WASHINGTON POST: One hundred and ten years ago, during another low point in the nation’s political discourse, newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst – who was angling for a presidential run in 1904 – published a pair of columns fantasizing about violence against President William McKinley. Columnist Ambrose Bierce wrote that a bullet “is speeding here to stretch McKinley on his bier.” Next, an unsigned column widely attributed to Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane declared: “If bad institutions and bad men can be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done.” Six months later, a deranged man […]

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MOTHER JONES: At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday—about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in Tucson—Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn’t answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: “Hey man, it’s Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later.” That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney first heard about the Tucson […]

[Photo by bewarenerd] BY MAVIS LINNEMANN When Doug announced to me that Treasure Island, a local high-end grocery store, was selling a limited number of black truffles —the diamonds of the culinary world—I couldn’t get the idea of buying one out of my head. Truffles are tuber-like fungi (think mushroom) that grow underground on the roots of particular oak trees in Italy, France, Spain, and in some other areas of Europe. Because truffles can’t be seen, specially trained truffle dogs and pigs hunt them out for farmers during the truffle’s very short growing season, which lasts from early December through […]

NEW YORKER: For the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn’t a big-government liberal—he’s a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He’s also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of […]

FRESH AIR Alan Lomax spent more than a half-century recording folk music and customs around the world, and now he is the subject of a new book by John Szwed called Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World. In 1990, Lomax, who died in 2002, spoke to Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross about the decades he spent compiling sound recordings from around the world. In the 1930s and ’40s, Lomax and his father, John, were the first folklorists to travel around the American South documenting songs on portable recording machines. They both contributed thousands of field recordings to the Library […]