African Men. Hollywood Stereotypes. [mamahope.org]

Egyptian Actor Convicted of Slandering Islam

Color me unflabbergasted. This is what that country is made of, away from the relatively westernized Cairo.

Anniversary of death of Richard Nixon, April 22nd 1994

I remember in the early 90s, when Nixon went to Moscow. He met with the Yeltsin government, and then with some former officials he knew from the Soviet era. He was criticized in the Moscow newspapers for doing the latter, and I marveled: Richard Nixon was lambasted in Pravda for hanging around with communists. I could hear the very wheel of history creak.

"Why Marxism?" | An Interview with C. Bradley Thompson

Random Rock Bloggage

RIP Levon Helm, gone to join Rick Danko and Richard Manuel at the Great Gig In The Sky. Farewell to one of the original Roots Rockers. In an era when hippy-dippy freaky-deaky flower-power was ascendant, The Band made some of the most timeless music in rock, by staying down-to-earth and reconnecting with America's rich musical soil. Plenty of rockers played drums; Levon was one of those who played music. He will be missed, and his work will not fade away.

Katie Roiphe in Newsweek on women's sexual fantasies

Is this a trend? Well, a long time ago, I read an interview with the late rocker Gerry Rafferty, in which he used the word "factoid". Nowadays, factoid just means a bit of trivia, but he tried to deploy it with the following meaning: Factoid: n, An event, trend, or set of circumstances which does not exist, except in newsprint. I thought that was a very clever and useful mot, and I'm sorry it never caught on. I suspect it applies in this case, too. But there's no doubt the practices Ms. Roiphe ticks off are real, of course. I don't envy their practitioners. Being a happily and securely married head of a nuclear family, I don't think I'm missing a thing. There's one thing that sexual liberationists don't have that most other people do: A private life. Technical note: I don't know why I can't insert line breaks recently, my apologies for the jammed-up layout.

Israel and the United Nations

Religion in the Modern World

The South

Here's a piece on the Master's newest champion, Gerald Lester Watson Jr., known as Bubba, on (Atlanta-based) CNN. It contains a good-natured trip through common stereotypes of the American South. Usually these things, especially in the NYT, come off like a National Geographic piece, our brave reporter venturing into the terra incognito west of Fort Lee, NJ, east of Anaheim, CA, and south of Washington, DC. But there's nothing like that in this one, so enjoy. Look at popular TV comedies over the past 20 years, and you see one distinguishing mark of Southerners. They are the only group anymore that can both laugh at themselves, and are comfortable with other people doing so as well. But sometimes I wonder: Is there any other place in the country where people move in, start new lives, enjoy the surroundings, and yet feel perfectly free to sneer at the natives?

Diversicrats censor family mural

A 17-year-old paints a mural of a boy growing up into a family man. This is deemed offensive by the school & painted over. Idiots... Via David Thompson

Why Megan McArdle can't get a taxi in DC

Not a problem for me in my suburban commuter-ville, but an interesting analysis nonetheless. We talk of participants in the free market creating prosperous communities by pursuing their own interests, a la Adam Smith. But government also pursues its own self interest, which is to entrench and extend itself, in this case by punishing and deterring private entry into its "turf".

Laws are for everyone

A platitude? Maybe. But something a friend else-web said some time back put it into fresh perspective for me. He knew of someone who took his dog for a walk in the woods, now that hunting was out of season & it was safe to do so. But he decided to let the dog run loose, because leash laws are "stupid". Well, what if there was a hunter in the woods, who thought hunting seasons were stupid, too?