Politics in any form is hard for me. I avoid confrontation and disagreement like the plague, so almost everything to do with politics makes me go running for the nearest blanket to hide under. But one of my Political Science students brought me a book catalog from a trip she went on, and The President’s Kitchen Cabinet was in it. I love food and anything to do with it, and looking at the history of politics through the lens of a thing I enjoy made this […]
Two books so close as to be indistinguishable
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide; and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness by Carol Anderson and Michelle Alexander
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell […]
Comedian Turned Senator? Sure.
Best for: Those interested in a fun (but surprisingly serious) look at how the sausage is made. In a nutshell: Comedy writer turned senator provides the story of how he got where he is, and what it really means to be a U.S. Senator. Line that sticks with me: “They’re all extremely conservative Republicans who I’m sure don’t want me to say anything good about them. And make no mistake, I hope they get beat in their next elections. But they’re there right now! And […]
Lose Yourself. Bring Sunscreen.
So. Get this. There’s this guy, right? He’s a super-secret, super-smart, super-duper spy person. He’s, like, the youngest of his kind EVER. His parents were viciously killed when he was young, but that’s okay because he was adopted by this really rich couple who loved him and turned him into a super-spy. And now? He’s an all-American hero, strong of jaw and willpower, on the hunt for a super evil radical islamist terrorist who is planning to unleash smallpox into the world. The only question […]
Great expectations brought low
I don’t know who has written the book on Grover Cleveland, but I don’t think this book is it. It’s an insightful appraisal of the man, and an informative snapshot of the era, but it isn’t nearly detailed enough in the latter respect to be able to draw much of a parallel to current affairs, and the subject perhaps isn’t interesting enough to safe the former respect. I liked the book, but it’s a fairly middling biography, for a president often ignored and little taught […]
MLK: The Original Shade Thrower
Yesterday afternoon, I read Frank Bruni’s opinion piece, titled “The Wrong Way to Take On Trump.” Bruni – former political reporter turned restaurant critic turned opinion columnist for the New York Times – decided to school the American public on how we should “go high” when talking, protesting, and generally reacting to Trump. Except he didn’t really give specifics on what to do, nor did he interview any activists on their advice. Bruni spent the majority of this column telling us how we failed in […]
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