Archive for July, 2004

Praying for Wisdom

Friday, July 30th, 2004

Political speech is so close to religious discourse. Listening to John Kerry and his friends and family last night was a little like praying: my mind skates over the parts I find disturbing (as during prayers beseeching God to smite our enemies), and lingers, swelling with desire, during the parts that lift my […]

Trial Balloon Plummets

Sunday, July 18th, 2004

Yesterday’s paper quoted Condoleeza Rice as saying “No one is thinking of postponing the elections.” A Justice Department spokesperson went so far as to deny they’d ever had a conversation with the Homeland Security folks on this question. I’d say the trial balloon described in my blog of 14 July crashed like a lead […]

Signs and Reminders

Friday, July 16th, 2004

The other day I took a walk with a friend who came to this country as a child, a refugee from Nazi Germany. We talked–are there any other topics these days–of the state of American politics and society. “It’s just like Germany,” she said. “If we were younger, if our children didn?t […]

The Best and Worst of Intentions

Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

Yesterday a friend sent me a message headed “The pending 2004 Coup d’Etat.” You may understand that when I started to read, I felt skeptical. It was a letter from a Unitarian minister in Atlanta, claiming that the Bush administration’s Homeland Security department is pursuing legislation that would allow it to postpone national […]

Art Imitates Art

Friday, July 9th, 2004

Today’s Doonesbury makes it clear why I chose \Clarity\ for my title. Can we get it into the Army’s MREs?

Fair and Balanced

Monday, July 5th, 2004

It’s hilarious the way \Fahrenheit 9/11\ is being microscopically vetted for accuracy, with long newspaper stories scoring each of Michael Moore’s assertions and implications. Where were these avatars of “balance” when the Ronald Reagan mythos was being constructed daily by a print-electronic media collaboration that rivaled the Tower of Babel?
The media snit […]

Art Under Attack

Monday, July 5th, 2004

My friend Michael Dorsey has a good story on his blog for June 29th about the U.S. Attorney’s insane charges against artist Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble. They started with bioterrorism and whittled the indictment down to something they thought might actually stand, petty larceny. But the crime the artist actually […]

Arlene Interviewed for Community Arts Network

Friday, July 2nd, 2004

Click here for the full text of my interview with Jan Cohen-Cruz.

National Call to Artists

Thursday, July 1st, 2004

A few days ago I alerted you to expect information about another great project by and for artists awakening to the crisis in democracy. SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, California, has inaugurated the National Call to Artists, a Web repository for images, songs, scripts, and ideas that can help […]