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Hitchens on Huckabee
Something to take note of post-MLK Day: Mike Huckabee recently said this in support of South Carolina’s right to fly the Confederate battle flag over the statehouse: You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with
Tiger strike
Thanks to the rise of the amazing and unclassifiable rapper-singer M.I.A., whose father is a senior figure in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), there’s been an unusual amount of talk about this Sri Lankan separatist group in the western music press in recent years. One of the smartest discussions was offered by Robert Christgau in the Village Voice
Zizek’s follies
Finally saw “Children of Men,” the acclaimed 2006 film by Alfonso Cuarón, starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore. It’s set in Britain in the year 2027, a time of global societal collapse; illegal immigrants are herded into cages and camps and the human race has fallen infertile. For the first half-hour this felt didactic and heavy-handed, but in time a
Political bits, bytes
~ Seems clear enough that the Clintonistas, not the Obamites, are playing dirty politics at this stage. BET founder Robert L. Johnson, one of the most cynical operators around, has lined up behind Clinton and touched off a firestorm with comments that seemed inteded to smear Obama. Johnson’s unsavory record as a propagandist for Social Security privatization, estate tax repeal
IAJE 2008
Just back from Toronto and an enjoyable conference of the IAJE (International Association for Jazz Education). Friday’s panel on blogging was moderated by Neil Tesser, who engaged me, Darcy James Argue, David Ryshpan and Carl Wilson in an hour of fun and productive discussion. Lots of schmoozing later with the good folks of the Jazz Journalists Association — one of
The week on disc (10)
In case you missed the last one… Jill Scott, The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3 (Hidden Beach): I don’t much care for “Hate on Me,” which lacks the harmonic interest of Scott’s best work, and at first I was put off by the simplified Mahavishnu sample on the title track. But the album gets under your skin and
Win, Barack, win!
From his pivotal Iowa speech: I will send, once more, a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says: You matter to us. Your future is our future. May it come to pass. Here for his Iowa victory speech.
On Keith Jarrett
My cover story [pdf] on Keith Jarrett appears in the January/February issue of Jazz Times, now on newsstands. Does he talk about the Umbria flap? Oh yes he does.