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    <title>Slate Magazine - Idea of the Day</title>
    <link>http://www.slate.com/id/2076931/?from=rss</link>
    <description>Arts and arguments in the news.</description>
    <copyright>2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC</copyright>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <pubDate>Fri, 4 Jan 2002 00:23:27 EST</pubDate>
    <lastBuildDate>Fri, 4 Jan 2002 00:23:27 EST</lastBuildDate>
    <ttl>120</ttl>
    
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  <title>Advertisements for Himself</title>
  <link>http://www.slate.com/id/2060399/?from=rss</link>
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  <description><![CDATA[  The habit of preening may be genetic, scientists now believe. Boasting may be equally genetic, for all we know, and one Web site that makes a boast or two belongs to Cornel West, the professor at the center of a Harvard controversy. In addition to his academic and polemical work (as www.cornelwest.com helpfully points out, the professor's "presence is a mainstay in the American media. So much so that he has virtually become a household word"—shouldn't that be "household name"?), professor West has lately taken up music. In collaboration with Derek D.O.A. Allen, he has produced an album titled Sketches of My Culture. (You can listen to some of the results by going to the Web site.) "In all modesty," the site says, "this project constitutes a watershed moment in musical history." One doesn't hear that everyday, even from Mariah Carey. The site continues: "The combination of the oratorical passion and unmatched eloquence of Dr. Cornel West with the particular musical genius of Derek D.O.A. Allen has produced an auditory theatrical experience. Sketches of my Culture succeeds at rendering a poignant yet inviting depiction of the African American experience that begins with the rich African heritage to and through the black American experience. It provides a glimpse into some multi-faceted dimensions and faces of an often maligned culture born out of wretched circumstances."<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2060399/?from=rss">more ...</a>]  ]]></description>
  <category>idea of the day</category>
  <author>Inigo Thomas</author>
  <comments>http://fray.slate.com/discuss</comments>
  <pubDate>Fri, 4 Jan 2002 11:23:27 EST</pubDate>
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  <title>A Writer Blocked</title>
  <link>http://www.slate.com/id/2060341/?from=rss</link>
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  <description><![CDATA[  If you are a novelist but also an officer in an infamous army, although you claim to have had no part in ordering or carrying out massacres conducted by these military forces, does that mean you should be expelled from an organization created to protect writers' lives? According to the International Parliament of Writers, whose members include Salman Rushdie, Vaclav Havel, and Wole Soyinka, yes, you should, although the person the IPW has thrown out might feel somewhat aggrieved.<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2060341/?from=rss">more ...</a>]  ]]></description>
  <category>idea of the day</category>
  <author>Inigo Thomas</author>
  <comments>http://fray.slate.com/discuss</comments>
  <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jan 2002 12:56:55 EST</pubDate>
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  <title>Summerstime</title>
  <link>http://www.slate.com/id/2060318/?from=rss</link>
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  <description><![CDATA[  Just over a decade ago, Benno Schmidt, an ambitious and rather bumptious president of Yale University, was derided by students for his interfering ways, some of whom chose to wear T-shirts bearing the words: "Schmidt Happens." Now, at Harvard, students may soon be deciding upon the phraseology for a similar T-Shirt. The new president of that university, Larry Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the twilight of the Clinton administration, has—perhaps more out of clumsiness than naked ambition—created an academic furor. As the New York Times and the Boston Globe report, at an October meeting between Summers and Professor Cornel West, a luminary of Harvard's Afro-American Studies department, the president suggested that West, who had been on a yearlong sabbatical, should return to "serious" subjects, eschewing lighter concerns such as recording rap songs. (That a professor should produce a rap recording is neither here nor there—no one cares two figs how much air time other professors fill up between ad breaks on cable news or history channels.) In addition, Summers asked West to join in a universitywide effort to stamp out grade-inflation at the richest university on the planet. The exact wording of the exchange between Summers and West is not known, but West was apparently incensed that the college president would challenge a professor's credentials at their first formal meeting. West has now threatened to leave Harvard, which might prompt two of the professor's closest and prominent colleagues in his department, Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah, to also depart—perhaps for Princeton University, which, in a further twist to the plot, is eager to set up an Afro-American studies department that might rival Harvard's. Other academics might also head south: The Globe quotes one black professor as saying: "If Harvard lets these people leave, and they don't make an all-out effort to keep them, I would really have to think about whether to stay." Of Summers, another said: "People are willing to give a new president a grace period, but if in that time he acts like a bull in a china shop, it makes people very worried. It appears as if he has deliberately set himself on a collision course with faculty members." Meantime, the Globe reports today that the Rev. Jesse Jackson has offered his services as a mediator between the president and West, although should those and other negotiations fail, then one can be certain that students at Harvard will go about a T-shirt campaign. Larry Summers can expect to be ridiculed.<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2060318/?from=rss">more ...</a>]  ]]></description>
  <category>idea of the day</category>
  <author>Inigo Thomas</author>
  <comments>http://fray.slate.com/discuss</comments>
  <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2002 15:09:02 EST</pubDate>
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  <title>The view from Staten Island.</title>
  <link>http://www.slate.com/id/2060256/?from=rss</link>
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  <description><![CDATA[  Of the many observations and remarks made by Rudy Giuliani yesterday in his last public address as mayor of New York, two stand out. The first was about the city's fifth borough, Staten Island: "I never lived or worked in Staten Island, but I love it the most and I'm going to retire there, absolutely." Staten Island? For non-New Yorkers, the mayor's choice may not appear strange, but for many New Yorkers, it will seem eccentric. Surely a man as accustomed to the bright lights of Manhattan as Giuliani would choose, well, Manhattan. Even if the views of New York's most glamorous island from the northern shore of Staten Island (one of the least glamorous islands in the New York archipelago) are rather fabulous, won't the former mayor feel somewhat cut off? Staten Island, separated from Lower Manhattan by an ocean known as New York Harbor, may have been the home of the Melanie Griffith character in Working Girl and the place where Splendor in the Grass was filmed way back in 1960s, but it's not quite the same thing as Broadway.<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2060256/?from=rss">more ...</a>]<!--AD BEGIN--><br clear="all" /><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/slate.rss/politics;pos=ad9;tile=9;ad=rss;sz=479x40;ord=8370" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/slate.rss/politics;pos=ad9;tile=9;ad=rss;sz=479x40;ord=8370" border="0" vspace="5" /></a><!--AD END-->  ]]></description>
  <category>idea of the day</category>
  <author>Inigo Thomas</author>
  <comments>http://fray.slate.com/discuss</comments>
  <pubDate>Fri, 28 Dec 2001 13:58:54 EST</pubDate>
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  <title>Which medal to give the heroes of 9/11?</title>
  <link>http://www.slate.com/id/2060115/?from=rss</link>
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  <description><![CDATA[  In Friday's Wall Street Journal, the columnist Peggy Noonan presents a list of people she believes should receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their endeavors on and after Sept. 11. The medal is the most prized American honor that can be bestowed upon a civilian—whether they are American or not. Among Noonan's nominees are Rudolph Giuliani, the passengers and crews on board the hijacked planes, all the emergency workers in New York and Washington, Oprah, Paul McCartney, and all the journalists (at newspapers and television stations) who reported on the tragedy.<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2060115/?from=rss">more ...</a>]  ]]></description>
  <category>idea of the day</category>
  <author>Inigo Thomas</author>
  <comments>http://fray.slate.com/discuss</comments>
  <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2001 11:47:40 EST</pubDate>
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