Author Sees Parallel In Giffords Shooting And JFK Assassination from NPR Blog Shots

In an email to NPR, regarding Friday’s Morning Edition piece on the possible motives of the Giffords shooting in Arizona, author James Reston Jr. drew a parallel between that incident and the JFK assassination. I was fascinated by your report on assassinations this morning for a personal reason. In my 1988 biography of John Connally of Texas [The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally] I had three chapters on the Dallas assassination. There I developed a theory, based upon intensive research in the back volumes of the Warren Commission, that Lee Harvey Oswald's principal target was not Kennedy, but Connally. It would take too much time to lay the theory out in detail here. But essentially, the idea is that Oswald, schleppy little guy that he was, had an intense personal grudge against Connally, because he (Oswald) believed that Connally as Secretary of the Navy (before becoming governor) was complicit in changing his discharge from the Marine Corps from honorable to dishonorable, or at least, not redressing the outrage of that change. Oswald's letters to Connally are deep in the background volumes of the Warren Commission. In those back volumes, Oswald's wife, Marina, testified to the Warren Commission that Connally was her husband's target. It's always interested me that the Warren Commission ultimately argued that Oswald's motive was grand and epic: to decapitate the U.S. government. But little people, with 9th grade educations, rarely have such cerebral thoughts.The Commission felt, I think, that it had to have a motive that was as grand as the crime itself. If my theory is right, President Kennedy was an accidental victim in Dallas.

"Favorite Books of 2010: Mara Liasson Suggests Actually 'Reading Obama'" from NPR's Monkey See by MARA LIASSON "+Democracy"

I cover the White House and the president, and I often wonder if there is such a thing as "Obamaism." This book offers one definition. Kloppenberg is the chairman of the history department at Harvard; he's written books about liberalism and social democracy, and he places Obama squarely in that progressive intellectual stream. Kloppenberg offers an answer to one of the great ironies about reactions to Obama: how the same man can be vilified as a socialist and derided as a sellout to Wall Street. According to Kloppenberg, Obama's writings and speeches show that he is an adherent of philosophical pragmatism, a home-grown American philosophy developed at the end of the 19th century by William James and John Dewey. Philosophical pragmatists are anti-absolutists. They believe that compromise, public debate and civility are the building blocks of true democracy. Kloppenberg believes Obama's cerebral caution and his nuanced understanding of both sides of a debate are not personality traits or signs of weakness; they are a philosophical choice.

Read the blog post here. But of all the blog posts and plugs for the book at NPR, the BBC and the like, the most substantive of them, must be this post out of the quarterly, "Democracy" ("a journal of ideas"), which we'll quote at length here:

One of Kloppenberg’s most important claims is that Obama embodies the spirit of pragmatism–not the colloquial pragmatism that is more or less the same thing as practicality, but the philosophical pragmatism that emerged largely from William James and John Dewey and continued to flourish through the work of Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and others. Kloppenberg provides an excellent summary of the pragmatic tradition–a tradition rooted in the belief that there are no eternal truths, that all ideas and convictions must meet the test of usefulness. (Or, as James put it, ideas have to “work.”) Josiah Royce, James’s Harvard colleague and friend, argued that behind all moral claims there must be some “absolute truth” or “absolute knowledge.” Without such absolutes, he (and many others) believed, individuals would have nothing on which to build a moral life. But the pragmatists insisted that every idea has to confront the test of relevance to its time and circumstances. There could be no easy recourse to an absolute truth, either from religion or ancient texts or even from contemporary philosophy. People and nations must live with the knowledge that even their deepest beliefs can be challenged and, if necessary, rejected.

What is the evidence that Obama shares that view? His years at Harvard Law School drew him into the pragmatic ideas that dominated much of the faculty, and so there is little doubt that he knew a great deal about the tradition of pragmatism. But despite Kloppenberg’s claim, it is not entirely clear that he wholly embraced it. In The Audacity of Hope, a book that was designed for his presidential campaign but that also contains much of what we know about his opinions and convictions, Obama makes clear that he has an interest in pragmatism, but he is not wholly committed to it. “It has not always been the pragmatist, the voice of reason, or the force of compromise, that has created the conditions for liberty,” he writes. “The hard, cold facts remind me that it was unbending idealists like William Lloyd Garrison . . . Denmark Vesey . . . Frederick Douglass . . . Harriet Tubman . . . who recognized that power would concede nothing without a fight.”

The best argument for Obama as a pragmatist is his well-known preference for “deliberative democracy,” which he describes as a politics “in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent.” Kloppenberg sees Obama as a person who is prone to “building support slowly, gradually, through compromise and painstaking consensus building . . . . It is a gamble he may lose. But it is not a sign of weakness.” Perhaps not. But the last two years suggest that the kind of slow, deliberate consensus-building that Obama seems to prefer is not consistent with the character and needs of national politics and is certainly not consistent with the political world he has inherited–as exhibited by the obdurate and virtually unanimous opposition of the Republican caucus to almost everything he proposes. It may be that no president could be more effective than Obama has been in this political climate. The climate of crisis that he inherited would make it difficult for any leader. But that is all the more reason for him to rebut energetically the powerful opposition that is attempting to derail him. His quasi-pragmatic coolness has not so far been helpful to him or to the nation.

If you're serious about "actually reading Obama," then it'd behoove you to check the full article out, here. See also: Pragmatism, Pragmatism: A Reader, Pragmatism and Other Writings (Penguin Classics), Pragmatism, A Companion to Pragmatism (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy)

The Hoopla Over Steve Martin's Appearance and Interview at the 92nd Street Y: "This is only a test."

NYT:

That night, a conversation between Steve Martin, the writer and actor, and Deborah Solomon, who writes a weekly interview column for The New York Times Magazine, resulted in the Y’s sending out a next-day apology, along with a promise of a refund.

You've got to check this out. They're the reader/user comments to an NY Times article, "Comedian Conversation Falls Flat at 92nd Street Y". If we're to go by the Google News airwaves, and what those media outlets are saying about the incident, Martin's being a really good sport about it. Maybe. He's quoted by NYT as saying, "“As for the Y’s standard of excellence, it can’t be that high because this is the second time I’ve appeared there.”" Read the NYT piece here. Steve Martin's other books: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, Late for School, Shopgirl: A Novella, The Pleasure of My Company: A Novella, The Underpants, The Crow: New Songs for the Five String Banjo.

In response to the 92nd Street Y uproar, Lee Siegel out of The New York Observer, was, well, "excited."

The people watching on closed-circuit began sending emails imploring the staff at the 92nd Street Y to intercede and press Ms. Solomon to ask snappier questions. Not questions about kvelling over Rembrandt, but about what it was like to work with Goldie Hawn. Back in New York, the members of the audience began to murmur their disapproval. After a few minutes, someone from the Y stepped out onto the stage and passed an index card to Ms. Solomon. It was a note demanding that she talk to Mr. Martin about his career. This defiant message will be remembered the way Americans remember the first shot fired at Concord. Ms. Solomon promptly began accepting questions from the floor. As a result of the general disappointment, the Y decided to give refunds to everyone in the audience. Messrs. Solomon and Martin, welcome to the age of the Internet! Welcome to the new participatory culture, where the paying audience determines the content of its cultural experience, not elitist gatekeepers and their flunkies. The passive discontent of the spectator has given way to the active control of the consumer. Aux armes, customers! I read an account of the Solomon/Martin imbroglio and excitedly banged out an email to Alan. According to the receipt, my share of lunch was $38.62. With tip, the whole thing came to $46. Make it a money order, I wrote, just to be on the safe side. That night, I slept like a baby. Thanks to the heroes of the 92nd Street Y, I had discovered IIR. Immediate Interactive Response.

The op-ed wasn't so enthusiastic, as you can tell; titled, "Apocalypse Now!" "IIR," got it (you old bag of whatever). "This is a test. This is a test of the immediate interactive response system, otherwise known as: you do something, something happens; such as picking up a phone, and calling somebody, or sending a sweaty singing telegram halfway across the world. You do; you get. This is only a test." Read the full piece here. And so, in response, there was this post, out of the The Economist blog, "Prospero":

Aren't we so crass—we the customers—for our Tweeting, bleating ways? And have you noticed what consumer control has done to the news media? Oh dear! This is where the exclamation point shines: a scenario in which everyone is meant to feel a bit shamed. Like sarcasm, a well-deployed exclamation mark holds a mirror up to our ideas so that we can see how dumb we really are. It bears mentioning that the Observer was wise to give Mr Siegel some weekly space this year for his gruff rants about the precarious state of American politics/the Great American Novel/the American man/America's media, etc. He's a wizard of macho outrage with a dash of wryness (and a gulp of rye). Now all that op-ed page needs is some readers.

Well, both of them need readers. The lowly Blogger.com blogger over here, has more readers than they do, according to their Facebook shares and Tweets: this post has one. And it automatically goes out when the article's published. Their posts? At this time, 0. I'll vote for both of them right now. Wow. Welcome to the "age" of the OCIASSAFAA system"!" The Opinions Come in All Shapes, Sizes and from All Angles system. This is only a test.

"On Location: New book presents a photographic history of filming in Los Angeles" from the Los Angeles Times by Richard Verrier

For nearly four decades Hollywood historian Marc Wanamaker has indulged his passion: collecting photographs from location film shoots in Los Angeles dating back to the early 1900s. Now, he hopes his new book featuring more than 200 vintage images, including Harold Lloyd dangling off the side of a building above 8th and Spring streets in the 1930 film “Feet First,” will remind the film industry of the city’s rich heritage at a time when much of production is migrating elsewhere. Wanamaker, a film history consultant and former curator of the Hollywood Heritage Museum, has collected about 250,000 still photographs that document the countless hotels, ranches, parks and beaches across Los Angeles that supplied the backdrop for some of Hollywood’s greatest films. [...] Wanamaker, who co-wrote the book with local authors Karie Bible and Harry Medved, said he wanted to use the photos to highlight L.A.’s deep ties to the movie business as film industry promoters and city officials attempt to stem runaway production. This week the nonprofit group FilmL.A. unveiled a new marketing campaign to boost the local film industry.

See also: Early Beverly Hills (CA) (Images of America), Location Filming in Los Angeles (Images of America Series), Early Warner Bros. Studios (Images of America) (Images of America Series)

"Teddy Roosevelt And The 'Burn' That Saved Forests" from WHYY Radio, NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross [original posting, broadcast: Oct, 2009]

Timothy Egan's "The Big Burn" was just released on paperback, and so, WHYY Radio, NPR Fresh Air rebroadcast last year's interview with the author.

In his new book The Big Burn, author Timothy Egan takes us back to 1910, to the scene of the largest forest fire in American history. Three million acres — an area the size of Connecticut — burned down in Idaho and Montana over the course of a single weekend. More than 70 people died. The Idaho Statesman has since remembered it as "a conflagration of biblical proportions," and Egan says the fire was of a singular kind, "a monster that takes on a life of its own." But in The Big Burn — subtitled Teddy Roosevelt and The Fire That Saved America — Egan argues that the fire actually saved the nation's forests, even as its flames charred the trees. The disaster served to strengthen the fledgling U.S. Forest Service, and rally public opinion behind Theodore Roosevelt's plan to protect national lands. Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of five books. He won the National Book Award for his critically acclaimed Dust Bowl chronicle The Worst Hard Time.

Download the NPR WHYY Fresh Air podcast here. Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and journalist. He maintains the New York Times blog, "The Opinionator," and recently wrote about two personalities, a "junkie" and an "atheist," Keith Richards and Christopher Hitchens respectively. His column, blog, whatever you want to call it, is usually enlightening in the sense that it doesn't get caught up in over opinions about current affairs, but rather sheds true opinions, unique and enlightening ideas, and in his recent posting, relationships; the relationship between a junkie and an atheist. In his latest post, Hitchens' bout cancer is evoked. It cuts to the materialism of our ideals, and it's the ideas in posts like this, that make a subscription to The New York Times on the Kindle worth it (even if you can get it at the desk or on the laptop for free). Check that latest entry out, here. See also: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (Vintage Departures), Breaking Blue, Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West

"George W. Bush Memoir Has Sold 1.1 Million Copie"s by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

George W. Bush has joined Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in an exclusive club: presidential authors who have sold at least a million copies of their books. The Crown Publishing Group announced Wednesday that Bush's memoir, "Decision Points," has sold more than 1.1 million copies. It was released Nov. 9.

NPR syndicated this AP bit, which can be found here. In the book, he defends the use of water-boarding to extract critical information from terrorists: The Times (UK) reported this earlier this month:

George W. Bush has claimed that information extracted from terrorist suspects by “waterboarding” saved British lives by preventing attacks on Heathrow and Canary Wharf. In an exclusive interview with The Times, the former US President offered a vigorous defence of the coercive interrogation technique: “Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.” He denied that waterboarding, which simulates drowning, amounted to torture. Asked if he authorised the use of waterboarding to get information from the captured al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he was unequivocal: “Damn right!” In his new book he writes: “Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States.”

Read the full Times article here. There's also this NPR All Things Considered podcast with and about the former president. See also: A Charge to Keep, George W. Bush on God and Country: The President Speaks Out About Faith, Principle, and Patriotism, Spoken from the Heart, The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment

"Surprise! Jaimy Gordon Wins The National Book Award, And Patti Smith Weeps" - from NPR's blog, "Monkey See"

The National Book Awards are like the Oscars of literature, without the national telecast, the security guards to watch over the Harry Winston jewels or the glowing Hollywood tans (most of the nominees bear the wan, indoors-y look of the writer's life). But, like the Academy Awards, there are fancy dresses, cummerbunds and cater waiters passing around Bellinis and caviar bites — trust us, book people can party. And, much like the Oscars, the NBAs are a particular industry's biggest night, in which a career can be made (or at least pushed heartily along) with the opening of an envelope. This year, that career belongs to Jaimy Gordon, a mid-career novelist from Baltimore living and teaching in Kalamazoo, Mich. Her fourth novel, Lord of Misrule, won the NBA for fiction on Wednesday evening, a victory that came as a surprise to many — including Gordon herself. When the announcement was read, the author's table companions shrieked at full volume, and Gordon seemed to be in shock when she finally took the stage. "I'm totally unprepared, and I’m totally surprised," she told the crowd. Later, we observed the author standing alone outside the grand façade of the Cipriani Ballroom on Wall Street in her long red gown, talking quietly into her cell phone: "I won," she said into the receiver, still seeming stunned. "I won ... the National Book Award."

Read the full NPR Monkey See piece, here. See also: She Drove without Stopping: A Novel, Shamp of the City-Solo: A Novel, Bogeywoman (Sun & Moon Classics)