Month: November 2020

Civility in public discourse

When I came home from the hospital 70 years ago, The New York Times was delivered to the door of my parents’ apartment on East 88^th Street and read religiously. Ever since then, despite frequently moving from one end of the country to the next, the Times has remained my hometown paper. 

When I was arrested in student demonstrations at Columbia in 1968, the Times published my name. When I married in 1981 in Alexandria, Virginia, the Times published the details—the social editor calling to double-check the ceremony was taking place. When I arrived late for a Passover seder, my unsympathetic family was sympathetic that the News of the Week in Review editor kept me late rewriting. My first trade book began as a NYT Magazine piece. When my kid sister published an op-ed piece, it represented her coming of age. 

My relationship to the paper of record is much like my relationship with my children. I am not always pleased with their behavior, but no matter what, I love them. I did not like it when the Times published Nixon’s transcripts substituting his obscenities with “expletive deleted.” 

As a reporter on agriculture policy, I condemned the Times for failing to publish in 1976 the exact words of the obscene “joke” Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told which resulted in the removal from office of the longest-sitting cabinet member in the Nixon-Ford Administrations. And yet…

I was shocked to read repeatedly in the Times the obscene words the President uttered at the Oval Office when negotiating an agreement on immigration policy. The editorial decision to publish language previously not published is to my mind a Rubicon. So completely has President Trump debased civil discourse in our country that even here in my family paper, his obscenity must appear in print.

Nearly every night at 9 here in the euphemism for a nursing home where I live in Downtown State College, PA, my neighbor John Harris, a devoted Times reader, discusses with me the news of the day. John has only been reading the paper for 30 years. I regard him as a parvenu coming as he does from Westport, PA where—despite condemnation from his parents– John faithfully read “that New York paper.” 

Frequently, I complain about our paper, detailing what you have done wrong or should have done better. John’s view is that in the environment where the Times is condemned as fake news, I should withhold criticism because, “When it is under attack, you are obliged to defend it. regardless.”

Nonsense, The New York Times is my hometown paper. With family, I do not pretend.

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Joel Solkoff is the author of The Politics of Food.

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Joel Solkoff

State College, PA 16801

Charles Edward Coughlin (/ˈkɒɡlɪn/ KOG-lin; October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979), commonly known as Father Coughlin, was a Canadian-American Roman Catholic priest who was based in the United States near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the Little Flower church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience: during the 1930s, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned to his weekly broadcasts.

Father Couglin returns to America not wearing his customary frock…

Wikipedia: Tucker Carlson, Father Coughlin redux:

”

An advocate of U.S. president Donald Trump, Carlson has been described by Politicoas “perhaps the highest-profile proponent of ‘Trumpism‘ and willing to criticize Trump if he strayed from it.”^[ He is also said to have influenced some key policy decisions by Trump. As of 2020, Tucker Carlson Tonight is the most-watched cable news show in the United States. Carlson’s controversial statements on race, immigration and women have led to advertiser boycotts against the show.

A vocal opponent of progressivism, Carlson has been called a nationalist.^[11]Originally a proponent of libertarian economic policy and a supporter of Ron Paul, Carlson would come to criticize the ideology as being “controlled by the banks” and became an active adherer to protectionism.^[2][12] He has also espoused anti-interventionalist views, renouncing his initial support of the Iraq War the year after it was declared.^[“

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson

A Fine Romance

Frank Sinatra

A fine romance, with no kisses
A fine romance, my friend this is
We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes
But you’re as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes
A fine romance, you won’t nestle
A fine romance, you won’t wrestle
I might as well play bridge
With my old maid aunt
I haven’t got a chance
This is a fine romance

Joel Solkoff’s Column Vol. VI, Number 5

DATELINE Thursday, November 19, 2020. Williamsport Pennsylvania, a town of 28,000 people (a treasure trove of architecture) 178 miles southeast over rotten roads to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall where my fathers (mothers did not apply) ratified the Constitution of the United States.Reality here in the county seat of Lycoming County, which last voted Democratic in 1964 may be removed geographically removed from a nation which voted significantly to elect Joe Biden President in 67 or 68 days/ These days physical georgraphically has become increasingly irrelevant in a real world bound by zeros and ones–an off of cimputer code–where I watch my news live from London on Sky News, or from Berlin on DW News or Paris on French 24/ Today’s Covid-19 for architects’ column concerns reality and the reality that reality is not always what you might think.

The United States requires a new capitol city to reflect the realiy of Covid-19

”Computers are not the thing. They are the thing that gets us to the thing.”

— Halt and Catch Fire,

Despite its 18th Century urban plan and its iconic Capitol dome and White House, Washington DC is very much a 20th Century town designed haphardly to reflect the desperate attempts by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to deal with the Great Depression. This is the spot where Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933 took the oath of office for the first time, our only President to be elected for four terms. It was FDR who moved the inauguration date from March to January having the prescience to reduce the danger my country is experiencing as transition now 62 long days away from a Biden Presidency. While the incumbent loser is endangering the lives of US America’s pandemic ranging death toll with his incompetence.

Today’s New York Times reported: “

“The United States passed a grim milestone on Wednesday, hitting 250,000 coronavirus-related deaths, with the number expected to keep climbing steeply as infections surge nationwide.

“Experts predict that the country could soon be reporting 2,000 deaths a day or more, matching or exceeding the spring peak, and that 100,000 to 200,000 more Americans could die in the coming months.”

“