Author: hankkalet

I’m passing this along from a friend, the poet Eliot Katz. He’ll be on the bill at the event and I’m hoping to get over there myself. Here it is:

Marc’s Place, a monthly coffeehouse of music, poetry and discussion, will hold it’s next event on Friday, June 2, at 8 p.m. Sponsored by the Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War, it will be held at the Reformed Church, 19-21 So. 2nd Ave. in Highland Park. The discussion topic will be : How the world is changing — and its impact on the peace movement’s goals and strategies. The speaker will be Sam Friedman. Music will be performed by “In Good Company,” and there will be a poetry reading by Eliot Katz. The coffeehouse is free, but donations are accepted. Come for the coffee, food, and music, and stay for the conversation. For further information, contact Dorothy at (732) 235-1444.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

A bit tired today. Stayed up to watch the game. All I can say is that there is never a dull moment in Metsville.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Richard Cohen’s column today sets the Saddam Hussein trial — which has been part comedy and part tragedy — in context. What he finds is that it is a near-perfect stand-in for the war.

So we are stuck with a trial that has become a microcosm of the way the Bush administration planned and executed the war itself. On most days, it has been a sputtering charade, which somehow has managed not to highlight the many crimes of Saddam Hussein but to obscure them.

Where his argument fails, however, is in raising a comparison with Darfur. Hussein was a brutal dictator, perhaps more brutal than Iran or Syria, but no more than some others. The moral component to the original invasion made by some liberal interventionists ignored the very real ethical issues — that piggybacking on the morally bankrupt Bush arguments ultimately fouls the entire operation.

The Iraq intervention was never a humanitarian crusade. There always was another dimension, an imperialist element that was paramount. Darfur — if the military option ever gets placed on the table — would be different. There is no American interest there and it would likely be accomplished with broadbased international support.

That’s something we can’t let go of.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

E.J. Dionne Jr., always reasonable, is especially reasonable here.

There is no point to this amendment except to say to members of our currently large Spanish-speaking population that they will be legally and formally disrespected in a way that earlier generations of immigrants from — this is just a partial list — Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Norway, Sweden, France, Hungary, Greece, China, Japan, Finland, Lithuania, Lebanon, Syria, Bohemia, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia were not.

Immigrants from all these places honored their origins, built an ethnic press and usually worshiped in the languages of their ancestors. But they also learned English because they knew that advancement in our country required them to do so.

And he closes with this:

I make my living writing and speaking in English, and I would preach to anyone the joys of mastering this Anglo-Saxon gift to our nation. My wife and I encourage our kids to speak the language with precision and to show respect for its grammar, as did the nuns who taught me as a kid — even if some of them spoke French better than English. Politicians who care about the language might usefully think about how it can be taught well, to the native-born as well as to immigrants.

When I put my children to bed, I recite the same prayer that my late mother said for my sister and me. The prayer is in French. I certainly hope that it doesn’t make my children any less American to hear a few spiritual thoughts in a language other than English before they fall asleep.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Before I start, I should remind readers that we’re not going to endorse in the primary (an editor’s note in Thursday’s South Brunswick Post will explain why) and what follows should be viewed within this context.

I’ve been covering South Brunswick for going on 17 years. In that time, there was just one other primary battle — in 1998 when Arthur Robinson challenged for a Democratic council nomination.

That one, however, was rather benign. This time out, the gloves are off.

The township Democrats, being challenged by a popular former mayor, have brought out the heavy artillery — the Middlesex County Democrats.

The county organization issued a mass mailing over the weekend, taking a state finding that former Mayor Debra Johnson violated the state’s antidiscrimination policy by using derogatory and demeaning names to refer to a subordinate when Ms. Johnson worked for the state.

Ms. Johnson acknowledges that the state ordered her reassignment, but disputes the state’s findings. She says she was joking with employees and did not intend for any hurt feelings.

The flier gave me a sense of deja vu, brought back memories of the brutal attack ad issued during the final week of the 2004 general election by the Democrats against Republican incumbent Ted Van Hessen.

The 2004 flier was factually accurate, as far as it went. But it also distorted those facts — facts that Mr. Van Hessen has refused to elaborate upon, citing a wish to keep family issues private.

In this case, the flier stays pretty close to the facts, though it apparently includes some information not a part of the public record. And Ms. Johnson was the first to introduce the issue into the campaign.

Part of me views the flier as a below-the-belt shot at Ms. Johnson, designed not just to ruin her candidacy but her reputation more generally.

Another part of me, however, wants to place it within the context of the modern election, which has become nothing more than a series of personal attacks (the Swiftboaters, Jon Corzine’s exwife, etc.). South Brunswick has never been immune to this kind of verbal brutality — Republicans in the mid-1990s were especially harsh on Ms. Johnson, while both parties played in the shark tank back in the early ’90s.

I’d like to get up a full head of steam on this, but I just can’t. Ms. Johnson knew that the charges were out there and were public when she opted to run and it seems legitimate to raise questions about them. And at least they were raised early enough for her to respond — unlike the 2004 attacks against Mr. Van Hessen.

Democratic voters need to ask themselves how important the flier and the issue of Ms. Johnson’s performance with the state Department of Health and Senior Services is, especially when compared to what I’d consider the most significant issues facing the township: open space preservation, the township budget and taxes, affordable housing, police and public safety, etc.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press