The Wednesday Curator – 11/19/14

November 18, 2014

Two weeks have passed since the election. Notions about new dynamics seem quaint already, what with talk about an impending government shutdown, impeachment, etc. One piece really resonated with me on this topic generally; it’s Elbert Ventura’s October 31 review of The Stranger:  Barack Obama in the White House by Chuck Todd—yes, the Meet the Press guy—in the Columbia Journalism Review. Money quote, from the review? “’Obama’s logic had no place in an age of ferocious unreasonableness,’ Todd writes, a pithy diagnosis of his—and our—predicament.” I don’t know the political scientist who has yet written the case study about what should happen where the president is serious and logical, when all around him so few others are! (By the way, Mr. Todd’s observation was not intended to be a compliment.)

Here’s Steven Waldman for the Washington Monthly, late last month, with The Conservative Alienation from Journalism. The piece reports on a recent Pew Research Journalism Project report, Political Polarization & Media Habits by Amy Mitchell, Michael Gottfried, Jocelyn Kiley, and Katerina Eva Matsa. Most depressing it is that we no longer share a common set of sources for information.

Here are two stories from The Atlantic, Optimism Is the Enemy of Action by Maggie Puniewska, from October 17, and The Upside of Pessimism by Olga Khazan, from September 12. Both pieces are interview-based, and provide worthy matter to consider. (For what it’s worth, and this will surely not shock anyone who knows me, I’ve never been able to work within the confines of a “rah-rah” environment.)

I wrote Football, Professional Style on September 27. Here’s from my friend Vu Le from Nonprofit with Balls, a few weeks ago, with What the NFL Would Look Like If it Were an Actual Nonprofit. Vu is much more entertaining than I’ll ever be!

Leslie Brenner is the food write for the Dallas Morning News. I read one of her books, and liked her on Facebook. Now, she’s come out—not that kind of coming out—as an identifiable face. She explains herself, and in doing so addresses important issues about food criticism, in Dallas Morning News Restaurant Critic Leslie Brenner on Going Public. Finally, from Darin Dines, check out the meal at L’Arpège in Paris. C’est magnifique! (And then, and then, Darin has dinner at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.)

 

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