No matter what our socially advanced thinkers say, there are some things that should remain all-white. Like the tennis togs that remain de rigueur at Wimbledon thanks to custom and the unbending rules of the dear old Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club that runs the tournament. Nothing but whites will do on its courts. Chartreuse shirts emblazoned with an assortment of brand names? Not done, old boy. Bad form, you know. Maybe there will always be an England after all. Let's hope.
Call them the New Jews, those Asian-American students who, however well-qualified, aren't accepted at some of the country's most prestigious universities. Much the way Jewish students once had to fight quotas to gain admission to Ivy League schools.
Asian Americans, who make up maybe 5 percent of the American population, win an estimated 30 percent of National Merit semi-finalist honors. What they don't win is admission to top-flight schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton in proportion to their academic performance. Which is just fine with the Obama administration's Department of Education, which has dismissed scores of complaints about these schools' de-facto quotas on Asian American students.
Discriminate against black kids or any others "of color," as the grating phrase goes, and a school is in trouble. But adopt quotas that limit the number of Asian Americans in your student body and that's just fine with this crew in Washington. Some kinds of discrimination, to lapse into newspeak, are more equal than others.
There's a better way to determine college admissions. Chief Justice John Roberts summed it up when he wrote that the way "to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Or would that be unspeakably simple? And fair.
Earlier this month, Little Rock's city directors were going to consider a ban on those annoying traffic stops manned by volunteers--think of them as elevated panhandlers--asking for contributions to one charity or another. Sometimes the solicitors are cops and firemen, which may only add to the sense of intimidation these roadblocks inspire.
Those passing the hat, or rather the bucket, may stand in the median, then run around to the driver's side of a car to collect a donation, holding up traffic all the while. The whole, untidy arrangement can add up to a safety hazard.
But those determined to collect some spare change for their group always have a reason. "It's for a good cause!" Namely, theirs.
But the city attorney has studied the problem and concluded there's no way he can permit soliciting for some causes at these traffic stops but not for others. Not without being accused of unfairly--and illegally--favoring some groups over others.
On July 7, the city directors were due to consider a uniform ban on all such solicitations, but not enough of them showed up to vote on the idea. Maybe they were held up by one of those traffic stops. But this week, all such solicitations were banned--by a vote of 8 to 2. At last safety came first.
The good news is that the sound of the oud can be heard once again in the land where it was born, or at least in Baghdad though not in the parts of Iraq conquered by Islamic State, where music remains outlawed--a heresy as dangerous as equal rights for women. The history of the oud, a wooden stringed instrument, goes back millennia. An ancestor of the guitar, it's depicted in a 5,000-year-old stone carving of a woman playing it on a boat. Its soulful notes, like that of the blues, can reflect any mood, and do.
To quote a master craftsman named Mahmoud Abdulnabi, known for his ouds, it's an instrument for all seasons: "If you feel joyful, it can play your joy. If the circumstances are sad, it can play your sorrow and help to empty whatever is in your chest." Just like the blues in these latitudes. Whether it's telling of "the troubles I seen" or urging folks to "get happy, get happy."
There hasn't been a singer who was a match for the oud since the incomparable Umm Kulthum could be heard everywhere you went in the Arab world and its byways, whether in the casbahs of the Maghreb or the alleyways of Haifa--in cafes and taxis and on hand-held radios ... everywhere. And now the oud is making a comeback. We've chosen the right side in the Middle East if it's the side the music is on.
There's more good news. There always is when old stories are being told again to new and ever bigger audiences. And that's the case with what may be the most popular program in all India, country and sub-continent.
The program, called The Idiot Box of Memories, has become a must for the millions who can't resist the mellifluous voice of Neelesh Misra, the storyteller behind its popularity, a Garrison Keillor with an audience 14 times that of A Prairie Home Companion.
"We are using radio," he explains, "to revive the rich tradition of oral storytelling and scrape the dust off our urban lives." Three cheers and a rebel yell. For what Southerner wouldn't identify, being the beneficiary of a rich tradition of oral storytelling of our own?
What's more, Neelesh Misra is using his voice, imagination, nostalgia and considerable talent to revive the rich tradition of spoken Hindi to offset the kind of mixed English and Hindi that is neither--India's version of Spanglish.
It's always good to see that a classical tongue is being revived. Next, Latin?
Bruce Westerman must be doing something right. He's got the foresters with him and the bureaucrats against him. The forester, businessman, and congressman from the Fourth District of Arkansas has just got his bill to reform the Forestry Service through the House--with the support of 19 Democrats as well as 243 Republicans.
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world for the world's economies. China's once booming stock market has gone bust, Greece is still Greece and so chaotically on. Call it creative destruction, another name for capitalism in full roar. 'Tain't pretty, but it's alive. If you prefer your economy steady, dependable, predictable--and flat as an electrocardiogram on a corpse--there are always countries like Cuba, where things never change except by the dictator's decree.
Some of us will take the free, even rambunctious, market any time. With all its uncertainties, like life itself, freedom has a way of winning out. Even in command-and-control economies, where it takes the form of a lively black market.
Scout is back! Prepared to dismiss Harper Lee's update of To Kill a Mockingbird as just another attempt by a superannuated author to cash in on her earlier classic, and ... Wow! In her new-old book, Go Set a Watchman, Scout is now a twentyish woman living the sexually "liberated" life in New York and on her way back to Alabama for a visit with her aging father when ... Well, see what you think. And if you can put it down.
Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat- Gazette. E-mail him at:
pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com
Editorial on 07/19/2015