on partisan rancor

daniel schorr thinks voters (influenced by the media) are responsible for elite polarization.

It's become commonplace to blame politicians as the class and to suggest that what is needed is a new Congress. It may be that what is really needed is a new electorate. The present Congress reflects some of the voter anger at politicians fed by news media portrayals of scandal and corruption in the government. Gridlock is produced by legislators trying to respond to the anger of their constituents. Too much partisanship, not enough progress, as Senator Bayh explaining his bye-bye to Congress.

Many Americans seem close to rejecting the whole machinery of government that Evan Bayh found wanting. What happens when the people turn their back on their government is a phenomenon that this democracy has yet to experience.

wilde in love

in honor of [in spite of] v-day, excerpts from a letter oscar wilde wrote to his lover (while serving time in prison for "gross indecency")--

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. To keep you in my soul, such is the goal of this pain which men call life. ... I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree. Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other...

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the sheltering sky

in 1949 paul bowles wrote a novel about morocco that grips you in the beginning, sputters out quickly, and ends tragically. i can't help but think of it as the north african version of d.h. lawrence's the plumed serpent. the plot is remarkably similar. american travelers equally repelled and fascinated by remote, exotic locale. female character gets involved with native men and submits to hypermasculine power. et cetera.

he walked through the streets... why do i feel this way about them? guilt at being well fed and healthy among them? but suffering is equally divided among all men; each has the same amount to undergo... emotionally he felt that this last idea was untrue, but at the moment it was a necessary belief: it is not always easy to support the stares of hungry people. thinking that way he could walk on through the streets. it was as if either he or they did not exist. both suppositions were possible. the spanish maid at the hotel had said to him that noon: "la vida es pena." "of course," he had replied, feeling false even as he spoke, asking himself if any american can truthfully accept a definition of life which makes it synonymous with suffering.