Required Reading for Omnivores?

I haven't reached this stage of "meat-consciousness" yet. And I almost wonder, if it were a choice between just going veggie overnight (again) or attending the slaughter of each species of animal I ate, I would just go straight to veggie and skip the slaughterhouse field trip. Well, at least I'll admit to being a hypocrite, but I get the feeling that's only the first step away from meat-related hypocrisy.

Morality bites

I've also been meaning to read The Omnivore's Dilemma (a.k.a. the "All Americans Eat is Corn" book.)

Scotty, they never knew ye.

I can't wait for Dana's book.

And as someone who listened to over a year's worth of daily Scott McClellan briefings, this Slate article made me giggle.

And my favorite former Republican senator...

... Lincoln Chafee (to whom I believe I once dedicated a sculpture of a weeping chocolate elephant -- or at least, in my mind, it was weeping) wrote a book, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President, and was interviewed on NPR.

Commensurate to our capacity for wonder: Gatsby lives on for new readers.

I don't know if it's the great American novel, but it's certainly one of them, and I don't think it will lose its relevance as long as America remains America, for good or ill.

NYT Education Section: Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers

Recommended Viewing: Persepolis

We'd been trying to see this movie, about a young girl growing up in and away from Iran in the wake of the revolution and war, since sometime in November, I think, but two advanced showings at two separate theaters were canceled, and then technical difficulties of a sort interrupted us half way through our third attempted viewing. We finally saw it in its entirety last night, and it was actually worth the wait.
Now that it's up for the animation Oscar, it should be around for a while, and I highly recommend it.
Original, sweet, funny, sad, quirky, and genuine. I'm actually going to go buy the graphic novel, too.

And while I'm wearing my feminist hat...

(Don't ask what kind of hat ;)

... I saw Susan Faludi interviewed by Marie Arana, Washington Post Book World editor, on C-SPAN yesterday regarding her new book The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.

It was a fascinating discussion of how, in Faludi's view, the U.S. psychological reaction was defined by the assignment of regressive gender roles. The discussion also placed this reaction in the historical context of captivity narratives dating from the early frontier days, comparing the revision and co-opting of captivity stories like that of Cynthia Ann Parker with that of Jessica Lynch, and the historical frontier women's self-reliance with that of the female first responders on 9/11, whose efforts were written out of the story by the resurgence of the gender-exclusive terms "firemen" and "policemen" to describe the World Trade Center heroes.

I knew our friend Scott McClellan was pissed...

... when he was asked to step down, as everyone knew, because of the Plame incident, but didn't think he'd speak out so soon...
Remember when he was on the Daily Show (ah yes, remember the Daily Show ;) and basically said he didn't know what the **** his considerably-closer-to-retirement boss was talking about when he gave Scott a parting line about how, one day, they'd sit on a porch somewhere as old men together and laugh about these crazy times.
Yeah, he's pissed, and if he was truly as ignorant as he claims, then well he should be.

Letter to a Young Patriot

Naomi Wolf was on The Colbert Report last night to discuss her new book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, and naturally had trouble getting a word in edgewise with her gracious host, but this Guardian article details her listing of the 10 steps democracies take on the path to fascism. Some of the later stages have only been lightly broached, but we have a pretty good handle on the first three or four, which is reason for caution, I think.
(And now I'm going to swallow my feminism for a moment and note that the author of the '92 bestseller The Beauty Myth, a big phenom during my college grrl days -- and Gore campaign styling consultant -- is looking pretty fabulous these days ;)

Mother Teresa letters/ Nonbelievers coming out of the closet

These somewhat surprising letters should be a catalyst for thoughtful discussion. I say "should be" because they will probably instead prompt merely the drawing of the usual battle lines.

E.g. this "Hardball" debate (well, what do you expect? It's "Hardball") between Christopher Hitchens, author of an unsympathetic book on Mother Teresa (in this clip, he seems to have acquired a bit of sympathy for her as a pawn in the game, although that could simply be a rhetorical tool) and Father Bill "You wanna take this outside?" Donohue, who, in this exchange, makes Hitchens (whom I grudgingly admire but have trouble forgiving for his pro-Iraq war stance) look relatively equanimitous.

Here's the book which compiled the letters discussed in the Time article:
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light by Brian Kolodiejchuk

*

And on a loosely related note, this article in the Washington Post notes the rise of the nonbelievers' movement since 9/11.

Poems from Guantanamo

This small book, edited by Marc Falkoff, a lawyer for 17 of the detainees, is subtitled "The Detainees Speak."
But Dan Chiasson from the NYT Sunday Book Review notes that it might be better titled "The Detainees Do Not Speak" or "The Detainees Are Not Allowed to Speak," due to the Pentagon's heavy vetting of the edition.
Still, given the human drive for expression, and the circumstances under which these were written, (one of them, Falkoff says, carved into a Styrofoam cup when pen and paper were banned, one of them, a despondent claim of innocence by a prisoner who has been in solitary confinement for nearly four years and tried to kill himself 12 times) it seems worth looking at.

Time Magazine: Who Dies in Harry Potter? (No Spoiler Alert)

Here's a refreshing perspective on the Potter series... once again, without any spoilers, for those of you who are still waiting for the book to arrive in the flesh (so to speak.)

Who Dies in Harry Potter?

You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Hear Voices...

... although, no doubt, it helps.
But that cheap joke aside, Daniel B. Smith, who was on The Colbert Report last night, has written what looks like a fascinating book on the phenomenon of auditory hallucination through the ages, centered around the story of his own father, an otherwise normally functioning attorney who heard voices throughout his life.

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination

Clinton-Gore Doubleheader

(Yes, I get nostalgic sometimes...)

• Al Gore has a new book out, The Assault on Reason.

• And this from Bill's commencement address at Rochester Institute of Technology:

Consider what you celebrate today at RIT. You learn together; you master technologies; you have rational arguments; you look at evidence. You learn from each other and you appreciate your differences.

How much of the world is dominated by patterns of thought and action directly opposite to what you have come here to pay tribute to, to political and religious, even emotional fundamentalism, designed to divide rather than unite, to crush argument, to seize power rather than to empower people?

How you think matters. And how people see you thinking matters.

I don't know how many times, when I was president and I was trying to convince people to make peace in one area of the world or another, someone would tell me, I hate it that we're doing this, but we have to because of the way they behave.

How much behavior in the world today; how many tribal wars; how many ethnic and religious conflicts are being driven by people who justify their conduct based on what someone else did to them or how they made them feel ashamed?

I don't care if you've got a Ph.D. and if you've been to outer space and back, every time, for the rest of your life -- you remember this -- every time, for the rest of your life, you say, do, or feel anything because you say, I have no choice because of how destructive people were to me, or because I had this problem or that problem, you give up your freedom.

You are only a free person when you recognize that every moment of every day, no matter what happens to you, no matter what is said to you, no matter what is done to you or your crowd, you still are free to decide how to respond.

(APPLAUSE)

That's why Gandhi was a free man and a great man.

(APPLAUSE)

That's why Mandela is recognized for the enduring greatness, not of his sacrifice, but of the way he responded to his sacrifice, not just inviting his jailers to his inauguration, but putting the leaders of the political parties that supported apartheid in his government, because, he said, "If I want us to go forward together, that means them, too."

He was a free man because no one could make him hate or kill or react. He got to decide.

Quote du Jour: former CentCom commander Anthony Zinni

Tim Russert quoted this passage from the new edition of General Zinni's book, The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose, today on Meet the Press.

"We promised to build a new Iraqi state in all aspects and the Iraqi people are still waiting for us to deliver on our promise.

Why?"

We now know the answers to that question: Poor intelligence, lack of planning, faulty political motivation, incompetent or inexperienced people placed in key positions, flawed assumptions, lack of understanding of the Iraqi culture, arrogance, spin, and the list goes on and on."

Now tell us what you really think, General.

As if they don't have enough to deal with...

... fighting in Iraq, once the lights go out, women soldiers live in constant fear of being raped by their male counterparts in the latrines, if they are unfortunate enough to need to use them after dark, according to Col. Janis Karpinski (demoted from general after taking much of the blame for Abu Ghraib.) So apparently many of the women avoided drinking water after a certain time in the afternoon, thus causing dehydration-related deaths, which, surprise, surprise, were hushed up.

Karpinski published a book about her life in the military called One Woman's Army.

Complicated Woman

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a guest, Thursday night, on The Colbert Report, which, prior to my working in the news media industry, was one of my primary sources of news (and now I realize how hilariously misinformed I was) but it's still one of my primary sources of entertainment.
I was impressed with how self-possessed and poised Ali remained (it's hard to be poised seated opposite Stephen Colbert playing Bill O'Reilly) while discussing her controversial views on Islam and religion in general.
What wasn't discussed in the interview, and which I was surprised to read later, was that Ali, a feminist and atheist, works at the American Enterprise Institute. It's easy enough to understand why she would have taken the job when it was offered, given that she was under threat of death from Muslims in the Netherlands after her collaboration with Theo Van Gogh, who was assassinated -- and also suddenly unwelcome in the country itself (where she had been a member of the Dutch parliament) for fabricating her reasons for seeking asylum there as a young girl fleeing an arranged marriage.
It's a fascinating story, which Ali recounts in her new book, Infidel.
But with this knowledge in mind, I thought it was interesting that SC asked her whether Christian fundamentalists should use the "fire with fire" approach in combating the violent element of Muslim fundamentalism (the new buzzword is "Islamo-fascism.")
This is the perfect question to have asked because it isolates what separates Ali's views from some of her neocon colleagues. But maybe not all of them, as I might automatically assume. Maybe it is possible to be a feminist and atheist at the American Enterprise Institute. As my significant other pointed out, at least it provides a little diversity over there. And at least it's genuine diversity, i.e. diversity of worldview versus merely the skin-deep tokenism so beloved of the neocons.

Second Chance (search for this book by title, not author)

The author's name, Zbigniew Brzezinski, (who was the national security adviser to President Carter) doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But he's a frequent guest (often along with Henry Kissinger, who affectionately refers to him as "Zbig") on the Sunday morning talk shows, and I've always been very impressed with his frank, well-expressed opinions on foreign policy. They seem like some of the soundest opinions around, so I'd feel safe recommending this new book just based on that, although I know it's a bad habit to recommend books one hasn't read yet... so little time in the day.

Anyway, since books are usually shelved by author, not title, there's always Amazon:
Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

J.K. Rowling: Apparently the last and only hope that kids will continue to read books.

At least according to this article in the New York Times Books section:

And the end of the Harry Potter series is not the most pressing problem facing publishers of books for children and young adults; competition from other forms of entertainment is the real threat. “When you look now at an 8- or 10-year-old, they are truly online, they are IM-ing their friends, they are text-messaging, they have an iPod where they are watching and listening to music,” said Susan Miller, president of Mixed Media Group, which develops books, television shows and movies for children. “They have a lot of other ways to spend their time, media-wise, and if you like to consume stories you can be watching something on the television. There are a lot of places for them to be entertained.”

Still, there’s always this possibility: Ms. Rowling could just write another series. “At some point she’ll come out of retirement and pull a Michael Jordan,” said Mr. Searby of J. P. Morgan.

The Kiesling letter

This is a bit dated, as John Kiesling turned in his resignation to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in February of 2003, but it was brought to my attention (I keep up with things more nowadays than I did three years ago) when quoted in this morning's National Press Club conference of the Council on American-Islamic Relations re: Arab and Muslim views of the Iraq Study Group report.

It definitely bears repeating.

Apparently Kiesling has a book out, published in August.

Be the first one in Washington to read it all the way through!

Heh heh... OK, I haven't read it yet, either, and it's very unlikely I'll ever read it cover to cover, although I definitely plan to pick up a copy (preferably from the library ;)
But hopefully some others (a key few in particular) are more ambitious (and don't have two books to read and critique by next Thursday for their lit class...)
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - A New Approach