Wallace Stevens’ “Peter Quince at the Clavier” and J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Tale of Tinúviel” always remind me of each other – and not just because they both rhyme “quavering” with “wavering.” (Whether Tolkien is likely to have read Stevens I don’t know; I’m not sure how well known he was outside the u.s.)
Tolkien is reading his own poem; I don’t know who’s reading the Stevens. Great voice, but he makes a couple of mistakes (as you’ll notice if you read along).
Lawrence O’Donnell accuses a “right-wing website” (he means Reason.com) for refusing to criticise cops – even though Reason.com not only frequently criticises cops, but regularly carries the columns of Radley Balko, one of the most prominent critics of police brutality in the country.
Nick Gillespie responds.
Kevin Carson responds.
Radley Balko responds and then responds some more.
I would hold my breath waiting for O’Donnell’s apology and retraction, only I’m not suicidal. As Kevin points out, O’Donnell himself has admitted that he regards only the great and powerful as deserving of courtesy.
When a man jumped the White House fence on August 2nd and was taken down by the Secret Service, John King’s program was already broadcasting live from the location. King commented:
Now you see, if you are ever thinking about this, the inevitable result if you hop that fence. … One of the things we don’t like to do is give too much coverage to this – if it is a political stunt, it would encourage somebody else to do it. So we’re going to turn away from this for now and come back to our coverage. … You never know what happens if you come down here. But the Secret Service, as always, performing quickly and admirably to bring it to a close.
He later told Don Lemon:
We usually don’t give these things any coverage, Don, because political stunts can happen, people trying to make a political statement, who want to be on television, jump the fence. Because we were on live television, from the White House, what had happened – we did show it.
Melissa Harris-Perry, poli sci prof at Tulane, explains to Rachel Maddow:
When your government is a free and fair democratically-elected-in-regular-elections government, then it’s not some scary thing outside of you. It is you. It is, in fact, that we, by being together in communal space, we say: okay, look, there are these community assets, air, water, land, national defense. And we know that individually we always have short time horizons. Not malicious or bad or evil – we can only see so far, only see our own good; so we come together in government – freely elected, not all governments – that say: look, we will protect our common good, our inner child that can’t speak for itself. Our job as a government is to protect that, and so government regulations, particularly federal government regulations, are precisely the interest groups that these sorts of common interests are to have.
So let me get this straight. We’re a bunch of self-centered, short-sighted individuals. And government isn’t something different from us; it’s just us. And yet government decisions are not similarly self-centered and short-sighted. Gee, I wish she’d explain what the mechanism is.
So if the sign is about pterodactyls, why does the image on this sign (and likewise the associated trailer) depict a pteranodon instead?
Guess the mystery artist:
Then see the answer.