Even though the framers were pretty bad about race, and they certainly didn’t understand sex equality, the one thing the framers got was class. They understood that the biggest risk was to create an aristocracy. And so they insisted, as Madison said, that ‘the people’ meant ‘not the rich more than the poor.’ We’ve completely betrayed that commitment.
— Lawrence Lessig
Watch Lessig’s entire 12-minute interview with Bill Moyers:
The Writers Almanac tells a story about Frank Conroy today.
Once, while directing the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Conroy scolded a student for using irrelevant details in her short story. He said…
The author makes a tacit deal with the reader. You hand them a backpack. You ask them to place certain things in it — to remember, to keep in mind — as they make their way up the hill. If you hand them a yellow Volkswagen and they have to haul this to the top of the mountain…
Geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.
— President Robert F. Kennedy on US / Canada relations.
The US President’s first foreign trip is highly symbolic. Yesterday President Obama reinforced a long standing tradition and made Canada the destination for his first foreign trip. President Bush’s first foreign trip was to Mexico. US / Canada relations were strained throughout his entire term. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford never visited Canada at all.
Granted, this trip was more than a pit stop than an extended visit. He arrived in the morning to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ate through a working lunch, held a joint news conference, met briefly at the airport with the leader of Canada’s opposition party, and was back home in the White House in time for dinner.
Even though he only had time to pop in for a quick chat, I am glad that my native country is back at the top of the list for our new US President.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
— Mark Twain
As I watched the latest meltdown from the latest cabinet confirmations I can’t help but think that Mark Twain may have been on to something in his assessment of people who run for political office.
It has been obvious to me for a long time that congress is broken. I couldn’t quite articulate exactly how I thought it was broken but I knew something was wrong. And then I discovered Lawrence Lessig’s latest mission. Partnering with Joe Trippi, he is determined to change congress. He makes a powerful case that lobbying and special interests have eroded the very foundations of the constitution.
I was trying to explain how the drug war doesn’t work. I would write these very careful, very well researched pieces and they would go into the ether and be gone. . . It was such an uphill struggle to tell this story with facts. When you tell a story with characters, people jump out of their seats.
— David Simon, creator, producer, and primary writer for The Wire.
If you have any interest in the drug war, the plight of our inner cities, or the power of finding your voice, set aside forty-five minutes this week and watch both parts of this Bill Moyer’s interview with David Simon. Great stuff.
Simon is insightful and inspiring on so many levels. He has a keen understanding of what is happening to our inner cities and, more broadly, to the “unneeded” classes of our society. His observations are poignant and delivered with restrained passion.
What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Like most children, my parents raised me with an unending plea to always tell the truth. In my mom’s eyes, a clean conscience was to be valued above all else. “Besides,” she always said, “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.” I have carried this commitment to truth and honesty with me, almost to a fault. It has served me well.
As I have observed the global meltdown of the financial industry I can’t help but believe that it has been forever transformed by a blatant lack of trust. When the banks stopped lending it was clear that they no longer believed one another. The Bernie Madoff case was the icing on the cake. It seems to me that it will take a long time to restore trust and confidence into the financial system. In the process, I am not sure what kind of “financial system” will actually emerge on the other side.
David Byrne has an excellent article on the music business over at Wired. He offers this brilliant insight into music business today:
What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.
A very good read.