Asking Why
Jul 25th, 2005 at 9:38 am by Susie
I finished reading the new Harper’s, and boy, it’s a good one. I strongly urge you to get it. (UPDATE: Here’s the link. ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the audio link to a forum Harper’s hosted on voting rights and the 2004 election.)
“None Dare Call It Stolen” is the cover story and it’s Mark Crispin Miller’s comprehensive overview of what happened in Ohio during (and after) the presidential election. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes:
The Washington Post reported that in Ohio’s Mahoning County “25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of Kerry votes to the Bush column,” but it did not think to ask why.
In this nation’s epic struggle on behalf of freedom, reason, and democracy, the press has unilaterally disarmed - and therefore many good Americans, both liberal and conservative, have lost faith in the promise of self-government. That vast surrender is demoralizing, certainly but if we face it, and endeavor to reverse it, it will not prove fatal. This democracy can survive a plot to hijack an election. What it cannot survive is our indifference to, or unawareness of, the evidence that such a plot has succeeded.
I was reading it on the train ride into the ‘XPN singer-songwriter concert in Camden yesterday, and it was so good, I was still reading it in bits and pieces during the show. During Patti Smith’s set, the man sitting next to me tapped my shoulder and said, “I’ve never seen anyone read during a concert before.”
I read everywhere. Bad habit, I know.
A reporter once asked Barney Frank why he was so vocal in his support for a pooper scooper law in Boston. “I like to read while I’m walking,” he replied.
Susie,
It’s only a bad habit if you read while trying to have a conversation. I must say, though, that I couldn’t have read through a Patti Smith concert. Patty Smythe, no problem.
I thought her set was pretty anemic. Otherwise, I would have been paying closer attention.
Susie I think we really might be twins separated at birth or something.
It’s a shame Patti Smith was not on. I saw her last fall and she absolutely kicked ass, which is pretty much the reason I read you every day.
I’m looking at the US from the outside, obviously, and I’m amused to note the first five responses. “Democracy … cannot survive … indifference” says the article, & what have we ? Two comments about reading & two about Patti Smith. I’m not quite sure what alphabitch means.
Come on, chaps, I thought this was a punchy & relevant site.
Bryan.