waldheim

2004-05-29T05:53:00.000-07:00

The future of the blog. For most of this blog's existance, now almost a year, I've been thinking about whether I should stop it. It's still inconclusive. But I'm about to start travels that will last about a month, during which time I'm extremely unlikely to post anything. After that, well, who knows. I think I'm probably going to give this up for good--at least this blog. I have an idea or two for a different, more focused blog; but again, I don't know if they'll go anywhere. Most likely blogging, as I said in my very first posts, was something to keep me intellectually occupied while not in school. Come August I'll start school again and hopefully won't need the blog.

So, right, we'll see. Maybe I'll see you in July, and maybe not.

2004-05-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

What do you do with a drunken royal? Pretenders to thrones are a famously dissolute lot, but this dispatch in the Guardian is particularly amusing.

Leaving a dinner given by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia on the evening of their son's nuptials, the heir to the Italian throne, Prince Vittorio Emanuele, was said to have hit his cousin and rival, Duke Amedeo, on the steps of the Spanish royal residence.

One report said the Duke was twice punched in the mouth and would have fallen to the ground had he not been caught by deposed Queen Anne-Marie of Greece.

The daily, La Repubblica, said Duke Amedeo was then helped inside the Zarzuela palace, where an unidentified Arab potentate applied an ice pack to his bruised lips.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that real monarchs like Juan Carlos and family would hang out with the obviously lesser-status pretenders like Vittorio Emanuele, Amedeo, and Anne-Marie.

2004-05-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

Linkily delicious. I'm not always good about acknowledging links, but I will now thank Zach and Josh. Also, a while ago something called Blog Father copied Crooked Timber's blogroll into a post, which I guess counts.

2004-05-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

David Dellinger dies. It is with great sadness that I note the death of David Dellinger, a noted peace and social justice activist. Dellinger is most famous for being the "adult" member of the Chicago 7, but he got his start as union activist at Yale in the 1930s. He was then a consciencious objector in World War II and continued his work in the anti-nuclear movement. His most recent fight was against the FTAA. When he was in jail for refusing to fight in World War II he also refused to eat in the whites only part of the prison cafeteria. AP (here via the Boston Herald) has an obituary. Ron Jacobs has an appreciation on the CounterPunch website. (More obits will be added here as I find them.)

I met Dellinger almost exactly three years ago, when he came to a Yale reunion (he was class of 1936). It was about the time I was (to quote a friend) "collecting old leftists." (Moe Foner, also now dead, was among my collection also. Surprisingly, the original member of my collection, my own grandfather, seems to be longest surviving. Note that the term is "old leftists" as in aged, not Old Left, although to some extent they go together.) As I just wrote to his wife, Dellinger was inspiring, approachable, and supportive of Alumni for a Better Yale, which I was then founding. Dellinger has inspired many generations of Yale activists, and I suspect his memory will inspire several more.

Dellinger was inspiring, and for the most part I agreed whole-hartedly with his politics. That said, one part of his story always sat ill with me. He described how he awoke politically during a trip to Nazi Germany after college. Not a bad place for a leftist to become radicalized. But I wondered how someone who became political after seeing the Nazis could make his first political stance a refusal to fight in World War II. That said, as someone who does not always reject violent struggle, it is inspiring to have known such a devoted pacifist.

The world is certainly a poorer place now that Dellinger is dead. It's not a phrase I usually use, but now it seems appropriate: may he rest in peace.

UPDATE: More obituaries in Thursday's papers. Washington Post; New York Times, which quotes Paul Berman: "Dellinger himself became the single most important leader of the national antiwar movement, at its height, from 1967 through the early 1970's. You could quarrel with some of his political judgments, but he was always sober, always resolute, always selfless and always brave." See also a nice little post at One Pot Meal.

2004-05-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

Things to read. With more or less in the way of comments.

At Arab News, Khaled M. Batarfi writes a not-quite-convincing opinion piece calling for a one-state solution to Israel/Palestine, in which Israel would become a binational, secular, democratic state. Jewschool's Mobius, though whom I found it, posts his largely negative reactions.

Also through Jewschool, I find this post from Ampersand about how Cynthia McKinney got royally screwed by the "liberal media."

Meanwhile, the other Jewish blog I read, Protocols, has absolutely plummetted in quality since Steven I. Weiss left it. He's now posting at Fiddish, but it's unclear to me how he'll adapt to a "slightly-edited" blog. If you do go to Protocols, skip anything Luke Ford writes. But another guest blogger, Daniel Radosh, has been posting some interesting stuff. See his introductory post and his post on humanist Judaism. Of particular note are the comments posted to those posts. I haven't seen such rabid and offensive comments since, well, since anyone posted anything decent on Israel.

At Wonkette, I read Dana Milbank's pool reports during Yale Class Day on Sunday. Last time Bush was at a Yale graduation, Milbank got to write an article about how no one liked him. This time he was stuck across the street wondering where POTUS was. But one thing he was, at least part of the time, was with Yale president Richard Levin. Yeah, the same Yale president Richard Levin who is on the committee investigating the false causus belli that got us into Iraq. Does no one see the glaring problem with Bush hanging out with Levin?

At Crooked Timber, Belle Waring posts about how about the totally outrageous smearing of Brandon Mayfield.

UPDATE: At HNN is an article well worth reading by Irfan Khawaja called "How We--You and Me--Missed the Story of the Taliban in the Years Leading Up to 9-11". I actually think that Khawaja is slightly unfair. Speaking as someone who took part in the Yale rally he mentions, I know that lots of people knew about the Taliban. Indeed, I hated the Taliban before hating the Taliban was cool. I think the question is why it took so long for people who aren't feminists to come around to that conclusion.

2004-05-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Loring for lending her instructive discourse to waldheim last week. In retrospect, it perhaps was a bad week to do it, since I wasn't posting much or even spending much time in front of the computer, but nonetheless it was fun, and I especially enjoyed her post on sports doping and leading me to the book of prettiness.

2004-05-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

Third parties. Paul Martin finally called an election in Canada, which occasions an overview article from the CBC. Included is this:

Liberal support fell by seven points in Ontario, where 42 per cent of respondents said they would vote for the governing party. Much of that support in Ontario is going to the New Democrats, not the Conservatives, according to the poll, conducted for the Globe and Mail and CTV this week.

While the NDP isn't going to win the government, and in that way isn't a "viable" party, it's nice to imagine a country in which a vote for the left-wing third party isn't seen as "giving your vote" to the right-wing party.

2004-05-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

Pretty things. Courtesy of Bookslut, a link to a lovely little book entitled "Sela Ward is more attractive than Shannen Doherty".

2004-05-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

About the only thing that has made me feel moderately patriotic in the last few months. Just when you think the Bush administration is actually going to succeed at strong-holding all three branches of government into going along with all its plans (re-election included), something like this happens and one can rest a bit easier, reminded that America is not an *entirely* totalitarian state. Phew.

2004-05-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

US Doping Scandal. I just think all of this is wicked interesting. To me, the bottom line of this whole story is that American athletic culture is a mess. (Perhaps not a particularly profound or surprising pronouncement, but certainly proven true by this series of events.) Kelli White has been celebrated for winning a whole, whole lot of medals in the past, and we were all suuuuper excited for her to win 3-5 of those 100 we're supposed to win in Athens come August. And yet, because her coach encouraged her to take a drug *that the USADA can't even test for*, she has outed herself as a THG user and has been stripped of her medals since 2000.

Who's really to blame here? I'm not at all convinced that it's White herself. And it does seem that this time around (as opposed to, say, the Ben Johnson scandal in 1988--a scandal I don't really remember, given that I was 8, but which at the time seemed to center almost exclusively on Johnson himself), the sports world is doing a better job of holding both White's coaching staff and the lab that made the drug responsible. But I don't think it's a stretch to say that the scandal goes much, much deeper than the track star and the coach and the lab--all the way down into American culture's relationship to sports. We want athletes to be big and strong and do impressive things, and we implicitly encourage them to use all sorts of performance-enhancing substances to accomplish these things. But even though a whole, whole lot of substances are OK to use, some governing bodies somewhere have decided that others are not (mostly steroids, I think, but maybe other substances too). And so we celebrate the people who run real fast and hit real far and lift a whole lot as long as they 'just' use creatin, etc., but demonize them the second they use something that some organization has decided is not OK.

I'm certainly not arguing that using steroids should be OK--only that if Americans understood sports differently, steroids and creatin and EPO and _all this_ would be an entirely different issue.

If only the whole athletic world could exist in the same drug-less, passionate, down-to-earth way my Division III sports team did . . .

2004-05-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but... Through Jewschool, I learn of Miri Ben-Ari, an Israeli hip-hop violinist. I kid you not. And she's really good!

2004-05-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

Apple! Really!?! APPLE? Yes, folks. That is apparently what Gwyneth and Chris Martin named their baby girl.

2004-05-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

I am a giant tool. After posting yesterday about Erin O'Connor not leaving her tenure track job, I got two fat reminders that I had NOOOOOO idea what I was talking about. EGJ pointed out to me yesterday that there is no reason to burn bridges when leaving any job, and that even if O'Connor had asked for a leave, that would be a highly reasonable request given the career gamble she's taking. And then this morning, I came to work to find an email from Prof. O'Connor herself in my inbox! It turns out that the comment I cited was not only unfair, but mostly untrue. It was totally, totally not OK for me to jump to conclusions about Prof. O'Connor's decisions based only on the comments of some random troll (as I now understand these commenters to be called). In order to avoid any type of further stress for anyone involved, I'm going to delete my old post right now. Sorry, Erin! Rest assured that the neophyte blogger has learned an important lesson.

2004-05-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

Sea shanties. For a project I'm doing for my roommate that is somehow related to teaching English phonetics to French people, I had to make a list of sea shanties I'm able to sing. Where better to look than the website of ARRR!!! the "acapirate" group from Brown? And indeed, they have a very useful compendium of sea shanty lyrics. I'm excited.

2004-05-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

Fat traitors. Apropos Savage Love this week, I just found this blog called Fat Traitors, with the tag line "Former activists reject fat acceptance and accept fat rejection." It's unlikely to become a regular read, but some of the posts are quite interesting. Check out, for instance, the post on Savage Love column in question (although I don't think I buy the argument) and a report back from Fat Pride Day.

2004-05-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

To my California readers. In his latest budget proposal, Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to eliminate funding completely for the Institutes for Labor and Employment at Berkeley and UCLA. There can be no question that his plans are politically motivated. As United Students Against Sweatshops writes: "It is outrageous that labor research is being singled out for elimination by the governor, while research for business and other concerns are left intact. The ILE has generated research for living wage policies, health care access, paid family leave, immigration policy, global outsourcing, and hundreds of other issues that affect working families. Its elimination is not only a direct attack on labor, but also a threat to academic freedom." The fact is, labor centers are to labor what MBA programs are to business--and you don't see Schwarzenegger trying to terminate MBA programs at UC schools. This isn't only a labor issue; it's an issue of academic freedom. The research that the ILE does is considered politically suspect to Schwarzenegger and his Republicans, so the institute's budget is being eliminated.

What's needed in California now is for the Democrats in the state legislature to stand up against the governor. And what's needed for that is for them to hear from Californians. Take a moment to write a letter.

2004-05-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

Rethinking gay marriage. Back when the Goodrich decision first ordering gay marriage licenses in Massachusetts was handed down, I was pessimistic. I wrote that I was afraid that for a relatively small gain of legalizing gay marriage in one state, the people who spearheaded the decision were creating a wedge issue that would drive social conservatives into the arms of the Republicans, when their economic interests suggested that they should be Democrats. Given the importance of this election, I thought that was a mistake to do in an election year.

But you know, it's hard to keep that attitude in the face of articles like this, in today's Times, or the ones I linked to yesterday from the Globe. It's difficult to see what happened yesterday in Massachusetts as anything but an unmitigated vistory for civil rights, and it's hard to argue that such a victory for civil rights should be postponed for election strategy. It also happens (by coincidence, I presume) that the first gay marriages were on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board, which points out the problems and the successes of court-ordered civil rights. On one hand, because school desegregation was mandated by federal courts, and not by the political branches, it was never backed by a general change in attitudes and thus has remained unpopular and unsuccessful to this day. On the other hand, Brown I think has to be seen as a galvanizing moment for the then nascent civil rights movement. Given that my generation is increasingly supportive of gay rights, perhaps we'll look back at the one-two punch of Lawrence and Goodrich as the start of a massive, popular, gay rights movement.

In August, I wrote that the issue of gay marriage might be solvable by divorcing (so to say) the idea of religious marriage and civil marriage. That way, I argued, we would take away some of social baggage that comes with the debate over the word "marriage." Let marriage be a solely religious affair, and let religions do what they want. If they want to only have straight marriages, fine; if they want to allow plural marriages, that's fine too. Civil unions would be what would be needed for all the important civil benefits of marriage--immigration, taxes, children, whatnot. (See also this long post, where I defend the idea.) Living in France has made me change my mind somewhat. In France, the idea I proposed in August is sort of what already exists. Here, every couple gets married at the Marie (city hall) and then, if they chose, gets a religious marriage. Here's the thing, though: although there's a national civil union-type-deal (called Pacs) that gives gay couples many of the rights of marriage, gay marriage itself is still a major issue (one which the Socialists last week decided to support). Apparently, the divorce isn't the panecea I saw it as.

UPDATE: Via Josh, I see an op-ed in the Times by Michael Klarman. He (who is presumably much more qualified to comment than I) argues basically the opposite as me. First, that Brown wasn't that important in the civil rights movement, because there had been a gradual change in attitudes that set the stage for the decision (cf. Lawrence). But troublingly:

Perhaps most important, the decision crystallized Southern whites' resistance to racial change, radicalized Southern politics, and increased the likelihood that protest, once it erupted, would incite a violent response. It was the beating of peaceful black demonstrators by Southern white law enforcement officers — many of whom were carried into office by the wave of racial fanaticism that swept Southern politics after Brown — that repulsed national opinion and led to the passage of landmark civil rights legislation.

I'm not sure what this does to my analysis above.

2004-05-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

John Kerry's penis. (That ought to increase google hits for a while.) The post to which Loring linked seemed to suggest that Wonkette somehow deserved credit for the "Kerry has a big schlong" meme. As long time readers of this blog will know, however, the credit goes to GoodForTheJews.com.

2004-05-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

MoveOn's "Go Big" campaign. Wonkette really says all there is to say about this one. The only thing I want to add is that, as one who received said "Go Big" message, I can safely say that not only was its phallic wording highly unnecessary, the message itself was rather poorly written. I mean, I signed the petition and all (Kerry certainly needs some encouragement to go left instead of middle, and I was far too lazy to write my own damned letter), but really! Can we get some better writers on staff over there at MoveOn?

2004-05-17T22:28:00.000-07:00

I'm really glad Jacob posted on gay marriage. In the Globe link he mentions at the bottom of his post, there's a link to an interview with the Goodridges, the couple from the Massachusetts lawsuit that gloriously began all this. The best part of the interview, which you can play using Flash, is when the interviewer asks the Goodridges' daughter whether her moms should be allowed to be married, and she says, "Of course! Not letting them get married is like saying that only people with yellow hair and blue eyes can go to the bathrooom!"

2004-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

Gay marriage in Massachusetts. Says a gay marriage opponent: "If we just sit around with our hands in our pockets and don't say something, I don't think the world will think we think this is important. For people not to make a statement would almost be a crime." Couldn't have said it better myself. Monday night at midnight, Cambridge started giving out marriage licenses to gay couples, and the Boston Globe covers the ensuing party, with 10,000 people out on Mass Ave in front of City Hall:

What started in the afternoon as a sedate lawn party in front of City Hall, with running children, glow sticks, and panting dogs, had by midnight become a celebration so huge that it was hard to walk across the thin lawn without getting a face full of bubbles, knocking into someone with a sign reading “Mazel Tov,” or colliding with women singing “Going to the Chapel” accompanied by a brass band.

The cheer that went up at about 10 minutes past midnight, when it became clear that the ﬁrst gay couple had ﬁled their application for a marriage license, was so long and so loud that it nearly drowned out the ﬁnal strains of Mendelssohn’s wedding march.

By 12:30 a.m. those cheers were erupting every minute or two, as each couple emerged from the building, marching down an impromptu aisle cleared by the crowd, one step closer to full-ﬂedged marriage.

Indeed, the Globe has pretty good coverage throughout, it being a local story of national significance.

2004-05-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

Light (Jacob) posting ahead. Just a warning (to Loring, too): I've vistors for the next several days, so my posting will likely be light.

2004-05-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

New blogger in town--and no, not the one currently gracing this page. The Ghost of Tom Joad has recently appeared, promising regular commentary on "usually American policy, both foreign and domestic, history, books, music, film, and anything else that I feel I am educated enough to comment on." And I particularly like it, because this blog is listed as an "(Almost) Daily Blog Read." Welcome, Tyler.

2004-05-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

Guest blogger Loring Ann Pfeiffer here, writing from Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, with an empty, crumb-y lunch plate in front of me and an SAT PREP class to teach later this afternoon.

By way of introduction, I'll say the following: until about 3 months ago I haaaaaated blogs. I refused to read them (except if google stalking revealed that someone I had a crush on kept one), and assumed that those of my acquaintances who kept them were true egomaniacs, convinced that their own thoughts were sooooo terribly interesting that the whole, wide world needed to be made aware of them.

But this all changed not too long ago. Being in Hong Kong has left me feeling pretty distant from the kind of intellectual camaraderie I enjoyed in college and during the year following. In this space, blogs have opened up a way for me to engage in some of the kinds of discussion I've been missing since leaving the US last September. Until now, my degree of engagement with these conversations has primarily been limited to eavesdropping (or lurking, I suppose), but with Jacob's invite, I have decided to throw myself into the blogosphere in a more direct way.

The types of blogs I like tend to be of two varieties: these and these (both of these examples come from folks affiliated with my undergraduate institution). The well-written, personal-life-y kind of the first variety satisfies my lust for gossip from people I used to know (however vaguely) and reminds me that it's good to view the world through a more romantic, sense-driven lens than I sometimes remember to utilize on my own; I like the second type because it points me to articles I'd like to read and has a spin on current events I appreciate. I enjoy both Nori's and Prof. Burke's writing styles a whole, whole lot, and find them both highly blog-appropriate, if pretty different, on the whole.

I spend a good bit of time thinking about grad school in the humanities these days, much like a lot of other bloggers and academic publications out there. Despite the e-pleadings of the aforementioned Prof. Burke and Erin O'Connor (via another blog I frequently read), grad school seems like something I'm going to try to do. Victorian Literature and Culture is just too interesting and relevant (although I recognize that some may contest this notion) for me not to at least try to devote my life to studying it.

I have recently noticed that frequently when I read stuff, I pick out the one (usually irrelevant) fact about Victorian England in whatever I'm reading, and remember that fact over whatever the story was actually about. Case in point, an article in the May 17th issue of the New Yorker about a silver thief. The article in itself was a real page-turner (who doesn't like a good heist story, after all?), but the one sentence I found most interesting was near the beginning of the article, describing this weird Victorian-era silver set that the dude stole. Apparently each piece of silver had a different zodiac sign on it--turns out Astrology was a big deal for the Victorians. I don't currently know why Astrology was such a big deal or what type of a role it played in Victorian era goings-on, but I'd like to know. In fact, I think I'd be pretty happy spending quite a bit of time and energy examining various aspects of the Victorian psyche--from astrological forks to George Eliot.

Many thanks to Jacob for inviting me to play around with this. More to come later in the week.

2004-05-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

Guest blogger. I'm really excited to announce a new thing on waldheim: guest blogging. My first guest blogger is one of my favorite people in the whole world: Loring Pfeiffer. You know that she'll be a good blogger because according to Webster's Revised Unabridge Dictionary, her very name means "instructive discourse." When she starts on Monday (for a run of a week), Loring will introduce herself, but just to give you a preview, I'll tell you that she's an American currently living in Hong Kong, and that she's not currently a blogger, although I believe she reads more blogs than I do.

Why a guest blogger? Well, it's an experiment (one that may or may not be repeated). I'm curious how a guest blogger works on a personal blog (as opposed to guest bloggers on groups sites). And I'm doing it vaguely as a test for an idea I have for future blogging, which I won't get into now. I encourage my regular readers to email me with comments about what they think of the idea of guest blogging on a site like this.

2004-05-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

Blog question. I hope that tonight or tomorrow I'll have some exciting news to announce about waldheim, but in the meantime, I want to ask you, my valued readers, a question. What do you think of the layout of this blog? I don't usually see it as you do--I see it from my editing screen on Blogger--and it looks different. When recently I was reading it on the actual page you all read from, I was struck by how wide the columns were. Does this bother you, or should I leave well enough alone?

Also, while I'm doing an administrative post, I should note that I have now listed my Atom feed on the sidebar. If you don't know what this means, don't worry about it. If you want to read waldheim on a newsreader or whatnot, now it's easy.

2004-05-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

This week's Savage Love is rather boring in content. But the online version at The Stranger (where it originates and where the online archives live) is notable for its illustration, featuring Bibendum--perhaps more known to Americans as the Michelin Man--in ill-fitting, low-rise jeans. While Bibendum advertises tires, he is perhaps better known as being the man who goes to all those restaurants and gives them stars.

2004-05-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

New Caledonia and French imperialism. One of these days (years), I'm going to have to devote some serious time to comparative colonial history, especially non-British settlement colonies. Randy McDonald writes about New Caledonia, a French South Pacific settlement colony in light of its recent election (via the Head Heeb).

2004-05-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

Good news from India. The Hindu fundamentalist BJP lost the national elections today. Vajpayee has resigned (but will stay on as a caretaker), and Sonia Gandhi, of Congress, is likely to take his place. It has consistantly surprised me how little American media remember to point out that the Indian government has been led by a (Hindu) fundamentalist and nationalist party, one that has made the world less safe.

2004-05-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

No surprise here. From Sunday's Observer (via the Young Fogey): Oral sex lessons to cut rates of teenage pregnancy. Ok, it's not lessons on how to give (or receive) oral sex--although I believe those too would decrease teenage pregnancy. Rather, in a case of actual science confirming what should be blindingly obvious: "Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates, a government study has found. Pupils under 16 who were taught to consider other forms of 'intimacy' such as oral sex were significantly less likely to engage in full intercourse, it was revealed."

2004-05-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma watch. Those bastards at the New York Times put Oklahoma in the "not in play" section. Ok, ok, perhaps they (and both campaigns, and pretty much everyone else) know a little more than I do, but this article does completely fail to mention other state-wide races that are being run concurrently with the presidential election and could very well play a role in it.

2004-05-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

Battle of Algiers and Abu Ghraib. Via Brett Marston, I see a post in which Mark A.R. Kleiman writes:

When I read that the Pentagon had arranged for screenings of The Battle of Algiers, I assumed that the intention was to warn our commanders about the moral and operational dangers of fighting a counter-insurgency campaign.

Mickey Kaus suggests that the film can be read another way: as endorsing the view that torture is a necessity in counterinsurgency operations.

No doubt that wasn't the intention of the filmmaker. Perhaps it wasn't the intention of whoever arranged the screenings. But it might have been the lesson taken home by some of the viewers.

Actually, I think that's a perfectly acceptable reading, and it may very well be what Gillo Pontecorvo meant. To me, the strongest message of the movie is that terrorism sucks, but sometime's it's all we've got and it's got to be used. The scenes in which the Arab women go to plant three bombs in French civilian hangouts are the post powerful in the film, I think, exactly because they show, in haunting detail, the carefree play of children the bombs are about to interrupt. You can't look at the milk bar and the children who are killed there without thinking that what the woman bomb-planter does is horrible. But at the same time, our sympathies are firmly planted with that woman. It's not much of a stretch to make the same argument about the French in the movie. Torture is a nasty, ugly thing, as the reporters and the off-screen Paris bureaucrats and intellectuals point out. Just as we're moved by the murdered children, we're moved by the broken man whom we see at the start (and near the end) of the film. But let's face it: the torture worked. Not forever (obviously, given the very last scene of the film) but Col. Mathieu is able to destroy the insurgency by means of information gathered by torture where other means (like planting a bomb in the Casbah) fail.

2004-05-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Emmitt Till. Given my running interest in the use of courts to do history, I feel the need to make some comment about the reopening of the Emmitt Till case. I think that memory is important, largely--although by no means entirely--because it tells us something about today. For instance, understanding how big business was intertwined with the Nazi death machinery (as exposed by the Holocaust slave labor and bank cases) helps us consider our relationship with big business today. In a backwards way, this article by Andrew Jacobs in the Times today about how Money, Miss., doesn't much want the trial, I think proves the point. The argument seems to be that having a new trial will be divisive and stir up bad memories. But the very fact that it will be divisive suggest that the claim that Mississippi Delta racism is just "bad memories" is false. Says a black state senator: "As long as you go with the status quo, things are all right. But when we push for change, the polarization comes again." Perhaps what is needed is some more polarization

As an aside, that same article makes the claim that the criminal investigation (and presumably the trial) will finally "uncover" "the full truth of what happened that steamy August night in 1955." The idea of the court as historical truth-finder is dubious at best; I tend to think they work better as historical story-tellers, cementing or changing the narratives of what people think about history, not discovering new facts. But beside that, most of the work of historical (as opposed to legal) fact-finding seems to have been done by the documentarians whose work prompted the reopened inquiry in the first place.

2004-05-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

On other weblogs. The last several posts at Crooked Timber have been at top form. See Ted on Rumsfeld and why you can be against both Saddam Hussein and George Bush (with the help of Matt Welch); John Quiggan on the "ticking bomb question"; and Daniel on a novel question about the Abu Ghraib pictures.

Responding to the ticking-time-bomb post, Scott Martens explains why--contrary to the platitudes usually spouted by antiwar people (including myself)--he's is both against the war and against the troops.

I found through the quicklinks of A Fistful of Euros (which found it through the Young Fogey, which I often forget to read, to my own detriment; he found it through Nicholas Whyte) a clever little page that grades national flags. It's funny and you should read it. My favorite is the Falkland Islands.

At Jewschool is an early link to Mobius' Jewsweek interview with Jilian Redford. Should be good for getting your blood boiling once again, if it's gone down to simmering. The most outrageous new information is that Redford's (JCC-appointed) supervisor told her: "Because you're a convert, maybe you don't understand the Jewish tie with Israel. You just don't understand why it's so important to the Jewish people." 'Scuse me? Even putting aside the extreme offensiveness of the anti-convert sentiment here, this nonsense about an inborn (literally) "Jewish tie with Israel" is exactly the problem with Hillel and the rest of mainstream organized community. (Also on Jewschool is this story--personal for Mobius--about how even tech writers manage to screw up tech stories.)

Via Patrick, I see this brief notice in the Times that Brazil is expelling the reporter who wrote Sunday's article about fears that Lula is an alcoholic. Both Patrick and Bill Keller express fear that this signals, shall we say, a lack of commitment to press freedom. I find that very sad, given my deep respect for Lula. This seems to rank roughly with Germany's Schroeder suing a newspaper for saying he dyed his hair.

Josh Eidelson points me to a USA Today article that says that members of the scientific advisory board that was roundly ignored in the political decision to refuse the morning after pill over-the-counter status are thinking about resigning.

2004-05-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Arts and government (and war). I spent the afternoon at the Louvre, where there's an excellent exhibit called Paris 1400: Les arts sous Charles IV. In addition to featuring some truly remarkable and beautiful illustrated manuscripts, the exhibit makes a pretty compelling argument about the importance of governmental arts patronage. Briefly all those beautiful illuminated manuscripts--and the "flaming gothic" style of architecture and a blossoming of figurative sculpture and technical advances in enamel-work (all of which were also pretty cool, but aren't as much my thing as illuminated manuscripts)--came because the new king and his princes were busy spending lots of money on the arts. They brought in artists from other countries--Italy, Flanders, Bohemia, even--and encouraged them to create and learn from each other. (I gather that's why the new gothic architecture they built is called "international gothic.) And it isn't all religious art--although there are a lot of Virgins and Babies and Descents from Crosses. There's secular art, too--illuminated manuscripts of early novels. It's all quite amazing.

But it didn't happen because the market valued art. It happened because the princely state valued art. It's a reminder that art doesn't thrive unless it's subsidized by the state; that is, markets don't create flourishing arts.

The final room of the exhibit is also a sobering lesson. This golden age of art came to and end, basically, when the French were defeated at the Battle of Agincourt, the Dauphin died, and the country sank into civil war. Some artists continued in Paris, but many when elsewhere. It's a lot easier for the state to focus on the arts when there isn't a war on its doorstep.

2004-05-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

The triumph of social democracy? John Quiggan sees evidence for it, in Australia. Can't speak of it myself. After all, in the country I come from, in the notoriously liberal state of Massachusetts, 45% of the people voted to abolish the state income tax entirely a year and a half ago.

UPDATE: Zach responds with other skepticism: "high taxes do not social democracy make."

2004-05-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

What's important at Abu Ghraib. From today's New York Times: "But Senator McCain indicated that focusing on the images missed larger, more important questions, including whether the military police unit at Abu Ghraib, a notorious prison during the Hussein era, was acting on the specific orders of military intelligence to soften up detainees in advance of interrogation." He's right, you know. The photographs make us look (and feel) bad, and they offer proof the the mistreatment, but they're basically just incidental. The issue isn't the photographs, it's the torture.

And the basic issue with the torture is this: why did it happen? Did it happen because--as the administration says--because there were just a "few bad apples?" Were these badly trained sadists given power? (Or people turned into sadists by being put into a position of power?) Or, as I suspect, is this the policy of the United States Army? Were these in fact well trained soldiers who followed orders as given? In other words, is the result of rogue soldiers, or was this official terrorism?

That's what matters. Not the pictures. Not the order in which new pictures of videos are released. Not when George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld or Tony Blair saw the pictures. What matters is the truth about why it happened.

UPDATE: Roger Ailes shows how everything the administration is saying about Abu Ghraib is a lie. (Via Patrick Neilsen Hayden.)

2004-05-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

The increasingly common "Things To Read" post. Via the Head Heeb, Brian Mangwende looks at internal divisions within the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe.

The Times Magazine has three interesting articles. One is about Mary Bonauto and the legal strategy for gay marriage. My favorite vice-presidential candidate, Bill Richardson, has a flattering profile that makes me worry about his politics but revel in his political skill. And Ira Glass (of my favorite radio show) describes why we should all care about Howard Stern. (Ira--yes, I feel like I'm on a first name basis with him--discusses two episodes of TAL. One, which he calls "recent" is actually from last August, although it was rebroadcast last week, and can be found here; the other is actually recent and is here.)

In the Times proper: A long article by Stephanie Strom about Theresa Heinz's vast philanthropic empire; a dispatch about German universities; and the beautifully headlined "Europeans Like Bush Even Less Than Before".

Also, be sure to read the article in Saturday's Times about mistreatment of American inmates in American prisons.

2004-05-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

Citizenship for Israeli guestworkers. The Head Heeb has a post reporting on a proposal to give Israeli citizenship to the children of foreign (non-Jewish) guestworkers, and even the workers themselves. The proposal is to give children over age nine who have grown up in Israel citizenship, and their parents permanent residence, which could then lead to citizenship. The Head Heeb writes: "Where Jews are the majority, assimilation runs toward Judaism rather than away. The immigrants will become 'Ashkenazim' (as Israelized Druze sardonically refer to themselves), and twenty years from now, there might be thousands of Hebrew-speaking, shakshuka-eating Ghanaian-Israelis who serve in the IDF and party hard on Yom ha'Atzmaut. If these new citizens are extended all the rights and obligations of Israeli nationality - including compulsory military service - then the character of the state may even be reinforced."

This reminds me a lot of the post-1867 policy of Magyarization of Hungarian Jews. In 1867, the Hapsburg Empire was divided into the dual monarchy--that is, the Austro-Hungarian Empire--in which the Hapsburgs were emperors of Austria and the kings of Hungary. While this was a way of placating the Hungarians, who got their own country-within-an-empire, it also served as a way of giving all of Austria's ethnic problems to the Hungarians. The increasingly restless Slavic minorities in the empire were given to Hungary to deal with (with the exception of the Czechs and, I think, the Slovenians). The Hungarians thus found themselves the rulers of a large "Hungarian Empire" in which they were at best a bare majority. Constantly threatened by Slavs to the north and south, Hungarians looked for ways to increase their demographic advantange. One of the ways they tried was "Magyarizing" Jews. Jews--who like Romani were neither Slavs nor Magyar (Hungarian)--were encouraged to join the Magyar elite and assimilate into Magyar culture, thus augmenting the number of Hungarians as compared to Slavs.

The parallels to the Israeli situation here are fairly obvious. Israeli Jews are clinging precariously to a majority within the land that Israel now controls (that is, Israel and the Occupied Territories). This new population of non-Arab, non-Jewish guest workers, of they can be convinced to become closer to Israeli Jews than Arabs, augment the Jewish population in Israel, just as Jews once augmented the Magyar population in Hungary.

UPDATE: The Head Heeb has updated his post to refer to my comments. (Thanks!) I'm pretty convinced by his counterargument (to the extent that I intended my post to be an argument about Poraz' intent at all). Without knowing much about internal Israeli politics, I wonder though whether if this proposal is successful it will be because of an alliance between people like Poraz (who favor withdrawl from the Territories) and people on the right who recognize the increasing demographic problem in Israel.

2004-05-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

Dialects. Among the people at my language school with whom I have made friends are two young women, a German from some small city between Cologne and Hamburg, and a Swiss girl from outside Zurich. They have several times commented about how different Swiss German is from High German--the Germans at my school claim not to be able to understand the Swiss when the Swiss talk among themselves. Apparently, when Swiss German television shows are played on German television, they're subtitled.

What's interesting, though, is the psychology of these different dialects. The Swiss Germans I know all speak Swiss German to each other when they're the only ones there. It's what they speak in their families and to their friends. But in school, they have to speak High German. Politicians speak High German (at least in formal occasions--I don't know what they do on the campaign trail). Reporters on TV speak High German. Standard written German is High German, even in Switzerland. Clearly, Swiss German is seen as lower, less appropriate, and less acceptable. How does this play out at school? My Swiss German friend (who calls the two dialects "Swiss German" and "real German") prefers to speak English to German friends because she's made so nervous by trying to speak "correctly." Another Swiss German at my school says that she's made exhausted when she has to spend all day speaking "real German." I'm fascinated by the fact that an entire country is made to feel bad about their dialect.

2004-05-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

From the Department of Just Not Getting It. Because outrage is good for the soul, read this article by Nathaniel Popper in this week's Forward. Jilian Redford, the student leader of Hillel at the University of Richmond sent an email had the audacity to write to the Israeli Embassy telling them that the role of Hillel was not to distribute Israeli propaganda or organize pro-Israel actions, but rather to create a religious community. As a result, she was removed from her post--not by the students with whom she worked, but by the Richmond JCC, which is otherwise unaffiliated with the university. It's hard to know which is more outrageous: that the Israeli Embassy send the girl's email to the Richmond JCC; that the girl was removed from her post at all; that the adults at the JCC butted into a student organization's leadership; or that the JCC, when challenged, says that it didn't have to do with the email, but rather that Redford called (in private conversation)a professor who called Arabs "inherently evil" (in private conversation) "racist."

At Jewschool, Mobius points to a Jewish Week article and urges the outraged to email Lisa Looney, the JCC "staff advisor" for the Hillel, and the buffoon responsible for this debacle. Her email address is llooney@weinsteinjcc.org.

2004-05-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

American colonialism. In an excellent essay in the Washington Post about Abu Ghraib, Philip Kennicott quotes Aime Cesaire: "First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism." Read Kennicott's essay, in which he argues that because the United States is a democracy, and the war in Iraq and its attendant attrocities are carried out in our names, we are collectively responsibe for those crimes: "Great national crimes begin with the acts of misguided individuals; and no matter how many people are held directly accountable for these crimes, we are, collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done. We live in a democracy. Every errant smart bomb, every dead civilian, every sodomized prisoner, is ours." (Via Mamamusings, via Jill's Kinja digest.)

2004-05-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

Controversies in history. This week's HNN has two interesting articles. One is a continuation of the public disapproval of Alan Brinkley, the usually pro-union historian who as Columbia provost is currently anti-union. In it, Rick Perlstein sympathizes with his friend Brinkley but also excoriates him. He writes: "I’ve enjoyed your company so much in the few times we’ve met that it pains me to say that I would have a hard time enjoying your company now. But you are now on the other side from me in a struggle over what kind of society America should become." (I should also take this opportunity to thank Josh for the link to my previous post on the matter.)

The second tells a story with which I have been familiar for about a year, although this is, to my knowledge, the first it has been actually published. Joseph A. McCartin describes why the entire editorial board of Labor History resigned to start a new journal called Labor--and why it matters to academic journal publishing everywhere. I for one am really looking forward to reading the first issue.

And as an aside, let me say how much I like it when HNN writes about the profession, rather than politics. Here's to more of that.

2004-05-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

More things to read. Via Josh, an AP article (here off the LA Times website): "The head of a U.S.-funded Iraqi newspaper quit and said Monday that he was taking almost his entire staff with him because of American interference in the publication."

At jill/txt, news that the guy who sold his ex-wife's wedding dress [on eBay] was really just looking for a venue for storytelling. While I'm at it, I figure I'll plug jill/txt, which is a just beautifully designed blog (and it's beautiful not only because Jill has a really attractive new picture of herself up).

In yesterday's Guardian, a positive article about Starbucks fair trade coffee.

Via HNN, I see a New York Observer article reporting that the Times is killing the Arts and Ideas section. Does it make me uncool in intellectual circles to say I'm sad? After the death of Lingua Franca, it was really the only place one could go for good, written-for-the-public coverage of intellectual debates. Sometimes bad? Sure. Did Edward Rothstein piss me off? Abso-fucking-lutely. But still, every Saturday I could go and read an interesting article about some intellectual debate. Here's hoping they really do incorporate "ideas" coverage into the daily paper.

More later, maybe.

ALMOST IMMEDIATE UPDATE: (Or, actually adding something of value to my links.) Jill's response to the wedding dress guy story--about what media people use to get their stories across--reminded me of this This American Life episode. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure why.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I should have mentioned, while talking about eBay auctions, about the Erdos number auction, which is over, with a (to me) unexpected finale. Read it here.

2004-05-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

Things to read. In no particular order. And one thing not to read.

Michael Bérubé on his blog (where he also posted the Internationale on Saturday) points to an essay by him published Sunday in the Times Magazine about grade inflation. (Speaking of the Internationale, yes, it was actually blared through speakers at the Paris May Day march. Yes, I sang along. In English.)

In the Times of various days: Cello prodigy Matt Haimovitz brings modern music to the masses. (Via SS.) Even military lawyers think military tribunals for accused terrorists are unfair. Bush administration rules mean that housing subsidy recipients around the country may be evicted. News flash: even the rich, corporate, and powerful aren't allowed to lie, destroy evidence, and otherwise obstruct justice. And American science is falling behind that of other countries. One reason is that draconian immigration rules make it hard for foreign scientists to study, teach, or come to conferences here. (Sign a visa reform petition here.) [UPDATE: See also YaleInsider on science and immigration.]

And what not to read? I for one am not reading the article in the Village Voice written by my classmate about why not to go to graduate school. I'm not even linking to it.

2004-05-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Academe, teaching, morality. LAP emails to let me know of a post by Erin O'Connor about her decision to leave higher education and instead become a private school teacher. (Actually, she says independent school teacher, which, she says, leaves open the possibility that she'll end up in a charter school. But most independent schools are private schools, and in my remarks I'll treat them as synonymous.) She puts it as a matter of ethics: there are too many PhDs being created and too few jobs into which to put them. One solution is to open up other legitimate fields into which PhDs can go, rather than just higher education. One of these is independent school teaching. Those people who feel like they can teach high school (or younger?) students have the obligation, O'Connor seems to imply, to at least consider moving out in order to make room for those who can't teach school.

Seems a bit strange to me. First, I often have ethical concerns about my decision to enter academia, but they don't have to do with the state of academia. Yeah, I worry about the job market and adjunct-hood, and whatnot. But I don't worry that entering that system is immoral or unethical because I'm going to further worsen the market by my presence; no, I worry that I'm being foolhardy by thinking that I can get a job when other qualified people can't. My ethical quandry is about whether I could do something more useful in society than researching and teaching about the British Empire. In my worries, this usually takes the form of thinking I should do "movement work," but others who have different political inclinations could easily think of other things that are more "of use" than being a professor. Among those things that could easily be seen as more useful is primary and secondary school teaching.

Which gets to my second comment about the Critical Mass posting: why claim that working at an private school is any moral high road? (And I say all this as a graduate of a private school--indeed, including undergraduate and the grad school I will soon enter, someone who has never experienced public education first hand.) Suggesting that private high schools are a good place for humanities PhDs to work (and implying by omission that public schools are not) just perpetuates the inequalities of education in the United States. Indeed, the very existance of private schools, by skimming the cream off the top of the educational milk, weakens schooling for those unable to afford private school. Much better is to encourage teachers into public schools--that's the moral choice, if one is to be made. That's not to say that it's immoral to teach at a private school, only that it's not obviously the specicially moral choice. If that's what makes you happy, if that's where you feel like you can do the best good while keeping yourself sane, by all means do it.

(Another concern is raised by O'Connor reader Loring in the comments--right now, it's the bottom comment--who suggests that school-teaching--like law, medicine, or the like--is a profession that requires professional credentials, and thus teaching degrees shouldn't be scoffed at. In other words, humanies PhDs are trained (maybe) to be professors, and that's a different training than to be a high school teacher.)

2004-04-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

History and law in Pitcairn. The Head Heeb provides an excellent summary of a court case in which it was decided that Pitcairn is indeed controlled by Britain. (Via Crooked Timber.) It's fascinating how the court was forced to analyse imperial history. Of course, this isn't unique (the U.S. Supreme Court for instance relied on historical arguments somewhat in Lawrence v. Texas, for instance), but this case does seem to turn especially on history almost exclusively. Lawyers (judges) of course aren't necessarily given historical training, and I wonder what's lost in the historical analysis when it's done by a lawyer. What nuances of culture and what it meant, say, in the 18-whatevers to be under British sovereignty? Are judges equipped to analyse whether the residents of Pitcairn islands conceived of themselves as British citizens in a long-past period? This is, of course, the primary interest I'm interested in when it comes to the Holocaust and slavery reparations trials.

(Conversely, there are times when historians try--and often fail--to do the job of lawyers. For instance, much of the historiography of the Haymarket Massacre is devoted to analysing the trial of the Haymarket Martyrs--in whose honor this blog is named--which in my mind largely misses the point. As historians, we're not usually equipped to decide to what extent the law was followed in the Haymarket trial. Unless we're legal historians, we rarely have a good grasp on what murder law was in 1886. But we are able, or better able at least, to discuss to what extent Lingg et al. were part of an actual anti-state conspiracy. What should matter is not whether the prosecution in the case actually, legally proved its case--let "legal guilt" of the martyrs, if you will. What matters is the actual, "historical guilt," which the trial doesn't necessarily prove one way or the other.)

UPDATE: At A Fistful of Euros, Scott Martens discusses the Pitcairn case as it applies to Europe--particuilarly, how European overseas possessions fit into the European Union. Read the comments.

2004-04-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Antisemitism decreases in Europe; Abe Foxman confused. The JTA's Toby Axelrod reports on an ADL survey of Europeans that shows a significant decrease in antisemitism. At the same time, anti-Israel feeling increased. Abe Foxman, while hailing European governments that have worked to differentiate Israel from Jews, fails to do so himself and continues to equate the two.

MEANWHILE, in the continuing saga of how to spend the extra Swiss Bank settlement money, "Israeli officials are blasting recommendations that money from the $1.25 billion Swiss banks settlement should be used to help Holocaust survivors in the former Soviet Union before others." So reports the JTA.

2004-04-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

The blog is dead. Long live the blog! In honor of his impending graduation, Zach shut down Education in the Streets. But then he started The Problem of Leisure. He may be a detached lunatic, but he's a lovable detached lunatic.

2004-04-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

L'obsession de l'antisémitisme. Despite my best attempts, my French is not nearly good enough to read this article by Esther Benbassa, the director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, and professor of modern Jewish history. (I also want to read her most recent book, "La République face à ses minorités. Les juifs hier, les musulmans aujourd’hui," but of course I won't be able to because I can't read French well enough.) But I was able to make it through the first few paragraphs. In describing the way France views its Jewish community, she argues that there's a change right now between the call of "devoir de mémoire" (roughly, the requirement to remember) and "devoir de vigilance" (the requirement of vigilance). She traces this change to a changing of the guard from Ashkenazi Jews to Maghrebi Jews. The Holocaust was largely an Askenazi experience, and thus is mostly foreign to North African Jews. When people "remember," they're remembering the Holocaust, and thus remembering the Ashkenazi experience. The foundational experience of modern French Jews under the "devoir de mémoire" regime is Ashkenazi. But the majority of French Jews today are Maghrebi, and they have their own traumatic modern foundational experience--their exile from North Africa. The perceived threats to Israel and threats to French Jews today more closely mirror the Maghrebi exile than the Ashkenazi Holocaust. (I use the term "perceived" not to suggest that those threats don't exist, but simply to emphasize that what matters is the perception.) Maghrebi Jews see their exile experience potentially repeated. This suggests a reason for the increased emphasis on equating antisemitism and antizionism, and the support of the French Jewish community for the anti-headscarf law.

Well, at least in France: it doesn't really explain any shift in, say, the U.S., where the Maghrebi community is much smaller.

I lost the thread of the article around the middle or so, but at the end it becomes a complaint of how fear of the new antisemitism has stifled debate on Israel. I was particularly taken with this: "Nous, hier citoyens du monde, nous voici chaque jour plus prisonniers d’un nationalisme étroit qui dessert la cause d’Israël aussi bien que celle des juifs de la diaspora. S’il persiste, notre terrorisme intellectuel se retournera contre nous et nous asphyxiera nous-mêmes." In my extremely poor translation: "We [Jewish intellectuals], yesterday citizens of the world, are today living each day prisoners of a nationalism that holds that those who dessert the cause of Israel also dessert the cause of diaspora Jews. If this persists, our intellecual terrorism will return against us and asphyxiate us."

2004-04-24T02:55:00.000-07:00

Today's news (a running post). From the BBC: Frances closes its last coal mine.

History abounds in Saturday's Times: a new diary by a companion of Albert Einstein has been discovered in her Princeton personnel file. A very long article describes John Kerry's role in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. And a piece from Arts & Ideas about medieval manuscripts in Timbuktu and the challenges in perserving them today.

And finally (at least for now): "Keats? Big poet, Keats. Keats was dead by the time he was 26."

LATER: The CBC reports on an Environics poll that finds the Liberals are in minority government range: "The Liberals now have 39 per cent support among those polled. Conservatives have 29 per cent, New Democrats 19 per cent and the Bloc Quebecois 11 per cent."

STILL LATER (SUNDAY, IN FACT): Jewschool's Mobius points me to an interesting post by Douglas Rushkoff about Israel and anti-semitism. (Meanwhile, in the Jewschool Cafepress store, this is really funny.)

2004-04-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

Today I am truly thankful that I am not Alan Brinkley. I have a professor friend who says that he is convinced that one cannot be a good person and be a high-level university administrator. Being dean, provost, or president seems to mean you have to always make bad decisions, and in order to do it well, you have to enjoy doing it. Alan Brickley is well known for being a liberal historian, and he professes a personal belief that "the decline in unions is one of the great catastrophes of our recent economic life." Yet as Columbia provost, he is forced to defend the univesity line on graduate employee unionization. I know, I know, if he really believed in unionization close to home, he could change policy. But I don't know that he could--after all, he has the president and the board of trustees to convince. By saying I'm glad I'm not Brickley, I'm not saying I forgive him--no, I'm much more in the Jesse Lemisch camp there in calling his refusal to suppor the union inexcusable--but I'm stil glad I'm not in his difficult position.

There are four parts to this HNN page: an interview with Brinkley, from which the quotes above and below are taken, a speech by Jesse Lemisch, a statement to a rally by Staughton Lynd, and a letter to Brinkley from one of my heros, David Montgomery.

The final three, all criticizing the Columbia administration (including Brinkley), are right. But there's something essentially tragic about this exchange:

Ady Barkan: A year ago in class I asked you, perhaps unfairly, for your opinion on student unionization, and you said you wouldn't oppose a graduate student union. And I'm curious whether your experience as a champion of liberalism, (or not, perhaps this is a separate issue)...I mean, is your personal position at odds with that of the Administration?

Alan Brinkley: Well, I can't answer that. I'm a great supporter of unionization. I think that the decline in unions is one of the great catastrophes of our recent economic life. I think there are many areas in economic life in which unions can play a constructive role, do play a constructive role, play an invaluable role. On this campus, we have lots of unions--we don't have unions for students. I don't know what else to say.

Some will, I'm sure, accuse me of going soft in feeling sorry for Brinkley, for reading pain in his voice when he says he can't answer the question. Those people aren't wrong in saying, Of course he can answer! In callying him a hypocrite or worse. They're not wrong. But his inability to answer still strikes me as above all sad.

2004-04-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

Quick links. New York Jewish Week's Adam Dickter scoops the world in reporting that a heretofore secret Columbia committee is investigating the university's Middle East Studies department looking for "bias and intimidation."

Bill Tozier is running an eBay auction for an Erdos number of 5. He's writing about the experiment on his blog. Crooked Timberites are also writing about it. Also, I like the way Tozier has his blogroll.

On Jewschool, Mobius writes: "I'm getting really sick of having to defend my Judaism every day to other Jews who wish to dismiss me, my ideas, my site, etc., for presenting divergent opinions on the state of Israel than those offered by most of modern Jewry. It's unnerving to me that every day should be an uphill battle to verify that, no, I'm not an antisemite, and yes, it's okay to be critical of Israel—it's been a Jewish tradition since before the state even gained its independence." Read the whole post (though I warn you, the comments have rather degenerated into mudslinging.)

Patrick Belton, to whom I owe thanks for interectly facilitating a fabulous time last night, reviews gmail. I haven't decided if I'm going to be among the first of those who try it out--I don't much like the idea of Google "reading" my email. Indeed, I don't much like my mail sitting on any third-party machine because of the severe decrease of fouth amendment protections. But I may use it as a holding site for large files--it is a gig of free, access-from-anywhere storage space, after all.

2004-04-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

Mazel Tov! With some trepidation for what it means for my own blog-reading habits, I congratulate Elder Steven I. Weiss of Protocols for landing a staff writer and blogger gig at the Forward.

2004-04-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

Historians and strikes. To no-one's (well, not mine) surprise, Jesse Lemisch is trying to get Historians Against the War--or at least historians against the war--to take a stand in support of striking Columbia graduate students. Via HNN.

2004-04-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Have they no shame? Yesterday, The New York Times (in the persons of Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Felicia R. Lee) finally picked up on the controversy about the Bush nominee for United States archivist, Allen Weinstein. Bush pushed out the long-time archivist and is trying to replace him with a historian notorious for being on the right (published a controversial book on Alger Hiss) and being secretive (won't release his notes on said book). More than that, Bush refused to consult with historical or archival organizations, despite that the law that created NARA requires that the archivist be chosen based on professional merit alone. This comes at a time when the danger and appeal of a partisan archives is all too apparent: there have already been controversies about the release of 9/11-related documents, and the release of Bush pere's papers is coming up. George Bush has continually shown himself to be the enemy of open and transparent government, and this is just another example.

The Times article is somewhat mediocre. For more information see the detailed description written up by Bruce Craig of the National Coalition for History, posted on H-NCH (also on HNN, but HNN isn't working right now). The Society of American Archivists has raised pointed questions about Weinstein and has called for Senate hearings. Joining the SAA are various archivists' and librarians' organizations, the American Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians.

To quote Craig: "Concern is growing within the archival and historical communities regarding the Bush administration's hoped for 'fast-track' process to replace Archivist of the United States John Carlin with one of its own choosing -- historian Allen Weinstein. According to informed sources, the administration hopes to short-circuit the normal confirmation process and see Weinstein confirmed through an 'expedited' process. Their goal -- place Weinstein in the position prior to the November election."

Again: have they no shame?

2004-04-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

South Africa and Israel. Via reader EAS, an article from the Sunday Washington Post suggesting that my "influence" continues. South African journalist Allister Sparks writes: "A South African solution in the Middle East would consolidate Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into one country ruled by an elected majority, which soon would be Palestinian. The Jewish people would live as a minority group, albeit an economically dominant one. If that strikes anyone as improbable, then let it be the measure of judging South Africa's achievement -- one that has turned this country, so recently the racist polecat of the world, into a paradigm for a world riven by racial, ethnic and religious strife." Something I've been saying for years! Read the whole thing.

2004-04-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

Nathan Newman still has it. I haven't been reading him for a while, but when I checked back today, there were a whole slew of good posts, mostly pointing to articles I hadn't bothered posting about. Check out his posts on this New York Times article that discusses how the US intentionally supported terrorism as a way to fight the Communists; an excellent roundup of recent labor news; and union busting universities (make sure to check out the comments). Among others--those are just my highlights.

Nathan also points me to a Times article about the UAW (the American United Auto Workers) and the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers, which split from the UAW in 1985) fighting over organizing the same plant. He makes the counterintuitive argument that competition among unions actually helps organizing. In keeping with my usually futile attempts to make this blog have a historical focus, I'll just mention the long history that the Canadian labor movement has of being dominated by the American labor movement. I'm most familiar with this in the context of the miners' union in eastern Nova Scotia. There, the United Mine Workers of America (that is, mostly of the U.S.) had a conflict of interest between its Canadian members and its American members. On one hand, the International required its locals (and districts) not to accept wage rollbacks. On the other hand, it refused to authorize a strike in Nova Scotia, and when local leaders did call one (so as not to have to accept wage cuts) the International refused to give any money, and then actively cooperated with the company to break the union. This isn't necessarily typical--just because the UMWA acted badly in 1925 doesn't mean that all U.S.-based Internationals are always going to destroy Canadian locals--but it does suggest the danger of Canadian workers relying too much on their U.S. brothers.

2004-04-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

Salon style art. When I get back to Washington, one of the things I'll be sure to do is head to the Renwick Gallery to see pictures from the collection of the National Museum of American Art hung salon style. Why? The Washington Post Magazine's Henry Allen explains far better than I could.

2004-04-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

I owe a big fat thank you to Elder Shleve at Protocols for giving me what may have been my highest-traffic day ever, and certainly my highest traffic weekend. If only my post about Rue des Rosiers had been better!

UPDATE: Also to IsraBlog, although I have no idea what it's saying. Could anyone who comes to this site from there do me a favor and translate it for me?

2004-04-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

The Oklahoma Senate race. I've written before about how I believe that the presidential race this year--and perhaps the Senate--rests on Oklahoma, a state that Democrats seem to have given up on. There are two key parts to this reasoning. First, there's an open Senate in the state, because Don Nickles (R) is retiring. Second, two strong Democratic constituencies cut their teeth on a successful effort to elect a Democratic governor two years ago--labor and Native Americans. Plus, despite its conservative reputation, and Bush's strong showing in 2000, registered Democrats actually outnumber registered Republicans (according to this Mother Jones article that's rather skeptical of the Democrats' chances in OK.) Here's the plan I would put into place if I could: put lots of money into the Senate race, with a particular emphasis on Indian and organized labor turnout. If Kerry wins the state, it'll be because of the Senate race--he's too liberal for Oklahoma, I gather, on issues like gun control. But treating the Senate race seriously helps Kerry's chances, and it helps us regain the Senate, too.

Happily, people seem to be taking my advice. (Um, yes, of course it was my advice was was what made the difference.)

The AP's Robert Gehrke (here in the Grand Forks Herald) reports on an effort the National Congress of American Indians to register 1 million Indians this year. He points out that Indians may play a decisive role not only in Oklahoma but in South Dakota, Alaska, and Colorado. He credits Indians for the Democrats' successes in South Dakota and Oklahoma in 2002: "In 2002, Indian voters decided a House race and governor's race in Oklahoma, and swung the South Dakota Senate race for incumbent Tim Johnson. On election night, Johnson trailed Republican Rep. John Thune by 700 votes, but Johnson surged as ballots came in from the Pine Ridge Reservation, where 4,000 new Indian voters had registered."

Brad Carson, the leading Democratic candidate (and an Indian), has raised $1,130,645--almost double the leading Republican and way more than the other Democrat. (According to the Center for Responsive Politics; this AP article reported on Friday he only raised $718,000; I can't explain the discrepancy.) This includes money from national Democratic money machines: the DSCC ($34,000), trial lawyers ($14,116 from PACs), and unions ($92,000 from PACs), and Democratic leadership and candidate PACs ($38,000)--suggesting that the race really is attracting national attention. A full 18% of Carson's money has come from outside the state (and 22% of his Democratic opponent's money), compared to 4% from the leading Republican. Indeed, Carson's top five donor metro areas are Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Washington, Dallas, Nashville, and Philadelphia. (There are some great tools to do this sort of analysis on CRP's website; see here for Carson's page.)

An April 11 article by Susan Milligan in the Boston Globe emphasizes that the US Senate could switch to the Democrats, and does mention the tailcoat effects for the presidential election. But she does add to the story of Oklahoma that, as in Pennsylvania, the Republicans are split between the establishment candidate and an ultraconservative.

Or, perhaps there's another reason to consider Oklahoma up for grabs by Kerry, unrelated to Carson (although national support for Carson would still seem to be important). Oklahoma blog Awe Contraire (via Okiedoke) suggest that Kerry is competitive in Oklahoma because Democratic governor Brad Henry, that same one who was helped by labor and Indians, is so popular. (He sites Dales' Electoral College Breakdown, which still shows the state as strongly for Bush.)

Among my goals for the coming weeks is to monitor the Oklahoma race, and I'll post here what I find.

UPDATE: This article from Native Times adds two more things. First, it explains the difference between the $718,000 (how much Carson's raised this year) and the $1.1m number (total). Second, it points out that Carson has raised the most money of any Senate candidat e. My influence again, I'm sure. See also this article from The Oklahoman: "Oklahoma is expected to be a major battleground state for the U.S. Senate. Although the state has been reliably Republican for the last 10 years, the election of Democrat Brad Henry in 2002 as governor and Carson's candidacy have convinced both parties that the U.S. Senate race will be competitive."

2004-04-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

From the "No Surprises" Department.

You are Bob Herbert! You're not the most sparkling writer, but one of the most solid and selfless on the Op-Ed staff. You focus on New York politics, the poor, race issues, and civil liberties. You like to quote others, and rarely place yourself in your columns. You keep it real. Seriously.

Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

You can read what I wrote as a college op-ed columnist and see if you agree.

2004-04-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Fun with Google. So yesterday, someone came across this blog with the Google search "Cape Breton blowjobs." Makes me feel somewhat bad for him (I assume it was a him) given what is actually on this site. But when I ran the search, I was especially amused by the other sites that came up, and what the excerpts from the pages were that Google displayed. To wit: "cape breton Milf distrist school board made him suck my cock, hot thong"; "cape breton ghost Bondage!" and last but certainly not least, "(suggested tourism slogan: "Cape Breton -- Dreary, but ... No unsimulated blowjobs".

2004-04-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

Some quick links. A New Yorker profile of Aaron McGruder by Ben McGrath. (Via Josh, although his permalinks don't seem to be working properly.)

The New York Times's Campbell Roberts on a young persons' Kerry fundraiser.

The Nouvel Observateur on the coming fight over who will lead the Socialist Party in the European Parliament. (In French. I read it all by myself the other day!)

2004-04-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Juifs contra les hipsters. This winter, the Edlers had a series of posts about the fight between Hasidim and hipsters in Brooklyn's Williamsburg. (The definitive post is here; see also here, which points to a New York Times article, the link for which will work here but not there.) It's not exactly the same, but right here in my neighborhood in Paris, the Marais, there's a similar story playing out.

The Marais, like most of the center of Paris, is a very old neighborhood. It's had a lot of ups and downs, swing from slum to chic neighborhood several times. During the last downswing (which lasted, I believe, roughly the last 150 years, but don't quote me on that), it became the home of one of the major Jewish communities in Paris, the Pletzl. Before the Occupation, the Jewish quarter, centered around a street called Rue des Rosiers, was filled with immigrants from Eastern Europe. After the Occupation, once the Jews who had lived there were either dead, refugees, or upwardly mobile into the suburbs, it became a for Jewish refugees from French North Africa. Tourists often know the neighborhood for the dozen or so falafel restaurants and the Judaica stores. The Marais, as is the wont for crummy neighborhoods, has also been an artists' quarter, and is also the location of Paris's main gay neighborhood. As in the U.S., artists + gays + cheap rent = rapidly trendy and gentrifying neighborhood. So now the Marais is on the upswing, and that's where the trouble begins. The City of Paris wants to make the Rue des Rosiers a pedestrian zone, at least on Sunday afternoons. But the Jewish merchants and neighbors are raising a stink about it, saying that it will put them out of business. (A few weeks ago there was an article in the Times about this issue, but it's been archived now and I can't make a free link because I don't have the original URL. Sorry.)

This raises a host of interesting questions. First, to my eye, I just don't understand the objections. Here's my bad translation of an article from the newspaper of the Paris Jewish Community: "This matter consistes, according to the [current plan] of closing a good part of the Pletzl on Sundays. And this would mean major work: removing the sidewalks, changing the traffic patterns on certain streets, establishing a central gutter... The extent of this eventual roadworks, the fear that the pedestrianization will be extended to other days, and the resultant nuisances for those who live in or frequent the neighborhood are provoking the genuine opposition of most of the merchants." Merchants (and others who support them in the Jewish community) are afraid that closing the street will make deliveries difficult and will prevent people from shopping at their stores. "Well now, if the stores disappear, they will be quickly replaced by bars and other branch stores. It is well understood that the Jewish memory of the place will be the cost of the operation." Like I said, I don't really understand why making the street pedestrians only will prevent people from shopping. If anything, I would have thought that it would encourage more foot traffic and thus more customers. The best guess I have is that most of the shops are not tourist driven--that is, they are not the visible Judaica and falafel shops--but rather are tailors and kosher butchers and whatnot that tourists don't shop at and that are dependant on suburban Jews coming in to shop.

Or maybe, like most people, they're just afraid of change. I don't know. For people who know their neighborhood, it can be scary to see new people moving in. But I don't have a lot of sympathy for that, because change happens. Yes, there may be some new people in their apartement buildings. Yes, there might be so non-Jewish stores on the street. But that's not the destruction of Jewish memory.

But if ACHERP--the Association of Shopkeepers, Residents, and Landlords--is right, they do have a point. It's really a matter of historic preservation. Especially in France, it's important to maintain lieux de memiore--sights of memory--about the Jewish community. That doesn't mean that places can't change. Indeed, the Pletzl has changed a lot in the past 100 years or so, shifting from a largley Ashkenazi community to a Sephardi one. But it's important to keep a working memory of the vibrant French Jewish community. For instance, around the corner is a Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr (which I haven't seen, because it's under renovation), which is different from the Ile-de-la-Cite Deportation Memorial. Without a Jewish Rue des Rosiers, the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr will still exist, but it will exist entirely within a vacuum. Now, one sees the memorial and the remains of the Pletzl, and one is reminded of the community from which Jewish deportees were taken; without the Pletzl, it would be simply an empty flame.

2004-04-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Marvin Lender update. Before Rue des Rosier, an update on Marvin Lender, whom as you may remember had the nerve to give a talk on Jewish business ethics. Josh Eidelson wrote an opinion piece for the Yale Daily News describing the event; the article appears to be an edited version of something he posted on his blog. (If you're only going to read one, read the blog version.)

2004-04-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long absence--when I got back to Paris the computer wasn't working. But blogging shall recommence tomorrow, probably with a discussion of the Rue des Rosiers.

2004-04-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome! To a new addition to the blogosphere, er, "Pesotta."

2004-04-03T22:05:00.000-08:00

It's not just historians; or, Sue their asses off! Historians have taken a lot of flack for a string of plagiarism scandals in the past few years. Meanwhile, George Bush has gotten away with two shocking examples of taking trademarked slogans of political oponents and twisting them into his own slogan. First it was taking "Leave No Child Behind"--the trademarked slogan of the Children's Defense Fund--which Bush appropriated as "No Child Left Behind." Now he's taken Planned Parenthood's "Responsible Choices" and turned it into "Responsible Choice"--an abstinence-only education program. Planned Parenthood is fighting. (Via Little Wild Bouquet.)

2004-04-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

Okrent replies to my email about Shaw's. (See also here.) His reply in full (with his permission to post):

Dear Mr. Remes,
I passed your comments about the Shaw's piece along to business editor Lawrence Ingrassia. This is his reply:

The reader raises a legitimate point. Newspapers should seek to get and
report the points of view of various parties affected by a story. When
warranted, that includes workers and their union representatives. We
often do write what workers think and how they're affected; less so,
probably what union officials think. There are some occasions when we
ought to but don't.

I think this was one of them. Thanks for writing.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Okrent

2004-04-01T21:47:00.000-08:00

Congratulations! Brett got married! I extend a hearty best wishes to Brett and Anita.

MORE, and in the department of willful misunderstanding: Brett writes that his chair pointed something out. To which I wonder if he teaches at Hogwarts.

2004-04-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

Quick links. "AFL-CIO out of Venezuela!" could summarize this is Kim Scipes article in Labor Notes. Scipes documents how the AFL's Solidarity Center has worked with the neo-liberal and undemocratic union center in Venezuela to overthrow the democratically elected Hugo Chavez. This is especially troubling because under John Sweeney the AFL has largely cleaned up its international act and has for the most part supported the creation of strong, democratic unions in the global south as a way of making globalization more fair. The continued Cold War-style operations in Venezuela go a long way in undermining the good the AFL is doing abroad. (Via Little Wild Bouquet.)

Two notes from Yale: Activists protesting Coca-Cola's murderous practices in Colombia stage a die-in at a a speech by Coke's CEO on, of all things, business ethics. The Yale Daily News's Justin Ash reports that the protesters were successful in forcing Douglas Daft to acknowledge the issue and made him so uncomfortable that he abandoned a post-lecture reception early. And Zach reports (sort of) on a talk by Marvin Lender, this blog's favorite whipping boy, when he had the chutzpah to lecture on Jewish business ethics.

2004-03-31T22:33:00.000-08:00

Fun toy! Via Zach, I just discovered Fundrace, which has all sorts of amazing tools for playing with campaign finance data. For instance, you can put in an address (yours, say) and get your closest neighbors' donor habits. I learned all sort of interesting things--like the fact that my next door neighbor, who owns two gigantic SUVs, gave $2000 to Howard Dean. Also, there are city maps, which show the locations of donors by party--the DC map shows both the extent of gentrification in the city and where those few Republicans in the city live.

2004-03-31T22:18:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court heard an appeal based on the Alien Tort Claims Act yesterday, which was, of course well covered in the newspapers. Howard Bashman (1, 2) and SCOTUSblog (Heather on press coverage, Amy describing arguments herself) have the coverage, er, well covered. (See also the coverage collected at the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre.) Everyone's coverage seems to agree that the justices seem likely to dismiss the cases without reaching the key question that everyone's actually interested in. That is, they'll say that there's no cause of action because the plaintiff's arrest in Mexico was legal, and rather than ruling whether ATCA provides him with a cause of action.

Is this a good thing? There seem to be four major types of human rights cases pursued in the past 25 years under ATCA. (One should credit the Center for Constitutional Rights, by the way, for pioneering these sorts of cases in the first place. CCR is too radical to get a lot of credit for the brilliant work they do, and they should get credit more often.) First is cases by individual victims against individual perpetrators: the case at hand is vaguely in this category, as is the groundbreaking Filártiga v. Peña-Irala. Second is cases in which people get largely symbolic, but very large, judgments against big perpetrators--Doe v. Karadzic is one of these. Fifth are cases against American companies for contemporary human rights abuses. This category includes Doe v. ExxonMobil. Finally, there's the historical cases--including the Apartheid, Comfort Women, and Holocaust cases. The first three categories (particularly the first and third) of cases are important. But what interests me is the last case--historical cases.

A lot of the work that's been done in these cases has been about the threats of lawsuits. Before the Holocaust case settlements, no one really thought that the suits would actually work if tested in court, but given the amount of money being spoken about, no one could take the risk. Companies settled and the purpose was served. In some ways, this uncertainty served everyone. Because it was unclear whether the cases could work, the companies didn't want to risk it. Similarly, the plaintiffs would have had less latitude if they'd been certain--after all, a truly equitable result (in which all slave and forced laborers had been fairly compensated for all their labor, plus interest, plus pain and suffering) would have come close to bankrupting German industry. Uncertainty about the legal basis of the suit is what made the whole project work.

Compare that to the slavery reparations suits. Everyone knows that isn't going to happen, so no one's even interested in treating the cases seriously. Thus no settlement discussions, and no public examination of the issues at hand.

2004-03-31T21:56:00.000-08:00

Can one sexually exploit oneself? Via How Appealing, I find discussion by Michael Froomkin and Volokh of a case from Pittsburgh in whch a 15 year old girl who posted naked pictures of herself was charged with creating child porn. I will resist comment.

2004-03-30T21:16:00.000-08:00

Update on Shaw's. The Times didn't answer the question (and Daniel Okrent hasn't responded to me), but the Providence Journal does have a piece (here via CNN Money IndustryWatch) on the union's response to the Shaw's sale. Peter Derouen, a spokesperson for Local 791 UFCW says the union was taken by surprise. But he's optomistic: "Albertsons isn't Sainsbury. Hopefully, we're going to get off on a better foot. It's not the goal of this union to go out on strike." Derouen said something similar to the Portland (Me.) Press Herald

2004-03-30T11:52:00.000-08:00

A belated thanks to Keywords, which has me blogrolled.

UPDATE: Also to Zach for the link.

2004-03-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

Oh, those wacky historians. From Rick Shenkman's HNN coverage of the OAH convention:

Best Put Down of President Bush: Speaking of the president's statement a few years ago that the story of America is the story of freedom, ERIC FONER acidly commented, "It's a little more complicated," which brought forth a roar of laughter.

2004-03-27T19:45:00.000-08:00

"U.S. and France Apparently at Odds over Labor Rights" is the headline in the Times. Guess which country is on the right side? The OECD is rewriting a document on best practises in corporate governance, and France wants to put in a line "enouraging" granting workers a role in corporate management, as is done in many European countries already. It will surprise no one that the U.S. is opposed.

2004-03-27T19:41:00.000-08:00

Sainsbury sells Shaw's to Albertson's. What does this mean for workers? Boston laborites know that the UFCW is in the midst of a long battle with Shaw's over an organizing effort at Star Market. Back when Shaw's was independent, it signed a card count-neutrality agreement with UFCW, which led to recognition. When Shaw's was bought by the British company Sainsbury, it turned suddenly anti-union and has been harshly fighting a drive to organize Star Market, which is the other breast in its double-breasted operations. (That is, Star Market, which itself used to be independent, is non-union, even though there's now no other difference between Shaw's and Star Market.) Shaw's is now being sold to Albertson's which was one of the companies that was involved in the long Southern California supermarket strike.

So what does the sale of Shaw's mean for workers? You sure won't find out from the New York Times coverage. Like usual, they completely ignore the workers involved. Below is the letter I sent to Daniel Okrent, the Times' public editor.

Dear Mr. Okrent-

I'm writing in regards to "Albertsons Buying Shaw's, New England Grocery Chain" by Constance L. Hays, which ran in Saturday's Business section. Ms. Hays' article represented a trend that's long bothered me in The Times: a failure to address workers and workers' concerns in business articles. (To be fair, this isn't only a Times problem, but given that the Times is one of the few major neewspapers to retain a labor beat, I expect better.) Unions are only addressed when an article specifically deals with issues of organized labor; they are rarely consulted when their industries or companies are discussed.

The Shaw's article is a handy example. When it was independently owned, Shaw's signed a neutrality agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers allowing a fairer system to determine whether Shaw's workers should be represented by UFCW. When Sainsbury bought Shaw's and in turn the Shaw's division bought Star Market, good labor relations went out the window, and UFCW has been in the midst of a bitter labor dispute over the right of Star Market workers to unionize. None of this was mentioned in the Hays article. The supermarket industry is in the midst of major labor turmoil--a fact alluded to in the article--but the fact that Shaw's is involved was not mentioned. This seems like a glaring ommission. It would have been better to see the response of UFCW to the news of the sale. An article the day before (at least on the website, "Sainsbury Selling U.S. Grocery Business," by Kenneth N. Gilpin) mentions that Albertson's is emerging from a major strike in Southern California but neglects any mention of Shaw's labor issues.

It seems likely to me that the reporters simply didn't know, and this seems indicative of the fact that Times reporters just don't think of calling unions to ask about their industries. While I can't point to a specific instance, I think also of articles about the chronic nursing shortage which rarely if ever quote officials of nursing unions.

I would be curious to know your opinion of this matter. Is it fair for me to expect Times reporters to ask those who represent workers when writing about their employers and industries?

2004-03-27T08:50:00.000-08:00

More on Bob Edwards is still being collected at the Current website, most recently here. SaveBobEdwards.com is also collecting news article here. Like I said, I don't think it's as big a deal as others do; frankly, I'm not sure that it's not a good thing to shake up a program now and again. That said, I've seen it argued that this is another case of older hosts being forced out. (I saw this first on the Romenesko feedback site, but now I can't find it without doing more work that I wish to do.) People point to Susan Stamberg (out of ATC first, then WESat), Noah Adams (ATC), Daniel Zwerdling (WATC), and Linda Wertheimer (ATC) as examples of this happening before.

If this is true, I think it's very troubling: there's no reason to force out experienced hosts just because they're old (my comments about the benefits of shakeups for shakeups' sake notwithstanding). But I'm not convinced it's true. My understanding is that Stamberg left ATC because she was tired of it, and left WESat because affliates demaded a live show rather than the taped-on-Friday show she'd signed on to do, and she wasn't interested in working on Saturdays. (This comes directly from her, albeit nine years ago.) Noah Adams left, I'd thought, because he wanted to do more writing. I don't know why Wertheimer left, but I didn't hear at the time that she'd been fired. It's terrible that Zwerdling was fired, yes, and I don't know why it was. But it's an example of why such firing aren't such a bad thing: Zwerdling now does excellent reporting for American RadioWorks, and Steve Inskeep is an excellent WATC host. (Stamberg's leaving WESat is similar; hardly anyone on public radio is better than Scott Simon.)

This controversy speaks to something that I find fascinating about radio. As a devoted NPR listener, I feel like I know the reporters and hosts. I feel like they're my friends. I think this is because they're disembodied and I hear their voices all the time. Unlike their counterparts on the radio, I don't see a set or have to stare at them all the time while I listen to them, so it's as if they're with me in my room. (Also, having grown up in my particular neighborhood of DC, they're all my neighbors, so they really do seem close to me.)

2004-03-27T08:14:00.000-08:00

IG Farben vs. IG Farben vs. UBS. Last night I heard on DW Newslink a story about IG Farben Holocaust reparations. It seems that the IG Farben Foundation is suing the now-bankrupt IG Farben in order to force UBS to pay reparations to Holocaust survivors. Bare with me: this story gets a bit confusing, and the rather good DW story doesn't seem to be online. (The AP has an article, here via the Jerusalem Post.) IG was broken up by occupation-era trust busters, but a shell company remained to pay reparation (and protect the successor companies like Bayer, BASF, AFGA, etc., from claims arising from Holocaust-era abuses). Stocks of this shell company continued to be traded, although I've never understood why anyone would buy it, since it doesn't seem to have been making any money. Anyway, this shell company last year or so announced it was bankrupt and couldn't continue paying reparations. The entity to which it had been paying reparations, the IG Farben Foundation (which then in turn disbursed the funds) has now sued, claiming that because the Swiss bank UBS controlled the shell company, UBS should be held responsible for IG's debts. This brings us back to the Swiss banks, of course, who are notoriously unwilling to admit their culpability

2004-03-24T10:24:00.000-08:00

Bob Edwards fired! I admit I'm a bit surprised, since Morning Edition is doing so well, that NPR management would want to fix what doesn't seem broken. But unlike others, I'm not heartbroken. I don't listen to ME that much, really (I'm much more of an ATC kind of guy). Bob Edwards isn't one of my favorite NPR personalities. And I'm a big fan of Steve Inskeep, who will be replacing Edwards temporarily. This Washington Post on-line chat from yesterday contains speculation that Edwards was forced out as part of a larger power struggle in NPR over entertainment programming and the expansion to the West Coast. None of the subsequent reporting has backed up such speculation, so I have no idea if it's true. But it's worrisome if it is, since Edwards would appear to represent those fighting for more hard news. In the Cartalk-inspired rush for lighter weekend programming, there have been ocasional winners (This American Life, most obviously, but also Says You, and some others), but the majority have been duds and--most importantly for this discussion--the non-duds have mostly not been NPR produced. The NPR-produced offerings, like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, are often terrible. Better for NPR to focus on what it does well. (On that Cartalk-inspired rush, see Act Three of this TAL show, Fiasco.)

The best collection of Bob Edwards-related news is on the quasi-blog on the side of the Current website. So far, see here and here.

2004-03-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

Speaking of Oklahoma, this seems like a good time to renew my call to take Oklahoma seriously as a swing state (not that anyone listens to my calls to do anything). In 2002, Oklahoma was one of the few bright spots for the Democrats (where they picked up a governorship). Unions there are mobilized. And there's an open Senate seat up for grabs, which suggests that a strong push in the state could mean both electoral college votes and a pickup in the Senate. The New York Times's Carl Hulse says that the Democratic nominee in the Senate race is a member of a "Dream Team" of strong minority Democratic Senate candidates. I'd like to see Brad Carson get national support, and I'd like to see the Democrats try to reach Native American and organized labor voters in Oklahoma.

2004-03-24T10:07:00.000-08:00

Tulsa race-riot suit faces setback. Federal Judge James Ellison ruled last Friday that the reparations lawsuit filed by survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race-riot was barred by a two-year statute of limitations, the AP's Kelly Kurt reports (via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via HNN). Charles Ogletree vowed to appeal. While the case seems unlikely to succeed (being, oh, 81 years late), it remains to be seen whether it changes the public memory of the riot. Given the judge's comments in rejecting the case, it seems headed in that direction, though.

2004-03-11T13:25:00.000-08:00

Holocaust judge rebukes US survivors. The Forward: "The federal judge overseeing a $1.25 billion Holocaust restitution settlement with Swiss banks is accusing an American survivor group of filing 'frivolous' claims for more funds while survivors in the former Soviet Union live in abject poverty."

2004-03-11T02:58:00.000-08:00

Take action! I've so-far resisted blogging about Education Secretary Rod Paige who called teachers' unions "terrorist organizations." This is an outrage for lots of reasons: it's an outrage that the Secretary of Education should think of school teachers as terrorists, it's an outrage that the Bush Administration should use the rhetoric of terrorism to try to discredit people who oppose them in totally different policy areas (remember that the AFT supported Bush's Iraq war!), and it's an outrage that Paige, having done this, is still in government. There's a growing petition effort to get him fired: sign on at firepaige.org.

Also, Juan Cole is trying to organize academics to write to congress--the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee specifically--to stop the Horowitz/Pipes/McCarthy "advisory boards" on Title VI research centers. (Via HNN.) This is a matter of extreme importance to anyone who cares about academic freedom. Cole gives contact information for all of the Senators on the relevant committee.

UPDATE: According to this article in the Forward, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the ADL "have made passing the bill a major goal. Sigh.

2004-03-10T02:45:00.000-08:00

Blogging break. The reason the Purim post was a bit late is that I'm traveling. I'm currently in Oxford (where I've seen, in addition to non-bloggers, Annie, Josh, Josh, and Patrick.) Today I'm going to London, and after that back to the States for three weeks. Longtime readers will note that when I'm in DC I tend to blog rather less, so you should expect a drop in frequency back to levels of this fall.

2004-03-08T03:05:00.000-08:00

Purim (a day late). I'm a proud participant in the Steven Weiss-assembled J-Bloggers Purim Issue. It's posted beautifully by Jewschool's Mobius here. Longtime readers should be able to guess which of the entries I'm responsible for.

2004-03-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

Pre-Purim Jewish humor, collected from various places.

Via Protocols and Jewschool, The Passion bloopers.

Also via those two fine blogs, I learn of Shabot6000, a new comic strip.

There's the oldie-but-goodie list of gentile jokes.

At the Heeb Magazine site, you can play Kosher or Treyf. It's fun. Even if (or especially if) certain people don't like the magazine. (That last link via Protocols.)

Finally, via Jewschool, I am reminded of a girl from West Virginia whom I met my freshman year. She said that "everybody knew" that antisemitism sprung from feelings of inferiority among gentile men because "everybody knew" that Jewish men have larger penises.

UPDATE: This isn't actually Jewish humor, but it's so funny I was afraid of waking my roommates by laughing too loudly. (Via Idealogian; warning--it's very image heavy so it needs either much time or a fast connection.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Because I am bored and am not really enjoying my book, I was reading the D-squared Digest, on which I found this rather old post. I am amused.

2004-03-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Santorum. Regular readers will know that the only googlebomb in which I will participate is the one driving Dan Savage's Spreading Santorum website up the google ranks. (Savage actually succeeded in getting his site up to the top of the page when googling Santorum, but then the senator bust have googlebombed himself with his official site.) Anyway, a wordy and inarticulate Republican wrote a series of wordy and inarticulate letters to Savage complaining. In one of them, he quoted in full a letter he'd sent to Santorum himself. (Scroll down to long letter in the Feb. 25 posting.) The gem of it is the end:

P.S. I wondered if I might also prevail on you to ask another favor. I have heard many conservatives fulminate at length on their belief that the Gay Agenda is intended to undermine America. I would very much like to weigh in on this debate but I have thus far been unable to procure for myself a copy of this document. It occurs to me since you have taken a broad interest in the activities of homosexuals that you are very likely to have a copy around youroffice. If you could in your response, please also forward me a copy of the Gay Agenda I would be extremely grateful.

He appends a similar note to Savage:

P.S. If you yourself would see fit to forward me a copy of the Gay Agenda I would be grateful to have a look to see what its all about. Or is it just a hoax like the Protocols of Zion?

Scary thing is, I think he's serious.

2004-03-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

University financial aid. With some exceptions, I've been trying to avoid posts about Yale, because I'm no longer there and because I assume (probably incorrectly) that most of my readership doesn't care about it. But today I'm forced to. Over the weekend, the Times reported that Harvard would drastically improve its financial aid: families making less that $40,000 a year will no longer have any family contribution, and the contribution will be reduced for those between $40,000 and $60,000. This is vaguely reminiscent of when, several years ago, Princeton announced that they would no longer have a student contribution (that is, no longer force students to take out loans).

Yale's response to Princeton in 2001? Top administrators said it was an affirmatively bad thing that poorer students should graduate debt-free. (Of course, no one suggested that it would be a good thing to force crushing debt on rich students.) Yale's response to Harvard now? They'll think about it.

Of all the shitty things the Yale administration did when I was there, their response to Harvard made me the angriest. As an alumnus, I've continued to be shocked at Yale sometimes; let's hope they'll do better now.

2004-03-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

Over at Crooked Timber, there's a fascinating conversation about the order of things: of names, of dates, of currency. Entertaining and informative.

2004-02-29T13:56:00.000-08:00

Haiti, France, and the Monroe Doctrine. With Aristide's departure from Haiti, an "interim international force" will provide order. Right now, that force includes American, Canadian, and French troops. A quick question: what does the presence of French troops (or Canadian ones, for that matter) say about the Monroe Doctrine? By accepting French influence in Haiti, isn't Bush undermining the U.S.'s primary foreign policy doctrine?

2004-02-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

Linkbacks. Thanks to Brett Marston and American Footprint for the links. I look forward to Brett's comments.

2004-02-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

French Jews, French Muslims, and Laicte. The Times Magazine on Sunday has a fascinating article about French Jews and they feel under seige from growing anti-semitism among French Arabs. It accords very much with what the Frenchwomen said that I reported last week. (I don't think I mentioned then that both of my sources were Jewish.)

2004-02-28T04:30:00.000-08:00

Courts as historical truth-finders. I've been blogging a lot recently about reparations lawsuits, but somehow this Times article from February 21 escaped me (I found it this morning through HNN). Edward Kornan, the judge overseeing the Swiss Banks settlement, complained that the banks are still refusing to take responsibility for their actions and still arguing that they didn't do anything wrong. He accused them of behaving like Goebbels, repeating a lie for long enough that people begin to believe it to be the truth. What makes this fascinating is that the Swiss Banks got away with it for fifty years until through the mechanism of American courts the lie was stripped away. The Swiss Banks case is perhaps the most successful historical lawsuit because really did change people's attitudes and beliefs about the Swiss and their role in the Holocaust. It's very interesting to see the court still trying to cement that role.

2004-02-28T03:16:00.000-08:00

Yet another post of quick links. The New York Times reports that the Treasury Department is threatening to prosectute anyone who edits, translates, or otherwise "provides services" to manuscripts produced in enemy countries. Right now they're going after Iran, but the logic holds, says the Times, for North Korea, Libya (at least for now), and Cuba. There are obvious first amendment issues here, and even more obvious foreign policy concerns. Shouldn't we be encouraging the translation and publication of things written in enemy countries? This is not unlike the movement for an academic boycott of Israel that got many people up in arms. I wonder whether the people who objected so strongly to those who refused to print manuscripts by Israelis will complain as vociferously about this?

While using Technorati to see who else had written about that article, I discovered American Footprint, which has this funny story about kids distrupting a Burger King drive-through window. It really belongs in the post below, but will stay here.

The Times this morning also has an editorial about the Forbes list of millionaires. It suggests that someone (though not anyone on the Times editorial board, apparently) try to figure out how many of the world's poorest people it would take to equal the $1.9 trillion held by the world's 587 richest people. Anyone here have a guess?

In this otherwise rather offensive article in the Seattle Catholic, Matthew Anger discusses the reaction of Protestants to The Passion. (This is a question Elder Steven raised too, briefly.) (Via the Guardian Weblog, which apparently doesn't have permalinks.) Anger argues that an interest in the crucifixion itself and in the suffering of Jesus is a particularly Catholic thing--note the way Protestants took Jesus off the cross when displaying it. Anger hopes that the Protestant reaction to The Passion will encourage a return to Catholic ideas about the mystery of the cross. (The Guardian also has a link to Christopher Hitchens' amusingly angry piece about the movie in the Mirror.)

2004-02-28T01:54:00.000-08:00

In this week's Forward. (Registration required, unfortunately.) Alan Dershowitz was honored by the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, but in his speech ruffled feathers by warning of the dangers of alliances with the Christian Right. He also urged the JCPA to opposed the right wing's attempts to monitor and censor academic research on the middle east--something that until he spoke the JCPA was about to support.

Another article tells of the United Jewish Communities' new report criticising itself for a paucity of female leaders.

2004-02-27T14:14:00.000-08:00

Funny stories--with video! Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. In a comment on Crooked Timber, Chris Marton linked to this story, about prosecutors who acted out a murder in front of the jury--a reenactment that required tying a colleague to a bed with neckties and then having a female coworker mount him. And on Haifisching, Evan links to this article about (in Evan's words): "Florida middle-schoolers facing expulsion from their school for an oral sex party in the bathroom during school hours." Seems to me to be a lot of hysteria over nothing. So some girls gave their friends blowjobs--there's no suggestion in this article that there was any coersion, and they weren't being disruptive. A suspention to show the kids that it's innappropriate to have orgies in school seems in line, but expulsion? That's going way too far.