I have always been a fan of Japan. I have been there four times, including on my honeymoon. I even had the pleasure of living for a year in Kyoto working at Kyoto University. It is, in many ways, a wonderful place and I do hope to go back when time and money permit. I even am teaching my son what little Japanese language I still remember.

But there are always strange undercurrents in Japan. Korean and Chinese friends of mine cannot understand why I ever would visit Japan. They have an anger towards Japan that Americans have a hard time understanding. The presence of the yakuza (Japanese mafia) in Japan is omnipresent, once you are aware of it, which seems strange for an otherwise so law abiding nation. When World War II comes up in conversation, many Japanese still think Japan was justified in its imperialism and that America should apologize for the nuclear bombings and for the occupation. It is a constant source of scandal that Japanese leaders frequently downplay and misrepresent Japanese imperialism in Asia. I was amazed at how unresolved WW II seems in Japan and in Asia.

Suze Rotolo, the girl depicted with him on the cover of Bob Dylan’s first album, has, 45 years later written her memories of their life together and of the early 60’s NYC folk scene. Although it has a publication date of May 13, it has been widely circulated (See for example, this post and this LA Times review and this Gawker Gawk .) The New York Times review is here with an excerpt here ; National Public Radio here. For Dylan fans or those with an unceasing yen for nostalgia, try these Dylan-Rotolo photos. It’s a good book about that time & place. I was there some (see last graph, below) and think her report catches well much of the flavor of the time. (Unlike, for example, “Positively 4th Street,” a book I found way too snarky.)

One of the great harms to Ms. Rotolo, I guess, of having been close to Dylan, is that he sucks the oxygen out of the room.

A book arrived in the mail, sent by Public Affairs, one of the publishers that Culture Kitchen and Daily Gotham has dealt with before. Based on what I had done with them in the past, they wanted me to reveiw the book. At the time I was excessively busy and had little intention of getting around to it. But, just to be fair, and since I didn't have another book going at that moment, I picked it up for my subway ride to work. Well, I have to admit that it was inevitable that it would grab me. So here I am reviewing it.

The Albany Project is offering something I'd like to direct your attention to:

[N]ext Wednesday the TAP Book Club will meet again right here on the internets at 7pm. Our guest will be Mr Frameshop himself, Jeffrey Feldman. Jeffrey will join us to discuss his fantastic new book, Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections). I hope we can really get to the heart of what Jeffrey is trying to say in his book about building our own progressive frames whilst ignoring the frames of the right, though I'm sure there will be at least some discussion about what it feels like to be "Fairbanksed".

I know it's short notice and all, but Jeffrey's book is widely available now and I read it in one sitting on a flight to LA a couple of weeks back. I so hope tht you'll join us for the discussion of this great piece of work and the ideas therein.

Framing is the critical skill for Progressives. Feldman has literally written the book on it. I haven't read it myself, yet - perhaps the publisher could send over a copy? - but if you've followed his work on the Kos, you'll love it, I'm sure.

I was surprisingly inspired by John and Teresa Heinz Kerry’s new book, This Moment on Earth, coming out March 26th, 2007. This inspiration snuck up on me around the third chapter. Prior to that, I found the book good, well worth reading, but a little bit like just one more book outlining what humans are doing wrong. Starting around the third chapter I realized I was referring to the book in several conversations and several blog diaries and that several of the people and organizations featured in the book I mentally filed away as worth looking into for future political connections, diaries and general research.

In short, almost without my realizing it, John Kerry’s book was getting into my brain and inspiring me. The book starts a bit dull but by the end is excellent.

My earliest impression, from the press material that arrived with the book and from the introduction, was that this book promised something really new and welcome. The book was billed as the next step in the evolution of the environmental debate. I was ready for a book that took as given the problems and focused primarily on solutions. Having been through way too many “debates” online where I yet again outlined the very clear scientific evidence for global warming only to have yet the same false claims that global warming was some kind of scam or myth (these claims are never backed up by scientific evidence of any substance), I really was ready to have a book that moved beyond that.

Senator John Kerry (and his wife Teresa) are currently touring the country to promote their new book, This Moment on Earth; last night, as part of that effort, they did a public sit-down with Charlie Rose at the 92nd Street Y.

John Kerry gives the impression of a man freed from fetters; that's not a coincidence, given that he's decided to withdraw his hat from the 2008 ring. Whether the country is well-served by that is another question entirely, but it certainly seems to be working for him. There's a new looseness there, for want of a better expression, a feeling that he can now say what he wants to say without fear of consequences. In part, this new ability to speak his mind without having to parse every statement has led him to a position of leadership on Iraq - check out SetaDeadline.com - and one that's coincidentally far ahead of any of the current contenders for the Oval Office (cough Hillary cough); it's also in part manifest in this new book.

The most ordinary items of our daily life - perhaps especially these items - are worth reevaluating in light of our precarious relationship with the earth. Even something as simple as, say, a baby's diaper.

The New York Times had a deeply disturbing article in Sunday's Arts section. The article describes several exhibitions on Moses, and flowing from them, an effort to rehabilitate his name, which has since Robert Caro's The Power Broker never quite recovered.

“It could be that ‘The Power Broker’ was a reflection of its time: New York was in trouble and had been in decline for 15 years. Now, for a whole host of reasons, New York is entering a new time, a time of optimism, growth and revival that hasn’t been seen in half a century. And that causes us to look at our infrastructure.”

“A lot of big projects are on the table again, and it kind of suggests a Moses era without Moses,” added [Kenneth T. Jackson, a historian of New York City at Columbia who co-edited the exhibition catalog].

It's true enough that we have a new Moses era, but that requires us to precisely not forget his legacy. And that legacy is mixed. Robert Moses destroyed the South Bronx and built the Cross-Bronx Expressway. He built hundreds of playgrounds in Manhattan, only one of which – according to The Powerbroker, it was decorated with little brass monkeys playing – was north of 125th Street. Robert Moses segregated previously integrated neighborhoods. The parkways leading out to the open air, the ones he built while starving mass transit, feature pretty little bridges built so low that no buses can use them, cutting off the poor (read: the black) from this bounty. Robert Moses' racism permeates literally all he has done. Along the way, he engaged in staggering acts of corruption that would be impossible today, the best efforts of Joe Bruno and Efrain Gonzalez notwithstanding.

The Huffington Post: Eight years ago today, the republican House voted to impeach President Clinton. Impeachment was put into the constitution as a measure to deal with inconveniently popular Democratic Presidents, and is not applicable to republicans, goes the conventional wisdom.

Also in HuffPost: That female Marine officer killed in Iraq the other day? She was escorting republican felon Oliver North and a Fox "News" crew, along with some guy from Newsweek. Even the manufacturing of republican talking points, it appears, gets people killed.

The New York Times: "Attacks in Iraq at Record High, Pentagon Says".

Also in the Times: Hevesi is negotiating with the Albany District Attorney, instead of doing what everyone is wishing he would do: just quietly go away.

The Albany Times-Union says an indictment could come as early as Friday.

The Washington Post: E.J. Dionne analyzes the death of Red America.

DMIBlog: "White Progressives Don't Get Race".

Lastly, The Albany Project has a book club. Now, heh, where have I seen that before? It's all good.

I all seemed so perfect! How could it possibly go wrong? You get Bernie Kerik's lover, Judith Regan, to edit a thinly veiled tell all book by OJ Simpson and get Rupert Murdoch and Fox to market it to sleaze crazed Americans. Perfect!

You had the tough Bernie Kerik...the sleazy Judith Regan...and of course you had Rupert Murdoch trying to create a new wave of OJ hysteria for his own profit. Clearly it is right-wing Republican family values at it's best, right?

But somehow, this went too far for most Americans...and even for anti-Semitic, lying, splotchy old Bill O'Reilly. There was a mini rebellion at Fox that led to Murdoch backing out, leaving Regan high and dry to once again look like the sleazy one. (And for those who don't know about it, Judith Regan is the woman Bernie Kerik had a year-long affair with, kicking Ground Zero workers out of an apartment overlooking Ground Zero so they would have a place to meet).

So what does Regan do? She takes the Mel Gibson/Saudi Arabia defense: Blame the Jews.

Now, at the risk of fueling her paranoia, since I am Jewish, I just want to say that blaming a "Jewish Cabal" for the collapse of the Kerik-Regan-Murdoch-Simpson Sleaze Scheme and for Regan's getting fired from Harper Collins is just plain insane. At least Mel Gibson had the decency to admit he was drunk and stupid when he blamed Jews for his getting arrested. Regan is just plain nuts and yet this is the woman Kerik and Murdoch loved so much.

Some of these things are just so brazen that you initially suspect they're just a hoax; surely, Judith Regan, the woman porked by Bernie Kerik in an apartment secured for that purpose by throwing out WTC rescue workers, couldn't be the editor behind O.J. Simpson's new book, the one that examines how he theoretically could have killed his wife and her boyfriend back in the day. Which, of course, he didn't in fact do; he's just writing a book about theories and possibilities.

Simpson's book, "If I did it", is being published by Judith Regan's venture, Regan Books, an imprint of Harper-Collins, which in turn is a part of the Murdoch media empire. Said far-flung fiefdom also includes Fox "News", The Weekly Standard, Fox Television, and other properties identified with the right. The Los Angeles Times notes:

"If I Did It" is the product of the former football star's collaboration with an unnamed ghost writer and will be published at the end of this month by ReganBooks, the euphonious shock-and-schlock imprint Judith Regan runs for the HarperCollins publishing house. Fox, ReganBooks and HarperCollins all have something important in common: They're owned by the predatory Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who has devoted his life to making money by making sure that news and entertainment are as coarse and vulgar as can be imagined in as many places as possible.