Questioning Abe?
I've been following this guy off-and-on for a few months now. A southern boy who writes for, among others, the Greek Taki. I pretty much agree with everything he writes. Because I'm not a big Abraham Lincoln fan, I especially found this part of his weekend blog entry interesting:
Benjamin Butler, decreeing that any New Orleans woman showing contempt for his occupying troops “shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation” – i.e., the city's outspokenly Confederate belles were to be treated as prostitutes. Feimster sifts evidence that the order was a green light for Union soldiers to threaten sexual violence if not commit rape itself.
After President Abraham Lincoln ignored calls to rescind the order and it was applied beyond the city, she concludes, its geographical reach “ensured that the threat of sexual violence and the fear of rape were common to southern women and central to how they experienced the Civil War.”
What's even better about this passage: It's a quote from a New York Times blogger. Maybe, just maybe, the Lincoln Lovefest that has afflicted this nation for so long is losing its luster.
Many Weekends at Bernie's
The New York Post does some hard time with Madoff. Some commentators think he's having an easy time of it, but it sounds plenty scary to me:
[A] bare-chested Bernie has been killing time at the prison participating in Native American religious purification ceremonies held at an on-grounds "sweat lodge," other sources said.
He accepted invitations from Native American inmates to join them at their weekly prayer services. The ceremonies involve praying, using heated rocks to induce sweat and smoking from a ceremonial pipe.
It is unclear whether the 71-year-old Madoff checked out the ceremony because of health reasons. For centuries, Native Americans have used sweat lodges to help detoxify the body mentally, spiritually and physically.
Inmates who participate are usually shirtless, and Madoff was no exception earlier this month during the first ceremony he attended, according to the prisoners.
Madoff is also making new friends at the prison complex through another unlikely clique -- the homosexual posse, although the relationships are purely platonic, according to the sources.
"In prison, you stick to your own kind, but he's doing the exact opposite by hanging with the Indians and [homosexuals] -- so who is going to have his back?" wondered one jailbird.
Another inmate said various "gangs" at the prison are trying to recruit Bernie to their crews.
Grow your own: As cigarette prices climb, smokers turn to green thumbs and gardens for tobacco.
Still raging: Professor Paul Krugman at war with Niall Ferguson over inflation. Highly-entertaining account of two nerds going at it . . . and, apparently, the jerkish nerd--Krugman--getting the worst of it:
Earlier this month, Ferguson wrote another piece for the FT, comparing Barack Obama to Felix the Cat: “Felix was not only black,” he wrote. “He was always very, very lucky.”
Krugman saw the opportunity to deploy the nuclear weapon of American academic arguments – an accusation of racism. “I cannot fathom the state of mind that led Ferguson to think this was a good way to introduce a column,” he blogged furiously. “Admittedly, it doesn't really distract from his larger point, since as far as I can tell he doesn't have one.”
As it was succinctly put in the posters for Jaws: The Revenge, this time it was personal. Over on the influential Huffington Post blog, Ferguson defended the intro, rather amusingly pointing out that Felix was just a black cat, “not an African-American cat”. Krugman shot back on his blog: “He's a whiner too.”
Undaunted, Ferguson enlisted the opinion of Henry Louis Gates Jr, one of America's leading African-American scholars, who handed down the verdict that referring to Felix as black wasn't racist, on the grounds that he really did have black fur, and, anyway, it wasn't clear that cats had race.
