue their improbable run.

Every year it seems the same debate plays out when addressing the bubble teams and the field of 65. It is a field of 65 because in its infinite wisdom the NCAA decided to make the two weakest teams go to Dayton and hold that "play-in game." But rather than subject these teams to that insult, why not take the last four at-large slots and have four play-in games, one for each region, pitting the last four teams from major conferences against the last four teams from mid-majors. It would make for a hell of a Tuesday, would help settle the mid-majors versus majors debate, and would allow every conference tournament winner a guaranteed slot. Reserve the 13 slot for the winners of these games, as customarily the 13 seeds are among the last into the field.

You're welcome.

Alma Mater Hoops Watch

We are about to embark on one of the great weekends in all of sports with the tipoff of the NCAA tournament. Each year my loyalties fluctuate. Unlike in professional sports, where my loyalties are firmly based in Boston, my college sports loyalties fluctuate. I grew up in a state without any real Division I presence in football or basketball (though UNH hockey is a perennial contender, albeit one that has yet to scale the top of the NCAA mountain). By default I have always been a Boston College fan as a result.

Going to college did not make a lot of difference on this front. I bleed purple and gold for Williams athletics, but Williams is a Division III athletic program, and while we have the greatest athletic program in all of DIII, it is simply not the same as the spectacle of major-level DI sports. I pursued my MA work at UNC-Charlotte (which now goes simply by "Charlotte" for athletic branding purposes). Charlotte has a respectable basketball program, once made a Final Four, and had a run in the period from the mid 90s to the middle of the decade just past when an NCAA run was the norm. Nonetheless, Charlotte straddles that line between major and midmajor-level program. For my PhD I attended Ohio University in the Mid-America Conference, for which the term "mid-major" was pretty much coined.

Otherwise my loyalties come and go. I have been a fellow at both Virginia and South Carolina, so I have tried with middling levels of success to appropriate those schools. I teach in the UT system and my paycheck (and tenure decision) come from Austin, so I gravitate toward the Horns. Duke was the most prominent and persistent college to recruit me for track out of high school, so I am not only not a Duke hater, I actually like to see them do well. Despite the appeal of being a free agent, it's a lousy way to go through life as a college fan, and I have always said that if I were to get a job at a college with big-time sports I would engage in full immersion and would write a book called "Becoming a Fan" based on that first year of overcompensation.

In any case, as usual, my alma maters are experiencing various levels of involvement with the Madness of March. Williams is ranked second in the country and has made the DIII Final Four, which is played every year in Salem. Williams has been there before, having won once, and has a good shot again this year. The Ephs will take on Guilford College on Friday for the right to play for the national championship. Guilford was the alma mater of one of my (late) college track coaches and is a Quaker school in North Carolina which will come into the national semifinal with a 30-2 record (Williams is 29-1) and that made the national semis last year as well.

Ohio University made an improbable run through the MAC tournament, its only shot at going to the Big Dance. Their prize? A trip to Providence (freakin' sweet!) and a meeting with historical powerhouse and #3 seed Georgetown. OU took a really good Florida team to the wire a few years back, though, and while far from a national power, OU has been to a dozen NCAA tournaments and will hopefully give the Hoyas a game. I'll proudly wear my OU green and am looking forward to the game on Thursday.

The news is not so good in Charlotte. The university inexplicably (to my mind) fired Bobby Lutz, the winningest coach in program history. In a dozen seasons Lutz compiled a 218-158 record. The team had its worst record in a long time last season, but was in a position for an NCAA berth this year until a collapse toward the end of the year and in the first game of the A-10 tournament scuttled any hope to make the field of 65. I have no idea what AD Judy Rose, the university administration, and the trustees want from the basketball program, but if the next dozen years look anything like the dozen just passed, it seems to me that it will be a rousing success and Lutz should have categroically been part of the program going forward. Lutz has been at least arguably the best coach in the history of the program, is a Charlotte alum, is one of the truly good guys in the profession and the community, and had weathered the toughest storm he was likely to face after last season. He had some of his best recruits on campus and had in the past turned down opportunities to move up in order to remain at his alma mater. I will continue to root for Charlotte to do well, but this is a lousy, knee-jerk decision no matter what rationalization comes from the athletic department.

In the meantime: Go Bobcats! And, above all, Go Ephs!!!

Coupe du Monde (Self Indulgence Alert!!!)

What do the following four World Cup games have in common?

Serbia v. Ghana, 13 June, Pretoria

Slovenia v. USA, 18 June, Johannesburg

Nigeria v. Tolerable Korea, 22 June, Durban

Commie Korea v. Ivory Coast, 25 June, Nelspruit

Give up?

Dcat's gonna be at all four of 'em. Laduma!!!!!!!

Nomahhhhh!!!

I don't want to get all Tommy-From-Quincy on everybody, but Nomar Garciaparra's retirement as a Red Sox brought about equal parts wistfulness and happiness when I saw the news. In the years since he left the Sox Nomar dealt with a spate of injuries. He was one of those guys whose career went downhill fast, with one injury leading to another. But in his first few years in the league Nomar was a Hall of Fame quality player, ARod's equal and Jeter's superior in what was the high-water mark for the shortstop position. The best analogy for Nomar's career in my mind is Fred Lynn, another preternaturally talented Californian whose potential was crushed due to injuries and whose departure from the Sox was on less-than-amicable terms. Nomar also served as something of a bridge between my youthful fandom and adulthood, and so the march to middle age continues unabated.

Hungover From Summer

I've now seen more than half of the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture. And two of the movies I have not seen I know in my bones suck. (Avatar and The Blind Side: Hello!) There were not five movies in 2009 that were better than The Hangover or (500) Days of Summer. In fact, I would make the case for those as two of the best movies of 2009, though Up remains my favorite from 2009.

Let's Don't Forget Bill Russell

I'm tired of hearing increasing discussions about whether Kobe has matched Michael for the mythical "best player ever" title. I have an answer to that debate:

Bill Russell.

I win. Mine beats yours. Eleven championships. One as a coach-player. (How's Micheal's career in management worked?)

Oh, and in terms of social significance? This becomes a laughable discussion. Plus, I'd take Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or LeBron James over Kobe in any case.

Pavement Front(wards) and Center

The Pavement reunion: Greatest News Ever? Greatest news ever.

Salt Lake City Bound

Am off to Salt Lake City tomorrow for a boys' ski weekend. I have not gone skiing in ages, so here's to not breaking myself. Utah is one of the very few states I've never been to, so I'm happy to break that seal, Mormon-style.

Justice Obama?

Would Barack Obama make a fine Supreme Court justice some day? Absolutely. And he is young enough that following in the footsteps of Williams Howard Taft might happen. But it is just silly to propose, (even as just a thought exercise) as Jeffrey Rosen does here, that Obama should appoint himself to the court.

Northern Ireland's Peace

Well, this is alarming news, especially as there are signs that it may not be a one-off, isolated incident. I began talking about Northern Ireland in my Global Terrorism class today (I always start off with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" from Rattle & Hum in order to have them hear Bono's awesome speech that is all the more powerful because it came on the day of the Enniskillen Bombing in November 1987) and had to try to convey to my students that the Troubles once seemed every bit as intractable as the Israel-Palestine question. The peace has held in Northern Ireland for more than a decade now (and really ought to be seen as the signature foreign policy accomplishment of the Clinton administration) and so presumably is strong enough to weather the occasional flareup. But if the IRA is determined to return to the way of the gun the way of the gun will prevail.

Just Asking

Is it unreasonable of me to expect my coffee to be full when I spend the bulk of a five-dollar bill on it? Because when I ask the barista to top me off they look at me like I've offended them.

Ways Texas Might Ruin America

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Charles Pierce's Blog

While I'm trying to catch up with life after my trip to eastern Pennsylvania (My rule of thumb is that it takes two days for every day I am away to get back to where I was when I left) you should check out Charles Pierce's sports blog at The Boston Globe.

Off to Penn's Woods (Self Indulgence Alert)

I'll be away for the next three days for a trip to southeastern Pennsylvania. Opportunities are afoot.

30 Books in 30 Days

At the National Book Critics Circle's Blog Critical Mass members of the NBCC Board are featuring "30 Books in 30 Days" for the month leading up to the announcement of the NBCC Book Award winners. Each day a new finalist for this year's awards will get the spotlight.

Um, Congratulations?

The far-right-wing British National Party has decided to abandon its whites-only policy, allowing black and Asian members into the party, albeit largely to skirt anti-discrimination laws. (Assaulting journalists? Apparently still ok.) Of course this raises the question: What black or Asian person in their right mind would consider joining the BNP?

Burning Scholarship

When I saw this story, about a Columbia University historian who lost a decade's worth of research to student radicals in the 1968 uprisings at that campus I experienced pangs of what can only be called sympathetic pain. For all of the legitimacy of protest in the 1960s, some of the worst and most indulgent excesses of the late years of that decade seriously undermined the legitimate claims.

Commemorating Black History

Scottsboro, Alabama has opened a museum to document the case that made the town infamous. In the words of Garry Morgan, a white man who helped establish The Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center, "We want to end the negative stereotype of Scottsboro, to let the world know we've moved into the 21st century."

Meanwhile today in Louisiana the Eddie G. Robinson Museum will open, honoring not only the legendary Grambling football coach, but also taking an honest look at segregation.

A Tragedy, Not a Case Study

Can't we stipulate that cases such as this one provide especially bad contexts for arguments about either gun control or the tenure system in American universities? Discussing an outlier as if it were a mean ends up just warping the conversation. Let's just recognize the story for what it is: A terrible tragedy perpetrated by a disturbed person.

Mandela's Long Walk

Over at the FPA Africa Blog I commemorate the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, one of the great moments of the 20th century.

Weather is not Climate

People who assert that a current snowstorm refutes long-range climate trends are complete fucking morons. Weather and climate are not the same thing.

Wolfe TKO's Sowell

At TNR's The Book Alan Wolfe has a glorious takedown of Thomas Sowell's new screed, Intellectuals and Society. Here is the opening paragraph:

Let’s get my judgment of Thomas Sowell’s new book out of the way first. There is not a single interesting idea in its more than three-hundred pages. Purporting to deal with the role that intellectuals play in society, it offers no discussion of literature, music, and the arts. While containing copious references to Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, its index lacks references to Lionel Trilling, Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Daniel Bell, Jürgen Habermas, Raymond Aron, Mary McCarthy, Michael Walzer, Amartya Sen, and countless others known to have put an interesting idea or two into circulation. It recycles ancient clichés about the academic world and never questions its author’s conviction that those who share his right-wing views are always right. Jonah Goldberg calls it “an instant classic.” Case closed.

The rest does not disappoint.

I love those who have made their way in American intellectual life who nonetheless make a career out of cracking wise about intellectuals (an issue that Wolfe mines to great effect). And I especially love those who have made their way in intellectual life cracking wise about academics. Very cute. In a self-parodic sort of way.

Update: Russell Jacoby is no kinder to Sowell's quite clearly bad book over at The Chronicle Review.

Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

Yesterday I highlighted Jeff Herf's review of Robert Wistrich's book A Lethal Obsession. Well, Jeff is having a big few weeks. On January 31 he was interviewed by Egypt's Al-Masry Al-Youm about his most recent book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World.

WH: Some Critics 'Serving the Goals of al Qaeda'* - Political Punch

WH: Some Critics 'Serving the Goals of al Qaeda'* - Political Punch

Going to the Dump

I got me a new laptop this weekend while in San Antonio and so need to do some serious housecleaning in the office. Thus it's time to do a links dump of all of the tabs that have accumulated on my perpetually-stretched-to-capacity Firefox window:

You would never know it from the madding crowds of tea partiers and talking heads, but this Congress has been a whole lot more productive than you think.

For all of the insults going Obama's (and Eric Holder's) way for allegedly radically changing how we deal with accused terrorists, it turns out that this administration has pretty clearly followed many of the precedents of its predecessor. So, yeah -- Obama's critics are largely uninformed. Shocking, I know. If anyone has a right to be angry it would be Obama's critics from the left, but they tend to wallow in their own blissful ignorance. All of this simply serves as a reminder that today's conservatives would reject much of what Ronald Reagan represented in reality (as opposed to in their purist caricature of him) but then you knew that already.

At TNR William Galston takes on some of the more sophisticated conservative critiques of Obama (they are out there, believe it or not). In so doing he mounts a nice defense of liberalism, something that should have never needed a defense.

Finally, at TNR's The Book, dcat friend and former mentor Jeffrey Herf reviews Robert Wistrich's A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad.

President of the Other America

I am pleased to report the publication of regular reader and commenter Ed Schmitt's new book, President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty. The University of Massachusetts Press, which has been putting out some really good books of late, just released it. By your copy and grab another for a friend.

Questioning the Book Review

I am often perplexed by some of the decisions of The New York Times Book Review. And I will gladly admit that some of my vexations stem from what probably qualifies as jealousy: Why is that person writing a review and not me? Why is that book being reviewed and not mine?

But take my own solipsism out of it and the questions are fundamentally the same. Why is that person writing a review of X and not (Persons Y, Z, A, B, D) who are clearly more qualified to do so and at least one of whom would surely respond to en email from the Times? Why is this book being reviewed at length and not all of these books that have come out lately?

Two examples speak volumes from Sunday's Book Review:

Why does Kaiama Glover get to review Chinua Achebe's new book, The Education of a British-Protected Child? Glover is an assistant professor of French at Barnard, and from what I can tell, most of her work has been on Haiti. Chinua Achebe is from Nigeria, which was not even a Francophone colony. When Nigerians looked to the metropole (and looked to pull away from it), they looked to London, as the title to the new book of Achebe's essays makes clear. Look, I do not resent Glover taking the assignment. She'd be a fool not to and I would accept an assignment to review an astronomy textbook to get to write about books for the Times. But are there really no, say, tenured professors of African literature out there? Are there no tenured professors of Anglophone literature who would have fit the bill?

Perhaps more vexing, why on earth does Catherine Millet's new book, Jealousy, get two full pages in the Sunday Book Review when it is a quite clear that it is not a very good book. Millet is the author of a controversial memoir about her sexual profligacy. Jealousy is a memoir about her jealousy over her kinda-sorta significant other's dalliances with a handful of other women during a time period when Millet admits to sleeping with hundreds of other men herself. The subject matter, if self indulgent, is not the problem. The problem comes in the fact that the reviewer, Toni Bentley is pretty withering. Bentley does a great job. It is a fun review to read as a result. And again -- given two full pages in a publication of that status I'd happily review the worst crap imaginable and would have a hell of a time doing it. But there are hundreds of authors of good books who would kill for that real estate for their own much better books.

I've always thought that reviews of bad books, except for books that are clearly important (and Millet's does not count, sorry), should go into a sort of dustbin in which the reviews are truncated to the length of those included in the "Fiction/Nonfiction/Poetry Chronicle" that the Book Review runs near weekly, opening up space for books worth reading, and thus worth reading about. In the meantime, editors -- email me. The answer is yes.

Starbury in China

Over at Deadspin Anthony Tao has a great, and lengthy, piece on Stephon Marbury's debut in the Chinese Basketball Association, "The Lone Wolf Goes to China."

The Greensboro 4 at 50

Monday marked the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Greensboro sit-ins. The actions of those four students -- Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond and Joe McNeil -- set in motion a new wave of civil rights activism.

Indeed, when I talk about the Civil Rights Movement I often try to hold two wholly contradictory ideas in my head at once, knowing they cannot both possibly be true. On the one hand, I embrace the idea of the Long Civil Rights Movement. In Freedom's Main Line I trace the story of the fight to desegregate interstate transportation back in considerable depth to the 1940s and recognize movements well before that decade (Plessy v. Ferguson, after all, involved transportation and not education.) In one of my current book projects I am looking at bus boycotts in the US and South Africa in the period between about 1940 and 1960.

On the other hand, there are times when I think that what began with the sit-ins really represents a new stage in civil rights, and that we might be as well served thinking of the period from February 1960 as almost sui generis in its new approach to direct-action protest. In that view, the Long Civil Rights Movement still holds, but that we then begin to think of the movement in terms of phases. This might help both to revive looking at Brown v. Board as a starting point (something that has been passe with the Long Civil Rights Movement's recent sway) for a phase of the movement while still recognizing that Brown really was not the start or beginning of anything when it comes to the movement as a whole.

I think the emphasis on the 1940s in particular has been essential. But I do not think we should let that swallow up the significant shift that the Greensboro 4 helped usher in and that the Freedom Rides helped connect. In the next few years prepare for a lot of 50th anniversary celebrations and commemorations and reflections of the lightning storm of events of the period from 1960 to 1965 or so.

Something Awesome Found Surfing the Web During a Break in an All-Night Writing Binge

This is awesome. Hat tip.

Honey, Can You Take Out the Trash?

There are thousands of writers and intellectuals who would kill to have just one of their opinion pieces appear in The New York Times. And they would confess to another crime they did not commit to have that piece appear in the Sunday "Week in Review" section. Count me in as one of those people.

Which is why it is so incredibly dispiriting to read a piece like this one, by Sandra Tsing Loh, in last week's Sunday Times. The purpose of the column, from what I can tell, is to brag that she makes more than the man in her life; to allow her to concoct an idealized and self-indulgent picture of a romanticized 1950s scene domestic bliss; and in ways that are not clear to tie it all into the difficulties of modern life. This is a column we've all read ten thousand times before. Surely the Times received a hundred potential contributions this week that the editors did not even deign to recognize with a response that were more substantial and more coherent than this flatulent garbage.

Howard Zinn, Not a Good Historian, RIP

Perhaps now is not the time. And so I'll gladly time stamp this for any future date that readers find more appropriate. But with Howard Zinn's passing this week I think we need to keep one salient fact in mind: He just was not a very good historian.

Zinn was an incredibly popular historian whose advocates somehow pretended had been overlooked despite the fact that he wrote one of the all-time best-selling works of history in A People's History of the United States. But popular is not the same as good. Bad books sell all the time while good books languish on shelves and in Amazon's warehouse. This is especially the case with works of history, where the best-selling book on a subject has literally nothing to do with its quality as a work of history.

A People's History is not only not very good, it is quite bad (this 2004 takedown by Michael Kazin in Dissent is a pretty damning indictment). It is thesis-driven history that is selective with its evidence and manages to be condescending and to deny agency to the very people it purports to celebrate (essentially: You've all been duped by corporate interests and the elites). It is cartoonish in its shallowness and lack of complexity.

Zinn was a polemicist. He could be a remarkably good reporter. (His insider's account of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is still useful for historians even if it is not in any meaningful way a work of history.) And he wrote well. But as a historian he fell far short. And he could be an incredibly shoddy thinker. His simplistic leftism (and by any measure I am what would have been called in another time "a man of the left") substituted ideology for historiography and agitprop for scholarship.

Buyer's Disappointment

We have all heard of buyer's remorse. Hell, we've all experienced it. You walk from the store, and the post-purchase euphoria fades quickly and you ask yourself: Did I really need this? Or: Should I have spent that much on this?

But there is something worse. Buyer's disappointment. We all know it. The movie you really looked forward to seeing that sucks. The book everyone is raving about that you cannot get into. The cd that you read about that fails to match the reviews.

We all live with buyer's remorse because it's our own damned fault. But buyer's disappointment? Well, that's someone else's fault. The director, the author, the musician: They disappointed you. Worse, they fooled you, or the hype machine fooled you.

I think I might be a victim of the hype machine. A while back I bought an ep by a South African quarter whose buzz was enormous. Blk Jks are supposed to be everything I like about music: A little bit indie, a little bit rock, a little jazzy. They play to my work by being South African, and to my curiosity by transcending the provincial South African music scene (hell, it seems they surpassed the South African music scene -- I had never seen or even heard of them until the past fall, well after my last trip to South Africa.

So I spent the ten bucks on their ep, Mystery. The ep aspect may be part of the problem. Four songs is not enough to get a feel for a band, especially one with eclectic influences. And to be fair, I did not know what to expect. Would I hear standard South African rock (which more often than not is pretty derivative)? Would there be Kwaito influences? Hip hop? Mbaqanga? I had no idea.

I still am not sure exactly how to describe Blk Jks. But if I had to come up with a sonic parallel, I would say that they sound an awful lot like TV on the Radio, a much hyped band that I like, but whose sonic experimentation can go awry and veer toward the atonal. But it did not grab me, and I continue to feel disappointed, if not in them (they promised me nothing, really) then in myself for not quite feeling gripped, which is always how one wants to feel when taking in new music (or for that matter books or movies).

But I'm going to give Blk Jks another chance. They have a full album that came out last fall, After Robots, and I'm going to hope that a full disc of songs will capture me in a way that Mystery's small handful did not. So, Blk Jks, maybe it was not you, it was me. But if After Robots disappoints? Then I think maybe it will have been you.

Premature Celebration

Ed Kilgore tells those of you anticipating Republican dominance in November's midterm elections to slo yo roll. It's good advice. For one thing, November is a lifetime away in American politics. For another, here is a guess: Republicans clean up if unemployment is near double digits. It is a pretty even race if unemployment drops near 5 or 6%. The calculus really is just about that simple.

Reagan and Modern Conservatism (With Bonus Self Indulgence!)

At TNR William Galston asks a quite reasonable question: what sort of reception would Ronald Reagan's actual policies and actual ideas receive in today's conservative movement? Galston's post gives me the opportunity to remind you of my History News Service op-ed from a couple of months, back, which is finally posted on their website even though it went out to newspapers and websites back in November. I asked many of the same sorts of questions in putting together the piece.

NBCC Book Award Finalists

The National Book Critics Circle (of which I am a member) has announced its book award finalists for 2009. Very few of the books that I nominated managed to make the cut. I'm ok with that in most fields, such as poetry (where I did nominate Louise Gluck) and even in fiction (I simply cannot believe, however, that any of those five books was as good as, never mind better than, Colum McCann's Let the Brave World Spin). But I have a real hard time with some of the nonfiction selections, and particularly with some of the works of history that were ignored over those that were chosen. (Springing to mind immediately is Gordon Woods' Empire of Liberty, or Pat Sullivan's book on the NAACP, or Robert Norrell's Up From History -- and this is without even looking at my shelves and reminding myself of some of the great new books I have read this year.)

Down Goes WaPo!

The New Republic has a lengthy and withering profile on the decline of The Washington Post. Donald Graham, chairman of the board of The Washington Post Company responded with a letter so tepid and so picayune that it only serves to make the TNR profile all the more damning.

A Rule

If you are going to write a review about three books on basketball, as Andrew Ervin did for yesterday's Washington Post, you simply cannot write a sentence such as this one about a book on Ivy League basketball:

Understandably, perhaps, it's not every season that an Ivy League team participates in the hysteria surrounding the annual March Madness tournament, yet the teams share a long and exciting history of extremely competitive basketball.

. . . and then complain about "the terrible writing in The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy."

Read the excerpted sentence. I have no idea what it means. For one thing, what is its subject? And since the regular season Ivy League champion receives an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament every year, the sentence seems factually wrong if it says what I think it is trying to say. I know it's sort of unfair to cherry pick one sentence from a review like this. It's a bit like criticizing someone for grammar or a spelling error or a typo in a blog comment. But when you lead off your discussion of a book by saying it is terribly written, you really cannot afford a shit-storm of a sentence like that in your 800 words.

The Oxford American Loves Books

The Oxford American ("The Southern Magazine of Good Writing") is one of my favorite magazines. Its burgeoning online component is fast coming to match its print content. For example, check out "Books We Love" in which "editors gush about some recent books that knocked our respective socks off."

I can vouch for Colum McCann's Let The Great World Spin. I nominated it for the fiction category for this year's National Book Critics Circle Awards. Despite being set in 1974 it is in many ways our greatest 9/11 novel.

Freedom Riders Preview (Self Indulgence Alert)

Yeah, I'd say this looks pretty awesome:

Given my small part in the documentary, I cannot wait to see the whole thing. If you are so inclined, you can always get a head start by reading this . . .

Me on TV Re: Terrorism (Self Indulgence Alert)

On a couple of occasions in the last few weeks I have been featured in stories on terrorism at our local ABC affiliate. You can see the first of these stories (with both online text and the videos) here (in a story on terrorists using technology such as Facebook for recruiting). I am still waiting for the second, on my Global Terrorism class this semester, to go online. .

Aguila Bait

At TNR's The Book Tom Bissell reviews Elizabeth Fraterrigo's Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America. The opening graph:

The historian Elizabeth Fraterrigo asks us to accept a somewhat unlikely premise, which is this: A titty magazine that has been culturally irrelevant since the late 1970s was at the forefront of many of this nation’s most important social upheavals and reconfigurations. It is to her book’s credit—and, it must be said, to Playboy’s—that one closes her book largely convinced that she is right.

Hopefully this guy will weigh in, as he knows of which he speaks on this particular cultural question.

FML Review (Self Indulgence Alert!)

They like me! They really like me!

FPA Africa Year in Review (Self Indulgence Alert)

Over at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog I have published my (very long) annual Year in Review post. It includes my predictions for 2010 (and an assessment of my predictions for 2009).

TNR's The Book

In an age of declining print media when newspapers are shuttering their book pages and coverage of books generally seems to be less of a priority than ever we should always welcome any attempt to give serious writing about books a platform. The Book: An Online Review at The New Republic represents an attempt by TNR to expand on an area in which it has always been widely respected. Here is Isaac Chotiner's introduction to this exciting new effort.

At the Movies: An Etiquette Primer

When did it become acceptable to talk during a movie in the theater? Today Mrs. Dcat and I went to see Sherlock Holmes, which we had both really wanted to see since its release but had not managed to fit into the schedule. She loathes going to crowded movie theaters and she absolutely hates the teen crowd, especially the one that flocks to the theater at the local mall. So we figured: It's a Thursday, 1:15 in the afternoon, school has started. We would have preferred the other multi-plex in town, but Sherlock Holmes is only playing at the mall. Still, we thought we were safe, especially when there were no more than thirty people seated when the lights went down and the previews came on.

We thought wrong. From almost the beginning a couple at the end of our row was yammering on. They were not kids. And they were not old people. I'd guess 50-something. I am no shrinking violet, so I asked them, loudly enough to encourage a public shaming from what I hoped would be an equally exercised vox populi, to "Stop Talking, Please!" They actually glared across the empty seats to me. And they talked for the remainder of the movie. Constantly. I said nothing else, not wanting to be a hypocrite and wanting to maintain the moral high ground, but I fumed for the next two hours or so. And they were not alone. Two guys, maybe a bit older than I am, on more than one occasion shared their comments with us all from nearly directly behind our heads.

Finally, Mrs. Dcat, who is not as aggressive as I am, finally had it. She went and fetched security. The security guard sat in the back. The two guys behind us, in his row (we sat second from back) did not realize he was there and started talking loudly. They got tossed. But that other couple somehow kept quiet for the two minutes the guard was there, and as soon as he left continued their conversation up into the closing credits. I literally had to wait until they left, because, and this is no hyperbole, there would have been physical violence. It was probably the most self-control I have ever shown in my life. I hate myself for it. These cretins talk throughout the whole movie, and if I punch the guy's lights out, I'd be the one to go to jail. This is an unjust world.

When did this behavior become commonplace? (And it is soul-crushingly common.) It ruined the movie for us and pretty much ensured that we do not go to the movies in the theater for a long, long time. Fortunately we have a great drive-in that does first-run double features for $5 a person, so we'll still get to see movies as they come out, but we will still miss many that we want to see and will be restricted to the time and circumstance that the format demands. No more matinees for us. No indie films, or documentaries, or short-run films that cannot be paired with fairly mainstream fare. Thank God for Netflix, I guess.

[I am exempting movies geared toward the kiddie crowd. Different situation, different rules, different expectations.]

What follows is the sort of advice that should be so obvious that no one has to say it. Or so I would have thought.: If you are one of those people who thinks it is ok occasionally to chat, or to compare notes, or to talk to the screen, or to share your brilliant witticism with us, or to ignore the "turn off your cell phones" rule, it is not. It is not ok. You are a fucking asshole.

Walk The Plank to Chait

Happy New Year. I hope 2010 is your best year yet.

Although I've read it less closely and linked it even less frequently in the last year or so, I was bummed out to see that The New Republic's Blog "The Plank" is closing its doors. The good thing is that Jonathan Chait, one of TNR's best and most astute writers, is starting his own blog, though it seems that it may just be a place for him to aggregate his magazine writing.

Disunity in South Africa (Self Indulgence Edition)

The Foreign Policy Association recently published my latest opinion piece, "Disunity in South Africa." It explores one of my evergreen topics, the possibility that the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) will break away from the African National Congress' (ANC) Tripartite Alliance.

[Cross-posted at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog.]

In the Changer: New(ish, Mostly) Stuff Edition

It has been quite a while since I imposed my musical tastes on you for one of my "in the changer" posts. The title itself is anachronistic in many ways. Yes, I still buy cd's, though my music listening is becoming increasingly digital even if I have not been able to make the transition to actually buying my music digitally. I like the idea of having hard copies of music, and someday when my iTunes crashes and my iPod dies or it all mysteriously gets erased I'll be thankful for being the guy who still has my music in some tangible configuration.

This is all stuff that I've listened to a lot in the second half or so of 2009. I imagine this will be a multi-post edition. (And just a reminder: for those of you wondering why the grades end up being so high, these are filtered reviews of music I've been listening to. When people start sending me music indiscriminantly to review, I'll be able to bear fangs. Until then, this is generally stuff I liked over the last few months, even if all of it did not come out this year). Without further ado, here is the first batch:

Amadou & Mariam -- Welcome to Mali: This is my favorite West African music produced by a blind married couple since at least their last album. And it should be yours too. What the hell is it with Mali? Per capita that vast but sparsely populated West African country must produce more great music per capita than any country on earth. A polyrhythmic confluence of blues and pop and jazz and highlife and rock and a melange of African styles, Welcome to Mali continues the run this duo has had over the last decade or so when they first exploded into public consciousness (they have been recording together since the mid-1970s). Use this as your introduction to them and work backward. Grade: A

Arctic Monkeys -- 'Humbug': I think it is a law that all writers who tackle the Arctic Monkeys must refer to them as "lads from Sheffield," so consider that requirement fulfilled. This is their third album and it's good. It also represents a modest but clear attempt at departure. Arctic Monkeys have done well with snide and cynical postpunk-pop songs about suburban pub life and poseurs and the various dipshits one runs across in daily life, especially in suburban pubs. And there is still more than a hint of that here. But 'Humbug' feels a bit brooding, a bit down tempo, a bit sludgy, all of which can probably at least in part be attributed to the production of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme. And given that the lads from Sheffield are no longer really lads and they have moved their worldview from Sheffield, change was to be expected. Lead singer Alex Turner writes his own lyrics and he knows his way around a clever phrase. ("What came first, the chicken or the dickhead?" is intended to be rhetorical. I think.) The question becomes whether this will remain a very good little band or whether it will grow to the scale that they promise. 'Humbug' tells me that this is a band in the process of becoming. The question remains: What will they become? Grade: B+

Bon Iver -- For Emma, Forever Ago: I have one question for Bon Iver and Damian Rice and Cat Power and to a lesser extent Fleet Foxes and Animal Collective and their ilk (Grizzly Bear, eg.) and a whole host of other bands and artists I really do like: What the fuck's up with recording in a whisper? I'll get three minutes into a Damian Rice song before I realize: This shit isn't going to get any louder; it's not all part of a languid introduction that's going to go somewhere. So, Bon, maybe Emma left (I'm assuming she did -- why else would you devote such a mopey effort to her?) because you wouldn't fucking speak up. It's ok to be both introspective and audible. If I want to fall asleep to you or have you as background music, I know how to turn the volume knob (they still have those, right?) down. But now if I put in an AC/DC album, which I am wont to do, glass in my home will shatter when I turn it on because I had to have your damned music cranked up just to hear it at all over the dryer whirring away in the other room. So: Good songs? Check. Nifty instrumentation and interesting vocals? Yep. Folk-indie rock hybrid? Oh yes. A few glorious moments? Yessir. But given that any ambient noise whatsoever makes this album nearly unlistenable, please, pal, next time turn it up just a little? You can be bummed out. Just do it a little louder. Grade: B

Jeff Buckley -- Grace: It's hard to believe that it has been more than 15 years since Buckley's lone studio album in his lifetime came out, scoring tail for a million savvy guys who could get this onto their stereo when they got a girl back to their rooms. The story is familiar: Buckley, the insanely talented progeny of the insanely talented Tim Buckley, revealed his endless promise with this album, only to die tragically swimming in a chennel near the Mississippi, eerily reminiscent of his father's own equally mysterious passing (well, dad died of a drug overdose, but give me some narrative license here). I did not really arrive at this album until about 1999 when I had a girlfriend who was in love with it introduced me to it (thus turning the table on the savvy guys). My thoughts now are just about what my thoughts were then: This guy is insanely talented and the music is in some ways uncategorizable. But it does not quite have the songs. It has moments that are quite sublime within what are supposed to be the songs, and the sings, such as they are, are geared toward these moments of sublime talent. But the whole does not quite cohere. But then came track #6. Hellelujah. You probably know the Leonard Cohen original. The Jeff Buckley version brings tears to my eyes every time. It is one of my single favorite renderings of any kind of music ever. It is nearly perfect, and in the light of what would later transpire, heartbreaking. Grade: B+, Hallelujah: A+

Neko Case -- Middle Cyclone: Neko Case is like the super-cool, super-hot chick in your favorite bar, the place where all of the indie bands play when they come into town. Just when you muster up the courage to say something to her, the break between bands is done and she steps on stage as the lead singer of the second band, the one that comes on before the headlining act, a band whose music, but obviously not the personnel, you know. Middle Cyclone is her sixth solo album, something all the more shocking when you realize that she also is part of the glorious collective that is The New Pornographers (and in fact the quality of a New Pornographers album is directly related to the amount of Neko Case contained therein). There was a time when case could easily be slotted into the alt-country/y'alternative category, but Middle Cyclone transcends that limiting category, much as does Wilco's career trajectory after their first album. And like Wilco, Neko Case produces guitar-and-singer-driven rock and pop, in the best traditions of both rock and pop music. She has a clear, strong voice that sings clear, strong songs. But don't kid yourself -- she's going home with someone else tonight, unless she chooses to go home alone. Grade: B+

Dirty Projectors -- Bitte Orca: How you feel about this album will be directly related to how you feel about "complicated" or "experimental" music. Because Dirty Projectors is a pretty self-consciously difficult band. I am fine with complicated, or at least complex, but "experimental" oftentimes ain't my bag and so I shied away from this album, recommended to me all over the place, for much of the year. This is a band, after all, whose last full-length album recreated a Black Flag album from memory, which strikes me as a bit too meet-cute. Nonetheless, I succumbed, and while the album has not blown my mind it is one that improves on multiple listenings. I could still do without some of the atonality. And sometimes the playing around with key signatures comes across as a bit gratuitous. And in the end I suspect that a lot of people who like this album actually like people knowing they like this album more than they actually like this album. Grade: C+

At the FPA Blogs (Semi-Self Indulgence Alert)

There are a great deal of changes under way at the Foreign Policy Association Blogs. We are consolidating the largest network of global affairs-related blogs into a series of categores. My Africa Blog will now be in the category of "Africa and the Middle East" and will include Africa, Egypt (not up yet), Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Middle East. I will be serving as both Senior Blogger and the Senior Editor for this category. I hope you'll continue to check out my Africa blog, the blogs in my category, and the network as a whole.

The newest addition to these blogs is Reza Akhlaghi, the first addition under my watch. He is our new blogger on Iran and his first post is must-read stuff. Here is my introduction of Reza at the Iran Blog.

Merry Christmas!

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas, and a happy holiday season. If it's your thing, I hope that Santa Claus brings you everything that you asked for and a few things that you did not.

Taking on the Dumb Jock Stereotype (Again)

At Critical Mass, the blog for the National Book Critics Circle's Board of Directors, Deirdra McAfee has a post with which I take issue. I responded in the comments with the following:

I want to take issue with the following assertion in this post:

“A culture that idolizes physical skill (sports of all kinds) and has no use for intellectual skill (the smart or knowledgeable stigmatized as nerds), that places physical passion above all possible other passions, except perhaps that for winning, is not one that believes books are important.”

This is just plain silly. It is possible, just possible, that millions of Americans can value both sports and books. Folks like Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway and George Plimpton and John Updike and Doris Kearns Goodwin (the list could go on for pages) all managed to value (and write about) sports and yet still somehow also to care about books. The creation of false dichotomies and strawpersons in a post that would seem to celebrate the intellectual life is ironic, because it shows poor analytical skills and sloppy argumentation, the opposite of what intellectuals are supposed to value.

There are lots of problems with our culture with regard to books. But a passion for sports has nothing to do with it. Blaming jocks is commonplace amongst too many intellectuals, which does not make it any less dumb.

I want to augment this a little bit here. When I was in grad school there were lots of social divisions. One of the more pernicious ones came between jocks (which included former athletes but also simply fans of sports) and non-jocks. And of course the non-jocks possessed that air of superiority that McAfee reveals in her post. Which was somewhat problematic since almost universally the jocks were also the better graduate students in our program. But the very stereotype allowed the non-jocks to feel superior despite the fact thet their superiority was unearned and undeserved. There is something bizarre about certain circles in intellectual life that allows being anti-athlete to be not only acceptable, but to be heralded.

When I wrote that the list of intellectuals who demonstrably care about sports could go on for pages, I was not kidding. Stephen Jay Gould and Gay Talese. David Halberstam and George Will. Michael Lewis and David Foster Wallace. Stewart O'Nan and Frederick Exley. Not to mention those academics who write about sports -- Chuck Korr and Charlie Alexander and James Carroll and Amy Bass and dozens of others spring to mind. And the ranks of those who are predominantly sportswriters yet who write well enough to transcend the stereotypes of that genre warrants more than scorn -- Bill Simmons and Sally Jenkins and Bob Ryan and Bud Collins and John Feinstein and Dick Schaap and Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and Rick Telander and John Ed Bradley and myriad others. (Unless I am misreading McAfee's website and Amazon and Worldcat, she has not ever actually published a book, unlike all of these people, with their crazy sports affinities.)

The idea that sports is the enemy of books or the intellectual life is a muddleheaded argument put forward by people who have decided they are the enemy of sports and who have elevated their prejudice to the realm of virtue. But it's not virtue. It's ignorance. And it is not to be lauded. It is to be scorned.

As a perhaps relevant aside, or at least for the sake of full disclosure, I am a member of the National Book Critics Circle. I also have written a couple of scholarly journal articles on sports, have written at least a dozen reviews of books on sports, am working on a project that may become a book on sports, and have published a book on a sports-related topic. I was one of the jocks in my graduate program, and in some circles of detractors was seen as the jock ringleader. I also care deeply for books, for book culture, and for American intellectual life. False dichotomies and strawmen are dumb. They are also deeply intellectually dishonest and indeed are anti-intellectual.

6 in 10 for 3

Bob Ryan reminds us all that the decade now concluding has been a damned fine one for Boston sports. Three championships for the Patriots, two for the Red Sox, and one for the Celtics is a good run. Not many cities have won six titles in a decade, never mind having three teams win rings in an (admittedly arbitrary) ten-year span.

Patricia Marx is an Ass

You want to know why a lot of people think the east coast (read: New York) intellectual class are effete assholes? How about these opening two sentences from Patricia Marx's brief "On and Off the Avenue" piece in The New Yorker on the arts and crafts store Michael's:

New York is rich in culture, cuisine, and commerce. The suburbs have parking spots and fast food, and they also have Michael’s, the largest arts-and-crafts supply chain in North America.

I love cities. I love the east coast. Outside of its sports teams (and fans) I love New York. I live in West Texas, decidedly not an enclave of the east coast elites. But I am associated with of those folks by background, by politics, by temperament and by preference. Patricia Marx, you are the reason why a mendacious drizzlewit like Sarah Palin can plausibly differentiate "real America" from her stereotype of a segment of the east coast. I hope you drown in a yachting accident. I hate nothing more than when my own side frags me with their idiocy.

Pre-Holiday Links

Super-duper pre-holiday quick hits from things that have caught my eye of late:

I'm very much interested in reading John Milton Cooper's massive new biography of Woodrow Wilson.

If you want to get stuff you almost always have to pay for it. Taxes are not a form of creeping socialism. They are a sign of a responsible society. There is a huge difference.

Spin has a slideshow of its 40 Best Albums of 2009. Begin debating now. (I must be getting old. I sort of miss the days when reading a simple list, preferably with annotations forming some sort of argument, was enough to kickstart a debate. The slideshow googaw takles a lot of time, is inconvenient, does not actually facilitate anything, but it does have images. And it takes up more bandwidth. So that's something.)

Most of the climate change doubters are basically fools. But you knew that already. I hope.

The quality of Cornel West's work has, in the minds of many, gone seriously downhill. The trajectory pretty much is in direct negative relationship with his public fame.

Invictus was very good and reasonably historically accurate. I'm working on an essay on the movie, the book on which it is based, and another book on South African sport. Hopefully I'll have good news on that front down the road.

A Nation Forged in War, The Cover

I've been remiss in not posting this until now:

Freakin' Awesome. It'll be out in spring 2010. Congratulations, Tom.

Ready For My Close Up! (Self Indulgence For Something I Did Not Really Accomplish Edition!)

A few weeks back I flew out to LA to play the role of talking head for a documentary on the Freedom Rides that The American Experience is producing with respected director Stanley Nelson at the helm. It was quite the opportunity, they treated me well, I got some good stories, and I hoped that it went well enough for me to get some face time for what was scheduled to be the 2011 release marking the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides. I was pleased to hear at the Southern Historical Association's annual meeting in Louisville that the rough cut of the documentary looks great and that as it stood at that point, a month or so ago, I will indeed get a little screen time.

I got even better news last week. Freedom Riders will be one of 16 documentaries (out of more than 860 submitted) and will makes its World Premiere in the US Documentaries Competition at next year's Sundance Film Festival, which runs from January 21-31, 2010 in Park City, Utah. Obviously my participation has zero role in Freedom Riders being accepted for Sundance I (and may have been a detriment). Still, it's a nifty little thrill even to be associated with something like this. I guess it's time for me to get some head shots!

Mega Self-Indulgence Alert

There has been no lack of analysis of the state of the Republican Party by fairly prominent folks. In my latest History News Service op-ed (which has not yet gone up on the "Recent Articles" page for some reason) I weigh in on the state of the GOP. I try looking back to another era of deep divide within the Republican Party and show how the lessons the far right needs to learn from Ronald Reagan seem not to be the ones they are learning. So far it has been picked up by the Durham (NC) Herald Sun, the Albany (NY) Times Union, and the LA Progressive.

It has also appeared on websites ranging from History News Network to The Dallas Morning News to USA Today to WBIR.com (Knoxville, TN), to Florida Today.

As long as I'm cranking up the self indulgence, I also may as well mention that on Friday, April 23, 2010 I'll be giving a talk at the Newberry Library's Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture as part of the 2009-2010 Chicago Seminar on Sport and Culture. The title of my talk, part of a larger project on sports, race, and politics in South Africa since 1994, is "Stopped at the Try Line?: Rugby, Race, and Nationalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa." I have an article with a similar title coming out in the next couple of months.

Herf v. Wolin: Heavyweights Square Off

This article on "the long, toxic afterlife of Nazi propaganda in the Arab world" by my friend and former professor Jeffrey Herf in The Chronicle of Higher Education prompted a, let's say "spirited" rejoinder from the historian Richard Wolin. The Chronicle then brought the two together, in a manner of speaking, for an "exchange." Read it all.

The State of State Universities

The New York Times recently conducted a discussion between a number of prominent academics on the state of public universities. The jumping-off point was the state of California's public universities and starts with the following question: "As they deal with tighter budgets, what should public universities do to balance fiscal responsibility and equal opportunity?"

Among the participants was Richard Vedder, an economist and economic historian from Ohio University where I received my PhD. I know Professor Vedder but never took a class with him at the Contemporary History Institute, with which he is affiliated as a professor and I was affiliated as a student. I disagree with much that he says but I am always glad to see OU folks getting such attention.

TNR Tosses Around the Pigskin

When I think of football I think of . . . The New Republic. Well, not really. But it turns out that every so often the venerable liberal thought magazine has considered the gidiron. Take a walk through TNR's football archives as you gear up for tonight's Pats-Saints clash.

My prediction: Patriots 38 Saints 31.

Marfa, Texas (And Thanksgiving Greetings)

If you are ever in my neck of the woods, look me up. We'll visit Marfa, down in Big Bend country.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Quid Quo Pro(file) (Self Indulgence Alert)

Here's the deal: If you blurb one of my books, and The New York Times does a little lifestyles of the rich and famous profile of you (Note: No causal relation between the blurb and the feature), I'm going to link that profile on dcat. Because I'm that kind of guy.

Bruscino Bait

The New York Times published a somewhat peculiar op-ed this past weekend. I cannot be certain, but it seems that in "How World War II Wasn't Won" David P. Colley, the author of Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Mistake to Halt the Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944, gets a very high-profile opportunity to lay out the thesis of his book, a gig many, many, many of us would love to have the opportunity to take.

As a result, though, Colley gets to make a pretty history-centered argument. I have no idea as to the merits (or novelty) of the argument, though I have to assume that by going after Eisenhower Colley is positioning himself in some sort of revisionist camp. Hopefully someone who knows more about this than I do will weigh in. (Calling Tom, Tom Please Report For Duty!)

One Last Cheer for the Huskies

Noertheastern University is cutting its football program and it is doing so because of money (or the lack thereof). I always hate seeing any college sports cut, because I do see sports as bringing a lot more to the table than they take from it. At the same time, in the ranking of priorities at most colleges and universities we need a little perspective. Football is important. It is not essential. And in the case of the Northeastern program it appears that "high costs, lack of fan interest, and inadequate facilities doomed the program" and that the loss of the program will be a gain for Northeastern's student body.

Growing Paine

It appears that conservatives who are embracing Thomas Paine may not quite understand him. Yes, I realize I'm grabbing at low-hanging fruit when I assert ignorance on the part of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin. But it's not my fault that low-hanging fruit has become the face of modern conservatism.

Are You Freaking Kidding Me?

So the majority of Republicans don't think Obama legitimately won the election and that somehow ACORN stole it. This is just completely idiotic and unhinged. But I also really do not believe that it is true. This is one of those questions that is so reliant upon party identification and sample size and . . . . but seriously -- are you fucking kidding me? How is it possible that a single human being could think something so monumentally stupid never mind even a poor and surely not representative sample? Even if the margin of error were 30% that would be batshit crazy.

You Take That Back, Sir.

This article in Spin vexed me. Beyond being largely incoherent, it is based on a complete Strawman. Who, precisely, is arguing that "Radiohead can do no wrong"? I love Radiohead. They are in my all-time top five. But I am happy to entertain arguments that their recent output has been too heavily doused in electronica, or that Thom Yorke's vision has overwhelmed that of the rest of the band, or that they should be more prolific, or whatever. I would disagree with some of those points, I would agree with others. But if Chris Norris' article is any indication, the critics of Radiohead are in a lot worse shape than even I thought, and I am of the belief that their argument is untenable to begin with.

Plus, Radiohead is fucking awesome.

Slow News Day in the Permian Basin (Self Indulgence Alert!)

You know it's a slooooooooowwww news day in West Texas when this is on the front page of the Midland Reporter-Telegram!

In the Service of Clio

For those of you in the historical profession, and especially early in your careers, I direct you to "In the Service of Clio," a blog that describes itself as providing "essays on career management in the historical profession." The professor who runs the blog recruits history PhD's working in various aspects of the profession -- various subdisciplines in the professoriate and in different types of schools and departments, archivists and librarians, public historians, foreign service officers, and the like.

Stoke-on-Trent Goes Green!

As many of you know, I spent a good hunk of my spring/summer as a fallow at the David Bruce Centre for American Studies at the University of Kent in England. The nearest town to the self-contained university is Stoke-on-Trent. I'm pleased to report that Stoke-on-Trent is set to become the first city to sign up to the country's "10:10" pledge to cut its carbon emissions by 10% during 2010 and thus in a way to become Britain's first "Green City."

Impact: Factor

For those of you in academia, and especially in the humanities, you will find this Stefan Collini article in the Times Literary Supplement on the ways in which research is being assessed in the United Kingdom particularly important.

Trusting America

I simply do not understand the outcry against exposing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to a criminal trial in New York City. Indeed most of the arguments are either irrelevant or overstated (and of course not a few of them are the result of the fact that if Obama said it was day at noontime, the vast swath of the right would proclaim it to be night). Charles Krauthammer sums up the argument as well as anyone -- which is to say, not particularly well -- in today's Washington Post:

September 11, 2001 had to speak for itself. A decade later, the deed will be given voice. KSM has gratuitously been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable -- a civilian trial in the media capital of the world -- from which to proclaim the glory of jihad and the criminality of infidel America.

I have no idea what "September 11, 2001 had to speak for itself" means, and neither do you, because it is nonsense, words that are intended to be portentous and meaningful but that are instead empty and useless. But that's not the point. The point, it seems, is that Charles Krauthammer and his ilk have no faith in the very things that make us better than the KSMs of this world. They have no faith in our ability to protect a courtroom in New York City. They have no faith that our truth is better than the jihadist's propaganda. They have no faith that our judicial system can prevail.

For many on the right -- and Krauthammer is only exhibit A -- the only real factor in terrorism is that it is a useful cudgel with which to whack those they disagree over the head. In the wake of that awful tragedy on 9/11 conservatives and Republicans were quick to point out that the failures of intelligence and security were the fault of no party and no politician, or rather, of all parties and all politicians, a useful conceit for them when they occupied the White House and both houses of Congress. But ever since that moment when suddenly accountability was so difficult to glean the right has been looking for ways to paint Democrats and liberals as soft on terrorism and weak on foreign policy. And if that means disparaging the American system, so be it. When Democrats and liberals criticized foreign policy during the staggering run of incompetence that was Bush years, the right was quick to play the un-American card, so quick to impugn the patriotism of those who disagreed with them. But apparently patriotism, like everything else, is contingent upon the prevailing political winds.

I think our truth is better than the jihadist propaganda. Clearly conservatives do not. That's a shame. There was a time when he seemed to love this country. It's amazing what Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill will do to a man's patriotism. Who knew that conservative love of country was only skin deep?

Put Khalid Shaikh Mohammed on trial. Give his poisonous rantings the widest audience possible. Not only is it the right thing to do in terms of upholding America's values. It also is the right thing to do because unlike Charles Krauthammer, I believe both that our ideas are better than the jihadists' and that any public airing of those ideas is a win for the United States of America.

Academics and Media

The Chronicle of Higher Education asked a number of academics about "issues of education, communications, and news and cultural literacy" and "how the decline of those news media will affect higher education." Their answers are thoughtful and very much worth considering.

I am one of those people who laments the decline, and probably eventual death, of the print newspaper. But I do not mistake the physical presence of print and cheap paper with a loss of good things to read, viable sources of opinion, or varying viewpoints. There will always be demand for these things, and the best of today's print media will adjust, the worst will fail, and that's the way the system is supposed to work. Yes, I'd miss a real honest-to-goodness Sunday newspaper, but I also believe that even a handful of those will survive, even if in morphed, national form. But the best papers are basically national in nature anyhow. The Sunday New York Times still carries with it as metro section, but let's be real -- the average reader of the Sunday Times does not give a damn about bond issues in Eastchester.

Ending the Hypocrisy

Sigh. So when George W. Bush was president, it was un-American and undemocratic to filibuster judicial nominees. But now it is apparently ok for Republicans to entertain doing so against Obama's nominees or proposed bills.

I feel about the filibuster largely what I feel about the Electoral College. Both are in desperate need of reform, but no matter when you do it the motives will seem to stem from sheer politics. In the wake of 2000 reforming the Electoral College would have seemed like nothing more than a Democratic Party reaction to the 2000 election, rather than seeing the failures of the 2000 election as impetus for reform. Changing filibuster rules would almost certainly be even more problematic, though if a party got up to 65 or so votes in the Senate they could just pound it through, but then they would have enough votes to override filibusters, and would want to reserve that right for the future.

There is so much self-interest involved that hypocrisy almost inevitably follows. But there is almost nothing democratic and not much more that is republican (small d, small r) about allowing a minority to thwart the will of the elected majority out of sheer political obstructionism. I'd happily support needing a a super-majority on some issues, and on others, such as civil rights, the will of the majority certainly is secondary to Constitutional and other rights. But on their face the Electoral College and filibuster serve to protect the few from anything other than republican democracy. Let's try to get rid of these remnants of the 19th century. There are no slaveowners whose rights we have to be cowed into protecting lest they blow the whole project apart.

The Wire's Greatest Hits

Courtesy of Matthew Yglesias, via Radley Balko, great moments from The Wire, the greatest show in television history.

[Is it me, or has Blogger made it impossible to embed YouTube videos?]

Monday Linkiness

While I recover, you should check out:

AO Scott of The New York Times writes about the greatest movie moments of the past decade.

At The Boston Globe Renee Loth argues, rightly, I think, that Democrats should "call the filibuster bluff." Reconciliation seems smart to me -- assuming they have the 51 votes, ram that bill through. Let the Republicans whine about a democratic majority prevailing.

At Newsweek Niall Ferguson makes the provocative but dumb argument that 1979 was a more significant year than 1989. Hint: The Cold War was kind of a big deal.

The Unbearable Lightness (And Deep, Deep Dishonesty) of Sarah Palin

I hate a world in which smart conservatives are consigned to the periphery. There are two great intellectual/political traditions in contemporary American history. They are liberalism and conservatism. I'm a liberal. I find much of conservatism to be wrong. But conservatism is not immoral or un-American, no matter what the continuing prattling of Dick Cheney teaches us. Nor are the variations of these traditions somehow prima facie flawed.

I am also worried about a world in which Sarah Palin is the spokesperson for modern conservatism. But today the ruthlessly dishonest Sarah Palin represents the most vocal world of conservatism, yet we know that she is deeply and profoundly mendacious. And she is unwilling to be challenged.

Based on sheer politics a huge part of me hopes that Palin becomes the GOP brand. But the problem with that would be that Republicans would then be compelled to support her. I knew Ronald Reagan. I loathed Ronald Reagan. And yet Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. I hope that America's right knows the difference. I fear that they don't.

Um . . .

Not to bitch about the officiating in a game whan the Patriots were clearly the better team, but: That was a fucking first down.

Up! Again

Here is what I wrote about the Pixar movie Up! After seeing it in the theater:

Up! is simply a beautiful movie. Toward the beginning it has what might be the single most emotionally powerful rendering of lived love between a couple as they grow old together. It is a movie about many things, not least of them loss, and it is poignant and funny and, yes, heart-breaking. It is perfectly suitable for -- indeed might be best appreciated by -- adults, but if you do not have kids, borrow someone else's so you are not the skeevie adult going to a Pixar movie.

After watching it on dvd as part of the Mrs. Dcat Birthday Bonanza yesterday, I double down on that sentiment. I will be profoundly disapponted if Up! (I think the exclamation point is part of the title) is not a finalist for best picture, animation be damned.

Aerosmith, RIP?

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Aerosmith. Although traditionally labeled a Boston band, they actually got their start in the Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire, where I grew up. It's tough to be a kid growing up in the area without absorbing the bands full corpus. Furthermore, when Aerosmith was starting out, they were regulars in the local party scene so that the first time I planned to go to an Aerosmith concert my Mom was stunned that I'd pay $20 to see them when she saw them for free every weekend.

One great story (that I've heard from multiple sources) among myriads that people roughly my parents' age tell that created the band's local legend involves Steve Tyler hitting on my Mom. It's an anecdote that embodies both figures quite well. At a party one night Tyler was wearing nothing but a fur coat. He went up to my Mom and sort of embraced her, opened up his coat, and put himself on offer. My Mom's response? "Put it away, Steve."

So despite the fact that it has been a long, long time since Aerosmith put out anything even vaguely relevant, it was still something of a shock to know that the band may be no more. Always racked by fraught internal dynamics (they broke up once before in the early 1980s) it seems that Tyler has decided to walk that way.

Deadspin Giveth to the Sportsguy, Taketh Away Brutally

Just days after Deadspin founder Will Leitch wrote a nice piece recognizing the contributions of The Sportsguy Bill Simmons, the site publishes Charles Pierce's absolute takedown of Simmons' new book on the NBA. (Extra credit to Pierce for linking this glorious Molly Ivins evisceration of Camille Paglia.)

I know it is too grad-schoolish of me, but I find sympathy with both Leich and Pierce on Sportsguy.

1989

So the Baby Boomers had 1968. Holy shit, have they told us, and told us, and told us of the wonders of 1968. Because in 1968 they changed the world, you see.

But of course they didn't. As a general rule of thumb, the baby boomers who tell you all about how they changed the world are not the ones who actually changed the world. So some ex hippie will prattle on about peace and love and someone like John Lewis, who really did change a particularly noxious corner of the world, doesn't feel the need constantly to reinforce that point. And John Lewis is a politician, for whom plugging his role in changing the world ought to be front-and-center. (It's actually remarkable how few of the Civil Rights Movement's activists act like your apodictic baby boomers, when the irony is that they are the ones who are most in a position to act like self-important, self-righteous, and self-indulgent twits. Ahhh, baby boomers, the dubious gift that keeps on giving, even when we make it clear we really don't like the gift.)

Don't get me wrong -- 1968 was a remarkable year, made all the more so because its currents were truly international. It's a year I love to teach. And it's a year that has come to symbolize both the best and worst of that strange decade. But for my generation, 1989 was every bit as important, with the added benefit of 1989 having been a time when the world really did re-order itself significantly.

Twenty years ago (gulp) I graduated from high school and headed off to Williams. Little did I know when I made the two-plus hour ride into an entirely different world that within a few months much of the world that I knew would transform itself. The Berlin Wall, the prevailing symbol and metaphor of the Cold War, would fall, and that collapse would itself provide a metaphor for the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc and the dawn of a new era. As 1989 gave way to 1990 FW de Klerk, who had risen from the ranks of Afrikaner Nationalism with a seemingly impeccable apartheid pedigree, released Nelson Mandela from prison and unbanned the ANC and PAC, setting the stage for epochal transformations in South Africa. The Simpsons made its debut in December 1989. And of course Milli Vanilli's first album, destined to win a Grammy in 1990, was released in the United States. Tectonic shifts all.

Much like 1968, the legacy of 1989 is "Still Up For Debate." Any series of events that causes The Boston Globe to heap praise upon a Bush (albeit the competent one) is clearly monumental.

Worth Spending Your D'oh!

I have not yet read John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, but it certainly looks like something I'd be interested in.

By the way, I don't know if I buy the idea that the new seasons are worse than the so-called golden age. Golden Age mythologies are almost always shallow and wrong, and what I find is that The Simpsons gets better with age -- episodes that at first don't blend with our idealized images of good Simpsons suddenly fit perfectly once blended into syndication.

That said, as far as favorite moments go, I would have to go with any number of Mr. Burns lines, such as when Mr. Smithers proposed that they go out for Chinese, and Burns replies, "Bah, those people are all gristle," or when, after losing an election for Governor Burns looks at the hoi paloi and remarks "Look at those slackjawed troglodytes, Smithers. Yet if I were to have them killed I'd be the one to go to prison."

Plus, I am not certain I could teach my classes without The Simpsons as a reference. The Simpsons: Is there anything it can't do?

Panhandling

If you take the advice of Glenn Frankel in The Washington Post and decide to visit the Texas Panhandle, be sure to swing on down to Odessa. We'll have a drink and a meal.

Book Talk (With Special Bonus Self Indulgence!)

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently had an exchange between Mark Bauerlein and Priscilla Wald, heavy hitters in the world of literary scholarship, about Harvard University Press' recently released A New Literary History of America, which has been garnering a great deal of attention of late. It makes for a fascinating engagement with what by all accounts seems like a major publishing event.

Speaking of major publishing events (shamelessness follows!) this weekend at the Southern Historical Association's annual meeting the University Press of Kentucky will be holding various book signings for some of its authors. I will be signing copies of Freedom's Main Line on Saturday at noonish in the book exhibit. If you are in the Kentuckianaohio area, swing by!

WaMo Turns 40

Washington Monthly celebrates its 40th birthday this year. As part of the celebration, the magazine has posted some of its greatest hits, which you can access here. Among my favorites: Taylor Branch on Civil Rights in Southwest Georgia, the smugness of baby boomers, the dubiousness of Woodward and Bernstein's cozying up to certain sources, and an assessment of the magazine's "Bullseyes and Blunders" over the last four decades.