Journalism

July 17 marked the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California, and the Nixon Foundation celebrated the occasion with a reunion promising “three days of incredible experiences,” including “an outdoor BBQ around the farmhouse where RN was born” and “a delightful breakfast cruise on John Wayne’s The Wild Goose.” Also: a panel discussing “How Will Richard Nixon Be Remembered.”  One thing was missing from the reunion: a visit to the library’s new Watergate exhibit, which was supposed to have opened July 1 — but didn’t.

. . . . from The Nation, Aug. 16 issue, continued HERE or HERE

What’s the difference between drinking alcohol and smoking pot? Art Linkletter explains to Richard Nixon.   Really: White House transcripts at TheNation.com HERE.

It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it: defend the new Arizona law that bans ethnic studies in public schools. Fox News anchor Greta van Susteren took on the task, with predictable results.
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

Homeboy Industries, the legendary L.A. anti-gang institution headed by Father Greg Boyle, laid off 300 people yesterday because of a financial crisis. The organization was founded in East L.A. in 1988 at a time when hundreds of gang members were killing each other annually;  Father Greg’s slogan was “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

The Arizona legislature has passed a bill that will end ethnic studies classes in the state, according to the state’s top education official.

The bill bans classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people,” “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treating pupils as individuals.”

Also prohibited: all those classes that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government.”

. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

Los Angeles’s Liberty Hill Foundation will honor Walter Mosley with its Upton Sinclair Award on May 20. Mosley, author of more than thirty books, is celebrated worldwide for his Easy Rawlins mysteries. Set in inner-city Los Angeles after World War II, they feature an out-of-work black war veteran who reluctantly becomes a private detective and confronts the city’s racism and corrupt police force. The best-known volume is probably Devil in a Blue Dress, which was made into a film in 1995 starring Denzel Washington as Mosley’s protagonist: “In a world divided by black and white, Easy Rawlins is about to cross the line.”
. . . Continued HERE.

Stephen Ambrose, the best-selling historian who wrote or edited more than a dozen books about Eisenhower as general and president, based his fame in large part on what he said were his interviews with Ike – but now, eight years after Ambrose’s death, an official at the Eisenhower Library in Abeline says the interviews never took place.
Continued at TheNation.com HERE

A prominent British historian has found a new way to get in trouble: Orlando Figes, a historian of Stalin’s Russia at Birkbeck College, London, and a contributor to the New York Review, has admitted that his wife has been publishing hostile comments about rival historians at Amazon.co.uk under a pseudonym.

The practice of using a pseudonym to post denunciations of rivals or critics on the internet is called “using a sock puppet.”   CONTINUED at TheNation.com: HERE.

“It is hard not to be intimidated by New Left Review,” Stefan Collini wrote recently in the Guardian.  He’s right: first there is the intellectual range and analytical power of the NLR writers, and now there’s the fact that it has been publishing for fifty years.  The fiftieth anniversary issue–the 299th–reviews the magazine’s history, announces its current agenda and displays the qualities that have made it so significant over the past half-century.
. . . CONTINUED at TheNation.com

Forty historians testify for Big Tobacco when they are sued by smokers with cancer; two testify against.  Why the disparity?
A story about seduction — and intimidation — featuring charges of witness tampering, witness intimidation, and subpoenas for unfinished book manuscripts — examples of how Big Tobacco can spend virtually unlimited money when they are challenged in court.
READ The Nation cover story HERE.