Saturday Notes
Robert Fulford,"Meet the keystone kops of criticism," National Post, 5 December, argues that we should bring on the conflicts of interest in book reviewing. Without them, we're left with boring, pasty, sanitized, and stale criticism. Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for the tip.
Neither Aeon Skoble nor Brandon Watson were much impressed with Russell Jacoby,"Hannah Arendt's Fame Rests on the Wrong Foundations," CHE, 8 December.
Rob MacDougall is exploring"The Old, Weird America" at Old Is the New New, 6 December. Rob sees America with fresh eyes:
The old, weird America is a land of juke joints and revival preachers, medicine shows and haunted battlefields. It’s the music of Harmonica Frank, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, and the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers. It’s the home of Tom Joad and John Henry, Mike Fink and Stagger Lee. Where preachers speak in tongues and tricksters make deals at crossroads, where grifters run long cons and hoboes lure young lads with songs of candy, where eggheads make breathless, pointless lists of rustic exotica, the old, weird America is near.
It hadn't occurred to a Southerner like me that Sacred Harp Singing is weird. Does it matter that I was baptized in it at Harvard?
Donald Rumsfeld on the American history books he'd been reading during his recent years as Secretary of Defense:"I stopped reading about the Civil War because there were so many Americans killed ...". Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
Finally, in fairness to former President Carter, the case for plagiarism against him is pretty weak, especially if the only evidence is the two maps. If Ambassador Dennis Ross had a copyright on the maps that he had created and it can be shown that Carter's book reproduced them without permission, there's probably a case for violation of copyright. But, a clue for the guys at National Review: maps of the same geographical boundaries will – you know – have"a lot of similarities."