We missed this Roger Cohen piece in yesterday's New York Times that takes Sean Penn to task for his recent odes to Raúl Castro's Cuba. "Penn," Cohen says, is foolish to champion a repressive regime and, worse, a bad writer. "...As rambling as a journalist as he is disciplined as an actor." The Times also has today's David Brooks. Like every other pundit on the planet, he weighs in on Israel v. Hamas. "The extremists’ goal, " Brooks says, "Is to kill as many Jews as possible and wait for God (or Iran) to kill the rest." Israel’s goal "is to restrain the brazenness of the extremists until their movement somehow burns itself out or is destroyed from within Arab society."
Which is what it always comes down to. There are only two ways the Palestinian problem can be resolved. Either the Arab-Muslim world will accept Israel as a permanent part of the region, or Israel will one day cease to be.
The Washington Post is surprised to find that George Bush has done something Green. Or, rather, something Blue. Today, the President is granting monument status to three "vast and breathtaking" areas of ocean habitat in the South Pacific. Combined with other designations over the past eight years, including a 138,000-square-mile marine national monument in the Hawaiian Islands, Mr. Bush has protected 333,000 square miles of ocean habitat.
Today's stupidest story comes from a music writer for the Guardian UK, Steven Wells. He has a nonsensical, mostly tongue-in-cheek rant about the success of Guitar Hero, and why it shows that all guitars should be made with buttons, not strings.
In actual music news, Rolling Stone traveled to London in December to watch U2 work on their new album, 'No Line on the Horizon.' RS has a big story on the band coming out this week and describes a few of the new tunes, here. previews of a few new songs here.
