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Unintentional laugh of the day
It comes courtesy that champion of global justice, the Chinese Communist Party, which is very upset over the Dalai Lama receiving the Congressional Gold Medal from the U.S.: “Such a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn’t even love his motherland has been welcomed by some countries and has even been receiving this or that award,” Tibet’s Communist Party
On Kidd Jordan
My review of saxophonist Kidd Jordan’s trio in Philly, in today’s Inquirer. My friend Shaun Brady has a backgrounder on Jordan in the Philadelphia Daily News.
On Dan Morgenstern
Downbeat magazine gave this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award to jazz historian (and former DB editor) Dan Morgenstern. It’s not online, but I have a profile on Dan in the November Downbeat, now on newsstands.
A rebuttal on Pinter
I have a letter in today’s NY Times Arts & Leisure section, objecting to Sarah Lyall’s Oct. 7 puff piece on Harold Pinter. Pinter’s political views are as crude as they come — leave it to an arts journalist not to examine them in any depth. The playwright didn’t simply protest NATO intervention in the Balkans; he joined the International
The trouble with Turkey
I haven’t had time to get my head fully around the Turkey controversy. I suppose a case could be made that congressional resolutions on such things as the Armenian genocide are pretty darn pointless anyway, so why stir the pot. But the notion that the world needs to keep tiptoeing around Turkey’s irrationalism on this issue is just as ludicrous.
Burma: crisis not over
The nightmare in Burma has passed from the headlines but it is not over. Now that they’ve had time to study footage of the recent pro-democracy protests, the government thugs are worsening their terror, rounding up those who took part. They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt
Torture postscript
I’d meant to comment on White House spokesperson Dana Perino telling the press corps something to the effect that ‘thank goodness we live in a country where these interrogation procedures are being debated openly,’ blah blah. This from an administration that has done everything in its power to keep that debate from happening openly.
Torture TV
There is a CBS crime show called “Without a Trace,” which focuses exclusively on the crime of kidnapping. A recent episode trailer showed someone, apparently a suspected kidnapper or accomplice, bound to a chair. A very nasty-looking knife is held up to the camera. “How far would you go to get the story?” the voiceover demands. Torture as a dramatic