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Roy’s purity
Novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, easily one of the world’s most overrated political thinkers, has no problem supporting the Iraqi insurgency, Maoist thugs in jungles of India, and Pakistan-backed militants in Kashmir. But she cannot bring herself to support Barack Obama. Somehow, some way, the Obama campaign will crawl on without her help.
On Message: Afghanistan
As I’ve remarked twice, the McCain-Palin camp has launched specious attacks on Obama for allegedly impugning American troops in Afghanistan, when Obama was in fact calling for increased American troops in Afghanistan. Palin went so far as to call Obama’s comments on civilian casualties “untrue.” So it’s interesting to read John Burns’s account of Afghan war policy in today’s NY
American racism today
John McCain: “I’m proud of the people who come to our rallies.”
The Real America
Sarah Palin in North Carolina: “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” The McCain campaign is trying to
Another Jazz Times letter
Once again, a reader attacks my July/August Jazz Times column on music and politics. Alan Embree of Hannibal, Missouri, writes: After reading David R. Adler’s Solo guest column [“Playing Changes for Change,” Aug. ’08] I debated whether to immediately cancel my subscription like I had done several years ago with Time magazine after tiring of the leftist rants of various writers
The week on disc (29)
In case you missed the last one… Nigeria 70, Lagos Jump: Original Heavyweight Afrobeat Highlife & Afro-Funk (Strut) Becca Stevens, Tea Bye Sea (ind.) G. Calvin Weston, Nassira (Amulet) Andrew Raffo Dewar, Six Lines of Transformation (Porter) E.S.T., Leucocyte (EmArcy) Dred Scott Trio, Live at the Rockwood Music Hall (ind.)
Nerve
In recent days, local Republican parties have distributed materials depicting Obama next to watermelon and fried chicken; suggesting that Obama should be waterboarded; and asserting, against a facial close-up that could easily be taken for Obama, “America must look evil in the eye and never flinch.” And John McCain feels he is owed an apology from John Lewis.