Some residents of Walworth County, Wisconsin object to public health measures to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. So hysterical is their opposition that one reads Opponents say county’s coronavirus safeguards are ‘like Russia’: Confronted by a raucous crowd of opponents fearing government intrusion, Walworth County Board members have backed away from a measure…
Books
Books, Literacy, Trump
Bogus Bibliophiles Benito Mussolini & Donald Trump
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s an oft-repeated tale, from Ernest Hemingway, about an encounter he had with Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, in which Mussolini – by Hemingway’s account – pretends to read a book: At a time when the Western consensus was championing Mussolini’s potential to rehabilitate postwar Italy, Hemingway branded the Duce as “coward” with a “genius…
Babbittry, Books, Culture, Fact Checking, Local Government, Marketing, Mendacity, Politics, Public Relations, That Which Paved the Way
Fact-Checking is an Active, Ongoing Effort
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Laura Hazard Cohen explains that “First-generation fact-checking” is no longer good enough. Here’s what comes next: “Fact checkers need to move from ‘publish and pray’ to ‘publish and act.’” “The idea that fact checking can work by correcting the public’s inaccurate beliefs on a mass scale alone doesn’t stack up,” write representatives from Full Fact…
Books, Film, History, Music
Monday Music: Robert Johnson, Kind Hearted Woman Blues (1936)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
Books, City, Culture
The Pictures on the Wall
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Books, Politics, Review, Trump
Review: Everything Trump Touches Dies
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Not everyone who opposes Trump does so from the same position or perspective; a picture that depicts his opponents only as Democrats and liberals is a pinched – and false – illustration. There are yet Republicans (and independents of no major party) who have and always will oppose Trump. Republicans (and this libertarian) who implacably…
America, Books, Culture, Politics, Press
Reading Next: Truth Decay (‘An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life’)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
I’m currently reading Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury on the Trump campaign & administration. (FW has a currently reading widget on the right sidebar of this website.) Afterward, I’ve something in queue, from Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich – their just-published Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis…
Books, City, Culture, Film
Advocacy Seldom Reaches Chocoholics
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A necessary element of writing or speaking – if it is to be enjoyable and sustained – is to believe what one writes or says, and to express those beliefs as one naturally would. (Even more important, of course, is to hold sound ideas, but here I’m writing about the underlying feeling of expression.) Writing…
Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville, Politics
Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 14 of 14)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
This is the final post in a series considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. I can happily recommend Goldstein’s book, both for the tale it tells of a single city’s struggle after an auto plant closes, and for what readers may reasonably infer about a none-too-bright boosterism that has left Janesville (and other cities) divided…
Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville, Politics
Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 13 of 14)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
This is the thirteenth in a series of posts considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. In this post, I’ll cover one chapter of Part Six (2013) of Janesville (Chapter 54, A Glass More Than Half Full). Goldstein’s 54th chapter describes a 2013 dinner of Forward Janesville (a local “business alliance hell-bent on reviving the city’s economy”). Someone at…
Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville, Politics
Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 12 of 14)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
This is the twelfth in a series of posts considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. In this post, I’ll cover one chapter of Part Six (2013) of Janesville (Chapter 50, Two Janesvilles). Amy Goldstein is not, by style of writing, a polemicist (something that might be said, for example, of a blogger). Yet, for it all, she knows…
Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville, Politics
Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 11 of 14)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
This is the eleventh in a series of posts considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. In this post, I’ll cover one chapter of Part Five (2012) of Janesville (Chapter 47, First Vote). Amy Goldstein’s chapter about the November 2012 presidential election is a study in contrasts, between the polling-place experiences of first-time voter and vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Goldstein’s…
Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville, Politics
Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 10 of 14)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
This is the tenth in a series of posts considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. In this post, I’ll cover one chapter of Part Five (2012) of Janesville. Goldstein writes of the broader events of 2012 (the Recall election, Ryan running for vice president) and others that are more intensely individual (a graduate of a retraining program takes her own life…
Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville, Politics
Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 9 of 14)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
This is the ninth in a series of posts considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. In this post, I’ll cover remaining chapters from Part Four (2011) of Janesville. Part of this story is well-known to Wisconsinites: Gov. Walker introduces a Budget Repair Bill (since its enactment into law now-universally called Act 10 by Wisconsinites), Democratic senators leave…