| Jew-Muslim dialogue deeper than it seems
Once every year, we Jews gather around the seder table to recount the Passover story, but one narrative has not found its way into the Ashkenazi (Eastern European Jewry) canon.
This past Tuesday, the eighth and final day of Passover, the Middle East Dialogue Group celebrated a festival with some 70 people interested in exploring the long-overlooked Moroccan Jewish Mimouna tradition.
According to Yigal Bin-Nun's April 7 article "Lady Luck" (from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz), the word "Mimouna" expresses its theological origins. It is normally depicted as a holiday of faith because of its similarity to the Hebrew word "emuna," or faith. It is linked to revolutionary rabbi and physician Maimonides because the celebration falls on his father Rabbi Maimon's birthday.
Paul Simon wins first Gershwin Prize for Popular Song
Musician and songwriter Paul Simon will be honoured with the first Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, a new award from the U.S. Library of Congress. The new award "recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world's culture," the Washington, D.C.-based Library of Congress said in a statement Monday announcing the winner. Paul Simon performs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in May 2006.(Alex Brandon/Canadian Press) "Few songwriters have had a broader influence or contributed more to song genres than Paul Simon," Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said. "Because of the depth, range and sheer beauty of his music, as well as its ability to bridge peoples and cultures, he is the perfect first recipient of this prestigious award." Simon, who achieved fame as part of the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel in the 1960s, went on to a solo career and worked closely with African performers for the 1986 album Graceland.
A host of support for Imus on Colorado's conservative talk radio
Summary: Several of Colorado's conservative talk-show hosts defended radio personality Don Imus in the controversy over his most recent racial slurs, ignoring his long history of making offensive and bigoted remarks on his nationally syndicated program. Mike Rosen, Peter Boyles, Dan Caplis, Joseph Michelli, and Amy Oliver downplayed the slur or suggested pop culture, especially rap music, was to blame. In the wake of the controversy regarding radio personality Don Imus' reference to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos," several Colorado-based conservative radio hosts defended Imus but ignored his history of making racist and bigoted remarks on the air. Newsradio 850 KOA's Mike Rosen, 630 KHOW-AM's Peter Boyles, 630 KHOW-AM's Dan Caplis, News Radio 740 KVOR's Joseph Michelli, and 1310 KFKA's Amy Oliver either downplayed the offensive comment or attempted to shift blame away from Imus and onto popular culture, specifically rap music, as the source of his racial slur.
Another look at SNL
NBC has ordered another documentary on the history of "Saturday Night Live," this time focusing on the show's up-and-down ride through the 1990s.
"Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation" is the third in a series of films about the late-night institution by director-producer Kenneth Bowser. .
An Intelligent Commentary: Cam'ron on '60 Minutes'
Now that hip-hop has become the fall guy and girl for teaching old ass Don Imus how to say "nappy-headed wench," oops I mean "hoe," and for turning young girls and women into strippers so we can exploit them in our videos even though strip clubs and stripping predates hip-hop by at least 5000 years, and for introducing and making the word "nigger" popular amongst Americans of all ages, I guess the next logical step is to blame hip-hop for law enforcements agencies inability and unwillingness to solve the assaults, rapes, and murders in our communities.
As we all know by now, rapper Cam'ron appeared on "60 Minutes" with Anderson Cooper to discuss "snitching" and the "street code of ethics." The interview plays out as if Cam'ron and other black youth in America's inner-cities are the originators and inventors of this "Code of Silence" concept.
All Hands on Holodeck
BY BRETT OPPEGAARD Columbian staff writer Something surprisingly like science fiction is being developed in the basement of WSU Vancouver's Classroom Building. The project started quietly but is now causing a commotion, like the smoke that recently oozed from the mysterious lab's corner doorway. The building had to be cleared. The fire department responded. Professor Dene Grigar sheepishly let everyone know that there was nothing to worry about. It was just mist, coming from one of the peripherals of her new virtual reality lab. Grigar is creating a prototype of a place where dream worlds can become elaborate interactive environments, like the holodeck on "Star Trek." At this point, she needs smoke. No mirrors. She will open the lab to the public for the first time Wednesday.
Al Franken… Gets Serious
Al Franken leans over the scattered papers atop his desk. He puffs out his pasty cheeks. His round brown glasses seem slightly too small for his face. His brown eyebrows arch up and he grins like Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman. "I gotta tell you," Franken says to me in his midtown Manhattan office, "I’ve been to Israel, and I didn’t enjoy it." He chuckles. He knows he’s telling this to a Jewish magazine. "I hate to say that," he continues. "I support Israel. But when I was there, in 1984, it was very high-pressured. It felt very"—he pauses to find the right word—"tense." Al Franken is a caricature of himself, which allows him to talk about serious issues without ever appearing to take himself too seriously. He can shuttle from the solemn to the sardonic as the straight man, often in droll monotone.
Why we must address both economics and values
From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, poverty policy was among the nastiest battlefields in the national culture war. Left and right slugged it out over why people were poor and how (or whether) to help them. Conservatives generally enjoyed the upper hand in these debates by focusing on individual-level causes of poverty, like family breakdown, drug addiction, and poor work habits -- pathologies said to be enabled by government largesse. This story line struck a chord with the American public, helping ensure the demise of the federal welfare entitlement and the introduction of strict work requirements in 1996. But since then, a structural understanding of poverty has come back in vogue, fueled by more awareness of globalization and dead-end jobs. Popular books like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Beth Shulman's The Betrayal of Work have drawn a fresh picture of the poor -- as mostly hardworking Americans who can't make ends meet through no fault of their own.
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