July 2008 Acquisitions

Books:
Alan Berube, Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two, 2000.
Sean Egan, Our Music Is Red with Purple Flashes: The Story of the Creation, 2004.
James Ursini, Humphrey Bogart, 2007.
David A. Witts, Forgotten War, Forgiven Guilt, 2003.
Commonweal Confronts the Century: Liberal Convictions, Catholic Tradition, 1999.
Wallpaper* City Guide: Las Vegas, 2007.

DVDs:
Dirty Harry, 1971.
The Future Is Unwritten: Joe Strummer, 2007.
If..., 1968.
Privilege, 1967.

Inversion Layers

"We are not witnessing the abandonment of the suburbs or a movement of millions of people back to the city all at once. But we are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end. For several decades now, cities in the United States have wished for a '24/7' downtown, a place where people live as well as work, and keep the streets busy, interesting, and safe at all times of day. This is what urbanist Jane Jacobs preached in the 1960s, and it has long since become the accepted goal of urban planners. Only when significant numbers of people lived downtown, planners believed, could central cities regain their historic role as magnets for culture and as a source of identity and pride for the metropolitan areas they served. Now that's starting to happen, fueled by the changing mores of the young and by gasoline prices fast approaching $5-per-gallon. In many of its urbanized regions, an America that seemed destined for everincreasing individualization and sprawl is experimenting with new versions of community and sociability."

Alan Ehrenhalt in The New Republic considers the transformation of the nation's cities.

Obama's Paper Chase

"For one thing, Mr. Obama’s courses chronicled the failure of liberal policies and court-led attempts at social change: the Reconstruction-era amendments that were rendered meaningless by a century of resistance, the way the triumph of Brown gave way to fights over busing, the voting rights laws used by Republicans in the South to crowd blacks into as few districts as possible. He was wary of noble theories, students say; instead, they call Mr. Obama a contextualist, willing to look past legal niceties to get results.
"For another, Mr. Obama liked to provoke. He wanted his charges to try arguing that life was better under segregation, that black people were better athletes than white ones.
"'I remember thinking, "you’re offending my liberal instincts,"' Mary Ellen Callahan, now a privacy lawyer in Washington, recalled."

Jodi Kantor in The New York Times investigates Barack Obama's time teaching at the University of Chicago Law School

Arc of the Covenants

"Racially restrictive covenants first came into vogue in the years after World War I as blacks began migrating in large numbers from the South to jobs in the North and West.
"After some attempts at racially restrictive zoning were outlawed as unconstitutional, developers hit upon covenants--in which buyers signed private contracts pledging not to sell their house to blacks as a condition of purchasing their home. Some covenants also excluded Jews, Italians, Russians, Muslims, Latinos and Asians from buying.
"They were widely used in many areas, but particularly in Los Angeles County because so much of its housing was built in the 1920s through the '40s, the heyday of covenants.
"The covenants were not enacted by the government but were private contracts between homeowners. Owners who sold their house to a black family, for example, could be sued for damages by other homeowners in the neighborhood. Black home buyers could also be sued.
"In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelley vs. Kraemer that covenants were unenforceable.
"But although it has been six decades since they were outlawed, historians and policymakers argue that covenants are no mere historical artifact."

Jessica Garrison in the Los Angeles Times reports on efforts by state Assemblyman Hector De La Torre to eliminate remaining racial covenants from deeds in California.

"A Glorified Form of Vocational Training"

"Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them. But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it’s almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it’s even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A’s in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time. Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they’re exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn’t get straight A’s because they couldn’t be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal. These are the kinds of kids who are likely, once they get to college, to be more interested in the human spirit than in school spirit, and to think about leaving college bearing questions, not resumés."

William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar expresses his dissatisfaction with America's most prestigious universities.

"This City Knows the Dream of Freedom"

"I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
"But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived--at great cost and great sacrifice--to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom--indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us--what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores--is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please."

Salon prints Barack Obama's Berlin speech.

"Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In"

"'Perhaps the new bubble could have something to do with watching movies on cell phones,' said investment banker Greg Carlisle of the New York firm Carlisle, Shaloe & Graves. 'Or, say, medicine, or shipping. Or clouds. The manner of bubble isn't important—just as long as it creates a hugely overvalued market based on nothing more than whimsical fantasy and saddled with the potential for a long-term accrual of debts that will never be paid back, thereby unleashing a ripple effect that will take nearly a decade to correct.'
"'The U.S. economy cannot survive on sound investments alone,' Carlisle added."

From The Onion.

Disaster Logic

"It ought to be morbidly embarrassing for a writer to discover that the central character of her narrative turns out to oppose what she identifies as the apotheosis of his own movement. And Klein's mistake exposes the deeper flaw of her thesis. Friedman opposed the war because he was a libertarian, and libertarian conservatism is not the same thing as neoconservatism. Nor are the interests of corporations always, or even usually, served by war."

Jonathan Chait reviews Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in The New Republic.

"Who's the Twenty-Seventh Prez Who's Got the Ladies Doin' Everything He Says?"

Taft! (via YouTube.)

Take a Chance on Me

"What is it about this rather cheesy Scandinavian pop group that sticks in our hearts like hot chewing gum on a summertime pavement? How is it that a group that essentially disbanded in 1982 is still selling upward of 2 million albums a year? It can't just be a collective nostalgia for wide collars, kitsch and up-tempo songs sung with an English-as-a-second-language accent. We can wrap our critical credibility around other acts more obtuse and obscure, we can brush off our relationship with ABBA--Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog--as purely novelty based. But how cynical would we have to be to believe that the brightness and liveliness and pure fun of something diminishes its artistic value? Is it possible to stop worrying and learn to love the Björn?"

Mary Elizabeth Williams answers such questions in Salon.

"The Triumph of Feminism over Socialism"

"To be sure, attacking feminist criticism as being the extended whine of a privileged, educated upper class is as old as … well, as bell hooks’s 1984 critique of Friedan’s Feminine Mystique: '[Friedan] did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife.' It’s a point that keeps having to be made, though. And hooks’s list doesn’t even include the legions of colorless office jobs that most women endure, 'real' jobs that trap them from eight to five in a cramped cubicle under hideous lighting. During the course of a Sex and the City workday you’re likely to encounter Mr. Big, but at a 'real' job you’re far more likely to be thrown in with the pimply, fright-wigged characters of Dilbert or with Dwight Shrute from The Office, the show whose name is synonymous with tedium, idiocy, and despair."

Sandra Tsing Loh reviews Linda Hirshman’s Get to Work … And Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late and Neil Gilbert's A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market and Policy Shape Family Life in The Atlantic.

"Our Work Is Not Over"

"What Dr. King and Roy Wilkins understood is that it matters little if you have the right to sit at the front of the bus if you can't afford the bus fare; it matters little if you have the right to sit at the lunch counter if you can't afford the lunch. What they understood is that so long as Americans are denied the decent wages, and good benefits, and fair treatment they deserve, the dream for which so many gave so much will remain out of reach; that to live up to our founding promise of equality for all, we have to make sure that opportunity is open to all Americans."

Salon prints Barack Obama's speech to the NAACP.

The Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel

"'I thought it was very difficult,' Olsberg says. 'The work had been misrepresented for so long, as sensational Space Age-ism, as Hollywood glamour. It was burdened with all these myths: It was vulgar, it was crass, it was drama, it was spectacle.
"'But it wasn't about that. It was about trying to establish this transcendent relationship between man and his environment,' Olsberg says."

In the Los Angeles Times, Anne-Marie O'Connor assesses the work of architect John Lautner, the subject of a new exhibit at the Hammer Museum.

Heart Smart

Lawrence K. Altman in The New York Times reports the death of Dr. Michael DeBakey.

Ease on Down the Road

"At 9:35 a.m., the house cleared Steinman Hall of City College with about 18 inches to spare. On reaching the park, it was turned around to its intended orientation. Maria Burks, the commissioner of the National Parks of New York Harbor, called the move 'a work of art' in its own right."

In The New York Times, David W. Dunlap reports on the National Park Service's successful effort to move Alexander Hamilton's country house, the Grange, to its new home in Manhattan's St. Nicholas Park.

Keep Hope Alive

"There's nothing new about this kind of self-examination, but in the past we've conducted it mainly in private, in barbershops and beauty parlors, and churches. We've bristled when whites in power like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, joined in the critique of, for example, our soaring rate of out-of-wedlock births. We've moaned about the negative consequences of washing dirty laundry in public. But such a self-protective mindset no longer makes sense because Obama is one of us, who has taken part in our private handwringing about the self-inflicted wounds that bedevil segments of the black community. He hasn't said anything most of us haven't heard or said at the dinner table. But now, because Obama is who he is, the whole world is listening in to the conversation.
"The attention makes us uncomfortable and disoriented. So does the prospect that one of us might soon be in charge of trying to fix this mess instead of simply complaining about it."

Jack White in The Root considers Jesse Jackson, Sr.'s recent remarks about Barack Obama.

And in The New York Times, Charles M. Blow backs up Obama.

Dead Right

Steven A. Holmes in The New York Times writes an obit for segregationist former senator Jesse Helms.

Vital Centrists

In The New York Times, Richard Norton Smith and Jean Edward Smith assess the legacies of Nelson Rockefeller and Dwight Eisenhower, repectively.

Smooth Moves

Labratory 101 celebrates "the art of the tracking shot."

"But If It Happens with Nice Design, It's Acceptable"

"Food is another important area of competition, and being able to show up other white people. Some white people get their status based on how much they know about food, like expensive ingredients or foreign cuisine. Whereas other white people gain their status based on how many things they've cut out of what they eat, like gluten and sugar and refined things and dairy and meat, trying to reduce as much as possible.
"But universally, throughout, shopping at Whole Foods is considered the best way to go."

Katharine Mieszkowski in Salon interviews Christian Lander, the author of Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions.

"Racial Justice on the Cheap"

"America fought over slavery. America fretted about Jim Crow and finally put a stop to it. During the 1960s, the nation tried out various remedies for its horrific history, including school integration and, especially during the Nixon administration, minority hiring programs. But by 1978, the nation’s attention was slipping to other pressing moral questions—abortion and the environment, for instance—and has never quite slipped back."

In The New York Times, Stephen L. Carter considers affirmative action thirty years after Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

Jules Tygiel, 1949-2008

Bruce Weber in The New York Times writes an obituary for historian Jules Tygiel of San Francisco State University.

"My Idea of America"

"That gut instinct, that knowledge would survive my growing awareness of our nation's imperfections: its ongoing racial strife; the perversions of our political system that were laid bare during the Watergate hearings; the wrenching poverty of the Mississippi Delta and the hills of Appalachia, and inner cities and rural communities all across America.
"That instinct that this is the greatest country on Earth survived not only because, in my mind, the joys of American life and culture--its vitality, its variety, its freedom--always outweighed its imperfections, but because I learned that what makes America great has never been its perfection, but the belief that it can be made better.
"I came to understand that our revolution was waged for the sake of that belief: that we could be governed by laws, not men; that we could be equal in the eyes of those laws; that we could be free to say what we want, and assemble with whomever we want, and worship as we please; that we could have the right to pursue our individual dreams, but the obligation to help our fellow citizens pursue theirs."

Barack Obama speaks on patriotism in Independence, Missouri.

Don de Dieu Feray Valoir

"It was here that New France took hold, here that the fur trade and the missionary conversion of the continent began and exploration of North America commenced in earnest. So as Quebec gets set to mark its quadricentennial today, it is as much a national celebration as a local one."

Canada's National Post notes that today is the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of Quebec City.

And David Hackett Fischer in The New York Times compares founding ideas of the United States and Canada.

Back to Old Virginny

"David Muraca, director of archaeology for the George Washington Foundation, said the size, characteristics and location of the structure, as well as many artifacts from the time of Washington’s youth, had led experts to conclude that this was indeed the house they were looking for. 'This is it,' Mr. Muraca said firmly."

John Noble Wilford in The New York Times reports that archaeologists have found the remnants of George Washington's childhood home near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Dead Souls

"A police spokesman said: 'There is no CCTV in the area and there are no apparent leads as to who is responsible for the theft.
"'This is a very unusual theft and I am confident that someone locally will have knowledge about who is responsible or where the memorial stone is at present.'"

The BBC reports that someone has stolen singer Ian Curtis's gravestone from Macclesfield Cemetery.

Bullitt Time

Using Google Maps, follow Steve McQueen through the streets of San Francisco in the chase scene from Bullitt.

"Would It Kill Ya Every Once in Awhile to Play a Little Foghat?"

Via YouTube, Jim Carrey wins an award for Best Male Performance at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards.

Spreading the News

"New York’s mission was to compete for consumer attention at a time when television threatened to overwhelm print publications. To do that, Mr. Felker came up with a distinctive format: a combination of long narrative articles and short, witty ones on consumer services. He embraced the New Journalism of the late ’60s: the use of novelistic techniques to give reporting new layers of emotional depth. And he adopted a tone that was unapologetically elitist, indefatigably trendy and proudly provincial—in a sophisticated, Manhattan-centric sort of way. The headlines were bold, the graphics even bolder.
"The look and attitude captured the attention of the city and influenced editors and designers for years to come. Dozens of city magazines modeling themselves after New York sprang up around the country."

Deirdre Carmody in The New York Times writes an obit for Clay Felker, founding editor of New York magazine.