This has been bothering me for a while, and yet I’ve hesitated to write about it because to do so properly requires gathering a lot more data than I have, or have access to. But I’ve concluded that perhaps I can shed a bit of my frustration if I put a few words down on (virtual) paper. Here is the headline of a report in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, which consists of teachers’ comments about returning to classrooms: “‘I’m scared. I... Read more
In the news last night: “Chicago-Area Leaders Call for Illinois to Abolish History Classes.” Here are the first few paragraphs: Leaders in education, politics and other areas gathered in suburban Evanston Sunday to ask that the Illinois State Board of Education change the history curriculum at schools statewide, and temporarily halt instruction until an alternative is decided upon. At a news conference, State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford said current history teachings lead to a racist society and overlook the contributions... Read more
Featured on NBC News on Tuesday: “Rep. Jayapal asks that her name be properly pronounced after colleague gets it wrong; ‘Jayapal. If you’re going to say my name, please say it right. It’s Jayapal.'” You have to listen to the twitter clip, of course, to hear it: After Lesko mispronounces Pramila Jayapal's name the first time, she butchers the pronunciation the second time and Jayapal was not having it.@RepJayapal: "Jayapal, if you're going to say my name, please say it... Read more
My husband is German. Well, as of two years ago, he is also American, but he spent his childhood in Germany, came to the U.S. for grad school, and stayed. Which meant that he had to accustom himself to American culture — and at the same time, I had to learn that some of his quirks were really more a matter of his German culture not being entirely the same as American culture: it pains him to be late, for... Read more
Will Joe Biden govern as the moderate that he presented himself as? Or will he succumb to the temptation to try to be the “next FDR” to be remembered by posterity? Or is he, in fact, so frail that he has no control over anything at all, and it’s all a matter of who, behind the scenes, is controlling him? There’s a new document out, the Unity Task Force Recommendations, which is an extended policy platform and which should provide... Read more
So I’m working my way through Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, which is admittedly over a decade old now (published in 2007). A bit of a summary as well as its reception at the time is available at Wikipedia: her key argument is that not only was Hoover inept in how he reacted to the emerging depression (especially in implementing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff) but that FDR also, by his actions prolonged the Depression. ... Read more
“Freedom,” Winston writes in George Orwell’s 1984, “is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” Is there an objective truth? Postmodern intellectuals have been insisting that’s not the case for long enough now, though, of course, once-upon-a-time that was in the sense that there is no objective “right” or “wrong” morally speaking, or that what defines great literature or art is not objectively discernable (nor is it possible to discern... Read more
Hey, everyone — the article below might seem outdated, but I had been shopping it around for publication, got quizzical looks, and I finally concluded I don’t have the time or motivation to try to wordsmith it to make it more persuasive, if, indeed, that is possible. So please be patient with the length of it and share your reaction in the comments. Everyone has made their pronouncements about the Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia Supreme Court decision in which... Read more
Chicago is, its civic leaders worry, a place of deep income divides — from deeply impoverished Grand Crossing (median income $21,135) to wealthy West De Paul (median income $148,113), as a browse of Statistical Atlas reveals. It’s a city where those leaders fret that the middle class is leaving, leaving a sharp divide between the rich and poor, and it shows up as one of the “most segregated cities” in the United States (for example, #4 in USA Today, assessing metro... Read more
Sometimes I write about politics. Sometimes I have things I want to say that I want to communicate, that I want others to hear, that I want to persuade people of. Other times I know that I offer no particular expertise on a subject but just want to get something off my chest. But I am aware that I haven’t said much about Trump lately. The words I’d use to describe the situation, well, require a lot of finger-stretching to... Read more
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