Roundup: Media's Take

Marc Bousquet: The United States of Alabama

[Marc Bousquet is the author of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation.] Many who learn that the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) amputated a $650,000 state appropriation, not to mention a flow of grant money, just to rid itself of a labor center (and Glenn Feldman, the accomplished historian who directed it) will focus on regional differences. One early commenter to Peter Schmidt's report for The Chronicle blamed "Dixie" culture, saying t

John McWhorter: But Is Jesse Jackson *Interesting*?

[John McWhorter is a lecturer at Columbia University.] Jesse Jackson has never interested me much. I’m a little late out of the gate in commenting about Jackson’s latest diversion, analogizing LeBron James to a runaway slave in light of Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s sputtering about James’ departure to Miami. I’ve always been a little laggard in dogpiling on Jesse. When I first started writing about race, I quickly noted a certain cognitive dissonance: everybody expected t

Michael Walsh: Pope Benedict's Divisions

[Michael Walsh is a writer and broadcaster. He was librarian at Heythrop College from 1972 to 2001. Among his books are The Secret World of Opus Dei (HarperCollins, 2004) and The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History (Canterbury Press, 2003).] There was a legal tag, much used by medieval canon lawyers, that the pope could not be judged by anyone. This did not put him above the law, because the law was God’s law to which all were subject. It meant, rather, than

Clifford D. May: From Berlin to Jerusalem

[Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.] Last month, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the mufti of Jerusalem, called on Palestinians to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which he said was “threatened by the plans of the enemies of God,” by which he meant Israelis. It should go without saying that this is a lie. Israel poses no threat to Al-Aqsa, no

Jonathan Bernstein: Do Governors Make Better Presidents?

[Jonathan Bernstein is a political scientist who blogs about American politics, especially the presidency, Congress, parties, and elections.] In his complaint about Barack Obama's failures on executive appointments, Brad DeLong says:I think that the general rule in the future should be that nobody who has not served a full term as a state governor or managed a similarly large organization should be supported in any presidential run. FDR and DDE are certainly the c

George F. Will: The High Price of American Hubris

Taken to heart, Peter Beinart's "The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris" might spare the nation some tears.... Beinart discerns three varieties of highflying foreign policy hubris in the past 100 years, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, who injected the progressives' faith in domestic policy expertise into foreign policy. He exemplified the hubris of reason, which supposedly could bring permanent, because "scientific," peace to Europe. The political scien

E.J. Dionne Jr.: What the NAACP is Really Asking on Racism Within the Tea Party

[E.J. Dionne Jr. is a columnist for the Washington Post.] Good for the NAACP. We need an honest conversation about the role of race and racism in the Tea Party. Thanks to a resolution passed this week at the venerable organization's national convention, we'll get it. The minute you say there are racist elements in the Tea Party -- reflected in signs at rallies, billboards and speeches from some of its major figures -- the pushback goes from cries of persecution to charg

Robert F. Worth: Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?

[Robert F. Worth was Baghdad correspondent for the NYT.] Two thousand years ago, the area east of Sana held one of the earth's most prosperous kingdoms, a lush agricultural region of spices and fruits, fed by irrigation canals from a vast man-made dam. The Romans called Yemen "Arabia Felix," or Happy Arabia. Today, the eastern region is an arid wasteland. Most people scrape by on less than $2 a day, even though they live atop Yemen's oil and gas fields. There are few ways

William Underhill: Why is Tony Blair Beloved Abroad but Hated at Home?

[William Underhill is a Special Correspondent at Newsweek.] Good news for Tony Blair. The former prime minister recently learned that he’d won the 2010 National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal (as well as a check for $100,0000), adding to a collection of U.S. gongs that includes the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. In the words of NCC president David Eisner, the award recognizes his “success in building understanding among nations and creating last

Adam Kirsch: Why Don't We Take the Russian Spies Seriously?

[Adam Kirsch is a senior editor of The New Republic.] The...reason why we can’t take Russian espionage too seriously is that it has been shorn of exactly the element that made Soviet espionage so serious: ideology. Americans who became Soviet spies were not just betraying their country, they were endorsing an ideological critique of their country. In the most dramatic sense, they were “voting with their feet” for Communism; and as long as Communism had the power to win such dedicate

Jed Babbin: Debating Groucho's War

[Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies.] So Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said, "I went on a safari to Afghanistan, and one night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know." Then Bill Kristol said Steele should be fired for cruelty to elephants and Ann Coulter said no,

Gwynne Dyer: U.S. bidding Iraq goodbye and good luck

[Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.] As the American withdrawal gains speed, there are fewer American troops in Iraq than in Afghanistan for the first time since 2003. By the end of August there will be no U.S. combat troops left in Iraq, though some tens of thousands of support troops will remain until next year. And still there is no new Iraqi government, although it is now four months since the election on March 7.

Nuala O'Loan: Northern Ireland ... A violence from the past

[Nuala O'Loan was first police ombudsman between 1999 and 2007.] The violence of the last few days in Northern Ireland has been in marked contrast to the earlier part of this year's marching season. The Drumcree march and many other marches passed off peacefully, or largely peacefully. Now, however, we have again seen people out on the streets rioting, we have seen police officers and members of the public injured, and we have seen shotguns, blast bombs, petrol bombs, bricks and oth

Eugene Goodheart: Obama On and Off Base

[Eugene Goodheart is Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities, Emeritus at Brandeis University. He is the author of many books of literary and cultural criticism as well as a memoir, Confessions of a Secular Jew.] My object is to defend Barack Obama against attacks on him by what has been his liberal constituency. Again and again he is accused of timidity and excessive caution for not fighting for their agenda. The assumption is that his agenda and theirs coincide, and that he lack

Lee Bollinger: Journalism Needs Government Help

[Mr. Bollinger is president of Columbia University and author of "Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century" (Oxford, 2010).] We have entered a momentous period in the history of the American press. The invention of new communications technologies—especially the Internet—is transforming the human capacity to speak, perhaps as monumentally as the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. This is facilitating the largest and fastest expans

Robert H. Giles: Denied a Nieman, by the U.S.

[Robert H. Giles, former editor and publisher of the Detroit News, is curator of the Nieman Foundation.] Colombian journalist Hollman Morris has long worked in challenging conditions, producing probing television reports that document his country's long and complex civil war. He has built contacts with the left-wing guerilla group known as the FARC and told stories of the conflict's victims. He has revealed abuses by the country's intelligence service and enraged government official

Stuart Taylor, Jr.: Supreme Immodesty: Why the Justices Play Politics

[The writer is a contributing editor to Newsweek and National Journal and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is also co-author of "Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case."] ...Conservative (and some liberal) "originalists" are correct in saying that justices who seek to override the text and original meaning by invoking the "living Constitution" have nothing to guide the

Katrina vanden Heuvel: November's Unpalatable Choice

[Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and writes a weekly column for The Post.] On the eve of the 1940 election, then-President Franklin Roosevelt took to the stump to call out his Republican adversaries for their obstructionism. "The Republican campaign orators and leaders are all now yelling 'me too' on help to Britain. But this fall they had their chance to vote to give aid to Britain and other democracies -- and they turned it down," Roosevelt de

Rachel Reid: The Taliban War on Women Continues

[Ms. Reid is the Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.] Beware Taliban revisionism. You're going to hear much more of it in the coming months as policy makers from Kabul to Washington seeking to reintegrate Taliban fighters try to explain why the enemy isn't so bad after all. Bombs that slaughter civilians, acid attacks that disfigure school girls, assassinations of women in public life—all of this will be swept under the carpet. In its place, a new narrative

Nick Turse: Death on Your Doorstep

[Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com.  An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author of