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By E.J. Dionne
$14.00
E.J. Dionne
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There’s a revolution underway in Chinese culture as young women flock from villages to factory employment in the cities, leaving traditional values behind.
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By Marie Cocco — Two weeks ago I wrote that this was going to be a Wal-Mart Christmas. I could not have anticipated the most macabre manifestation of the syndrome: the death of a Wal-Mart worker who was trampled by a mob of early shoppers Friday on Long Island.
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By David Sirota — Judging by the proliferation of capital letters in the e-mail correspondence I receive, many seem worried that Barack Obama may not deliver the promised “change we can believe in.”
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By Regina Marler — A new volume of the late poet’s correspondence sheds fresh light on the anguish and art of Sylvia Plath.
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AP photo / Tina Fineberg
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By Chris Hedges — The change from a print-based to an image-based society has transformed our nation. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.
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A new book argues that the Mississippi Delta was the birthplace of what in 1903 W.C. Handy called “the weirdest music I had ever heard.”
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By Joe Conason — Obama can be expected to behave as Bush ought to have acted in a time of national crisis. That means drawing on goodwill wherever he can find it, drawing on talent regardless of party and drawing on the powerful desire of most Americans to live again in one nation.
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A new book investigates the illicit trade in antiquities and raises uneasy questions over cultural patrimony, the fevers of nationalism and the imperial ambitions of museums.
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guardian.co.uk
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Former Secretary of State and current dance sensation Colin Powell graced the stage of a London hip-hop concert “in celebration of African culture.” The song he sang and danced to? A Nigerian hit about people spending money gleaned from U.S. Internet scam victims.
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Mr. Fish
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The renowned author sits down with Truthdig literary editor Steve Wasserman to tell stories about his books, the many loves of his life—including dinosaurs and Halloween—and his own starring role in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rise to fame.
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Flickr / M@rcopako
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By Marie Cocco — In its own way, Starbucks has a lot in common with SUVs, hot tubs and television screens wide enough to fill a wall. That is, it represents the bit-by-bit extravagances that helped get us into the tight economic jam we find ourselves in today.
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Illustration by Peter Scheer
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For 33 years, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review has brought the literary world to the doorstep of the nation’s largest book-buying community. That era is about to end, a fact that disturbs the section’s former editors who have written this formal protest.
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By David Sirota — America has become homogenized. From suburb to suburb, what people eat, think and enjoy is the same. This is not good for a democracy.
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By Marie Cocco — One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. And the ones that mother gives you soon will control your cholesterol.
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What do abortion, nude beaches and group sex have in common? According to author and sex therapist Marty Klein, they’re all targets of a coordinated war on sex. “The government,” he says, “has acquired more and more tools to regulate sexual expression over the last thirty years.”
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AP photo / Kevin Sanders, file
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By Chris Hedges — I survive the degradation that has become America—a land that exalts itself as a bastion of freedom and liberty while it tortures human beings, stripped of their rights, in offshore penal colonies, a land that wages wars defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, a land that turns its back on its poor, its weak, its mentally ill, in a relentless drive to embrace totalitarian capitalism—because I read books.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Barack Obama keeps trying to end the wars over culture and religion, and good for him. The 1960s are so 40 years ago. But Obama’s opponents, as well as some of his friends, won’t let him do it.
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By Amy Goodman — The world lost one of its great comedians this week with the death at age 71 of George Carlin. Carlin had a career as a stand-up comic that spanned a half-century, in which he continually broke new ground, targeting those in power with his wit and genius.
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By Ellen Goodman — It all began with a case in France, but the uproar has resonance in the United States too.
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Robert Scheer discusses his new book, “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America,” with USC’s chair of history on the “Politics of Culture” radio show.
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By Ellen Goodman — As the dust settles from the recent roundup of allegedly abused children from a fundamentalist retreat, some are asking whether saving these kids is worth the human cost.
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Flickr / FourthFloor
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The Barack Obama campaign’s “culture clash” in Philadelphia goes beyond the unwillingness to pay out “street money.” The L.A. Times details the many challenges of trying to wage a new kind of politics in the city where our nation’s politics began. Update: “Ward leaders are pretty pissed.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The pope came to the U.S. as a quiet but forceful critic of “an increasingly secular and materialistic culture.” Almost any American who paid attention to his sermon Thursday had to be uncomfortable because all of us are shaped by the very forces he was criticizing.
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By Marie Cocco — The latest plot twists are stunners, even as they unfold against the scandalous backdrop of the Bush administration’s sorry regulatory record.
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By David Sirota — Since the 1960s, bigotry has undergone an aesthetic makeover. Today, the most pernicious racists do not wear pointy hoods, scream epithets and anonymously burn crosses from behind masks. They don starched suits, recite sententious bromides and stage political lynchings before television cameras.
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By Ellen Goodman — Just below the text there was a Google ad inviting me to take a quiz. “Christian? Jewish? Muslim? Atheist? See which Religion is Right for You.”
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By Larry Blumenfeld — Ned Sublette’s remarkable new book tells an inspiring story of resilience and resistance by ordinary men and women who won’t cooperate in their own erasure.
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AP photo / Carlos Osorio
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By Chris Hedges — Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges—a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy—to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic.
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By Mark Arax — It is said that behind every great fortune there is a crime. Here’s a true-life drama of self-invention, greed and ambition involving four larger-than-life men who singly, and together, helped create California. A book to be read after you’ve watched “There Will Be Blood.”
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By Ellen Goodman — Pregnancy is way cool on the big screen these days. Moviemakers seem to be reflecting a cultural tide that has shifted key positions on both the left and the right.
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By Zachary Karabell — With religious passions inflaming and complicating politics worldwide, the very project of a secular future is threatened. In “The Stillborn God,” Mark Lilla reveals the roots of the age-old quest to bring political life under God’s authority. He also explores how modern Western thinkers found a way to free politics from theological power and build barriers against destructive religious fanaticism.
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By Ellen Goodman — Pretty soon, we’re going have to amend the favorite mom and dad moniker of the moment. Those much vaunted helicopter parents are turning into black-helicopter parents. The image of parents hovering over their kids is morphing into the darker image of parents spying on their kids.
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AP Photo / Stephin Chernin
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An aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is attempting to work some spin-control magic on what was probably (and unintentionally, according to the aide) Ahmadinejad’s biggest headline-grabber from his speech at Columbia University: his assertion that, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”
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Photo by Arturo Perez y Perez / Courtesy of Malaleche
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By Rosa-Linda Fregoso — Cinema, communication and American studies scholar Rosa-Linda Fregoso takes a look at recent exhibitions and installations by the Colectivo Malaleche, a Mexican artists’ collective that addresses the plight of women, migrants and other vulnerable groups through their work.
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By Chris Hedges — In his book “Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,” John Gray warns that as the era of liberal intervention in international affairs wanes, it is being replaced with “primitive versions of religion” that will be used to fuel apocalyptic violence.
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macadamcage.com
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Gina Nahai —
Truthdig is pleased to present these two excerpts from the novel “Caspian Rain” by Gina Nahai, best-selling author of “Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith.” In “Rain,” her fourth novel, Nahai explores Iran’s complex culture through the eyes of a group of memorable characters living in various sectors of society during the years leading up to the Islamic Revolution.
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By Steve Wasserman — Although coverage of books in major newspapers may seem to have taken a precipitous downturn in recent months, this decline has been in the works for a while, says longtime writer, literary editor and book aficionado Steve Wasserman, who opines in this CJR article about the high costs of this lamentable cultural sea change.
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By Eugene Robinson — Back when the renowned author was in hiding because of a death threat from the Ayatollah Khomeini, he felt that John le Carre was no help to his cause. “The Satanic Verses” had sparked a spat between two literary lions.
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The iconic writer, who challenged conventional wisdom through 14 novels and numerous essays, died Wednesday from a brain injury. Vonnegut survived a nearly lifelong smoking habit only to succumb to a recent fall in his apartment. He once joked that he would prefer to die in a plane crash on Kilimanjaro and said he would avoid suicide “so as not to set a bad example for my children.”
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cnn.com
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A Hong Kong broadcaster is about to release China’s first gay-themed TV show. Although the program will air only over the Internet, it’s a big step for a country that treated homosexuality, or “buggery,” as a mental illness until 2001.
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By Paul Cummins — The author takes aim at the shortcomings of the contemporary American educational system, laments the current state of arts education, and wonders what exactly schools are preparing younger generations to do—and become.
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Stephen Colbert says goodbye to an American icon, who began his career fighting the Nazis and would go on to capture the cultural temperature for decades. Plus, don’t miss Fox News’ reaction: “You should not kill Captain America when we’re at war.”
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By Amy Goodman — The legendary entertainer and activist may be in his ninth decade, but his commitment to social justice is as fervent as ever.
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cantonrep.com
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The Dixie Chicks, who became country music pariahs after the band’s lead singer criticized President Bush in 2003, swept the Grammys on Sunday, winning every award the band was nominated for—five in all—plus a standing ovation.
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Read around the cliches about single women and cats etc. and find in this NYT story an interesting window into how shifting social values and socioeconomic stratification contribute to a marriage “happiness gap” for many Americans without college educations.
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northernstars.ca
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The Mamas and the Papas’ Denny Doherty died on Friday at the age of 66. The singer had suffered a brief illness and was experiencing kidney problems.
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robertredford.com
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Robert Redford opened the Sundance Film Festival by demanding an apology for the war in Iraq. The festival features several decidedly political films, including “Chicago 10,” which centers on demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic convention, and “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.”
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Etiquette experts still don’t approve of sending thank-you notes via e-mail, despite the growing popularity of the practice. Because it’s not the sentiment that counts, but the former tree it’s written on.
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Lake Superior State University has recommended the banishment of 16 words and phrases from the English language, including “Brangelina” and “ask your doctor.” The annual list targets expressions that are irritating, overused or generally ill-applied.
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