A letter from Barack Obama to a ten-year-old girl gives a good idea of the character of the man just reëlected.
[I’m sorry, but I’m powerless before the umlaut dieresis.]
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
“Dear Sophia”
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
As Vigo goes (2012)
Elaine found the above detail while looking at CNN online. Indiana’s Vigo County has gone to Barack Obama, as it did in 2008. Vigo has voted for the winning candidate in every presidential election since 1956. We were knocking on doors there for Obama in 2008, with no idea of the county’s political significance.
A related post
As Vigo goes (2008)
Election Day
“Why is voting day for American federal elections always a Tuesday? The answer is a bit obscure and has to do with buggies”: Why Are Elections on Tuesday? (NPR).
The Weavers, 1951
“A collection of all the video recordings for Snader Telescriptions filmed in 1951”: fifteen minutes and thirty-four seconds of the Weavers (YouTube).
Monday, November 5, 2012
Reality distortion fields
There are reality distortion fields, and there are reality distortion fields. The term “reality distortion field” (RDF) is associated of course with Steve Jobs, who was able to convince Apple employees that they could accomplish difficult or seemingly impossible tasks — deadlines and the limits of technology be damned. Such feats are hardly limited to charismatic executive types. Any teacher who gives students the sense that they are smarter than they believe, that they can do more than they suspect, has a good RDF at work. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign mantra “Yes, we can” captures what’s involved: a belief that success is possible despite long odds. A good RDF reshapes one’s sense of what is possible.
Then there is the other kind of RDF, the kind that distorts matters of fact and history. Such fields were in force all through the 2008 presidential campaign, and they have been in force ever since, turning a candidate and president into a non-citizen, a secret (you can fill in the blank, in several ways), turning healthcare reform into communism and death panels and theft from Medicare. This year’s presidential campaign has a challenger who has trained an RDF on his own record, obscuring or simply denying positions he has taken not just in recent years but in recent months, in this very campaign.
Distortions so blatant, so cynical, suggest that such a candidate and his advisors must see American voters as credulous fools, ready to believe one thing after another after another. I think though that the majority of American voters are smarter than that. Tomorrow we will find out.
Related posts
George Orwell on historical truth
George Orwell on totalitarian history
Stepping in it
Ted Curson (1935–2012)
The trumpeter Ted Curson has died at the age of seventy-seven. I know him best from his work with Charles Mingus. Here is one of Curson’s finest moments, from 1960: “Original Faubus Fables,” with Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone), Mingus (bass and vocal), and Dannie Richmond (drums and vocal).
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Bryan Garner on snoot
“The corresponding abstract noun is ‘snootitude’”: Bryan Garner glosses David Foster Wallace’s snoot .
A related post
Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace
[Bryan Garner, author of Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009), offers a free Usage Tip of the Day. You can sign up at LawProse.org. Orange Crate Art is a Garner-friendly site.]
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