David Adler

23
Aug

Herbert on Project Censored

While I’m on the subject of hypocrisy on censorship… I’m listening to There’s Me and There’s You, the forthcoming release by the Matthew Herbert Big Band. I like Herbert’s music; I’m intrigued by his process. His Chomskyite politics I can do without, although I agree with the statement on his album cover, which takes the form of a personnel list

Read more

23
Aug

Come on up for the rising

22
Aug

The Olympics story that matters

As the world celebrates its athletes I’d like to acknowledge the determination and bravery of all those, Chinese and foreign, who have stood up in protest against the Chinese regime during these Olympic Games. Censoring the Internet is the absolute least of it. The regime set up three designated areas where protests would be allowed and then started detaining people

Read more

21
Aug

Give us your poor, continued…

Following up on Matt Davis’s City of Arrivals, on the immigrant experience in Philadelphia, and this story about a Malian couple gunned down in their store in July… this is in today’s Inquirer: Yesterday morning, almost exactly seven years to the day that Fakhur Uddin came to America from Bangladesh, he was slain – bound with duct tape and string,

Read more

21
Aug

On S.M.V.

My review of S.M.V. (Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten) at the Keswick Theatre, in today’s Inquirer.

20
Aug

Heading back

[A shorter, modified version of this statement will appear in the Fall 2008 edition of Jazz Notes, the quarterly journal of the Jazz Journalists Association.] New York remains an unparalleled cultural mecca, but there’s really something to be said for getting out of town. In April 2007, for reasons pertaining to marriage, I moved to Philadelphia, immersing myself in another

Read more

19
Aug

McCain’s service

As is clear from Michael Goldfarb’s response, the right will seek to portray any questioning of McCain’s cross story as an attempt “to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement….” But that’s just the point: If McCain falsified this account, then it is he who disparaged his own memory of war. “[B]ut most Americans,”

Read more

18
Aug

Campaign dirt

“Swiftboating” has become an all-purpose term, a synonym for smearing, but its accurate meaning is to accuse a candidate of embroidering his (or her) military record for political gain. In 2004 a group of hacks tried this against John Kerry. It may not have caused his defeat but it certainly didn’t help. Now we have a very damning circumstantial case

Read more