In a post awhile back on great jazz clips on YouTube, Rusty made an interesting comment. When I stated that the jazz we remember today is a much-filtered and refined sample of all the jazz that existed back in the mid-century, and that I doubted whether a similar tradition-formation was happening with rock ‘n’ roll, he answered, “I believe we are doing the same thing to rock that was done to jazz oh-so-many years ago. It may not be Devo in the long run, but Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and a small cadre of bands seem to have a staying power that surprises me.”

He’s right, they do have a staying power, and it surprises me as well. I was a hard-core Pink Floyd and Zeppelin fan in college, and I attended one of the few “The Wall” concerts they gave (I think the entire U.S. tour was a week in New York and a week in Los Angeles). But when I listen to “The Wall” today, it sounds like a mix...

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, spoke with ABC News recently about the Kindle 2, and he added some remarks about the future of print books as well. The interview is here, and the summary includes this:

“While Bezos built his company around books, today he said he thinks that books in their current form are becoming obsolete, and he’s giving them a shove off the shelf with a gizmo that does away with the need for paper and ink.

“But Bezos says he’s not announcing the death of the book.

“‘I am here to announce the birth of Kindle 2,’ which he thinks can co-exist with old-fashioned books — for now, at least.”

Listen to the interview for what he says about “the smell of books,” and also for his final remark about letting consumers decide whether print books or e-books will dominate reading in years to...

Don’t mind her. She’s “enduring the labor of composition.”

The National Council of Teachers of English has a series on 21st century literacies, and this week at the CCCC in San Francisco, it will release the third paper in the series entitled “Writing between the Lines — and Everywhere Else.” (Go here for the press release.) The announcement provides the rationale, noting that while students complete writing assignments for school, “today, as in the past, much writing also goes on outside of school, and students don’t recognize their self-directed, often online, out-of-school writing as writing that counts as much as the writing they do in school.”

Well, one might say, why in the world should they regard texting, posting, blogging, tweeting, and the rest as counting as much as class assignments? They aren’t graded, they don’t require...

Today in The Wall Street Journal, John Walters, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under Bush II, announces “Drug Legalization Isn’t the Answer.” Rising violence in Mexico and the recent report headed by three former presidents in Mexico are putting the effectiveness and cost of the War on Drugs back into the national discussion, and Walters’ op-ed unambiguously argues for the wisdom of existing policies.

From the opening paragraphs, however, the bias is clear. Walters reasonably cites statistics showing declining drug use among young people in recent years, but then proceeds to the following statement:

“For decades, we did not want to believe that alcohol or drugs could have the power to take over our lives, despite the evidence we witnessed when our loved ones...

With so much vulgarity, cacophony, juvenalia, and doltishness spilling from mass culture, it is necessary for people to sprinkle their hours with momentary antidotes — better words, images, and sounds.

You can’t escape the swell. I belong to the faculty/staff gym at Emory University, and even though almost everybody is 45+, we have to endure teeny-bopper twaddle over the speakers at all hours (I’m SU-per-GIRL! I’m EV-ery-WHERE . . .”). I take my little boy to the Children’s Museum in Atlanta all the time for fun stuff, but at the last Bob the Builder presentation to 3- and 4-year-olds, they cranked up the volume for Devo, “Whip It Good.”

Teen pop has spread up and down the age ladder, from preschool to middle age. That’s why regular reprieves are crucial, songs and poems and paintings that lift you out of the puerile muck. YouTube has a whole bunch of them from TV shows back in ...

The editors of The Chronicle of Higher Education received a letter from Bill Moyers in response to my blog post from last week. (See here for the post and comments.) Here is the text in full, and my answer follows.

To the Editors of the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle Review and The Brainstorm:

In his vituperative attack on me (“The Moyers Controversy,” February 25), Brainstorm Blogger Mark Bauerlein irresponsibly and egregiously misrepresented my journalism, relied on second hand and groundless sources to support his venom, and distorted the record beyond recognition – all the while failing to ask for my comment on his charges and ignoring what I have in fact published about them.

Bauerlein is not telling the truth when he says that my broadcast on shock jocks in the media “asserts”...

President Obama’s address this week turned out one of the biggest viewing audiences ever for a chief executive’s visit to the chamber. But while people at home were admiring Obama’s delivery and accepting or rejecting his statements, some in the seats in front of him were doing something else.

Here’s the story by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. Several members of the House and Senate came to the occasion equipped with real time digital tools, and before and during the speech, they sent out “content,” what they saw and heard and judged. Or, as Milbank puts it, “They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class.”

Some of their broadcasts:

“‘One doesn’t want to sound snarky, but it is nice not to see Cheney up there,’...

If you go to this YouTube site, you’ll find a segment of Bill Moyers’ Journal devoted to conservative talk radio and its incitement of hate. The springboard is a murder in Knoxville. A man walked into a Unitarian church and opened fire, killing one man before parishioners wrestled him to the floor. The killer was deranged, and one motive was, according to police, his “stated hatred for the liberal movement.”

He targeted the church because, among other things, the narrator says, it “openly welcomes gays and lesbian and transgendered members.” And the vitriol spilling from conservative books and talk radio spurred him on, the show asserts.

But a recent Washington Post story calls into question whether Bill Moyers has any standing at all to raise the tolerance issue.

This weekend The Wall Street Journal has a long story on the drug war in Mexico (see here). Murder, torture (some gruesome cases are mentioned), turf battles, extortion, kidnappings, and corruption are up, and in some areas civil society is on the verge of collapse. The number of people killed in drug-related violence in 2008 was more than double the 2007 figure. One Monterey police official admits, “The gangs have taken over the border, our highways, and our cops.”

The Journal lists several reasons for the increases.

One, when in 2000 voters ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had dominated for 71 years, longstanding policies and “alliances” that “kept a check on drug-related violence” disappeared.

Two, tighter border security after 9/11 made Mexcian gangs look for more markets inside Mexico,...

David Horowitz gave a speech at Emory this week, and he lived up to the advance billing posted here. It was a provocative, in-your-face lecture, and he railed against Islamic radicalism, Jimmy Carter, liberal professors, and Arab anti-Semitism.

There were no disruptions this time, no protests. But the evening turned out to be an utter disappointment. While Horowitz was pointed and passionate, the audience response was feeble and flat. Nearly every questioner opposed the speaker, but their opposition came down to one repeated phrase: “I’m offended.” They felt that Horowitz insulted their religion, their politics, their ethnicity, and they told him so — earnestly and courageously.

But they didn’t say much more. To Horowitz’s contempt of Jimmy Carter for, in his view, cozying...