onegoodmove

Actually, having just read David Mamet's otherwise execrable piece at the Voice, I can point out that a correction is in order regarding Mailer's estimation of Beckett. He said such a thing before seeing Waiting for Godot; afterward, "When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is."

I can't get linking to work here . . . Mamet's "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-dead Liberal." is currently linked to the Voice site's front page.

Daily Kos is feeling your pain.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/14/20827/4727/132/476843

The difference being, the reaction here has mostly an opposition to attacks on Obama, rather then a lashing out at Clinton.

But none the less, We find ourselves in a unity crisis.

Thanks for the reminder of the sad fact that it's been five years since Rachel Corrie died and there's still no peace in Palestine.

RedSeven,

Re unity, TomCat at Politics Plus said it better than I could

There has not been a more perfect opportunity for Democrats to sweep the GOP from power, since the policies of GOP brought us the last depression. We have everything going for us. The GOP is ready to go down for the count, and except for their most rabid ideologues, even they know it. Only one question remains. Will Democrats take advantage of the opportunity, or will we squander it with squabbling and infighting?

I have an email account attached to my profile, which I check daily, but use for no other purpose other than to give people who read here a way to contact me. Like all public email accounts, I get a daily barrage of "do you want a bigger..." ads, but in the last couple weeks, I have been receiving emails from people, whom I do not know, asking me to post smear articles against either Clinton or Obama with links of dubious quality. Almost every day I see Clinton smears on Obama blogs and Obama smears on Clinton blogs. All this intramural negativity sickens me.

Wake up, people! One of these two is going to be the Democratic candidate for President! Neither is perfect. Both, like all politicians, have their gray areas. I'm not telling anyone not to wholeheartedly support the candidate of your choice. By all means do! But please express that support in terms of the positive things about your candidate. Let the smears and the name calling come to an end. Whoever emerges as the nominee needs all our support not only to win the general, but also to develop coattails sufficiently long to elect so many Democrats to the House and Senate that the GOP will be a virtual non-entity.

Isn't removing the GOP from power a sufficiently worthy goal to unite, even if it is not behind the candidate of your choice?

Catcher in the Rye overrated? Apparently she's never been a 17 year old boy. I read it directly after The Scarlet Letter (which I despised) and found it amazing for it's lack of literary trappings.

My nomination for most over-rated book: Pride and Prejudice. If you want to read a trashy airport romance go right ahead but let's stop pretending it is anything more.

Heh, Wilson's "one blunder" was more than enough for a lifetime!

By the way, Kafka lovers: I just finished Kundera's Art of the Novel, and it contains what I suspect is the most insightful essay ever written on Kafka. Highly recommended, and highly topical to that little matter of immunity for Big Telcom now pending before Congress -- check out this snippet:

Totalitarian society...tends to abolish the boundary between the public and the private; power, as it grows ever more opaque, requires the lives of citizens to be entirely transparent.

Sorry, but Rachel Corrie's death was just utterly meaningless. Considering the hopeless history of this conflict, you'd have to be pretty damn full of yourself, to think that your own martyrdom will make a damn bit of difference. This sort of infantile, self-aggrandizing behavior is something you're supposed to grow out of in your teens.

So now the mess has another martyr: Saint Pancake. Nice work there, toots.

And then there's the pièce de résistance: Her family actually tried to sue Caterpillar. You couldn't make this shit up.

well, no one wants to touch that one, ay, deezee? i'll stick my neck out: i have mixed feelings about the whole rachel corrie thing. on the one hand, i knew a lot of the ism people who worked with her. they used to drink at the bar where i was a musician for many years. they're nice kids, highly idealistic (obviously), relatively harmless and, in some cases, unconciously anti-semitic. but that was par for the course at that place- you'd meet people from all over the world, and everyone comes with their prejudices including, of course, your humble poster. i never met her personally (i think) but one of my best friends was tight with her at evergreen state college. we had a big fight about it after she was killed because:

on the other hand, i try to judge these things by, as much as possible, putting myself in the other persons place. if, in some arab country, the arabs were (for whatever reason) killing jews left and right, and bulldozing the family homes of those who resisted, and i had a friend, not jewish, not arab, with little knowledge of the history of the conflict go there and die standing in front of a bulldozer trying to protect a house, would i speak up for that friends intelligence or judgement? would i try to make him/ her a martyr? i think most of you know the answer.

and norm, thanks for posting that link to her dead, torn-up face in closeup. i'm sure that was really helpful. should i send you one of my friends' 16 year old son, who had his head shot off last week (quite intentionally, no grey area whatsoever, unlike corries' case) while he studied talmud in the library of his yeshiva? really, the creation of martyrs- and especially the way people focus on the young and attractive- is disgusting to me. there are a lot more people getting killed in this thing than young hotties. ism itself lost 2 other members to idf actions- do you even know their names?

the arab "shaheeds", btw, get marriage proposals "i will be his bride in heaven" all the time on live talk radio-i can't speak for what goes on in private homes-ALL THE TIME. their photos are plastered in huge posters all over the walls of the west bank, gaza, and east jerusalem- where this last cherubic, doe-eyed 26 year old machine gunner came from- and the better looking ones (most are in their teens and early 20s) get the most offers.

fact.

"rachel, will you marry me? perhaps i can somehow, with my love, make up for the tragedy of what happened to your beautiful face!"

you like the sound of that? want to be a part of it? now as a rusult of this conflict, the jews can have their martyrs (by the bushel!) and the arabs can have theirs (as many as you want! cheap!) and hey, we'll throw the goyim in america a bone, they can have one too. make it a pretty girl with a name easily pronounced and remembered by americans.

i'm sorry, i was getting a little steamed up there, thinking about it. hope i made my point without being too offensive.

"well, no one wants to touch that one, ay, deezee?"

Yup you got that one right, dude.

Ah, well, while patting oneselves on the back might be bad form, I think I called that one -- or jonathan becker did. No one wants to touch that one.

St. motherfucking Pancape indeed.