Andy, Henry, Ron

Three for Barack Obama.

"The new narrative"

The upcoming New York Times Magazine story on the everchanging narrative of the McCain campaign is now online. An excerpt:

The new narrative — the Team of Mavericks coming to lay waste the Beltway power alleys — now depended on a fairly inexperienced Alaska politician. The following night, after McCain's speech brought the convention to a close, one of the campaign's senior advisers stayed up late at the Hilton bar savoring the triumphant narrative arc. I asked him a rather basic question: "Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?"

The senior adviser thought for a moment. Then he looked up from his beer. "No," he said quietly. "I don’t know."

The Making (and Remaking) of McCain (New York Times)

Trading places

I've asked my freshman composition students to read the 2007 National Endowment for the Arts report To Read or Not to Read, which is filled with thought-provoking bits of detail about the fate of reading in contemporary American culture. Here's an example, presented in the report without explication (the analysis that follows is mine):

[Click for a larger view.]

Notice how categories trade places over eleven years. The reading level of the 1992 high-school graduate (268) becomes that of the 2003 high-school graduate who has completed a post-high-school course of study (268). The reading level of the 1992 student with a two-year degree (306) becomes roughly that of the 2003 student with a four-year degree (314). And the reading level of the 1992 college graduate (325) is virtually the same as that of the 2003 college graduate who's had some graduate study (327).

These numbers suggest that acquiring genuine readerly competence is increasing a do-it-yourself matter: simply going to school, whether it's high school or college, guarantees less and less. For the prose literacy test cited above, proficiency equals a score of 340 or higher (out of 500). Thus by 2003, even students with graduate study were falling short as proficient readers.

That's why I'm asking my comp students to read words, words, words (and the occasional chart).

I early voted

Yes, I early voted. And I've proof.

(How odd early sounds before a verb.)

There were fifteen people in line when I arrived, late in the day. Most were students, registering and voting on the last day to register in Illinois. Go students!

"[T]hey're in charge of the United States Senate"

I'd say that the push to accept the use of they, their, and them with singular nouns just had a setback, in the form of Sarah Palin's reply today to a third-grader's question about the job of vice president:

"That's a great question, Brandon, and a vice president has a really great job, because not only are they there to support the president's agenda; they're like a team member, the team-mate to that president. But also, they're in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom, and it's a great job, and I look forward to having that job."

Socialism! Communism!

These accusations — so ridic. I remember Eugene Chadbourne's hilarious rant "Bo Diddley Is a Communist":

It was Socialism!

Communism!

Bo Diddley!

(from Chadbourne's 1987 LP Vermin of the Blues)

Frank O'Hara and Mad Men again

Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency reappeared last night in Mad Men, in Anna Draper's house, as the subject of four sentences' worth of conversation:

Dick/Don: "You read it?"

Anna: "I did. It reminded me of New York. And it made me worry about you."

Thus far, FOH's book seems to be a MacGuffin. But the series seems to be promising more, as the season's upcoming final episode is titled "Meditations in an Emergency." My guess is that what will prove relevant is the last line of the poem "Mayakovsky" ("perhaps I am myself again") or simply the book's title, serving as a metaphor for a moment of crisis and decision in Dick's/Don's life.

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Frank O'Hara and Mad Men
Mad Men and Frank O'Hara (not again)
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Dave McKenna (1930-2008)

Dave McKenna was a brilliant, generous, and self-effacing pianist. I am fortunate to have heard him play at the Plaza Bar at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, in 1984 or '85. (That was where you went if you wanted to hear Dave McKenna.) I joined the handful of people close to the piano and asked McKenna if he'd play "About a Quarter to Nine," a tune from his 1982 LP The Dave McKenna Trio Plays the Music of Harry Warren (Concord). He obliged, and added "Would You Like to Take a Walk?" and "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me," which followed on the LP. How generous was that?

Dave McKenna, Pianist Known for Solo Jazz Work, Dies at 78 (New York Times)
Dave McKenna (A family-run site)
Dave McKenna on YouTube

If you've never heard Dave McKenna, try YouTube's "Nagasaki."

Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan

On Meet the Press this morning, Colin Powell addressed the claim that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim:

I'm also troubled by not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said: such things as "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is "He is not a Muslim; he's a Christian." He's always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is "What if he is?" Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: "He's a Muslim and he might be associated [with] terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine.

Powell went on to describe this photograph, of Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, one of eighteen photographs in "Service," a photo-essay by the photographer Platon, in the September 29, 2008 New Yorker.

Thank you, General Powell

Colin Powell, talking to reporters this morning, answering a question about the part that "McCain's negativity" played in Powell's decision to endorse Barack Obama:

It troubled me. We have two wars. We have economic problems. We have health problems. We have education problems. We have infrastructure problems. We have problems around the world with our allies. So those are the problems the American people wanted to hear about, not about Mr. Ayers, not about who's a Muslim or who's not a Muslim. Those kinds of images going out on Al Jazeera are killing us around the world.

And we have got to say to the world, it doesn't make any difference who you are or what you are; if you're an American, you're an American. And this business, for example, of the congressman from Minnesota who's going around saying, "Let's examine all congressmen to see who is pro-America or not pro-America" — we have got to stop this kind of nonsense, pull ourselves together, and remember that our great strength is in our unity and in our diversity. And so that really was driving me.

And to focus on people like Mr. Ayers and these trivial issues, for the purpose of suggesting that somehow Mr. Obama would have some kind of terrorist inclinations, I thought that was over the top. It was beyond just good political fighting back and forth. I think it went beyond. And to sort of throw in this little Muslim connection, you know, "He's a Muslim and, my goodness, he's a terrorist" — it was taking root. And we can't judge our people and we can't hold our elections on that kind of basis.

So yes, that kind of negativity troubled me. And the constant shifting of the argument. I was troubled a couple of weeks ago when in the middle of the crisis, the campaign said, "We're going to go negative," and they announced it, "We're going to go negative and attack his character through Bill Ayers." Now I guess the message this week is, "We're going to call him a socialist. Mr. Obama is now a socialist, because he dares to suggest that maybe we ought to look at the tax structure that we have."

Taxes are always a redistribution of money. Most of the taxes that are redistributed go back to those who pay them, in roads and airports and hospitals and schools. And taxes are necessary for the common good. And there is nothing wrong with examining what our tax structure is or who should be paying more, who should be paying less. And for us to say that that makes you a socialist, I think is an unfortunate characterization that isn't accurate.

I don't want my taxes raised. I don't want anybody else's taxes raised. But I also want to see our infrastructure fixed. I don't want to have a $12 trillion national debt, and I don't want to see an annual deficit that's over $500 billion heading toward a trillion. So, how do we deal with all of this?

(Transcript from CNN.)