Supreme Court Rules On Race
The Supreme Court knows how to end a term with a bang. The last opinion of the last day this morning redefined the way public schools can integrate. Basically, the schools can not take students' race into account to ensure diversity when deciding who gets in. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion (it was another close 5-4 vote) and said that the two school districts have, "failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classifications to avoid racial isolation in their school districts." Given the recent changes in the makeup of the court, it wasn't a complete surprise, and cheers and criticism of the decision began even before the final announcement. Any thoughts on the outcome? Does this make public school admissions more fair for everyone, or does it take away a necessary tool to diversify schools after Brown v. Board of Education?
Scott Cameron
1:45 PM ET
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06-28-2007
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Working Girl
In the '80s, fashionable working women had Liz Claiborne to thank for their power suits, skirts, and shoulder pads. Her eponymous brand was everywhere ... she epitomized the women (like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl! My fave!) who were breaking glass ceilings and navigating the tricky waters of work, family, and femininity. She died Tuesday, at the age of 78, but her label (now a conglomerate that includes one of my other favorites, Juicy Couture), lives on. Robin Givhan will remember this power house today. Got any favorite Claibornes still filling out your wardrobe?
Barrie Hardymon
1:25 PM ET
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06-28-2007
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Days Of Our Lives
When I lived in New York, a few of the ABC soaps filmed right down the street from my apartment. I had been hooked on them ever since I started waitressing and daytime TV became my only (sober) friend. The first day I ran into one of the actresses from All My Children, I had the weirdest feeling; it was like running into someone I knew; I almost lectured her on her poor choice in men. That's the thing about television; it's in your house, so we have a rather intimate relationship with Luke, Laura, Ross, Rachel, and even Jack Bauer (do not make him mad). No other medium has infiltrated our social consciousness in quite the same way as TV. Lee Siegel, a critic and essayist, has a new book about television, in which he deconstructs our favorite shows, and how television operates (in) our lives. What role does it play in yours?
Barrie Hardymon
12:57 PM ET
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06-28-2007
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Immigration Bill Obit (Again)
The second time around wasn't the charm for the immigration bill. The senate picked up debate again this week, after it died three weeks ago. President Bush made a trip to congress to push for the bill, and made last-minute calls to some Republican senators this morning. Several top Democrats made their own case for the compromise bill. But, as the tally on C-SPAN2 told me this morning, it just wasn't enough. Many conservatives want to focus on securing the border before offering citizenship to immigrants who are in the country illegally. And, some see a path to citizenship as amnesty, and don't want it in any final bill. Beyond what it means for immigration and border security in the country, the vote is a poke in the eye to President Bush from senators in his own party. And the animosity that's filtered across the country in the last few months could bleed into next year's congressional and presidential elections. We'll grab Ron Elving and hash this all out with him. Questions? Opinions on the demise of the bill? Let us know...
Scott Cameron
12:45 PM ET
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06-28-2007
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Bald Eagle is Back
I was driving out west somewhere the first time I caught a real good look at a bald eagle up close. This was years ago, but I remember we all grabbed for the camera and ohh-ed and ahh-ed. These are big, beautiful birds, and they have a regal presence that I'm sure comes (in part anyway) from the position we give them in this country. The bald eagle is a symbol of America, and we've learned to respect that. But, it wasn't always the case. Eagles were hunted and pushed almost to the point of extinction. There were just 417 (documented) of them in the lower 48 states in 1963. Today, it was dropped from the endangered species list, and there are now nearly 10,000 bald eagles (it's been illegal to kill a bald eagle since 1940, and that's still the case). Now that more of us may be spotting one flying overhead, what meaning does the bald eagle have for you?
Scott Cameron
12:29 PM ET
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06-28-2007
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Prospero's Staff
We don't talk about stage actors all that much anymore. A conversation about a memorable performance is more likely to be about a film; it's as if we're so involved in the life of Angelina Jolie (and honestly, I've had a subscription to Us Weekly for longer than I care to admit), that we can hardly believe it when she turns into someone else entirely -- let alone Marianne Pearl. There's no shiny veneer on a stage actor -- unless it's a few beads of sweat. When I was a kid, every summer our family would drive up to the Stratford Festival in Canada (which is where, I'm convinced, the best theater in North America is performed), to see an absurd amount of theater in far too few days. The schedule was brutally delightful: two plays a day, with a lot of reading by the river and food and drink sandwiched in between. The problem is, when you see fourteen productions in seven days, you're likely to forget a bunch of them. There are whole performances that have just floated right out of my head. (My mother used to describe the need for a "great big intellectual burp" at the end of each trip.) Sadly, they were most likely wonderful productions, but they didn't move me; and seemed to elicit admiration rather then real empathy. Of the plays that stuck, I would wager that most of them featured actor William Hutt. Hutt died yesterday at the age of 87; he was, I think what you'd call a "grand old man" of the Canadian stage; I had only to see that white-silver head of glinting on stage to become rapt. In a Much Ado About Nothing that eventually traveled to the United States, he wrested humor from a small role, in a scene that owed quite a bit to the screwball comedies of the '30s. (He did a happy drunk better then anyone else.) As James Tyrone in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, his performance (among four other extraordinary performances) gave me the feeling that I had somehow gained entry into the broken Tyrone house. I utterly forgot I was watching a play at all, and almost tiptoed out at the end. The first time I was ever moved to tears in the theater was watching Hutt become King Lear, in a spare, but deep performance. As he wandered the moors, he balanced the terrified, angry, and yet still dear old man -- eminently recognizable to anyone who's confronted the specter of dementia -- with the carriage of a man who had once been a king. It was high drama, real tragedy, and entirely intimate at the same time.
His final curtain call at Stratford was as Prospero in Shakespeare's Tempest. My mother heard a replay of the final speech on the CBC early this morning, where Prospero pledges to give up magic forever. She described it as "straight-forward, astonishing, without histrionics, right to the bone and full of meaning." Hutt was an actor who knew how to perform, he spoke the classics with a baritone that could shake walls, but more often chose to simply become a character -- a complicated and generous spell that enchanted all of us who were lucky enough to watch it happen.
But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
Prospero, The Tempest, Act V, scene i
Barrie Hardymon
10:14 AM ET
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06-28-2007
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