Today, Sarah Vowell wrote an op-ed piece Radical Love Gets a Holiday. It’s a great read, of course, and a great reminder of Martin Luther King, Jr. on this day.

On Sunday, NY Times magazine had a piece on Friday Night Lights and the franchising of television by Virginia Heffernen.

Also, New Wave on the Black Sea was an interesting article on the recent output of accomplished Romanian films by A.O. Scott. I am really anticipating the release of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

The Green-Collar Solution: Thomas L. Friedman’s editorial about Van Jones, a black social/environmental activist from Oakland, CA, and the importance of bringing the young black underclass into the environmental movement and the opportunity to expand the green movement into an economic opportunity for the jobless and underprivileged.

Friedman makes a great point. Van Jones’ work is really inspiring and promising, and I just hope this idea can gain momentum and start to work in practice and not just theory.

The environment as an issue is one that seems very segregated by socioeconomic factors. If you’re struggling just to get by, you’ve got more things to worry about than what could happen to the Earth decades down the road. On the other hand, how hard is it to place an empty pop in recycling rather than the trash? Education is a big part of it. When we can’t even get kids to read in failing public schools, how can we push for them to recycle and absorb and retain that information? And if parents aren’t doing it, kids are likely to follow in their footsteps. How do we make this a relevant issue to low income families? The environment and the Earth’s sustainability is an issue that affects us all and if our children are going to have a place to live at all, it’s an issue that everyone is going to have to be united on and work towards…and soon. It’s great to read about a viable idea being championed by a smart, energetic man.

Check out Green For All, the organization/campaign that Van Jones and others are lobbying for in Congress. You can click on “Get Involved” and sign up for their mailing list and see how you can help and you can give donations on their site as well. I’m signing up as we speak.

And another one, from today’s NY Times: Abstinence 1, S-Chip 0.

Here’s a link to an editorial by Maureen Dowd that I thought was really interesting and quite provocative.

Did anyone else who watched the USC vs. Nebraska football game get as annoyed as I did with ABC’s coverage of Clarence Thomas watching the game in his skybox?

An inordinate amount of time (while the game was being played) was devoted to an interview with Justice Thomas and his interest in the Cornhuskers. It was bizarre and made me really angry. I really can’t stand the fact that he is treated with such honor and grace, two qualities that he has shown to be lacking.

Two interesting articles on television in the Sunday New York Times.

You Are What You Watch, about how audiences are more segregated now and also how television is as much as a reflection of your taste and personality as music is/was.

Another on my current obsessions, 30 Rock and Tina Fey.

In related news, the NY Times has done away with TimesSelect, giving everyone online access to its current and archived articles for free. Funny how that happened right after I signed up for TimesSelect. I didn’t want to be a part of any club who would have me as a member, anyway.

Weeds Season 3 airs tonight. I’ll be watching, especially after the cliffhanger ending of Season 2. I’ve said that I thought Weeds is fairly radical in that its premise is basically about a bad mother (JC, your idea has been pre-empted somewhat). It’s not that Nancy doesn’t care for and love her kids (she does) or try (again, she does). She simply fails at being a good parent most of the time. And that is interesting, especially since she is a single mother. Even more interesting because she is white, rich and looks like Mary Louise-Parker.

I do take issue with the show occasionally, but I think it does push the boundaries — and I’m not talking about Showtime/profanity/nudity/dark comedy/”look, a white, suburban woman is selling drugs” boundaries. The show raises questions about motherhood, parenting, maternal instincts. It questions the depiction we so often see of the struggling, yet competent, ultimately unselfish mother. Nancy doesn’t always tell her kids where she is, she doesn’t stress the value of education, she doesn’t set boundaries, she leaves a lot of the parenting up to equally incompetent figures such as her brother-in-law Andy, she makes poor decisions, she says she must sell drugs to provide for her family and keep up their lifestyle, but then she splurges on luxury gifts for herself, she’s unpredictable and unreliable. Most of the time she is trying, but Nancy also straight-up gives up sometimes. She is deeply flawed, and thus comes across more as a real and complicated person. There are very few characters on the show that I actually like, yet in this case, that’s kind of what makes the show interesting.

So I was very excited to read a short review in the N.Y. Times this morning titled, “Is Motherhood Noble Work? Not in the World of ‘Weeds.’” This article pretty much summed up what I’ve been thinking and saying all along. I feel vindicated (though no one was questioning my observations, maybe supported is a better word) and offer this up as further proof that I feel I should be writing for the entertainment section of a newspaper. If I was still in college, I would write a whole essay on this, with concrete examples from episodes elucidating these insights. Maybe I still will. In the meantime, I will be tuning in to see how Nancy is going to get out of the mess she’s in.

In honor of my new obsession with racquetball, here is a cool photo essay that was created for the New York Times Magazine a little while back. It’s a nice change from the usual sports photography you see. The photographer, Vincent Laforet, distance, composition and especially depth of field to create some unique images. He uses selective focus as a way to not only guide a viewer’s attention, but also as a way to alter our perspective, make us see these events in a new way. The effect of messing with something as simple of depth of field can be pretty startling. Even sports stars look as small and insignificant as they really are — I don’t mean that in a demeaning way, just in the sense that the ocean and the natural world are huge compared to one human…and, stuck in our own brains, we can’t help but view our worlds in such a human, me-centric way. These photos set things straight. We look like we are little figurines in a little dollhouse-world (stadiums, streets, courts) that we created, which is essentially the truth.

The Democratic debate is on tonight. It airs on CNN at 7 pm Eastern time. I’ll be tuning in. Catch it if you can.

Also, I subscribed to the New York Times home delivery yesterday and I’m so excited. The Omaha World-Herald was just not cutting it as the only print source of news. The only weird thing is that there is no way for me to get the Saturday paper. My only options were Monday-Friday or Sunday only. I signed up for both, but that still excludes Saturday. I will have to designate this as my day to go out and get the paper, which is fine I guess since that is what I have been doing every day. I hope it starts coming soon!