Brother Thelonious

I love Thelonious Monk. I love robust, heavy, high-alcohol-content beer.

Until recently, these were largely separate obsessions. Then, this came along.




















I found this gem, literally, at my doorstep. A few weeks ago, I got a package from a friend of mine in Washington DC. Inside, amidst a few other brews and a copy of the Weekly Standard (we have a strange sense of humor) I found a bottle of Brother Thelonious, a new powerhouse beer from North Coast Brewing Co. Boy did my eyes grow wide. A 9.3%-alcohol ale named after one of my favorite musicians ever, complete with a hugely awesome illustration on the bottle?

Sounds great, right? And here's the real kicker: it's actually damn good beer, too. Not just novelty-good. The beer doesn't really scream "Monk!" when you taste it, but, then again, what would that even taste like? (dissonant? idiosyncratic? staccato?)

Like one of my other favorite beers, Brother Thelonious is a drink to savor. I sipped mine over the course of a two hour movie and that felt just right.

The North Coast Brewing Company really knows how to sell a product. They know that jazz enthusiasts can be punishingly nerdy. Just name any arbitrary product after Bud Powell, Coltrane, or Mingus and we'll be interested. In Minneapolis a while back I stumbled into a coffee house serving only jazz-themed espressos, lattes, and smoothies. You should have seen the look on my face. I got a Monk coffee-drink, an iced, sugary concoction that was basically like anything at Starbucks. But of course I loved it. Seeing the words "Thelonious Monk" on the overhead menu made that drink almost worth the $4 I paid for it. I wasn't just getting a morning dose of caffeine. Those two words made that drink an experience. This is the mind of a jazz listener. Jazz, this thing we love, appears so little in popular culture so, when it does, we pounce. At least I do.

I just noticed a "Merchandise" tab on the beer's website. This is bad news. Posters, hoodies, mugs ... am I gonna be that big of a sucker and buy Brother Thelonious goblet? Almost certainly.

UPDATE: I just called a local beer vendor and learned that North Coast no longer does business in the state of Iowa. Boo-urns. Looks like I might have to cross that creepy threshold and begin buying beer online.

McCain on HIV, sex education

John McCain, I think it's pretty safe to say, has never sounded dumber than he did in this 2007 interview on HIV and sex education. I'm not a total McCain basher, but, really, this is just absurd. The mix of right-wing pandering and plain-old ignorance is truly cringeworthy.

Reporter: "Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?"

Mr. McCain: "Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it."

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: "I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it."

Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy."

Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "You’ve stumped me."

Q: "I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?"

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) "Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it."

Q: "But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?"

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) "Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.

Knee jerk liberal arguments: Installment One

Being a graduate student in the humanities, I experience the phenomenon of knee jerk liberalism far too often. I used to think this was funny, but, more and more, I've become irritated, pouncing on those who pass knee jerk liberalism as debate. It's not a good sign when I, of all people, am the most conservative voice in the room.

What exactly is a knee jerk liberal argument? Well, The Free Dictionary defines knee jerk liberal as "a person of strong liberal convictions who reacts predictably and emotionally to certain events." This is an appropriately vague definition because, as we will see over the course of several posts, there are many varieties of knee jerk liberal arguments.

My problem with these arguments isn't exactly that I disagree with the sentiments. Sometimes I do, but other times it comes down to this: "There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear." I can probably think of a few things I like less, but I concur totally with the point: There are few things more irritating for a progressive-minded person than hearing brain-dead arguments for your cause. It makes you, and the whole cause, look stupid.

Which brings us to our first knee jerk liberal argument.

Standard knee jerk liberal argument #1: The Crude Comparison. This argument is the most popular and takes on the most forms. In essence, the Crude Comparison model involves interrupting a discussion about a foreign crisis with a variation of the phrase "Really, when you think about it, that's not all that different from what's going on in the United States..." Here are a few examples I've seen over the last year:

• Warping a discussion on repressive Middle Eastern politics by suddenly claiming that George W. Bush is like an authoritarian leader.
  
• Claiming the surveillance thriller The Lives of Others shows a government "not all that different" from the Bush administration because both use covert surveillance on their own citizens.
  
• Any and all comparisons between the US government and Nazi Germany.
• Language comparing George W. Bush to a king or the Bush family to a monarchy (as much as I love the Arcade Fire, "The king's taken back the throne / the useless seed is sown" is textbook knee jerk liberalism).
  

I could go on. Like many knee jerk liberal arguments, this form of debate does nothing but further caricature the left as the "blame America first" crowd of the Democratic Party. It makes progressives not only look critical of their government (which is fine), but makes them look like they don't even understand the government they're criticizing. Comparing the Stasi's surveillance tactics to Bush's domestic wiretapping is ludicrous (this goes to all the film critics who hailed The Lives of Other as timely and relevant). Claiming that Bush is an authoritarian leader is a bend-over-backwards attack on someone who's not particularly difficult to criticize in the first place.

A significant subset of the Crude Comparison is the Crude Historical Comparison. In an example of this model, a knee jerk liberal would interrupt a conversation on women's rights in Saudi Arabia by "reminding" us to "remember the way women used to be treated in this country." I'm taking a class on Morocco and Bangladesh right now, and -- without fail -- someone makes this argument every session. Again, it does nothing but brand progressives as simplistic, Blame-America-First reactionaries. It's also oddly ethnocentric; why must conversations on foreign affairs, past or present, always refer back to America and its troubled history?

Not all arguments using this structure are patently offensive, but, more often than not, these arguments rely on a superficial, broad-stroke understanding of the United States. There's much to criticize about the Bush administration, but, in the end, a knee jerk liberal argument only helps their cause.

Starbucks in Iran

Starbucks, like other American companies, cannot do business in Iran. Star Box, however, serves the best caramel macchiatos this side of the Karun River.

Iranian bloggers

I'm currently writing two papers on the phenomenon of Iranian bloggers. There's a lot to say about those who've been blogging in Iran since 2003 -- here is a good place to start. Iranian bloggers may very well turn out to be one of the great Internet Age success stories. We'll see.

Mostly, I wanted to share with people one blog in particular. Of the dozens of blogs I've read for these two papers, this one is the one that's really gotten my attention. In order to do this blog justice, you must read it from the beginning, as the diary of bitterly funny, insightful young woman who was born AFTER the Islamic Revolution turned Iran into what it is today. This is enjoyable, painful stuff. I'm floored by the witty, brutally honest way she ridicules her government and her culture. It's almost too far, on occasion. This is the type of derisive, scathing insight I'm talking about:

for me Ramadan means staying hungry for hours and hours, have no energy to work, get headache, and wait impatiently for sunset! it makes no difference if you believe in "fasting" or not, you must be hungry and thirsty because GOD wants so!! this is what living in ISLAMIC REPUBLIC means, this is what stupidity means!

don't need to remind me the old funny story about how Ramadan lets us taste the hunger that hurts poor people!, its just deceiving ourselves! if one of those firm fasting ladies or gentlemen agree to spend even 5% of his/her monthly salary for poor hungry people, then i will beleive they really care for them! but just staying hungry and forcing others fast? has nothing to do with poor people! it is silly!

I'm not even sure I agree, but still -- I'm damn impressed. That's certainly a viewpoint you'd never hear from Iran's traditional media.

Mike Huckabee defends Obama

You can read all about it here, or watch the full video below (jump to the 3:30 mark for the relevant stuff).



Here are some snippets of what he had to say: "Obama has handled this about as well as anybody could ... [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama ... anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements ... "

"As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told 'you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus...' And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."

A very classy move from Huckabee, I think. He cuts through the hit-job nonsense a gives a non-partisan answer. Let's hope others catch on. Obama does not equal Wright.

March 18, 2008 ... "A More Perfect Union"

I try hard to avoid hyperbole. I really do. But Barack Obama has made that very difficult, so I'm just going to come out and say it: Today, March 18, 2008, Sen. Obama gave the greatest speech delivered in my lifetime.

If you haven't heard it, sit back, get comfortable, a see below.



I feel like a smarter person after those 38 minutes. To think he wrote this speech. Barack has always talked about how, as president, he wouldn't just tell America what it wants to hear; sometimes he'd tell the country what it needs to hear. For the first time, he gave us a preview of that today, discussing race in a way no has for decades. Not in sound-byte politics, but in a manner both from the heart and academically insightful. I could say a lot more, but I'm trying very hard to not sound like a fanboy. I am not. I am not a slavish Obama supporter -- I think it's stupid, for example, for Obama to criticize Clinton on her Iran vote from last year because, well, he missed the vote.

So, I don't see Barack as a fix-all or a messiah figure. But today, as I watched him give this speech -- a speech filled with nuanced, intelligent views on race, not crowd-pleasing platitudes -- I realized just how close we are to electing a man who could actually challenge us. Even if he doesn't win, this speech, I'm certain of it, will be remembered for a long, long time. For at least one day, we got a taste of an Obama presidency. And it was a good day.