"…a civilized society compensates for the human propensity to screw up. That’s why we have single-payer firefighters and police officers. That’s why we require seat belts. When someone who has been speeding gets in a car accident, the 911 operator doesn’t sneer: “You were irresponsible, so figure out your own way to the hospital” — and hang up. To err is human, but so is to forgive. Living in a community means being interconnected in myriad ways — including by empathy. To feel undiminished by the deaths of those around us isn’t heroic Ayn Rand individualism. It’s sociopathic. Compassion isn’t a sign of weakness, but of civilization."
"Mr. Obama made clear to advisers that he was not happy about debating Mr. Romney, whom he views with disdain. It was something to endure, rather than an opportunity, aides said."
Questions for Das Racist: Straight Outta Wesleyan
If your albums are available free, how do you make money?
Vazquez: Touring. Most people are making their money on touring, merchandise and licensing. I’ve been paying rent off the shows for a while now. My rent is $290, so it’s not a big deal. It’s five people in a four-bedroom in Bushwick. I keep my stuff at my parents’ house. I like to go home, hug my parents, drink chai with my mom, watch Hindi movies and re-Indianize two days a week before I re-emerge into the filth that is progressive liberal white America in trendy Williamsburg.
Why do you speak of your friends in Brooklyn as filth?
Suri: They know what they did.
You met at Wesleyan University, in 2003.
Vazquez: I was his R.A. at a dorm for students of color.
What did you study?
Suri: I was an economics major. From a cost-benefit perspective, college was a waste of time and money.
Do you see your work as a critique of white America?
Suri: I think it is solely a critique of John Boehner. As our bandmate Ashok Kondabolu would say, John Boehner represents the utmost in white demonry.
This is precisely why I make a point of never asking rappers questions about politics.
Suri: Deborah, chill. Vazquez: Fall back.
"
The board of the N.A.A.C.P. voted to endorse same-sex marriage on Saturday, putting the weight of the country’s most prominent civil rights group behind a cause that has long divided some quarters of the black community.
The largely symbolic move, made at the group’s quarterly board meeting in Miami, puts the N.A.A.C.P. in line with President Obama, who endorsed gay marriage a little over a week ago. Given the timing, it is likely to be viewed as both a statement of principle as well as support for the president’s position in the middle of a closely contested presidential campaign.
All but two of the organization’s 64 board members, who include many religious leaders, backed a resolution supporting same-sex marriage, according to people told of the decision.
Borrowing a term used by gay right’s advocates, the resolution stated: “We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
In a statement, Roslyn M. Brock, chairwoman of the board, said that “we have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”
"
"
Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.
Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.
…
I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.
But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed.
"FRANK BRUNI, writing in the New York Times, “The Right’s Righteous Frauds.”
Read the whole thing.
Pakistani girls sit among graves to take a test at their makeshift school near Lahore.
Photographed by Muhammed Muheisen
Ethiopian Orthodox worshipers prayed during a foot-washing ceremony at the Ethiopian section of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Photographed by Ronan Zvulun
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA Abdullah Abdiraham Abdullah Alif, a painter.
Photographed by Sven Torfinn for the NY Times
Faces of the Tsunami, photographed by Dennis Rouvre
Rouvre spent a month last fall traveling the Japanese coast, photographing the devastation, and speaking to the survivors. “Sometimes, I wake up at night because I fear another tsunami might be coming,” one survivor told him. “Even now the earth is still shaking.”
Gulbibi Sale Mohammed, 13, cuddles with the young son of a fellow resident at a women’s shelter in Herat, Afghanistan.
Photographed by Stephanie Sinclair
"I may not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives…birth control is not a frill that can be lightly dropped to avoid offending bishops. Coverage for contraception should be a pillar of our public health policy — and, it seems to me, of any faith-based effort to be our brother’s keeper, or our sister’s."
Nicholas Kristof, in his NY Times Op-Ed Beyond Pelvic Politics
