Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/paul-schmelzer/page/10/)
There’s irony to be had in the Star Tribune’s front-page story Saturday about Target riling bloggers with its undisclosed practice of rewarding teens for promoting its stores on Facebook: By not crediting the local blogger who broke the story, reporter Jackie Crosby showed the same kind of transparency as Target — that is, very little — while ticking off at least one local blogger in the process.
In a truly bizarre piece in today’s Washington Post, staff writer Perry Bacon, Jr., devotes more than 1,400 words to rumors that Barack Obama, a longtime member of a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago, might be a closet Muslim. Continue Reading
The stories of Janine di Giovanni captivate: A New Jersey-born war correspondent now living in Paris, she’s stared down government guns — quite literally — during a coup attempt in Ivory Coast, walked among towering walls of corpses after a cholera epidemic in Rwanda, spent four days “mopping up blood” after a NATO bombing raid in the Balkans, and in 1992, dropped her notebook to hold an elderly woman as she died near the front line in Sarajevo.
Last night Mok and I were proudly in attendance as Kinjia Akagawa was named 2007 McKnight Foundation Distinguished Artist. At The Dock Cafe in Stillwater, we all gathered to honor Kinji, Mok’s artistic mentor and friend to us both. For the occasion, Kinji invited me to write an essay for the book McKnight published to commemorate the prize.
Here’s what I wrote:
I have two images of Kinji Akagawa in my mind as I sit down to write this.
Death Cab for Cutie guitarist/producer Chris Walla recently had his computer hard-drive confiscated by Homeland Security officials at the Canadian border, and the government hasn’t really said why. His entire new solo album, which contains some “very political” content, was on the drive.
He tells MTV:
The new logo for the Republican National Convention, unveiled this week, prompts some immediate questions:
Why is the GOP elephant Democratic blue? Are those prison stripes on its back? And — given the convention’s proximity to Sen. Larry Craig’s infamous bathroom stall — why the wide stance?
A most vital aspect of contemporary art is that it often attempts to fulfill its aesthetic imperative while embodying a deep awareness of the world that gives it context. So as news continues to spread about the violent crackdown by Burma’s junta against Buddhist monks, nuns, and civilians who peacefully demonstrated for democracy, it’s heartening to see a response from artists and curators.
It’s been amazing watching resistance to the junta in Burma grow: tens of thousands of saffron-robed monks, nuns, and student supporters taking to the streets in peaceful protest against an oppressive 19-year military dictatorship and the high prices and restricted freedoms that have come with it. Now riot police are kicking back.
Barack Obama, unlike 72 Senators distracted from dealing with a costly bloody war in a substantive way, gets it right when he says today’s symbolic resolution against a silly MoveOn ad is a waste of time: