Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
Romney with his private relief,
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/romney-turns-rally-storm-relief-event-172745725--election.html
and Obama with his public relief,
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-gets-sandy-scraps-more-campaign-plans-161734255--election.html
I hope America is paying attention -- this is why we have government agencies, the agencies the Republicans want to eliminate.
ReplyDeleteI hope so too. The private relief in Ohio is a joke, although I imagine he will soon be in Virginia mounting relief efforts, to show how well the private sector works during times of crisis ; )
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember Bush working with the private sector in the wake of the Katrina disaster. Wasn't it the private sector that sold the government thousands of trailers that proved uninhabitable because they were contaminated with formaldehyde?
ReplyDeleteAlso farmed out much of the security to private contractors, including the notorious Blackwater USA, resulting in many ugly situations.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. "Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a painful read.
DeleteAnd as I think was mentioned earlier, the government pays twice as much -- to the contractor and to its workers. Like a temp agency which takes its "free market" cut off the top.
ReplyDeleteSeems the biggest news story to come out of this storm is the working relationship between Obama and Christie,
ReplyDeletehttp://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/jersey-bromance-president-obama-and-chris-christie-survey-storm-damage/
kind of throws a fly into the ointment as far as Republican claims that Obama is working against them.
I give Christie a lot of credit. He has had nothing but praise to sing about Obama now. Wonder how he feels about Romney's idea of privatizing FEMA or giving it back to the states now that he's operating on three days of no sleep.
ReplyDeleteMore fallout from the hurricane,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nyregion/bloomberg-endorses-obama-saying-hurricane-sandy-affected-decision.html?pagewanted=all
I loved the end paragraph,
"Coming on the heels of Gov. Chris Christie’s public embrace of Mr. Obama, the endorsement by Mr. Bloomberg left aides to Mr. Romney a bit flustered, and they privately dismissed its importance."
Amazing image,
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WOW! Beautiful but scary.
ReplyDeleteI read an interesting article about the need to upgrade the grid into smaller networks to prevent that -- not to mention burying all the power lines in the DC area. Sounds like a great job program to me. Think the Republicans would allow that?
Yea, it seems the Republicans would rather grope around in the dark.
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