David Adler
The current PW
In this week’s Philadelphia Weekly: my review of Lafayette Gilchrist’s Soul Progressin’ (Hyena), and gig previews of Weasel Walter and Marc Ribot.
Amateur hour at Tikkun
Tikkun magazine, for which I interned in the early ’90s, has published an article by the pseudonymous Israel Shamir, a notorious antisemite and arguably a neo-Nazi. The subject is terrorism, Israel and Palestine. This is sad, because Tikkun originated as a sane voice on the left, dedicated to getting beyond crude and demagogic thinking on the Middle East. Now they
David Foster Wallace, R.I.P.
I never read Infinite Jest, but I did read A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments and got a lot out of it. However, the DFW work that left the biggest mark on me by far was this Harper’s essay [$] about grammar and usage. To take a subject as crushingly boring as this and turn it
Maher looks back
Bill Maher raised the subject of 9/11 on last night’s show, and countered Sarah Palin’s regurgitation of “they hate us for our freedom” with his own “they hate us for our airstrikes.” And there the debate remains frozen, still, seven years later. Although “they hate us for our freedom” is cartoonish and misleading, Islamist militants are in fact declared foes
Bush doctrines
Timothy Noah makes a fair point. You could say this talk of The Bush Doctrine gives Bush 43 too much credit, as if he’s left us some grand foreign policy legacy on par with Monroe, Teddy Roosevelt and Truman. … In his book The Bush Tragedy, my Slate colleague Jacob Weisberg identifies and dates five separate Bush Doctrines: Unipolar Realism
The week on disc (27)
In case you missed the last one… Bobo Stenson Trio, Cantando (ECM) Catherine Russell, Sentimental Streak (World Village) Mark O’Leary & Han Bennink, Television (Ayler) Aaron Weinsten & John Pizzarelli, Blue Too (Arbors) The Stance Brothers, Kind Soul (ObliqSound) Michael Jefry Stevens Quartet, For the Children (Cadence)
Back to Obama
A Sullivan reader makes a good point: The McCain campaign has managed to get liberal blogs constantly talking about McCain-Palin, rather than Obama-Biden. “Yesterday Obama gave a fantastic interview at the Service Forum. Did the liberal blogs even cover this? No. He gave a great speech on the trail. Are his town halls even posted or excerpted? No. […] The liberal