Obama
Swinging Barack Home
As a New Yorker, I’ve witnessed some pretty moving examples of public-spirited jazz, including the 9/11 memorial concert at Town Hall in November 2001. The sight of Dianne Reeves — not just a fine singer but an imposing musician — taking wing with an inspired rendition of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” has never left me. At the October 1
Nader’s casual racism
In June, Ralph Nader accused Barack Obama of wanting to “talk white.” Last Friday on Bill Maher, Nader played the racial condescension card once again while making the (defensible) case against sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal regions. Now, I’m really ashamed that someone from a third-world background like Barack Obama is so unbelievably insensitive about the history
Back to Obama
A Sullivan reader makes a good point: The McCain campaign has managed to get liberal blogs constantly talking about McCain-Palin, rather than Obama-Biden. “Yesterday Obama gave a fantastic interview at the Service Forum. Did the liberal blogs even cover this? No. He gave a great speech on the trail. Are his town halls even posted or excerpted? No. […] The liberal
Jazz for Obama
October 1 at 92nd Street Y. Here for details!
Cohen on Palin
There’s been much to admire in Nick Cohen’s savaging of the George Galloway-John Pilger wing of the left in Britain. But to me, the point of all this, and the reason I launched this blog almost exactly three years ago, was to shore up liberalism and social-democratic politics against attacks from the know-nothing left and the know-nothing right. Cohen has
Surge PS
Steve Coll of The New Yorker describes the situation in post-surge Iraq as “patchwork calm,” and here’s one feature of said calm: “Violent deaths of Iraqi civilians, while difficult to measure, have also dropped steeply, although the figure remains high: about five hundred per month, at a conservative estimate.” Five hundred violent deaths per month, and this is what the
“Obama and the suicidal left”
William Jelani Cobb asks: “Why it is that a group of progressives would spend about 40 minutes discussing how to critique Barack and virtually no time discussing how to elect him?” Perhaps the most biting irony is a kind of reverse affirmative action, where Obama seems to face a higher bar for support than the white candidates who preceded him.