January 28, 2022

All-time icon Art Spiegelman responds to Maus ban on CNN (while vaping).

All-time icon Art Spiegelman responds to Maus ban on CNN (while vaping).

By Jessie Gaynor
January 27, 2022, 10:49am

Yesterday, as the “Intellectual Dark Web” continued to hand-wring about the perils of over-wokening, a Tennessee school board voted unanimously to ban Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about his father’s experience in the Holocaust, ostensibly due to the book’s “rough, objectionable language” and nudity (a small illustration of Spiegelman’s mother, nude in a bathtub having died by suicide).

The only silver lining of this terrifying case of (actual) censorship is that it gave us one of the greatest television interviews of all time, when Spiegelman appeared on CNN to respond to the news, while affably sipping coffee and vaping.

Spiegelman elegantly summed up his reaction, saying, “I’ve moved past total bafflement to trying to be tolerant of people who may possibly not be Nazis? Maybe? Because having read the transcript of the school board meeting, the problem is sort of bigger and stupider than that.”

Ron Gilmer, the segment’s director, said on Twitter of the interview that “In 40 years of Directing TV news I’ve never seen this. He was amazing.”

Spiegelman, confirmed coolest man in America, went on to call the school board’s response “daffily myopic.” Well said (and vaped).

[via CNN]

https://lithub.com/all-time-icon-art-spiegelman-responds-to-maus-ban-on-cnn-while-vaping/

January 10, 2022

Split large population states, add DC and Puerto Rico as States, and end filibuster would preserve

the original intent of the Senate and improve representative democracy at the State and Federal level.

Ending the filibuster is the most practical now, splitting states would be much more involved. Adding DC and Puerto Rico is somewhat in between as far as implementation and las a leg up politically now.

The Senate would be expanded as each split State would add Senators.

I would propose that California and Texas be split into 3 states and New York and Florida be split into two States.

The split States and new States would add 16 Senators to the Senate.

January 8, 2022

Maya Miller

Maya Miller was the mother of my roommate, Eric, at a boarding school near San Francisco in 68-69, out sophomore year of high school.

The 3rd weekend she came to visit and took us to an anti-war rally at the Marina Green near Fisherman's Wharf. That time is when I became an anti-war Democrat. I have never wavered.

I last visited Eric when he was living with Maya and his wife at the Washoe Valley ranch in 1994 just before I moved from California to Oregon. Both have long passed on now, Eric before Maya.

Why Maya Miller today?

>>In 1974, at the request of several women leaders, Miller ran for the United States Senate, losing to Lt. Governor Harry Reid in the Democratic primary. At the time there were no women serving in the U.S. Senate, and her campaign drew national attention, funding and volunteers. She still managed to receive 38% of the votes and her campaign revealed that there was a strong base of women and men willing to support a woman candidate. “Maya wasn’t a real politician. She was an outside agitator fighting the powers that be,” daughter Kit Miller said. “She ran for the Senate because she felt the cause was right.”

https://www.nevadawomen.org/research-center/biographies-alphabetical/maya-miller/

Please read about Maya Miller at the Nevada Woman's History Project link.

January 5, 2022

Are Trump and the MAGATs being set up?

In no way should this question suggest that I support Trump or the MAGATs or mean to mitigate Trump or the MAGAT fools.

This question is based upon the Meadows, Hannity, etc, revelations in the recent news.