Arlene Goldbard's Blog
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Mar.16.2008
Geraldine Ferraro was unrepentant this week as she stepped down from her post on Hillary Clinton's campaign finance committee after having inserted her foot into her own mouth well past the knee. "If Obama was a white man," she said, "he would not be in this position." Trying to...
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Mar.13.2008
The Germans have a word for it—schadenfreude—joining the words for joy and harm to mean taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune. The Eliot Spitzer scandal fascinates me because it offers a veritable typology of schadenfreude.
Most everyone was briefly shocked—I say, shocked—to learn of the...
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Mar.09.2008
A few days before International Women's Day (March 8th, yesterday), a friend and I were talking about the results of the Ohio and Texas primaries. I shocked myself to notice how deeply devastated I'd been that Obama hadn't won big in both states, even though my rational mind knew he was still in...
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Feb.28.2008
The Law of Unintended Consequences says that the unintended consequences of an action are likely to have more impact that the ones that were intended. I have absolutely no doubt that it is correct.
Look anywhere: Hillary Clinton thought attacks on opponents by her husband (who has since been...
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Feb.20.2008
I've been a cultural activist all my life, so where I stand on the question of culture is clear: with Augustin Girard when he wrote more than 30 years ago that “Culture concerns everyone and it is the most essential thing of all, as it is culture that gives us reason for living, and sometimes for...
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Feb.16.2008
George W. Bush is still George W. Bush, busily vetoing the ban on waterboarding and sowing cheerful malice around the world. But let us give him props now for a quite remarkable discourse on the subject of the noose and all it symbolizes. Speaking last Wednesday at a ceremony commemorating...
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Feb.13.2008
My desire to believe there is progress in human history is strong. Clearly, there is change: more people, more stuff, more (or at least different) dangers, more (or at least different) pleasures. But can anything be said with certainty, anything more than "Things change"?
Yes, amidst...
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Feb.10.2008
Did you know that two-thirds of the people who have lived to age 65 or beyond in all of human history are alive right now? Did you know that in the last hundred years we have gained thirty years in average life expectancy? Did you know that between 2000 and 2020, projected U.S. growth in the 55-64...
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Feb.04.2008
It's almost Super Tuesday, and my email inbox is flooded with messages proclaiming that to vote for Obama is to oppress women. Most of them are detailed accounts of discrimination against women from time immemorial, coupled with the suggestion that any criticism of Clinton is internalized sexism....
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Feb.02.2008
This is the text of a message I was invited to send to a conference to be held February 24th through March 1st at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.
Dear Friends: I am so sorry I am not able to join you at Ahmadu Bello University, to take part in your conference “3 Decades+ of Popular Theatre/...
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Jan.28.2008
I spent the last few days with people whose work in the world combines art and social justice, mostly the community-based and collaborative work I've written about for decades. As a group, we tend to be simultaneously weary and hardy. The theme that comes to mind is from Pirke Avot (Ethics of the...
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Jan.24.2008
I had another birthday last week, on the whole an experience far superior to not having one. But growing older is such a crazy quilt of joy and angst: as the inner library of experience expands, you know more, see more, feel more, have more choice in almost every matter; and all the while, despite...
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Jan.18.2008
"Did you know Will Smith is a Scientologist?" my husband asked over tea this morning. Like most people, I'm aware of religious prejudices lodged in dark corners of my mind. As a wise rabbi once told me, Jews tend to have an immune problem with Christianity, having been exposed too early...
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Jan.17.2008
The absentee ballots have arrived at my house, and I'm voting for Barack Obama. Please stick with me for a few minutes while I take a little detour to tell you why. A friend sent me a link recently to an extremely interesting piece in Wired. Clive Thompson writes about an Australian philosopher...
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In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.”
—Frank O'Hara
About Arlene
Arlene Goldbard is a writer and speaker whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics and spirituality. Her blog and other writings may be downloaded from her Web site.
She was born in New York and grew up near San Francisco. She now lives in Richmond...
Causes Arlene Goldbard Supports
Thousand Kites http://www.thousandkites.org/
The...