• Hark, a Vagrant: Chopin and Liszt. Hark, A Vagrant! (2011-03-28). buy this print! Chopin! Liszt! I wanted to get back into the world of composers because let’s face it, they are Grade A comic material. Too bad I know relatively little about most of them. I went on a reading spree and came out with Chopin and Liszt, who were… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• What Happens if You Combine a Hundred Tourist Photos? [Photos] Max Read, Gawker (2011-02-21). Swiss artist Corinne Vionnet creates art for her series "Photo Opportunities" by overlaying hundreds of tourist photos (she finds them online) on top of one another. What she ends are these beautiful, shimmering things—Boing Boing calls them "metaportraits"—that are as recognizable as they are eerie. They look almost like oil… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• Solidarity Forever. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2011-02-20). "Acts of solidarity are going to be either gifts or entrepreneurial affairs, depending on how you understand the basic dynamics. If you wait around for someone in this tangled-up culture of ours to "deserve" solidarity, you'll just sit on your hands and nothing will change (except for the worse.) You… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• Is ignoring copyright the best strategy against IP monopolists? Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation (2011-03-20). Rick Falkvinge has an excellent editorial on the death of copyright if the IP industry ignores all appeals for sensible reform, such as those proposed by the Swedish Pirate Party. Kevin Carson has a further reaction: "I think ignoring the law and developing countermeasures against enforcement are a much more… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• feministhulk: HULK APPROACH SMASHING PATRIARCHY LIKE JUDITH BUTLER APPROACH WRITING SENTENCES: AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO GET JOB DONE! Twitter / feministhulk (2011-03-18). feministhulk: HULK APPROACH SMASHING PATRIARCHY LIKE JUDITH BUTLER APPROACH WRITING SENTENCES: AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO GET JOB DONE! (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

As far as I can tell, Jamie Kirchick, assistant editor for The New Republic,^[*] has devoted most of his young professional life to becoming exactly the sort of bright boy at the The New Republic whom Randolph Bourne had in mind when he wrote The War and the Intellectuals, and who, decades later, would make the best and the brightest into a bitter national joke. In any case, here’s something from his latest, a TNR blog post on Barack Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his recent speech on race:

Finally, what concerns me most about the Wright controversy isn’t the Pastor’s racist statements or even his unhinged views of Israel. I don’t think Obama agrees with any of that nonsense. What concerns me is the sort of comment that Wright made about Harry Truman’s ending World War II, that We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. This smacks of the Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky/Nation magazine wing of the American left that Democrats serious about this country’s security (and winning in November) should not want within 100 miles of the next administration.

— James Kirchick, The Plank (2008-03-21): Thoughts on a Speech

Let’s set aside, for the moment, Rev. Wright’s confusion about personal pronouns. I didn’t bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and I don’t think that he did, either. But that’s apparently not what Kirchick has a problem with. What he has a problem with is what such statements about the U.S. government smack of.

But, Mr. Kirchick, no matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Hiroshima?

No matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Nagasaki?

No matter what it may smack of to mention it, isn’t it true that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed somewhere around 210,000 civilian men, women and children — about 70 times the number of civilians killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

As far as I can tell, nothing that has provoked Jamie Kirchick’s outrage here is actually, you know, false. Perhaps he thinks that these are facts which it is rude to mention in public. But if being taken for serious about this country’s security (which is TNR-speak for this government’s wars) requires not mentioning them–that is, if being taken for serious requires silence or dissembling about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people for the sake of a shared vision of American power, then it is well worth asking just who the hell these assholes are who we’re supposed to prove our seriousness to. And what their notion of seriousness really amounts to. And why anyone should think she has to prove a damned thing to them.

(Via David Gordon, via Lew Rockwell 2008-03-23.)

Further reading:

• GT 2006-02-06: Dr. Strangeread, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Our Troops