links for 2009-06-04

""Janet came home after the luncheon and said to me, 'It hurts so much to be told that remembering my history is unbecoming,' " said William Cohen, her husband, who was secretary of defense during the Clinton administration. "Then she said, 'I wonder what Anne Frank would have said to Emmett Till?' And I said, 'Go write it.' And she did — using two thumbs and a BlackBerry."

The play, "Anne and Emmett," turned out so well that two performances are scheduled for next week in commemoration of Anne Frank's 80th birthday. One is an invitation-only engagement at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10; the other is open to the public at George Washington University on June 12. "

"Malcolmson argues that her project is different from the kind of celebrity activism so in vogue these days because of its scale — Shakira needs to get governments to change their policies, something mere benefit concerts won't do — and because it is homegrown."

"Miranda's statement is of the garden "divide and conquer" and "anything but black" variety. It's an obvious wedge that has worked over and over in our country's history as ethnic minorities have come to America, assimilated, and do a social leapfrog over blacks as the most hated/feared minority. The Latino population is primed to be the next group to do this, except the virulent anti-immigration wing of the GOP has alienated that voter base so badly that it's hard to imagine, regarding the Sotomayor nom, that this wedge plan is going to work."

"This all reads as rape apologism. These men are portrayed in such a way that their abusive tendencies are just their "flaws"; flaws in heros serve as a grounding, something that makes them more human. In this case, what makes these heros more human is they participate in the rape and abuse of women. In the case of the victims in these novels, rape is inevitable, and the only thing they can do is accept their task to "fix" their rapists by loving them."