Feet of Clay, Feeding Frenzy

John Edwards had an extramarital affair. OK, this is news, but is it front-page news? Is it front-page news FOR A SOLID WEEK?
Our media, which has for several years been sinking inexorably into an abyss of infotainment claptrap, appears now to have arrived at the bottom.

We should get no pleasure from an ugly, embarrassing story about human frailty and deceit. We should see ourselves in this mirror -- report it, read it, wince, and move on.

Subtle Hatchet Jobs -- How to read them

In Obama Campaign, Big Donors Are a Major Force



That's the front-page headline of an August 5th NY Times article by Michael Luo and Christopher Drew. For Obama supporters who thought campaign contributions were largely of the grass-roots variety, the headline intimates the opposite, clearly intending to make Obama fundraising look like the same old political game.

But in the first paragraph of that article we read "In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.


But records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama�s Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, raised in contributions of that size."

So what's happening here? The grass-roots, ground-swell of small donations for Obama is obviously true, but this article takes pains to side-step that incredible fact and to focus instead on an 'expose' of where the rest of the money is coming from.


Is it surprising that Obama has big-ticket supporters? Where did we think the other half was coming from, a secret gold mine in the Rockies?
Please remember (or learn) to read critically.

Click the title for a link to the article. (You'll get an ad first, so be patient)Look at the 'buts' and 'whiles' there, and continue to feel good about your $5 contribution. You're still important!

China exhibit starts today

There will be a photography exhibit called �An American in China, Etc� at the Middletown Township Public Library,55 New Monmouth Road, Middletown, NJ 07748 (Phone 732-671-3700)


With the 2008 Olympic Games taking place in Beijing, China, beginning this week, the photographs provide a cultural and physical background in which to view the Games. The show will run through Aug. 29.
The photographer, Arthur Krasinsky, an award-winning professional, took the images on a recent 3-week trip to 4 cities in China in addition to spending 3 days sailing on the Yangtze River.
Some of the images include the Chengdu area where a devastating earthquake took place recently.
The 53 13"x19" images in the show, which Krasinsky printed himself, were selected from over 5,000 images he took during the trip.
�It was tough selecting the photos to exhibit so I finally wound up with those that give an overview of the very diverse physical and cultural sights we visited. As you can see from the photographs of the people, they were all very friendly and open and very proud of their children, who all seemed happy to have their picture taken. The camera acted as a bridge that crossed the language barrier.�
Images selected for the show include: The Terra Cotta Warriors, The Largest Buddha in the World, Pandas at play, The Forbidden City, The Great Wall, highlights from various museum collections,various garden scenes, landscapes and cityscapes. The 12 �Etc� photos were selected from a variety of projects completed over the years in a variety of different formats.
�The show� Krasinsky said �is meant to look behind the news headlines we see of China and its people, and hopefully build a bridge through which we can relate to one of the most ancient and interesting civilizations that is going through unbelievable change but not without growing pains.�

Krasinsky�s photography has included projects that included photographing 3 US Presidents, several heads of state as well as editorial photography for: Merrill Lynch, AT&T,Prudential Insurance, Johnson & Johnson, Cartier, Meals on Wheels, Foster Wheeler, Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers and other major institutions.A reception will be held at the Library on August 4th from 6-8:30PM.

Alexander Solzhenitsin 1918-2008

Timeline

1945: sentenced to eight years for anti-Soviet activities
1962: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich published in Russia
1970: Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature
1974: First volume of The Gulag Archipelago published
13 February 1974: Exiled from his native Russia
1994: Returns to Russia
3 August 2008: dies in Moscow


French President Nicolas Sarkozy described him as "one of the greatest consciences of 20th Century Russia".

"His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook figure, heir to Dostoyevsky," he said in a statement.


(I wonder what Bush said?)Click 'read more' for the full BBC obituary.


Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89; had been ill for years

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89.

The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure.

The Nobel laureate had suffered from high blood pressure in recent years.

After returning to Russia, Solzhenitsyn wrote several polemics on Russian history and identity.

His son Stepan was quoted by one Russian news agency as saying his father died of heart failure, while another agency quoted literary sources as saying he had suffered a stroke.

He died in his home in the Moscow area, where he had lived with his wife Natalya, at 2345 local time (1945 GMT), Stepan told Itar-Tass.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to the writer's family, a Kremlin spokesperson said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy described him as "one of the greatest consciences of 20th Century Russia".

"His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook figure, heir to Dostoyevsky," he said in a statement.

Prisoner, patient, writer

Solzhenitsyn served as a Soviet artillery officer in World War II and was decorated for his courage but in 1945 was denounced for criticising Stalin in a letter.

He spent the next eight years in the Soviet prison system, or Gulag, before being internally exiled to Kazakhstan, where he was successfully treated for stomach cancer.

Publication in 1962 of the novella Denisovich, an account of a day in a Gulag prisoner's life, made him a celebrity during the post-Stalin political thaw.

However, within a decade, the writer awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature was out of favour again for his work, and was being harassed by the KGB secret police.

In 1973, the first of the three volumes of Archipelago, a detailed account of the systematic Soviet abuses from 1918 to 1956 in the vast network of its prison and labour camps, was published in the West.

Its publication sparked a furious backlash in the Soviet press, which denounced him as a traitor.

Early in 1974, the Soviet authorities stripped him of his citizenship and expelled him from the country.

Moral voice

He settled in Vermont, in the USA, where he completed the other two volumes of Archipelago.

While living there as a recluse, he railed against what he saw as the moral corruption of the West.

Scathing of Boris Yeltsin's brand of democracy, he did not return to Russia immediately upon the collapse of the USSR in 1992, unlike other exiles.

His homecoming in 1994 was a dramatic affair as he travelled in slowly by land from the Russian Far East.

Solzhenitsyn's latter works, which included essays on Russia's future, courted controversy.

In 2000, his last major work Two Hundred Years Together examined the position of Jews in Russian society and their role in the Revolution.