Gallery of art and thoughts

Here's the Pitch!

2007-04-23T12:53:00.001-07:00

Here's the Pitch!
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

New pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka has made quite an impact on the Boston Red Sox thus far. Last Tuesday, although he took the loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, he was nevertheless impressive.
Thanks to my friend Taro Matsuoka for his help with this cartoon. Any errors in translation are mine alone.
Oh, and I hear Sunday night's game was pretty interesting, too (wink, wink). I should have another cartoon about it soon ...

News on friends' art ventures

2007-02-27T10:56:00.001-08:00

A couple of friends have art-related news I'd like to share:

First, Cambridge artist Bren Bataclan discusses his upcoming projects on YouTube. Check it out!

Second, Georgia Bellas, who had an exhibition at the Holyoke Center last year, now has work on display (digital mixed media on canvas) at the Cambridge Common restaurant until March 27. That gives me a reason to stop by Porter Square...

News on friends' art ventures

2007-02-27T10:56:00.000-08:00

Hello, Red-State America!

2006-12-20T17:07:00.000-08:00

I visited Ohio for a week at the start of this month. This Bay Stater enjoyed touring red-state America. Until this month, I'd mostly visited blue-state destinations (New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC).

Among the highlights: Getting addicted to Tim Hortons bagels and Skyline chili. Touring art museums in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Walking across the bridge into Kentucky. And getting an up-close look at the religious right.

I'd like to do it all again!

Tough talk from Israel?

2006-11-10T15:09:00.000-08:00

An Israeli defense official says his country could attack Iran to prevent that nation from developing nuclear weapons.

Someone should tell President Bush to rein in Ehud Olmert ... and someone should tell Vladimir Putin to rein in Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Israel and the 2006 elections

2006-11-09T16:12:00.001-08:00

Last night I heard a representative from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, discuss (among other things) the impact of the 2006 elections on Israel. He didn't seem worried about any changes in US policy, although some Israelis are. I suppose that, given the absence of a Cynthia McKinney this campaign season, there won't be any such changes next year when the Democrats reclaim Congress.

He discussed the current situation in Israel. One big item in the news is the Israeli artillery barrage in the Gaza Strip that left 18 Palestinians dead. Seems like this is the first big story from the region since the Israel-Hezbollah war this summer.

What concerned him most? I would say Iran. He brought up Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments about eliminating the Zionist state.

Is Ahmadinejad as big a threat to the Jews as Adolf Hitler was? For all the Iranian leader's braggadocio, I don't think he (or the real power broker in his country, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) would dare to attack Israel. The reasons are twofold: An American response, and a risk of creating Palestinian casualties.

There are objections to this second item. After all, Iran fought a war with other Muslims, namely those in Iraq, for eight years. And how much identification would the Persians of Iran feel toward the Sunnis of Ramallah, East Jerusalem, and Gaza?

The Palestinians, though, have become a cause celebre in the Islamic world, and a key part of the Muslim ummah. Their proximity to Israel may ironically prove to be a sort of protection for the Jewish state from the greater threat of a nuclear Iran.

Saddam sentenced

2006-11-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence. What are the charges against him?

The principal one, for this trial, seems to be his reprisal against Shiite Muslims in Dujail for a 1982 assassination attempt. According to the Chicago Tribune, "entire families from Dujail were detained. Death sentences against many were issued after perfunctory one-day trials. Nearly four dozen victims died in captivity--often during interrogation." The death count: 148.

While the sentence seems final, it may not be. "There are appeals and more trials," the Tribune wrote. Hussein is scheduled for another trial for charges of genocide. The basis: killing around 180,000 Kurds in 1987-88. The Tribune: "All told, Hussein's regime is believed to have killed at least 300,000 Iraqis."

Some Sunnis have reacted violently to the death sentence. Even after his sentencing, it seems, the dictator can still cause trouble in Iraq.

Christopher Hitchens on I.F. Stone

2006-10-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

Finished reading Christopher Hitchens' piece on I.F. Stone in Vanity Fair. It's a review of Myra MacPherson's biography All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone.

Hitchens deserves praise for a balanced assessment of Stone, applauding the man for defying McCarthy and criticizing him for supporting Communism (among other transgressions). "But in point of fact and interpretation," Hitchens writes, "he was naïve about the Soviet Union for most of his life (dying just as it was about to do so itself, in 1989), mistaken about the Korean War, simplistic about both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and unable to see the diminishing returns of the New Deal tradition."

Hitchens finds broader significance in Stone's style. "Even the slightest piece written by Izzy was composed with a decent respect for the King's English and usually contained at least one apt allusion to the literature and poetry and history that undergirded it: an allusion that he would expect his readers to recognize," Hitchens writes.

Also, I've begun writing (and drawing) for the AOL Elections 2006 blog. Check it out!

What's new?

2006-09-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

As a (more or less) lifelong resident of Malden, Massachusetts, I'm happy to be part of a new project, Window Arts Malden, or WAM. The project matches local artists with businesses in Malden Square, and each artist gets to display his or her work in storefront windows. I have seven pieces on display at the New England Comics on 95 Pleasant Street. The opening celebration was held on Saturday, Sept. 16, and the event runs until the 30th.

Also: There's a new progressive Jewish organization, Moishe/Kavod House, in Brookline. A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture by State Rep. Frank Smizik; you can see my cartoon about the event here.

World War II and 9/11

2006-08-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

In an article written for Gather.com, I compare and contrast two types of suicide attacks: those of the kamikazes in World War II, and those of al-Qaeda on 9/11.

Bat Mitzvah Cartoon

2006-07-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

Bat Mitzvah Cartoon
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

This is a response to an article on the adult bat mitzvah movement by Linda K. Wertheimer in the July 30 Boston Globe magazine. "During the last decade," Wertheimer writes, "the practice of an adult marking a bat mitzvah has become increasingly popular and an institution in both Reform and Conservative temples. Even Orthodox women are shaking up tradition, learning rituals once forbidden to them, though the pace of change is slower." Wertheimer's article focuses on the experiences of a group of women, including herself, at Temple Shir Tikvah in Winchester.

Local musician Geni impresses

2006-07-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

Geni
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

A few weeks ago, I got to hear local musician Geni perform at All Asia in Central Square. His schedule's stayed busy, as he's doing two shows this week (one at Lily's Pad tonight). Check him out; he does a great job playing the shakuhachi, or Japanese flute.

Thoughts on recent Globe articles

2006-07-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Two writers discuss Jewish issues in the Boston Sunday Globe. Columnist Jeff Jacoby mourns what he supposes to be the loss of Israel's derring-do epitomized by Entebbe, and Harvard professor Susan Suleiman reviews a new book by Jan Gross about a post-World War II massacre of Polish Jews by their countrymen at Kielce.

We will begin with Suleiman's review and Gross' book, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz." Gross is certainly no stranger to documenting Polish atrocities toward Jews. In 2001, Gross published "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland." According to Suleiman, "The most shocking fact was that those who murdered the Jews of Jedwabne were Polish. The Polish villagers killed their Jewish neighbors and took over their property -- with the approval and encouragement of the Nazi occupiers." Now Gross considers the plight of Polish Jews after the war. After the trauma of the Holocaust, Poles murdered a thousand more Jews between 1945 and 1946. One pogrom took place on July 4, 1946, in and around the city of Kielce. The victims included "a woman and her baby who were driven to a forest and shot in cold blood by a small group of men," Suleiman writes. "After stripping her of her few belongings, they went out and had dinner."

Gross does good work in identifying and debunking the purported causes of this pogrom, including what Suleiman calls a "medieval fantasy of ritual murder" and the equation of Judaism with Communism. "There are still historians in Poland who explain Polish anti-Semitism on those grounds," Suleiman writes, "but Gross shows that, if anything, the Jewish population was largely anti-Communist, before and after the war."

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the Holocaust is that as soon as World War II ended, heartless people in Poland wanted the killing of Jews to continue.

The Entebbe operation, subject of Jacoby's column, also took place on July 4 (1976). He bemoans Israel for seemingly losing its soul, for committing the same audacious acts -- a commando raid in 1976, demonstrations against Gaza today -- while seeing its macho, martial character disappear. What is the evidence? "Israel's operation in Gaza comes less than a year after its unilateral retreat last summer," Jacoby writes, "when more than 8,000 Jews were expelled from the homes and communities some of them had lived in for decades." The Gaza disengagement, he adds, "didn't appease Hamas and Fatah. Instead, it convinced them that Israelis were weak, that terrorism worked -- and that more terrorism would work even better." He cites numerous examples.

Yet is Israel really different from its counterpart thirty years ago? Between 1968 and 1970, the country fought an inconclusive War of Attrition with Egypt before the Yom Kippur War of 1973 resulted in embarrassment, bloodshed, and the toppling of the Meir government. The Olmert administration seems better prepared today, given its rapid response to the kidnapping of French-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Withdrawal doesn't necessarily mean weakness. Leaving the Sinai after 1978 helped bring peace with Egypt. Yes, it is a cold peace, but Israel fought four major wars with Egypt before 1978 and none since. Leaving Lebanon does not seem to be the mistake the hawks felt it was in 2000. Hezbollah has had ample time to prepare for an invasion, yet that invasion has not come. And certainly we can argue that when Israel has acted with too much machismo, it has hurt itself -- as was the case with the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which resulted in a deadly stalemate with Hezbollah that overstretched an IDF already trying to deal with unrest in Gaza and the West Bank.

Those who govern Israel must never forget that their country was formed to protect Jews. Renouncing Gaza gives the IDF less territory to patrol and thus strengthens its overall position. Nonviolent solutions may not grab headlines, but their effect may prove as lasting as the raid on Entebbe.

Al Gore and "An Inconvenient Truth"

2006-06-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

Fourteen years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Al Gore has finally come out with the pro-environmental message the world has needed. The prodigal son has produced a movie, An Inconvenient Truth, that details the dangers of global warming. While impressive, it should nevertheless have been titled An Incomplete Truth because it fails to present a complete picture.

Those of us in the greater Boston area may have particular cause to urge our legislators to take action against global warming. Mike Miliard, of the Boston Phoenix, describes an alarming scenario for Boston in the year 2106.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

2006-04-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

It's a day after Yom HaShoah. This article is a good explanation of why the world should continue to remember the evils of the Holocaust.

Hope?

2006-04-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

The specter of AIDS has haunted the world for decades. According to this Associated Press article, it seems that researchers could be progressing toward a vaccine. How wonderful that would be -- some good news amidst the terrible talk of dangerous diseases (bird flu, SARS, and of course AIDS).

Israeli elections, Palestinian response

2006-03-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

Ehud Olmert has won the election for prime minister in Israel, and the Palestinian government of Hamas has approved a cabinet and agenda. What does this bode for the Middle East? I attempt to answer this question on Gather.com.

Update

2006-03-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

I've been remiss in blogging, partly because I've been drawing cartoons for the Cambridge Chronicle over the past few weeks.

I've also been traveling. Two weekends ago, I was in San Francisco, where I visited the Cartoon Art Museum and saw fascinating exhibits on Israeli cartoonists, international cartoonists in general (and their views of the US), and the "Gross, Gruesome and Gothic." Additionally, I got to hear one of the better cartoonists out there (and a fellow Malden, Mass. native), Keith Knight, speak on marketing one's artwork.

As a result, I am considering making some changes to this website. I plan on drawing a political cartoon each week, using the format from last month. Cartooning requires persistence and consistency, and by setting a schedule for myself, I hope to display both traits.

Thoughts on Mohammed cartoons

2006-02-28T17:30:00.000-08:00

By Richard Tenorio

Several weeks have passed since the media began chronicling the increasing Muslim rage over 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed, first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. It is therefore time to examine the reaction by the American media.
The response of American newspapers shows that the violent threats made in Europe and Asia have had a ripple effect across the Atlantic. The general reason why editors have shirked from printing the cartoons is because of a fear of reprisals, whether at home or abroad.
What the cartoon controversy has reminded the globe is that journalists and editors can face the same problems as the people whose lives they chronicle. Despite the best efforts of the Fourth Estate to remain outside the story, the decisions they make can sometimes become part of the story – or, in this case, the cartoon.
It does not matter that the most prominent newspapers in the United States, such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe, refuse to print the cartoons. What matters is that it was a Western publication that ran them in the first place. This action symbolized the most potent trait of Western culture: its ability to trespass. Whether disproving the Ptolemaic conception of the earth, experimenting with stem-cell research, or having Jesus Christ and Satan duke it out in a cartoon Christmastime clash, Western culture has always harbored individuals willing to defy cultural norms.
The Muslim world, meanwhile, has been characterized by the umma, the community. Dissent is discouraged, and the lopsided election returns racked up by Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak attest to the prominence of one-party rule. The government assumes a major role in daily life because it appropriates so many functions: not only temporal ruler, but also spiritual one. Even journalism has been placed under the governmental mantle: most newspapers in Muslim countries are state-owned, which makes the complaint of Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan more understandable: “There should be a limit to press freedom,” he said.
Now that one of its brethren has prompted a cultural controversy, the Western media is trying to return to its former position. The self-censorship of the cartoons is exposing many organizations as acting hypocritically. The same publications that decided not to print images of the Mohammed cartoons exercised no similar restraint in running photos of Chris Ofili’s sacrilegious artwork, of the Reverend Fred Phelps and his “God Hates Fags” signs, or of neo-Nazi rallies. They know that controversial subject matter attracts readers, and they must have seen the articles attesting to the sales climb for those newspapers brave enough to reprint the cartoons. The threat to their security must have been very great indeed for American newspapers, with their declining circulations, to eschew 12 controversial images.
The Western news media wants it to be January 2006 again, before the February furor. It is admirable that media bosses are so concerned for their workers’ safety. At the same time, it’s sad to see that intimidation tactics have silenced the mouths of the American media, with an effectiveness that John Ashcroft or George W. Bush would have envied.

The waiting is the hardest part

2006-02-23T18:11:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a new cartoon and a new column. The cartoon should be done by tomorrow, the column by next week. Enjoy this scrutiny of American inequity while you're waiting. It shows how concentrated wealth is in our society.

Ortiz or Rodriguez?

2006-02-20T06:29:00.000-08:00

I wrote a column on this subject -- who gives his team the better edge, David Ortiz or Alex Rodriguez -- in today's Daily Item. The link is here.

Gunsmoke, The Sequel

2006-02-16T07:27:00.000-08:00

Cheney Cartoon
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

The coverage of the Dick Cheney shooting incident continues to unfold. Here's my take on the bizarre story.

For another interesting article, incorporating the views of an actual hunting columnist, click here.

The Red Sox and Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

My latest article, accompanied by a Shakespearean sonnet, is on the relationship between the Red Sox and their fans, which resembles a romance. Read it here...

The New Bedford anti-gay attack

2006-02-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

Cartoon2-10
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

The news media is busy covering the recent anti-gay attack in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and the subsequent death of the suspected attacker, 18-year-old Jacob Robida. Here is my reaction.

Trouble in Denmark

2006-02-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

Cartoon
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

My take on the Mohammed cartoon controversy.

A new war in the Gulf?

2006-01-17T20:36:00.000-08:00

Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson predicts a new Gulf War erupting in 2007 and lasting until 2011. He shows none of the extended analysis of, say, Harry Turtledove's fiction, and limits his hypothesis mainly to this year. His main point is that if the United States and the United Nations ignore the looming nuclear threat of Iran, the following scenario will occur: "As in the 1930s, an anti-Semitic demagogue broke his country's treaty obligations and armed for war."

This time, the demagogue in question is Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Aided by French and Russian money, Ahmadinejad could make his country into a nuclear threat, and his anti-Israel rhetoric makes him appear as dangerous as Saddam Hussein once seemed.

Just as worse, according to Ferguson, is that this is a year of lost leadership: a reluctant Dubya, a battered Blair, an incapacitated Sharon. As a result, the only course to pursue is through diplomatic wrist-slaps.

Is Iran really that formidable, and is the West really that helpless? Iran has not fought a war since the 1980s, so it is hard to gauge the effectiveness of its army. The American and Israeli militaries remain two of the best technologically-equipped fighting forces in the world. That said, the US is pursuing an ambitious agenda with forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan; this could make it difficult for the US to invade other countries. However, the American forces in Iraq would seem sufficiently strong to withstand any Iranian attack across the border.

Misdiagnosing Massachusetts

2006-01-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

Massachusetts is losing residents. Between July 2004 and July 2005, the net loss for the state was 8,600 people, which represents a population decline of 0.1 percent. This continues a trend: Over a 12-year period (1990-2002), when you subtract the number of arrivals in Massachusetts from the number of departures, the end product is 213,000. Why is this happening?

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe blames the state's politics. "I suspect that fewer and fewer people want to call Massachusetts home not because of its oppressive winters but because of its oppressive and demoralizing political culture," he claims. Among such political oppression: "A state legislature that stays in session year-round? A supreme court that turns same-sex marriage into a constitutional right? Public 'authorities' that answer to no one? In most of America, no way. In Massachusetts, no problem," Jacoby writes.

Like any good debater, Jacoby considers the counterarguments. "Yes, overpriced real estate and a high cost of living are serious issues in Massachusetts," he acknowledges. "But they are serious issues in California, Florida, Hawaii, and New Jersey, too, yet none of them is losing population."

The trouble is that the liberalism Jacoby loathes here is equally present in the four alternative states he lists. Does he really think that the Supreme Judicial Court is more liberal than, say, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who briefly allowed same-sex marriage in his city? Does he think that immigration in Massachusetts -- "On Beacon Hill last week, the big issue for Massachusetts lawmakers was whether tuition should be reduced for illegal aliens at the state's public colleges," he writes -- is any more of an issue than immigration in Florida? And while Jacoby decries the Democratic dominance in the Bay State, symbolized by Senator Ted Kennedy, he omits to mention that Democrats are equally represented among the senators or former senators of California (Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein), Florida (Bob Graham), Hawaii (Daniel Akaka, Daniel Inouye), and New Jersey (Bob Corzine, Frank Lautenberg).

Jacoby is wrong. It is the high cost of living in Massachusetts that is forcing people out. Just look at the real-estate prices. A Coldwell Banker report surveyed 300 cities across the United States to gauge the value of "a 2,200-square-foot house with 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, a family room and a two-car garage" in a neighborhood that is "typical for corporate middle-management transferees." Only two states had cities with prices above $1 million: California and Massachusetts.

This is a serious problem. Coupled with the demise of rent control, high prices for apartments and homes are making it hard for people to find affordable housing. It makes sense to migrate to a red state because you can buy a car and rent an apartment in Arkansas for the same amount that it would cost you to rent an apartment in Boston, Cambridge or Brookline.

The large number of colleges and universities in this state only adds to the number of people competing for jobs each year. As people marry and have children, it becomes even more sensible, financially, to move someplace cheaper. Having an inexpensive apartment or house is, of course, an asset during a layoff or downsizing.

Issues like gay marriage or Kennedy's stance on Samuel Alito don't directly affect the majority of Massachusetts residents. But housing is, and its cost is rising beyond the reach of many people in this state. Until someone solves this problem, Jacoby's argument makes no sense.

Dealing with death

2006-01-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

The Boston Globe has a good article about dealing with the death of a loved one. According to freelance writer Judy Foreman, "the emerging view among mental health experts is that grieving for a lost loved one is really a disorderly, highly idiosyncratic process." This means, Foreman writes, "that there are no set stages to go through and no 'normal' or 'right' ways to do it."

Having lost my grandmother in November (she was 85), I am dealing with my own grieving process. It's hard when someone who was so much a part of your life is suddenly, irreplaceably gone. While this country emphasizes stoicism, different people cope with death in different ways. A friend of mine said that it takes up to a year to reconcile yourself to the death of someone close to you. I wonder if she meant the "acceptance" part of the five-stage process described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

The Globe article is at its best when Foreman makes practical suggestions for grieving. She quotes Lynn Osborn, a 48-year-old woman from Belmont who lost her husband to Lou Gehrig's disease four years ago. Osborn suggests "record(ing) your loved one's voice" and, as Foreman paraphrases, "to treasure the time you do -- and did -- have with the person you love."

My suggestions? When facing the loss of an older family member, don't just spend more time with him or her. Ask questions about their life. Family histories -- especially immigrant family histories -- disappear when the older generation dies, and the younger generation doesn't show enough interest. Identify people in old photos and compile albums. It's important to pass family heritage on to children so they know where they come from.

The Democrats' future

2006-01-05T14:27:00.000-08:00

Profiles about liberal bloggers have been popular in the news during recent months. The Washington Monthly has one on Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (The Daily Kos), while Vanity Fair profiled Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post) in November.

If the Republicans have become the party of the think tank, the Democrats have become the party of the blog. One can imagine an elephant at a Heritage Foundation cocktail party, discussing Hannibal's tactics with Victor Davis Hanson and laughing at John Kerry with Grover Norquist. Likewise, one can imagine a donkey busily blogging in the wake of another Jack Abramoff scandal.

Let's focus on the Democrats. The blog is portrayed as a less effective tool than the think tank. Washington Monthly writer Benjamin Wallace-Wells explains: "Moulitsas is just basically uninterested in the intellectual and philosophical debates that lie behind the daily political trench warfare." Wallace-Wells adds that "the more that the Democratic Party turns to Moulitsas for help, the more the limits to his movement become apparent, the less the raw animus of many liberals for the Iraq war seems likely to translate into any lasting liberal movement, and the more the current obsession with his brand of Winnerism looks misplaced."

Is this a legitimate critique? Are voters really seeking a philosophy behind candidates? George W. Bush and the Republicans have profited by exploiting red-state Americans' feelings about issues that don't directly affect most people: the estate tax and gay marriage, for instance. There is an element to Republican politics that is as visceral as any Howard Dean speech.

That said, the Democrats must settle on a response to the Republicans. They still haven't done so. Some ideas:

National security. If the Democrats really think that we should leave Iraq, they should join people like Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania. There are persuasive reasons for it: The war is too costly, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and Osama bin Laden hasn't been apprehended, wherever he may be. Meanwhile, American servicemen continue to die and the Bush administration has yet to come up with an exit strategy.

Health care. Many Americans remain uninsured. The Democrats need to make an ideological case for universal coverage. In 1994, the insurance industry used its "Harry and Louise" ads to scare Americans away from the Clinton health-care plan. It seems that a viable solution will be hard to find -- in Europe, the wait for a doctor can be excruciating -- but it is rather callous to deny health care to those who need it, and the Democrats ought to keep searching for a way to provide it to all.

Squeezing the middle class. From student loans to credit cards to mortgages, Americans are getting into debt. Life for Generation X is comparable to the financial hardships of colonial America, when newcomers signed up for lives of indentured servitude. The Internal Revenue Service already allows people to deduct student-loan interest on their taxes, but more deductions (for a certain amount of principal) should be offered to allow young people to save more money.

Education. This is one area where the Democrats have long been committed to helping the cause of minorities in this country. More than 50 years since Brown v. Board of Education, minorities frequently remain drastically underserved in our nation's schools. What can be done? The Republicans want school vouchers (if they even care about the issue at all). Like it or not, the Democrats may have to deal with the teachers' unions, who are resistant to enforcing standards among educators.

The Democrats need to create a workable agenda for the 21st century. They have been defining themselves according to what President Bush has done, and this is a weak, reactive policy. The problem is that the Democrats are now split into several wings: the establishment, which includes James Carville and the Democratic Leadership Council, and the insurgents (Howard Dean pre-2005, MoveOn.org, Al Franken). The problem is that the establishment is too pragmatic, while the insurgents are too hysteric. Yet both of these camps have the same policy: React to what Bush does. It is the challenge of the Democrats to pursue a more independent policy based on a coherent ideology that will make this party once again attractive enough to voters to carry out its agenda in Washington, DC and across the country.

Ariel Sharon's surgery

2006-01-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

If Ariel Sharon dies of his cerebral hemorrhage, Israel will have sustained a loss as grave as that of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
This conclusion has developed after watching Sharon serve Israel as its prime minister since 2001. Just as negotiation with the Palestinians was the right strategy of the 1990s, so was unilateralism the correct move in the first decade of the 21st century.
When Sharon first took office after defeating Ehud Barak, I regarded Israelis' choice with trepidation. Here was the man who had been found indirectly responsible for the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1981. Here was the man whose idea of the best thing to do during the riots of 2000 was to make a controversial visit to the Temple Mount. Here was the man who would repudiate the hard work of Oslo in 1993 and Camp David in 2000.
Instead, Sharon has brought Israel its best hope: a situation of perpetual cease-fire. His withdrawal from Gaza and construction of the security barrier has accomplished several objectives. The security barrier prevents Palestinians from crossing into Israel from terrorist strongholds such as Jenin. The departure from Gaza shows the world that Israel is ready to hand over territory to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, his policy of targeted assassination has claimed the lives of some notorious terrorist leaders, including Hamas' Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.
The problem with Sharon's solutions is that they are those of a politician, not a statesman. Sharon's successors will have to contend with a serious problem: what the Christian Science Monitor, in 2003, called "the growing realization that Israel is losing the demographic war with the Palestinians, even as it emerges more or less triumphant from the battles of recent years." Coupled with the demographic problem is the likelihood that many of these newborn Palestinians will have unhappy lives, if the people governing them combine the incompetence of the Palestine Authority with the fundamentalism and xenophobia of Hamas.
There does seem to be some hope when power will be passed to Sharon's deputy, Ehud Olmert. The Monitor reported that Olmert "intimated that Israel would have to remove settlements and cede control much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip," and quoted him in a Yedioth Ahronoth article: "Above all hovers the cloud of demographics...It will come down on us not in the end of days, but in just another few years."
The decisions to make will be difficult. Should Israel relinquish more of the West Bank, but not the parts containing the region's valuable water deposits? Should Israel continue on turning its attention within its own borders, ignoring the burgeoning Palestinian population mired in poverty and anger? And what happens if Hamas continues its success in Palestinian elections?
The problem with a cold war in the Middle East is that it can erupt into a hot war at any time. Sharon's surgery puts his country in a precarious position. With so many unresolved issues, it is necessary for Olmert -- and all of Israel -- to be on high alert.

Happy 2006!

2006-01-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

What better way to celebrate a new year than by going retro? The Boston Globe has an article by Joanna Weiss on a staple of childhood during the 1970s and 1980s: the After School Special. The article is a delightful blend of nostalgia and narcissism, showing my generation's tendency to imbue its past with the same sort of importance that Gen-Xers lavish on themselves.

Here is Josh Schwartz, the 29-year-old creator of "The O.C.," having young Seth make fun of his dad, Sandy, when Sandy decides to intervene to stop his wife's drinking problem. "Is this, like, an After School Special?" Seth sneers. This despite the fact that none of the members of Generation Y watching "The O.C." have any idea what an After School Special is.

Fear not, we aging individuals of the Me Decade are rushing to fill that educational void. "In the last two years," Weiss notes, "distributor BCI Eclipse has issued box sets of 'Martin Tahse's After School Specials,' in packages that look like a locker, a school bus, and a Trapper Keeper notebook." The director of acquisitions for BCI Eclipse is Jeff Hayne, who is -- surprise, surprise! -- 26 years old. Weiss tells us that he "has hosted nostalgia screenings for friends in his apartment."

It could be worse. Weiss notes that the young people of today live in saltier times. Weiss writes that "today's teenagers are precociously cynical; raised on Harry Potter and MTV, (Emerson College professor Martie) Cook says, they are more accustomed to dark themes and quick cuts. They prefer TV to talk to them sideways, from odd angles." So in 20 years, we'll get Harry Potter collector's editions and Real World reunions -- oh, wait, they're already doing that last one already.

Boston College football

2005-12-30T15:30:00.000-08:00

I wrote on the BC football team in Monday's Daily Item. Two days later, the Eagles nearly blew a 27-0 lead in the MPC Computers Bowl. BC ultimately defeated Boise State, 27-21, when Broncos quarterback Jared Zabransky threw a pass into the Eagles' end zone, and saw BC safety Ryan Glasper snare it.

Religion and death

2005-12-29T14:25:00.000-08:00

I'm reading Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." While David Barrett, a writer on religion, tells The Guardian that the book is "basically a hack thriller, a typical airport book," it is a compelling read. That said, what is more interesting about the book is what it suggests about its readership.

Umberto Eco, writer of "In the Name of the Rose," criticizes Brown's book in cultural terms. "The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide," Eco writes in the Telegraph. "So we revert to the occult." While he unfairly tarnishes all occultism with the stamp of racism -- "many of Hitler's henchmen were devotees of the most infantile occult fantasies," he writes -- and while he makes no mention of the atrocities committed in the name of organized religion, he does make a good case for religious tradition.

How does he do this? By affirming a truism of life. "Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death," Eco writes. It is very difficult for me to accept that life, as Macbeth said, is "but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more." Religion restores our significance. What Eco is denouncing is society's sense, at least in the West, that it has outgrown religion.

What are the alternatives to religion? Occultism, science and material goods (this category can also include money). Europeans seem to be choosing science foremost among this trio -- England is, after all, the home of Richard Dawkins -- while Americans seek comfort through materialism, whether driving their SUVs, shopping at The Gap, or living in comfortable suburban homes. Yes, they may also go to church, but, as Eco wisely pointed out, "Father Christmas means one thing to children: presents. He has no connection with the original St Nicholas, who performed a miracle in providing dowries for three poor sisters, thereby enabling them to marry and escape a life of prostitution."

Dawkins is more optimistic, though I suppose he would have to be. "Obviously," he tells BeliefNet, "there are other things having nothing to do with science —- music, poetry, sex, love. These are all things that make life, to me, extremely worth living." He adds, "Then there's the added fact that it is the only life we’re ever going to get. Don’t kid yourself that you’re going to live again after you’re dead; you’re not. Make the most of the one life you’ve got. Live it to the full."

Still, in such an anonymous world as ours is, it becomes increasingly difficult to live without some justification for it all.

Getting in and out of poverty

2005-12-28T17:56:00.000-08:00

Michelle Singletary, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a thought-provoking column in the Dec. 25 issue of the Boston Globe. This column would have been welcome during the affirmative-action debate before the Supreme Court, for it addresses some misconceptions people have about poverty.

In a previous book review, Singletary discussed the Rev. Michael Eric Dyson's response to Bill Cosby's criticism of impoverished African-Americans. "Cosby launched into a rant against lower- and lower-middle-class blacks, who he feels are largely responsible for their economic condition," Singletary wrote. "Dyson criticized Cosby for his lack of empathy for the poor and ignoring the sociological, political, and economic factors that keep those in poverty from achieving more."

Readers who responded to Singletary's book review had harsh words, arguing that it is the decisions that poor people make that are chiefly responsible for their misery; some of these readers used personal testimony to illustrate how, thanks to their own prudence, they were able to escape poverty.

Singletary exposes the fallacy behind these arguments: the success of an individual is due partly to that individual's actions, but it is also due to fortuitous actions by role models -- parents, relatives, and teachers, for example. "My grandmother taught me how to be frugal," Singletary wrote. "But Big Mama wasn't much help when it came to applying to college. I got that push from my high school counselor, who literally hounded me until I applied for a journalism scholarship."

In high school and beyond, the roles played by adults become crucial to success -- particularly the mentoring and networking capabilities played by alumni of, for instance, prep schools and Ivy League colleges. Professional relationshops forged at summer internships or co-op programs also prove helpful.

Singletary deserves credit for her refreshing riposte to the American idea of individual success. "I hate the expression 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' because no one gets where they are in life without some help or guidance," she wrote. Words for us all to remember.

Harvard Square: Hello, goodbye

2005-12-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

An Associated Press article posted on Boston.com describes a melancholy development: the corporatization of Harvard Square, as the formerly quirky mecca of intellectualism becomes a momument to mass marketing.

The article describes the utopian Harvard Square of previous decades, when Harvard professors mingled with homeless people over cholesterol-laden meals at the Tasty. There were other places with panache: the Wursthaus, a cavernous German restaurant, the Bow and Arrow, where Matt Damon wooed Minnie Driver in "Good Will Hunting," and Briggs & Briggs, a music lover's paradise. All of these stores are gone, with others -- the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, the Brattle Theater -- on the brink. Replacing them are adidas stores and Citizens Banks.

Are barbarians finally reaching the brick gates -- modern-day Alarics and Odoacers wearing adidas, listening to iPods and stashing their plunder at Citizens? It's sad to see beloved businesses close and their employees get laid off. It's also sad to see the outrageous real estate prices demanded by landlords -- Harvard among them. These prices are one reason why smaller-scale stores shut down.

Places like Harvard Square provide people with the refreshing news that Starbucks, adidas, and Wal-Mart don't own every piece of commercial real estate in this country. While it's nice to get cheap clothing at Target, and while the prices at, say, the Harvard Book Store are often quite high, Harvard Square offered residents of Cambridge, and other visitors, an urban refuge from suburban sameness. As the Square loses its iconoclastic identity, we, as Americans, lose part of our identity as well.

Some remedies exist. Near Harvard Square are two other squares with healthy sprinklings of unconventionality: Brattle Square, with its storied old barn of a theater, along with the Algiers coffeeshop and the Casablanca restaurant; and Central Square, which, with its assortment of clubs and funky restaurants, seems on its way to becoming the old Harvard Square.

Also, the stores that formerly populated Harvard Square might want to consider moving to other parts of the country, where the rents are cheaper. (Any red state will do.) It's condescending to think that only Harvard students like or appreciate Beethoven, Baudelaire or Bergman. Time for a mass exodus to combat mass culture.

Saddam's fate?

2005-12-22T17:47:00.000-08:00

What will happen to Saddam Hussein? When he is found guilty, as he undoubtedly will be, what will be his fate -- life imprisonment or death? Victorino Matus, writing in Policy Review, believes that Iraqis will execute their former dictator, and based on precedent, the results may be gruesome.

The United States has toppled one dictator, but in the Middle East, there is no shortage of them, from the president of Iran to Bashir al-Assad in Syria. If Iraq is to be a haven for democracy in the region, it must be freed of the conditions that allow autocrats to flourish. How to do so?

It's a difficult process. The absence of a large Iraqi military may prevent a coup, but the competing claims of Sunnis and Shiites are preventing the two peoples from working together. The American military has neutralized Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- "Zarqawi and other insurgent leaders drive many miles every day to escape the coalition and Iraqi forces constantly chasing them," Frederick W. Kagan writes, also in Policy Review. However, Zarqawi's mere presence in the country shows that terrorism remains a threat.

However well-intentioned, the calls of politicians like Rep. John Murtha for withdrawal from Iraq cannot be heeded. The objective upon which the US staked itself in the Second Gulf War -- not simply defeating Saddam, but transforming his dictatorship into a democracy -- will require many more years of a stabilizing American presence. That may rankle politicians and the public. But it is the only way to succeed.

Munich, 1972

2005-12-14T16:13:00.000-08:00

Steven Spielberg has come out with a movie about the Israeli response to the 1972 murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Based on David Brooks' review in the New York Times, the film seems flawed, reflecting Hollywood pieties on tolerance at the cost of reality.

First, some background. Members of the Palestinian terror group Black September attacked the Olympic compound housing members of the Israeli team in 1972. The attackers killed two Olympians in the attack and took nine more hostage. During a clumsy German attempt to free the hostages, all of them died. So did five terrorists (out of eight) and one German policeman. The Olympics continued after a day of mourning, but International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage did not mention the slain Israeli athletes during a speech on the first day that the Games resumed. Thanks to Arab protests, the United Nations did not pass a US-sponsored resolution condemning the terrorism. Reprisal attempts by the Israeli government killed Palestinian terror leaders, but whether or not these leaders were all involved in the Munich attack is questionable.

Now, Spielberg's film. It seems to show an interesting evolution in the man's career. In 1989, he portrayed Muslims as suicidal foils to Indiana Jones. Here, he generally absents them from "Munich" and lets ambivalent Israeli secret agents question whether all the violence is necessary. Spielberg says, "A response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual motion machine ... There's been a quagmire of blood for blood for many decades in that region. Where does it end?
"The only thing that's going to solve this is rational minds, a lot of sitting down and talking until you're blue in the gills."
Sounds like a sequel to Kingdom of Heaven, albeit almost 800 years later. In that film, too, Hollywood attempted to sell moviegoers the notion that the Middle East is a battle between two groups of people who, if they would only be persuaded to sit down in the same room, could solve their differences. Rubbish. Saladin wanted the Franks out of the Middle East, just as Hamas wants Israel out of historical Palestine, and just as many Israelis want Palestinians to be deported to Jordan. As long as Israelis and Palestinians cling to their conceptions of themselves, there will be no peace, and cold war will be the best possible outcome.

Why is the man behind Schindler's List -- a film that, more than any other, awakened the public to the magnitude of the Jews' suffering -- now coming out with a film that diminishes the Munich tragedy? In Hollywood today, both principles are holy writ: the Holocaust is bad, and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is bad. To question either statement would be tantamount to questioning Josef Stalin during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Perhaps Spielberg simply knows his audience. The people who will see this film will do so after hearing about it on NPR and reading about it in the New York Times (although the Gray Lady deserves credit for running Brooks' piece). Or perhaps Spielberg believes what he is saying. It's easy to do so when you live far from the actual conflict. Yes, by all means, let's put both sides in a room and talk our problems over ... unless the other side is Republican.

I will see this movie and add further comments once I have done so.

The woes of Generation X

2005-12-12T07:20:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago this day, I was admitted into Harvard. I felt like my future was secured and that, like Tom Buchanan, I "had reached such an acute limited excellence in life" at age seventeen "that everything else savors of anticlimax."

After getting my bachelor's at Harvard and a master's in journalism at Columbia, I'm now dealing with paying off student loans. This makes me a typical Gen-Xer, according to this Business Week article, which describes the indebtedness of today's twenty- and thirtysomethings.

This indebtedness is ascribed to two factors: rising college costs, and the increased availability and use of credit cards. While the article does not attempt to find out why these factors have increased, it does present some compelling portraits of young people dealing with the stresses of insurmountable costs. Among them: Cristina Garcia Gamboa, 30, and her husband Manuel. Both have graduate degrees, she from Medill and he from Texas, but the price is steep: they plan to pay $1,256 a month over a decade to settle their student loans.

The result of these troubles? Tamara Draut, director of the New York-based economic opportunity program Demos, says, "This is the first generation who won't necessarily do better than their parents. They've been told: 'Apply yourself. You'll get a job, a home.' For many young people that's not the case."

Postscript: Poorer members of Generation Y are feeling the hardship, too, according to this Boston Globe Magazine article.

More on Israel-Palestine

2005-12-11T20:51:00.000-08:00

I had an opinion piece on the Israel-Palestine crisis published in Friday's Lynn Daily Item. I hope to watch the footage of the Chomsky-Dershowitz debate sometime soon.

The question of why people become suicide bombers has occupied my attention for a while. It is something that is antithetical to everything that I value. I have asked the question to Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz and former Israeli Defense Forces colonel Miri Eisen. Now, writer Hans Magnus Enzensperger takes on the question in a provocative piece for the German website Sign and Sight. Enzensperger posits that "the instinct of self-preservation is not up to much," citing the adulation won by religious martyrs. He adds, "The remarkable fondness of the human species for suicide, down the ages and across all cultures, is proof enough of this." From this statement he delves into the mind of the suicide bomber -- or, in his words, "the radical loser." He portrays young Muslims across the globe, heirs to a dissipating culture, hopelessly dependent upon the West even for their tactics. His explanation of the terrifying phenomenon of suicide bombers is powerful, persuasive and pessimistic.

Islam and the United States

2005-12-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

I've gone to several Islam-related events at Harvard recently. Today I went to a lecture about Saudia Arabia at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. The presenter painted a bleak picture of the country due to its corrupt ruling family, its high unemployment rate (about 25 percent), its rising numbers of aimless young men, and the Islamist opposition to the royal family that supports terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

Saudi Arabia has been portrayed as a villain in world affairs by many, from Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 to Craig Unger in House of Bush, House of Saud. Its sponsorship of terror groups, its hatred of Israel (Israelis cannot enter the country), its violations of women's rights (the secret police prevented Muslim schoolgirls from fleeing their burning building because they were not dressed properly, condemning them to a fiery fate), and the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis have all created hostility toward the country from many in the West.

What distinguishes Saudi Arabia among states with repressive policies is, of course, its command of significant oil reserves. While the United States now commands access to a sizeable amount of Iraqi oil, this pales in contrast with the barrels under Saudi control. This makes the kingdom an instant player on the world economic scene.

Yet is the Saudi government actively trying to change the situation in the Middle East and the world in general, or is it responding to the actions of other countries? The argument has been made that it is Iran, and not Saudi Arabia, that is the chief culprit in the Middle East. From funding Hezbollah in Lebanon to developing its uranium supplies with Russian help, from the anti-Israel slurs of Iran's new president to its attempts to woo the Shiites of Iraq, Iran is seeking to become the dominant power in the Middle East -- and not for the better.

Let us say, then, that the two greatest threats to stability in the Middle East are: the Iranian government, and the disaffected elements of the Saudi population. One is trying to do what Saddan Hussein was prevented from doing -- create weapons of mass destruction -- and foment Iraq-style anarchy across the region. The other is trying to export terror on a more personal scale, whether as mujahideen in Afghanistan or hijackers in America.

Curiously, each country has an element that has been viewed by the West as a possible fulcrum for change. American commentators have high hopes for the young people of Iran, who appear far more amenable to Western influence than, say, their Saudi counterparts. Meanwhile, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has been lauded for his honest dealing. But he is also 81 years old, and presides over a largely free-spending, out-of-touch royal family with hazy succession plans.

Is the Middle East a Sarajevo 1914-style tinderbox? Or can a nuclear crisis be averted? To achieve this, the government of Iran must be stopped from descending into further repression, and the condition of Saudi Arabia must be prevented from falling into Hobbesian (or Iraqi) anarchy.

Dershowitz vs. Chomsky

2005-11-29T20:57:00.000-08:00

So, my alma mater, Harvard, has brought Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky together for a debate on Israel. I wish I could have been there.

I loathe Chomsky; he singles out Israel and the US for his criticism while letting Sierra Leone, Sudan, China, North Korea and countless other ruthless dictatorships escape his lens. Perhaps I detest him so much because some of his points are valid; Israel is oppressing the Palestinians, through the security barrier, through landholding laws, through its policies in the occupied territories.

Israel exposes itself to scrutiny because of its unusual position: it attempts to maintain some democratic structure, but it is founded upon a religion. Until Israel becomes a true democracy or a true theocracy, voices like Chomsky's will challenge the contradictions in its philosophy instead of going after purer theocracies (like Iran, which the MIT professor praised, or Saudi Arabia, which admits no one but Muslims into Mecca and Medina).

Israel is no colonial occupier. The Holocaust refugees from Europe needed a refuge, and the Jews in Palestine gave it to them when other countries did not (including the US, whose newspapers downplayed the Holocaust and whose government officials turned back ships with Jewish refugees). As one famous Jew put it: "When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose."

Israel seized Palestine fair and square, in the purest way possible: through military might. The Israelis defeated the Arab armies and conquered the territory that constituted the pre-1967 Jewish state. Chomsky may speak of justice, but for Jews whose backs were to the Mediterranean Sea, the only justice was survival.

It makes sense for Israel to expand -- to a point. More land means more places to put people, and Israel needs to nurture its Jewish population if it wishes to remain a Jewish state. The settlers should move into the West Bank. It has water and other agricultural resources. However, it also has millions of Palestinians who want to hold onto their land, and who can blame them?

Chomsky, Dershowitz and myself spend the bulk of our lives in the comfortable West. We don't worry about suicide bombers on Jerusalem buses, and we don't live in squalid (or not-so-squalid) refugee camps in Jenin. It's very easy to talk about equality from a Western standpoint. But how freely do they live in Saudi Arabia? Is there an equivalent of B'tselem in Riyadh?

Because they both want the same land, Israelis and Palestinians will never live in peace. All they can hope for is a state of cold war, and an enhanced standard of living on the Palestinian side.

I hope to translate this into a newspaper column sometime soon.

Cities and their politics

2005-11-29T16:57:00.000-08:00

The Bay Area Center for Voting Research study, which I referenced in a previous post, continues to intrigue me. Is it possible to quantify whether a city is liberal or conservative?

A city's voting patterns may not reveal its true nature. Just because its residents choose Democratic or Republican candidates doesn't necessarily indicate a political leaning. Many Massachusetts cities voted for John Kerry in 2004, but their stance on liberal issues like gay marriage is more ambiguous.

The race issue is complex as well. Does a large African-American population automatically make a city more liberal? Not necessarily. There can be some significant differences of opinion within these populations, due to the roles played by income and religion.

Belichick Illustration

2005-11-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

Belichick Illustration
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

Here is an illustration I drew for a column in the Daily Item about New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.

Manny Illustration

2005-11-28T09:55:00.000-08:00

Manny Illustration
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

This is the illustration I drew for my column about Manny Ramirez in today's Daily Item.

Living in America

2005-11-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

Where do you want to live? Someplace liberal or someplace conservative? If you're a city person, then check out the following study.

Among its surprising findings: Liberals are less educated than conservatives. Less surprising revelations: More people are married in conservative cities than in liberal ones. With regard to ethnic composition, cities with large African-American populations tend to be liberal.

Two cities from my home state, Cambridge (No. 8) and Boston (No. 24), are in the Top 25 list of most liberal. No representation for us Bay Staters in the "other" Top 25. But geography doesn't necessarily dictate politics, especially if you're from California. From liberal Berkeley to conservative Orange, the state is well-represented in both Top 25 lists.

Why the sudden interest in geography as it relates to politics? (Mysterious smile.)

Another sad story

2005-11-25T20:33:00.000-08:00

Reading this article and seeing the corresponding photos of two abused baby cheetahs in eastern Ethiopia made me further depressed. The two cubs are being forced by Mohamed Gudle, a restaurant owner, to fight each other for the entertainment of his customers. The female cub is blind because a poacher kicked her in the eye. US soldiers and Ethiopian government officials are trying to rescue the cubs. I hope they succeed.

This week...

2005-11-25T17:57:00.000-08:00

...was one in which I did not write anything on this website (except, of course, for this post). Tomorrow I turn 27. But there is a more meaningful date that is weighing on me: November 20, when my grandmother died.

She was one of the most encouraging people in my life. The daughter of two Polish Jews who died in Auschwitz, she was the only one of four siblings to escape. In 1938, she left for America and never saw anyone from her immediate family again.

Over the years that I knew her, she taught me much. When we differed on political issues (she supported the Rosenbergs, I questioned their innocence), she said that people can disagree on certain topics and still love one another. Her story of survival and escape from an anti-Semitic Europe made me determined to nourish my own Jewish identity in the United States. Her interest in Israel helped spur me to visit my "second" homeland this past January.

We lost her at age eighty-five to what was almost certainly cancer. She spent nearly a month in a nearby nursing home before being hospitalized in Boston. Her last day was in a hospice.

I regret that her last month was so difficult, and I regret that this country makes it so difficult for its senior citizens to live stress-free lives. Our nursing homes need improvement; they must be more affordable, and their residents must be separated between those who are mentally sound and those who have dementia.

Writing about a loved one who died is difficult for me. Yet I feel that my grandmother's life, and the way it ended, both deserve remembrance.

Bill Belichick column

2005-11-15T06:19:00.000-08:00

My column about Bill Belichick, and why his stature is diminished after losing his top two assistants, has been published on Page C1 of today's Daily Item. Accompanying it is a graphic drawn by yours truly, which I will work on scanning and putting online.

When I'm on the cell phone, I have enough trouble walking straight. But a teenage woman in Virginia was actually able to rob several banks while chatting, or appearing to be chatting, on her cell phone. Some people are just better able to compartmentalize than others!

On health insurance

2005-11-14T20:35:00.000-08:00

The Boston Globe has a good article about twenty- and thirtysomethings in Massachusetts who choose not to buy health insurance. Young people like myself make good news subjects because of our glamorous, unpredictable lifestyles, which explains the New York Times' focus earlier this year on Gen-Xers who live with their parents and, now, the Globe's study of health care.
Based on primarily anecdotal reportage, writers Scott S. Greenberger and Maria Cramer relate the stories of five young'uns, ranging in age from 23 to 31, with no health insurance. There are 200,000 people in similar circumstances in this state. What to do? Some people simply don't want the expense. "I have a mortgage on my condo...car insurance," Ulises Rosa, 31, tells the Globe. "You try to maintain a certain lifestyle. After that, all your money is gone."
However, the two reporters mention a salient fact. "Employer-provided health insurance is becoming less common, as companies try to trim costs and turn to independent contractors," they write. "Many healthcare specialists are convinced that an individual mandate is the only way to achieve the goal of covering everyone in the Bay State."
Hard to force people to buy something they don't want. But I'm sure there are plenty of other people, young and old alike, in this state and across the country, who are uninsured and need access to health care. Investing in a healthier, more secure America is in our nation's best interest.

The twisted logic of suicide bombers

2005-11-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

Three people blew themselves up at three separate hotels yesterday in Amman, the Jordanian capital. The Grand Hyatt, Regency SAS and Radisson hotels each suffered explosions. Fifty-seven people died and 115 have been injured.

Hotels, and luxury housing in general, have become the new target for terrorists. Among the attacks: On July 23 of this year, two suicide car bombs and a planted bomb killed at least 83 people and injured 200 at the Ghazala Gardens Hotel in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. On Oct. 7, 2004, terrorists bombed the Taba Hilton in Egypt and nearby resort areas.

In Israel and Iraq the murderers from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda blow themselves and others to smithereens in marketplaces. Witness the Oct. 26 suicide bombing at a felafel stand in an open-air market in Hadera. There appears to be a difference when suicide bombers operate in countries that they may not see as "occupied." To them, Israel (which, of course, is merely a pretext for Palestine) and Iraq are both "occupied" -- Israel by the Israelis, Iraq by the Americans. Why do they focus on public spaces in occupied places and private property in Muslim nations?

Let's look at what they want. Obviously it would be ideal for them if they could shatter the Israeli government and drive the Americans out of Iraq. So they kill shoppers in public spaces and soldiers outside bus stations to deflate confidence in the ruling authorities.

In Muslim nations, it's a different occupier that the terrorists seek to drive out: the foreign presence. The hotels blown up in Jordan, and the ones in Egypt, are popular spots for tourism, including Israeli visitors. The terrorists' goal is to expel all foreign visitors from Muslim soil, and so they adjust their plans accordingly.

Western liberals, a group with which I identify, say that the best way to unite people from two hostile cultures is to encourage more interchange between them. The terrorists' attempt to sabotage this interchange shows that this sounds easier than it is.

Return of the Native

2005-11-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

Theo Epstein's departure from the Boston Red Sox left a lot of people wondering "Why?" They should be asking, "How soon before he comes back?" Read my explanation.

Also, today's Boston Globe has a funny interview with Richard Kiel, who played Jaws in the James Bond movies. This man stands a whopping seven feet, two inches tall, and he weighs an incredible 320 pounds.
Kiel comes across as a talented and interesting guy, albeit one who will always be carrying around the reputation of the fearsome monster with the killer teeth who consistently comes close to planting those choppers in 007's flesh. "I'm an intelligent guy who always plays these huge thugs," he tells the Globe's Mark Shanahan. Shanahan, whose past subjects have included Tom Brady and Sarah Silverman, deserves some credit himself for not being intimidated by this behemoth and focusing on getting answers to his questions.

Horror in France

2005-11-07T17:20:00.000-08:00

By Richard Tenorio

Three words explain why France is being ripped apart by violence and the United States isn’t.
Action versus ignorance.
Gangs of urban youth are torching hospitals, schools, and cars in France. They bludgeoned 61-year-old Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec into a coma and let him die. The riots have lasted more than a week – 12 days, as of yesterday – and show no sign of stopping.
It’s time for French president Jacques Chirac and prime minister Dominique de Villepin to stand up and take responsibility. But not only them. Everyone who has a hand in French governmental policy should hold themselves accountable for a Muslim resentment that has festered for decades, and is only now growing into a conflagration.
To understand France’s crisis, it is first necessary to ask: Who are these young men throwing gasoline bombs and rocks at police, and why are they so upset?
These rioters are the second or third generation of Muslim immigrants to France. Their parents or grandparents come from North African nations that France once governed, directly or indirectly. One of the two youths whose deaths caused the riots was of Mauritanian descent. The other’s family came from Tunisia.
Instead of trying to integrate Muslims into the larger society, the French government let them isolate themselves in crime-ridden ghettoes. How horrible are the ghettoes? In 2003, Samira Bellil, a French Muslim woman, published a book, Dans l’enfer des tournantes (“In Gang Rape Hell”). In its pages, Bellil described being gang-raped multiple times within mainly Muslim housing projects or cites.
Poverty by itself doesn’t cause crime. But when poverty is isolated from the larger society, it becomes toxic. And the French have proven unwilling hosts. They have ordered Muslim schoolgirls not to wear the hijab, or ceremonial headgear, and they have discriminated against hiring Muslims in the workplace. This hostility isn’t recent. In 1961, Paris police killed between 32 to 200 Algerian immigrant protestors. They threw them into the Seine River and murdered them inside a police station. The French government did not acknowledge this until 1998. The city of Paris waited three more years.
Contrast this mistreatment with American policy toward immigrants. Yes, we have our Pat Buchanans and our migrant-worker laws, and historically the US has been unkind to immigrants. Today, however, instead of ignoring the immigrant issue, we have taken action and become a hospitable nation. Affirmative-action policies are achieving the purpose intended by President John F. Kennedy: ensuring that groups formerly discriminated against will get fair and equal treatment when applying for jobs. Because of this, immigrant families here have a chance to escape the ghetto within a generation or two.
France owes its citizens, immigrant and non-immigrant alike, a harder, better effort to integrate its society. Otherwise the rapes and riots will continue. And the chilling words of a European Muslim in a similarly troubled country will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don't-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers,” 27-year-old Dilpazier Aslam wrote in The Guardian almost a week after the London subway bombings. “We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.” The Guardian fired Aslam after discovering his membership in a racist, sexist and homophobic Islamic group. Yet four months later, his words are proving more and more resonant.

Illustration

2005-11-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

I have a new illustration up on InTheFray.com. One good thing about drawing illustrations is that you learn about many different topics, including some you never thought about depicting before. That was the case for this article.

It's horrible to hear about the rioting in France. The segregation of Muslims in the country is its biggest problem. Discriminated against at work, isolated in Islamic ghettoes, they are angry, poor, and determined to release their hostility on society in general. I hope the French government can reclaim control of the situation. I also hope that this will show the country how important it is to integrate the Muslim population; the only alternative is civic unrest.

Last week I heard Grover Norquist speak at Harvard. One theme he made me think of was the conservative coalition. Last week, Patrick Guerriero, the head of the Log Cabin Republicans, also spoke at my alma mater; how, one might ask, can gay people possibly consider joining the party of Pat Robertson?

Apparently it's all an issue of what you want. If a gay person is very interested in, say, fiscal restraint, that might convince him or her to join the Republican Party. If other Republicans disapprove of homosexuality, they may not necessarily bolt if the party welcomes gays. They will bolt, however, if the GOP pushes for higher taxes. (It's also true for abortion.) This evokes images of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's coalition, which united such mutually loathing groups as African-Americans, Southern Democrats, and big-city union bosses.

National Novel Writing Month

2005-11-01T17:49:00.000-08:00

November is National Novel Writing Month, and prospective novel writers have a chance to write 50,000 words (175 pages) of prose by Nov. 30. To those who accept this challenge, my congratulations. Good luck; you will need it.

Speaking of novels, my friend Alfonso Mangione is selling his on Lulu.com. "Pottersville" is an intriguing look at the Chicago of a few years ago, after the dot-com crash and 9/11. Through the eyes of narrator Marcus Compton, a twentysomething ex-Navy man, we learn about religion, relationships, and romance at the commencement-de-siecle.

Each of Marcus' friends, lovers and acquaintances adds a different layer to his life: drunken, debauched Neil embodies the spirit of "hooking-up" previously chronicled by Tom Wolfe; sober, sincere Mike manifests the Midwest and its red-state resistance to Neil's excesses; Captain Ron, head of the startup for which Marcus works, represents American business through his deadly combination of authoritarianism and ineptitude; and endearing, offbeat Allison shows us a hope for salvation, however imperfect.

The impact of 9/11 and the subsequent economic recession, affecting companies from Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and HealthSouth, created a sense of helplessness in the United States. Marcus' attempts to patch up deteriorating conditions in his work and social lives reflects this helplessness. His journey toward resolving these issues makes the book a worthwhile read and an impressive debut.

Want to read some interesting articles? Steven Holmes, in The Nation, dissects two books on the Iraq war and liberals' reaction to it. And Christine Rosen, in Policy Review, continues the conservative assault on the therapy culture. Conservatives and liberals both want to re-make the world in their image, but the difference is that liberals are content with hoping that it happens, while conservatives actually want to make it happen. Let's hope they don't succeed...

Miers Cartoon

2005-10-31T09:34:00.000-08:00

Miers Cartoon
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

I altered this cartoon somewhat using Photoshop, and now it's good to go. I'm hoping to do more stuff related to the Bush administration very soon.

New day, new happenings

2005-10-30T11:47:00.000-08:00

It's official: I'm an uncle! My nephew Nathaniel was born this morning, and I'm so happy for him and his parents!

Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

2005-10-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

Rosa Parks is dead at 92. By her simple yet courageous act of refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, she started a process that ensured that African-Americans would receive fair and equal treatment under the law. She is one of this country's greatest heroines.

I remember, ten years ago, one day in high school when our 1960s history teacher had us simulate a bus trip in 1950s Montgomery. Those of us who were assigned to play the roles of African-Americans had to move to the back of the bus. We experienced -- albeit only for a few seconds -- what it felt like to be discriminated against. It's important to remember that this sanctioned inequality really did happen in the US, but it's equally important to remember that there were people like Parks who had the courage to do something about it.

Although I'm sure the remembrances of Parks will all be positive, her reception was anything but back in the 1950s. Only by recalling how intense was Southern hatred of African-Americans can we comprehend the depth of Rosa Parks' courage.

Other news of interest: Intriguing books about al-Qaeda and Mao Tse-tung are out. And Fritz Stern mulls the conditions that made it possible for Nazism to flourish in Germany.

Nothing gold can stay

2005-10-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

So, the Brattle Theater finds its existence imperiled. How sad. That beautiful brick barn, one of the few remaining jewels of Harvard Square, is in danger of closing if its management cannot raise $400,000 by year's end. Let's hope they can.

I have many magic memories of the Brattle from my college days. Thanks to the theater, I was able to see many of the classic films as they were meant to be seen -- on screen, not within the sterile face of a television set. Among the great movies I watched: Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Graduate, Woman of the Year, Citizen Kane, From Here to Eternity, The Seven Samurai, Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, A Clockwork Orange.

The memories didn't confine themselves to the films. On Halloween 1999, I went to see The Blair Witch Projects dressed as the funny pages; also during that academic year, I donned Mafioso attire to watch The Godfather. And the audience sometimes enlivened the show; I remember the crowd singing along with Isaac Hayes for the opening credits to Shaft.

Lately, the theater's management has made some questionable decisions, veering away from recognizable attractions to more obscure fare. The public, even its snootier side, has responded by not going as much (I am one of those whose attendance has been remiss over the last few years). The Brattle's practices of running one film endlessly for a week, and of eschewing name attractions for the avant-garde, have turned me off, I'm sad to admit.

What also frustrates me is that the Brattle has so much going for it: a wonderful old-timey atmosphere in which to experience the thrill that audiences of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s must have felt. When so many modern movie theaters are little more than malls with screens, the Brattle stands out "like bright metal on a sullen ground" (Henry V). I'll try to go more often, but I fear the theater's management must make some drastic changes if they want their splendid showpiece to withstand the merciless mall-ification of Harvard Square.

Team America

2005-10-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

More cartoons coming soon, promise.

BostonWorks has an interesting article that confirms past comments about Generation Y: it is very team-oriented. This is one of several reasons why I dislike the up-and-coming cohort. A friend and fellow Gen-Xer once remarked that our primary-school teachers stressed creativity in the classroom; today's teachers stress unity of purpose.

Creativity, by its nature, requires individual work. Whether the student's goal is to write a poem or draw a picture, he or she must work alone. Teachers these days are incorporating all students toward a shared goal. (I saw harbingers of this as a student.) This happens outside the classroom, too; witness our national preoccupation with team sports, many of which, leech-like, siphon off time from our children's schedules.

What's good about teamwork? It encourages diversity. "When it comes to teams, diverse input leads to more effective outcomes," the Globe's Penelope Trunk writes. "Diversity is important not only in terms of race and culture but in terms of the way people think." You can also include sexuality. Generation Y is much more tolerant of gay people than previous generations.

That said, team-oriented teaching strategies assume that everyone can be included on the same team when some people want to play on different teams, or not even play at all. While de-emphasizing individuality may curb selfish behavior, too much teamwork leads to homogeneity and groupthink.

For a look at what groupthink is doing in some American colleges, read this article from spiked. Even as a reluctant member of what author Norman Levitt calls "the PC Mafia," I cringe.

Corruption and misrule

2005-10-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

Andrew Rice of The Nation writes a good analysis of three recent books about Africa and its troubles. "The dispute is about causes and consequences," he writes. "One group--call it the poverty-first camp--believes African governments are so lousy precisely because their countries are so poor. The other group--the governance-first camp--holds that Africans are impoverished because their rulers keep them that way." Who is right?

The authors who try to answer this question include Martin Meredith ("The Fate of Africa"), Jeffrey Sachs ("The End of Poverty") and Robert Guest ("The Shackled Continent"). Meredith does it from a historical perspective, while Sachs and Guest attempt to do this from a more economical vantage point.

Much of the scrutiny falls on the dictator-despoiled countries of sub-Saharan Africa. "Tyranny in Zimbabwe, famine in Niger, a constitutional coup in Togo, rampant corruption in Kenya, protesters shot in Ethiopia, an epidemic in Angola, civil war in Sudan--those are this year's headlines, but if you think you've heard it all before, you have," Rice writes. All of these countries, save for Ethiopia and Sudan, are sub-Saharan.

Historically, what happened to make these countries so poor? The legacy of colonialism is certainly bitter; Rice writes that while the British left valuable roads and schools to their former colonies, the French and Portuguese abandoned their onetime domains with far less willingness and far more spite. And even the British weren't always so lenient; witness their actions in Kenya.

Then came a parade of homegrown dictators: Jean-Bedel Bokassa in the Central African Republic, Idi Amin of Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and the generals of Nigeria. Wars and disease (such as AIDS) have only worsened the problems; Rice surprisingly omits mention of the Rwandan genocide.

What can be done? Sachs makes the boldest assertion -- that Africa can quickly emerge from poverty -- and backs it up with simple proposals: "Use irrigation and fertilizers to increase crop yields; distribute mosquito nets to combat malaria and pharmaceuticals to lessen the symptoms of AIDS; give rural villages cell phones to ease communication and trade." He also urges Western governments to restrict or increase their aid according to how well a country governs. Rice, however, says that Sachs ignores the many previous efforts by others to remedy Africa's woes.

A final note. Rice ignores two parts of the continent that contain interesting ramifications. First, North Africa, and specifically Egypt. Second, South Africa. Egypt and South Africa are two of the rare "success" stories of the continent (I am speaking in relative terms). Sure, Hosni Mubarak is essentially a dictator, confirmed by a presidential election that is likely as fraudulent as any won by Mugabe or Saddam Hussein, and the economy is hurting. Yet thanks to 1.3 billion in American military aid each year, the country remains stable.

Next, South Africa. Rice mentions Nelson Mandela only once -- and only as a subject of one of Meredith's previous books. Despite South Africa's struggles with crime and AIDS, the country is a remarkable story of whites and blacks living together peacefully. The rest of the country could learn from the examples of its north and south.

Computers in the classroom

2005-10-05T15:14:00.000-07:00

A while ago, the Boston Globe ran a list of educational rankings for Massachusetts cities. Among the categories: computers per student in the classroom. An article in Orion Magazine by Lowell Monke suggests that the Globe was misguided in using this criterion.

According to Monke, computers sap important skills from youngsters, from learning how to deal with other people to exploring the natural world for themselves. Instead of developing relationships with classmates at recess, they sit in front of computers, letting a machine do their work for them. Monke illustrates this by describing a project about "Charlotte's Web" assigned to his students. They grew so fascinated by their computer work that they eschewed recess for research, and they were as proud of their computer-graphic spiders as if they had drawn them on their own.

What does the control offered by computers mean for young people today? For Monke, it is a way to manipulate human relationships. "I was constantly frustrated by individuals and even entire groups of students who would suddenly disappear from cyber-conversations related to the projects," Monke writes. "My own students indicated that they understood the departures to be a way of controlling relationships that develop online. If they get too intense, too nasty, too boring, too demanding, just stop communicating and the relationship goes away." Adults do this, too. Just about everyone I met through online dating websites has broken off communication with me, occasionally deigning to send an explanatory email. Yet I wonder if this is a new development. Back in the 1920s, Nick Carraway confesses in The Great Gatsby, he used the following technique to end a relationship: "when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow quietly away."

Overall, though, Monke makes some good and worthwhile points. We can't become Luddites, reverting to a pre-computer age. At the same time, we can't let computers dominate our lives. We need to go out and experience the world in person, not virtually. Is it still possible? I think it is. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to check my email.

Short people with big ears

2005-10-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Gladwell has a fascinating New Yorker article on how Harvard selects its students. It's thought-provoking (and sometimes disturbing). Gladwell details how Harvard purged, as much as possible, Jews, shy people, physically unattractive people, et al. from its ranks of accepted students for much of the past century. (Gosh, I'm lucky I applied when these policies ended! I would have been what Gladwell terms a J1, "for someone who is 'conclusively Jewish.'")

In the end, it's all about preserving image. Harvard wants loyal and successful alums, and Gladwell explains why admitting athletes and legacies makes sense in fulfilling these goals. It's disheartening, sure. At Harvard, I met classmates from Harlem projects and Southern trailer parks. But we were, it seems, an afterthought.

Ha, ha, ha

2005-09-27T16:31:00.000-07:00

So now we have this news about how Atlanta hostage Ashley Smith rescued herself from escaped killer Brian Nichols, contradicting this sanctimonious tripe from Peggy Noonan written immediately afterward. It shows, once again, how wrong journalism can be in those first seconds after a big news story breaks out. Also, that opium (or in this case, crystal meth) is the religion of the masses.

Rejection and reflection

2005-09-10T17:28:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle 9
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

I've finally finished the Dating Debacle series. Maybe I'll add a cover and a back-page cat cartoon and make it into a comic book. It feels weird to be done (with the story, at least).

Take it from me ... Love stinks

2005-09-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle 8
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

The Dating Debacle series is almost done! One more episode, and it's finished. The highlight of this one was including an homage to one of my favorite films, Casablanca.

Complicating the picture

2005-09-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" was one of my favorite books to read. (I once heard the author give an engaging and informative talk at the Sackler Museum on the Harvard campus several years ago.) Here was a work that disproved any notion that superior racial characteristics were what enabled the West to dominate the world; it was merely the good fortune of unequal starting positions. Yet in an article for the Boston Globe Ideas section, author Charles C. Mann contends that these positions may not have been so unequal, and that Diamond may have underestimated American Indians' technological ability.

Mann writes that "Germs, not guns or steel, conquered the Inca," and that "The same held true in the Northeast -- the region wasn't conquered so much as infected." For the technologies of the natives in North and South America seem to have made them a match for the invaders, save for the fact that the invaders brought lethal diseases.

Mann marshals evidence in the form of weaponry, quoting arms scholar Harold L. Peterson on longbows: "far better than the average musket of the Plymouth colonists in rapidity and accuracy of fire." Mann also describes Indians in both North and South America as excellent sailors: "In 1605 three laughing Indians in a canoe literally paddled circles around the lumbering dory paddled by traveler George Weymouth and seven other men," he writes, while "Europeans first encountered the Inca in the form of an Inca ship sailing near the equator, 300 miles from its home port, under a load of fine cotton sails. It had a crew of 20 and was easily the size of a Spanish caravel."

This is an interesting moment in scholarship. Our widely accepted view of the technological superiority of the West seems punctured. The ways in which the Europeans used their technology, along with the diseases they unknowingly brought, made far more difference than what happened on the battlefield.

Love is in the air (and newspaper pages)

2005-09-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Romance, or the lack of it, seems to be a popular topic in the news lately. It is the subject of two articles posted on ALDaily.com: one on the inevitability of divorce, from the Hartford Advocate, by author Annabel Lee, whose name strongly suggests a pseudonym; and the other on the evolutionary psychology of romance, from the LA Times.

Lee, in her article, says that marriage is doomed because people are living longer, which allows them more time to grow disenchanted with their spouses. "Marriage is a naturally polarizing process that causes one person to detest, over time, what the other person loves," she writes. And the factors that might have kept past couples together -- children, warfare, disease -- no longer have the same weight.

After predicting, Nietzsche-like, the downfall of marriage, the author spends an equal amount of time lamenting the life of a divorcee -- "Divorce, like death, is a crossing-over, into a terrifying, mortifying land from which you never return, even if you remarry." She argues that the legal ramifications of divorce must be made more equitable and sensible, and bemoans the inequitable dating prospects for divorced men and women. She feels that divorced men are better off than divorced women when it comes to judges' rulings and the newfound singles scene.

Why are we so impatient to get divorced and seek someone new? Is it truly the passage of time that is at fault? Should we consider deleting the words "from death do us part" from marriage vows? Are all differences inevitably irreconcilable these days?

Last week, the Boston Globe Ideas section may have provided the answer. In an interview with columnist Joshua Glenn, Sonoma State sociologist E. Kay Trimberger discussed her new book, "The New Single Woman," and shared some thoughts on today's singletons. One statement is revealing: "Thanks in part to the activism of feminists in the 1960s and '70s, women today are urged to settle for nothing less than an egalitarian marriage with a soulmate," Trimberger says. "This cultural ideal is dominant -- so it's very difficult to convince yourself that another arrangement is good enough."

The cultural perception of the institution of marriage has shifted from a communal-based one -- a couple who will bring children into the society -- to an individual-based one -- two people who are more of a partnership, less a corporation. It's now about finding two people who match up well with each other; children have become incidental. And perhaps my generation will introduce a new concept to this country: in addition to couples divorcing from each other, we may also see parents, unhappy with offspring who are not living up to their standards, divorcing from their children. You read it here first.

Meanwhile, the LA Times article describes research into why we choose the romantic partners we do, and whether or not biological imperatives play a role. Evolutionary psychology suggests that science is important. Men prefer physically attractive women, women like men who can take care of them. These statements are backed up from findings that when choosing mates, our male ancestors "gravitated toward youth and physical attractiveness — markers of fertility and health." However, "females, for whom conception meant pregnancy and the need to care for a child, were more selective, searching for long-term commitments from males with the resources and willingness to invest in them and their offspring."

The article cites a number of complications: females aren't wholly monogamous, and it seems that men and women today prefer partners who are well-rounded, not partners who are merely good-looking. One scientist, Geoffrey Miller, contends that the human mind serves the same purpose in men and women: it's a means to attract the opposite sex. Miller's book, "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature," we learn that "traits such as musical and artistic ability played no clear role in helping human beings survive, but instead enhanced their reproductive success." As an artist, I was interested -- and not a little gladdened -- to read this.

In the news...

2005-08-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by Hurricane Katrina. The images from New Orleans, Biloxi and the surrounding area are horrifying. It's sobering to be reminded of how powerful nature can be, and how vulnerable we are. To make a donation for hurricane victims, click here.

Christopher Hitchens has an interesting article in the Weekly Standard. He forcefully argues the case for the war in Iraq, using his customary broad and erudite analysis. He claims the liberal dream that became a reality with the fall of Communism in the late 1980s soon disintegrated, to be replaced with far more fearsome dangers in Bosnia and Rwanda -- and Iraq. In contrast to the Bush administration, Hitchens succinctly explains why the Iraq war was justified; somewhat less convincingly, he lambasts the war's critics, including Michael Moore. Despite Moore's tempestuous personality and evasive relationship with the truth, to quote Pistol in "Henry V," "I love the lovely bully." The most interesting line in Hitchens' piece? "I am one of those who believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden did us all a service (and holy war a great disservice) by his mad decision to assault the American homeland four years ago." Had this not happened, Hitchens asserts, we would have had a Talibanized nuclear Pakistan to add to our now-decreased list of threatening nations.

Walk this way

2005-08-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle 7
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

This is the sixth installment of the Dating Debacle cartoon story. Two more to go!
Also, I have been published in the August 2005 issue of Moment magazine. I bought the issue yesterday, at the Borders on School Street in Boston.

Tea for two

2005-08-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle 6
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

Here's the fifth installment of the Dating Debacle cartoon story. The coffeeshop depicted is one of my favorites, Cafe Algiers in Harvard Square.

"A jaded heart and an empty head"

2005-08-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

That's what Meghan Cox Gurdon, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says is the result of the insipid content of magazines for young girls in this country today. The magazines that she examines include Girls Life (the magazine of the Girl Scouts), Teen People, Cosmo Girl and Bop. Television programming for girls (for children in general) is just as bad: "Watch television aimed at the young and it is difficult to escape the disquieting sense that too much children's programming exists to -- well, program children," she writes. "Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel teach children through precept and relentless example how to preen, how to diss and how, if dark-skinned, to talk Ebonics."

I'm not an expert in girls magazines. However, last week, I was talking about children's TV programming with some other folks in Cambridge, and we were comparing the programs we liked as kids with the fare for today's youth. In the past, the programs tended to come out before the merchandise; today, the programs exist to sell the merchandise. I was even told that in the 1970s, Saturdays were sacrosanct: no advertising during the morning cartoons that so many of us Gen-X and Gen-Y folk grew up watching. Instead, kids got educational fare between shows, like "One to Grow On" (which I remember) and "Conjunction Junction" (which I don't). What to do if you're a kid today?

Today's Journal also has an interesting Review & Outlook piece on the fact that there are now 27 million single people in this country. It focuses on the younger demographic. "Even if you discount the college graduates who paint the town every night before crashing happily at their first pad," the author writes, "you're left with a huge number of people who have found companionship and lost it or are still looking for someone to share their life with." Most, the author continues, "probably are missing something, and we don't mean the better health and the longevity boost that scientists have associated with marriage and other forms of intimate living."

Let's face it, people are pickier these days. And there are so many of us out there. I've tried no shortage of online dating sites -- Match, the Boston.com personals (before they were farmed out to Yahoo!), JDate, and now Craigslist. We live in a disposable culture, our attention span shortened by the Internet. It's easy to continuously reject less-than-sterling suitors in hopes of finding perfection.

"Let’s begin again, get the big broom."

2005-08-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why Arts and Letters Daily does this, but every so often my favorite website runs articles months (or, in at least one case, years) out of date. Yet these articles often are gems; videlicet this interview with Camille Paglia. Robert Birnbaum does a creditable job going one-on-one with Paglia, though given her loquaciousness, it's inevitable that this becomes more of a monologue.

I started reading Paglia while in college. I enjoyed her opinion pieces for Salon, as well as several of her books. In the Birnbaum interview, she speaks accurately, as usual, while doing a book tour for "Break, Blow, Burn," her discussion of 43 of her favorite poems.

Paglia uses the interview to discuss her thoughts on education. "There is no more quality," she tells Birnbaum. "So we are not giving the kids anything to sustain them. Heaven forbid there should be anything about religion or sex. The far right keeps the sexual out — nudes from the history of painting. And the left keeps anything from religion out. The things that are the most substantive are not there." She stays on message when prescribing a remedy: more exposure to the "mother ship" of the Western canon, but also more knowledge of the great art of all civilizations.

And what of the political state of the country? Her comments, again, are interesting: she upbraids Thomas Frank for contending that red-staters vote against their interests. Choosing capitalism, she argues, is explainable. "Even if you are not rich," she says, "you see other people getting rich and you want a system that can produce rich people."

Prospects for artists and writers? They seem grim, because it's becoming too expensive to live as a bohemian, because we all cling to our coteries, and because we creative types aren't doing enough living. And maybe it's something about this country. "The arts have never taken root in America," she declares. "Ever since Puritan New England — this is a business-oriented culture as opposed to Europe where it’s a part of the cultural heritage of the nation." Is emigration the answer?

Not necessarily. She says that "socialism in a nation ultimately does lead to economic stagnation and eventually of the creative impulse, in terms of new technology and other things." Do those "other things" include art and writing? If they do, that contradicts her praise of the British educational system and media.

That observation aside, I enjoyed her interview immensely, as I do with most of her writings. It was also a pleasure to learn how much she likes Yeats ... though, while she cited "The Second Coming" and "Leda and the Swan," I would argue that "Easter 1916" is his most powerful poem.

Unrelated note: My friend David Arenson has started a blog ... give it a read.

"The play's the thing..."

2005-08-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hamlet Cartoon
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

As I may have mentioned, I attended the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's performance of Hamlet twice this summer. The company's tenth annual performance of summer Shakespeare was excellent, the best I've seen, and I've seen four (the three previous were Henry V, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing). Here is a cartoon I drew about the play.

Malls as "safe spaces"

2005-08-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

This article ran in the Boston Globe earlier this week, but it's an interesting subject that deserves more discussion. Was the management of the Holyoke and Springfield malls justified in restricting access to local youth? Kaila Kuban, a UMass doctoral student, disagrees, writing, "What I am asking us to consider is not only the very blatant age discrimination at work here but also the implicit classism and racism."

Sure, it's unfair for stores in malls to target youth through merchandising, and then for mall management to limit the hours in which young people can visit. And is it appropriate, in criticizing youth for their allegedly violent behavior, to invite military representatives to malls to recruit said youth?

Kuban has brought up some good points, including the idea that malls could be a "safe space" for young people who live in unstable families. However, communities deserve stronger "safe spaces" like community centers, religious centers, etc., where youth can participate in more fulfilling opportunities and have access to role models that they will probably not find in malls. Of course, it's healthy for kids to have fun, too; I enjoyed walking around the Meadow Glen Mall in Medford when I was younger.

Also of interest: Theodore Dalrymple writes on Ibsen in City Journal. Having read both "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll's House" (and having seen the latter on stage while in college at Harvard), I was interested to read Dalrymple's insights. Yes, the great playwright's characters make decisions that are great for the individual but disastrous for the larger community. He quotes Nora Helmer upon her realization that she must leave her family: "I don’t want to see the children. ... As I am now I can be nothing to them." Dalrymple adds, "And with these chilling words, she severs all connection with her three children, forever. Her duty to herself leaves no room for a moment’s thought for them." It's no surprise that children of divorce who read this play may have far less positive reactions than many feminists of the 1960s.

I'm not trying to criticize feminism or Ibsen. I only wish to point out that, yes, marriage is a flawed institution, but ending a bad marriage can be only a partial solution and may create new problems, especially when children are involved.

I'm back!

2005-08-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

After nearly a month, I have a new posting. My friend Philip Klein has a blog now, so take a look at it, faithful readers. Even if he and I usually occupy different ends of the political spectrum.

Also, there's a delightful article in The Nation on sports by Dave Zirin. Bravo, bravo. Zirin manages to criticize the foibles of sports while remaining passionate about their beauty. One of the finer pieces of writing about sports that I've seen.

Saw the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company perform Hamlet on the Boston Common ("Ay, madam, it is common") on Saturday. Overall, the acting was wonderful. Kudos to Jeffrey Donovan for his role as Hamlet, and to Jeremiah Kissel for his fine rendition of the First Gravedigger's lines. In the conversation between Hamlet and the Gravedigger, the audience gets an excellent impression of the country bumpkin's street smarts (or barn smarts?) juxtaposed with Hamlet's scholarly snobbishness.

Afternoon delight

2005-07-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle 5
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

I'm back, finally, with a new cartoon. In this installment of the dating series, I have a face-to-face meeting with an online flame. I'm hoping the next edition doesn't take as long to do.

The saga continues

2005-06-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle 4
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

Finally, I have completed Part Three in the online dating series. On the one hand, I'd like to do something a little less narcissistic/depressing. On the other hand, I'm happy to be putting stuff up online, regardless of its context.

Culture, high and low

2005-06-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

Interesting musings from Tony Kushner in the Nation on Arthur Miller, and Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal on PBS (during which she takes a swipe at Kushner).
Noonan makes a good, if snobbish, case for continuing to fund public television. "Sumner Redstone is never going to pay for an 11-hour miniseries called 'The Civil War,'" she writes, "he's not going to invest money and years of effort into a reverent exhumation of the rich loam of American history." I wonder if such pragmatic elitism will draw broadsides from her conservative peers. She's right, of course; and yet, when she contends that "Nobody needs their investigative unit pieces on how Iran-contra was very, very wicked," she's missing something ... the BBC is state-funded, and I would say, anti-Israeli bias notwithstanding, it's far superior to anything we have in the US.
Eulogizing Miller, Kushner praises him for his empathy toward humanity, even its evildoers. "Arthur Miller had the curse of empathy, even for the enemy," Kushner explains. "Humans justify themselves to themselves, even bad humans, and Arthur the playwright always wanted to know how and why." Incidentally, Noonan, in her article, writes, "It is true that if you tell PBS producers they are now doing a play series they will immediately decide to remount "Angels in America," and proposes a rule: "It takes at least 50 years for a currently esteemed work to prove itself a work of art, a true classic. It proves this by enduring." Sure -- this evokes Ernest Hemingway's inscription, "Il faut, d'abord, durer." ("It is necessary, first of all, to endure.") Perhaps much of the current widely-acclaimed art and literature will be forgotten a half-century later. However, that shouldn't stop us from trying to evaluate contemporary arts and letters. The creative arts do require continual rediscoveries and reevaluations.
Now for some unrelated items: Cheers to NBC for another enjoyable episode of "Hit Me Baby One More Time." All five performers sang well, including Oscar winner (and tonight's audience choice) Irene Cara. I am glad to see that there will be another new episode next week. Haven't been this excited about anything on TV since Paris and Nicole visited Altus, Arkansas.
I have a feature story up on my friend Bryan Person's website, AroundTownSports.com. Check it out ... and check out the website in general.

Ave atque vale

2005-06-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

Hail and farewell to valedictorians -- at least at some high schools, which, according to the New Yorker, are phasing out the honor because of the supercompetitive struggle by some students to gain it. This includes lawsuits. On the other hand, a number of schools are naming multiple valedictorians to satisfy every qualified candidate and avert any anger.

I wasn't valedictorian or salutatorian at Malden Catholic High School (Class of 1996), and my grades were never high enough to challenge. (Math and science were the main reasons; I was fifth or sixth, if you're wondering.)

For those of us who will never be a (fictional) Tracy Flick or a (real-life) Blair Hornstine, there is some hope. A 1995 study of 81 valedictorians from Illinois reveals that "few of the valedictorians seem destined for intellectual eminence or for creative work outside of familiar career paths." Why? "Valedictorians ... conformed to the expectations of school and carefully chose careers that were likely to be socially and financially secure," whereas, professor Karen Arnold writes, "Exceptional adult achievers often recall formal schooling as a disliked distraction." It's an interesting idea: are today's Michelangelos and Mozarts unfit for the get-good-grades philosophy we encourage in high school?

And it doesn't sound like any of the valedictorians interviewed for author Margaret Talbot's article care more for the subjects they studied than for the award they "deserve" for studying. One simply sounds spoiled: "Every time I sat down (at graduation), I had to get up again to get an award. I had so many plaques I literally couldn’t carry them off the stage, and I’m, like, ‘Oh, yeah, right, I’m not valedictorian?’” So that's the point of studying hard? Not because you care deeply about a subject, but so other people will know you studied hard? Perhaps Amory Blaine, protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise," could wise up these whippersnappers with a reflection on college in the 1910s that's just as apt for high school in the 2000s: "What little boys they had been, working for blue ribbons."

Unrelated note: What happens when a valedictorian actually has something interesting to say? And what happens when a valedictorian sues not for grade-point reasons, but for free-speech ones? Click here.

New Illustration

2005-06-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

I have an illustration in this month's edition of In the Fray, an online political magazine that I've been drawing for. (You can see my two previous illustrations for ITF here and here.)

In other news, Alicia C. Shepard, an American University journalism professor, has some disturbing words on students' reactions to undesirable grades in the Washington Post. Undergrads, she writes, become ornery about getting an A-minus or a B -- to the point of arguing with professors over these grades and attempting to change them. Prof. Shepard suggests using a numerical grading policy as opposed to a letter-based one. However, this approach contains problems, as well; students become, to borrow a phrase from John Kennedy Toole, a "steely-eyed accountant" in checking and re-checking the value of their education. (Toole's observation of this quality in students, in "A Confederacy of Dunces," suggests that it is not a new development.)

In high school, I would occasionally confab with teachers over tests I'd done egregiously badly on, and if they happened to notice a few stray points I might have merited, they'd tack them on. That was all I did ... Bad grades provoke outrage from both students and parents. Of course students would want to avoid anger at home. But students have to realize that life doesn't end with a bad grade; one of college's intangible lessons is recognizing that adversity exists and dealing with it. That's worth any A.

Death and taxes

2005-06-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

David Runciman has a good article in the London Review of Books, a review of "Death by a Thousand Cuts," by Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro. The book is about the estate/death tax and how the Republicans managed to -- albeit temporarily -- eliminate it. He raises a point I wasn't aware of -- conservatives used minorities and gay people as spokesmen for their effort to repeal the "death tax." Among the minorities was African-American millionaire Bob Johnson, who made the interesting point that having struggled against racial injustice to earn his money, the government would take away some of it on his deathbed.

Runciman has some familiar evidence to support his belief that the estate tax should nevertheless survive -- it targets a very small percentage of Americans, "the richest 2 per cent of American families." He lambasts President Clinton's triangulationist -- or accommodationist? -- policy, charging that this made the GOP salivate over the prospect of tax "reform" once Clinton left office.

The conservatives' work may not be done; Runciman predicts an onslaught on the income tax next. True, the income tax has been used to bolster Big Government, but whether it's through Democratic social programs or Republican wars on terror, effective government isn't free. Steven Weisman made a decent case for an income tax in his history (more like a regurgitation of facts) "The Great Tax Wars."

The plot thickens

2005-05-31T11:04:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle part 3
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

The dating series continues. I'm trying to use more hatching and cross-hatching techniques a la R. Crumb ("My Troubles with Women") and David Macaulay ("Rome Antics"). This edition also features a side of myself you might not be familiar with.

More dates from the dark side

2005-05-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle part 2
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

Here begins a new story recounting one of my more dismal online dating experiences. Writing about difficult moments in your life is challenging because of the memories it evokes, but this can also be a good thing because it forces you to deal with them.

Weekend musings

2005-05-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I attended a writing conference, "The Muse and the Marketplace," sponsored by the Grub Street writing center. It was amazing to listen to speakers such as Arthur Golden and George Packer, who both had helpful things to say about writing -- Golden about Chekhov's short story "Anyuta," Packer about narrative journalism. I left feeling renewed, a sense that I should probably take advantage of soon before it dissipates. It's always helpful to be around other writers or aspiring writers.

Packer's discussion of narrative journalism was interesting. He talked about what role, if any, a reporter should play in his/her story, citing such examples as a Dexter Filkins piece on the war in Iraq in the New York Times. I thought of an article I read in the Columbia Journalism Review about the "new" new journalism, which combined the reportage of old masters like Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, et al., with the style of even older ones such as James Agee. These days, it seems, you can't write a good book without immersing yourself in your subject for five or ten years. A daunting prospect, yet one that still calls to me...

"The world's most powerless workers"

2005-05-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

It's 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the greater Boston area, and I have dressed for the occasion: a gray-and-red Perry Ellis undershirt; a blue Fruit of the Loom sweatshirt bearing the moniker "United States Navy: Operation Enduring Freedom" on the front and an American flag on the back; and a pair of grey Gap slacks. To shield my hair from the winds, I don my blue-and-red Chicago Cubs cap (from Sports Specialties) and zip up my light-blue-with-black-trim Pacific Trail jacket.

All of the above attire was made in other countries: the undershirt in Bahrain, the sweatshirt in El Salvador, the pants in Vietnam, the ballcap in Korea (it doesn't specify North or South), and the jacket in China. Welcome to the world of slavery, 21st-century style.

Yes, I know, it's not "slavery," it's "sweatshops." Child workers from Indonesia to Mexico -- and the United States, too -- toil for abysmally low wages to make the clothes that I purchase in malls and department stores. But it's the same basic format: exploited group, with no means for advancement, labors for privileged classes. How can concerned people change this awful situation?

Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, feels that not enough work is being done -- and in an article in Dissent magazine, he criticizes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for telling the reformers to back down. In an article in Dissent Magazine, Rothstein makes some convincing points.

Kristof contends that while child workers' salaries are low by our standards (for example, $2 a day in Asia), they are significantly higher when compared to incomes in these countries. He also argues that employment at a clothing factory provides a viable alternative to what these children might be doing otherwise: work as prostitutes, beg for money, scrounge in garbage dumps. Rothstein includes testimony from other public intellectuals, including Harvard president and former Treasury head Lawrence Summers, who remarks, "As long as the workers are voluntarily employed, they have chosen to work because they are working to their best alternative."

Kristof is a columnist for a daily newspaper with a circulation of over 1 million. Summers is president of a university whose endowment is worth billions. It is as comic as it is tragic that people like these can attempt to understand the lives of those who grow up in places like, say, the Tondo slums in Manila or the equally horrendous slums along the US-Mexican border. When you live in a squalid city or a desolate countryside, you do not choose between work and unemployment. You choose between life and death.

Any efforts to raise the living conditions of the young workers in the Third and First Worlds deserve praise. Higher wages can increase both financial stability and personal mobility. Better-paying work, however, is only part of the issue; education is equally important. Kristof graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and went on to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; Summers has equally lofty credentials (a bachelor's degree from MIT in '75, a Ph.D. from Harvard in '82). Neither of these two men would be in their prominent positions today without an outstanding education during their formative years. Such an education wouldn't hurt the global poor, either.

P.S. Sorry, Nick and Larry. Flogging you limousine (or SUV?) liberals is too easy and fun. My argument should have been more serious. Countless Americans know what it's like to slip on a shirt or pair of pants assembled in a First or Third World sweatshop. It's far more difficult to envision what it might be like to be one of the workers in those sweatshops.

Dating Debacle

2005-05-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

Dating Debacle
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

I'm back with another cartoon, this one about a date I went on a few winters ago. It was one of several online dates I've been on, and it's the first I've drawn a cartoon about ... online. Perhaps I will do more (don't worry, ladies, all names have been changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent).

Ivory-tower tales

2005-05-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

Two recent articles, one in the Weekly Standard and one in the Wall Street Journal, contain interesting insights into the academic life.

First, the Weekly Standard article, "Civilization and its Malcontents," by Joseph Epstein. The author poses the question "Why are academics so unhappy?" while reviewing Princeton professor Elaine Showalter's book on college novels. Epstein writes that the gripes of les clercs may seem strange given their job security and enviable work hours. He subsequently contends that the professorate -- who consist of "people who are good at school" -- become disillusioned, in part by academic life and in part by seeing "people who got lots of B's in school" now "driving around in Mercedes, buying million-dollar apartments, enjoying freedom and prosperity in a manner that strikes the former good students, now professors, as not only unseemly but of a kind a just society surely would never permit." Among the underachievers who have done well after graduation, of course, are Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Epstein writes engagingly, but awkwardly. We see him haranguing academia for its political correctness (in the humanities, at least; nary a mention of the situation of the sciences, except for a nod to the Larry Summers imbroglio) and defending the boring old days of, say, the great-leader theory of history. This, perhaps, makes giddy reading for conservatives, but what does it have to do with explaining why professors are so disenchanted?

The good-student/bad-student hypothesis is an interesting one, however. But what more could academics get that would balance the situation with the plutocrats who didn't care about Plato or photons yet waltzed into million-dollar jobs on Wall Street nevertheless? Perhaps what bothers the professors is the fact that you don't need to have a liberal arts education to succeed -- financially, socially, politically -- in today's United States. It bothers me, too. But since it doesn't seem likely that our democratic republic is going to transform itself into Plato's Republic anytime soon, perhaps our professors could enjoy their pretty decent work lives just a bit more.

Now, on to this morceau from the Wall Street Journal. Journalist Michael Steinberger charges Harvard, my alma mater (Class of 2000), with getting too much media coverage due to the prevalence of journalists with Crimson ties. Steinberger adds that this coverage is misguided because Harvard's influence in the spheres of politics and business is diminishing; the sun may be finally setting on the Harvard Empire.

Points worth considering. Yet in criticizing the journalists who lavish so much ink to Harvard, Steinberger omits to mention his friends who compose the Journal's "Best of the Web Today." Thanks to its reputation as a liberal bastion, Harvard makes a wonderful whipping-post for conservatives. Is it agenda, rather than diploma, that fuels the interest in the Kremlin on the Charles? Probably a mixture of both. Also, Harvard is a selling-point, thanks to movies like "Good Will Hunting" and institutions like the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, and it's easily recognizable to the public -- which prompts media coverage as well.

Has Harvard's star been eclipsed? Perhaps Steinberger is focusing on the wrong institution. Harvard may merely be the most visible of the elite colleges that are viewed as tickets to success. And the path to such success does not begin at these colleges. Rather, the sons and daughters of privilege in this country start their journey at the same place they did at the turn of the 20th century: the St. Grottlesex schools. The country needs to recognize this.

General ramblings

2005-04-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

Still can't get over how good that article was about the World War II bombings in Germany and Japan. A lot of the European commentators I read, whether in the pages of the Guardian, the Telegraph, or Sign and Sight, have a marvelous knowledge and writing style. Makes me want to traipse off to the Continent...

Wole Soyinka was honored at Harvard on Wednesday. The former Nobel laureate got tributes from fellow prize winners Nadine Gordimer (1991), Derek Alcott (1992), and Toni Morrison (1993), with Skip Gates presiding. It sounds like a wonderful event. My knowledge of Nigerian literature (and African literature in general) isn't very large. I read "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe in freshman year of high school (1992-93) ... other discoveries were Francophone works ("Xala," "L'enfant noir") in a French literature class in my senior year of college (2000). Africa has been somewhat in the news lately with the release of "Hotel Rwanda" and the strife in the Sudan. But I feel we don't know much about its countries and peoples, and I'm not sure how helpful the media is in increasing our understanding.

Stopped by MIT yesterday to check out a model of the Israeli security barrier, which was a part of Palestinian Awareness Week. On Saturday, there's a discussion about the Israel-Palestine crisis that I'll probably attend.

How I Learned to Start Worrying and Loathe the Bomb

2005-04-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I read a chilling article from the German website "Sign and Sight." Author Jorg Friedrich explains that the reasons why the Allies bombed German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, and why the United States used Fat Man and Little Boy to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was to intimidate Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union.

I first learned of the Dresden bombing from reading Vonnegut's masterpiece "Slaughterhouse-Five" in junior year of college. Bill O'Neill's masterly "A Democracy at War," which I also began that year (but did not finish until about two years later), provided factual information about the bombings and Germany and Japan, making that case that the use of plutonium and uranium bombs against Japan was justified.

The methodical nature of the Allied preparation for the firebombings and atomic bombings is stunning: within the US, fake German and Japanese cities were set up, complete with toys and books that might be found in such cities. The only difference, of course, was that there were no people, and an American serviceman recalled that it was helpful to block out the fact that there would be people living in the cities that the Allies would bomb.

Friedrich describes in awful detail what the bombings felt like: hurricanes of fire in Germany, burning air and water in Japan. And it seems that all of it achieved relatively little in terms of staving off the Communist specter: China and North Korea were -- and are still -- lost. The only result the US could point to is, as Friedrich writes, "if everyone can do it, it is highly unlikely that nobody will." (Does he mean "anybody" instead of "nobody," I wonder -- Mutually Assured Destruction?)

In any event, this was a disturbing article to read and shows that the Allies defeated two evil powers in World War II -- Germany and Japan -- but saw another malignant nation, Stalin's USSR, replace them. And the science of killing people had been upgraded dramatically. Friedrich's writing style is mesmerizing and his knowledge profound. The conclusions he reaches are profoundly depressing.

On gender...

2005-04-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

There were several items in the news that interested me. The first is the death, at 58, of feminist Andrea Dworkin. Folks like Camille Paglia may despise Dworkin, but the self-described "radical feminist" is important for her efforts to stop violence directed against women. Dworkin's desire to be -- unabashedly -- herself is also welcome. In this age of Dr. Atkins diets, "The Swan" and Botox, I laud Dworkin for her nonchalance regarding her looks. It reminds me of a Mike Royko column in which the master ridiculed those who felt squeamish about seeing Mary Pickford, wrinkles and all, at the Oscars. Everyone gets old, he reminded them, and we shouldn't put it behind the Potemkin village of a face lift. (That's my mixed metaphor.)

Secondly, my former Harvard classmate Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times has written an article about a phenomenon that she calls "man dates." Lee defines this as "two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports," or "two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman." Examples of this might include a visit to an art museum or dinner at an expensive restaurant. Lee adds that the prospect of being perceived as homosexual would make some men wary of their behavior on a man date, or even make them shun the practice altogether; however, given the busy nature of people's lives in the Internet era, most men see the development as unavoidable. Indeed, say some gender studies experts, "Before women were considered men's equals ... men routinely confided in and sought advice from one another in ways they did not do with women, even their wives."

This is all so silly that I don't even know where to begin. Lee proceeds from the assumption that all men conform to the stereotype she depicts in her article: Final Four-watching, beer-guzzling, power-lunch-grabbing lunkheads who don't go for more, shall we say, refined pursuits, and certainly not in the company of another man. I am guessing that her experiences in Cambridge and New York would have convinced her otherwise. Secondly, a look at the Western canon could have proven what these gender gurus say: Strong male friendships have existed for hundreds of years. Witness Hamlet talking about Horatio: "Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice/And could of men distinguish, her election/Hath seal'd thee for herself." Or Benvolio and Romeo; or, in "The Importance of Being Earnest," Algernon and Jack.

More cartoons

2005-04-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

Roommate Rivalry 2
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

In addition to my Israel-themed cartoons, I'm also developing a series about online dating. You can see the latest one here. It's a subject that's been chronicled extensively in recent years, and I felt like taking my pen to the subject as well.

A newer version

2005-04-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

States of Mind revision
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

After a lengthy delay, another cartoon is posted onto my blog. This is a revised version of the preceding "States of Mind," which I've submitted to Moment magazine. I'm thinking of making this a running story.

A world leader departs

2005-04-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

Pope John Paul II has died, and millions of people around the world are in mourning. The pope, who was 84, deserves credit for helping to end Communism in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. His frequent travel (129 countries visited) is also laudable -- in the new, connected global society, it was important for Catholics worldwide to associate a face with their religion.

His long tenure (1978-2005) was not blameless. The pope should have intervened more decisively in the priest-abuse scandals of recent years. His adherence to some traditions (he upheld the notions that priests should be celibate, and that only men could become priests) may have alienated Catholics in the "progressive" West. That said, one characteristic that many religions share is a tension between orthodoxy and liberalism. How firmly Catholicism should follow its doctrine will be a crucial subject for the next pontiff. Is it better for a religion to win more believers by a more accommodating regimen, or is it better to have a smaller flock but a more united faith?

It's unlikely that the 117 cardinals who choose the next pope will go for more Vatican II-style liberalism. It will be interesting to see whether or not they select a candidate from one of the geographical regions where Catholicism is gaining followers, such as Latin America or Africa (Lagos, Nigeria, contains one of the largest Catholic populations in the world). Choosing such a candidate would send an important message to the world and would emulate the example set by the Roman Empire when Septimius Severus (reigned 193-211) became that power's first African emperor. This would show that the Catholic Church, like the Roman Empire, has become a truly global institution.

On Terri Schiavo

2005-03-21T14:36:00.000-08:00

President Bush has signed into law a measure calling for a judge to review the Terri Schiavo case. Terri, 41, has been in a coma since 1990. Bush's action comes after Terri's husband, Michael, successfully petitioned to have his wife's feeding tube removed. If it stays removed, Terri is expected to die within two weeks.

Many people in this country are following this situation. Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, views this as a simple case of life or death, and I agree. Terri Schiavo should be kept alive by any means necessary. I don't think we should give anyone the power to terminate life.

I'm disturbed that Michael Schiavo wants Terri's life to end. No matter what his relatives say, I don't trust his motives. He has another child with another woman, and in trying to end his wife's life, he has battled her parents in the Florida courts.

If Michael wants to start a new family with someone else, let him. But let Terri Schiavo live, too. Maybe Terri will recover from her coma, maybe not. However, it's not for anyone but life itself to determine when she will do that.

As for those who are upset that Bush and Congress have intervened in a situation they opposed: I think their work achieved a good result, and I would have been dismayed if someone did not intervene. Does this set a dangerous precedent? No, merely a dangerous continuance. In the nineteenth century, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall decided against President Andrew Jackson's plan to forcibly move the Cherokee Nation out of its lands in the South. Jackson went ahead with his plan anyway, and said, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"

Revised cartoon idea

2005-03-17T06:56:00.000-08:00

States of Mind 1
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

Here's a new version of a political cartoon series I began last year. In college, I drew editorial cartoons for the Harvard Crimson and Harvard Independent. I like a narrative style more, though, and this represents the kind of work I'd like to be doing. I want to explore both liberalism and conservatism, as well as the people who espouse these philosophies, poking a little fun along the way.

Kifaya

2005-03-16T14:56:00.000-08:00

That's Arabic for "enough," as I'm told in an article expressing cautious optimism about prospects for democracy in the Middle East. This has become the name for a movement across the region for greater rights -- for women and for citizens in general. The writer, Youssef M. Ibrahim, lists numerous democratic gestures made recently: elections in Palestine and Iraq, promises to expand the franchise in Saudi Arabia, nonviolent protests in Lebanon. Yet he asks the pertinent question: Does this seem less like Berlin 1989 and more like Beijing 1989?

I'm hoping that the democracy movement (at least, if the media is presenting this accurately) can flourish in the Middle East. However, as Ibrahim also accurately points out, this movement has neither a Gorbachev nor any official recognition. Revolutions led by the masses have succeeded in places like the Philippines (against Ferdinand Marcos), where the term "People Power" gained popularity. The prospects sound encouraging, but there are plenty of risks. Would any of the rulers in the Middle East -- the House of Saud, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan (one of the more enlightened monarchies in the region) -- renounce their power and hand it to the people?

Furthermore, what would a people's government look like? Would it be secular -- a mini-West, with women's rights and open debate? Well, one thing that Sari Nusseibeh said on Tuesday was that there has been an increase in the Islamicization of the Middle Eastern public. Would democracies, therefore, become theocracies? Or would they lapse into regions of anarchy, like Afghanistan or the Sudan?

Last year, King Abdullah II of Jordan suggested that what Iraq needs is a strong leader as opposed to a democracy. Dictators, to play devil's advocate, can be useful; Marshal Tito united a fractious Yugoslavia that fell apart once the Cold War ended. Still, denying a people full representation in a government breeds resentment and violates a basic human right.

Other items that interested me:

1. An intriguing article in the LA Times by a Georgetown linguistics professor, Deborah Tannen, about the recent debate over women's representation in editorial pages. Tannen writes that what makes opinion writing in general a difficult profession for many to succeed in is the attack-dog style people feel is necessary for such a position. She continues by suggesting that this style is nurtured by our society -- the idea that American boys develop a love for roughhousing, while American girls are taught reserve.

This article resonated with me. Growing up, I played with such toys as GI Joe, Masters of the Universe, GoBots and Transformers. My action figures included both heroic and villanous types, and each sets had their own weapons. The popular toys for girls, meanwhile, included Cabbage Patch Kids and Barbie dolls.

I remember, while participating in a drama workshop at Tufts University, helping to perform a version of the song "William's Doll," which concerns a boy named William who shuns sports and, instead, wants to play with a doll. I still recall some of the lyrics: "'A doll,' said William, 'Is what I need/To wash and clean,/And dress and feed...'" (Okay, Google helped with the lyrics.) His father and male relatives laugh at him initially, but in the end, they find out that he wants a doll so he can learn to take care of the children he will eventually have. I found this a beautiful song.

(Granted, I also don't like the metrosexuals who have become profuse in American cities. Their mistake is confusing sensuousness for sensitivity.)

I'm not saying that little boys should toss their action figures and toy guns and join their sisters in playing house. (Though that's not a bad idea!) What purpose does fighting serve? Teaching kids to become bullies? Teaching them that whoever expresses an argument louder or more forcefully than his peers is right? The author of the article cites numerous cultures -- the Chinese, for example -- that teach young people of both genders the virtues of refined debate.

In a high school French class, we once had to read a La Fontaine fable about "le loup et l'agneau" (the wolf and the lamb), in which the wolf approaches a helpless lamb and attempts to justify why the former must eat the latter. When none of these arguments is proved logical, the wolf finally explains that he is hungry and must have his dinner, whereupon he promptly tears into the lamb. Displeased with this ending, I wrote a substitute one featuring a new character, "un porc-epic" (a porcupine), who stings and scares away the wolf and rescues the lamb. My new moral (the old one, I believe, was "Might makes right") was that there needs to be the deterrent of law to prevent injustices being done to the weak.

I'm thinking that we in the United States need to become porcupines. People in the media and in life in general should conduct their affairs civilly, without scare tactics. Yet if our opponents will not take the high ground, we should know how to use their tactics as effectively as they can.

One last note, about a different issue: Larry Summers, as I noted in my previous post, has lost a vote of confidence from his faculty. Four hundred and twenty-one professors out of a possible total of 802 showed up for the meeting. Eighteen abstained, 218 voted for the measure, and 185 voted against it. Those who backed the measure say they are not simply criticizing the Harvard president for his remarks on women and science; they are criticizing him for his abrasive leadership style.

On one hand, I feel this is the end of Summers at Harvard. He will resign, and the Harvard Corporation will pick another kindly fund-raiser like Neil Rudenstine. The faculty will exercise a more vocal presence at the university. Perhaps they will develop their own Star Chamber for students who, like their quondam president, express opinions contrary to their own.

Then again, maybe -- maybe -- Summers will regain his resolve, and the Croesuses (Croesi?) of the Corporation will hold firm, and the Prescott Street panjandrums will weather this storm. But the fact that he did lose a vote of no confidence to the faculty will remain a blot on Summers' career, just as his former boss, Bill Clinton, is tarnished for having been impeached.

Okay, one final -- and I mean final! -- point: The Wall Street Journal has published a commentary by P.J. O'Rourke in which O'Rourke lampoons the public-transportation movement, which is encouraging Congress to pass a $52-plus billion measure in support of mass transit. O'Rourke says that four percent of Americans take public transportation to work (can someone find me the percentage who take it for leisure?), and that the enterprise in general is costly (say, $52 billion).

Comments from a frequent user of the T in Boston and fan of the MTA in New York: I don't drive. Someday, I hope to fix this. But in the meantime, the subway provides me with a relatively inexpensive way to get around the Greater Boston area. For the cost of $44 each month, I can purchase a subway pass that allows me to do this. Compare that to the hundreds of dollars I would spend on car payments, insurance, and gasoline.

Furthermore, as Eric Schlosser pointed out in "Fast Food Nation," one reason so few Americans take public transportation is because they can't. Straw corporations owned by car companies bought up city bus lines across the country and destroyed them, essentially forcing the public to choose to drive.

Among those who do take public transportation are the poor, elderly, and disabled. Denying this service to these groups is not a little heartless. I would also argue that the less people on the roads means less traffic. Those of us who take mass transit, at least theoretically, make life easier for those who don't. Ditto parking spaces; every person who rides the subway or takes the bus, in theory, provides a parking spot for someone else. And, of course, for those who like to go out for a few drinks at night, public transportation provides a safe (again, in theory) alternative to driving drunk.

Public transportation, therefore, is a far more valuable service than O'Rourke would imply.

Back on campus

2005-03-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

Today I went to a luncheon and lecture at the Center for the Study of World Religions, part of the Harvard Divinity School. The speaker was Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds (Arabic for "the Holy") University in Jerusalem. Nusseibeh expressed hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. His talk was interesting; he said that many Palestinians have refused all contact with "the Other," but this policy needs to be reversed. The Other must not only be recognized, it must be embraced -- i.e., there must be dialogue.

I agreed with the speech, although I did not feel that it was realistic. Nusseibeh alluded to a survey that found that 60 to 70 percent of Palestinians disapproved of the recent suicide bombing outside a Tel Aviv nightclub. However, it seems that in the Gaza Strip, at least, the shahidim still have the support of their people, as documented in a New Yorker profile of Mahmoud Abbas.

It also seems that Nusseibeh's credibility has been questioned. He, too, was profiled in the New Yorker, by David Remnick; the one item in the article that sounds unsettling is his arrest, in 1991, on charges of aiding Saddam Hussein's plans to launch Scud missiles against Israel. (More recently, in 2002, he apparently expressed lukewarm criticism of suicide bombers.) However, Remnick notes that Nusseibeh has met with such Israeli political stalwarts as Shimon Peres and Binyamin Bin-Eliezer, and that it doesn't seem likely that these men would meet with someone hostile to their interests.

Many conservatives scoff at liberals for meeting with representatives of causes to which the US is opposed -- Jimmy Carter's chats with Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat, for instance, or Bill Clinton's dealings with Arafat. Someone -- I think it was Peggy Noonan -- noted that you'll never see Dubya's crowd looking into the eyes of some of the dignitaries they meet (Laura with Jacques Chirac, Condolleeza Rice with Hu Jintao). Indeed, back in the 1980s, Dick Cheney called Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

Perhaps the standards for appeasement were set before and during World War II, when Neville Chamberlain coddled Hitler at Munich and Stalin took advantage of FDR at Yalta. The British should never have backed down to Hitler. Whether the US should have supported Stalin is questionable; from 1941 to 1943, the Soviet Union was essentially doing all the fighting in Europe.

I wish I had answers to the question of when does dialogue stop and hostility begin. I'm not comparing Nusseibeh to any of the dictators mentioned above. The Oslo process was well-intentioned. In the case of the Israelis and the Palestinians, where two people (4.5 million Israeli Jews, 1.5 million Israeli Arabs, and about 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) live in a land the size of New Jersey, the two sides should keep some dialogue open. Somehow, the cycle of violence must stop for everyone to live peacefully and equally.

Will it, though? Nusseibeh said that the peace process hinges on three elements: Israeli settlements, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the issue of Jerusalem. I agree with him on settlements -- Israel loses credibility when it builds them while saying that it is working toward peace. On Jerusalem, the city is so riven with ethnic and religious disagreements that agreement on it seems impossible. On the right of return, I disagree with Nusseibeh; if Israel incorporated the refugees (and it has been questioned as to whether they are all refugees), it would lose its status as a Jewish state.

What would help the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is if, somehow, their income level could rise, a situation that has happened for other peoples in exile, such as the Taiwanese or the Cubans of Miami Beach. I think both of these groups wouldn't mind staying where they are, and you don't see any activist group pushing for a Right of Return for either. Poverty may or may not breed terrorism. But it may foster a nostalgia for times past, when life was (or seemed to be) better. An increase in standard of living would remedy that.

In a completely different note: Harvard president Larry Summers has lost a vote of no confidence to his faculty. Medieval metaphors once again seem apt here. Larry looks like a new version of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Like Frederick, Larry probably considers himself a "Stupor Mundi" -- a "Wonder of the World" -- for his brilliance. Like Frederick, Larry has found himself locked in a struggle with an implacable foe; Frederick faced Pope Gregory the Great, who excommunicated him, while Larry has the Harvard faculty, who censured him. The struggle between Hohenstaufen and papacy led to the extinction of Frederick's dynasty; let us hope Larry can last at least a little longer.

Maybe Larry could borrow from the strategy of a previous Holy Roman emperor: Henry IV, who donned sackcloth and ashes to appear before another unforgiving Pope Gregory (VII) at Canossa in January 1077. Gregory had excommunicated him, and Henry's penance lifted the ban.

Come to think of it, this might make a delightful column. I'll see what I can do with it.

Women on the editorial page

2005-03-14T13:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've read the New York Times editorial page, but OpinionJournal.com has mentioned (negatively, natch) an interesting Maureen Dowd column. Dowd is writing about the dearth of women on editorial pages across the nation. She notes that she is the only female columnist out of a staff of eight, and adds that the Washington Post also has just one female columnist.

Why the imbalance? Dowd quotes her boss, Gail Collins (who I once got to hear speak at Harvard's Institute of Politics): "There are probably fewer women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight opinion stuff, and they're less comfortable hearing something on the news and batting something out." Incidentally, Dowd observes that "Male bloggers predominate, as do male TV shouters."

I once heard a graduate student (male) describe grading his students' papers. Out of curiosity, he separated the papers according to gender to see if the responses matched any trend. He found that men tended to be more direct in their essays, while women qualified their statements with such phrases as "It seems that..." This is, of course, just one student at one institution of higher learning. But in light of what Collins and Dowd say, it is interesting.

Is Western society still a doll's house, stifling present-day Nora Helmers from voicing their opinions? Do male responses to female criticism -- Dowd notes that she was described as castrating President Clinton during the impeachment hearings -- inhibit women from being more daring?

Let's start with the stereotype that men are direct, while women are subtle. We have seen that there are many types of men and women, and that thanks to political correctness, the world has become a more accomodating place for sensitive souls like yours truly. Though people on the left (Camille Paglia) and right (Tom Wolfe, Harvey Mansfield) may bemoan the decline of "manly" men, I feel there is room for both action and contemplation in society, politics, culture and life in general.

As for the "subtlety" of women: Perhaps some people in this country are still turned off by the idea of an authoritative woman. For instance, when Mitt Romney successfully ran against Shannon O'Brien for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, it was said that O'Brien's aggressive conduct during televised debates helped swing voters Romney's way. (The article cited above also says it may have been party affiliation, rather than gender, that doomed O'Brien, which sounds legitimate from a national perspective but ridiculous in Massachusetts.) There are women who enjoy dishing it out, especially in comedy: Roseanne Barr, Sandra Bernhard.

However, is there a difference between being authoritative and being too relentless? There were people on both sides who wouldn't let up on President Clinton -- from Dowd to Henry Hyde -- and regardless of what gender one is, it's not a positive trait. Dowd seems to regret that more women aren't TV talking heads, but why would anyone want to aspire to become the next Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity? OpinionJournal cites "plenty of female columnists who have seldom if ever faced the charge of meanness," including Collins and Anne Applebaum, who I referred to in a previous posting about the Larry Summers controversy. I stopped reading Dowd because her columns started sounding alike: too much vituperation. Granted, most of her subjects deserve this vituperation, but sometimes it would help to ease up on the pedal.

Dowd comes out of this column with two points, one valid, the other less so. The valid one: Newspapers should hire more female columnists. The less-valid one: Newspapers should hire more female columnists who write like Maureen Dowd.

Tenorio's Tenth

2005-03-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

Israel Cartoon 10
Originally uploaded by SoxIn18.

Well, here's my tenth Israel cartoon. In some ways, this one has been the toughest to draw because we didn't do that much on Saturday. This ties the number of pages for my longest continuous work (ten, set two years ago for a cartooning course at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). I'm trying to work on contrasts -- light objects against dark background and vice versa. Looking forward to drawing Tzfat in the next edition!

Rather signs off

2005-03-10T18:09:00.000-08:00

Dan Rather has retired from CBS, 24 years to the day after taking over from Walter Cronkite. I watched his farewell retrospective, and it was amazing to see images of the protests of the 1960s, the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. Rather has done some solid reporting, and it's wrong for some to carp at his botched coverage of President Bush's National Guard days.

That said, last night was the first time I've intently watched a news-related story on television. I'm not sure how representative my experience is, but I get most of my news from online sources. The Web seems like the best way to get the latest coverage. I feel that TV is at its most powerful when we confront moments of increased importance: the shock of 9-11, the war in Iraq.

Rather's worth may lie in providing us with a face that we can connect with the news; a familiar presence. I would guess that's what kept people listening to Cronkite and Rather. The idea of an impartial presence seems to be losing popularity, however. These days, even the more impartial hosts like Chris Matthews have their biases. I wonder how much longer the Rather ideal can sustain itself.