At Barak Obama's second inauguration yesterday, American Idol star Kelly Clarkson added a poignant chapter to the storied annals of America's least offensive patriotic anthem, My Country 'Tis of Thee. Seventy-four years ago, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson perform at the association's Constitution Hall in Washington because the celebrated contralto was African-American. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest, and weeks of controversy ensued. On April 9, 1939, 75,000 people turned out to hear Anderson sing at an outdoor Easter Sunday recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Interior Secretary...

21 January, 2013

Canadians tend not to think of Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a funny guy, but check out this anecdote from George W. Bush's presidential memoir, recounted in Maureen Dowd's New York Times column this morning: He writes of a visit to Russia, when Putin showed him his black Labrador, Koni. “Bigger, stronger, and faster than Barney,” Putin bragged. Later, when W. recounted this to Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, Harper drolly noted, “You’re lucky he only showed you his dog.”...

07 November, 2010

Salon's Glenn Greenwald digs out a prescient morning-after column by Hunter S. Thompson of all people, published on 9/12/2001: The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare...

13 September, 2010