Presidential candidates’ personal preferences.
A rather amusing article reviewing the release of the DVD of Season 1 of “Hawaii 5-0.”
NY Times’ Mark Bittman on getting the best steak frites in Paris. Mmm. Fries.
Plus, Bittman with a risotto recipe, along with the accompanying video. The butter and oil that chef Mario Batali put into his risotto – goodness. But, looks tasty and otherwise, Bittman and Batali made it look easy. Almost makes me want to cook. Umm, yeah, right…
A profile on Allyson Hannigan, the ex-Willow of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame, and currently Lily on “How I Met Your Mother” on CBS, a pretty darn good comedy. And, I agree – Lily and Marshall are probably the only couple in the TV multiverses who are in a healthy relationship – heck, they’re surviving Marshall’s time as a Columbia Law student. All they have to do is get through Marshall’s bar review experience, and they’re golden.
Serious note: Law Day – celebrating rule of law, not about celebrating lawyers, the NY Times editorial on May 1 notes. I’ll applaud that.
But, meanwhile, I found it highly disturbing that the Daily News spent Sunday and Monday on a Special Exclusive on the city’s alleged worst lawyers – people who resigned or were disciplined because they seriously screwed up. That’s nice to know, but not quite sure what else Daily News was trying to do – as if people didn’t already have little faith in the system as it is – as if we don’t learn what not to do.
Interesting article on the current trends on Civil Rights history, Southern history, and American conservatism – as a new generation of historians consider examining the Civil Rights era from the lenses of the White moderates. Patricia Cohen writes:
Conservative appeals to limit the government’s reach and emphasize individual freedoms resonated not only in the South, but in the North as well, said Joseph Crespino, 35, whose book, “In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution” (Princeton University Press), was just published.
The racial and religious conservatism of whites, for instance, “converged in unexpected ways in the fight over federal tax policy toward Southern private schools,” Mr. Crespino writes. He said that while many Southern whites set up “segregation academies” for the sole purpose of avoiding school integration, others were genuinely interested in sending their children to church schools for religious reasons. “By the late ’70s, this issue of defending church schools against harassment by the federal government and the I.R.S.,” Mr. Crespino explained in an interview, led to the “mobilization of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.”
Mr. Crespino, who grew up in rural Mississippi, said his research was partly inspired by his experience. Many of the African-Americans he met in the deeply segregated precincts of Chicago while he was an undergraduate at Northwestern University had come from his home state and were struggling with the same issues they had had down South. “Rather than treating white Mississipians as these racist pariahs in larger postwar liberal America, I wanted to treat them as part of a broader popular reaction against modern liberalism,” he said. “I wanted to show how central the resistance to civil rights policies were in shaping modern conservative policies.” [….]
Like Mr. Crespino, Matthew D. Lassiter was motivated to research his own Southern roots. He found a gap between the history he had learned in school and his experience growing up in its wake in Sandy Springs, a white, middle-class suburb of Atlanta. “I was trying to find my own people, my parents and grandparents,” said Mr. Lassiter, 36, who wrote “The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South” (Princeton) published last year. “There were a few white Southerners who were liberals, a larger number throwing the rocks with the rioters and the vast group in the middle were left out of the story.”
As a graduate student at the University of Virginia, he taught undergraduates and assigned the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” in which he wrote, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride towards freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than justice.”
Reading this just tempted me to go get the books; really reminded me of what I studied back in college and discussing the course of post-World War II America with the TA’s. … ok, pardon, geeking out as the former history major that I am. 😉
But, it is interesting to wonder – what is the moderates’ position in society? Are moderates more a threat than they realize, by virtue of what they hold as priorities? Or are they too busy concerned about stability and status quo (maybe even too scared shitless) to dare pursue a course of justice and a better world?
Hmm. Kind of makes me question why I consider myself a a left-of-center moderate. Kind of.
Leading to an interesting question, which NBC’s “Heroes” made me wonder: “If You Could Save Millions of Lives, Wouldn’t You?” Would you dare to save the world? … Well, Monday’s episode was just plain awesome. And, reminds me once again why time traveling episodes drive me a little nuts (the possibilities of paradoxes astound me). Actors Masi Oka (as Future Hiro and Present Hiro – thumbs up!) and James Kyson Lee (as Hiro’s sidekick Ando) play well as Asians/APA’s on tv. Oh, and finally (even if it was in the future) the character Dr. Mohinder Suresh takes a heroic action ( I won’t say more, in case others haven’t watched yet)… once we head back to the present, well, surely the hard part’s coming…
More cool space stuff: pictures from Jupiter.
On the local side of things:
The planned arts library in Brooklyn is hitting a snag; not easy when the Brooklyn Public Library is experiencing another change in leadership. Guess I can only hope for the best for BPL, since libraries in the city need better hours and facilities as a basic matter.
And, last but not least: Frank Bruni reviews Max Brenner. I did like the Union Sq. one myself, but he’s right – it can be a bit much.