“I can’t think of a surer way to lose both our national soul and the struggle against terrorism. Yes, Mr. Gingrich and Ms. Palin, there’s a cultural-political offensive afoot to undermine our civilization. And you’re leading it.” Slate‘s William Saletan reviews the current GOP jihad against a potential mosque near Ground Zero (not to be confused with the mosque that’s already been there for 40 years.) But, on the bright side, at least now we know not to take the ADL seriously anymore. (See, by way of contrast, J-Street’s statement.)
Tag: NYC
Little Sis Doin’ Work.
“Gillian Murphy was an enchanting heroine on Monday, crystalline in her delicate approach to her first solo, steely in her balances in the Rose Adagio, ethereal (if a little tragic) in the Vision scene, radiant in the final act…Ms. Murphy perfectly embodied the teenage shyness and graceful poise of the young princess.” For those of you in Gotham, ABT’s Spring Season is now in full swing at the Met, and the NYT is giving sis her props. Catch her if you can.
Concrete Jungle Where Rings are Made Of.
Well, the King’s season isn’t over yet. (Although it may be soon, if there’s another game like tonight’s 120-88 Game 5 fiasco.) Nonetheless, New York Magazine offers LeBron James a multi-part hard sell of NYC on behalf of the Knickerbockers. To my mind, their logic is irrefutable.
Life in the Great American City.
“In her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, self-taught urban scholar and activist Jane Jacobs observed that sidewalks and their users are ‘active participants in the drama of civilization versus barbarism’ (by “barbarism,” she meant crime) and that a continuously busy sidewalk is a safe sidewalk, because those who have business there — ‘the natural proprietors of the street’ — provide ‘eyes upon the street.’ Jacobs, who died in 2006, would not have been surprised to learn that it was two street vendors who first notified police of the suspicious Nissan Pathfinder parked on West 45th Street just off Broadway.“
In surveying the recent foiled Times Square car-bomb attempt, Slate‘s Fred Kaplan makes the case for the prescience of Jane Jacobs, and explains why Dick Cheney is, yet again, wrong. (Kaplan also makes a case for security cameras which I’m less sanguine about — but, hey, two out of three ain’t bad.)
Speaking of the Times Square situation, Twitter wag pourmecoffee had some arch responses to the near-disaster: “Somebody saw something in Times Square. If Cheney were still around, he’d torture entire Lion King cast for answers,” and “When we catch this Times Square guy, I assume he will be too scary to try in New York.” Ah, Twitter.
Red Queue, Blue Queue.
By way of the NY Times, here’s a map of what Americans are renting from Netflix. Apparently, the Fort Myers military base at zip code 22211 has radically different viewing tastes than the rest of DC, and Manhattan and Brooklyn (but not New Jersey) love them some Mad Men.
Go NY Go NY…Go?
The 2009-2010 NBA Season starts tonight, and, um, the Knicks don’t look very good. (I’ve been playing them this past week in NBA 2K10, and, yeah, they’re terrible — the simulator never lies. But hope springs eternal. And, hey, maybe that new point guard Murphy can right the ship…)
A Brooklyn Scorcher.
“It’s worth remembering how Vincent Canby began his review on June 30, 1989, in the New York Times: ‘In all of the earnest, solemn, humorless discussions about the social and political implications of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, an essential fact tends to be overlooked: it is one terrific movie.’“
In The Root, Henry Louis Gates reflects on the 20th anniversary of Do the Right Thing, and checks in with Spike Lee on the film. “None of us back then could possibly have imagined all that has transpired for our people, and for this country, in the intervening two decades: a black prince and princess so elegantly sitting up in the White House, and their very first date was in a movie theater in 1989, watching–what else? Do the Right Thing.“
The Mayor of Seventh Street.
“‘You get so hard living here,” he said in a gravelly, mournful voice. ‘But pets open up that heart center. There is something about the unconditional love; they clean the blues off of you. ‘That’s their mission. That’s why a lot of New Yorkers have pets.’” The NYT reports in on the passing of Pretty Boy, stray cat and late prince of the East Village.
Hentoff Sent Off.
“With all due immodesty, I think it doesn’t help to lose me because people have told me they read The Voice not only for me, but certainly for me.” In another troubling indicator of how bad things are getting in the world of print journalism, the venerable institution Nat Hentoff is laid off from The Village Voice. “‘Nat Hentoff wrote liner notes for every great musician that I’ve ever loved, from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin, and that’s not even what he’s been writing about for the last 30 years,’ said Tom Robbins, a Voice staff writer.”
Escape from New York.
“On an island under military occupation at the edge of an empire, the armed forces of a global superpower detain hundreds and sometimes even thousands of allegedly unlawful combatants. The powerful nation consigns the detainees to a legal limbo, subjecting them to treatment that critics around the world decry as inhumane, unenlightened, and ultimately self-defeating. That may sound like a history of Guantanamo. Yet the year was 1776, the superpower was Great Britain, and the setting was New York City. The ‘unlawful’ combatants were American revolutionaries.”
in a mixed review of Edwin Burrows’ Forgotten Patriots, friend and Columbia prof John Witt notes “eerie” parallels between Guantanamo Bay and revolutionary-era Manhattan, and offers choice advice for President-elect Obama. “To succeed, he will have to reunite the twin American traditions of interest and idealism. They are traditions his predecessor tore apart, but they are the true legacy of the Revolution.“