94 Responses to “Pitch a Show: Late October 2006”

1. David Weinstein Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 5:41 am

   I hope this is where to pitch a show, if not please forward it to the right thread.

   I have three related show suggestions that could possibly be squeezed into two. Democrats could well take back both the house and the senate due to the Bush backlash and some very fine democrat candidates. As far as the senate is concerned, the races in Missouri and Virginia are a matter of two or three percentage points in the polls at present, while many house races are too close to call. The wildcard in who will win these races and who will control the senate and Congress is election fraud and vote suppression. Remember that John Kerry was up as much as two percent in some polls going into the election and what transpired. This was a recent op-ed topic in the Philadelphia Inquirer that can be found on a link on votetrustusa.org.

   Election integrity watchdog groups are warning this election is ripe for disaster, as most of the election system flaws and the voter disenfranchisement that plagued the 2004 election have not been fixed. Several articles about this disaaster waiting to happen can be found on votetrustusa.org. There is a link there to electionline.org, a bi-partisan election integrity organization that gives a rather pessimistic assesment of the current state of the American electorial system. Other articles can be found on tompaine.com. This weeks edition of yes, the People’s Daily World has a fine article on the riskes to the ‘06 election, the respected election integrity organizations and what can be done before the election to help mitigate this disaster. I do not know if they have an online edition.

   So a potential big and tragic story is whether the results we get on November 7th will reflect the will of the people, or the ingenuity of Karl Rove, Diebold programmers and felonious secretaries of state and their minions.

   On the positive side, several patriotic Americans have stepped up to the plate and have taken on the defense of of election integrity. Are these folks the Tom Paine and Patrick Henry of our times? I was just at a house party for Debra Bowen who is running for secretary of state in California. This bright, tough and modest woman said that election fraud and voter disenfranchisement is the gretest threat to democracy that she has ever known. She said that she is only doing the job that needs to be done. Debra has led the fight for election integrity as a California state senator and the chair of the election oversight committee. She fought for and prevailed for a law for paper vote verification. She and others won in court to overturn registragtion procedures put in place by the republican secreatry of state that rejected 46% of all new voter registrants.

   Other heroes and heroines include Jim March and his partner at blackboxvoting.org, the people at the openvoting consortium, Common cause and other groups that has successfully pusehd for HR 550, which would go a long way towards fair and accountable elections, and many other brave individuals and organizations, including several journalists who have risked ridicule during the log and painful time this story has taken to get some traction.

   The heroes and heroines of election integrity and the republic is a second show idea. Close by is a third idea that would focus on the key secretary of state races going on that are a battle really for the heart and soul of our electoral process and our democracy. They are in California, Colorodo, Ohio, and Iowa and other states where eelction fraud and disenfranchisement happened in ‘04 and/or is being planned for in ‘06 and beyond. A good site to get an overview is thesecretaryofstateproject.org (you can also make a donation if you wish).

   The patriots fighting to protect our democracy in these states are Debra Bowen, CA, Jennifer Brunner, OH, Mark Ritchie, MN, Mike Mauro, IA, Ken Gordon, CO, Ross Miller, NV. They are taking on the Christian right (righter than democracy) and the various skuldulgery and maneuvers by the Bush/Cheney/Rove political machine playbook. This makes for fascinating stuff, very scary and very inspirational — where the future and viability of our democracy is being played out.

2. jdyer Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 8:46 am

   In reading Ron Rosenbaum’s “Shakespeare Wars”

   http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Wars-Clashing-Scholars-Fiascoes/dp/0375503390/ref=sr_11_1/102-7504022-1156903?ie=UTF8

   I thought that it would make for a great discussion hour.

   What attracts me to the book is the suggestion that language in Shakespeare’s day was more fluid than it is today. This is mirrored in the variance of word spellings in the original manuscripts of the plays.

   The show then can focus on language in Shakespeare’s day with an eye though on the recent re-opening up of language in the age of internet.

   However, I’ll leave the details of the show to you.

3. bryongw Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 10:31 am

   How about a show comparing Open Source and Lydon’s Connection. You could focus on how Open Source’s pathetic obsession with the blathersphere has overtaken and poisoned the work of one the best radio show hosts this country has to offer. What could be more “now” than that?

4. hurley Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 12:10 pm

   Distantly apropos of jdyer’s comment about Shakespeare’s language, in Shakespeare’s Language the great Frank Kermode wrote about how frankly impenetrable Shakespeare’s language can be. He would be a great guest in the event.

   To pick up on Robin’s comments elsewhere about Pynchon: I’m no publisher’s shill, but perhaps I’ve misjudged his reknown. My guess is that Against the Day will be the publishing event of the season, as his books, on the rare occassion of their appearance, tend to be. The ever-fallible but ever-famous Harold Bloom, who knew Pynchon at Cornell, considers him one of the four greatest living American novelists, along with Philip Roth, Don Delillo, and Cormac McCarthy (who also has a book out: Cormac McCarthy and Apocalypse, anyone?).
   I haven’t read Against the Day, so can’t speak to its relevance to the news-cycle, but all of Pynchon’s work is deeply, if often allegorically, concerned with the state of America. Here’s Pynchon’s own description of it:

   Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
   With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

   The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

   As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it’s their lives that pursue them.

   Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they’re doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

   Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

   –Thomas Pynchon

   Apart from the work, there’s the persona, the mysterious “recluse” who stands in stark contrast to the cult of celebrity long ago embraced by the literary community. WIlliam Gaddis objected to the literary artist being confused with the performing artist, but that’s what’s happened, except for Pynchon and a few others. A point you might explore, among many others.

   Kettle screaming. I can add more if you’re interested.

   (Lawrence Norfolk, an intelligent young British novelist who has written of his debt to Pynchon, might be an interesting guest).

5. hurley Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 12:14 pm

   Oh, and I don’t think anyone has ever done something as silly and counter-intuitive as a radio show about Thomas Pynchon. But I think you ladies and gentlemen might pull it off.

6. metin Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

   What about Nancy Pelosi? Will she become the next Speaker of the House? Would she be the next in line (as the first female president instead of Hillary) if Bush and Cheney are found ‘guilty’ of consitutional eclecticity in exhange for historical clemecy and both resign immediately after the elections. They would be fired by now if George Steinbrenner owned the US as I commented on my blog.

7. Dale Keiger Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 3:00 pm

   One is cautioned against ever using the term “golden age,” so I will not. But I do believe we are in a period of resurgent interest in the essay, with many vigorous practitioners and more and more places to publish. The 15th or so edition of Best American Essays has just been published, and Christopher Lydon could invite the series’ editor, Robert Atwan, to the program to discuss the form and its best current practitioners. Another guest could be Anne Fadiman, not only an estimable essayist herself, but former editor of The American Scholar, which four times a year publishes six or so new essays. (Last I heard, Ms. Fadiman was teaching at Yale; this may have changed.) Among other potential guests: David Foster Wallace (recently published a volume of his collected essays, including his hilarious essay on lobsters that caused a stir when published by Gourmet), Lauren Slater (guest editor of the last Best American Essays), Phillip Lopate (essayist who has edited his own anthologies of great American work), and Barry Lopez (one of the very best).

   I write and publish essays myself, both in print (for example: http://www.ndsu.edu/ndsu/news/magazine/vol02_issue01/fargo.shtml), and on my blog. Hence my keen interest in the topic.

8. bmccaff Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 6:59 pm

   Video the vote…
   http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/25/video_the_vote.html

   This is a movement to document this year’s events at the polls. The goal is to catch any “voting irregularities” and then post them on the Internet. More citizen journalism for you to explore.

   Brian
   Colorado

9. peggysue Says:
   October 26th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

   Just last week 2 new books about Marie Antoinette have come into the bookstore where I work. One, Queen of Fashion, by Caroline Weber about what Antoinette wore and a biographical novel Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund, the beloved author of Ahab’s Wife. There is also a movie Marie Antoinette directed by Sofia Coppola.

   I’m wondering if the buzz about Marie Antoinette right now illustrates a collective feeling that its about time for some heads to roll? Can we see clues to future in our popular art? Did that miniseries, ROME a little while ago portend the fall of our own empire?

   Or somesuch exploration of the interesection of creative popular culture with current events.

10. nother Says:
    October 26th, 2006 at 9:15 pm

    bryongw, when you talk about the word obsession, do you mean for example if I was obsessed with hearing a certain guest, like say, I don’t know, Philip Pullman – and when confronted with the reality that I may not hear that guest, my unrequited obsession induced me to write a mean spirited post to people I feel rejected me? Is that what you mean?

    The only thing I worry about with the Pitch a Show thread is that people are going to act childish in the face of rejection. ROS has only 4 shows a week and they cannot even come close to pleasing everyone. Please respect them for even listening to you at all bryongw. Try suggesting Pullman to Fresh Air, or On Point, or Charlie Rose, or any other show anywhere and see if a producer even acknowledges your existence.

    By the way, you keep requesting the guy with out even giving an angle for the show. They’ve changed it from “suggest” to “pitch,” now you have to put some work into convincing them. Now it can’t be just, “hey guys, bryongw wants us to do a show on Pullman, get him on the horn and book him.”

    In all seriousness bryongw, I’ll hope you’ll do some research, provide some links and search for unique angles on interesting ideas – I know you have them. If you appreciate Chris Lydon so much you appreciate interesting ideas.

11. HWheels Says:
    October 26th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

    Privacy!

    Just wrote a piece about athletes using Facebook/MySpace and came across and interesting article on “youngster’s” understanding (or lack thereof) of private vs. public: A Privacy Paradox; Social Networking in the United States http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_9/barnes/index.html

    Researching the I was writing piece opened up lots of questions about expression and institutional control, but I was particularily intrigued by students who were “outraged” that administrators or coaches had read their MySpace/Facebook pages, as if it was an invasion of their privacy. Despite the fact they’d published their pages to the world….

    So, I’m intrigued by questions of privacy – what is the legal expectation within our constitution etc., what people KNOW about those legal rights, what is the personal expectation, how are we encroaching on personal privacy, the “why are you worried — if you ‘re not doing anything wrong..” attitude.

    How little attention we pay to “privacy policies” our credit cards send us, or websites present to us… The prevelance of cameras — everyone with a cell phone has one…” personal beliefs vs. publicly expressed beliefs (which bleeds into a totally different topic – Bergers “Ways of Seeing” where what we know of an artist impacts our opinion/understanding of their work ie How do I listen to a composer’s music once i discover he was an anti-semite etc But I digress… typical!.)

    Not a particularily articulate pitch of my idea, but I’ll blame my looming head cold and medicinal glass of red wine….

12. jdyer Says:
    October 26th, 2006 at 9:46 pm

    hurley Says: “Frank Kermode wrote about how frankly impenetrable Shakespeare’s language can be. He would be a great guest in the event.”

    If you can get Kermode, go for it.

    ” My guess is that Against the Day will be the publishing event of the season, as his books, on the rare occassion of their appearance, tend to be. The ever-fallible but ever-famous Harold Bloom, who knew Pynchon at Cornell, considers him one of the four greatest living American novelists, along with Philip Roth, Don Delillo, and Cormac McCarthy (who also has a book out: Cormac McCarthy and Apocalypse, anyone?).”

    Against the day is a 1200 page long book and I doubt many readers will finish it in time for the show.

    Pynchon is a great writer though my interest in him is post Gravity’s Rainbow.

    I liked Mason & Dixon and will read, hopefuly, this decade his latest.

    Just finished McCarthy’s The Road and liked the writing but hated both the subject matter as well as its development. I believed in the father son relation but didn’t believe in the background characters good and evil mostly evil.

    I didn’t care for Roth latest novella, either.

    It would be interesting though to hear a show about contemporary American fiction. Don’t have an angle yet, but when I think of one I’ll post about it.

13. oppositionradio Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 1:38 am

    how about a show on the wonderful woman who writes baghdad burning?

    essential reading from baghdad… and so so terribly sad:

    http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

    ”
    Let’s pretend the 600,000+ number is all wrong and that the minimum is the correct number: nearly 400,000. Is that better? Prior to the war, the Bush administration kept claiming that Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report published in The Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al. “

14. David Weinstein Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 4:04 am

    Chris said that ROS is a baseball and golf kind of place. Well we have a World Series where the improbabae is happneing, the cinderalla team is one game up on the underdogs and one game away from capturing the title. While the forces of truth, justice and the American way are trying to wrest back our democracy from lies, greed and tyranny, our national pastime is showing that money doesn’t always buy success while arrogance strikes out at the plate. Is this a harbinger for better times to come? Is the soul of America still alive in the church of baseball?
    And what about how this cinderella – underdog story came about expained by some our ROS’s favorite baseball officianados.

15. stoneg64 Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 9:55 am

    Hey guys,

    I always like the non-political shows so I’m going to suggest a music show. http://Pitchforkmedia.com, the (mostly) indie music site, is a giant amoung the online music news and review sites. With one good review at Pitchfork, a bands popularity can double and triple. Prime examples of this are the bands Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and Love is All. They were all bands that had little to no following until Pitchfork gave them good reviews, at which time they’re popularity sky-rocketed. On the same note a bad review from pitchfork can kill a band. Just ask former Dismemberment Plan membe Travis Morrison. Magazines like Rollingston and Spin don’t even have this kind of influence. It seems as if they will often take they queues from Pitchfork.

    Much of these details are explained in this wired article. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/pitchfork.html.

    Ther are not without criticism. I myself consider myself to be a critic of them. They’re often perceived as pretentious. Sometimes it seems as if they’ll be unfair to bands they didn’t discover. Also they’re reviews themselves are always written well. They’re often way to long and, ironically enough, they don’t mention the actual music enough.

    With that said, I discovered some my favorite bands (Deerhoof, Les Savy Fav, and a million more) because of Pitchfork. I read it everyday and almost always find an article or feature that is interesting .

    This is a good time for a show about them because they’re influence may be peaking. Many other sites are also discovering many new great bands to listen and they starting to show they’re own influence. One of them is Brooklynvegan.com. It is a great blog, that seems a little more down to earth then pitchfork. They link to mp3’s of concerts, they put up great pictures from shows and the site often scoops Pitchfork on the latest music news. Fluxblogcom is another great site that has less focus on writting but more focus on mp3’s so you get to actually listen to the great bands your reading about.

    Anyways, I love the topic. I think Pitchfork and others have opened up the indie-music world to many people who would have never done so otherwise (myself included).

16. jzcronan Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 10:39 am

    Next year “The Graduate” will be forty years old. A major theme of that movie is iconoclasm -breaking down and breaking away from static post-war values. Seems to me Ben and Elaine’s generation became iconophillic – singing the praises of Starbucks, Hummer, and HDTV. Where have we gone, Mrs. Robertson? ps. If Ben had taken his father’s friend’s advice re: plastics and invested $1000 in Dow Chemical, how much money would he have made?

17. poemeater Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 11:04 am

    I saw Elizabeth Grossman discuss her book High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health at a bookstore reading the other day and felt quite riled up about the topic afterward. She takes a very wide-angle approach: she looks at issues on the production and disposal ends of creating a society that has a stream of products with toxic parts. I was impressed with how well she integrated stories about companies that are starting to make changes with the details of toxicity that affects workers and people elsewhere handling American goods. Also, she mentioned that European countries are dealing with this on a governmental level- I believe that Sweden is in the lead with policy that requires companies to have a ‘take back’ program for things like computers, instead of the voluntary programs happening here.
    I think she would be a great person to have on the air since she was very articulate on a wide range of questions. It would probably not be hard to find people doing environmental design for computer comanies who want to go on the air as well, but I personally am interested in the government angle: why is it ok for US government offices to dispose of thousands of its older computers weekly (Grossman had an exact #) yet it relies on the companies to come up with a plan for dealing with the toxics? Why is there no push to get a European-style program off the ground here?
    It makes me angry and I think this book should be getting wider play than it is- when she came to Boston, she only did the one book reading and it was to a small group of people already slightly in-the-know. I sat there thinking that this is a perfect topic for a show like Open Source. And I see that a few weeks ago, you guys did a show on John Warner and ‘green chemistry’. This would be a great follow-up to that.

18. Scarequotes Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 1:53 pm

    With shows such as The Wire, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, and Veronica Mars on the air, why is television still considered a guilty pleasure?

    Critics like Matt Zoller Seitz and his cohorts at The House Next Door, and the varied voices at The Onion’s AV Club, treat great shows with the same seriousness they bring to other pop art forms (movies and music), and that seems to be a growing trend. And Steven Johnson’s previous book was his counterintuitive argument that television was actually good for you, citing many of the great series of the past few years.

    I know (from doing a site search) that Chris doesn’t own a TV, but we may be living in a golden age of television. I’d love to see a show where the best of fiction on American TV gets the same respect and serious consideration as poetry. (Which certainly deserves the attention, as well.)

19. dougmoench Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 3:38 pm

    Pitching a show:
    One idea that seems never to make it on any of the media is the idea that the various nations that we are having a hard time dealing with, such as Iran, No Korea, other middle east nations and even China to a large degree, all would like to see the US juggernaut fail. They all have an interest in bringing us to our knees and not for entirely wrongheaded reasons. How do we know they are not having meeting amongst themselves about how to do that? I.e. how to best frustrate our goals, how to keep us engaged in our own egocentric, domineering point of view, while they work behind the scene to fashion responses, build policy, and design responses to our myopic attempt to bring everyone to our point of view?

    We, as a nation, are so enamoured of our view as to be almost completely unaware of other’s goals and national interests. We think that everyone wants to deal with us, or rather must deal with us. What if they get together, collectively, and work toward a sort of communistic goal of disassembling the US and our system? Why wouldn’t they want to do this?

20. Celtica Says:
    October 27th, 2006 at 8:53 pm

    Pitching a show:

    I’m hearing a lot about global warming nowadays which I think is great. I was given a copy of The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other CONVERGING CATASTROPHIES of the TWENTY – FIRST CENTURY (as per cover copy), by James H. Kunstler. Firstly I will admit to not finishing the book due to the alarming nature of the material and my finite capacity for stress. I remember NPR doing a series recently on alternative fuels and their feasability. But generally I don’t hear much about the peak oil issue, ie. there are only enough global oil reserves, given current production levels and mounting demand especially from countries such as China and India, to last all of us, the whole world, about 40 or so more years. Kunstler takes a rather shrill perspective that includes mass riots and starvation if/ when this comes to pass. Even if 40 years is a minimalist viewpoint, most geologists agree that we are likely to run out within the next 60 years. So why aren’t we doing more to upgrade and change over our global infrastructure to handle the vast changes that a lack of cheap oil will entail before our children and grandchildren have to pay such a terrible price?

    I’m sure Kunstler would jump at such a forum as ROS for spreading his views. Some of his language is questionable and points as well. But he does raise other valid points, such as the lack of attention the peak oil issue is being given. The average joe doesn’t even have a clue that we may run out of oil in their own lifetime. Questions like how do we fly produce half way around the world if the price of fuel for the planes is impossibly high, or gas for the trucks needs to be addressed? How do we heat our homes if it costs $1000 per delivery? Or if there simply isn’t any oil to be had. Who is addressing these issues and how soon will substitutes be ready? Are these points valid? How do we know? And if they are valid, how do we, as a people, prepare for such an eventuality? We will eventually run out of oil. With a global economy based on unlimited availability of affordable oil, will we be able to convert to something else in time? Everything, absolutely everything, in our culture is dependent on cheap oil. If the well runs dry too soon, we’re all in serious trouble.

21. BigAlan Says:
    October 28th, 2006 at 5:35 am

    What a way to start a pitch show Chris with a statement like “How do we manage Iraq, North Korea and Iran, all at the same time?”

    Radio Open Source is available globally but I take “we” to imply “America” given the America centric tones of previous shows and the lead in is about the 110 Congress.

    Setting aside the question of America’s legal or moral authority to manage other countries (be they good or evil), given America’s policy failures in recent years why should anyone believe America can “manage” Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

    Run a show wihich asked in terms of International relations does it really matter to the rest of the world who wins these Electons in America?

    I being a non American hope it does and that American’s choose wisely.

22. sullivus Says:
    October 28th, 2006 at 11:29 pm

    I would love to see a show on deaf culture and what’s going on at Gallaudet right now…

23. zaxl Says:
    October 29th, 2006 at 1:30 pm

    Hi,
    how about this:

    International Herald Tribune
    “Laptops give up their secrets to U.S. customs agents”
    http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/24/business/laptop.php

    The US goverment is not motivaiting many bussinesman to go to the US, is a real threat to lose your laptop with all your personal and bussines information in it.

    Is there real freedom in the US?

24. Katherine Says:
    October 29th, 2006 at 4:47 pm

    oppositionradio: Riverbend is amazing, and we hoped to do a show with her months ago, but she’s completely anonymous for her own safety. Check back, though, for an hour that David’s putting together with actors reading some of her posts.

    David Weinstein: Maybe if the Series hadn’t ended Friday night…

    stoneg64: Funnily enough, David’s also thinking (I swear the rest of us are working, too) about a show on how the web & iPods are changing the way we listen to music. So thanks for the interesting Pitchfork and Brooklynvegan links. Stay tuned.

    jzcronan: The germ of a fun idea here — but maybe for next year?

    poemeater: Turns out Robin’s riled up about where we’re sending our trash, too. I spoke with Grossman before the Green Chemistry show, and we haven’t forgotten about her.

    Scarequotes: It could be fun to figure out how to talk about good television in a new way…but I think you hit on the glitch: Chris doesn’t watch TV.

    dougmoench: A different idea, but it seems fairly speculative. Who’s talking or thinking about this?

    Celtica: We thought James Howard Kunstler was interesting, too; so we did a show with him that you can find here: The End of the Oil Age.

25. Old Nick Says:
    October 29th, 2006 at 5:37 pm

    I don’t watch TV either (aside from sports, and I skip through the ads), but I sure hear about political ads on public radio shows like ATC and OTM. So, even though I haven’t seen the sexist/racist anti-Harold Ford ad, I heard enough of it to take offense.

    Is there any reason to hope that the two party political debate might someday rise from out its sewer?
    Will the tactic of politic debate by lowest-common-denominator endure into perpetuity?
    Or are language and the metaphorical framing of issues more important than the contemptible art of the smear?
    Does this sort of topic strike your fancies?

    If so, here are three guests (one whom you have already had on the show):
    Geoffrey Nunberg
    David Brock
    George Lakoff

    And, as for balance…well, you could try to get Karl Rove…

26. walkerhenry Says:
    October 29th, 2006 at 11:09 pm

    The Athiesm Debate:
    Open Source always handles questions of faith with such nuance. Richard Dawkins’s new book has prompted a lot of coverage with little new to say, but as a nonbeliever I was deeply struck by Terry Eagleton’s review in the London Review of Books (not available online, though good chunks of it have been quoted in the blogosphere). I’d love to hear Mr. Eagleton discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Dawkins’s book and following with, say, anti-faith writer Sam Harris, who gives great radio.

27. David Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 9:41 am

    Sullivus: IS something going on at Gallaudet these days? What makes you suggest this topic now?

    BigAlan: Chris can more than defend himself, but I’ll just say that while we do aim to think, stream, and converse globally, we still live locally. We at ROS are American — proudly, critically, indelibly.

    As for the show suggestion, it’s intriguing. I take it to be, in short form: after the infamous “do nothing” Congress, will we have a “change nothing” election? I’ll bring it up in today’s story meeting. If nothing else, I imagine that this question can be folded into our still-to-be-planned post-election show next wednesday.

    Zaxl: We’ve done a few shows about the NSA and civil liberties. This seems like one more domino, but not a big enough domino for its own show.

    Old Nick: I think we did show, or most of it, with George Lakoff. (And, in case you missed them, we’ve had Nunberg on twice, first on Orwell and then on human interractions with robots.)

    Walkerhenry: I hate to keep saying, “We’ve done that already,” but in this case I think it’s largely true. Still, I hadn’t heard about Eagleton’s LRB response and I’m happy to check it out.

28. Scarequotes Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 2:55 pm

    Katherine:
    I think the reason Chris doesn’t have a television may give you the in you’re looking for. If he doesn’t think there’s anything good on TV, it’d be great to have him talk with people like Zoller Seitz and Johnson, who take the art form seriously and can advocate for the position that there’s essential TV the way there’s essential literature.

    If Chris has no problem with TV but just doesn’t have time to watch it, well, that’s not as exciting a hook, I’ll grant you that.

    Regardless, I definitely see the show as about TV as an artform, and the good examples thereof, rather than about a particular show or even about nonfiction TV and the politics of that. (Could be an interesting show, but not what I’m envisioning.)

29. hurley Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

    PYNCHON:

    I’m not a slavering Pynchon fan, but there are hundreds of thousands of them, and the internet angle dear to ROS is vast. This, before the book is even published:

    http://pynchonwiki.com/index.php?title=ATD_-

    You could make good radio out of this.

    That’s all.

30. Greta Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 4:16 pm

    First of all, sorry that pitches from last Wednesday went unheeded. Here’s catch-up:

    David Weinstein, we pitched the election integrity idea in today’s meeting, and there might be a show here. It might be a two-parter, looking at two different electoral machines: get out the vote, and keep out the vote. If we can find the right guests, it’ll be next Monday’s show. Thanks!

    hurley, thanks for the update on your first Pynchon pitch. I’ll let Robin respond.

    jdyer, the Shakespearean language/digital age language show sounds interesting, but I’m not sure I know what you mean by “the recent re-opening of language” today. Should I pitch this as a way to revive the Language Evolution in the Digital Age show? Does your man Rosenbaum draw the parallels in his book?

    metin, we hate to do shows that are too speculative, and we’d worry that the locus of the Nancy Pelosi conversation is all speculation: will she be Speaker/what would she do as Speaker?

    Dale, I fear that a show on essays would be impossibly broad, as broad as a show on poetry, say, or one on short stories. If you’re noticing a stylistic or thematic trend in essays that you think deserves an hour of radio, let us know.

    bmcaff, this might be a good feature pegged to the Experiments in Democracy show, or maybe for Monday or Tuesday before the election. Keep an eye out.

    peggysue, Chelsea liked your Marie Antoinette idea, and pitched it at our meeting, and nobody else got excited about it. That’s how it goes.

    HWheels, check out our Google Privacy show.

31. LarryK Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 10:37 pm

    The show I’d like to hear concerns the decentralized production of electricity. What Canada may become well known for [besides universal health care] is the Ontario Government’s move to double sustainable energy production to 10 % of the the total in just a few years, and close down coal burning plants. A prime strategy is to pay $CN 0.42/KWhr for electricity produced by sustainable sources [it is sold to cutomers for about $CN 0.12 KWhr]. I’d like to hear experts compare the US history of encouraging sustainable energy, the past and current subsidies for both production of equipment and installation of electrical production, and the current directions of the US Department of Energy towards decentralized sustainable energy. What is the effect on decentalized electricity production by the past deregulation of US utilities and the lobbying of US Utilities against this direction? How will millions of solar electric homes move us to new technologies like the hydrogen economy? Sounds to me like a show worth doing. LK

32. sullivus Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 11:15 pm

    Hi David,

    What’s happening at Gallaudet…

    The current President is leaving and was supposed to be replaced by Jane K. Fernandes, much to the chagrin of a lot of students and the US deaf community. The students ended up protesting the incoming president and shut down the school for a few days. After a few days the current President, I. King Jordan, decided to call the cops which ended up with 133 students being arrested. Just tonight the Gaullaudet Board of Trustees voted to terminate the selection of Jane Fernandes as incoming President.

    Protests also occurred last time the President was replaced. The initial replacement was a hearing candidate, which enraged the campus as most people were hoping that a deaf President would be chosen for the first time. Students protested, shut down the campus and a deaf President – I. King Jordan was chosen instead.

    So, there’s lots of directions this could go in. A few questions – why is the selection of President at Gallaudet so much more controversial than the selection of a President at other schools? What qualifications does the President of Gallaudet need to have that the President of a hearing school doesn’t have? What does the deaf community see as the role of the Gallaudet President? Fernandes was deaf, how did this affect her selection or how the deaf community looked at her?

    There also seems to be a lot of different opions in deaf society as to how deaf people should fit into a hearing world. Learn to read lips and try to learn to speak? Communicate in sign language and be proud of deaf culture? How do these theories interact? How did this come into play during the selection of President? Is it even possible to choose a President that could please everyone?

    Joseph Raimond has several good blog entries about this, particularly here
    http://surdus.blogspot.com/2006/10/370-why-is-gallaudet-community_20.html

    There are tons of blogs about this at http://www.deafdc.com, but here’s one good one http://www.deafdc.com/blog/?cat=3

    And I haven’t read it, but there’s a book about deaf culture that is supposed to be very good – “Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood”
    by Paddy Ladd

33. Brendan Says:
    October 31st, 2006 at 11:23 am

    Hurley – Having staggered my way through “Gravity’s Rainbow” as a twenty-three year old (it took me a year), I will take a look at the wiki and pitch this this morning. To be honest, hard to make radio out of an author who famously refuses to be interviewed, but I did have a friend who created a reading list out of “Gravity’s Rainbow” that lasted him ten years; perhaps we can do a show about generating reading lists.

    LarryK – Perhaps a show on the private economies of energy production, e.g. farmers with windmills in Denmark? I’ll talk to Katherine, our global warming expert, but in the meantime check out our Global Warming series, which touches tangentially on this.

34. hurley Says:
    October 31st, 2006 at 1:38 pm

    Brendan says:

    “To be honest, hard to make radio out of an author who famously refuses to be interviewed.”

    Of course, but that’s part of the point, part of the challenge (shamelessly and anonymously charging you with yet more responsibilities): No one has done it. The BBC did a brief impressionistic aural sketch on the occassion of Mason & Dixon (with the wonderful Iain Sinclair). Apart from that, far as I know, everyone else in radio-land put off by the obvious contradiction. You’ve done shows on Beckett, Emerson et al, and I don’t recall hearing their voices. I’d prefer another show about Beckett, or William Gaddis, if only because Pynchon’s latest will get enough attention elsewhere. But whatever you think of his work, he is a major figure, proto-Nobelist and so forth. I’ll be content to read the book, but I fear you might miss an opportunity to do more of what you all do so well, and to do something no one else is likely to.

    Thanks for listening. Happy to help as I may.

35. howardpark Says:
    October 31st, 2006 at 11:05 pm

    I’m pretty darn political but whenever I hear about Open Source originating in Lowell I think of the great writer Jack Kerouac so sometime I’d love to hear a show about Kerouac and the cult following he still inspires.

36. jdyer Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 12:43 am

    “jdyer, the Shakespearean language/digital age language show sounds interesting, but I’m not sure I know what you mean by “the recent re-opening of language” today. Should I pitch this as a way to revive the Language Evolution in the Digital Age show? Does your man Rosenbaum draw the parallels in his book?”

    Greta, Rosenbaum “is not my man” and I have no stake in his book.

    I’ll get back to you in a few days with a more focused proposal on the uses of language at the beginning of the age of printing and its uses today on the internet.

37. jdyer Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 12:47 am

    IN the meantime there is an fascinating op ed piece in The Wall Street Journal by an Iranian dissident who argues that the upper classes in Iran have been co-opted by the regime and bribed into passive acceptance of the rule of the Mullahs.

    http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009162

    Iranian Moolah
    How can you have a revolution when everyone is watching TV?

    BY FAROUZ FARZAMI
    Sunday, October 29, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

    This got me thinking about the behavior of the upper classes in other Islamic States and indeed in other non Islamic tyrannical regimes.

    A show about tyranny in the digital age would be very welcome.

38. nother Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 2:53 am

    I’m still trying to think of something worthy of an hour – it’s hard – but in the mean time I keep thinking, levity levity levity. You guys can’t be this serious all the time in your personal lives, can you? So why do think we want to be this serious in our intellectually recreational lives?

39. jdyer Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 1:18 pm

    What is a great (American) novel?

    It’s been suggested that the greatest American novelists living today are, De Lillo, Cormac McCarthy, Pynchon, and Roth.

    On the other hand, Tony Morrison’s Beloved has been judged as the greatest novel of the last quarter century.

    To me De Lillo’s White Noise and Roth’s American Pastoral are the greatest novels of the past 25 years. I can’t decide between them, though if someone put a gun to my head and yelled choose, I would give the edge to “White Noise.” Posterity, I gather, will be the ultimate judge.

    Why is it that Pynchon, while undoubtedly a very gifted writer, has yet to create a single memorable character?

    My question then is what makes a great novel? Is it thematic grandeur and complexity, or is it the creation of “larger than life” characters? Can a novel be restricted in theme and be historically specific while dealing with only one segment of society such as Mc Carthy’s Blood Meridian or Morrison’s Beloved do and still be great?

    I’d like to hear a program devoted to asking this question in relation to contemporary American novelists.

40. Greta Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 5:19 pm

    jdyer, I just had to jump in and respond to this. I don’t remember if we discussed Pynchon, but I hope we covered the rest of your requests on our Great American Novel show.

    May it bring you instant gratification.

41. Robin Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 6:29 pm

    JDyer- That is a really interesting op-ed. But it reminded me more about things at home than things abroad. Namely, the way a comfortable life-style makes people politically apathetic or complacent. I don’t think it happens only in totalitarian regimes. At any rate, what do you think would be the show to do here? We’ve done a lot of shows on Iran in the past, although granted none in a while. Tyranny in the digital age sounds promising as an idea for a show – it makes me think of stories I’ve read about governments in Qatar and Pakistan and elsewhere filtering out blogs etc. – but it would have to move beyond last summer’s Great Firewall of China show. Any ideas?

    Nother – we hear you on levity
    We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on some of our “high concept” or more cultural shows, and we’re always trying to think of more to do. Obviously when and if you think of any, let us know.

42. ChelseaM Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 8:07 pm

    Howardpark,

    We are very resistant to the idea of doing a Kerouac show precisely because the Lowell connection seems too obvious a reason to celebrate America’s beloved beatnik.

    However, a couple of weeks ago Chris went to a UMass Lowell event, “On the Road in Lowell.” While there, he met former UMass Lowell Kerouac writers-in-residence. We’re hoping to include some of them on Open Source in the future. This is at least an indirect way of bringing Kerouac into the conversation.

43. jdyer Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 8:27 pm

    “novelists.

    Greta Says:

    “jdyer, I just had to jump in and respond to this. I don’t remember if we discussed Pynchon, but I hope we covered the rest of your requests on our Great American Novel show.”

    I did hear the show.

    I was thinking of something that focused on what makes a great American novel rather than one were the discussion centered on a list of novelists.

44. jdyer Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 8:38 pm

    “Tyranny in the digital age sounds promising as an idea for a show – it makes me think of stories I’ve read about governments in Qatar and Pakistan and elsewhere filtering out blogs etc. – but it would have to move beyond last summer’s Great Firewall of China show. Any ideas? ”

    That’s the idea, adding Qatar and Pakistan would be interesting.

    There is something specific to oil wealthy Islamic non democratic regimes which places the upper classes in a special category. They are too sophisiticated for their own society (sort of being educationally too qualified to be a Muslim) but at the same time they need to stay in that society because that is where their money and property is. They are also dependent on the ruling powers to keep their wealth safe.

    At the same time these folk tend to live digitally in another world, being hooked up to the internet as well tuned in to Western media.

    btw: I don’t think the upper classes (money people) in this country are opting out of politics.

    If anything they are manipulating the electorate. Thinks of all those right wing think tanks as well as Soros’s use of his billions to sway the electorate in one direction or another. No, our rich folk are not as alienated from their culture as the upper crust seem to be in Iran, Qatar and elsewhere.

45. jdyer Says:
    November 1st, 2006 at 8:49 pm

    Another show idea would be: The Fate of Classical Music in the age of the internet.

    Tower records which recently filed for Chapter 11 used to be a great classical music resource. Where else could one find collections of music by the Russian Alfred Schnittke?

    It was also a place to browse and discover classical composers.

    What will take its place now? How is the classical music aficionado to find the obscure composers?

    The show should offer a much needed discussion about the place of serious music in our lives.

46. jdyer Says:
    November 3rd, 2006 at 9:19 am

    Ok, so I am the only one posting show suggestions.

    Here is another one:

    A newspapaper article about the latest attempt to ban Huckleberry Finn got me thinking about why it is that book burners have been picking on that great novel?

    http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061101/UPDATE/611010440&SearchID=73261766946989

    “Complaint prompts Taylor schools to stop teaching ‘Huckleberry Finn’”

    Santiago Esparza / The Detroit News

    After the elections a show about book banning in our time would be most welcome.

47. hurley Says:
    November 3rd, 2006 at 1:33 pm

    No links and nothing more than anecdotal information to offer on this, but I think a show about military desertion might sound the right contemporary note. There have been some high-profile cases recently. I gather there’s a version of the underground railway in place, conducting disaffected US soldiers to Canada — not to evoke any comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, no sir. It’s an issue there, it’s an issue here, though you wouldn’t know it. I’m sure a little research would yield plenty of people on the far side of the border willing to talk, and even a few here.
    Curious what anyone here has to say about this.

48. mynocturama Says:
    November 3rd, 2006 at 5:06 pm

    My pitch starts with a film and a book:

    In a scene from a favorite film of mine, Mike Leigh’s “Naked”, the lead character Johnny quasi-ironically indulges in a prophetic monologue, a kind of concoction of corporate conspiracy, Nostradamus, and the Book of Revelations. I’ve always been struck by the peculiar sort of pleasure I receive when I watch this scene – its intensity gives me chills. It’s not as though I literally believe the content of what’s being said (the gist of it has to do with the barcode/mark of the beast conspiracy), yet I feel as though the curtain is being pulled back, and I’m being made privy to a secret which promises to explain what William James called this “blooming, buzzing mass of confusion.”

    In Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”, a book I’m continually grateful to have read, the characters Jimmy/Snowman and Crake watch internet videos ranging from people displaying themselves in their private spaces to filmed executions and snuff films. The book was published in 2003, at least two years before the You Tube craze got on its way. Among other things, the story has to do with rapid advancements in genetic engineering and, as somewhat of a corollary, the declining state of education in the humanities. I feel deeply that this book has equipped me for the world we’re emerging into. And yet Atwood herself, in an interview, unequivocally stated, “I don’t do prophecy.”

    So the pitch is, a show on the prophetic imagination, in its different manifestations, from the vulgar, idiotic and self-righteously judgmental to serious attempts to formulate where we human beings are going. There’s the Rapture and those who take it literally, an expression, I think, of the worst in human beings. And then there’s Niall Ferguson’s “The Great War of 2007” piece which you guys linked to a little while ago, which similarly gave me the chills, a kind of pleasure tinged with terror at being let in on something BIG. There are psychics and horoscopes, and the plenty who believe them, and there are folks like Vico and Hegel, speculating on patterns of human history.

    What feeds and fuels the prophetic mode? What desires and fears do prophecies tap into? What are the criteria for legitimacy, if any? What prophecies have actually played out in history?

    As far as the “why now” question, it’s no secret that a significant amount of people in this country believe in some version of the Rapture. Also, with the 2006 and 2008 elections, trying to peer into the future of this country, to attempt a prophetic stance, seems apt to me. And a telescopic view of current politics, a philosophical discussion of its larger patterns, would serve as a nice complement to the down in the dirt elections coverage.

    And let me recommend Stephen Erickson as a guest. His 1999 essay “The Coming Age of Thresholding” is something I turn to repeatedly, almost as a sort of consolation. He also has a book by the same name.

    Anyway, that’s my pitch. Hope it makes it over the plate.

49. JohnS Says:
    November 3rd, 2006 at 10:15 pm

    Chris,
    With Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize what better time to revisit microfinance. With the award ceremony being held on December 10 in Oslo perhaps a show on Monday the 11th or sometime that week. You might broadcast excerpts from his laureate’s lecture and have an interview with him. (Does the Nobel Committee allow broadcast of those lectures?)
    Peace Prize: http://nobelpeaceprize.org/
    More on all the prizes http://nobelprize.org/award_ceremonies/
    Questions at
    comments@nobel.se
    and The Norwegian
    Nobel Institute
    Henrik Ibsens gate 51,
    NO-0255 OSLO

    +47 22 12 93 00 tel
    +47 22 12 93 10 fax

    Information on Grameen at
    http://www.grameenfoundation.org/
    (the international expansion group started at Yunus’ request. It is based in Washington D.C.)
    and
    http://www.grameen-info.org/
    (The Grameen Bank’s own web site from Bangladesh (in English)).

    The Grameen Foundation (formerly the Grameen Foundation, USA) is headed by Alex Counts who worked with professor Yunus in Bangladesh. I heard him speak at the JFK School. He speaks well. As you sometimes have multiple guests, you might want to include him too.
    http://www.grameenfoundation.org/who_we_are/our_people/staff/alex_counts_president/ (or if that breaks and doesn’t work try
    http://tinyurl.com/yxhs99)

    The Grameen Foundation’s web site says Kay Hixson handles Count’s appearances.
    Kay Hixon: Director of Marketing at 202-628-3560, ext. 109, or khixson@grameenfoundation.org.

    http://www.grameenfoundation.org/who_we_are/our_grameen_heritage/nobel_peace_prize/
    (or if that breaks and doesn’t work try
    http://tinyurl.com/ykw79r )

    JohnS

50. metin Says:
    November 3rd, 2006 at 10:53 pm

    this ‘pitch a show’ reminds me of the ’suggestion box’ at my company that has an open bottom with a trash can placed directly underneath it. do you have to find a reason to knock off every request or do you sometimes go out of your way to thank people for bringing forth ideas for discussion.

51. emmettoconnell Says:
    November 4th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

    Though technically “early November,” how about Vaclav Havel will be in the United States for the next four months, probably the best chance any time soon to talk to a leader of a Democratic revolution. And, with all our talk about Democracy recently… Maybe a show about Democracy overseas, including the recent developments in Ukraine, Belarus, central Asia.

    Other guests could include:
    The bloggers at Publius Pundit

52. gusrabson Says:
    November 4th, 2006 at 6:44 pm

    Perhaps you have done this already but in my opinion the blog by Riverbend that she calls “Baghdad Burning” is to the war in Iraq as “All Quiet on the Western Front” was to World War I and “Diary of Ann Frank” was to World War II.

53. metin Says:
    November 4th, 2006 at 11:18 pm

    How about a show about whether the US is a ‘democracy’ or a ‘republic?’

54. hurley Says:
    November 5th, 2006 at 7:08 am

    Awhile back someone suggested a show about the new heroin epidemic. I was particlarly struck by it since my oldest, dearest friend had recently od’d. He’d been clean for 10 years when, I suspect, he decided to “treat” himself on his birthday…He was a very experienced junky, alas, but presumably had no idea of the potency of the new product streaming out of Afghanistan.
    Since then, I’ve become familiar with a policy initiative proposed by the Senlis Council, a Canadian think-tank, to actually encourage the legal production of poppies in Afghanistan for the starved international morphine market. The idea is clearly outlined, by a Nobel Prize winner, no less, here:

    http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/media_centre/opeds/04_oped

    Should this be of interest, I’ve been informed that the person to contact is Jane Francis at:
    francis@senliscouncil.net

    One of the boldest, most radical and far-reaching ideas I’ve heard of in a long time.

55. David Weinstein Says:
    November 5th, 2006 at 8:11 pm

    [This comment has been deleted because it failed to heed our commenting guidelines. - Brendan]

56. David Says:
    November 6th, 2006 at 9:14 am

    Emmettoconnell: Nice suggestion! I’d love to get Havel on, and four months gives him a long time to consider it.

    gusrabson: we haven’t done Riverbend yet, but we’ve been plotting for a while. She maintains strict anonymity, but we’ve recorded actresses reading some of her posts. Look for the show some time in the next month or so.

    Metin: While we haven’t asked that particular question, we’ve been doing a lot of shows about the nature of our political system (and what else that system could be), including one about political identities, one about experiments in participatory democracy, and tomorrow’s, about the nature of discourse and debate in a micro-targeted society. And a side note: in case no one responded to your question above: we are immensely grateful to your and everyone’s suggestions here. Some of them are being turned into shows now. Most are not. The fact that we respond negatively to the majority of them is just un unfortunate fact of producing a daily radio show. But we figure — based on MANY complaints from our community — that one of the golden rules of kindergarten has been turned upside down on this site: it’s better to respond (respectfully but) negatively than not to respond at all.

    Hurley: I’ll check out the article. Thanks!

57. Katherine Says:
    November 6th, 2006 at 10:29 am

    hurley: The desertion idea sounds kind of intriguing. Care to do some of that research?

    mynocturama: A high-concept show on prophecies would be hard to produce well — it would require fantastic guests — but i’ll bring it up in the meeting and see what everyone thinks.

    JohnS: The New Yorker just did a piece on microfinance/microcredit that was pretty comprehensive re: the new developments in the field. It’s very interesting, but what could we say about it that would be new and different? I’ll see what the group thinks.

58. hurley Says:
    November 6th, 2006 at 1:33 pm

    Katherine says: The desertion idea sounds kind of interesting. Care to do some of that research?

    Katherine: I would if I could, but most of my time online is borrowed time, borrowed on a friend’s computer and against an impending deadline. I just googled “deserters from the iraq war” and came up with plenty. I’ll try and sift through it when I can. I think you could make a great show on the subject — probably the first radio show. Thanks for the response.

59. Scarequotes Says:
    November 6th, 2006 at 6:44 pm

    I’d love to hear a show on lowbrow art.

    Specific ideas: lowbrow’s been percolating through the subculture for a couple of decades, but it’s come closer and closer to the mainstream in the last few years. (See an ad for the Toyota Yaris.) What happens to a countercultural movement when it’s no longer countering anything?

    And what does it bring to the mainstream? An article in the LA Weekly last year argued:
    

    Lowbrow can be said to have a legitimate claim to the true lineage of modern American art. By reconnecting with pictorialist and figurative traditions despised as kitsch by the art-critical school of Clement Greenberg, opening their visual vocabulary to the most unironically inclusive array of pop-cultural iconography, and embracing the marketplace potentials of Generation eBay, Lowbrow has managed to create what the art world never has — a mass consumer base for art. And while a lot of this consumption is directed at low-ticket Zippo lighters, coffee-table books, and the fancy dollies — er, limited-edition urban vinyl collectibles, I mean — found in outlets like Giant Robot and Chinatown’s Munky King, the demand for original paintings and fine-art prints seems to be growing exponentially.

    Is lowbrow more exciting, more vital than “mainstream” contemporary art? Is it reconnecting with a lost tradition, or is it just visual noise destined to be forgotten? Is its commercial success something to be envied or suspicious of? And why does it take former tattoo artists and hot-rod painters to make art feel vital to a mass of people?

    Possible interviewees: Robert Williams (editor of Juxtapoz magazine — second most popular art magazine in the country! — lowbrow artist, and the guy who coined the word “lowbrow”); and Kirsten Anderson (gallerist for Roq La Rue in Seattle, author of Pop Surrealism. Or any number of artists: Mark Ryden, SHAG, Todd Schorr…

60. Scarequotes Says:
    November 6th, 2006 at 10:35 pm

    Screwed up the coding — the two sentences I meant to bold in that quote are the first one (Lowbrow can be said to have a legitimate claim to the true lineage of modern American art.) and “Lowbrow has managed to create what the art world never has — a mass consumer base for art.”

61. Jon Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 1:10 am

    Borat is too interesting a phenomenon to let pass you by. First, go see it. Then, think about possible angles. Who ever would have thought you’d do a program on Groundhog Day? But it was really an interesting tour de force. Borat is a very different kind of movie, but quite rich in ideas, underneath the wild hillarity. For starters, the scene so grotesquely portraying the drunken college students might have a sobering effect on similarly aged people seeing this film that is more powerful than all who have preached sanctimoniously on this subject. And the scene in the church? It will be fascinating to see if this has any far-reaching impact on social morays in this country. Humor is a very powerful instrument, and in the case of Borat the humor may at first seem painted with a broad brush, but I think the individual bristles are plenty sharp.

62. David Weinstein Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 2:29 am

    This is really a Wednesday morning November 8 kind of thing. I think that the dems will regain control of the house and have a better than even chance of regaining the Senate now that Jim Webb haas pulled ahead and other races are looking strong. But these contests will be close, particualrly many in the house, ripe for the kind of electronic election fraud that is not easily detected or contested.

    Here is a brief article from the Open Source Consortium describing a series by Carter Evans on GoTV, a web-phone/camera format that has the best best and most explosive exposes about how the bad guys are stealing our democracy that I’ve encountered to date; two stories by Diebold whistleblowers and one on how college students were able to break into and program a voting machine…

    The saviour of our democratic electoral process might very well be the web and its open nature. MoveOn.org has election day watchdog teams poised to video election fraud and put it up immediately on the web…

    It’s going to be a close one, so fasten your seat belts.

    From: alan@openvotingconsortium.org
    Subject: Another Good Warning About Diebold et al
    Date: November 5, 2006 4:04:25 PM PST
    To: davidweinstein@earthlink.net
    Reply-To: alan@openvotingconsortium.org

    __

    Dear Friends of Open Voting:

    Feel free to pass this around:
    http://gotvnetworks.one.revver.com/collection/42547

    Chris Hood is great in this report. Thanks to Brad Friedman for getting me involved. Thanks also to Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg for letting us use her office for some of the taping. Carter Evans did an excellent job.

    We still need to hear more about solutions, but, with luck, we’ll hear more about that after Election Day.

    Alan Dechert
    http://openvoting.org
    p.s. This is from Carter Evans of GoTV
    ****************
    Sorry for all the emails, but we finally have link with all four parts…
    please watch and let me know what you think. Part four is especially
    important, because it gives some solid tips to help protect your vote this
    Tuesday…

    Here’s the lowdown:

    This Tuesday millions of voters will cast their ballots electronically. But
    some say using this new technology is a step in the wrong direction.

    “Hack The Vote” is an in-depth look at the still-unsolved problems with
    electronic voting. Reporter Carter Evans secured the first-ever exclusive
    on-camera interview with a former employee (now turned whistleblower) of
    Diebold, one of the companies making these machines.

    Among the revelations in this series:

    A whistleblower admits on-camera that he and a team secretly inserted
    “patches” into election machines before an election was held in Georgia.
    A computer programmer admits before Congress he wrote programming code that
    would “switch” an election.

    We’ll show you how students from a respected university easily hacked a
    voting machine.

    It’s a sobering look at electronic voting – and a series you must watch
    before visiting the polling booth. Catch the entire series on every single
    GoTV channel on Sprint/Nextel. If you don’t have a video enabled phone,
    GoTV is posting the segments for free. Please share this with all your
    friends before they visit the voting booth:

    http://gotvnetworks.one.revver.com/collection/42547

    -Carter

63. Potter Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 7:42 am

    Katherine and JohnS regarding microfinance also see Alexander Cockburn’s piece in “The Nation” magazine The Myth of Microloans

    I usually skip over this writer (he’s just too strong for me) but I was interested in what could be negative about small loans. Added to the mix, his points would help make a more interesting show

64. Brendan Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 9:49 am

    Scarequotes, this is exactly the kind of pitch we’re looking for: concise, good reading material, potential guests. That said, I am utterly without a clue about this stuff, but I read the LA Weekly article and I’m going to pitch it to give someone like Chelsea or Robin — who both actually know things about visual art — a chance to react.

    Jon, I can’t wait to go see the Borat movie,, and in fact I had dinner with a friend last night who said that partway through watching Borat his own head exploded, and he continued to bleed out until the movie ended. I can only assume that this was a metaphor, because he looked fine to me, but from what I’ve seen of the Borat sketches on Da Ali G show, it looks to be exquisitely painful.

    So I don’t think we can do a show about Borat or the movie alone, but what about the advent of painful satire? The Office is so awkward it’s difficult to watch; sometimes the Colbert Report offers the same thing, and certainly Colbert’s performance at the White House Press Club dinner this year made me squirm.

    We did a show about the Colbert moment in front of the White House press corps, but what if we missed the point? What if what we’re watching is a new kind of satire, one that relies on discomfort — in the guest, in the viewer — to make its point?

65. Katherine Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 2:23 pm

    hurley: If you do have time to do some weeding, let us know what you come up with. Also: what would the story be? How would you frame the hour?

    Potter: Thanks for the link. I’ll read the piece.

66. hurley Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 3:57 pm

    Katherine: No time to weed and sift much soon. But I will when I can.
    What would the story be? Representative stories of desertion. Say, one person acting out of principle, another acting out of fear — or both. They’re not mutally exclusive, and one doesn’t necessarily trump the other. But you’re unlikely to get anyone on air as an avowed “coward.” Or maybe not. You and Chris and co. might tease this tension into being on-air. Imagine getting a Marine to say: I came to oppose this war, and I was also scared out of my wits. It’s an old theme in literature, one you might be able to update. But I doubt it. More reasonably, you might simply examine the culture of desertion against the context of the Iraq war, and relate it, in that dread analogy, to the Vietnam War. Or not. Regardless of antecedents, there are any number of disaffected US military personel streaming covertly into Canada as we speak, so to speak, and legal and extra-legal structures on both sides of the border are springing up as a result. This has provoked political tensions in Canada, with Conservative politicians calling for the expulsion of the deserters, tapping into Canadian political tensions, etc. Sorry I haven’t time gnaw this bone further, but there’s a lot of meat there.

67. hurley Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    Katherine: I just wrote a follow-up, hit the wrong button before I’d finished, should it come through. More anon.

68. loganpoppy Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 6:09 pm

    I know this is a salacious suggestion, but the Ted Haggard thing has clinched it for me: there really needs to be a show about “self-loathing” and its consequences. I am interested in where the term comes from and why self-loathing people often show up in our culture as fighting against the very thing they are. Obviously the idea of Mark Foley and Haggard’s sexuality are places to start since these were men of substantial power who also seemed to push for legislation directed against their own desires. I guess this would go along the idea of “passing” to gain power. Anyways, it’s an idea and something that really hit me hard last week with the Haggard scandal.

69. mynocturama Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 8:45 pm

    I’ll throw my weight behind the Borat and extreme confrontational satire suggestion. My head didn’t explode, but my facial muscles cramped up from the mix of laughter and gaping awe. It reached a point where the laughter started to have a physiological effect, maybe involving extreme fluctuations in oxygen levels or something.

    And I’ll try another pitch over the plate. A few weeks ago, I’m not sure in which thread, a couple of comments came up having to do with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio National and the international popularity of their podcasted shows. There’s an interesting tension, it seems to me, between listening to public radio shows like ROS in, let’s say, the usual or conventional way, tuning in at a certain time, vs. consuming them in the more portable format of an mp3 file, choosing to listen when and where at one’s leisure. Apparently the people down under have been pretty successful negotiating this transition, between having to tune your antenna to a designated public broadcast, and having the piece of media in your own hands, contained and personalized.

    Is there a loss, say in the tacit sense of participating in something larger, in the move towards personal convenience and entertainment? I remember having a conversation with a friend, where I was arguing for the communal aspect in actually going out to see a movie in the theater, whereas he was fine with his large screen and sound system at home. And, besides, he said, it’s not like you have a group discussion afterwards. But I think the experience of being part of a community, of experiencing a film with others, is significant, regardless of whether you talk with others after. Plus there’s the social quality of agreeing to be at an event, of meeting someone or something, at a designated time. Is a similar dynamic happening in radio?

    I’d suggest having radio personalities from ABC, like Alan Saunders, host of The Philosopher’s Zone:

    http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/

    It’s pretty amazing how much he packs into a 25 minute show. It’s a very full and fulfilling half hour. And, in an interesting case of cross pod-ination, he too had a show with Jaron Lanier, with Lanier referring to his experience on ROS.

    And perhaps there’s an interesting parallel between America and Australia, both being former British colonies (Australia now technically a commonwealth), each with its own distinct dialects and accents on the Queen’s English.

    Sorry- should keep these suggestions shorter. Anyway, there it is.

70. mfortner Says:
    November 8th, 2006 at 2:20 pm

    What will it take to have a functioning, open, electronic voting system?

    After the previous Presidential shamed us into upgrading our voting systems to 20th Century technology, what will it take to upgrade our systems to 21st Century technologies. Each state spent millions of dollars on proprietary voting systems. In 2001 the Australians used the first ever open source voting system. Why can’t we?

    We currently file our taxes online, and register our cars, why can’t we use off-the shelf technology, and open source software to cast our ballots? If it’s secure enough for those transactions, why isn’t it secure enough for voting? We’ve already paid for the computers, they’re sitting in our public libraries and on our desktops at work and at home. Everybody who wants to vote would have easy secure access without the hassle of standing in line, or dealing with expensive (and sometimes broken machinery). Off-The Shelf hardware would insure that we could easily configure, replace or repair the machinery. Open source software would insure that the vote count is accurate and secure.

    Here are a few links to get the conversation started:
    http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/28/1648218&tid=136&tid=132
    http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/08/19/0652240&tid=132
    http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/

71. huff Says:
    November 8th, 2006 at 11:19 pm

    What about Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen who was wrongly accused by the US government of being a terrorist, and because of it shipped to Syria where he was tortured for a year before finally returning home to BC.

    In particular I’m wondering why it is the Rice and the US government absolutely refuses to issue an apology to Arar; is it because it would poke a giant hole in the fabric of foreign policy, or just pure stubborness??

72. Michael Foburg Says:
    November 9th, 2006 at 11:45 am

    Hi,

    Is this where I pitch a show? I read “How It Works”. If so, here goes.
    If not, I’ll be glad to resend it. Just tell me.

    The Show.
    What do speech inflections and speech patterns tell us about our leaders.

    I’ve listened thrice to GWB’s voice when he announced Rumsfeld resignation. yesterday. It had his usual uncertainty when he speaks about something he knows little about or when he answers a challenging critical question. But this was a bit stranger. There was a little squeak at the end of one sentence. The pauses were more awkward. It should have been a prepared announcement, probably was. (I don’t know how to find that out.) But it hardly sounded that way. What can we learn or conjecture from our leaders’ speech inflections and patterns?

    You could be as specific as comparing this announcement with other Presidents who’ve announced reluctant changes in their administration. I suggest GWB, RR and RMN. WJC, JC and LBJ. Or it could compare good news-bad news Presidential statement or confident and unconfident.

    Invite one or two speech experts on the show as well as a current or former White House reporter. Helen Thomas would be great.

    Is there something else I could do to make it a Radio Open Source Show.

    Thanks,

    Michael Fosburg
    Quality Search, Inc.
    978-762-5544
    Michael@qualsearch.com

    http://www.qualsearch.com

73. jdyer Says:
    November 9th, 2006 at 12:51 pm

    How about a show on the meaning of freedom of speech?

    You could invite Wendy Kaminer as well as Stanley Fich to argue out the limits and merits of free speech:

    Wendy Kaminer is profiled on this British website:

    http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2031/

    ‘The left has been infected by the disease of intolerance’

    Stanley Fish has an article in the Chronicle on the subject:

    http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=f2281gdy909q6jfczpj22f7gtkg3cqft

    The Trouble With Tolerance
    By STANLEY FISH

74. Robin Says:
    November 9th, 2006 at 1:40 pm

    mfortner : Did you hear the show we did this summer on electronic voting machines? I think some of your questions are addressed in that show. I do think this is a well presented and well written pitch, but now that the election is over I think we’re going to end up focusing our coverage on aftermath issues — governance, implications of Dems controlling Congress, what to do about Iraq, etc. (I’m also pushing for us to look at how the new Congress will deal with some of the big issues of the last two years like executive branch power, Guantanamo, and torture.) This feels like a show for before the election.

    huff: What’s the hook for this right now? Is anything new happening with this case? Is there a border security angle or something? I don’t think we could make an interesting show about how the US won’t apologize for this instance.

75. hurley Says:
    November 9th, 2006 at 2:35 pm

    This re Pynchon:

    Fans Still Passionate About Publicity-Shy Thomas Pynchon
    http://us.f347.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=28173&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes

    Nov. 8 – Zak Smith is a painter, a rebel and an Ivy
    Leaguer, a Yale University graduate with a green
    mohawk, an apartment of wall-to-wall illustrations and
    a passion for comics, classic novels — and Thomas
    Pynchon. About 10 years ago, Smith had a feeling that he should
    try Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” an instinct
    consummated from the very first page. Smith didn’t
    just read the book, he reread it, marked it up and
    went back to it so many times that his paperback copy
    is held together by duct tape.

76. jeffreydean Says:
    November 9th, 2006 at 9:05 pm

    Should Democrats pragmatically jettison abortion support and gay rights support in order to maintain and grow their popularity in the American center?

77. jdyer Says:
    November 9th, 2006 at 9:08 pm

    ““`Gravity’s Rainbow’ hit me hard, especially the parts
    set in Europe during and just after World War II. I’d
    never read a writer whose voice on the page came so
    close to echoing the sound and feel of the Cold War
    ’50s and ’60s, hip and angry and complex,” he says.”

    Is this enough to make GR a classic novel.

    What is it about the novel that raises it above its historical context and make it relevant to us today? Will it be relevant to readers a hundred years hence?

78. Robin Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 1:50 pm

    hurley – please don’t post entire articles on our site. It takes up too much room, is hard to read, and violates our commenting guidelines. I edited out the article but kept the link.

79. jdyer Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 3:33 pm

    Here is another idea for a show.

    How reliable are translations?

    We like to think that we that reading “world literature” gets us closer to those cultures whose novels or poetry we read.

    This is an illusion since most of us can only read these novels in translation. I just read Turgenev’s “First Love” (19th century Russian novel) and had a distinct sense that many if not most of the allusion to Russian literature didn’t come through. Often the allusions are intimated through puns which are almost impossible to translate.

    As I said on another thread the same is true for the Egyptian novelist Mahfouz. To really understand his work one would need to have knowledge of Arabic literature including the Koran which is often alluded to indirectly in the same way as even non religious British or American writers allude to the King James translation of the Bible.

    To read a work critically on has to read it in the original as all translations are mere approximations of the original text.

    Hence the idea that a show on translation is an urgent matter for us as too many people take translation for granted. As Poe would say (in the Purloined Letter) translations hide in plain sight.

    I hope a show on translation can make the invisible a little more visible for most us.

80. winston_dodson Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 3:43 am

    Title for show “Iraqi People sitting on trap door over a Meat Grinder – New Dem majority have hand on lever ready to pull”. With a subtitle “While America’s and the West’s enemies wait”

    “McGovern to Meet With Congress on War

    George McGovern, the former senator and Democratic presidential candidate, said Thursday that he will meet with more than 60 members of Congress next week to recommend a strategy to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by June.
    If Democrats don’t take steps to end the war in Iraq soon, they won’t be in power very long, McGovern told reporters before a speech at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “I think the Democratic leadership is wise enough to know that if they’re going to follow the message that election sent, they’re going to have to take steps to bring the war to a conclusion,” he said.”

    http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/09/D8LA01L00.html

    “The face of the new House

    The most outspoken member of the U.S. Congress in the Iraq war debate is U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, who aspires to become chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for funding the war.

    This powerful position will no doubt enable him to make good on his threats to cut funding for the Iraq war effort, thereby forcing the withdrawal of American troops.”

    http://www.cecilwhig.com/articles/2006/11/09/ralph/73.txt

    “Troops Fear The Loss Of Rumsfeld

    Indeed, some members of the 101st Airborne Division and other troops approached by The Times as they prepared to fly home from Baghdad airport yesterday expressed concern that Robert Gates, Mr Rumsfeld’s successor, and the Democrat-controlled Congress, might seek to wind down their mission before it was finished.”

    http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008482.php

    “Total U.S. Withdrawal

    In December 1974, the Democratic majority in Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government and made unenforceable the peace terms. . . . ”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

    Effects on US Military

    “When all is said and done in connection with the Pentagon management shakeup, the Baker commission report and the Dems actively taking control of the legislative branch, I for one will be watching the reenlistment rate among the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect many troops will opt to return to civilian life if they feel that they no longer have support from the policymakers, rather than be jerked around by people who think like John Kerry. And if the re-up rate goes down, original enlistments will probably decrease, too. Nobody wants to fight in a war that the movers and shakers don’t want to win. That was true in Korea and Vietnam, and it’s true now.

    Any new trends should be apparent by March or so, if they are to happen. I guarantee you that any such change will be spun by the lamestream media as Bush’s fault, probably accompanied by NYT and WaPo opinion pieces bemoaning what a dumb thing it was to get rid of Rumsfeld.

    It sure would be interesting if Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) idea of reinstating the draft had to be implemented by a Democratic congress in order to maintain military force levels. I wonder what the political fallout from that would be in ‘08.

    As an aside, I also think that diminished capacity of our conventional forces, especially the Army and Marines, tends to make nuclear war more likely, because weakness encourages the enemy to attack, and when you must fight, you fight with what you have. The alternative is capitulation.”

    http://outoftherace.blogspot.com/2006/11/bellwether.html

    “Speak Up, Democrats

    Al Qaeda and Iran are both gloating over the U.S. election results. AQ’s chief in Iraq, Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir, actually mocked Bush while praising the Democrats’ victory in the congressional mid-term contests. According to an audio tape message attributed to Al-Mujahir, Americans had “voted for something reasonable in the last elections.”

    Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated that the Republican defeat at the polls “is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation.”

    The White House has declined to comment on these statements, but what about the Democrats? Doesn’t it behoove the Democrats to correct the claim that their ascension to power is good news for the enemies of the U.S.? Don’t they want to move quickly to disabuse Al Qaeda of the idea that Democrats represent something that these butchers deem “reasonable”?

    There’s even a precedent for speaking out right away. Bill Clinton, following his victory in 1992, addressed the enemies of the U.S. in one of his first statements as the new president-elect. Couching his remarks in terms of the transition from one president and party to another, Clinton said, “The greatest mistake any adversary could make would be to doubt America’s resolve” as power changed hands.

    Clinton reminded the world that “America has only one president at a time,” and added that, “even as America’s administrations change, America’s fundamental interests do not.”

    http://iraqpundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/speak-up-democrats.html

    Terror Cells in UK

    “What I can say is that today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don’t know) who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas. The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified.”

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2447690,00.html

    “Blair Says Terrorist Threat to Last ‘a Generation

    Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that the threat from home-grown Islamic terrorism would last “a generation,” reinforcing a highly unusual warning by the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency that some 1,600 suspects in 200 terrorist conspiracies were under surveillance.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world/europe/11terrorcnd.html?ex=1320814800&en=c1835b1c5134183c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

    WHILE ENGLAND SLEPT : A Survey of World Affairs 1932 – 1938 (BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD)

    http://www.amazon.com/WHILE-ENGLAND-SLEPT-Affairs-CHANGED/dp/B000ERQCWE

    Why England Slept

    Why England Slept (ISBN 0313228744) is the published version of a thesis written by John F. Kennedy while in his senior year at Harvard College. Published in 1940,[1] the book examines the failures of the British government to take steps to prevent World War II and is notable for its uncommon stance of not castigating the appeasement policy of the British government at the time, instead suggesting that an earlier confrontation between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany could well have been more disastrous in the long run. One could consider these to be bold words given that at the time of writing the German army was sweeping across Europe and appeared near-invincible.

    Its title was an allusion to Winston Churchill’s 1938 book While England Slept, which also examined the buildup of German power.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_England_Slept

81. hurley Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 6:48 am

    Apologies, Robin. I should have sent that to you directly, or just posted the link. I’ll figure this business out, someday. Thanks again in the meantime.

82. Mike Michaud Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 9:46 am

    Is anyone reading Cormac McCarthy? This week’s show on reading lists was fascinating and now that the Dems are back in power we’re all ready to take up fiction again… McCarthy has a new book out this fall and while I’ve not yet finished it, it seems to take up the question of what might have happened had 11/9 not occured:

    http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-0307265439-0

    McCarthy is our living American Dostoyevski, or Faulkner at the least. Edna O’Brien is great, but McCarthy is mapping the America we’re all worried over. Who knows, maybe Chris could even get him to come on the show (he’s famously unavailable).

83. winston_dodson Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 10:59 am

    To help answer the question “Why now” to the story that I pitched above

    Rumsfeld’s departure pleases Arab press
    Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
    “No tears are being shed over him”

    Many Middle East press commentators view what they dub the “fall” of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as symbolic of the perceived failure of US policy in Iraq as a whole.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6138966.stm

84. nhboy Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    So we’ve heard a lot about Ohio, Tennessee, Arizona, Rhode Island, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania…but what about New Hampshire?

    We just kicked out our two Republican congressmen, affirmed our Democratic governor with overwhelming support, took control of the house, senate, and executive council. We were the only state in the nation to reverse our vote in 2004 (we went for Bush in ‘00 and Kerry in ‘04), again, one step ahead of the electorate that finally caught up in ‘06.

    Our economy is changing…in the past month, features in The Union Leader have chronicled the demise of the timber and granite industries and the rise of a federal prison in the northern part of the state. High tech is booming in the south and our exports are up.

    In housing, there’s this from a recent Union Leader piece: “The Manchester-Nashua metropolitan area is the eighth-best nationally to invest in a home purchase and will experience 35 percent appreciation over the next five years, according to Business 2.0 magazine.”

    Our population is aging, educated, and wealthy. We are the northern MA suburbs, but there’s more to it than just that…

    So, how about a post-election show on your northern neighbor? Are we simply the last northeastern state to swap red for blue? Is there something else going on up here that sheds light on the national picture? What will the country find in ‘08 when it returns to New Hampshire for the primary. This ain’t your father’s Granite State…how about it?

85. vigneron Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

    “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” U.S. Constitution – Article I, Section 9.

    A Bill of Attainder is a law that specifically applies to a group of persons. I’m referring to detainees held by the military, charged with crimes under our domestic law for actions done in a foreign nation.

    Ex post facto. Congress has given immunity for crimes committed by our agents against enemies in the field and detainees.

    I want my Constitution back!

86. walkerhenry Says:
    November 12th, 2006 at 10:10 am

    Stephen Kinzer’s opinion piece about Ortega and Nicaragua in today’s NY Times makes it sounds like the strangest place on earth, politically (except maybe Arizona). I’d love to hear more about the truth or exaggeration of these allegations of child abuse, spouse-Rasputins, and monumental hypocrisy.

87. Jon Says:
    November 12th, 2006 at 1:44 pm

    Last year’s pre-Thanksgiving show, Thanksgiving 2.0, focused on the culinary aspects of Thanksgiving. I’d suggest for this year a show that might be called Thanksgiving 1.0, or some other title that better captures the essence of the following: Thanksgiving is a unique holiday that brings families together across many great divides, some or all of which might be interesting to probe in this hour. I’d recommend, however, starting the program with some brief history of the holiday, possibly through a selective reading of some of the more interesting presidential Thanksgiving proclamations (http://www.pilgrimhall.org/ThanxProc.htm). A very interesting issue that stems quickly from the proclamations is the question of to whom are we giving thanks? And in particular, what is the take on this for those who do not believe in God? Check out http://atheism.about.com/od/religiousholidays/p/Thanksgiving.htm for leads on this, as well as http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1103/thanksgiving.html for a more humorous approach. It may also be of interest to explore this holiday from the perspective offered by the United American Indians of New England, who have turned the feast day upside down and created a day of fasting and mourning (http://www.uaine.org). And apparently not only do the U.S.A. and Canada have their Thanksgiving, but related holidays are celebrated in Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Liberia, and Switzerland (http://www.thanksgiving.org/2world.html). But now on to lighter aspects of this show—there is a wealth of material dealing with what happens when relatives return from distant locales to join around the Thanksgiving dinner table. This includes essays (http://www.humorgazette.com/thanks04.htm), kitchen humor (http://www.cyber-kitchen.com/holidays/thanksgiving/humor.htm), the cartoon drawings of “a dysfunctional family thanksgiving” by Lauren Weinstein (http://www.gurl.com/showoff/comix/pages/0,,653201,00.html), and of course the movies. I was amazed, for example, to read the following “review” written by a fan of “Home for the Holidays”: “I have watched this movie every year for 8 years. My copy was burned with my daughter’s house and I really have to have another copy for this Thanksgiving. This movie represents so many families in this country. The writer must have experienced this type of family life. This movie is on par with ‘The Christmas Story’, concerning the BB gun. Cannot go through either holiday without these movies.”
    (http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?ean=027616865700&crvAll=1&crvStart=1&displayonly=CRV&z=y&mode=A,%20A,%20A,%20A). And of course movies related to Thanksgiving just keep coming, perhaps the most recent being “Momma’s Boy” (2006), described at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493024/ as “Plot Outline: Bad things happen when a young guy brings his fiancé home for Thanksgiving;
    User Comments: Dysfunctional family fun (more).” Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

88. patsyb Says:
    November 13th, 2006 at 10:08 am

    Great theater shows us how individuals work out their lot as human beings, realigning their dreams, sharing their stories, and above negotiating the tensions and the pressures, personal, cultural, mythic even. Great performances demonstrate how the personal is universal. Samuel Beckett did it brilliantly, and Eugene O’Neil — and now Marie Jones, whose “A Night in November” is currently playing at the Jimmy Tingle Off-Broadway Theater (Davis Sq., Somerville, MA.). An acting tour de force about Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants, but also about succumbing to and overcoming cultural blinders and bigotry. Isn’t it time we ask how actors they do it? Invite Marty Maguire in while he’s in town — and Marie Jones on the phone, why not, to tell us how playwrights write it?

89. Scarequotes Says:
    November 13th, 2006 at 6:09 pm

    Where’s all of our plastic ending up?

    Susan Casey has an article in the current issue of Best Life magazine — which does not, unfortunately, make it available online — arguing that plastic is going to be a crisis on the scale of AIDS or global warming. Why? Because almost every piece of plastic ever created still exists.

    Large pieces have created a miles-wide mass in the Pacific Ocean. Smaller particles are found throughout the sea and on beaches. Animals eat it. We eat it. And it may really wreak havoc on our systems.

    Though Casey’s article isn’t online, another blog tracked some related online articles: Plastics, Plastics Everywhere and Drowning in an Ocean of Plastic, among others.

    Should we be more concerned about plastic? If so, what do we do — or can we avoid being killed by one of our most convenient creations?

90. Scarequotes Says:
    November 14th, 2006 at 2:47 am

    The perils of serial narrative.

    Noel Murray’s done three articles at the Onion’s AV Club about how their natures as serial media undermine some of the artistry of TV and comic books. (Part 1, TV. Parts 2A and 2B, comics.)

    There are some things that television will always do better than movies, like building characters and plots over long stretches of time, and playing out premises in different permutations. But it’s still rare to find a TV series that works as a complete, seamless work of art, with no dead spots or false starts.

    But at the same time, the persistent pacing problems of comics is in some ways inherent to the way the medium has arranged itself. The art of editing—so crucial to movies and novels—isn’t as easy in comics, where cutting something that’s not working might mean spending days or weeks rearranging and redrawing pages.

    Adam Sternbergh in New York has his own analysis of why shows like Lost don’t work, long-term, and argues for the creation of the limited-run show.

    More and more of the popular art forms these days — TV, comics, even movies — are episodic by nature. What are the challenges of episodic storytelling, and are there latter-day Dickenses able to produce great art by the episode? (Or was even Dickens himself sometimes stymied by serial publication?)

91. David Says:
    November 14th, 2006 at 11:06 am

    Mike Michaud: I’m not reading Cormac McCarthy — and I think for some reason almost no one in the office has — but your note reminded me that I’m missing something. Is “The Road” the place to start?

    Winston: I can’t find the show you pitched above! Where/what was it?

    NHBoy: I think this will be a hard sell. I agree that NH is interesting right now — and could make an engaging story even for a national audience — but I get the sense, both anecdotally and from the number of comments to our last few election shows, that our listeners aren’t ready for more election horse-racing. ‘06 is done. Let’s wait at least a months before ‘08 starts…

    But when it does, we’ll do our best not to ignore a fascinating story just north of us.

    Vigneron: We’ve done a number of shows about executive power, torture, and detainee rights. Are you suggesting another angle?

    Walkerhenry: I’ll check out that article.

    Jon: We’re actually working on a show for Thanksgiving Day that might — I’m just guessing here — be more up your alley than “Momma’s Boy.” Chris interviewed Daniel Barenboim when the Maestro was giving his Norton Lectures at Harvard a month and a half ago. I’m still cutting it, but the plan is for the pre-recorded hour on Thanksgiving.

92. chilton1 Says:
    November 15th, 2006 at 2:04 am

    Scarequotes Says: October 27th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
    “With shows such as The Wire, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, and Veronica Mars ……
    I know (from doing a site search) that Chris doesn’t own a TV, but we may be living in a golden age of television. I’d love to see a show where the best of fiction on American TV gets the same respect and serious consideration as poetry. (Which certainly deserves the attention, as well.)”

    I agree Mr. Scarequotes…something is happening.
    I see writers fighting back against reality TV
    with The Office, Extras, Reno 911,…
    but these writers use reality TV (and would’nt work before or without it)
    fiction is indeed stranger then truth
    or what is truth
    I love this blur
    (this blur occurs in a different way in works such as Eggers’ Heartbreaking Work or Pamuk’s New Life)

93. chilton1 Says:
    November 15th, 2006 at 2:08 am

    I am with Mike Michaud on McCarthy (except the Dostoyevski bit)

94. JamesT Says:
    November 15th, 2006 at 2:44 pm

    Moral and cultural perspectives are present in every human interaction, every story, every issue. Every thought necessarily originates from some perspective, and the variety of perspectives often paralyzes us as we seek agreement. How about a story on relativism? Are there any absolute truths? Are “Brown’s human universals” simply the biologically based traits of a species, or are the underpinnings of moral development universally present across cultures? Clifford Geertz and Steven Pinker offer positions on this.
    On Geertz: http://newcriterion.com/archives/lead-article/10/geertz-windschuttle/
    On Pinker: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/

    Now take this subject out of the academy and bring it to the people. Understanding relativism might help us sort through practical issues that confound us:

    1. Taking of life: OK at war; not OK at home; OK for self defense; not OK for mercy, maybe or maybe not OK for prisoners…
    2. Genital mutiliation of females vs. routine circumcision of males: How are these different?
    3. If it’s OK to have single-sex schools, is it OK for private clubs to exclude entire classes of people (gender, race, religion)?

    Why now? I sense that Open Source listners, readers and writers are seeking to make sense of the world. We want tools that can be applied in all cases. An understanding of cultural and moral perspectives is one such tool. This could be an installment in the “intellectual toolkit,” which might include future pieces on rationality and reason, language, emotion, persuasion, etc. Once a month or quarter, Open Source can familiarize its constituents with a new tool and help us grow.

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