"A Bronze, Bearded Figure with a Determined Gaze Perched atop a Three-Foot Marble Pedestal"

"Douglass is the fourth African American to have a statue or bust in the halls of Congress, following the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Sojourner Truth. Reflecting the nation’s complicated past, Statuary Hall also includes Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee."

Ben Pershing in The Washington Post reports on the debut of a statue of Frederick Douglass at the U.S. Capitol.

Second Glove Hamburger Beanery

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for composer Bob Thompson, restaurateur Harry Lewis, historian Robert Fogel, musician Sam Most, impresario Bernie Sahlins, surfwear designer Bob Meistrell, restaurateur Irwin Held, and actor James Gandolfini.

"Whether Someone Would Really Want to Return to a Particular Time Depends on Socioeconomic Class, Age, Sex, Race and Health"

"In 1950, a young man, with or without a high school degree, would have found it much easier than it is today to get and keep a job in the auto industry. And in that year, according to Colin Gordon, a historian at the University of Iowa, the average autoworker could meet monthly mortgage payments on a median-priced home with just 13.4 percent of his take-home pay. Today a similar mortgage would claim more than twice that share of his monthly earnings.

"Other members of the autoworker’s family, however, might be less inclined to trade the present for the past. His retired parents would certainly have had less economic security back then. Throughout much of the 1960s, more than a quarter of men and women age 65 and older lived below the poverty level, compared to less than 10 percent in 2010."

 

Stephanie Coontz in The New York Times warns against nostalgia. 

"What We Need Is a Change in Incentives for Corporate Elites"

"'It is ironic that I would be writing about the postwar American corporate elite as a model for responsible leadership,' he admits. “I spent the early part of my career characterizing these people as the "bad guys," and there certainly was plenty about which to complain.'
"But he doesn’t pursue the truly unexpected and uncomfortable paradox his historical study reveals. When America’s postwar corporate elites were sexist, racist company men who prized conformity above originality and were intolerant of outsiders, they were also more willing to sacrifice their immediate gain for the greater good. The postwar America of declining income inequality and a corporate elite that put the community’s interest above its own was also a closed-minded, restrictive world that the left rebelled against—hence, the 1960s. It is unpleasant to consider the possibility that the personal liberation the left fought for also liberated corporate elites to become more selfish, ultimately to the detriment of us all—but that may be part of what happened. The book sidles up to but doesn’t confront head-on the vexing notion that as the business elite became more open and meritocratic, it also became more selfish and short-termist."

Chrystia Freeland in Democracy reviews Mark Mizruchi's The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite.

"As If in a Careful Dance with Its Audience"

"Wandering through the exhibit, one is reminded of the filmmaker's beloved tracking shots, which accompany protagonists through trenches, corridors and hedges, influenced by filmmaker Max Ophüls, whose death, the exhibit notes, Kubrick memorialized on the set of 1957's Paths of Glory. Intensified by the filmmaker's fondness for wide-angle lenses, they emphasize the singular travels of his protagonists moving through time and space."

Doug Cummings in the LA Weekly reviews "Stanley Kubrick" at LACMA.

"Superficial, Juvenile Nonsense"

Michael Lind at Salon goes on a tear against libertarianism.

"Kennedy’s Finest Moment"

"But he quickly spun that news into a plea for national unity behind what he, for the first time, called a 'moral issue.' It seems obvious today that civil rights should be spoken of in universal terms, but at the time many white Americans still saw it as a regional, largely political question. And yet here was the leader of the country, asking 'every American, regardless of where he lives,' to 'stop and examine his conscience.'       

"Then he went further. Speaking during the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation—an anniversary he had assiduously avoided commemorating, earlier that year—Kennedy eloquently linked the fate of African-American citizenship to the larger question of national identity and freedom. America, 'for all its hopes and all its boasts,' observed Kennedy, 'will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.'"

 

Peniel E. Joseph in The New York Times marks the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy 1963 speech on civil rights. 

"To Understand Edward Snowden's Motivations, Look to Aaron Swartz"

"Snowden’s mindset seems similar to me. He told The Guardian that, as a teenager, he considered the Internet 'the most important invention in all of human history' because it connected him to 'people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own.' But, as an adult, he increasingly worried that surveillance was destroying the Web. The same invention he believed could liberate mankind was becoming a tool of oppression."

Noam Scheiber at The New Republic reacts to the National Security Agency leaks.

And Alec MacGillis "welcomes the uproar."

Fearsome Harlem Mermaid

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for documentarian Jean Bach, Senator Frank Lautenberg, football player Deacon Jones, farmer Bob Fletcher, film editor William T. Cartwright, and swimmer-actress Esther Williams. 

"Cut from the Top"

"This relationship between university and community poses a stark contrast to the UCOP in Oakland. As Kerr succinctly put it, 'The university-wide system has no alumni, no students, no faculty, no sports teams, no one to cheer for it.'
"Students, faculty and campus administrators know what the most pressing challenges are. And we are our own best advocates; we know who our students are and what our faculty can accomplish. We have loyal alumni who understand the value of excellent and accessible higher education."

David N. Myers in the Los Angeles Times calls for the downsizing of the University of California Office of the President.

"Passion Plays on Television, Even If It’s an Act"

"Toward the end of its run, as reasonable guests (and major advertisers like Domino’s Pizza) became harder and harder to woo, The Morton Downey, Jr. Show became more and more of a Network-style sideshow, peopled by assorted crazies and attention-mongers: Nazi skinheads, strippers, conspiracy theorists. The speed of his downfall makes the last third of the documentary difficult to watch: We see an increasingly out-of-touch Downey berating and humiliating his guests and employees, then physically assaulting his wife before leaving her for a much younger woman, whom he proceeds to nearly bankrupt himself spending his money on. (They would remain together until his death.) He’s an unredeemable bastard, but in his pettiness and desperate need for recognition, there’s something moving too. The man whose logo was a cartoon of a wide-open, yammering mouth would probably not have objected to this mostly unflattering but ultimately respectful portrait."

Dana Stevens in Slate reviews Evocateur: The Morton Downey, Jr. Movie.

The Benefit and the Burden

"By 1983, it was apparent that a huge shift in power resulted from Prop 13. More local funding decisions were made in Sacramento, as the state government picked up responsibilities that could no longer be financed at the local level because the property tax was the principal revenue source for local governments.
"On the 25th anniversary of Prop 13 in 2003, William Fulton and Paul Shigley, editors of the California Planning & Development Report, asserted that Californians had lost a great deal of control over their local governments as a consequence."

Bruce Bartlett at The New York Times looks back at Proposition 13, thirty-five years later.

As does Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.