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The liberal highbrow, the person who favored an immediate ban on nuclear weapons and refused to have a television in the house, was a wonderful mid-twentieth-century type. I knew such a person very well: my father. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Metropolitan Opera were the joint deities of his world. I met a lot of people like that growing up, people who managed to combine unequivocal support for principles like equal rights and freedom of speech with flagrant cultural élitism. One way to explain them would be to say that they subscribed to a particular liberal idea: that there is often a discrepancy between public values and private tastes, but as long as these things are kept in separate compartments people have no obligation to justify their personal likes on political grounds. They can be democrats out in the town square and snobs at home.
I wonder how many people actually can compartmentalize that way; in any case, people like my dad did not. They thought of their cultural preferences in exactly the same way that they thought of their political principles: as positions that, if everyone adopted them, would make for a better world. The roots of this mentality go back to the nineteen-thirties, and one of its liveliest cultivators and exponents was the journalist Dwight Macdonald.
Macdonald was a man who had a congenital distrust of authority, but whose talent and charm made this into an appealing trait of temperament rather than a personal or professional liability. Macdonald not only enjoyed provoking; he liked to be provoked. He was therefore nicely endowed to flourish in a provincial culture—the intellectual niche world of New York City from the nineteen-thirties to the nineteen-sixties—where trading attacks and high-minded insults with former or future friends was regarded as simply one of the ways that work got done. Macdonald was vociferous, opinionated, and, when he was drunk, nasty and combative, though this was true of many of his peers as well—it was an alcoholic milieu. He was also, almost serenely, pure of heart. He was easy to quarrel with and, by most accounts, easy to forgive.
Macdonald began his intellectual career in the nineteen-thirties, in the center ring of the great political cockfight between the Stalinists and the Trotskyists in New York City, then, in the nineteen-forties, broke with all sects and sectarians to run his own little magazine, and finally established himself, in the nineteen-fifties, as the Lord High Executioner of middlebrow culture. He published widely—in quarterlies, in journals of opinion, in general-interest magazines, like this one, and in big-circulation monthlies, like Esquire, where he served as the movie critic for six years. He wrote with a lot of salt and pepper, and when he was criticized he joyfully published the criticisms. The English scholar Ian Watt once said of Macdonald that he had "the pugnacious resilience of a Donald Duck." Watt meant it admiringly.
Macdonald was born in 1906 on the Upper West Side. His family, though not wealthy, was reasonably well off, and he attended a series of private schools, ending up at Exeter and Yale. At Yale, he wrote an editorial for the Yale Record in which he called on the English professor William Lyon Phelps, a campus fixture, not to teach Shakespeare, on the ground that, if Phelps thought it over, he would realize that he was not competent to do so. The dean learned of the editorial before it was printed and suggested to Macdonald that he would be prudent to withdraw it. Macdonald invoked his right of free speech and the prohibition against prior restraint. The dean said that he had no intention of suppressing the editorial; he only wanted Macdonald to know that if it ran he would be kicked out. The editorial did not appear. That dean was one of the last people known to have persuaded Dwight Macdonald to keep an opinion to himself.
A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist. After Macdonald graduated from Yale, in 1928, he first took a job in sales at Macy's. He had an exalted idea of the heroism of business; three months in retail disabused him. He quit, and began his career as a writer, going to work for Henry Luce, beginning at Time, which Luce had started up (with Briton Hadden) in 1923, and then moving to Fortune, which was launched, unpropitiously, in 1930, shortly after the stock market crashed.
At Exeter and Yale, Macdonald had been a mandarin, literary type, and something of a dandy. He later claimed that he was radicalized at Fortune, where his reporting brought him face to face with the captains of industry, whom he found boorish and contemptible. In 1934, he married Nancy Rodman, a woman with a well-developed politics and a trust fund. She got him to read Marx, which did not mix well with the Luce, and Macdonald seized on the incompatibility with a characteristic combination of righteousness and glee. He saw, possibly, a way of exiting a job he disliked through the doorway of principle. In 1936, he submitted a piece about the U.S. Steel Corporation that began with a quotation from Lenin. The editors rewrote the story, and Macdonald resigned. In the Presidential election later that year, he voted for Earl Browder, the Communist Party candidate.
Macdonald was an unlikely recruit to a political movement notoriously obsessed with doctrinal correctness. The Communists he encountered in political meetings disgusted him; he called them "wobbits." "They don't have any brains," he later said, "and they're scared to death of each other and they have no sense of humor, no life!" He had become interested in politics just when the Moscow Trials were making news, so it was easy for him to turn against the Party, which he had never joined, and Stalin, whom he had never praised, and become a Trotskyist.
He proceeded to irritate not only the Trotskyist sect he joined—a faction of the Socialist Workers Party led by James Burnham and Max Shachtman—but Trotsky himself, who made Macdonald the object of a famous put-down. "Every man has a right to be stupid," Trotsky is supposed to have said, "but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege." It is unclear whether Trotsky ever expressed just this thought in just this way (though it is certainly the kind of thing that Trotsky was accustomed to saying about his antagonists: "stupid" had specific dialectical force in Marxist polemic). But Macdonald treated it as a wound honorably incurred in intellectual combat, and he repeated the remark against himself throughout his life.
In 1937, Macdonald joined Philip Rahv and William Phillips in the repositioning of Partisan Review. The magazine had been started, in 1934, as "A Bi-Monthly of Revolutionary Literature Published by the John Reed Club of New York," an organization controlled by the Communist Party. An editorial statement informed readers that "the defense of the Soviet Union is one of our principal tasks. We shall combat not only the decadent culture of the exploiting classes but also the debilitating liberalism which at times seeps into our writers through the pressure of class-alien forces." By 1936, though, Rahv and Phillips were looking for a way to break with the Party. They found in Macdonald not only a natural iconoclast but a man agreeable to housing the magazine's editorial offices in his apartment. Nancy Macdonald served as business manager.
Partisan Review was a literary magazine—the John Reed Club was a writers' organization—and the purpose of the break was to liberate its fiction, poetry, and criticism from Stalinist orthodoxy, particularly from proscriptions against avant-garde art and literature. The editors proposed combining a Marxist political stance with a modernist, or avant-garde, aesthetic. This was an improbable formula, but, for more than a decade, it sponsored an amazing concentration of intellectual firepower. A typical issue (Winter, 1939) included writing by John Dos Passos, André Gide, Harold Rosenberg, Lionel Trilling, Richard Blackmur, Leon Trotsky, Allen Tate, Elizabeth Bishop, Ernest Nagel, Gertrude Stein, F. W. Dupee, Theodore Roethke, Delmore Schwartz, and Franz Kafka. And by Macdonald, who published, in that issue, the last article in a three-part series on the demise of Soviet cinema under Stalin.
Movies were always an interest of Macdonald's. His father, a lawyer, had served on the boards of several film companies, and had once lectured at Yale on the movie business. In the nineteen-twenties, some of the most innovative films in the world came out of the Soviet Union. "One went to the 'little' movie houses which showed Russian films as one might visit a celebrated cathedral or museum," as Macdonald described it. "In the darkened auditorium of the theatre, one came into a deep and dynamic contact with twentieth century life." By the late nineteen-thirties, though, the cinema avant-garde in Russia had been killed off by official demands for a doctrinaire product and official hostility to experimentation. Soviet film under Stalin, Macdonald wrote, had become "something that more and more closely approaches the output of Hollywood," which he thought was similarly committed to uncritical, generic entertainment, and his articles analyzed the causes of this decline. In response, the magazine received a letter to the editor from a thirty-year-old aspiring poet and literary critic, Clement Greenberg.
Macdonald had been introduced to Greenberg in 1938 by two Partisan Review contributors, Harold Rosenberg and Lionel Abel. Greenberg's letter took issue with a few of Macdonald's points, and Macdonald, delighted to have stimulated an antagonist, encouraged him to expand it into an essay, which he edited. The essay, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," was to some extent a collaboration. (Macdonald later claimed that he "invented" Clement Greenberg.) It appeared in the Fall, 1939, issue of Partisan Review, and became one of the most influential essays of the century. It was only the second piece of criticism Greenberg had published.
Except for an important twist, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" is an orthodox Marxist analysis. Greenberg explained that both avant-garde art and kitsch (that is, popular, or commercial, culture) were by-products of the industrial revolution. Art became avant-garde when serious artists turned inward, away from a society they felt alienated from. In the case of painting, artists moved from representation to abstraction, from attention to the world to attention to the paint. Kitsch—the word means trash, or, as Greenberg put it in his letter to Macdonald, crap—was a consequence of the fact that the industrial revolution had made universal literacy possible, and the new technology of mechanical reproduction permitted an ersatz culture to be manufactured cheaply for an audience looking for entertainment and diversion. This manufactured culture killed off folk art, which was a genuine popular culture.
A Marxist ordinarily went on to condemn both avant-garde art (solipsistic and escapist) and kitsch (a mass opiate), but this is where Greenberg introduced his twist. He didn't denounce abstract painting and modernist poetry; he justified and defended them. They were what genuine culture had to become under the conditions of capitalism. "By no other means is it possible today to create art and literature of a high order," Greenberg claimed. The people at Partisan loved "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," and no wonder: it elegantly squared the magazine's apparently asymmetrical allegiances to Marxism and modernism.
One of the jokes at Partisan Review was "Dwight is looking for a disciple who will tell him what to think." Even in his Marxist period, Macdonald was not a systematic or even a consistent thinker. But he was drawn to Greenberg's scheme. He adopted the avant-garde and kitsch, or highbrow-lowbrow, distinction, and the historical account that went along with it: a story about the emergence of something called "the masses," the destruction of folk art, and the rise of a debased commercial culture and its profit-seeking manufacturers—"the Lords of Kitsch," as Macdonald came to call them.
Macdonald had always been an advocate for modernist writing; he was a great admirer of James Joyce. And although he liked the movies, he had distinctly highbrow tastes—Chaplin, Stroheim, the early Eisenstein. By 1939, all of this was no longer merely a question of taste. It had become a question of politics. When Macdonald equated Stalinist cinema with Hollywood, he was not only saying that Soviet cinema had become a medium of approved crowd-pleasing banality. He was saying that Hollywood cinema was a spurious "people's art."
This was a critical standard that one could carry into battle. In 1943, Macdonald quit Partisan Review, complaining that the magazine had become too literary. The next year, he started his own little magazine, Politics. Greenberg, who, through Macdonald's offices, had come on as an editor at Partisan, had also resigned. He was made the art critic of The Nation; during the rest of the decade, he turned himself into the champion of avant-garde American painting, particularly the work of Jackson Pollock. He and Macdonald remained friendly, though with occasional fallings out, such as after Greenberg beat up Lionel Abel at a cocktail party, an incident that produced a brief two-fisted epistolary exchange. (D.M.: "I don't see how it will be possible for me in future to have any personal relations with you." C.G.: "You are a moral busybody. You should think a little more before you open your mouth.") To Macdonald's charge that he was always punching people, Greenberg replied that he had formerly punched only surrealists.
Macdonald's own contribution to the first issue of Politics, which came out in February, 1944, was "A Theory of Popular Culture." This was a re-statement of "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," though without Greenberg's identification of avant-garde art and literature with formalism and self-reflexivity (painting about painting), an aesthetic value that never appealed to Macdonald. Macdonald now placed the blame for the American worker's indifference to socialism on "the deadening and warping effect of long exposure to movies, pulp magazines and radio." T.S. Eliot (no friend of socialism) read Macdonald's essay, and cited it in his little book "Notes Toward the Definition of Culture," published in 1948. "Mr. Macdonald's theory strikes me as the best alternative to my own that I have seen," Eliot wrote, which, for Eliot, was pretty approving. Eliot, a self-proclaimed royalist, and Macdonald, a self-proclaimed anarchist, then began a correspondence, heavy on expressions of mutual respect, that persisted until Eliot's death, in 1965.
Macdonald was a remarkable editor, and although Politics had, at its peak, only around five thousand subscribers, it was a remarkable magazine, valuable for its unorthodox coverage of, and commentary on, the war, reflecting Macdonald's antiwar and pacifist point of view. Still, in the end, running Politics led Macdonald to reject politics—or, at least, politics in the progressive, science-of-history sense. His manifesto was a very long essay, "The Root Is Man," which appeared in Politics in 1946. Macdonald asserted a conviction—borrowed, in part, from Burnham's "The Managerial Revolution" (1941), though he had written critically of the book—that the country was headed toward a social system that was the moral equivalent of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The United States was becoming a "mass-society which implies authoritarian controls and the kind of irrational—subrational, rather—nationalist ideology we have seen developed to its highest pitch in Germany and Russia."
The idea that, with the correct political philosophy, this process could be reversed Macdonald dismissed as belonging to the progressive politics of Marxism and other utopian schemes. The war, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb showed that humanity is not so reformable. The only hope was "to reduce political action to a modest, unpretentious, personal level. . . . People should be happy and should satisfy their spontaneous needs here and now." The essay angered some of Macdonald's old Partisan Review comrades, but it presaged a general migration from the political to the personal in New York intellectual life in the postwar decades.
In 1953, Macdonald published a revised and expanded version of his Politics essay on popular culture, renamed "A Theory of Mass Culture," in Diogenes, a journal funded by the Ford Foundation. Macdonald now cited, along with Greenberg, critical work on mass culture by writers associated with the Frankfurt School, including Max Horkheimer, Leo Lowenthal, and Theodor Adorno, whose analysis of standardization in popular music Macdonald called "brilliant." For the Frankfurters, too, had made a marriage between anti-capitalist politics and modernist aesthetics.
"Folk Art was the people's own institution, their private little garden," Macdonald argued in the new essay. "But Mass Culture breaks down the wall, integrating the masses into a debased form of High Culture and thus becoming an instrument of political domination." The most insidious development in this process was what he called l'avant-garde pompier, phony avant-gardism. As he put it, "There is nothing more vulgar than sophisticated kitsch."
Macdonald eventually categorized this pseudo avant-gardism as the culture of middlebrow aspiration—Midcult. Real kitsch, he decided, could be left to the masses. The true enemy was bourgeois high-mindedness in literature, music, theatre, art, and criticism, and, over the next ten years, he turned much of his critical might to the job of identifying this culture, exposing its calculated banalities, and, often with genuine success, persuading readers of its meretriciousness.
Macdonald was now at The New Yorker. He had written occasionally for the magazine since 1928; not long after closing down Politics, he began contributing regularly. His editor was William Shawn, who took over as editor-in-chief in 1952, following the death of Harold Ross, and made Macdonald a staff writer. One of Macdonald's first long pieces in this capacity, published in November, 1952, was a demolition job on the Encyclopedia Britannica's fifty-four-volume edition of the Great Books of the Western World, with Syntopicon (a two-volume index of topics), and on the enterprise's Aristotle, the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. It was easy to have sport with this ponderous production, and Shawn was pleased. He encouraged Macdonald to find more middlebrow monuments to demolish.
Macdonald was happy to do so, in part because, for the first time since his Fortune days, he was getting decently paid for his work. He took on the Revised Standard Version of the King James Bible (in 1953), with its modern updating of sixteenth-century English; the young British writer Colin Wilson's wildly popular work of popular philosophy "The Outsider" (1956), which purveyed a quasi-existentialist anti-intellectualism; and Webster's Third International Dictionary (1962), a work dedicated to descriptivism, rather than prescriptivism, about usage. Macdonald was obliged to publish his classic evisceration of James Gould Cozzens's "By Love Possessed" in Commentary, because the novel had been reviewed enthusiastically in The New Yorker by Brendan Gill. (Macdonald did not fail to mention Gill's review, and more than once, in his piece. Gill had praised the book, Macdonald wrote, "in terms that might have been thought a trifle excessive if he had been writing about War and Peace.")
Macdonald did not consider the books he was reviewing to be isolated cases of bad writing or false premises. He regarded them as representative of a formidable and dangerous historical development: the rise of a shallow and pretentious literary and intellectual culture for people who were educated but essentially uncultivated, living, as he put it, beyond their "cultural means." In politics, Macdonald was a radical democrat, but he worried that middlebrow pieties about tolerance and democracy were undermining what he saw as the basic function of criticism: discrimination. When Webster's Third listed "disinterested" as a synonym for "uninterested," on the ground that the former word frequently gets used in this way, it was renouncing a dictionary's basic function. It was refusing to exercise judgment. Macdonald saw the abandonment of such distinctions, between correct and incorrect diction or genuine and sham art, as a society's abandonment of its own history and traditions.
Was he right? People still use words like "middlebrow" and "kitsch" as terms of disapprobation, even if they don't remember the Marxist tree from which those apples long ago fell. This is because aesthetic preferences are always tied up with anxieties about social status. The connection seems virtually primordial. I can't help judging you by the novel you're reading on the plane or the wallpaper in your house. (You have wallpaper?) If we had no social invidiousness, we would probably have no art—or, at least, we would have a very different economy of art. People like to debate the merits of what they read and see and hear, and to pretend to think ill of those who differ. It's part of the game. The college freshman who declares herself a relativist in philosophy class by day will argue all night about whether Band X is better than Band Y.
People also like to feel that they know what's correct and what isn't, and thus belong to a privileged minority. It doesn't matter what Webster's Third tells me: I will always feel superior to a person who says, "I am totally disinterested in that subject" (though I will also strive to treat that individual with the dignity and respect owed to any human being). I can't help it; it's the way I was brought up. On the other hand, I don't believe that the future of the republic is at stake.
To this extent, Macdonald had nothing to worry about. The general understanding of what's profound and what's shallow, proper and improper, cool and uncool will change, but the faculty of critical discrimination is never going to go away. Still, some of the edge has come off those distinctions. There has been a levelling of taste in both directions, down and up—a kind of Unibrowism. People have learned not to rule out any cultural experience in advance. They don't have a problem with the idea that a television series might be as dramatically involving as a grand opera. It's not that they think that these cultural forms are equally worthy as art, but they respond with less inhibition to the pop and less intimidation to the avant-garde. And, from the point of view of artists, writers, and filmmakers and their galleries, publishers, and studios, the equation of big box-office with pandering and mediocrity has almost disappeared. About the emergence of this more relaxed and fluid cultural universe Macdonald may have been prescient.
In the mid-nineteen-fifties, Jason Epstein, who founded the original trade-paperback line, Anchor Books, and was now an editor at Random House, gave Macdonald a contract for a book on popular culture. Macdonald struggled with the project. He was never a book writer. He had spent months, back in the nineteen-thirties, taking notes for a book on dictators, and couldn't get anywhere with it. It was not just that his talent was for magazine pieces. He also distrusted what he called Big Issue books, works such as David Riesman's "The Lonely Crowd," Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media," and C. Wright Mills's "White Collar"—which he brutally reviewed ("boring to the point of unreadability") in Partisan Review. (Mills was an old friend, and had been a close collaborator on Politics.) So it is unsurprising that the two-part essay he produced in lieu of a book, "Masscult and Midcult," was not Macdonald at his most persuasive. He was obliged to generalize and theorize, and those were not strengths.
But he did have fun in the essay, and scored points, when he got down to cases: Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" ("written in that fake-biblical prose Pearl Buck used in The Good Earth, a style which seems to have a malign fascination for the midbrows—Miss Buck also got a Nobel Prize out of it"), Archibald MacLeish's "J.B." ("It is Profound and Soul-Searching, it deals with the Agony of Modern Man, and it has been widely discussed, often by the author, in the Midcult magazines"), Stephen Vincent Benét's "John Brown's Body" ("sometimes solemn, sometimes gay, always straining to put it across, like a night-club violinist"), and Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" ("I agree with everything Mr. Wilder says but I will fight to the death against his right to say it in this way"). "Masscult and Midcult" stands as a kind of summa of the New York highbrow's contempt for bourgeois culture, and it served as introduction and polemical ballast for the collection "Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture," which was published, by Random House, in 1962.
And why wouldn't Shawn have been pleased with Macdonald's mighty takedowns of middlebrow enterprises like Adler's Great Books? The subjects made for juicy, witty, intelligent journalism; readers loved the pieces and wrote letters saying so; and they attracted lots of attention. And there might have been another reason lurking somewhere in the shadows. Shawn made a highly successful magazine even more successful by adding some gravitas to its traditionally lighthearted and insouciant pages. In the nineteen-fifties, The New Yorker became an icon of literary respectability for educated readers. It flattered their sense of their own good taste. It's impossible to know (as it is in the case of most great magazine editors) how much of this was calculation based on canny insight into magazine demographics and how much was simply a reflection of what Shawn unaffectedly liked and didn't like. Whatever the case, he must have seen that Macdonald's pieces put just the inch and a half of distance he needed between his glossy and carefully crafted product and the genteel fakery of wannabes and rivals. Macdonald's attacks on middlebrowism inoculated The New Yorker against accusations of being middlebrow.
The point was brought home to Macdonald forcefully; typically, he included a complete account of the affair in "Against the American Grain." He explained that he had written "Masscult and Midcult" on commission for the Saturday Evening Post. When the editors there suggested that he ought to list The New Yorker among the examples of Midcult, Macdonald declined. He did not think the magazine was middlebrow. The editors pressed their point; Macdonald pressed back; and, in the end, "Masscult and Midcult" appeared, in 1960, in Partisan Review.
Macdonald's defensiveness about The New Yorker has a backstory. The New Yorker has always been a foil for quarterlies and opinion magazines, which regularly accuse it of the journalistic equivalent of gentrification. The first piece Macdonald wrote for Partisan Review, in 1937, was an attack on The New Yorker, and what he called its "Park Avenue attitude toward the arts." (He did not mention that he had occasionally written for it.) By the nineteen-fifties, though, Macdonald had drunk the waters at Forty-third Street, and he believed completely in the official dogma of Ross and Shawn's New Yorker, which was the absolute separation of the magazine's business side (the side concerned with advertising and circulation) from its editorial side. The New Yorker did not cater to any class of reader, in its self-accounting; it simply published what its writers and editors wanted to publish. It was blind to the marketplace.
So, in 1965, when Tom Wolfe came out with a drive-by attack on The New Yorker, in the form of a largely fictional "profile" of Shawn, Macdonald was outraged. The attack appeared in the Sunday magazine section, edited by Clay Felker, of the New York Herald Tribune, a newspaper on its financial last legs. With not much to lose, Wolfe and Felker looked around for a sacred cow they might goad to some sort of entertainingly antic reaction.
Wolfe's two pieces about The New Yorker, "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead" and "Lost in the Whichy Thicket," were mostly, as he later admitted, "sheer rhetorical showboating." But the cow jumped. Learning that the articles were in the works, Shawn made the mistake of writing to the publisher of the Herald Tribune, demanding that they be suppressed. Felker happily made the letter public, and the pieces got more attention than he or Wolfe likely ever dreamed. (The Herald Tribune did fold soon afterward, but Felker went on to become the founding editor of New York.)
Macdonald's long, two-part response to Wolfe's pieces appeared in The New York Review of Books, a paper co-founded by Epstein and then in its third year of publication. Wolfe's hit jobs were easy enough to discredit. He had made up or slanted most of the facts. But Macdonald also attacked all of Wolfe's journalism, recently collected in "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," and he coined the term "parajournalism," derived from "parody," to describe it. (That term did not catch on. Wolfe's term, the New Journalism, did.)
It was all a case of overkill. Wolfe had got under Macdonald's skin, and there are a couple of possible reasons. The first was Wolfe's strident, though always cleverly ambiguous, claims for the attractions of, precisely, kitsch: custom cars, beehive hairdos, Las Vegas signage, rock-and-roll dance styles, and so on. Macdonald and his generation of intellectual journalists had marked out this territory as beneath critical consideration—and here was a journalist, with a doctorate from Yale, who had written a best-seller about the stuff.
What really disgusted Macdonald, though, was Wolfe's flippant letter to the editors of The New York Review in reply to the articles. "I like your Tom Wolfe issues the best," Wolfe wrote. "I hereby charge and assert that the testy but lovable Boswell who annotates my old laundry slips, Dwight Macdonald, drinks tea. Please print this letter up front in your paper so that he can respond at length and write another Tom Wolfe issue." "I take this persiflage to be a flag of surrender," Macdonald replied, "but hadn't expected the flag to be so white. A depressing victory." It was not the way intellectual battles were fought in the old days.
Or maybe it was just that the undergraduate popinjay who talked back to the dean had got old and established, and become rather deanlike, himself. The Herald Tribune pieces were sophomoric enough, but they were predicated firmly on the cardinal premise of all journalism, which is that a cat may look at a king. Macdonald had once been such a cat.
"Against the American Grain" was well received, and was the most commercially successful of Macdonald's books (including his peerless anthology "Parodies," published, by the Modern Library, in 1960). But 1962 was virtually the last year when a spirited defense of traditional cultural values by a liberal thinker could have carried much credibility. The whole high-low paradigm, so rigorously constructed and maintained by the critics of Macdonald's generation, was about to end up in the dustbin of history (to borrow a Trotskyism). Before 1962, an educated cultural consumer might understandably have concluded that there was not much in the world of popular entertainment that demanded serious attention. Hollywood was in the doldrums; the broadcast networks, fearful of offending anyone and losing their oligopoly, were locked into a policy of lowest-common-denominator programming; the pop-music industry was plagued by racism and scandal. And in the nineteen-fifties there was a major middle-class culture of earnest aspiration, the product of a strange alliance of the democratic (culture for everyone) and the élitist (culture can make you better). Macdonald understood how this culture was contrived and which buttons of vanity and insecurity it pushed so successfully; and he had no inhibitions about blowing it out of the water—a free-spirited attitude that gave his readers pleasure as well as a sense of self-justification.
Just around the corner, though, a different dispensation was poised to come into being. This was a culture of sophisticated entertainment that was neither avant-garde nor mass, that was popular but had a bit of a brow. It was the moment of "Sgt. Pepper's" and "Bonnie and Clyde," "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and "All in the Family," Motown and "Blonde on Blonde," "Portnoy's Complaint" and "Hair," Andy Warhol and Rolling Stone. The old hierarchical schemes didn't work very well on this stuff, in part because it ignored the distinction between art and commerce that had grounded the high-low system. The new art was smart and enjoyable, and it made lots of money, too. A great river of pop, soulful, demotic, camp, performative, outrageous, over-the-top cultural goods flooded the scene, and Macdonald's system of critical judgment was left stranded on the far shore.
Still, Macdonald was not a prude. He was not in the business of blaming people for enjoying what they enjoyed or admiring what they admired. His business was getting people to realize that they were often not actually enjoying or benefitting from the cultural goods they had been persuaded to patronize. His attacks on James Gould Cozzens and Colin Wilson, his roasting of Mortimer Adler and "the Book-of-the-Millennium Club," his disembowelment of the editor Norman Cousins's genteel Saturday Review and its family-of-man successor, World (one of Macdonald's funniest pieces), and even his potshots at the Big Issue books were directed as much at the literary establishment as they were at buyers and readers. Macdonald thought that people were being tricked into buying this stuff by being told that they ought to like it, or that it was good for them. He thought that, like kitsch, Midcult was a marketing phenomenon. It was culture manufactured for the aspiring sophisticate.
In the case of kitsch, no one was being fooled. Lowbrow culture was produced in order to make a profit, and it was bought in order to provide simple pleasure and diversion. No one pretended otherwise. What alarmed Macdonald was that in the case of Midcult everyone seemed to be fooled—not only the readers but the writers, the editors, the publishers, and the reviewers. They had all become convinced of their own high-mindedness. They believed that they were engaged in an uplifting enterprise of human betterment, even as they raked in the profits. (As Macdonald pointed out, in 1961 alone the Adler Great Books set grossed twenty-two million dollars.) "No vulgar promotion" was their means of promotion, and readers who aspired to something superior to simple pleasure and diversion were taken in by it.
It all seems to have provoked Macdonald's lifelong hatred of bogus authority. He saw Midcult as a form of moral and intellectual bullying, and a dislike of bullies had been part of his anti-Stalinism, his pacifism, and his anarchism—even his attack on Professor Phelps of the Yale English Department.
"Clem has many of the aspects of the old-fashioned con man," Macdonald once said of Greenberg in an interview. "I never knew that he knew anything about art and I'm not so sure that he did know anything about art. But he had something that was very important: a moralistic approach to everything. He made people feel guilty if they didn't like Jackson Pollock." This was unfair to Greenberg, who was a genuine critic. And it was unfair to Pollock and to Abstract Expressionism, a style of painting that Macdonald never appreciated. ("Enormous globs and gloobs," as he described it in the preface to "Against the American Grain.") But it suggests the remorselessness of Macdonald's commitment to exposing the self-promotion, self-satisfaction, and self-delusion that are always wrapped up in the business of making and appreciating art. That exposure is one of the foundational tasks of criticism, and Macdonald is one of its great exemplars. ♦


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Rabbit TV CEO Finally Speaks Out on Aereo Case
ORLANDO, Fla., July 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — FreeCast Inc, operators of the world's largest online entertainment aggregator Rabbit TV, today responded to the recent ruling against cloud-based antenna and DVR service Aereo, which the Supreme Court determined was violating copyright laws by providing consumers with web-based access to remote TV antennas.
The company's CEO William Mobley commented that while he understands the logic behind the court's ruling, he sees the initial success and controversy surrounding Aereo as a strong indicator of shifting consumer demand, now favoring the new generation of Wifi & mobile devices over traditional television for daily entertainment. Due to this shift, cable/satellite companies who've found success as middle-men aggregators now face declining values in this television-focused market. As the entertainment landscape continues to evolve away from the traditional TV model and toward mobile consumption, these companies will be required to focus primarily on tiered bandwidth offerings.
"In a recent talk with a major TV network VP, I explained that while his network may be getting a couple bucks a month from 50 million cable subscribers, he's ignoring ten million or more subscribers from web-based entertainment services like Rabbit TV who are willing to pay $10-15 a month for online a la carte channel bundles including CBS, ABC, or HBO on their mobile and Wifi devices," asserted Mobley. "This is also better business for targeting advertisers' dollars, and if the networks don't start offering multi-device a la carte bundles directly to those buyers, the content providers are bound to circumvent them and go directly to consumers online themselves."
Mobley's claims are further supported by a recent Nielsen Report, which indicated that despite cable companies offering 200+ channels in their prepackaged bundles, consumers are consistently watching only 17 or fewer channels on average.
Newly launching Rabbit TV Plus brings together all forms of online media into a single location via their eMedia Guide, including TV shows, movies, live channels and all other entertainment available on the web. The original service Rabbit TV launched in February 2013, gained overnight success from millions of consumers seeking an alternative to traditional television.
More Information:
Company: https://freecast.com
Network: http://rabbittvgo.com
Product: http://rabbittvplus.com
This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

subset: commoncrawl


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The 15 Best and Worst Things About Fall
By Hallie Cantor
Going Back to School A new year. A clean slate. No one remembers that time last year when you accidentally referred to Hawaii as a country. This time, you're going to come back from the summer all tan and aloof and everyone will be like "who is THAT" and something will finally happen between you and that attractive person you like. This is definitely gonna be that year. :: Turns out that attractive person has transferred schools, no one cares what you did this summer, and everyone still thinks you're an idiot. Luckily, there will be homework and classes and tests and papers for the next ten months to take your mind off your unpopularity. Hooray. Good TV Is Back Oh, thank God. You no longer have to pretend that you enjoy watching foreign films on Netflix. Now there are enough quality sitcoms pumping out new episodes every week that at any given moment, you can watch something that makes you feel like you're hanging out with friends. But without all the pressure of actually, you know, hanging out with friends. :: Because it's not enough to have actual homework, you also need to have a million shows to catch up on every week before someone on the Internet spoils it for you. Pretty soon you're going to forget how to even interact with other people in a way that doesn't have a punchline. (The punchline is you. Because you're so bad at being a human.) Colorful Foliage Like Britney Spears during a VMA performance in the early 2000s, fall finds the trees ripping off their snooze-worthy green coats to reveal the sexy multi-colored outfit beneath. You'd have to be some kind of monster not to appreciate a horizon ablaze with fiery reds, vibrant orange and golden yellow. It's like a drug trip, but all-natural. :: Let's all calm down a little bit about the color orange. Leaves changing color is not some kind of hallucinatory cinemascape, it's merely the chemical reaction of decay. It's the tree's way of telling us that its leaves are growing older, becoming incapable of feeding themselves, and dying. Just like all of us will die one day. Sweater Weather Say goodbye to uncomfortably revealing cotton and hello to lovely cozy cable-knit, flannel, corduroy and tweed. Fall clothes are universally flattering without being bulky, and as a bonus they tend to make you feel like a wholesome, scholarly model on the cover of a college brochure. Who's that in the fair-isle sweater, throwing a Frisbee while reciting the quadratic equation to a rapt co-ed? It's you! :: Oh, we forgot to mention that the day after spending a hundred dollars on that new lightweight fall jacket, you're going to spill black coffee all over it. You know, the coffee you needed to stay warm after the weather decided to be unexpectedly freezing on a day that you only wore your new lightweight fall jacket. Apple Picking It always looks great on other people's Facebook albums. Why not you? Who says you can't be the kind of person who goes apple picking? You'll wear that great plaid shirt that you have, and get a picture of yourself up in a tree. It'll be so picturesque. And apple pie! Apple crisp! Applesauce! :: How did Americans get tricked into thinking this was fun? First, you have to drive at least a few hours out of civilization, and then you get to pay way too much for the privilege of doing your own menial labor. And applesauce takes SO LONG to make. Like, hours. Also, what are you, 80? Who has functional teeth and still eats applesauce? Daylight Savings Time All the bitching you did back in March about losing your precious 2am-3am hour is finally paying off with a sweet, sweet extra hour of sleep. That's a full hour of dreaming about making out with your elementary school crush in a submarine run by midget pirates. You might even get to second dream-base. (Dreaming about boobs.) :: Aside from the fact that you'll be an hour early for everything on Sunday morning because you're definitely going to forget to set your watch back, the only thing this means is that it starts getting dark way earlier. Pretty soon all you'll want to do after class is go home, get under all your covers because it's dark in there too so what's the difference, and call your mom to complain about how Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real thing that goes undiagnosed in millions of Americans so can she please buy you one of those light therapy boxes already? Football Season Screw baseball. America's national pastime should definitely be the sport that yields at minimum three concussions per hour. Even if you don't care about the game, it's a great reason to invite people over to eat hot wings and pizza and stare at cheerleaders who are basically glorified porn stars with a tiny amount of fabric on. :: Well, I guess this is what Sundays are going to be now. Just sitting in a room listening to your friends whine at each other about their fantasy teams, and occasionally asking them what a "safety" is and why these guys are kicking it now even though the other team just had it a second ago. Awesome. Pumpkin Carving Oh, man, you really feel your creative juices flowing this year. Your jack o'lantern is gonna be so spooky, it will straight-up TERRIFY the children of the neighborhood when they see its angry face with that eerie candlelight glowing through it. Plus you get to put a buttload of salt on the seeds afterward and roast them, which is delicious. All activities should come with a built-in snack. :: So much for scary. Your pumpkin face mostly looks sad and strangely uncertain. Goddamn tiny knife always breaks when you're halfway through. And ew, you swore you put down enough newspaper, but somehow there's stringy pumpkin goop all over everything. Oh crap, did we get the kind WITHOUT seeds this year? Halloween Halloween parties are like regular parties but with a guaranteed failsafe non-awkward topic of conversation. You know how during the first week of college you can go up to anyone and ask them where they're from? Halloween is like that, but better because no one's hometown is "Honey Boo Boo Radley." :: And just like the first week of college, the pressure to have fun on Halloween is so high that you're practically guaranteed to end up disappointed. That costume you worked on for a whole ten minutes before coming out? Someone else had the same idea, and he used a sewing machine instead of duct tape and staples. Jumping in Leaves There's no better way to make you feel like a kid again than raking up a big pile of crunchy leaves and jumping in. You forgot how much you love this stuff. In fact, maybe this'll be the year you get really into nature. Finally go on a camping trip with that Outdoor Exploration Club whose email list you've been on since freshman year. Yeah, you're gonna sign up right now. :: There's no better way to feel incredibly old than getting winded after raking a few mildewy dead leaves. Also, you forgot how disgusting nature is. Who knew "pile of leaves" was actually code for "pile of snails and wet dirt"? Oh god, is that a tick bite? Hold on, you have to check WebMD really quick. Election Season Watching televised debates and belittling the political gaffe of the day are a fantastic way to feel like an intellectual when all you're technically doing is watching television and reading Facebook posts. Who knew it was so easy to participate in our country's great tradition of democracy?! You can make a difference! Have your voice heard! Get one of those braggy stickers that say "I Voted!" Power to the people! :: Every single one of your annoying Facebook friends is just as excited about taking part in the magic of democracy, and they are all way more vocal about it than you. Also, you have a sneaking suspicion that when you vote for President, the ballot is also going to include a bunch of stuff about local elections. You know, those ones you have no idea about, haven't researched at all, and have zero interest in. Warm Drinks Fall is the season of hot coffee, apple cider, cocoa and mulled wine. Not coincidentally, it is also the season of feeling all comfy and cozy on a window loveseat while you snuggle under a blankie. It's scientifically proven that drinking warm things makes you feel warm feelings. Why else would everyone in that coffeeshop on Friends be so happy all the time? :: Warm drinks are one of those things that you like in theory, but as soon as you take a sip of one and immediately spit it all over yourself because it's scalding, you remember how overrated they are in practice. It's almost impossible to pinpoint the split-second window when a drink is cool enough not to burn your tongue but warm enough to not be disgusting. You feel guilty about it going to waste, but who really wants to drink a giant mug of cloyingly sweet lukewarm chocolate? Sticky children, that's who. Thanksgiving Thanksgiving: the only holiday that is 100% purely about eating. And also being grateful, or whatever. More importantly: stuffing, pumpkin pie, and oh, what? It's suddenly considered acceptable to eat potatoes with MARSHMALLOWS baked into them? Okay! I WILL have seconds, Uncle Joel, and now that I'm a grownup, I'll also tell you to your face that your political opinions are stupid. :: Uncle Joel? Can you guys hear me down there? I don't know why I'm still at the kids' table. Turkey's kinda dry, huh, cousin Madison? Yes, I know that Thanksgiving is the celebration of the massacre of an entire indigenous people. I went through a 6th grade goth phase too. You're not special. Calling It Autumn Fall is the only season to have an alternate name for when you feel extra fancy and whimsical. "Fall" might be rainy and boring and cold, but AUTUMN is going to be a goddamn romantic paradise wonderland of long walks and golden sunsets. Set to an all-Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong soundtrack. :: Are you William Wordsworth? Seriously, are you? Are you a poet who was born in 1770 and helped define the Romantic Age of English Literature and had a weird borderline-incest relationship with your sister Dorothy? No? Then say "fall" like the rest of us, you pretentious twit. It's Almost Winter Snowmen! Gingerbread! Christmas! Twinkle lights! Frost! Snow days! Getting presents! Boots! Roaring fires! Sledding! :: Slush! Ice! Winter coats! Cold! Your annual family fight! Buying presents! Holiday weight! Disgusting eggnog! Bad Christmas movies! More cold!


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- That the Celine/Nickelback joke was way too easy.
- That we are about to do that Canadian media thing that we hate.
The O's are apparently looking for two young Major League ready players and a prospect for Bedard, which might be a bit too much to hand over to a division rival, while the Bucs might be ready to unload Bay and build around some of their own young prospects.
With so much emphasis being placed on teams pursuing Johan Santana this winter, Bedard's price might go up when teams fall out of that race. Still, we're guessing that it wouldn't take as much to pry him out of Baltimore, nor will he cost anything near the $25 million over five years that Santana is seeking. A quick look at their numbers, and it is hard to find why the gap between the two would be so great. (Bedard: 3.16 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 221 Ks versus 57 BBs; Santana: 3.33 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 235 Ks versus 52 BBs.)
Bay might come cheap, but he's 29 and coming off an awful 2007 season that was eerily similar to Vernon's (.746 OPS, 21 HRs, 84 RsBI, 4 SBs). The question with Bay is whether if that was a harbinger of things to come, or if his knee injuries held him back that much.
Maybe the most important question is whether if we'd give a flying fadoo about either of these guys if they didn't have a maple leaf on their passport.
Where's Corey Koskie these days?


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Blog Archive
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Home 1 year later
5:32 PM | Posted by paigereno | Edit Post
It is hard to believe that it has been a year since Holli has been home. She and I are both so much happier being here. She is now standing up in physical therapy with assistance. Each time we stand her she tolerates it for a longer period of time. It will take awhile to build up her strength. She appears to be getting stronger, especially her left (unaffected) side but I am seeing some improvement on her right side. We finally after about 3 tries found a good foot splint that she wears daily for about 8 hours that is helping her foot drop. She is continuing to get botox every 3 months in her right arm and leg. We now have to put her arm splint on when she goes to sleep or she will take it off!! This way we can get some benefit from the arm splint. Holli is talking more and more but still confused most of the time and continues to have the short term memory loss. She continues to get agitated easily and will cuss you out in a heart beat. Her appetite varies from day to day. Some days she will eat and drink really well but then other days she will not eat anything. We still have her on nightly tube feeding to be sure she get adequate nutrition. She loves watching movies and believe it or not football. This is funny to me because before her accident she could care less about sports. When Heather has asked her during the play offs who would win , she has picked the winners every time!! It will be interesting to see if she picks the winner of the Super Bowl on Sunday. Her 34th birthday is coming up on Valentine's Day. She has come along way these past three years but she still has a long way to go.
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Subscribe To Weekend Box Office: The Vow Snags The Year's Biggest Opening Updates
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Whatever dent last weekend's Super Bowl event took out of the box office, this weekend's Valentine's holiday status more than made up for it. Four new movies gave audiences a wide range of options and, while the weekend didn't shape up to be a record breaker, it was still a nice boost for the film industry.
Even though the top two movies of the weekend took a hammering from critics, they fared well with ticket buyers. In keeping with the approach of the most commercially romantic holiday of the year, romantic drama The Vow [ RT: 27%, CB: 2/5 ] took the number one spot with $41 million, the largest opening of the year so far. Action-thriller Safe House [ RT: 52%, CB: 2/5 ] took a close second place with $39 million.
Family action sequel Journey 2: The Mysterious Island [ RT: 42%, CB: 2/5 ] banked $27 million to take the number three spot while the 3D re-release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace [ RT: 57% ] debuted at $23 million. That topped Beauty and the Beast's $17 million re-release opening weekend earlier this year, but it fell short of The Lion King's 3D return which opened with $30 million last fall.
For the full weekend top ten, check out the chart below:


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North Oakland Ducks Unlimited Chapter: Saving an acre at a time
Chuck Myers knows how to save an acre of land at a time – raise money.
Myers, chairman of the North Oakland Ducks Unlimited Chapter since 2003, has 25 people on his committee that are dedicated to making the club's 31st Annual Banquet Fundraiser on Wednesday, May 1 a continued success.
'We get between 360 and 400 people at the banquet,' said Myers of the May 1 event being held at Deer Lake Athletic Club in Clarkston. 'It is the best DU fundraiser out there.'
Next month's fundraiser is just one of many events the North Oakland chapter does during the year to raise money for wildlife conservation.
'We're doing multiple events: a fundraising banquet in May; our second Kids Adventure Day in June; and August is Ducks Unlimited Month at Bass Pro (Outdoor World in Auburn Hills) and we do raffles,' Myers said.
'We got the Ducks Unlimited Golf Outing in August and a DU Shoot in September at Detroit Gun Club,' Myers continued. 'We are in process of trying to put together a new Waterfowl Expo for this coming fall.'
You get the idea. The North Oakland DU Chapter is all about raising money for the national organization, while offering members and friends unique and special events to attend.
For 10 years running, the North Oakland Chapter is at the top of the national list for raising funds for waterfowl habitat projects across Michigan and the U.S.
Last year, the North Oakland chapter raised nearly $94,000 in pure profit.
'DU comes out with a list of the Top 100 Chapters in the country and we were No. 6 last year,' Myers said. 'All monies go to DU national for wetlands conservation. For every $250 we raise they are able to save an acre of wetlands.
'The easiest thing for me and is the guys on the banquet committee are dedicated,' he said. 'They believe in it and willing to do what it takes to get there. They believe in the cause.'
Part of the 25-person North Oakland County Ducks Unlimited Fundraiser Banquet Committee includes John Radenbaugh, Lucy Noonan and Glenn McTaggert.
'I moved here 31 years ago and was part of the original group that started North Oakland,' Myers said.
Banquet doors open at 5 p.m. on May 1. The cost is just $80 for a single ticket and $135 a couple, which includes dinner and a DU membership for the year. As tradition, it is a cash bar.
But here's the catch: there are more raffles and chances to win great items than most fundraisers.
'For starters, every table has a hand-carved decoy and we have a drawing and one person at the table will win that decoy,' Myers said. 'We do a quickie: $1,000 worth of raffle tickets; and we do Pot of Gold; we sell 100 chances at $10 to win $500 in gold coins, or five $100 bills – whatever you prefer.
'We have 15 high-end guns from Browning, Winchester Super X-3, DU Remington 1187, a Browning Max, Browning Silver, Benelli, a .12-guage over and under DU gun of the year,' he recited. 'We have sold a mass majority but 15 tickets are still available.
'We do about 70 silent auctions,' Myers said, 'a lot of cool and different stuff, not your normal stuff. We got a classy bow tie made out of turkey feathers; two golf packages; a layout hunt on Saginaw Bay, pheasant and goose hunts, walleye trip; some DU merchandise. A Special Forces tomahawk, prints, antique canvasback decoy, sculpture of Great horned owl, a swan decoy.
'We have the $10 raffles, six of them, and one involves a 5-gun raffle. There will be five winners. We have a pistol raffle, a 20-ton safe, and all kinds of stuff.'
The $5 raffles include restaurant packages, beer, wine, X-Box Connect, turkey, duck, upland game packages, chain saw, cross bows,' Myers said in naming just a few prizes.
'The live auction has got three DU guns of the year, a Miguel Cabrera triple crown jersey, a black lab puppy, a lady who does excellent dog portraits, African hunt, photo safari, 2 season passes to Pine Knob, a wine tasting for your home, 4-man salmon charter, two Walpole Island duck hunts, a hand-made DU rug, and couple other surprises,' he said.
'We cater to a different crowd, not your normal banquet,' Myers concluded. 'We do a lot of work to get a lot of different items, and it all goes to restoring wildlife habitat.'
For information about tickets to the 31st annual North Oakland Ducks Unlimited Chapter Fundraiser, call Chuck Myers at (248) 909-6502.
SAL Youth Shoot The 7th Annual Salvation Army Outdoors Sporting Clay Shoot will be held once again at the Detroit Gun Club on Thursday, May 9.
There are three flights to choose from for the Sporting Clay Shoot: morning (9 a.m.); early afternoon (12 noon); and mid-afternoon (3 p.m.).
The 100 round Sporting Clay Charity Shoot will offer a full day of activities including challenging shooting games like Air Soft.
There will be a live auction where items this year include: a 5-day Colorado hunt; a Massachusetts striped bass fishing trip; a wolf hunt; a hot air balloon ride for two; autographed Red Wings jersey; and much more, organizers said.
Lunch will be served and there will be other great prizes during the day. Also, the Detroit Gun Club's famous steak dinner will be served.
The Salvation Army Outdoors is a faith-based initiative designed to provide youth with engaging and educational outdoor sporting experiences, such as hunters safety, shooting, archery, and fishing through a diverse network of sporting industry partners and friends.
To register for the Salvation Army Outdoors Sporting Clays Shoot, contact Amy Howard at: email@example.com.
Deadline is Thursday, May 2. For information on live auction prizes, visit http://centralusa.salvationarmy.org/emi/clayshoot.
Just a reminder The Rec' Bowl in Mount Clemens will host their 2nd annual Walleye Tournament on May 4-5 with the official weigh-in conducted by the Lake St. Clair Walleye Association. Entry fee is $20. Call Jeff Regulski at (586) 872-1916 or Stan Bydlos at (586) 716-7741 or www.recbowl.com. … The 6th Annual Oakland County Pheasants Forever Banquet is set for Saturday, April 13, at Lyon Oaks Banquet Center, 52251 Pontiac Trail, in Wixom. … The 6th annual Oakland County Pheasants Forever Banquet is April 13. Call Rob Goodman at (248) 756-1645. … The North Oakland Chapter of Ducks Unlimited will hold its 31st Annual Banquet at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 1, at Deer Lake Athletic Club in Clarkston. For tickets, call Chuck Meyers at (248) 909-6502 or visit www.northoaklanddu.org. …Wonderland Marine in Howell will host its annual Fishing Extravaganza on April 13-14 at the company showroom located at 5796 E. Grand River. Call (734) 417-5550. … The FOP Lodge 142 and Shelby Township Police Honor Guard will hold a Pig Roast on Wednesday, April 24, at Coyotes Joes, 49440 Ryan Road in Shelby Township. Call (586) 731-2121, ext. 434. … Spring turkey season opens April 22. … Trout season opens April 27. … The Michigan Council of Trout Unlimited will host the 41st annual Fly Fishing School on June 7-9. Call (517) 442-2926 or contact Scott Smith at TU Fly Fishing School, P.O. Box 117 Grayling, MI 49738.
Tom Watts writes a weekly outdoors column for Journal Register Newspapers. Contact him at email@example.com.


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For those of us from Louisiana, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is not really a spill. It's a gusher.
It is a deep wound in the minds, hearts, and yes, the pockets of anyone whose life has been enriched by the beauties of the Gulf Coast. The wildlife, the natural waterways, and yes, even the alligators: all those things we love are under dire threat.
The view from Louisiana
My home town is Sulphur, La., a relatively small place with a powerhouse football team and a heavily oil-dependent economy. My father, uncles, grandfather, and some cousins have all put in time working the oil fields of rural Louisiana, the rigs along the coast, or the refineries that dot our cities.
It's fully understandable, then, that weaning ourselves from oil dependence has never been a popular proposition in Louisiana.
In fact, environmental awareness in the state has been embarrassingly bad. When I was in elementary school, teachers taught us "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," but there were no recycling facilities in town. I once encouraged a woman in Louisiana to buy a hybrid vehicle, and she stared blankly at me as though I'd suggested she should eat cardboard for dinner.
But the BP oil calamity is changing that.
The people of Louisiana and oil-dependent communities throughout the country are waking up to the realities of this dependence.
Every time I call my dad, he is angrier about the damage being done to his home. Meanwhile, his barber is angry because he thinks the media is making too much of the oil spill and hurting Louisiana's reputation.
As a community, our journey has only begun. We've all known for years that we need to reduce our oil dependence, and we've known how much damage an oil spill could do, but we've hidden behind a deceptively comforting mantra: It won't happen to me.
Well, now it has happened to me. It's happened to all of us, and we can't afford to make excuses any longer. We must take every step we can – small or large – to reduce our oil consumption and reduce our dependence on oil both foreign and local.
Those of us who grew up in the Gulf should now lead the way, because we're seeing firsthand the toll this oil gusher is taking on our land and sea.
Growing up, my family often went fishing in the Gulf. We would sometimes tie our boat to a leg of an oil rig to keep us from drifting off.
At the end of the day, a pod of dolphins sometimes joined us on our way back to shore. They'd swim alongside us, eager for a snack. Now, like everything else that makes its home in the Gulf, they are threatened by this ongoing manmade disaster.
Location of oil rigs
Many Gulf oil rigs are just a few miles from shore. If any of these rigs sprung a leak, it wouldn't take long for the land to be destroyed.
By comparison, the Deepwater Horizon rig is 50 miles from shore and on the eastern side of the state. The oil has been drifting away from Sulphur and toward Florida instead, and for that my family feels dubiously lucky. It's like feeling grateful when a hurricane turns the other way or when the flood waters rise in someone else's neighborhood.
We can usually call it a natural disaster, say prayers, and collect canned food to donate to those whose homes were destroyed.
But a broken oil rig pumping crude into the ocean is the result of human hands, not nature's fury, and no reasonable nature lover could be happy to see the oil wash up on their neighbor's shores. I know what my family would have lost if a different rig had gone down, and my heart aches for the losses of the communities closest to the Deepwater Horizon rig.
Consumers can take action
Now it's time to turn that ache into action. We live in a consumer culture where, theoretically, buyers have all the power. It's time to test that theory by switching to sustainable products and using our dollars to demand and support the development of better petroleum alternatives.
When I heard the news about the oil spill, I swore to quit using oil immediately and permanently, but I was in the middle of my drive home from work and quickly realized how difficult it would be to cut petroleum from my life. Difficult, however, doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
That realization prompted me to commit to reducing my petrol use one day and one purchase at a time. True to my generation, I'm doing it on a blog. I'll be making efforts to drive less, consume less energy, use fewer plastics, and learn about alternative fuels.
Every purchase I make is a miniscule step, but I hope by putting my journey in the public view I can help inform others and encourage them to create change.
Mary Richert is a Louisiana native currently living in Maryland. She blogs at Not An Activist and contributes regularly to The Nervous Breakdown. She has also contributed to The Guardian's Comment is Free, and Brevity. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College.


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NEW YORK (AP) -- The dollar is falling against most major currencies ahead of a decision by the Federal Reserve on interest rates.
No policy change is expected, but investors will be closely watching Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's press conference Wednesday afternoon for clues about how the U.S. economy is doing.
The euro rose to $1.2954 in afternoon trading from $1.2875 late Tuesday. The British pound rose to $1.5127 from $1.5105.
Traders are waiting to see how Cyprus will stave off bankruptcy, after the country's government rejected a plan to contribute to its bailout package by seizing money from people's bank accounts.
The dollar fell to 0.9442 Swiss franc from 0.9478 Swiss franc.
The dollar rose to 95.54 Japanese yen from 95.09 Japanese yen.


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Ancient Grains 101: Millet-Chia
Millet and chia seeds are both ancient super foods that are beginning to play an important role in a healthy gluten free American diet. For thousands of years people all over the world have been reaping the benefits of these culinary powerhouses. Nutritionally rich and fiber-packed, millet and chia seeds deliver a tremendous nutritional boost and are a smart addition to a daily diet.
Millet is not only tasty, but also rich in B vitamins, calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, riboflavin, thiamin, phosphorous, Vitamin E, lecithin, methionine, protein, and fiber. Millet grasses can grow in poor soil and arid climates requiring very little water. So not only is millet good for our bodies, growing the crop is gentle to our planet. Considered non-allergenic, we use the small rounded seeds of the millet grasses to make highly alkaline foods, which are easy to digest and soothing to the stomach. Although millet can be used to make a variety of products from beer to couscous, we most commonly see it as a main ingredient in gluten free bread.
When we hear the word chia, most of us think of the little terracotta planter that sprouts when watered. That association is soon going to change as more people learn of the incredible health benefits of the little dynamo. Chia seeds were once a revered staple in the diets of the Aztecs and Native Americans of the southwest. The seeds were consumed not only to build strength and endurance, but also for their tremendous nutritional value and their medicinal properties.
Chia seeds come from the desert plant, Salvia hispanica. The richest known plant source of omega-3, the seeds are brimming with fiber, antioxidants, and protein. Full of vitamins and minerals, chia seeds are also easily digestible. The seeds have an incredible ability to absorb up to 14 times its weight in water. Consumption of chia not only helps to keep blood sugar levels under control, it also slows down digestion and absorption of carbohydrates making us feel full while eating fewer calories.
Alone, millet and chia seeds are tremendous sources of protein, fiber and omegas, but can you imagine the health benefit of combining the two super foods? Well, Udi's did and they created gluten free bread that not only tastes great, but is brimming with an abundance of nutrition. For a quick breakfast, toast a couple of slices of Udi's Millet-Chia bread, top them with almond butter and sliced bananas, and reap all the wonderful nutritional benefits from nature's top two super foods!
– Bea Lavelle
6 responses to "Ancient Grains 101: Millet-Chia"
This bread is GREAT! Finally a gluten free bread that tastes like a multi-grain bread! This bread is soooo hard to find though! I usually buy ALL of the loaves they have in the store and then freeze them! I wish I could order it on this website??!!
When will this product be available online or in stores
LOVE this bread! My boyfriend and I bought a loaf on Saturday and were thinking about getting out to get another on Monday! (We hadn't eaten all of it just yet…we were merely planning ahead for when we were going to be out of it!) 😀
We'd love to see this bread with some caraway seeds! It would make a great pseudo German loaf!
Kudos to you, Udi's! We love your products!
This bread is great! I had some this morning and, as much as I love Udis white and whole grain breads, I really yearned for a different type of gluten free bread. This tastes great and packs a nutritional punch! Extra protien and fiber. YAY!
I am very anxious to try this bread. I am a real Chia fan, and I love the crunchy texture of millet when it tops traditional breads. In my past I wouldn't eat a bread without fiber, so it pains me since I have been experimenting with Gluten free living,(not Celiac, But Believe I am Gluten Sensitive) to have so few high fiber choices in breads and baked good products….I do love your multi grain bread and think it makes a sensational grilled cheese! any insight on why there isn't any fiber added to gluten free products? I've experimented with it a little and found out I'm no chemist… can you email me with a reply?
When will these be available??


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Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Education
Diagnosis and Evaluation in Speech-Language Pathology
Three semester hours.
This course will introduce the student to the philosophy, planning, and implementation of speech-language pathology evaluation and diagnosis. Norm referenced and criterion referenced evaluative measures will be discussed. Philosophy and structure of the diagnostic procedure as it relates to the educational and medical models will be covered as will clinical decision making. Interpretation of validity and reliability of testing measures will be introduced to the student. Prerequisite: CSDO 3305 and one course from CSDO 4321, CSDO 4330 or CSDO 4335.
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Appreciating Teachers
Honoring Students
Educational Productivity
Arts in Education
Commencement Addresses
Odds and Ends
Quote to Note
Upcoming Events
Appreciating Teachers
In a series of events during Teacher Appreciation Week (open letter; personal video), Secretary Duncan honored America's 7.2 million early learning, elementary, secondary, and postsecondary teachers. On National Teacher Day (May 3), he stopped by Randolph Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, where he surprised staff at an appreciation breakfast sponsored by the school's PTA and congratulated Matt Tosilleo, a third-grade teacher and the 2011 Arlington County Teacher of the Year. Later that afternoon, he joined President Obama for a special Rose Garden ceremony honoring the 2011 National Teacher of the Year, Michelle Shearer of Maryland, and the State Teachers of the Year. A 14-year veteran, Shearer is certified in chemistry and special education and currently teaches Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry at Urbana High School in Frederick County. Previously, she taught chemistry and math at the Maryland School for the Deaf. Her "specialty," stated the President, "is taking students who are normally under-represented in science... and helping them discover the scientist within." Then, on May 5, the Department welcomed the State Teachers of the Year for roundtable discussions with senior staff and Teacher Ambassador Fellows. Among the topics of conversation were effective teaching, teacher preparation, school leadership, school turnarounds, and family/community involvement. Following the roundtables, groups presented key recommendations to senior staff and asked questions. Each recommendation and question was addressed by several members of the senior staff.
Also, Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Thelma Melendez, and Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services Alexa Posny thanked teachers who had made a difference in their lives; the 2011 National Online Teacher of the Year, Kristin Kipp, spent a full day shadowing Director of Educational Technology Karen Cator; and the White House welcomed a group of teachers for a roundtable discussion as part of its "Champions of Change" listening series.
In addition, Teacher Ambassador Fellow Laurie Calvert authored and presented a new video for teachers. "A Teacher's Guide to Fixing No Child Left Behind" details some of the main problems created by the No Child Left Behind Act and describes the President's proposal to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This video offers a vision that strengthens teaching, raises standards, narrows achievement gaps, and prepares all students for college and careers.
(Note: A comprehensive summary of the week is available online.)
Honoring Students
Last week, the Secretary announced the selection of 2011 U.S. Presidential Scholars. This program was established by Executive Order in 1964 to honor academic achievement by graduating high school seniors. It was expanded in 1979 to honor students who demonstrate exceptional talent in the arts. Each year, 141 students are named, including at least one young man and woman from every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and American families living abroad. Another 15 students are chosen at-large, and 20 students are scholars in the arts. Over 3,000 candidates qualified on the basis of significant ACT or SAT scores or nomination through the national youngARTS competition of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. The Commission on Presidential Scholars, appointed by the President, chooses finalists. Scholars will be recognized June 18-21 in Washington, D.C. Each scholar will invite the teacher who had the greatest impact on his or her success to participate in the activities and receive a certificate of appreciation.
Also last week, Deputy Secretary Tony Miller praised the accomplishments of Mathletes and presented medals to the winning MATHCOUNTS teams at the 2011 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National Competition.
This week, President Obama announced Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, Tennessee, as the winner of the 2011 Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge. Some 400 high schools competed for the honor of having the President as a graduation speaker. The applications, consisting of short videos and essays showing dedication to academics at all levels, were narrowed down by the Department and the White House Domestic Policy Council to six finalists, and, between April 21 and April 29, nearly 100,000 people voted online. The President selected the winner from among the top three finalists receiving the highest average ratings. Booker T. Washington's graduation rate increased from 55% in 2007 to 81.6% in 2010. The school has taken steps such as creating separate freshmen academies for boys and girls to help students adjust to the school culture and establishing an atmosphere where educators can take personal interest in seeing students take pride in their school's work. Students now take AP classes, learn about engineering through robotics competitions, and earn college credits. (Note: Recognizing the extraordinary achievements and outstanding efforts by each finalist, senior Administration officials will attend the commencements of the runner-up schools.)
Educational Productivity
In March, to help states meet the challenge of doing more with less and to protect public schools from counterproductive cuts, the Secretary released promising practices on the effective, efficient, and responsible use of resources in tight budget times. Building off of this work, the Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) has compiled information to help schools, school districts, and states increase their educational productivity. This information has been pulled from numerous resources, in particular the work of leading thinkers in the field. It is organized into 10 reform categories, each aligned with various strategies, practices, or approaches that seek to increase productivity by: (1) improving outcomes while maintaining current costs; (2) maintaining current outcomes while lowering costs; or (3) improving outcomes and lowering costs. The strategies seek to invest in what works, make better use of technology, reduce mandates that hinder productivity, pay and manage for results, take full advantage of existing opportunities, and make short-term investments for long-term results. Guiding these strategies are two underlying principles: putting student learning first and protecting the neediest children and communities. While some of these strategies will have a greater impact on budgets and spending than others, each represents a potential opportunity to contribute to improved productivity at the school, district, or state level.
Arts in Education
During the Arts Education Partnership meeting in early May, the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities introduced its landmark report, "Re-Investing in Arts Education: Winning America's Future." The value of arts education is often phrased in enrichment terms -- helping kids find their voice, rounding out their education and tapping into their undiscovered talents. This is true, but, as the committee witnessed in schools across the country, it is also an effective tool in school-wide reform and in fixing some of the nation's biggest educational challenges. To realize the true potential of arts education, the report argues for a marriage of arts education strategies with overall educational goals. To accomplish this requires dynamic collaboration between classroom teachers, arts specialists, and teaching artists to develop creative environments and using all the tools available to reach and engage students in learning.
"A Snapshot of Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 2009-10," a new report from the Department's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), presents selected findings from seven Congressionally mandated arts in education surveys. During the 2009-10 school year, most of the nation's schools offered instruction in music (94% of elementary schools and 91% of secondary schools) and visual arts (83% of elementary schools and 89% of secondary schools), but instruction in dance (3% of elementary schools and 12% of secondary schools) and drama/theater (4% of elementary schools and 45% of secondary schools) was more limited. This first report will be followed by a second, fuller report that includes all 2009-10 items with comparisons by school characteristics.
On May 10, the Department and the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) hosted an event celebrating and supporting national music programs. Students from Maryland's George Fox and Lime Kiln middle schools performed on the plaza at the Lyndon Baines Johnson building in Washington, D.C. Subsequently, attendees participated in a public drum and ukulele circle to experience playing music first-hand.
Commencement Addresses
President Obama and Deputy Secretary Miller recently gave commencement addresses at institutions of higher education (IHEs). The President spoke at Miami Dade College before an audience of 4,000 graduates, family members, and faculty. The college is one of the nation's largest IHEs, with more than 170,000 students, and one of the nation's largest Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), serving thousands of African-American and Hispanic students. "I believe that community colleges like this one are critical pathways to the middle class that equip students with the education and skills necessary to compete and win in this 21st century," the President noted. "That's why I've made community colleges a centerpiece of my education agenda -- along with helping more students afford college. I couldn't be prouder of the work we've done in community colleges. And your accomplishment today is vital to America reclaiming the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020." (Background on Miami Dade College is here). The Deputy Secretary spoke at Fayetteville State University. The university, North Carolina's second-oldest public institution, serves more than 6,300 students and is an Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Also, it has a strong footprint in China -- with dual degree exchange agreements with five universities there. "As you pursue your passions, your careers, and build a family in the years ahead," the Deputy Secretary said, "I would like to add one more path to follow. I hope that every graduate comes to feel an obligation to be involved in some way in transforming education so that the students behind you go to college and earn their degrees too. Take your education, and pay it forward. Res Non Verba; Deeds, Not Words."
Odds and Ends
In a May 6 "Dear Colleague" letter, the Administration reminds school administrators of their obligation under federal law to enroll children, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. The letter cites Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, among other factors, by public schools. It also cites Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held a state may not deny access to a basic public education to any child, whether that child is present in the country legally or not. Both the letter and the accompanying materials (fact sheet; questions-and-answers) declare schools may require proof (for example, lease agreements, utility bills, or other documents) that a child lives within school district boundaries. However, schools may not discourage the enrollment of undocumented children by inquiring about their immigration status, deny enrollment to those with foreign birth certificates, or deny enrollment to children whose parents decline to provide their Social Security numbers or race/ ethnicity information.
The Nation's Report Card: Civics 2010 finds achievement by U.S. fourth-graders in civics has increased, while eighth-graders' performance was not significantly different and twelfth-graders' performance has declined. Indeed, the report shows that fourth-graders posted the highest civics score since 1998, with the percentages of students at or above the Basic and Proficient achievement levels higher than in 1998 and 2006. Yet, twelfth-graders scored lower in 2010 than in 2006 and had a lower percentage at or above Proficient compared to 2006.
NCES's latest edition of "Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data" presents findings associated with public high school graduation and event dropout counts for the 2008-09 school year. Across the U.S., the 50 states and the District of Columbia reported that a total of 3,039,015 public school students received a high school diploma, resulting in a calculated Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate of 75.5%. On the other hand, the 50 states and the District of Columbia reported 607,789 students dropped out, resulting in a calculated overall event dropout rate of 4.1%.
Also, IES has released the Department's first report on the revamped School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, "Baseline Analyses of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG-Awarded Schools." This report uses publicly available data from applications, state web sites, and NCES's Common Core of Data to provide some initial information on SIG-related policies and practices that states intend to implement, as well as key characteristics of SIG-eligible and SIG-awarded schools. There are 15,518 SIG-eligible schools nationwide, with 1,247 SIG-awarded schools across 49 states. (Note: A mapping tool for the SIG data is available online.)
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has launched a public media initiative to help improve high school graduation rates. American Graduate expands on public media's record of success in early learning to connect with students attending middle school, a critical point when the disengagement that leads to dropping out in high school frequently begins. Local public radio and television stations are at the core of this initiative and are uniquely positioned to educate and engage various stakeholders on the dropout problem, rally support, and help coordinate efforts in communities.
Quote to Note
"Your generation was born into a world with fewer walls, a world educated in an era of information, tempered by war and economic turmoil. As our globe has grown smaller and more connected, you've shed the heavy weights of earlier generations. You have grown up more accepting and tolerant of people for who they are, regardless of race or gender or religious belief or creed or sexual orientation.... You see our diversity as a strength, not a weakness. I believe those life experiences have fortified you, as earlier generations were fortified, to meet the tests of our time. Everything I have seen of your generation has shown me that you believe, just as deeply as any previous generation, that America can always change for the better."
|President Barack Obama (4/29/11), in his commencement address at Miami Dade College
Upcoming Events
In a May 5 Federal Register notice, the Department announced its intent to establish one or more negotiated rulemaking committees to prepare proposed regulations under the Higher Education Act, as amended. This notice also announced three public hearings (May 16 at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA; May 19 at Loyola University-Lake Shore Campus in Chicago; and May 26 at the College of Charleston, SC) at which interested parties may suggest issues that should be considered for action by the committees. Moreover, the notice announced four policy roundtable discussions (May 12 at Tennessee State University in Nashville; May 17 at Pacific Lutheran University; May 20 at Loyola University-Lake Shore Campus; and May 27 at the College of Charleston) to inform policy in the areas of college completion, teacher preparation, and the proposed "First in the World" competition.
Next week, the Department will exhibit at the Boys and Girls Club of America National Conference in New Orleans (May 18-20) and the Armed Forces Joint Services Open House and Air Show at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. (May 20-22). If you are attending either of these events, please stop by the Department's booth.
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Welcome to Student Health and Counseling Services! We are committed to delivering professional mental and physical health services to a diverse student body. We encourage you to view your health holistically rather than separating your mental health from your physical health.
Our mission is to assist students in achieving and maintaining wellness by providing medical and counseling services that address the unique needs of college students. We encourage students to take responsibility for their health and to become active participants in the process.
We are committed to the following:
Student Health and Counseling Services offers a positive approach to supporting a student's healthy lifestyle through the development of physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and social well-being.
Director of Student Health & Counseling Services,
Shannon Deal, APRN-BC
Sexual Misconduct
Know what to do if you or someone you know is a victim of power-based personal violence.
Suicide Prevention
If you have had thoughts of suicide, know that you are not alone. We are here to help.