Tuesday, January 27, 2009

WEB BOHEMIAN (Tuesday, January 27, 2009)
(1)- CHANGING AMERICA – The Atlantic Monthly reports: The election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation of a larger trend: the gradual erosion of “whiteness” as the touchstone of what it means to be American. If the end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream look like—and how will white Americans fit into it?

(2)- ANOTHER MEXICO -- Story after story depicts Mexico as a country overrun by out-of-control drug wars and murder, where corrupt police officers trip over beheaded victims more often than they nab perpetrators. South of the border, a beauty queen smuggles drugs. Kidnappers take a hostage negotiator hostage. People with money keep security SWAT teams close by. But there is another Mexico!

(3)- SHAKESPEARE REVISITED -- At last we have a new kind of biography of Shakespeare. Starting from Ben Jonson’s description of Shakespeare as “Soul of the Age”, and shunning “the deadening march of chronological sequence that is biography’s besetting vice,” Jonathan Bate selects only the material that, he believes, will help to reveal Shakespeare’s cultural DNA.

(4)- LITERACY REVISITED -- We have already taken the first steps on our journey to a new form of literacy—“digital literacy.” The fact that we must now distinguish among different types of literacy hints at how far we have moved away from traditional notions of reading. The screen mediates everything from our most private communications to our enjoyment of writing, drama, and games.

(5)- WHAT’S IN A NAME? – We don’t call people by their Social Security numbers. We don’t hail them by their birth dates. We call them by their names. We don’t refer to cities by their latitude and longitude. We use their names. Mountains have names, so do rivers, states, provinces. The planets in our solar system—the major and many of the minor ones—have names. Shouldn’t we extend the courtesy to planets that orbit other stars.

(6)- CONCERNING OSCAR -- It’s remarkable how newspapers these days still can’t resist a story about Oscar Wilde. There’s something about those languid eyes, that curled hair, and the defiant cigarette, that suggests ‘Transgression’. Modern marketers continue to exploit the Wilde ‘brand’, too, in order to sell everything from Perrier Jouet to mouse mats. Early this January, however, some earnest souls tried to take Wilde down a peg or two, by labeling him a child abuser.

(7)- AN ART WORLD CULL NEEDED -- As recently as the November auctions, you could still find plenty of inhabitants of Sotheby’s-and-Christie’s-land who were insisting that art was recession-proof, that aesthetic values would, like the salamander, survive any fire. A mere month ago, nobody seemed to be batting much of an eyelid at the prospect of the nation having to come up with £50m to “save” the Duke of Sutherland’s fine pair of Titians from resale.

(8)- MY KINDA ATM MACHINE – Sainsbury’s shoppers cashed in on the ultimate buy-one-get-one- free sale, when its Welshpool cash ATM machine paid out double. And the good news is the bank says they won't have to pay it back. Desperate to get their hands on some free cash, scores of people – some in nothing but their dressing gowns – queued outside the supermarket.

(9)- DAD IMPERSONATES HIS SON -- A 54-year-old Japanese father was arrested after he tried to help his son pass an exam by impersonating the young man and taking the test for him. The father, who was not named, put on glasses and straightened his hair to look more like the picture on his son's identity card, said Masaaki Nakamori, a police official in western Japan.

CARTOON COMMENTARY

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