Ever see the flick about the young Parisian car thief who steals an American convertible, find a gun in the glove compartment, kills a guy, and goes down for it? How about the one about a young couple who get involved in murder over a stolen car and fantasize about dying together with their pictures…
Search Results for: george will
Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams
Pre-sellout,mid-sixties Miles with his last great quintet, the “E.S.P.” “Miles Smiles” quintet. In 1969, Davis played the Newport Jazz Festival, as he always did, a festival that had become, much to the chagrin of organizer George Wein, the Newport Jazz/Rock Festival. It was Miles’ invariable practice to arrive at the festival minutes before his set…
Joe Lovano
Tenor sax man Joe Lovano, one of the leaders in “post-Ornette” jazz, is shown here in 1995 with George Mraz on bass and Al Foster on drums. Two years later, Lovano made one of the greatest free jazz albums ever—Trio Fascination*—with Dave Holland on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. *Trio Fascination (edition one) to…
Justice Scalia, very big, very fat liar
In his already infamous dissent in Boumedienne v. Bush, Justice Scalia released a massive volley of palpable falsehoods, including this one: “At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.” Nino has an obsession with “the battlefield.” His use of “returned” is intended to make us believe that…
If it walks like a kangaroo
In the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin has an article on Guantánamo that tries very hard to sound even-handed, pumping only slightly for a proposal from Georgetown law professor and former Clinton Administration official Neal Katyal and Harvard law professor and former Bush Administration official Jack Goldsmith, which “is attracting a great deal of attention in…
The Washington Post, searching for purpose
Why are we in Iraq? Good question! Damned good question! Originally, it was stop Saddam from attacking us with “weapons of mass destruction,” nukes in particular, or at least that dreadful yellow cake. There was no chance that Saddam would attack us, of course—he wasn’t that dumb—but the mere fact that he had those WMD…
Keeping Posted: The Myths Keep Coming
Myth debunking has become a full-time job on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Last Sunday, Jacob Heilbrunn debunked five myths regarding “those nefarious neocons.” On Monday, Ann Marlowe took on two myths regarding Afghanistan. Myth 1. Hamid Karzai is a good president who looks after American interests. Myth 2. The second is that…
Debunking Myths or Creating Them?
The Washington Post has plenty of editorial space available, and it’s hardly unreasonable for the editors to offer its pages to “competing views.” But when offering space to outside opinion, one might expect, as a courtesy to its subscribers, that the Post would require these contributors to state their case honestly—opinion yes, propaganda no. But…