Economics / Crime

The victims of Bernie Madoff, delighted with the evil one's 150 year sentence, now only have one other request - 'Go get my money and give it back to me. Now.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/business/04nocera.html?8dpc

Economics / Politics

In my continuing series "Hey, look, no, really, it's an Admirable Republican", I submit Ryan Lizza's wonderful article on Sheila Bair, the current head of the F.D.I.C.

During her college years, in the early nineteen-seventies, she worked briefly as a teller at a small-town bank, like the ones that make up the bulk of the F.D.I.C.’s membership today..."Everybody had a thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage back then,” Bair said. “It was a ritual to come in and make your mortgage payment personally. There was a kind of pride in living up to your obligations, and, on the lender side, in making loans that people could understand and afford.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/07/06/090706fa_fact_lizza

Socioculture

Tunku Varadarajan thinks we have things backwards, and I'd have trouble debating otherwise:

"Farrah Fawcett was the perfect practitioner of that most prized of American feminine arts: that of semi-wholesomeness. She was lithe and sexy without being flagrant or debased, or--the biggest no-no of all--sexually threatening. She had an utterly American sense of openness and fun, with a smile that suggested that life was fundamentally good and full of promise, that anything could happen (and that a few really fun things certainly would). Imagine the impact of her image, and subliminal message, in the towns and cities of sterile societies where the pursuit of happiness was not part of political scripture.

"The contrast between Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson could not be clearer. He was a grotesque, and in every way. He's an American icon in spite of his fondness for small boys, his skin-whitening and his general lunacy. So where does that leave us? Ululating for a Martian, and brushing aside the girl next door."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/26/farrah-fawcett-michael-jackson-poster-opinions-columnists-tunku-varadarajan.html

Socioculture

Socioculture

The satirist blogger, Betty Bowers, is very good, very funny. And she seems to have written the Michael Jackson column I would have liked to have written - she got here first - credit where credit's due:

"Somewhere in Hell, America’s most famous child molester is smiling. He got out of doing those onerous London concerts he was going to cancel anyway. And he can now sit back and watch the one thing he seemed to prize more than melody: flattery."

http://bettybowers.com/betty4president/?p=154

Socioculture/Politics

Patricia Clarkson recently spoke at the Human Rights Campaign gala in New Orleans. Here's her speech. This woman owns the joint, flat out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-clarkson/heres-to-the-violets-my-t_b_215383.html

Music

Blues Fest is here in Chicago this weekend. Bettye Lavette's here.