Month: January 2009

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Our new president’s first week was a good one, with big steps on torture, Gitmo, health care, education, and ending the secrecy that charactized the Bush era — but will he succeed at repairing the economy?  Will he be able to help with foreclosures?  JOHN NICHOLS will comment — he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation and he writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.
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Also: the Academy Award nominations are out — we’ll talk about some of our favorites, including “Milk,” starring Sean Penn as gay activist Harvey Milk, and “Waltz with Bashir,” the Israeli animated film about soldiers’ memories of the 1983 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
Award-winning film critic ELLA TAYLOR will comment —  she’s written for the LAWeekly, the Village Voice, the LA Times, the New York Times, The Atlantic and the Guardian.

Plus: our Gaza update from ROBERT DREYFUSS — he covers national security for Rolling Stone, and also writes for Mother Jones, The Nation and The American Prospect.

More stuff to read: my new piece in The Nation, “Rick Warren’s Clout.”

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ERIC FONER, KATHA POLLITT and HAROLD MEYERSON comment on Obama, history, and our future.
Highlights of Obama’s  inaugural address:  “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals”; and “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

–Eric teaches American history at Columbia, and has written many books, most recently Our Lincoln. His new essay in The Nation, “Our Lincoln,” explores the ways Americans have examined themselves though the lens of Lincoln.

–Katha is a poet, essayist, and columnist for The Nation, author most recently of Learning to Drive­.  She wrote about Rick Warren for the LA Times, and her most recent column is “Caroline and Me.”

—Harold is editor-at-large of The American Prospect and an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, where his latest column is about Obama’s speech.

Playlist: Stevie Wonder, “Higher Ground” — he sang it Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial concert for Obama; Beyonce, “At Last” — she sang it for Barack and Michelle Obama at the Neighborhood Ball last night.

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Five days left on the Bush countdown clock; in the president’s exit interviews, he has defended his handling of Katrina, Iraq, and Gitmo.  JOHN NICHOLS will comment on Clinton replacing Condi Rice, and whether Eric Holder will investigate Bush Administration constitutional violations.   John is Washington Correspondent for The Nation, and he writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Plus: Growing up black and affluent in LA:  JENNIFER BASZILE remembers the seventies in Palos Verdes – she was the first black female professor in the Yale history department, and her powerful and beautifully written new book is The Black Girl Next Door.

Also: Growing up in Iran in the eighties: AZAR NAFISI was expelled from the University of Tehran in 1981 after refusing to wear the veil. She went on to write the best-seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, and now she has a new memoir out: Things I’ve been Silent About.  Azar Nafasi will be speaking tonight/Wed. in the downtown LA Public Library ALOUD series at 700pm – 5th and Flower streets.

Gaza update: Israel for the first time in its 60-year history has banned Arab parties from participating in the upcoming election: READ the news in Haaretz.

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The Gaza disaster: MARK LeVINE comments on Israel’s invasion, now 12 days old, which has killed 660 Palestinians – while Palestinians have killed 6 Israelis.  Mark teaches Mideast history at UC Irvine, his most recent book is Heavy Metal Islam, and he’s written for the WashingtonPost.com, Al Jazeera International, and the Huffington Post.  READ Mark’s latest blog post on Gaza at History News Network.

Plus: Our Washington update: HAROLD MEYERSON of the Washington Post op-ed page talks about Obama’s latest appointments; and Your Minnesota Moment: Al Franken wins–but doesn’t take his Senate seat – yet.  READ Harold’s new piece, “A Page from the Hoover Playbook.”

Also: The hidden history of the Reagan revolution: corporate execs opposed to labor unions, government regulation and welfare spending were more important than right-wing Christians, anticommunist neo-cons and disgruntled working-class whites—that’s what KIM PHILLIPS-FEIN says.  They provided the money and the organization for a war against New Deal liberalism. Kim teaches US history at NYU and writes for The Nation; her new book is Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan.