Adele M. Stan
Adele M. Stan is a columnist for The American Prospect. She is research director of People for the American Way, and a winner of the Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism.
Recent Articles
NEW FRONT IN WAR ON TERROR: G.O.P. DONORS
Adele M. StanFeb 20, 2007NEW FRONT IN WAR ON TERROR: G.O.P. DONORS The AP has just reported the arrest of a donor to the Republican Party -- a self-described lifetime member of National Republican Senatorial Committee's ''Inner Circle" and appointee to the NRCC's ''White House Business Advisory Committee'' has been indicted on terrorism charges for allegedly providing aid to an Afghan terrorism training camp. His name is either Michael Mixon or Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari , depending on the day and hour. One can't help but wonder just how long the U.S. attorneys who brought these charges will last, given the recent firings of seven who dared to take cases that made the G.O.P. look bad. (Now we know why the administration was so quick to yank the collective bargaining rights of U.S. attorneys.) --Adele M. Stan
All that Jazz
Adele M. StanFeb 15, 2007In the Paris of the 1920s and '30s, Chez Bricktop was one hot jazz club. As depicted in a delightful, bittersweet new musical , Bricktop (playing at Metro Stage in the D.C. area), the club was frequented by those who needed to be seen. There, European royalty met the monarchs of American music. "King" Sidney Bechet , the great New Orleans clarinetist, might sit only tables away from the Duke of Windsor -- a scene rendered impossible in the United States, thanks to Jim Crow. It was racism as much as anything else that first brought jazz to Paris, making Bricktop all the more special, owned as it was by the indefatigable href="http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1072/The_original_Bricktop_Ada_Smith">Ada "Bricktop" Smith, the African-American entertainer and entrepreneur who championed the careers of blues singer href="http://www.redhotjazz.com/hunter.html">Alberta Hunter and cabaret songbird href="http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1383/...
A "CLEAN" BILL OF HEALTH: BIDEN DECLARED TOO ARTICULATE BY WHITE GUYS.
Adele M. StanFeb 05, 2007A "CLEAN" BILL OF HEALTH: BIDEN DECLARED TOO ARTICULATE BY WHITE GUYS. Here in Washington we have this marvelous thing called C-SPAN Radio, which on Sundays airs all of the big political TV talk shows back to back, allowing one to do one's laundry, cook a duck or practice one's ukulele with the sound of self-important white men droning in the background. And so it is that I spend my Sundays. (Don't cry for me, Argentina...) Senator Joe Biden 's "unfortunate" comments last week about the presidential candidate from Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama (last discussed here by Garance ) proved to have legs, leaving a lot of white guys, and the occasional white gal (occasional is all we gals are allowed in world of punditry) to roll their eyes at Biden's apparent eccentric-uncle act, and then assert that the senator from Delaware is not a racist. Herein lies the problem: In the American media, if you say about an African-American something based on racial stereotypes that is not overtly malicious...
THANK YOU TO THE BLACK WOMEN OF VIRGINIA.
Adele M. StanJan 24, 2007THANK YOU TO THE BLACK WOMEN OF VIRGINIA. The junior senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, James Webb , is hardly my favorite freshman. (Feminists of my generation find it tough to forget his attack on the women attacked at the Tailhook convention in 1991.) However, there's no denying the effectiveness of his rebuttal to the State of the Union. He kept his message simple and strong, bringing the weight of his family's continuing military history to his reasoned denouncement of the war in Iraq. And his clearly articulated explanation of the economic injustices now endured on some level by most Americans was dead-on. Sticking to these two issues was smart stuff; let the Democratic presidential candidates take note. We would be remiss, however, to go on lauding Webb's response without expressing heartfelt thanks to the African-American women of Virginia, for it was they who made the difference in Webb's tight contest against the former Senator George Allen (known in some parts as...
DROP IN THE...
Adele M. StanJan 24, 2007DROP IN THE BUCKET. More on the noblesse oblige theme. Did the president just applaud himself for getting AIDS drugs to 50,000 people on the continent of Africa? According to the U.N. , of the 900 million people on the continent, "an estimated 24.5 million people [in sub-Saharan Africa] were living with HIV at the end of 2005 and approximately 2.7 million new infections occurred during that year." Thank goodness that Africa's devastation at least gets some notice in a presidential address but, really, I think we could do a bit better at getting AIDS drugs to a continent deep in crisis. --Adele M. Stan
