Links and commentary on media, politics and culture by Steve Rhodes.

 
Art and politics in Iran. The second part of the "Adventure Divas" special "Iran: Behind Closed Cha-dors" airs tonight on many PBS stations. In addition to having more personality than most travel programs, it is visually striking. A montage shows the routine in a beauty shop, one of the few places women don't have to wear the veil. There is a fascinating profile of filmmaker Tahmineh Milani. The interview with her by Holly Morris is online. At the end of August, a month after Morris visited her, she was arrested because of the content of her latest film and comments she made promoting it. She was released on bail after a few days. There is a campaign on her behalf organized by Facets which includes a petition online asking that all charges be dropped. The Christian Science Monitor has a more recent article on her, but seeing her on "Adventure Divas" gives an even better sense of her films and who she is. [also posted on TVBarn]
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/30/2001 01:25:00 PM

 
Arlo Guthrie performed during the second hour of Talk of the Nation on November 14th.
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/22/2001 11:53:00 AM

 
Another letter to This Week with Sam and Cokie:

First, although George Will was able to get it right last week with the teleprompter, this week he said Rowing instead of Rowling.

And while I'm glad that books were discussed again this week, you left out a major story. A story you devoted most program to just a year ago.

The media recount was released this week showing that if all the votes in Florida had been counted, Al Gore would have won. That seems worth at least a few minutes of time.

And given George Will's commentary in praise of Mark McGuire's altruism, I wonder if he'll take a salary cut at ABC and the Washington Post to help make sure there are no cutbacks as a similar gesture.
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/18/2001 09:04:00 AM

 
The Voices Of Dissent - Newsweek
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/15/2001 11:53:00 AM

 
Washington Post story on Harry Potter marketing.
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/13/2001 02:49:00 AM

 
On October 19th, I saw Michael Chabon at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books. He said he wanted to read some sections from towards the end of his Pulitzer prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay (he was tired of reading the same sections from the beginning), but it wouldn't be fair to people who hadn't read it. So he read. a story he had just finished called Along the frontage road. I was going to ask him where it would be published, figuring it would be in the New Yorker. It turns out it appears in this week's issue.
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/13/2001 02:35:00 AM

 
The recount (see below) received even less coverage than it would have because of the plane crash in Queens. But it deserves more attention.

See Gore's Victory by Rober Parry, John Nichol's analysis for the Nation, and Timothy Noah's Why is the electoral college still there?

Mickey Kaus cites the Orlando Sentinel's story. Since you can't permalink to his blog, I'll just post the entry here:

Everything the New York Times thought about the Florida Recount is wrong!
The Orlando Sentinel has done it again.
In their media recount story they had the wit to call up Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, who was supervising the
actual recount of Florida votes on Saturday, November 9, when it was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court. Lewis told the
Sentinel that "he would not have ignored the overvote ballots."

"Though he stopped short of saying he definitely would have expanded
the recount to include overvotes, Lewis emphasized 'I'd be open to that.'"

"If that had happened, it would have amounted to a statewide hand recount. And it could have given the
election to Gore," the Sentinel notes -- since salvaging valid overvotes turns out to
have been "Gore's only path to victory." ... In other words, the entire premise of
the Bush-ratifying spin given the media recount by the
NYT and numerous other press organs -- that (as the Times's lede puts it) "George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the
Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward" -- is bogus. If the
recount had gone forward Judge Lewis might well have
counted the overvotes (at the Bush camp's urging!) in which case Gore might well have won in spite of his misguided
undervote-centered strategy. ... Another Sentinel story does describe what
a mess the recount would still have probably been,
mainly because Gore's strategy had caused the county vote-counters to bump up against a December 12
deadline. ... I say the Sentinel gets the Pulitzer, if anyone does. Remember that they
discovered the whole "overvote" story in the first place. ...
(11/12)


posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/13/2001 02:34:00 AM

 
The Florida vote recount has been released. This story gives background. Below are links to all of the packages by members of the consortium. Notice most of the headlines favor Bush. They could as easily read "Gore would have won a statewide recount, Bush a more limited one" which gives a much different impression of the story. A useful overview is Gore wins under six of nine scenarios. And perhaps the most important story is this, Battle Cries for Voting System Reform Go Largely Unheeded. The raw data will be available here on Monday.

Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote - New York Times

Bush Still Had Votes to Win in a Recount, Study Finds - LA Times

Study: Recounts Would Have Favored Bush - Washington Post

Bush-Gore Revisited - Newsday

Ballots, rules, voter error led to 2000 election muddle, review shows - Chicago Tribune

Florida recount study: Bush still wins - CNN

Ballot review: Bush wins again.....But Gore had more (over)votes - Palm Beach Post

Recount: Bush - St. Petersburgh Times

posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/12/2001 01:39:00 AM

 
Letter to This Week with Sam and Cokie:

I was pleased to see George Will praising JK Rowlings for promoting literacy rather than criticizing her for promoting witchcraft like some conservatives.

But there was one thing he forgot to mention. Rowling was an unemployed single mother on the dole when she wrote the first Harry Potter book at that cafe.

Yes, she might never have created all that capital and all those readers if it hadn't been for Britain's relatively generous welfare system.

So I hope Mr. Will will soon be advocating a new WPA to put all of us unemployed journalists (in my case), writers, artists and musicians to work possibly creating the next cultural phenom.
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/11/2001 09:08:00 AM

 
From Sam Smith's Progressive Review:

RECOVERED HISTORY

Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a
day,
who has been turning his employees over to the government relief rolls
in
order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you-using
his
stockholders' money to pay postage for his personal opinions-that a
wage of
$11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American
industry.
-
FDR, on the first US minimum wage law, June 1938

All CIA all the time

Thanks to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen for pointing out that
we had
short-changed the CIA in giving credit to only two of its former assets
who
had become targets of a Bush war - Noriega (whom the agency paid a
higher
salary than the president's) and Osama bin Laden.

But it appears that Saddam Hussein was also a CIA asset early in his
career.
In 1958, a revolution led by Abd al-Kassem Quassim overthrew the
British-installed king of Iraq. The CIA was not happy about this and
hired
some assassins to get Quassim (including with a poisoned handkerchief).
Hussein was among them. But they only wounded their target and it took
another four years before Quassim was overthrown in a CIA-aided coup.
Hussein ran the torture center for the new government.

Smith has an interesting piece on how he came to oppose the Vietnam War. The Progressive Review along with Bitch, Bust and many other fine publications is nominated for a 2001 Utne Alternative Press Award (you can vote in the reader's choice category). I don't always agree with Smith (he relies too often on right wing sources like Druge and Newsmax), but it is always worth reading.

posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/09/2001 12:49:00 AM

 
On of the best email newsletters on books is Michael Cader's Publisher's Lunch. You can subscribe for free. You also get Deal Lunch, a roundup of recent publishing deals like this:

Oakland firefighter Zac Unger's memoir WORKING FIRE (it began as an online diary last spring), to Scott Moyers at Random House (from Entertainment Weekly; no agent identified).

Unger did a diary for Slate last spring and wrote about search and rescue in September, and posted a dispatch from Ground Zero and another about anthrax in October.
posted by Steve Rhodes at 11/05/2001 05:42:00 PM