Weekend Bloggerback
Best of Blogs Round-Up: February 18-19, 2006
EDITED BY PIERRE TRISTAM/Candide's Notebooks

Non-disclaimer: We're liberal to the core, but we include in this daily blog review the political, the social, the cultural and the undefinable from the left, the right, the in-between from all over the globe. And we're suckers for good writing regardless of ideology. Clicking the link will take you to the original post.

• Finally, someone speaks up for the quails
• An essay on moral psychology, long and satisfying
• Respectful insolence gives alternative medicine’s “alties” the saline
• The olive tree’s Lexus mind shadows Japan and the West
• Ann Coulter, America’s cross-dressing Ahmadinejad
• Feministing discovers virgin-in-chief Wendy Shalit is procreating…
• … While TurnpikeFem capsules the premature orgasm pill for women
• The United Arab Emirates make a port of call in 6 US cities
• TCF does a play by play on conservative discoursing
• Habitus for Humanity: an ageing but appreciating post on Cartoongate
• The new Fed chairman admits to GOP lies on the minimum wage
• Playing chess with Islam’s soul: Saudi, black; Turkey, white
• Nancy Kay Shapiro takes us on a walk: “My New York”
• Bob Parks is “black & right” and tunnel-visioned about all things liberal
• What’s all this about an Online Freedom Act?
• Fiction from India : Her first kiss
• The Arabian Sea at Varkala

Featured Blog I: That's a Rap
Thug Music's Fetish
Robert Lashley /January 22, 2006

In "The Male Prison", his review of Andre Gide's notebooks that appears in his brilliant collection of essays titled "Nobody Knows My Name", James Baldwin said that " To deny another person's humanity is to deny one's own." Specifically, he was talking about the French Nobel laureate suppressed love for a woman named Madeline, of which Gide hid beneath a veil of extreme contempt. Baldwin's broader point, however, was about sexism: that when men do not give love to women, and i'm talking abouta a broader more plural, more encompassing love than the pleasures of the flesh, they do a brutal amount of damage to the women they are with, as well as themselves.I am reminded of this quote every time I turn on the radio and hear crunk, bounce or any other kind of thug music over the past couple of years. For the imagery in their lyrics has been brutally inhumane, even for rap. Where do you want to start? Lil Jon's obsession with sexual dehumanization ( all you b*tches crawl, skeet, skeet, skeet) 50 cent's vicious lyrics combined with an antebellum image of a black woman in chains? Read the rest at the Literary Thug...

Featured Blogger II: All Fall Down
"I Knew This Day Would Come"
FLEA, One Good Thing /February 13, 2006

[When world affairs can't hold a candle to the geopolitical strategies and setbacks of parenting: One of the best-written blogs out there explores the balance of power that matters most, to most of us anyway.]

Alex woke up on the wrong side of the bed on Thursday. Sometimes he has days so rare and fine that he's almost unrecognizable to the rest of the family. Other days, like Thursday, are so horrible that it takes all we have to just hang in and wait for it to be over. Every symptom of every disability he's been diagnosed with was being manifested on that day. By three o'clock, he had started showing signs of scurvey and rickets, too. Complete inability to focus, check. Smearing food all over his hands and mouth at mealtime, check. Systematically destroying everything in the house, check. Loud off-key vocalizing for hours on end, check. Total lack of awareness of the space around him, check. Nonresponsive to any inquiry, check. Inability to follow any direction, check. Total lack of impulse control, check. And yet, I took him to TaeKwanDo class anyway. I wasn't sure if I should or not, and I almost didn't take them. TaeKwanDo has been bringing out the best in him, or at least it usually does, and he tries very hard for Mister Harrisonorsir. Plus, Thursday was the day that Christopher was to earn his last stripe on his white belt. It's the eternal balancing act when you have a child with disabilities and a child without disabilities, making sure neither of them gets the shaft more than humanly possible. I didn't want Christopher to have to sacrifice such an important stripe, so we went, and I kept my fingers crossed. Class was a disaster. As impressive as he was on Tuesday*, he bombed out totally on Thursday. The classtime was devoted to Discipline, and Alex was a textbook example of how not to behave. When class was called to stand at attention, he picked apart his uniform unti the front of it gaped open and exposed his chest, he fiddled endlessly with his belt, he pulled the drawstring out of his white pants. Read the rest at One Good Thing...