Biutiful is not the usual blockbuster, if compared to the Hollywood masterpieces of either money or talent we usually watch. Yet Biutiful is a mainstream film nonetheless. It follows a pattern already well precluded by international directors who try to portray Europe and the Europeans in the least romantic way possible, but still fail. If you are … Read more
A young teenager sits in a cell with hands clasped and head down. His face suddenly brightens when three visitors enter and say that they are from his home country of Canada. They chat, give the teenager a Subway sandwich, and copiously use his first name, Omar. However, despite Omar’s enthusiasm in welcoming his potential … Read more
The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency Randall Kennedy 336 pp. Pantheon. $26.95. When it happened, few would have called Barack Obama’s marriage to wife Michelle much more than simple matrimony. But in retrospect, Randall Kennedy claims that Obama’s union played a critical role in helping him secure his place … Read more
9-11: Was There an Alternative? Noam Chomsky 176 pp. Seven Stories Press. $13.95. Following 9/11, few people questioned whether the American government was right to invade Afghanistan, and certainly did not blame the American government for the attacks on the World Trade Center. Noam Chomsky was one of the few dissenters. His book, 9-11: Was … Read more
That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back Thomas Friedman, Michael Mandelbaum 400 pp. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $28. America faces a torrent of crises in education, governance, climate change, infrastructure, and labor, to just name a few. In these dark times, one … Read more
Person of Interest, CBS, Thursdays 9/8c It’s that time of year when the networks are premiering new shows right and left, and critics and viewers alike are trying to figure out what’s great and what’s terrible (For the latter, I’d nominate The Playboy Club). Among the all shows I’m just now hearing about, one I … Read more
What do Ted Turner and Adolf Hitler have in common? Strangely enough, both the media mogul and the maniacal Mensch both come under scrutiny of Nassir Ghaemi in A First-Rate Madness. The thesis is maddeningly simple: the “insane” leaders tend to charge through difficult times better than the “sane” leaders who waffle about and end … Read more
A post in our ongoing series from haywirehiphop.com Music is inherently designed to surprise us, to acknowledge our existing expectations and then surpass them, thus guiding us as listeners toward the next song and making us yearn for further advancement of the musical product at hand. Think about that for a second: music would be … Read more
In the second week of September 2007, the hip hop world was abuzz with exactly what usually sets the hip hop world abuzz: a good feud. It was a manufactured feud, of course, not deeply rooted in bad blood between two rappers, but rather drummed up in the spirit of a friendly competition of sorts. … Read more
They are rich. They are powerful. And they are Ivy-League educated. They lead our country in everything from politics to banking to Wall Street and even academia. They include senators, corporate executives, federal government bureaucrats, finance moguls, and even a handful of Harvard professors and past presidents. Their lives are well connected, full of bonuses, … Read more