Posts Tagged ‘authenticity’
“Silence is consent … I refuse to consent.”
The following just-published news story has a bearing on an episode of hypocrisy that caught my eye … and gave me more food for thought about one of our themes: What is it ‘right’ to do in the face of wrongdoing? Or put another way, How should we then live? Read on… Paul Haggis Renounces […]
Critic — a definition
A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by good taste. — Whitney Balliett, Jazz critic and book reviewer for the New Yorker magazine 1954-2001. Yep, that about sums it up. Does it for me. (Of course, like beauty, ‘good taste’ is in the eye of the beholder.)
Exodus?
I’ve always thought when facebook and twitter got mainstream the kids would leave for somewhere ‘cooler’… as happened to MySpace. Now Miley Cyrus (1.1 million followers) has [reportedly] bailed on twitter… too trivial, too intrusive, too demanding, too ADHD-inspiring would be my guess. Watch her rap yourself, and observe her own entertaining ‘explanation’… Twitter followers […]
How to protect yourself from extortion: Er, live a ‘clean’ life
David Letterman Reveals Extortion Attempt Over His Affairs – NYTimes.com By Bill Carter October 1, 2009 David Letterman, the late night talk show host, said on his show on Thursday that he had been the victim of an extortion attempt over charges of sexual affairs with staff members, claims that he conceded were true. Mr. […]
Handling the truth… and a parable
Col. Jessep: You want answers? Kaffee: I think I’m entitled. Col. Jessep: You want answers? Kaffee: I want the truth! Col. Jessep: You can’t HANDLE the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? I have a […]
Potshots from behind a mask of anonymity are, by definition, cheap
I wholeheartedly agree with the court decision to order Google to identify the blogger who [allegedly] defamed this NY model. My view: People need to be accountable for their public statements. Anonymous log-ins tend — in some — to breed a recklessness and nasty damaging discourtesy. And they shouldn’t get away with it. (I still […]
Pressure!!
Once, in a hotel in California, I stepped onto an elevator in which a large well-dressed black man, and his equally large wife, stood. “Going down?” the man asked. “Yes, thank you,” I answered. Quietly the elevator slid downwards. The couple did not know me and so had stopped their private conversation. Because, I did […]
Merlin Mann on the internet
The internet is becoming this thing where it’s just people trying to become successful on the internet by showing other people how to become successful on the internet. It’s this unbelievably fractal ponzi scheme. It’s very Escher. Boy, it’s a terrible terrible ghetto of information out there. It’s like a snake masturbating its own tail. […]
Groping for the truth
Why does a lie offend us? Why is it that a lie — especially a lie to our face — vexes us so? Our efforts to identify the veracity of a claim (sometimes a very basic claim), can be frustrated by liars and rogues. So much of our lives can be taken up with efforts to […]
The power of an appeal to decency
A recent reference to a made-up threat of ‘Death Panels’ led me to recall a famous political showdown. Legend tells us this interchange sparked the beginning of the end for Senator Joseph McCarthy. While McCarthy was not without opponents to his paranoid demagoguery, lawyer Joseph Welch went down in history as a giant-slayer. Welch was […]
Remembering Karla
They can be strange lands, the pathways of our memory. Our recent discussions about animosity and forgiveness and letting go of disappointment and anger has provoked recollections of a case which I haven’t thought about for long time. When I was a news reporter twenty years ago I covered the search for a young girl […]
“Do I believe in the forgiveness of sin?”
I heard this question in a BBC Heart & Soul documentary today about a family where the father had sexually abused his young daughter. The wife described how she had come to a place where the question, “Do I believe in the forgiveness of sin?” arose when considering her husband’s actions towards her daughter. Her […]
