Pièce de Résistance

An Unformulated Experience

Peanut Peacock: Alinea The Restaurant (Chicago)

Menomena: Rotten Hell

This video for Menomena’s Rotten Hell from the Oregon band’s latest album, Friend and Foe, regains some of the underlying experiential thematic meaning that is attached to the age-old image of the school lunchroom food fight.  In a cleverly droll take on the song’s lyrics about violence and self-righteous moral conviction (“Well it’s high time we stepped outside, Drop the gloves and settle this like a man“), this juicy video clip gathers a group of uniformed schoolchildren and has them flinging sloppy, sloppy spaghetti at one another.  Presented in a manner that creates an affective counterpoint to the actual ongoing violence of the pasta combat, the action is captured in slow motion from the initial incident of provocation to the concluding full-fledged Braveheart-style battle charge, the video’s emotional impact is at the same time elegantly alluring, touching and hilariously eccentric.

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Duke Lacrosse Player Reade Seligmann Testifies at Prosecutor Nifong’s Ethics Trial

Reade Seligmann’s Full Testimony: Prosecutor Nifong’s Ethics Trial

Reade Seligmann’s Full Testimony at Prosecutor Nifong’s Ethics Trial

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Reade Seligmann testified how he was sure that the DNA tests would clear his name.  He broke into tears during his testimony, while he described finding out that he had been indicted and thinking about how he was going to manage breaking that terrible news to his mother.  Mr. Seligmann, 21, gave emotionally moving testimony about the anguish of having to face false charges that interrupted a year of his education and could have sent him to prison for 30 years.

Mr. Seligmann choked up and repeatedly wiped back tears as he described hearing the news of his indictment and telling his parents.  “My dad just fell to the floor, and I just sat on the ground,” Mr. Seligmann said.  “And I said, ‘My life is over.”

Mr. Seligmann recounted how last winter, Mr. Nifong refused to meet with his lawyer who had evidence that he was not even at the party when the assault supposedly occurred.  He said that Mr. Nifong had said he was not interested in such “fiction” and that the district attorney had “smirked” on another occasion when the evidence was offered.

Mr. Seligmann described how people in familiar restaurants, as well as on the Duke University campus, turned against him after the charges were filed.  Mr. Seligmann said people in a restaurant that he used to eat in every day, and who he considered to be his friends, put up a “Wanted” poster showing the entire Duke lacrosse team.

“The feeling on campus was as lonely as you can imagine,” he said.

Immediately following the conclusion of Seligmann’s testimony, Nifong voluntarily resigned from his position as the Durham County Prosecutor.  The North Carolina State Bar has charged Nifong with withholding critical DNA test results from defense attorneys, lying to the court and Bar investigators and making misleading and inflammatory comments about the players.  If the Bar’s three-member Disciplinary Hearing Commission decides that he violated ethics rules, he could be disbarred.

Technorati: Reade Seligmann, Duke Lacrosse, Duke University Lacrosse players, Duke Lacrosse players, Duke rape case, education, higher education, racial, racist, legal, legal issues, Nifong, Prosecutor Nifong, Nifong resigns, culture, cultural, cultural issues, racial issues, African-American, social social issues, society, politics, political, political issues, video

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Steven Colbert: On Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Steven Colbert: You’re on Notice!

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“The only thing worse than an al Qaeda attack would be a gay man stopping that,” quipped discharged gay military linguist Stephen Benjamin to Steven Colbert.  And that pretty much sums up the core of the stupendously ignorant Republican position on gay people, as stated in the official military personnel policy regarding the Iraq war on terror.

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“Sicko” from Michael Moore

Michael Moore’s Sicko: The 2007 Cannes Film Festival Smash Hit!

Michael Moore’s “Sicko”

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