UNDERNEWS: Links: Words and writing

Anonymous said...: Jim Crow tolerated roadhouse blues, church hymns and street jazz. Today's aristocracy allows hip hop, dance, the music of complaint. What it does not tolerate is literature informed by Shakespeare and Milton, Dickens and Sinclair Lewis, Sumner and Lincoln. This deliterization of the voting middle class is part of the historical process described by Henry Adams whereby culture is subordinated to energy extraction, human agency is removed, and technology increasingly dominates. The patterned noises emitted by human resources like slaves or employees, are permitted as long as such biorobots have no vote. Given that "we the people" have no vote, we are saved from the wasteful expenditure of resources on the "humanities"- that is, things that concern human literacy per se. A common sense Booker T. Washington self-help approach is permitted in the book market, but a W.E.B DuBois deconstruction of dominant myths is banned from the middle class as elitist neocommunism.; May 28, 2015 at 11:17 AM

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

The Review is edited by Sam Smith, who covered Washington under nine presidents, has edited the Progressive Review and its predecessors since 1964, wrote four books, been published in five anthologies, helped to start five organizations (including the DC Humanities Council and the DC Statehood Party), was a plaintiff in three successful class action suits, served as a Coast Guard officer, and played in jazz bands for four decades.

A truly independent journalist with his feet firmly grounded in the reality of neighborhoods and everyday people. -- Patrick Mazza, Progressive Populist

A truly original voice in American journalism: humorous and plain spoken and filled with common sense -- Jay Walljasper, Utne Reader

Inimitable -- Mother Jones Magazine

Sam's a cynical cat -- Marion Barry

Sam's one of the few independent voices left. The press today is either extreme or special interest or else just establishment, an extension of the corporate spirit -- Sen. Eugene McCarthy,

One of a small group of whites with whom many blacks would trust their political lives - Chuck Stone, Washingtonian.

A reputation for wit, intelligence and anger. -- Claude Lewis, Chicago Tribune

Smith is an island of reason and information in a sea of narcissistic blather. -- City Paper, Washington

Whatever the debate, the Review's sharp critiques encourage us to look out our window, notice and act upon what we see, and also to look further -- to the rest of the country and globe -- to see how the organized big world interacts with our more spontaneous small worlds. - Utne Reader