I was just listening to Republican Convention coverage on NPR and heard a young delegate from Nebraska describe herself as part of the “post-9/11 generation,” and therefore especially concerned about national security. She put me in mind of \Letter to the Next Generation\, a wonderful film by Jim Klein (you can find it at New …
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, very near the liberal epicenter at Berkeley, I’ve yet to meet anyone who is now or has ever been a Bush voter. I?ve been thinking hard about this, because it’s in my nature to want to understand those with whom I disagree, and my encounters with their views …
In the Jewish spiritual tradition, there is a Torah reading–a portion of the Hebrew Bible–assigned to each week. This week’s text is \Shoftim\, from Deuteronomy 16:18-21.9, focusing on prohibitions and exhortations to justice. I?m by no means a biblical literalist, but I often find the weekly text resonates with the concerns of the moment, providing …
We had houseguests this past week, dear friends we?ve known for decades. Lingering over breakfast on Friday, we divvied up the \New York Times\. Whoever commented first on the employment report (200,000 new jobs had been forecast for July, but only 32,000 actually materialized) spoke what all of us were feeling: I hate to say …
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 heart. Then …
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 weight. …
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 elections in …
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 suggests a …
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 committed was …
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 increase …