If we are the world, as we say we are, how is it possible to have a foreign face in America?

Not all immigrants come by this question the hard way. If you come
from Northern Europe or Slavic Europe, you may grasp the question in your head but not your gut, because the chances are you look enough like our received idea of how Americans should look to duck the bite of the question. Unless of course you’re Jewish and your forebears haven’t mixed with Aryans enough, by force or choice, to give you that accepted, that approved look.

Things change, for better or worse. When I was a boy Rudolph Valentino’s foreign face had been romanticized into at least as much acceptance as pizza or kielbasa. But the stardom of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Jennifer Lopez would have been harder to imagine. Harder still the stardom of Samuel L. Jackson and Halle Berry. (more…)

New York’s Hudson Valley and the nearby Berkshires and Taconics
are alive with art galleries. When people buy second homes in these scenic
treasuries they look to local galleries to provide them mementos of their new environment. They’re missing a huge bet.

If I were a fledgling or even a seasoned collector of contemporary and recent estate art I would comb these galleries as an alternative to the pricier Hamptons and Manhattan galleries where prices are driven up by overhead, including the high cost of taste-making.

Traditionally buyers look to the Hamptons and Manhattan to enhance their city homes or their investments. They tend to beautify their second homes with Hudsoniana or art relevant to the locale of the homes. This categorical mindset doesn’t well serve the buyer or the country galleries. (more…)

We live in a society that has reached an incredible consensus, in spite of all the red state-blue state talk: we agree that it’s something akin to a terror alert to talk straight. (more…)

The CNN crawl this morning declared the Flip-Flop Wars. Barack Obama had changed course about campaign finance, deciding not to limit himself to a federal contribution, and John McCain had decided offshore drilling is okay after all.

The more important issue is the press’ mindless acceptance of the received boobism that changing one’s mind, one’s position about issues, is bad. Anyone who embraces this mania du jour doesn’t hold out much promise as a leader. Anyone incapable of course corrections in response to changing circumstances is a meathead.

And yet the press maintains its ludicrous flip-flop watch as if it were a national security alert. If we elect those who never change their minds and never alter course we deserve what we get. The notion of flip-flop is bogus. It panders to ideologues. But insistence on inquiring and flexible minds in our leaders is essential. The press confuses integrity with ideology.

If Alexander the Great had not been what our feckless press is calling a flip-flopper he would have been Alexander the Loser. —DM

Sometimes I think the all news all day formula is traumatizing society. The news—if you can call that weird concoction of anchor bonhomie and drivel news—is surpassingly negative, and in the interest of ratings the media rarely lose an opportunity to exaggerate the negative side of the news. News or what passes for it is about bad behavior, disaster, crime, nasty mouths, lies, spin, malfeasance—and a little upbeat story here and there as condiment. (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 43, one of my regular pod casts for The Student Operated Press)

There’s a crucial difference between balanced reporting and insightful reporting. You can listen to this difference by tuning into the Yes Network and listening to color commentator David Cone, the famously versatile former pitcher who once considered a career in journalism.

You can describe the game and gin up excitement with personal mannerisms the way television anchors increasingly do, or you can quietly shed light on the science of the game the way Cone (inset) does. He represents the difference between reporting as theater and reporting as insight.

When Cone tells you wrist and elbow action is as important as finger location in throwing strikes, you know a lot more than when another reporter tells you that you’ve just seen a changeup, which the camera has probably already told you. (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 42, my regular pod cast for The Student Operated Press).

Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, has written a book confirming some of the public’s worst suspicions about the presidency of George W. Bush. McClellan (inset) says, among other things, the White House lied us into the Iraq war and covered up its role in destroying the career of a CIA undercover agent simply because she was married to a critic of President Bush’s war policies.

Self-righteous critics on the left and the right of the political spectrum immediately accused the once adamant Bush loyalist of being a day late and a dollar short. Why didn’t his conscience bother him when he foisted these lies on the public, his critics ask? Well, conscience isn’t always as hair-triggered as John Wayne in the movies. Sometimes it takes a lot of introspection to accept that you have been part of wrongdoing, that you are part of the problem when you have been posing as part of the solution. (more…)

The glory of Christianity is its gospel of love, charity and compassion, so why do condemnatory histrionics from the pulpit about family values, abortion and homosexuality dominate news of Christendom while the pulpit’s deafening silence about a church-going society that allows insurance adjusters to make a mockery of its dearest tenets is met with complimentary silence in the media? (more…)

It’s interesting how eager both the left and the right wings are to pull the trigger on Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, who has written a book confirming many of our worst suspicions about the Bush Administration.

If he knew his bosses were lying about Iraq and Valerie Plame, the CIA undercover agent whom they treacherously outed, why didn’t he speak up, save thousands of lives, dollars and damages? That’s what many of his critics of the left and right are yowling. (more…)

I live in a house surrounded by its weed yards. Each spring I look forward to the happy dandelions so despised by the many. I even like the myriad puff balls they turn into. Periodically the farmer who cuts our grass rakes the thatch and spreads lime, but I use no chemicals or fertilizer.

Something is wrong with this picture. At this point it would be expensive to correct it, but the predicament heightens my awareness that a great many aspects of our culture are missing from the discourse we are reluctantly beginning about energy. (more…)