The Obama gift shop
Is it just me, or is there something a bit tone-deaf about the products on sale at the Obama campaign’s online shop?
Along with the Obama golf balls, there are Obama golf towels and divot replacement tools. There are Obama grilling aprons and spatulas for the barbecue, and tumblers and martini glasses for the party at the country club.
Martini glasses? Really?
On the other hand, I like the in-your-face Made in America mug and the Cats for Obama cat collar. If Dudley were willing to tolerate a collar (he’s not), we might consider it.
Nukespeak
Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I was a college freshman and (I think) the youngest member of the Boston-area Clamshell Alliance.
That’s how I first met Steve Hilgartner, the baby-faced, iron-spined antinuclear activist. A few years later I got to know Steve Hilgartner and Dick Bell a bit better when I worked one summer as an energy researcher for a nonprofit they had set up on Beacon Hill. And when their book Nukespeak came out from Sierra Club Books (with coauthor Rory O’Connor) they signed my copy, which still has an honored place on my shelf
Recently I saw that a book called Nukespeak had just been published. My first reaction was outrage: Someone stole my friends’ title! But as it turns out, Sierra Club has followed its original post-Three Mile Island edition of Nukespeak with a new post-Fukushima edition, available as an ebook (more details at the Nukespeak website).
50 documentaries to see
Yes, I know that’s not the complete title. But the title is what I like least about Morgan Spurlock’s project 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die. A title like that creates not only a sense of obligation but a sense of impending mortality. It’s not really necessary to say “before you die.” I’m not going to see them after I die, am I?
The upside is that, at least for most us, seeing 50 documentaries is not an impossible task. A motivated person could do it in a month while holding down a full-time job. The same could not be said for projects like the one posed by the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.
Various people have complained about notable films that are missing from the list, or about the fact that nearly all of them are American, and quite recent. Like some of the critics, I would have liked to see Hearts and Minds, Harlan County USA, and the 7 Up films included—not to mention Burden of Dreams, which I haven’t seen anyone else mention. But like this PBS reviewer, I think that the interest and discussion the series stirs up makes it more than worthwhile.
The complete list of 50 films is at the New York Times. Although I don’t consider myself a documentary buff, I’ve seen 16 of them, including Hoop Dreams and the rest of the top five, plus some memorable films like Grizzly Man, The Fog of War, The King of Kong, Waltz with Bashir, and Inside Job. I look forward to seeing more.
Saul Bellow and 9/11
I don’t know what Saul Bellow said about the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Very likely I wouldn’t agree with it. Bellow was politically quite conservative, something I didn’t know until I had read most of his work. But in Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck, his friend and would-be biographer Mark Harris quotes him as saying something worth thinking about today.
Harris had just driven from Vermont to visit Bellow at his house in Tivoli, New York.
I remember best of all ... standing at a window with Bellow and feeling fearful of the silence, the solitude of his surroundings, and remarking, “I’d be nervous. Do you own a gun?”
“No,” he beautifully replied, “why should somebody die because I’m nervous?”
September 11 was a terrifying day in New York City, and in Washington, DC, and in the skies over Pennsylvania. But it was no more terrifying than the nights of “shock and awe” endured by the people of Baghdad. Because we were afraid—and because that fear was whipped up and exploited—hundreds more innocent people died for every person who was killed on 9/11. They too should be remembered.
