Recommended Reading
from Bruce
ALEXANDRA HAZLETT: SPEAKER CHRONICLES ADVENTURES OF AN INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST (athensnews.com)
Amy Goodman, co-host and producer of "Democracy Now!", riveted a large audience at Ohio University Thursday evening with tales of her and her colleagues' adventures standing up to authority and practicing the sort of independent journalism that is the exception rather than the rule these days.
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): On Teacher Accountability (irascibleprofessor.com)
After eight years of No Child Left Behind, I was kind of hoping, what with the onset of the depression, that the federal government would be preoccupied enough that they'd leave education alone. I was wrong.
Mark Morford: Great American Detox (sfgate.com)
Which is better: To be rich 'n' slothful, or lean 'n' panicky?
Rob Horning: The "gleefully frugal" (popmatters.com)
I found this NYT article about the alleged resurgence of thriftiness as an ethic strangely depressing. Isn't this what I had been hoping for in writing all these screeds against consumerism, that there would be a return to some more sensible set of values once the waste and frivolity of status consumption was revealed to all? I don't know, may...
Jessica Kinnison: Learning to Change (jacksonfreepress.com)
JoEva Flettrich turned off the fluorescent lights in her office after 23 years on the job. The lights are an external manifestation of the change she wants to see in her personal life-like a haircut or sitting in a different seat at the dinner table.
Ed Pilkington: The town that voted for a corpse (guardian.co.uk)
In Winfield, Missouri, voters have elected a dead man for his fourth two-year term as mayor.
KAREN J. WINKLER: The Literary Tradition of Women (chronicle.com)
Q&A With Elaine Showalter, author of "A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx."
Miles Raymer: Advertisers Go from Licensing Songs to Releasing Them (Chicago Reader)
The synergy of marketing and indie music has evolved so swiftly that selling a tune for use in a commercial or video game seems almost quaint. Marketers aren't just horning in on the territory of record labels' promo departments -- they're starting to act like labels.
20 QUESTIONS: Paul Ben-Victor (popmatters.com)
Prolific television and film actor Paul Ben-Victor wants to be remembered most for his knack for throwing one helluva dinner.
Chris Riemenschneider: Once a side project, the band Halloween, Alaska has survived out of love (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Never mind how great the new Halloween, Alaska record is, although "Champagne Downtown" is indeed one to behold. Scenes of America's hastening fade from glory are set to a slower-moving sonic backdrop that sounds like the comfortably numb whir inside a car being driven between Hollywood and Las Vegas.
Will Harris: A Chat with Johnny Galecki, Co-star of "The Big Bang Theory" and "Roseanne" (bullz-eye.com)
That credit tag at the end of the Christmas episode was really very touching. You grow very close to these characters and even protective of them, and we're five hypersensitive actors.
Video and Music: Stand By Me (vimeo.com)
This just builds and builds. If you have five minutes, it will make you smile -- even on tax day.--Andrew Tobias
David Bruce: "Voltaire's 'Candide': A Discussion Guide" (lulu.com)
Free download.
The Weekly Poll
The 'Know thy Enemy' Edition...
The ancient Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu (400-320 BC) wrote in his acclaimed work, The Art of War...
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
I whole-heartedly believe in that wisdom and think that progressives should peruse conservative web sites regularly in order to keep up with current conservative trends, strategy and dogma. i.e Know thy Enemy.
That said, the question is... Do you read any conservative web sites and if so, which ones?
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to
answered:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, windy and a bit nippy.
Fired By Fascists
Vauro Senese
One of Italy's most popular cartoonists has been fired by state television company RAI for an anti-government drawing deemed offensive to victims of last week's earthquake.
Vauro Senese's dismissal on Wednesday sparked an angry reaction from the center-left opposition which branded it censorship underscoring the grip that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has over Italy's media.
The cartoon appeared on current affairs program Annozero, whose coverage of the authorities' handling of the earthquake has been attacked by ruling politicians since it was aired last Thursday.
As well as firing Senese, RAI Director General Mauro Masi, who was recently appointed by Berlusconi'a parliamentary majority, ordered the program's anchorman Michele Santoro to "re-balance" his coverage in this Thursday's program.
Vauro Senese
Visits Egypt
Daniel Barenboim
Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim will lead the Cairo Symphony Orchestra Thursday in his first performance in Egypt, bringing his campaign to bridge divides through music to the heart of the Arab world for the first time.
He will conduct the orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and play several piano solos at the Cairo Opera House.
The visit by the famed conductor and pianist has been largely welcomed by mainstream Egyptian intellectuals and artists because of Barenboim's outspoken support of Palestinian statehood, criticism of the Israeli government and his contention that there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those views even earned him honorary Palestinian citizenship, which he accepted in 2007.
He is known for promoting understanding by bringing together young musicians from Israel and around the Arab and Muslim worlds in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He helped create the project with late Palestinian-American intellectual and activist Edward Said, with whom he developed a close friendship after a chance meeting in the lobby of a London hotel.
Daniel Barenboim
Women Attacked
Afghanistan
Dozens of young women braved crowds of bearded men screaming "dogs!" on Wednesday to protest an Afghan law that lets husbands demand sex from their wives. Some of the men picked up small stones and pelted the women. "Slaves of the Christians!" chanted the 800 or so counter-demonstrators, a mix of men and women. A line of female police officers locked hands to keep the groups apart.
The warring protests highlight the explosive nature of the women's rights debate in Afghanistan. Both sides are girding for battle over the legislation, which has sparked an international uproar since being quietly signed into law last month.
The law says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days, unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home without a male escort.
Afghanistan
Rupert Hates Journalism
News Corp
News Corp said on Tuesday that it has formed a new unit to share journalism across all its properties, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Fox News and The Times of London.
Rupert Murdoch's international media conglomerate said that John Moody, executive vice president of news editorial at Fox News, will run the unit and report to Murdoch.
Michael Clemente, who joined Fox this year after 27 years at Walt Disney Co's ABC News, will report to Fox Chief Executive Roger Ailes.
Moody will work with news chiefs at News Corp's properties to improve News Corp's newsgathering efficiency and find ways to cut costs, News Corp said in a statement. Moody said it was too early to provide examples of how this will work.
News Corp
Catalog Online
ARChive of Contemporary Music
A catalog of the world's largest archive of popular music - which includes gems like Keith Richards' old blues records - is going online.
The materials at the ARChive of Contemporary Music in Tribeca will be available for public inspection under the agreement announced last week with Columbia University.
The ARChive includes more than 2 million recordings, 3 million photographs, books, press kits, videos and memorabilia.
Pop music lovers won't be able to listen to the music online, but the catalog will provide authoritative data about the sound recordings in the collection.
ARChive of Contemporary Music
UK Share Up 10 Percent
U.S. Pop Market
One in 10 albums bought in the United States last year was by a British act, figures from the BPI, which represents the British recorded music business, showed on Tuesday.
The rise to 10 percent from 8.5 percent in 2007 was due to a mixture of established bands like Coldplay, which released "VivaLa Vida or Death and All His Friends," and Radiohead, with "In Rainbows," and newer acts like Duffy, Leona Lewis and Estelle.
There is one caveat, however. British pop stars are gaining a growing share of a rapidly declining U.S. market.
U.S. Pop Market
Italian Deal
Getty Museum
California's Getty Museum, one of the world's richest art institutions, has received the first two artworks from Italy under a deal that settled a 2006 dispute over looted antiquities.
Getty officials said on Wednesday that two life-size ancient bronze statues discovered in the volcano-destroyed Italian city of Pompeii and owned by the National Archeological Museum in Naples will undergo restoration by Getty conservation experts.
The priceless statues, known as Ephebe as a lampbearer and Apollo as an archer, also will be on display for two years at the Getty Villa, a reconstruction of a Pompeii villa that is dedicated to the study of Roman and Greek antiquities, in the beach city of Malibu.
They are two of only about 30 surviving bronze statues from the period. The Getty will use the expertise it has gained in quake-prone California to strengthen the statues before their return to Italy, which also has a history of devastating earthquakes.
Getty Museum
Auction's Off
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's glove is not going once, going twice - or going anywhere.
A scheduled auction of the pop singer's possessions was called off Tuesday after Jackson and Julien's Auction House reached a settlement to their dispute over whether 2,000 items from Neverland Ranch were ever intended for sale.
Specific terms were not disclosed. But in short, Jackson keeps his things, while Julien's keeps its exhibition, which was open to the public and originally meant to promote next week's sale.
Julien has said he spent $2 million organizing the sale, which another auctioneer estimated could have fetched $12 million. The exhibition in Beverly Hills costs $20 to attend, and auction catalogues - a $50 single volume and $200, five-volume boxed set - were still selling, Julien said.
Michael Jackson
Sues TV Network For Defamation
Gloria Trevi
Mexican pop diva Gloria Trevi is accusing a Mexican television network and the host of one of the country's most popular entertainment television shows of conspiring to attack her reputation, according a lawsuit.
Trevi's lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Hidalgo County district court, named Mexican network TV Azteca, its U.S. affiliate Azteca America and Pati Chapoy, host of "Ventaneando," a popular entertainment news show specializing in celebrity exposes. The lawsuit seeks damages that have yet to be specified, said her lawyer, Raymond Thomas.
Trevi was an international pop superstar until police arrested her, her manager and a backup singer in 2000, accusing them of luring young girls into their entourage and sexually abusing them. Trevi spent almost five years in prisons in Brazil and Mexico before she was acquitted on charges of kidnapping, rape and corruption of minors.
Her lawsuit claims the TV network tried to stop her comeback through a campaign of slander, libel and defamation, among other charges, as retribution for her refusing to sign with them. It accused the network of spreading rumors that Trevi was spotted with a notorious drug cartel leader, forcing her to move her family to McAllen where she began to resurrect her career.
Gloria Trevi
Slams Woody Allen
American Apparel
A clothing company known for its racy ads is fighting a $10 million lawsuit brought by Woody Allen, arguing that it can't have damaged his reputation by using his image because the film director has already ruined it himself.
The 73-year-old Allen started the fight against American Apparel Inc. when he sued the company last year for using his image on the company's billboards in Hollywood and New York and on a Web site.
Allen, who does not endorse products in the United States, said he had not authorized the displays, which the Los Angeles-based company said were up for only a week.
Now the company plans to make Allen's relationships to actress Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn the focus of a trial scheduled to begin in federal court in Manhattan on May 18, according to the company's lawyer, Stuart Slotnick.
American Apparel
Fires Back
Woody Allen
Actor-director Woody Allen has fired back against American Apparel's effort to drag his personal life into a civil court case, saying the clothing company is harassing him.
Lawyers for the 73-year-old Allen filed new legal papers in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday. The papers say American Apparel isn't playing fair by trying to expose his family life, personal finances and career. They say it's a "scorched earth" approach.
Los Angeles-based American Apparel was put on the defensive after Allen sued the company last year for putting his image on its billboards in Hollywood and New York and on a Web site.
Woody Allen
Repugs Rebuff Prostitution Tax
Nevada
Nevada lawmakers defeated a proposed prostitution tax that had won support from brothel owners and working ladies willing to do their part to ease the state's $3 billion budget crisis.
Nevada, one of only two U.S. states that allow some prostitution, is reeling from a deep economic recession that has led to high numbers of foreclosures, dwindling tourism revenues and a gaping budget shortfall.
State Senator Bob Coffin, a Democrat, proposed levying a $5-per-customer service tax on patrons of some 20 legal brothels operating in rural Nevada, all of them outside Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, where prostitution remains outlawed.
But a sharply divided Nevada state Senate committee voted 4-3 Thursday to kill the tax, which Coffin said would have raised an estimated $2 million a year.
Nevada
Texas Cattle Rancher
Deep Shit
Mack Stark figures cattle raisers can appreciate the name of his west central Texas ranch and makes no apologies for the words in big black letters on the steel arch over the dirt and gravel driveway. The name's not exactly fit to print, but let's just say "Deep Droppings Cattle Co." or "Deep Excrement Cattle Co." wouldn't have the same effect. "That has a ring to it," the 75-year-old rancher said.
After all, it's why cowboy boots go up almost to your knees. That comes in handy in this part of the state where manure runs deep and cars are outnumbered by cattle haulers rumbling along Texas Highway 36 in and out of Comanche, about 10 miles to the west of the Starks' 140-acre ranch.
And thus the name Mack Stark gave to his operation "six or eight years ago" after a tough day of herding and moving cattle and, naturally, stepping in it.
Deep Shit
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research for April 6-12. Listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation.
1. (1) "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 22.98 million viewers.
2. (2) "American Idol" (Tuesday), Fox, 22.81 million viewers.
3. (3) "Dancing with the Stars," ABC, 19.88 million viewers.
4. (5) "NCIS," CBS, 17.81 million viewers.
5. (X) NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: Michigan St. vs. North Carolina," CBS, 17.65 million viewers.
6. (7) "The Mentalist," CBS, 16.92 million viewers.
7. (4) "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 16.62 million viewers.
8. (8) "Dancing with the Stars Results," ABC, 14.56 million viewers.
9. (12) "Criminal Minds," CBS, 13.61 million viewers.
10. (18) "House," Fox, 13.29 million viewers.
11. (X) "60 Minutes," CBS, 12.82 million viewers.
12. (16) "CSI: NY," CBS, 12.5 million viewers.
13. (18) "Without a Trace," CBS, 12.15 million viewers.
14. (X) "Prelude to a Championship," CBS, 12.15 million viewers.
15. (22) "Surviving Suburbia," ABC, 11.25 million viewers.
16. (16) "Survivor: Tocantins," CBS, 11.24 million viewers.
17. (20) "24," Fox, 10.96 million viewers.
18. (X) "Amazing Race 14," CBS, 10.57 million viewers.
19. (X) "Cold Case," CBS, 10.56 million viewers.
20. (32) "Harper's Island," CBS, 10.21 million viewers.
Ratings
In Memory
Judith Krug
Judith Krug, a director of the Chicago-based American Library Association and a founder of its Banned Books Week, has died. She was 69.
She had been head of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom since 1967.
Banned Books Weeks has been observed since 1982 during the last week of September. ALA officials say the event celebrates intellectual freedom.
Judith Krug
In Memory
Lee Madden
Lee Madden, who directed the cult film "Hell's Angels '69," died of complications from pneumonia on Thursday in Camarillo, Calif. He was 82.
Madden's first film was the 1969 release "Hell's Angels" for American International Pictures. The film starred the real Oakland Hell's Angels, including Sonny Barger, then the president of the Angels. It was the only fiction film in which the gang ever participated.
Among Madden's other feature directing credits were 1970's "Angel Unchained," a biker remake of "The Magnificent Seven" starring Tyne Daly and Don Stroud that Madden also wrote and produced; "The Night God Screamed" (1971), starring 1940s icon Jeanne Crain; and "Night Creature" (1978), starring Donald Pleasence.
The Brooklyn native also directed episodes of 1970s TV series including "Cade's County," starring Glenn Ford, "Bearcats!," starring Rod Taylor, and "The Most Deadly Game," starring Ralph Bellamy.
His company, Lee Madden Associates, was a major supplier of industrial films and TV commercials. His principal clients were automobile companies.
Among Madden's survivors is a son, David Madden, executive vice president programing at Fox Television Studios.
Lee Madden
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