Rev. Wright

Bill Moyers' hourlong interview with Jeremiah Wright is essential viewing. Certainly, Wright didn't need a presidential candidate to defend him, not that that ever happened.

Just as interesting: the morning's NPR news brief reports on Wright's speech in Detroit yesterday, in which he "calls for more cross-cultural understanding" (NPR's words) and provides a relevant clip. The significance here is that the event offers a nice opportunity to encapsulate the general 'NPR' world-view. (A view with which the present writer agrees.)

playlist one

Check out today's WXPN playlist for the 10a hour, esp 10:30-11 (read up):

10 am Middays /w Helen Leicht

Kim Richey - I Know
Joy Division - Isolation
Mgmt - Time To Pretend
Ub40 - The Way You Do The Things You Do
Erykah Badu - Honey
Eddie Vedder - Hard Sun
B-52's - Hot Corner
Joan As Police Woman - Eternal Flame
Elton John - Madman Across The Water
The Staple Singers - Slippery People
Aimee Mann - Freeway
Rem - Supernatural Superserious
Little Feat - All That You Dream
Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary
Mark Ronson - Stop Me

Smiths cover, new REM that sound like good old REM, the new Cosmic Thing, Joy Div. Wow.

Obama's Philadelphia Speech Today

Apologia for Rev. Wright. Is this a good rhetorical strategy? Talk radio cut the feed after the first half (Obama's personal story).

b/c everything politically relevant was in 2nd half.

Happiness (it's elsewhere)

Eric Weiner, NPR foreign correspondend, has written a book on happiness around the world--i.e., which societies are happy. Iceland, for instance. His first point is that for most of human history, it was thought that only the gods could be happy. But today we think that individual people should be happy. And that makes us unhappy.