Democracy and Opportunity

"The A.D.A.'s most important intellectual—its equivalent of James Burnham—was the tall, German-American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr was a dedicated opponent of communism, but he was concerned that in pursuing a just cause, Americans would lose sight of their own capacity for injustice. 'We must take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization,' he wrote. 'We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized.' Americans, Niebuhr argued, should not emulate the absolute self-confidence of their enemies. They should not pretend that a country that countenanced McCarthyism and segregation was morally pure. Rather, they should cultivate enough self-doubt to ensure that unlike the Communists', their idealism never degenerated into fanaticism. Open-mindedness, he argued, is not 'a virtue of people who don't believe anything. It is a virtue of people who know. . .that their beliefs are not absolutely true.'"

The New York Times Magazine excerpts Peter Beinart's new book, The Good Fight.


U.S. News & World Report offers a Beinart profile.


"When it comes to foreign policy, the fundamental divide in American politics today is not between left and right but between those who subscribe to the myth of the 'American Century' and those who do not. Peter Beinart is a true believer."

In The Nation, Andrew J. Bacevich gives Beinart a negative review.


Jacob Heilbrunn calls Beinart a Neoconservative Democrat in the Los Angeles Times.


And Beinart and Michael Tomasky go toe-to-toe in Slate.

John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-2006

The Associated Press reports the death of America's most prominent liberal economist.

John Nichols provides an appreciation in The Nation.

In Foreign Affairs, J. Bradford DeLong argues in a review of a biography by Richard Baker that Galbraith has little contemporary influence.

But in The Nation, Eric Alterman links Galbraith with Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin.

And John F. Harris in The Washington Post explores the friendship of Harvard faculty and Kennedy administration members Galbraith and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Had Enough?

"In 1946, Karl Frost, an advertising executive, suggested a simple slogan to the Massachusetts Republican Committee: 'Had Enough? Vote Republican!' Frost recognized that these simple words could unite his national party and blame its opponents, who controlled Congress, for causing or failing to solve the many problems facing the country, including meat shortages, economic difficulties and labor unrest. The strategy worked: in 1946, both houses of Congress flipped.
"Sixty years later, Democrats would be smart to turn Karl Frost's slogan on Karl Rove's strategy."

In The New York Times, Tim Roemer revives a famous rallying cry.

The End of Multiculturalism?

"While Phillips has drawn the ire of the far left, he has found support among his center-left Labor Party colleagues. Like Phillips, Sunder Katwala, the general secretary of the Fabian Society, a Labor-aligned think tank, believes that pluralism is inherent in the concept of Britishness, and so why not foster Britishness rather than its constituent parts? A self-described 'mongrel Brit' and 'product of the rise and fall of the British Empire,' Katwala, the 32-year-old whiz-kid son of an Indian father and an Irish mother, argues that for a generation the 'politics of recognition' have overshadowed liberals' traditional concern with equality.
"'We need to create a progressive notion of integration and make it compatible with our goal of equality,' he said."

Gregory Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times discusses a shift in emphasis in Britain away from diversity and toward unity.

So Sorry

"'The comment was not meant to be a regional slur. To the extent that it was misinterpreted to be one, I apologize.'
—Lawyer Kenneth Taylor, after referring to people living in the mountains of Kentucky as 'illiterate cave dwellers.' Oct. 17, 2003"

In the Los Angeles Times, Paul Slansky and Arleen Sorkin catalogue various apologies.

What's the Matter with Politics?

"Harry Truman was no centrist, and neither was he a radical. Still, listening to his ferocious ad-libs back in 1948 (which was, incidentally, not during the Great Depression), his audience could have had few doubts about what the Democratic Party stood for. Truman was explicit: '[T]he Democratic Party is the people’s party, and the Republican Party is the party of special interest, and it always has been and always will be.' He reveled in what Mr. Klein would call 'class war,' calling a Republican tax cut a 'rich man’s tax bill' that 'helps the rich and sticks a knife into the back of the poor' and describing politics as a contest between the 'common everyday man' and the 'favored classes,' the 'privileged few.' Even more astonishingly, Truman went on to talk policy in some detail, with special emphasis on Mr. Klein’s hated 'jobs, health-care, and blah-blah-blah': He called for the construction of public housing, an increase in the minimum wage, expansion of Social Security, a national health-care program and the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. And this sort of high-octane oratory propelled Truman on to win the election in a historic upset."

Thomas Frank reviews Joe Klein's Politics Lost in The New York Observer.

Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play

"Enthusiasts still maintain that the 'nuances, subtleties, and allusions to his previous works' are all unmistakably Beckett. They also claim to have found notes and ideas for this play in the margins of Beckett's earlier works."

From The Onion.

Jane Jacobs, 1916-2006

Reuters reports the death of Jane Jacobs, author of 1961's influential urban-planning critique The Death of Life of Great American Cities.

Appreciations come in from Christopher Hawthorne in the Los Angeles Times and Witold Rybczynski in Slate.


"The answer to such superficiality is not to resurrect the spirit of Robert Moses. But in retrospect his vision, however flawed, represented an America that still believed a healthy government would provide the infrastructure—roads, parks, bridges—that binds us into a nation. Ms. Jacobs, at her best, was fighting to preserve the more delicate bonds that tie us to a community. A city, to survive and flourish, needs both perspectives."

Nicolai Ouroussoff offers a counterpoint in The New York Times.

Big Revival in Little Tokyo

"Though few outside Pentecostalism know of him, Pastor Seymour, a son of slaves from Louisiana, held round-the-clock religious revivals that drew thousands of people of all races to the Azusa Street Mission.
"His ministry began at a prayer meeting on April 9, 1906, at 216 N. Bonnie Brae St., when it was 'visited by a move of the Holy Spirit' and people began to speak and sing in tongues....
"Within days, his flock had grown so large that he had to find a bigger place — an abandoned building at 312 Azusa St...."

The Los Angeles Times notes the beginning of this week's centennial celebration in downtown L.A. of the birth of Pentecostalism.


"The revival celebration means a lot to Los Angeles, Butler said. 'In many ways, L.A. is always associated with the movie and entertainment industry,' she said. 'But when you think about the City of the Angels, the spiritual focus of the city from the very beginning was always part of the life blood of Los Angeles — life blood that was really ignored in light of the entertainment industry here.'"

More from the Times.

Downtown Orange County?

"Author Joel Kotkin, a national expert on urban growth who is based in Costa Mesa, said he finds the slogan puzzling: 'I don't quite get it. One of the unique things about Orange County is it really doesn't have a downtown. It has several downtowns.'"

The Los Angeles Times reveals Santa Ana's new city slogan.

"A Contemplative in Action"

"And the journey is not over. A former governor and son of a former governor, a repeat presidential candidate, a loser for the U.S. Senate, an urban mayor, the brother of a state treasurer who was herself a candidate for governor, Brown is now running for attorney general—the state's top law enforcement office and, also, a position once held by his father. At 68, he's on the stump in what appears to be high spirits, talking tough about crime, the environment and worker rights, but also having fun coloring outside the lines."

The Los Angeles Times checks in with Oakland mayor Jerry Brown ahead of the June California Democratic primary race for state attorney general.

Get Your Yeah-Yeahs Out

"Back at the video shoot at the Los Angeles slaughterhouse, there was a surreal moment when an unexpected visitor wandered onto the set. It was Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca, the leader of the largest police force in the country, who looked a bit ashen when he happened upon a scenario that looked like some sort of fast-food snuff film. He had been touring the property for a completely unrelated purpose and, as he exited, he made a strained joke about wanting to go on a diet after seeing the surreal proceedings.
Coyne wore a smile of puerile mischief as he watched Baca leave. 'If he saw the cops in the video he might have gotten mad,' Coyne said. 'That could be fun.'"

Ladies and gentlemen, the Los Angeles Times presents a profile of the Flaming Lips.

"The Monstrous and the Mundane"

"During the Cold War, Arendt's theories provided both comfort and powerful propaganda for conservatives in the West by suggesting that there was no difference between the Third Reich and the Soviet system—Eichmanns flourished under both. For the left, Arendt's 'banality of evil' model seemed to explain how government bureaucrats could operate weapons of mass destruction against civilians and how military men such as Army Lt. William Calley could follow orders and commit atrocities in Vietnam."

In the Los Angeles Times, David Cesarani of the University of London challenges the legacy of Adolf Eichmann's trial, which began forty-five years ago this month.

Democrats Must Become republicans

"The old liberalism got America out of depression, won the war against fascism, built the middle class, created global alliances, and made education and health care far closer to universal than they had ever been. But there were things it did not do; its conception of the common good was narrow--completely unacceptable, in fact, to us today. Japanese Americans during World War II and African Americans pretty much ever were not part of that common good; women were only partially included. Because of lack of leadership and political expediency (Roosevelt needing the South, for example), this liberalism had betrayed liberal principle and failed millions of Americans. Something had to give.
"At first, some Democrats--Johnson and Humphrey, for example, and even some Republicans back then--tried to expand the American community to include those who had been left behind. But the political process takes time, and compromise; young people and black people and poor people were impatient, and who could blame them? By 1965, ’66, ’67, the old liberalism’s failures, both domestically and in Vietnam, were so apparent as to be crushing. A new generation exposed this 'common good' as nothing more than a lie to keep power functioning, so as not to disturb the 'comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom' that Herbert Marcuse described in 1964 in one of the more memorable phrases of the day. Activists at the time were convinced--and they were not particularly wrong--that the old liberalism, far from nurturing a civic sphere in which all could deliberate and whose bounty all could enjoy, had created this unfreedom. The only response was to shatter it."

In an important article in The American Prospect, Michael Tomasky diagnoses the problem and offers a prescription.


"So would liberals be willing to go whole hog? At the very least, they'd probably be willing to embrace common-good type appeals when it comes to economics--things like healthcare and the minimum wage. They'd probably also unite behind a common-good approach to certain social issues like immigration and affirmative action (e.g., the argument that we all benefit from immigration, not just immigrants), both of which Tomasky discusses. In each of these cases, the challenge is to rethink the rationale behind policies liberals already support, not to rethink the policies themselves. But what about stickier social issues, where a common-good approach might lead you in a substantively different direction? (To say nothing about foreign policy, which is an entirely separate can of worms.) Would liberals get on board with that? My hunch is no."

In The New Republic, Noam Scheiber points to problems for the Democrats in emphasizing communitarianism over libertarianism.

Undead, Undead, Undead

"The Scottish team described Goths as being a subgenre of Punk 'with a dark and sinister aesthetic, with aficionados conspicuous by their range of distinctive clothing and makeup and tastes in music.'"

Reuters reports a new study, published in the British Medical Journal, by researchers at Glasgow University who argue that Goths are more likely to harm themselves or attempt suicide.

Inventing the Prize

The Pulitzer Board announces the winners of the 2006 Pulitzer Prizes, including David M. Oshinsky for history, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin for biography, and special citations for Thelonious Monk and Edmund S. Morgan.

This Is the City...

"Today, as that recent roll call suggests, the 9,314-officer LAPD is a different place. Like the city, it is less than half white; one in five officers is a woman, and Hispanics make up roughly a third of the department, with their representation even greater in the lower ranks, reflecting more recent hiring.
"'Fifteen years ago, this department was dominated by white males,' Mack said. 'That picture clearly has changed dramatically.'"

The Los Angeles Times reports the shifting demographics of the Los Angeles Police Department.

And the Times runs an obit for Chief Ed Davis, who led the LAPD from 1969 to 1978, between William Parker and Daryl Gates.

Eastward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way

"The region's median income now surpasses that of Los Angeles County. It is creating more jobs than Orange and San Diego counties are creating put together. Riverside and San Bernardino counties boast more residents than Oregon.
"'The L.A. dream still exists, it just moved east,' said Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who writes frequently about California. 'Ontario is transitioning into what Los Angeles once was, with both white collar and blue collar.'"

The Los Angeles Times discusses the booming growth of southern California's Inland Empire.

Scenes from the Feminist Struggle on the Upper West Side

"For mothers who can afford full-time baby nurses and $20,000-a-year private schools? Who would no sooner partake of universal day care ('Women, unite! Universal day care!') than they would of their corner brown-skinned public elementary, where their nanny's children go? I don't think so. (Wealthy, powerful left-leaning women will never be able to admit that they have much more in common with wealthy, powerful men than they do with their poor, disenfranchised pseudo-sisters.) I do, however, like Cheever's notion that 'working and stay-at-home moms today are like the famous psychology experiment in which too many rats are put in a cage with too little food.' Although I think the cage is the three square miles around 76th and Broadway, and the problem is too much food (if not actually Barney Greengrass eastern Gaspé smoked salmon)."

In The Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh reviews Mommy Wars, edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner.

"A Flood of Noise and Sound"

From "Canzone del Porter" to "Teen Age Riot," the Library of Congress unveils the latest additions to the National Recording Registry.

The Heart Is a Little to the Left

"For his ruggedly handsome, engagingly flawed, humane if not always lawful behavior, he inspired the Doonesbury comic strip character, the Rev. Scot Sloan. In the late 1960s, after the most heated battles of the desegregation movement had passed, U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated and Coffin took on the war as his issue. While his colleagues at Yale had supported him through the civil rights era, his popularity there waned during the Vietnam conflict."

The Los Angeles Times explores the life of the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who died yesterday at age 81.

Slate runs an appreciation by Mark Oppenheimer.

Curiouser and Curiouser

The Los Angeles Times runs an obit for Swedish director and Ingmar Bergman-protege Vilgot Sjoman, who made 1967's I Am Curious (Yellow), the movie that successfully challenged American obscenity laws.

The American Religious Tradition

"The book described nearly every denomination and the people who made them tick: Protestant groups from Anglican to Pentecostal, Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, neo-pagan groups and atheist associations, along with bibliographical references and mailing addresses.
'I quickly arranged to review it for a journal and then contacted Gordon, expecting to meet a frail guy of 80 who'd spent his entire life putting it together,' Stark said. 'Instead, he turned out to be this young Methodist preacher who'd done the whole thing in his attic.'"

Louis Sahagun in the Los Angeles Times profiles UC Santa Barbara's J. Gordon Melton, who wrote 1979's Encyclopedia of American Religions.

And by way of Ghost in the Machine, Regions of Mind weblog reprints maps depicting American religious identity, created by Glenmary Research Center.

Popular or Professional?

"Unfortunately, Hoffer's rendering of the profession, dividing it between the older historians who relied on 'comforting falsehoods' and his own generation which emphasized discomforting truths, is indicative of the impasse in contemporary historical scholarship to which Wood refers. Perhaps the solution is not for professional historical societies to gain more courage in extending their outrage over oppression and injustice to professional malfeasance. The way forward may be for historians to admit that the failings of America are just as complicated and deserve as much nuance as the nation's accomplishments. And to deflate the self-righteousness that afflicts the profession, the leaders of the OAH might reconsider the priorities that led them to move their convention to San Jose."

In Christianity Today, D. G. Hart reviews Peter Charles Hoffer's Past Imperfect.

Rhinestone Cowgirl

The Los Angeles Times reports the death of Helen B. Cohn, "Bobbie Nudie," who with her late husband, Nudie Cohn, opened Nudie's Rodeo Tailors in 1947 and went on to clothe Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons, and Johnny Cash.

Understanding the Poetics of Space

"'It suggests that the compass has rotated somewhere' away from Western Europe and the U.S., he said. 'Here's this old-fashioned model of someone like Gaudí, who barely set foot outside Barcelona. It stretches the world's frame of reference: He hasn't had to move physically to move the world internationally.'"

Scott Timberg in the Los Angeles Times profiles Paulo Mendes da Rocha, winner of the 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Current Affairs

In the April 9 Los Angeles Times opinion pages, Todd Gitlin criticizes political sectarianism, Francis Fukuyama defends changing one's mind, Swati Pandey lists five political side-switchers, Charles Murray resurrects Richard Nixon's guaranteed annual income, and Jonathan Chait proposes an end-run around the electoral college.

Les Enfants du Lumieres

"The French are terrific at carrying off romantic gallantry but equally unsparing at laying bare the nastiness, the dankness and pure evil that can consume the human spirit. While French cinema is hardly free of mediocre movies, it has been sustained, like that of the Japanese, by a continual flow of gifted filmmakers grappling honestly with the human experience. At their best, French movies, past and present, remain essential viewing."

Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times presents a brief history of French cinema, including a list of important films on DVD.

This Is My Happening and It Freaks Me Out

The Los Angeles Times runs an obit for artist Allan Kaprow, the pioneer of "happenings."

Round Up the Usual Suspects

The Writers Guild of America announces the results of its members' poll of the 101 greatest screenplays.

La Bataille Continue...

"The plaque explained that the students created the phony 'Howe & Ser Moving Company' and used fake work-order forms to get past Caltech campus security guards. After that, a real shipping company toted the 2-ton relic across the country."

The Los Angeles Times reports the theft of the cherished Fleming Cannon from the hallowed campus of the California Institute of Technology.
Update: Caltech students reclaim the cannon.

But The Onion notes new problems for MIT.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Bomb

The Telegraph reports the death at 92 of Nina Countess Schenk von Stauffenberg, wife of Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the German colonel who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

Not a Rebel to Me

Singer Gene Pitney, the writer of Phil Spector's greatest production, "He's a Rebel," dies at 65.

Water and Power

"In his 1970 book 'The Architecture of Four Ecologies,' architecture critic Reyner Banham glowingly called it 'the only public building in the whole city that genuinely graces the scene, lifts the spirit and sits in firm control of the whole basis of human existence in Los Angeles.'"

The Los Angeles Times reports the death of architect Albert C. Martin, Jr., who designed the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power building in 1965.

Scott Timberg adds an analysis in the Los Angeles Times.

Observation or Celebration?

"Newsom acknowledged that the 1906 earthquake was an awkward' event to mark.
"'Do you sit there with a candlelight vigil and say, "My God, how dare the city do what it did back then, with the corruption of city officials or the mistreatment of its Chinese American residents?"' he said.
"'Do you sit there and tell people, "Why are we all here? The next earthquake is going to come, and most of us are not going to make it." Or do you focus on the city's comeback and rebuilding?'"

The Los Angeles Times discusses the difficulties San Francisco has had in commemorating the centennial of the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Manliness and Civilization

"First of all, he thinks we should clearly distinguish between the public realm and private life. In public we should pursue, as best we can, a policy of gender neutrality. He firmly believes that the law should guarantee equal opportunity to men and women. However, 'our expectations should be that men will grasp the opportunity more readily and more wholeheartedly than women.'"

Christina Hoff Summers reviews Harvey C. Mansfield's Manliness in The Weekly Standard.

All the Rest Is Commentary

"Turbulent times accompanied the birth of Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, monotheism in the Middle East and rationalism in Greece.
"All shared a core vision for building a better world that was both simple and drastic: Do not harm others."

The Los Angeles Times interviews Karen Armstrong about the Golden Rule.