Mitt Romney on life with his late father George and the lesson of his derailed presidential bid, by Sridhar Pappu for Capital New York
When Americans of Romney’s vintage turn to the subject of 1968, it is often to talk regretfully about a future that never came to pass, and of what a country led by Robert Kennedy or Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller, or Eugene McCarthy might have looked like.
But because it was Romney, we were speaking of his late father George—once the governor of Michigan and, more importantly, the ghostly engine of his son’s own ambition to seek out the presidency no matter the political or financial price.
George Romney’s presidential bid was undone when the early advocate of the Vietnam War went to Southeast Asia to find not a successful military effort, but a disillusioned armed forces waging an unwinnable campaign.
“I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam, not only by the generals but also by the diplomatic corps over there,” Romney said some time afterward. “And they do a very thorough job.”
Sharon Van Etten /// “Warsaw” /// Tramp
All the good singers have three names.
The ladies of “Twin Peaks” at last weekend’s “Twin Peaks” burlesque event (and yes, the pun is intended). Read Dan Rosenblum’s review (and watch more video of the performances) here.
Happy Birthday Philip Glass. We are excited and honored to be publishing his memoir next year!
That’ll be on our reading list. But for tonight, Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 9 is set to have its U.S. premiere at Carnegie Hall, as part of his “75th Birthday Concert.” Check out Seth Colter Walls’s interview with Glass over at Capital New York:
“There is a special political agenda [of mine] which can be seen, not in every piece … . But there’s a very strong, I would say, awareness of the way in which entertainment and theater and film and opera and music can participate in an active dialog with public.”
“Active,” Glass repeats immediately for emphasis. “Active!”
Seth Colter Walls on “Luck,” the new HBO series from David Milch (of “Deadwood” and “NYPD Blues” fame): “On the surface, it’s about the world of the racetrack, where horses, trainers, jockeys, their agents (and, oh right, gamblers) are all jostling to handicap and then improve their fortunes. But like all of Milch’s best work, the principal character, the one haunting every scene, even though invisible, is the specter of information itself.”
“Our New York canon is large-bore: little pieces adding up to a grander context. The list is meant to be encompassing, but not complete. It is representative and intended to be sensitive to the city’s extraordinary diversity in perspectives — ideological, racial, ethnic, sexual — but it is not the product of a committee or based on a quota.
Rather, the aim is to create a composite reflection of how New York got this way, how its bridges and subways were built, how its power structure and political culture evolved, how its pastiche of unique neigh-borhoods developed, collapsed and rose again, and how some of its citizens survive on the bottom rung and others succeed or fail on the top.”
Yes. Especially Here is New York.
(Source: esquared)
Bloomberg on the city’s 1,172 electronic typewriters and a plan to order more of them:
“Nobody’s using a typewriter because they want to, they’re using a typewriter because they have to. They still have a function. And your belief that typewriters have gone away is just erroneous. There are companies that make typewriters around the world. It’s like books. Some people, believe it or not, still read books in paper.”
This is an amazing lede, actually, esp. from the Times: “The Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park is no more, but the focus it brought to income inequality is having an impact in Albany and beyond.”
(Source: inothernews)
TONIGHT. FREE. 7PM. Join Dr. Benjamin Chavis, co-founder of Occupy the Dream; Allison Kilkenny, contributor for The Nation, In These Times and co-host of Citizen Radio; Malik Rhasaan, co-founder of Occupy the Hood; Rachel Schragis, designer of the Flow Chart of the Declaration of the Occupation of NYC, Steven Syrek of the Occupy Wall Street People’s Library and Ryan Devereaux reporter for The Guardian by way of Democracy Now! along with Julie Gueraseva and Andy Stepanian of The Sparrow Project as they discuss where Occupy has taken us, where it can bring us, and what to expect in 2012.
The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City 2nd ed. booklet is a collection of the official statements drafted by the New York City General Assembly, a Letter from the Occupiers at Tahrir Square to the Occupiers of Wall Street, and an expanded resource list for occupiers to organize and network with. Taking inspiration from the pamphlet that sparked the Mai 1968 uprisings in Paris, France, the crowd-funded, design-savvy Declaration has already received acclaim from Vanity Fair, Current Television, and other forward-thinking media outlets.
Twenty thousand copies of The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City will be made available for free during the event. Attendees are encouraged to each take a bundle and help distribute them around the city.
Recommended. How do you think the Occupy movement should evolve in 2012?
By all objective measures, a bill to update a 42-year-old law in order to better govern a safe, legal medical procedure and protect women’s health shouldn’t be particularly controversial. But when that bill is the Reproductive Health Act, and the law it seeks to update relates to abortion care, experience shows that a few vociferous groups will try to create controversy where there is none.
New Yorkers deserve to know the truth.
