David Adler

This Thanksgiving eve we should send thoughts and prayers to the city of Mumbai (Bombay), which has just been subjected to a savage multi-site terrorist attack. Some people’s idea of bravery includes attacking a hospital for women and children. Patients are being held hostage as I write this. [Update: Stratfor weighs in on the possible geopolitical fallout. Grim, grim, grim.]

There’s little I can say about Sean Penn’s fluff “interview” with Hugo Chávez and Raúl Castro that Marc Cooper hasn’t said. Some have suggested that I tend to overstate the influence of actor-activists like Penn. If anything, I’ve understated it. Penn’s “journalism” is now being published on the cover of The Nation, right at the moment when audiences are swooning

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Just a note on the ironic timing. UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua issued his call for a boycott of Israel — and his antisemitic charge that Palestinians are being “crucified” — just as the NY Times and Marc Cooper report on the increasing authoritarianism and corruption of the neo-Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega.

[Cross-posted at Z Word.] It’s a good thing that Jimmy Carter is pressing the case for help to the Zimbabwean population. But following the Mugabe regime’s politicized denial of a visa to Carter and his group, the former president’s statements have a weirdly passive ring — in stark contrast, one might point out, to his unequivocal denunciations of the Israeli

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My ballot — with snazzy cover art this year — is now up at the website of the Jazz Journalists Association. More year-in-review posts to follow soon.

Seemed appropriate to post this as somehow related to the discussion Darcy kicked off here. [Hat tip Phil DiPietro.]

Shameless plug time: My sister runs an online dog-products business, nawtydog.com. Bookmark it for holiday gifts. [Pictured: My little Margot at nap-time.]

Only good things to report about trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and his quintet at the Jazz Standard on Wednesday night, with Walter Smith III on tenor, Fabian Almazan on piano, Harish Raghavan on bass and Justin Brown on drums. Mostly one long, continuous set with unaccompanied trumpet segues. The harmonic model and band interaction recalled the second Miles quintet, but the

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