'Best of TBH Politoons'
BYU Cancels Free Speech Forum
'This Divided State'
Steven Greenstreet from THIS DIVIDED STATE
. writes:
"I've got a WHOPPER of a story
for you:
BYU Cancels Free Speech Forum...So We Held It Anyway.
All this just happened last night (Thursday)!
It was so crazy! But, in the end, all the students felt good for
giving BYU a big "screw you".
Here are some articles:"
BYU Cancels Free Speech Forum
BYU Cancels Free Speech Forum
BYU Cancels Free Speech Forum
BYU Cancels Free Speech Forum
BYU Cancels Free Speech Forum
Steven Greenstreet
This Divided State
Thanks, Steven!
Steven's documentary This Divided State examines Michael Moore's visit to
BYU. It is one of the best documentary films I've ever seen.
Check it out!
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Laura Barcella: How Secure Is Your Job? (AlterNet.org)
Author Louis Uchitelle talks about how the rising tide of layoffs in corporate America isn't just damaging the nation's job security, but our sense of self-worth.
David Leonhardt: The Economics of Henry Ford May Be Passé (nytimes.com)
HENRY FORD was 50 years old, and not all that different from a lot of other successful businessmen, when he summoned the Detroit press corps to his company's offices on Jan. 5, 1914. What he did that day made him a household name. Mr. Ford announced that he was doubling the pay of thousands of his employees, to at least $5 a day. With his company selling Model T's as fast as it could make them, his workers deserved to share in the profits, he said.
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): Stairway to Nowhere (irascibleprofessor.com)
There's an old joke about English teachers who grade compositions by tossing them down the stairs. Landing on the first step means an A, and so on down the alphabet. This system offers advantages. First, it's fast. Schools and students can have the results within minutes. Second, it's cheap. All you need is a two-story building. Finally, it's likely no less meaningful than your state's academic assessment system.
Molly Ivins: A Good Swift Kick (AlterNet.org)
"Stand firm," he added. "Resist evil. Remember that all truth and blessings emanate from our Creator." He then went with Tan to see a cockfight. This is why DeLay's professions of Christianity make me sick. He was there. He could have talked to the workers. Instead, he chose to walk with the powerful and do real harm to the very people Jesus mandated we especially care for.
Mark Morford: Who Loves Baby-Seal Kabobs? (sfgate.com)
It's another shockingly brutal Canadian seal slaughter. How appalled should you be?
Karl M. Petruso: Deconstructing Faculty Doors (aaup.org)
The humor-pedagogy index reveals more about your colleagues than you need to know.
Sites for Book Lovers
Andrew Tobias
The Great Going Out of Business Sale
Loompanics
We are rapidly moving into the last days of Loompanics Unlimited's book selling. The Great Going Out of Business Sale has gone well for all of us, but the time has come to give an even deeper discount to our customers for the remaining books.
These are the books that had the largest remaining stock, or were forgotten in the warehouse until it really emptied out. Some, we were out of, but were returned from stores. And with some, there is literally only one book of that particular title left.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Pleasant sunny day.
Didn't hear any noise from the Grand Prix today - maybe tomorrow.
Some years it sounds like it's just down the block - other years, nothing.
Added a new flag - Mauritius 
Finally Gets Walk O'Fame Star
Lou Adler
Grammy-winning music producer Lou Adler, who launched the careers of Carole King and the Mamas and the Papas, was honored with the 2,307th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Guests included Jack Nicholson, Herb Alpert, Adler's sister-in-law Daryl Hannah and his son Cisco. Adler is married to Hannah's sister Page.
Among the 33 top 10 singles and 18 gold and platinum albums Adler has produced are "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas and the Papas, and "(What a) Wonderful World."
In 1967, he co-produced the Monterey International Pop Festival, which brought together Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin. He produced a film of the fest in 1968.
For more, Lou Adler
Anti-War Play
'Stuff Happens'
When David Hare's incisive political play on the decision to go to war in Iraq debuts in New York next week, the audience will be in the spotlight.
The Public Theater production of "Stuff Happens" is staged with the audience facing each other across a low platform. At times, the entire audience is illuminated while actors playing resident George W. Bush and his former secretary of state, Colin Powell, debate invading Iraq in 2003.
"Stuff Happens," a quote from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissing the looting after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, details the Bush administration's shift to a political doctrine putting U.S. power and security interests first.
Hare uses real quotes from Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice augmented with imagined exchanges between the leaders and their aides.
Hare continues to revise the script before opening night on April 13 to reflect those changes, even adding a quip on Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of a hunting trip companion.
'Stuff Happens'
Gossip Writer Suspended
New York Post
A gossip writer for the New York Post has been suspended pending a federal investigation into whether he tried to extort money from a billionaire California financier, the newspaper reported Friday.
Jared Paul Stern, who worked freelance for the newspaper's Page Six column, is suspected of demanding $100,000 and an annual $10,000 stipend from Ron Burkle in exchange for not writing negative stories about him, the Post said.
"Should the allegations prove true, Mr. Stern's conduct would be morally and journalistically reprehensible, a gross abuse of privilege, and in violation of the New York Post's standards and ethics," editor in chief Col Allen said in a statement.
New York Post
Wins Lincoln Prize
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose best sellers include "No Ordinary Time" and "Wait Till Next Year," received a standing ovation from a roomful of Abraham Lincoln experts, the kind of people who usually look suspiciously upon popular authors.
Goodwin's "Team of Rivals," her acclaimed biography of Abraham Lincoln and the former political foes who became members of his cabinet, was this year's winner of the Lincoln Prize for an outstanding work about the president and/or the Civil War.
The award, which includes a $50,000 check and a bronze bust of a somber, reflective Lincoln, was presented Thursday night to Goodwin at the century-old Union League Club, in a large, ornate dining hall featuring an oil portrait of the president. In attendance were some of the world's leading Lincoln authorities, including Michael Burlingame, Harold Holzer and Gabor Boritt.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Feted In Italy
Roy Disney
Roy Disney was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the 10th Cartoons on the Bay Festival on Thursday, which also featured the world premiere of the latest Asterix and Obelix film and the Italian premiere of the controversial Danish cartoon film "Terkel."
The 76-year-old Disney was given the award for a career that started in 1954 as an assistant film editor. Disney, who produced "Fantasia 2000," the sequel to his uncle Walt Disney's 1940 classic, remains the company's director emeritus.
Before receiving the award, Disney participated in a public showcase that included a rare screening of "Destino," an unlikely 1946 collaboration between Spanish surrealist painter Salvatore Dali and Walt Disney that was not completed until 2003. Disney announced that the eight-minute film, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2004, will be released along with documentary footage as a DVD later this year.
Roy Disney
Greatest Script
'Casablanca'
"Casablanca" has topped the list of "101 Greatest Screenplays," a first-ever ranking by members of the Writers Guild of America that was revealed Thursday night at a reception in Beverly Hills.
The screenplay for "Casablanca," by Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein and Howard Koch, was followed, in order, by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather," Robert Towne's "Chinatown," Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" and Joseph Mankiewicz's "All About Eve."
Rounding out the top 10 are Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman's "Annie Hall," Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman Jr.'s "Sunset Blvd.," Paddy Chayefsky's "Network," Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's "Some Like It Hot" and Coppola and Puzo's "The Godfather Part II."
'Casablanca'
Downplays Chinese Censorship
Mick Jagger
The Rolling Stones have been told not to perform five of their songs at their debut concert in China, but Mick Jagger said Friday he wasn't surprised by the censorship.
Authorities objected to four songs from the band's 2002 greatest hits collection, "40 Licks," and Jagger said officials asked them not to play one other at their concert in Shanghai.
The four songs cut from the greatest hits collection were "Brown Sugar," "Honky Tonk Woman," "Beast of Burden," and "Let's Spend the Night Together," apparently due to their suggestive lyrics. Jagger didn't say what the fifth song was, but it was believed to be "Rough Justice," the opening track of their new album "A Bigger Bang."
Mick Jagger
Judge Slams Lawsuit
'Da Vinci Code'
"The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown and his publishing house were cleared of copyright infringement in a British court Friday, with the judge finding the lawsuit based on a contrived and "selective number of facts and ideas."
Authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh had sued Random House, claiming Brown's best-selling novel "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 nonfiction book, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
"It would be quite wrong if fictional writers were to have their writings pored over in the way DVC (`Da Vinci Code') has been pored over in this case by authors of pretend historical books to make an allegation of infringement of copyright," Judge Peter Smith said in his 71-page ruling.
Random House may end up the biggest winner. Its legal costs are covered and, as publisher of "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," it benefits from increasing sales for both books.
'Da Vinci Code'
Producers Settle Suit
'Bumfights'
The producers of videos featuring homeless people brawling and performing dangerous stunts have agreed to settled a lawsuit filed by three men they filmed, the men's attorney said.
The four filmmakers agreed to pay the men damages and not to produce any more "Bumfights" videos or distribute the ones they have already made, under a settlement announced Thursday as the lawsuit was to go to trial.
Felony charges including battery were filed in 2002 against the four filmmakers: Ryan McPherson, of San Diego, and Zachary Bubeck, Michael Slyman and Daniel Tanner, all of Las Vegas.
'Bumfights'
New '70s Compilation
More Cowbell
Popular music needs more cowbells. Or so believes a Toronto record producer who has put together an entire album devoted to the former herding instrument, once a percussion pariah, but now hip again.
James Greenspan told AFP he had seen a spoof of New York rock band Blue Oyster Cult's recording of its 1976 hit "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" laden with the hollow clank of cowbells on an American television comedy show last year.
In the "Saturday Night Live" skit, which was originally broadcast in 2000, actor Christopher Walken portrayed music producer Bruce Dickinson who felt the Blue Oyster Cult track needed "more cowbell".
Later, Greenspan noticed local radio stations were playing a lot of old songs with cowbells in them at the request of listeners who had also presumably seen the skit, he said.
And so, he decided the world was ready for more.
More Cowbell
Pleads Guilty In Pellicano Case
Robert Pfeifer
Former music industry executive Robert Pfeifer on Friday became the latest person to plead guilty in connection with the Hollywood wiretap investigation surrounding one-time celebrity sleuth Anthony Pellicano.
Pfeifer, who served as president of Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Records label in the mid-1990s, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a charge he hired Pellicano to illegally eavesdrop on an ex-girlfriend.
The former record executive remains in custody in lieu of a $1 million bond. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said he expected Pfiefer to deed over his house next week to secure the bond and win release while he awaits sentencing, which was set for June 26.
Robert Pfeifer
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