Linktastic Voyage

Loads of stories that have caught my eye have begun to pile up on my tabs. My intent was to give each a full post, but with my pace of late, let's face it -- that wasn't gonna happen. So here are some links with commentary as apt:

You know what? President Obama has accomplished a hell of a lot, especially given the political context within which he has had to operate.

The Miller Center at UVA has started a blog, Riding The Tiger, that promises to look at the presidential election in historical context.

Cliopatria, the first among equals of the History News Network Blogs is closing its doors. Ralph Luker, paterfamilias of Cliopatria, did yeoman's work herding cats over there for more than 8 years. When he started blogging at HNN Ralph was one of a precious few professional historians who saw the potential for blogging as a medium of blending historical, political, social and cultural questions. In large part due to his nurturing thousands of historians now blog.

Ruy Teixeira thinks much of the hullaballoo about Independent voters is nonsense and he recently found himself reviewing an especially nonsensical book about Independent voters. Negative reviews are fun.

This about sums up my feelings.

Voter ID laws, created to create a solution to a problem that doesn't exist (but really simply created to make it harder for Democrats to vote), might just end up having unintended consequences.

Students in one history class at my alma mater are making campaign ads rather than writing final papers. I love this idea:

There’s a catch, though. The students can only use images, quotes, documents, and music from the era. They cannot use anything that came afterwards. An image of the White House burning in 1812 would not work for the election of 1808. They cannot use images of Leutze’s famous Washington Crossing the Delaware, a product more reflective of the 1840s than the 1770s. Their assignment is to capture the spirit of the age – not the spirit of our historical memory.

I might have to appropriate this idea and adjust it for my students.

At the Chronicle Leonard Cassuto argues that the comprehensive exam needs to be changes because it does not seamlessly fuel the way toward writing a dissertation. The problem with this solution is that it assumes rather than proves the seamlessness. The fact is that the comprehensive exams are rather different from the dissertation -- and frankly I've always argued that in many ways the comprehensive exams are what separates history PhD's from laymen -- learning to respect both the history and the historiography is vital. There is a lot of material out there. I am of the belief that before one does original work one should immerse oneself in the books and articles that have come before. And in so doing get to really know the history as well.

In which I say some stuff about the new UT system post-tenure review policy.

A Town, A Team, A Documentary

The Onion SportsDome (which you probably should be watching) might just be tweaking Odessa (Friday Night Lights : The Book, The Movie, The television show) "High School Football Documentaries a Way of Life In Small Texas Town."

More Saturday Foodstuffs

From the good folks at Burnt Orange Nation (a Texas Longhorns joint) comes a "Brisket Treatise" followed by a comments sections that adds more than it detracts -- the internet equivalent of a unicorn sighting (if you can get over the authenticity fetishism that nearly any discussion about barbecue seems to lure).

Pre-Departure Links Deluge

These should keep you off the streets:

Richard Kahlenberg believes that most distance learning is, at the least, problematic. He's fundamentally right, of course. Although this review focuses mostly on secondary education, the reality is that institutions look at online education, see a cash cow and justify it not for pedagogical reasons (anyone care to tell me how to give a test to an online class?) but rather out of self interest couched in the language of giving the consumers what they want (rather than what they need).

The C's and Lakers are tied at one game apiece as the NBA Finals head to Boston in the ridiculous 2-3-2 format that the league uses for the finals, and only the finals. Going into the series the great Charles Pierce wondered why the C's were underdogs. This will mark the first time one of my teams will have a chance to win a championship while I am away, pretty remarkable given the extent of my travels. Suffice it to say, I am ambivalent. Not that I expect much pity given what I'm going to be doing.

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, the smartest man I've ever been in a room with, recently put the smack down on conservative "originalism" saying it "has only a tenuous connection to reality." He's right, of course.

Former federal prosecutor-turned-conservative commentator Andy McCarthy's book is apparently riddled with errors, all of which just happen to bolster his anti-Obama screed.

In the wake of the Rand Paul idiocy about the 1964 Civil Rights Act comes a reminder that in places like Paul's Kentucky not only racism, but active discrimination, are alive and well.

There are a million things you can read about soccer (or football if you prefer -- I tend to use them interchangeably) right now, given our proximity to the World Cup, but I would recommend taking a few minutes to read this, from The Chronicle Review. (Of course I hope you'll also regularly check in at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog where I hope to have daily coverage of things on the ground, not only from a football perspective, but more significantly in looking at how South Africa -- and Botswana -- experience the Cup.)

Texas is looking at a budget crunch right now. My adopted state is looking at cutting back on vital services. And the Lone Star State loved to look at the rest of the world and point fingers when things remained ok here while the economy tanked elsewhere. (Oh, you should have heard the smugness about California's meltdown two years ago. Admittedly, California is rightfully as source of mockery for all given its absurd political-economic system. Still -- many of us knew Texas was just putting off its own reckoning.) Well, Texas is giving $25 million dollars to Formula One, apparently just because.

I have not had the time nor the inclination to weigh in on the fiasco that was Israel's inept handling of the ship of fools heading toward Gaza last week. But Leon Wieseltier hits it pretty squarely on the head when he writes that whatever the justification, Israel may as well just have called its invasion of the ship "Operation Make the World Hate Us." Bibi Netanyahu is a bigot and a fool and has set back the cause of Israel by decades.

Apparently this is what follows "Generation X." I have no idea what it all means.

Have I mentioned that I'm going to the World Cup?

Ways Texas Might Ruin America

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Gameday!!!

The ESPN Gameday crew will be in Austin tomorrow for the Texas-Texas Tech game. It's not going to be as thrilling as last year's game, as Tech is nowhere near as strong and the Longhorns might be better than they were in 2008, but it will still tax the scoreboard operator. My guess? Texas 54 Texas Tech 35.

The best part? I'm gonna be there.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo probably reonates more with those of us who live in border states such as Texas than elsewhere. But even here the holiday seems to represent an excuse to drink than it does an homage to cultural heritage. Like many other holidays, Cinco de Mayo has largely become comodified, or, as The New York Times explained in an op-ed today, "For this north-of-the-border success, we have to thank the persuasive powers of beer. Cinco de Mayo is probably Corona’s biggest day." As Homer Simpson might say: "Beer. Is there anything it can't do?"

Texas' Super Tuesday

The Lone Star State is getting ready for its closeup on Tuesday. If you're confused about how the Texas process works, you are not alone. Fortunately The New Republic has a primer. The intro describes the convoluted process thusly:

Welcome to Texas: home of the most ludicrous, convoluted, and downright screwy Democratic primary system in America. Actually, it's not even a primary; it's a primary-caucus hybrid, the electoral equivalent of the turducken.

As we move from the primaries to the general election, is it possible that Texas, presumed to be the apodictic red state, could actually swing Democratic in November? Jonathan Gurwitz, a member of the editorial board at the San Antonio Express-News argues at Real Clear Politics that such an unexpected outcome might be possible. Texas politics are more complicated than most people imagine. The state that brought the country George W. Bush also produced Ann Richards and Molly Ivins and not so long ago was as solidly democratic as anywhere in the country. Wouldn't it be an irony of history if a state that turned red at least in part because of the politics of race voted for a black Democrat for president?

All Politics is Local

Or if all politics are not local, we tend to try to find the local angle because people are, let's face it, solipsistic bastards. And I think it is no surprise that Texans tend to have established a sense of state and regional pride that is legendary even given that everyone thinks their home region is pretty special. Let's face it -- where else might an anti-littering campaign ("Don't Mess With Texas") become a pugnacious state motto ("Don't Mess With Texas").

But because Texas is so big and influential, national stories sometimes legitimately are also state and local stories. take, for example, the passing of Lady Bird Johnson earlier this week. Mrs. Johnson was an admired figure in the state and nation, and it is remarkable to think how she outlived her larger than life husband by more than three decades.

In her role as a member of the University of Texas' Board of Regents she took her commitment not only to UT-Austin, but to the entire system seriously. UTPB archivist Dr. Terry Shults passed the following along to the university community to show us a little local angle to a story that has received a great deal of attention nationally and statewide:

As someone who has only lived in Texas in this century, Lady Bird Johnson was only known to me filtered via national media. As archivist here, I was aware of many photo ops of her on campus and in town including a very interesting one with Mr. and Mrs. LBJ, John Ben Shepperd, and first UTPB President Billy Amstead at the opening of the Presidential Museum room in honor of JBS' son who had just died.

We also have "Lady Bird Johnson, Regent, The University of Texas System, Formally Accepting First Student of U.T.P.B., August 1, 1972."

But evidence that she was involved in UTPB in more than ceremonially, literally came across my desk just recently from the thirteen boxes of papers of late business and civic leader Dan Hemphill:

[A2004/05 Dan Hemphill Papers, Box 10, Folder #26 Item 9]:

Presidential Associates UTPB Development Committee from UTPB President V. R. Cardozier [cover letter for paper in answer to a question from Mrs. Lady Bird Johnson on what is being done to recruit students], May 21, 1976.

R.I.P. Lady Bird Johnson.

San Antonio News

I'm in San Antonio for another weekend. A couple of stories caught my eye in this morning's San Antonio Express-News:

The first involves a federal discrimination suit. While the court did not agree that Richard O. Cook had been fired because he had filed a discrimination suit against the Texas Human Rights Commission. But these details, from Jaime Castillo's column in the Metro section this morning, are alarming and Castillo's conclusions spot-on:

This is no time to question the jurors. They heard all the testimony. They judged the statements and the body language of the accused and the accuser over several days of trial.

But a piece of evidence introduced in the case speaks to how woefully inept we are as a country at having honest discussions about race, ethnicity and discrimination.

During the trial, Cook testified about finding a "Mexican Application for Employment" on his desk shortly after he filed the complaint with the human rights commission.

"It is not nessesary (sic) to attach photo since you all look alike," the application begins.

Under the space reserved for a person's address, it states: "If living in car, give make, model and license #."

The choices under estimated income include, "welfare," "unemployment" and "theft."

Skipping to near the bottom, the application asks: "How many children do you have?"

There are spaces reserved to "1st wife," "2nd wife," "best friend's wife" and "neighbor's daughter."

The capper is the blank left for the applicant to "sign your name as it appears on your tattoo."

Now, there are those who will argue that this is funny between friends. But put yourself in Cook's shoes.

He's a Mexican Iraqi working in a Hill Country sheriff's office where only four out of the agency's 41 employees are Hispanic.

Although he attempts to ignore it, throwing away the application doesn't do any good.

Cook testified that he was given a second copy by a fellow deputy who said he took it off the bulletin board at the Gillespie County law enforcement building, which houses the sheriff's office, the Fredericksburg Police Department, some state troopers and a local game warden.

The response to Cook's allegations, even before a trial could be held, is the way too many so-called "minority" issues are greeted today: with sneering.

To my mind, this case is not about whether or not Cook has a sense of humor. In some contexts some might find it funny. But in the context of a job that sort of behavior is unacceptable. In the workplace people have the right not to share someone else's sens eof humor, especially when the joke is about the ethnicity of the target. Most Mexican Americans i know might be able to laugh at the faux application. Few would find it funny if it were placed on their desk (not once, but twice) when they were applying for a job.

The second story represents an equally problematic decision by Texas authorities. For a decade students from Texas high schools who graduated in the top 10% of their classes have been guaranteed admissions to UT-Austin or Texas A&M at College Station. republican lawmakers are trying to repeal that law and in so doing to restrict access to the best state universities. Who will lose in this scenario? Studnts from poor districts and disproportionately minorities. Who will gain? Students from affluent districts and disproportionately whites:

The House Mexican American Legislative Caucus notes the law has resulted in 170 high schools in 71 counties being able to send students to one of the state's two flagship campuses — UT-Austin and Texas A&M-College Station — for the first time.

But the law created a backlash in wealthier suburban communities with highly competitive schools. Parents say their children instead are attending universities outside Texas.

The policy was put into place in order to get away from a policy of race-based admissions that Republicans, of course, opposed. Now the state GOP shamefully wants to scuttle that compromise. There is no excuse for enacting such a policy that will only serve to restrict access for those who most need it. And we are not talking about opening up the admissions floodgates -- we are talking about kids who have excelled at their own public high schools. The solons in Austin, however, have decided to privilege affluent and overwhelmingly white suburbanites over the rest of the state. So much for fairness and standards.