Mark Skoda, one of the organizers of the first-ever national Tea Party convention in Nashville, is no revolutionary. “I get irritated when people say, ‘Let’s take our country back.’ We have a country,” he told one interviewer at the three-day-long gathering earlier this month. “In America, we only have to move the dial a little bit. We’re not off the rails.
I should not speak ill of the dead, but what of the dead who spoke ill of the dead? Many years ago an acquaintance of mine applied for a position at the Museum of the City of New York, over which Louis Auchincloss presided. The search committee met in the writer’s apartment on Park Avenue. When the candidate was asked to describe what he would do to improve the institution, he replied that too many people were not represented in its galleries, and noted in particular the inadequacy of the museum’s portrayal of African Americans.
Sunday, February 7, 3:28 p.m. Among the convention’s several last-minute saves—opening the conference to media, replacing one speaker who fell ill and another who dropped last minute—was bringing on Andrew Breitbart.
Here's one thing about the Tea Party movement everyone can agree on: It's confusing. With decentralization as a core value, the Tea Party phenomenon can seem like a baffling collection of individuals and organizations, often divided against each other. But with its first national convention now underway in Nashville, and as Tea Party groups gear up for campaigns around the country, it's time we met the movement's main players. Herewith, a handy guide.
KEY DATES IN THE MOVEMENT
Recent polls show their movement is thought of more favorably by Americans than either the Democratic or Republican Parties. Political independents are said to be attracted more each day. Progressive dissenters against the “pro-corporate” policies of the Obama administration pine for alliances with them.
A massive 7.0 earthquake that erupts beneath a poor, densely populated city is going to have horrifying consequences in any scenario. But as Henry Fountain reports, the devastation in Haiti was made so much worse by the shoddy construction of buildings in Port-au-Prince:
The economists tell us that the recession is over or, at least, nearly over. A California woman named Claudia Bruce might not agree:
Claudia Bruce was laid off from her well-paying job 13 months ago after the economy fell. Now, Bruce is among a growing number of people who, in what seemed like an instant, went from middle class incomes to relying on public assistance.
Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties fed a record-breaking 272,000 people in November. That 16 percent increase from the same time last year denotes a concerning trend for the 300 or so local agencies distributing its food.
The latest edition of MetroMonitor--our ground-up view of the recession and recovery--is out today, looking at economic indicators through the third quarter of 2009. The bottom line: It’s still a big country. Some places had largely recovered by September, while others still hadn’t bottomed out yet. Check out the report for all the details, but here are a few amuse- bouches to whet your appetite:
The manufacturing belt surges… but it may be temporary. One of the big stories over the course of the recession has been the devastation wrought in “auto country,” particularly the upper Midwestern portion in metro areas like Detroit, Grand Rapids, Toledo, and Youngstown. But during the months of July through September, output grew, and job loss slowed, in these and other auto-focused metro areas. Signs point to the cash-for-clunkers program, which seemed to have a hand in boosting auto and auto parts production in these and many other regions across the country. Whether the trend continues into the current quarter, after the program expired, remains to be seen.
Education continues to be a mainstay… but government is slipping. Employment in educational services continued to grow in the third quarter, rising by 1.4 percent overall, and increasing in 77 of the 100 largest metro areas. And many centers of education--Austin, Madison, Syracuse, Washington, D.C.--continue to rank among the best-performing metropolitan areas over the course of the recession. However, government employment--a mainstay over the past two years—showed signs of slipping in a number of metro areas, particularly those including state capitals where budget crises loom. Honolulu, Nashville, Baltimore, Columbia (SC), and Albany saw government job growth in the second quarter turn into job loss in the third quarter.
Robert Altman: The Oral Biography
By Mitchell Zuckoff
(Knopf, 592 pp., $35)
Here is your exam question: who is the last American movie director who made thirty-nine films but never won the Oscar for best director? Name the film by that director that cost the most money, and name the film of his that earned the most. Clue: The Departed, which must have been around Martin Scorsese’s thirtieth picture, and did win the directing Oscar, cost $90 million (four times as much as any of this man’s films cost)--so don’t go that way. Background info: Gosford Park cost $15 million; Nashville cost $2.2 million; M.A.S.H. cost about $3.5 million, and earned around $70 million; Popeye cost $20 million (in 1980). Here is your assignment: assess and reconcile these allegations in an essay of approximately 3,000 words. (Note: banish from your mind any insinuation that nowadays a director who makes thirty-nine films has to be given a best director Oscar--though it is not easy to think of many that fecund who don’t have a bronze fetish to nurse at night.)
Foreign policy is always difficult in a democracy. Democracy requires openness. Yet foreign policy requires a level of secrecy that frees it from oversight and exposes it to abuse. As a result, Republicans and Democrats have long held that the intelligence agencies--the most clandestine of foreign policy institutions--should be insulated from political interference in much the same way as the higher reaches of the judiciary. As the Tower Commission, established to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal, warned in November 1987, "The democratic processes ...
The lingering questions of the Thomas and Ginsburg hearings anxiously converged in a sexual harassment case before the Court this week. Can sexual banter in the workplace be punished if it offends women without affecting their job performance? And are men's and women's perspectives about sex so vastly different that women need special protection from the vulgarity of men?
