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“Contagious shooting”
That’s the theory being bandied about to explain the police killing of Sean Bell last weekend. William Saletan of Slate shreds the argument to pieces: What makes contagious shooting a handy legal defense is its mechanical portrayal of behavior. You’re not choosing to kill; you’re catching a disease. In the Diallo era, the NYPD patrol guide explained that the first
The year in review
The Jazz Journalists Association critics’ roundup for 2006 is now online. My entry is here. Also, the year-end edition of All About Jazz-New York is in the clubs as well as online. Our special year-end spread is available for download as a pdf. Because I can’t help myself, and because so much excellent music came out in 2006, I thought
Current doings
Saw “Borat” over the holiday weekend and left the theater physically exhausted from laughter. I’d rebut this annoying anti-Borat column by Joe Queenan (and endorsed by Norm Geras) but I don’t have the time. I’ll just say this: like any comedy that people will actually care about 10 years from now, Sacha Baron Cohen’s work pushes the envelope. Yes, “Borat”
Closed for Thanksgiving
I’ve been under the weather and otherwise unable to blog. And now I’m taking a holiday. Check back in early December for year-in-review comments on music, among other things. Thanks for reading.
Saddam postscript
In my posts here and here, I took issue with the increasingly popular notion that Saddam Hussein, to coin a phrase, was a uniter not a divider — i.e., that his brutal repression was the only thing that could hold Iraq’s volatile opposing sects together. In this piece for openDemocracy, the Kurdish writer Dlawer Ala’Aldeen rebuts the argument far more
The Ritscher suicide
Malachi Ritscher, a denizen of Chicago’s avant-garde jazz scene, committed suicide by self-immolation on November 3. In this suicide note he explained that his intention was to protest the Iraq war. Peter Margasak’s Nov. 7 blog report is worth reading; so is this lengthier comment by Nitsuh Abebe of Pitchfork Media. Many of the comments that follow Margasak’s post take
“Only liberty”
David Cox’s distasteful “tribute” (yes, tribute) to Saddam Hussein is not without a kernel of truth: that life for the average Iraqi is in fact more dangerous today than it was under the dictatorship, and that Bush’s war has created more problems than it has solved (to say nothing of the injustice it has entailed). But Cox’s cavalier account of
Sweet victory
The results are superb. After Bush won in 2004 he declared: “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.” How ’bout now, George? You’re flat broke. The South Dakota abortion ban failed. The Senate still hangs by a thread. Still, even if the Dems remain a minority, they’ll have