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Monthly Archives: March 2008

Turnips to Squeeze

Monday, March 31, 2008

Things are tough all over so what am I doing, about to criticize non-profits I favor? The endeavors — literature, fine art, serious music — are the sorts of things that keep me rooted here, but some of their staff members could use some free advice, for what it’s worth.
1. The literary bimonthly Oxford American, [...]

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Scary Comics Not a Contradiction

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
Book report: The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu
When I saw this title online I had a flashback. In an early primary school year (the early 1960s) Mrs. Friedman gave me for my birthday a subscription to a Disney comic book. Mom [...]

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What Honesty Comes To

Friday, March 21, 2008

Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
In the last couple of weeks, American politics took a big turn — all of it, from national to state to local.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., gave a speech to explain how he has devoted his life to acting on inclusive feelings of love and harmony while following the ministry of [...]

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Famous Columnist School

Friday, March 14, 2008

Book report: The Art of Column Writing: Insider Secrets from Art Buchwald, Dave Barry Arianna Huffington, Pete Hamill and Other Great Columnists, by Suzette Martinez Standring
The reviewing trade has a law that a critic doesn’t write up works created by friends. It’s a group of laws, actually. When a periodical’s staffer or regular contributor writes [...]

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Club with No Members

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
My main club — only because inclusion means adherence to its rules before and beyond any others — is the Journalist Club. The name for the rules collectively is Conflict of Interest. Being an ethical person from early childhood, even teaching a semester of journalism ethics to UA undergrads, demonstrates I [...]

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Georgie Porgie, Porgy and Bess

Sunday, March 2, 2008

The Democrat-Gazette published today my review of What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, Andras Szanto, editor. I was so excited by this book, even though it was disappointing, that I wrote three Bricks referring to George Orwell. Two of them were on revelations about today from his 1949 novel [...]

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