tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-297172202024-03-20T15:13:19.655-04:00SAM SMITH'S ESSAYSAn archives of articles by Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review. More can be found at prorevflotsam.blogspot.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger617125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-35081169166758050482024-01-07T14:14:00.003-05:002024-01-07T14:14:22.245-05:00Journalism: What good old days?From our overstocked archives <!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-25550971137158222712024-01-07T14:09:00.000-05:002024-01-07T14:09:03.839-05:00Eternal fundamentals of leadershipSam Smith,
2011 - I have been trying to understand the eternal fundamentals of
leadership according those who see government and non-profits as badly in need
of corporate principles. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
Fire, don’t inspire
Test, don’t teach
Statistics are just another form of adjective. Use them at will
Treat everyone – including citizens, patients, students, teachers, Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-62821396222558407822024-01-07T14:07:00.002-05:002024-01-07T14:07:09.432-05:00The liberal virtue standard: words rather than action Sam Smith – Although your editor graduated from
Harvard magna cum probation, I do feel compelled to say a word on behalf of
that college’s president who is currently under attack for committing the current
greatest liberal sin: saying something the wrong way. As the son of a man who
worked for the Roosevelt administration and helped to end 69 years of GOP rule
in Philadelphia back in the Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-594867150576785082024-01-07T14:04:00.002-05:002024-01-07T14:05:13.965-05:00The hidden power of us Sam
Smith – Last
May I wrote about a discovery that deer in the field behind our house had made
for me:
We
live next to a Maine field that is periodically used by up to a dozen deer.
Watching them and thinking about their lives has taught me something about my
own: namely humans are the only animal species on earth that allows fellow
creatures outside of their close environment to tell Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-46822288314249799402023-01-22T12:22:00.005-05:002023-11-13T17:51:48.086-05:00Summer<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-18811084407855336492023-01-03T09:10:00.006-05:002023-01-03T09:10:54.090-05:00Cora Du Bois
Sam Smith, 2015
I only took one course from Cora Du Bois, but when I heard about Susan
Seymour’s new biography of the anthropologist - who had come to Harvard
about the same time as I did - I immediately got hold of a copy.
As I observed a few years ago, “Anthropologists were often people, like
myself, not totally at home in their own culture. You sensed this
listening to Clyde Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-44477153757277445522022-11-28T17:59:00.002-05:002022-11-28T17:59:11.301-05:00The different ethnic tales of Washington DC
Sam Smith – I was born and lived most of
my life in Washington DC. In recent years I have been repeatedly reminded of
how little non-residents know of the non-federal aspects of the capital city. For
some five recent decades the city was majority black yet whites like myself were
quite content to live there. Given the current ethnic controversies across this
land, these random notes from DC Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-72873690761685303312022-10-28T22:50:00.004-04:002022-10-28T22:50:42.749-04:00Lawyers don’t get to define virtue Sam Smith - One of the ways in which the current scandals
have altered our thinking is a broad acceptance of the notion that it
all is mainly a matter of law. What will judges and juries decide? We
seem to have forgotten that virtue, fairness and decency are not legal
matters but ones we used to go to ministers, teachers, historians and
philosophers for guidance. This Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-29124499161852786702022-10-28T22:49:00.001-04:002022-10-28T22:49:03.430-04:00Jazz and democracySam Smith
– During four
decades, most while engaged in journalism in Washington, I also played in jazz
bands. I recommend this to any journalist who finds their work over-stressful. But
the other thing I came to realize was that jazz was also a metaphor for the sort of democracy
we still hadn’t achieved.
After all,
many musicians get to solo but have to spend the rest of the tune backing Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-21250346468633178382022-10-28T22:47:00.002-04:002022-10-28T22:47:22.797-04:00Just a thought: What churches could do on SaturdaysSam Smith – As a seventh day agnostic, I share most
Christian values albeit regarding where they allegedly came from as far more myth
than reality. The other day I heard of a minister describing churches as one of
the few remaining institutions of real importance to community. I think this
is right. Certainly business, politics or media are not places to go to learn
about ethics, fairness Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-75826781963124239052022-07-30T15:06:00.002-04:002022-07-30T15:06:10.722-04:00Some tips for young writersWritten by Sam Smith in 2017
as part of a local Maine high school writing contest
Writing isn’t about winning; it’s about saying things that
others understand, learn from and appreciate. They may be your class mates
rather than just some old judges. So just keep writing
Writing is a trade or craft not a profession. You don’t need
to go to grad school to learn how to write. In one publication I Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-49245566712480184532022-07-17T12:46:00.001-04:002022-07-17T12:48:56.005-04:00The failure of liberal evangelicalism
Sam Smith, 2016 –
Lately, I’ve been feeling real glad that I got into activism in the early 1960s
because I’m increasingly getting the sense that I wouldn’t be good enough to be
an activist by today’s liberal standards.
For example, Jesse Benn, writing in Huffington Post, said
recently that “White people from across the political spectrum are overt
racists, hold implicit biases, and/or Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-70307023449304112882022-07-16T16:57:00.005-04:002022-07-17T12:46:39.766-04:00From anger to action: dealing with ethnic relations Sam Smith One
of the sad things about the ethnic conflict that has increasingly defined our
land is the lack of movements that produce change rather than merely more anger.
While the victims of such things as police brutality have more than enough
reason to express this anger, that doesn’t mean the anger will produce results
by itself.
Even
when alternatives are proposed, the media Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-87951996196537279292022-06-27T17:36:00.004-04:002022-06-27T17:36:30.249-04:00Introduction The Unauthorized Memoirs of Sam Smith
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict
myself I am large -- I contain
multitudes --Walt Whitman
On a warm September
evening in 1994, approaching the corner where you turn towards Old Rag Mountain
-- just this side of the Exxon station that is both on the edge and near the
center of Sperryville, Virginia -- I hit a cow. The bovineUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-4090143065722918792022-06-27T17:30:00.004-04:002022-06-27T17:31:46.212-04:00Georgetown
From Multitudes:The Unauthorized Memoirs of Sam Smith
As I lay in my bassinet at Washington's Garfield Hospital in
the late fall of 1937, I was of course unaware that the world was rushing
towards war, that Roosevelt was still struggling with the depression, and that
Mado thought I looked like "le petit Jesus."
It was the year that Amelia Earhart disappeared, the
Hindenberg Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-277077160317421812022-06-24T12:40:00.001-04:002022-06-24T12:40:42.623-04:00Before the lies of Donald Trump Sam Smith – Long before the arrival of Donald Trump,
America was into lies. For example, Wikipedia reports:
In Propaganda
(1928), [Edward] Bernays argued that the manipulation of public
opinion was a necessary part of democracy. In public relations, lobby
groups are created to influence government policy, corporate policy or public
opinion, typically in a way that benefits the sponsoring Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-83519914279579129182022-04-17T08:55:00.002-04:002022-04-17T08:55:00.188-04:00Civil rights substance and symbols Sam Smith, 2016
On the civil rights front, in recent years there has been a
shift in action from substantive improvements to symbolic cleansing. While the two should not, in principle, be in
conflict, as a practical matter people tend to cling to their favorite symbols
long after a substantive battle has been lost. And they can fight harder over them than they
do with Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-56835906866208484212022-04-13T13:45:00.004-04:002022-04-13T13:45:40.257-04:00Confront the strong but convert the weakSam Smith, 2020 – One of the problems I have with activism
these days is that we seem to have lost both the capacity and desire to convert
the weak. Too often there is a style I’ve come to think of as evangelical
liberalism in which organizers and those who agree with them will allegedly be
saved, but the rest will just go to hell.
Philosophy aside, this is not particularly good activism or
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-21358305225112760592022-04-09T14:35:00.007-04:002022-04-09T14:35:58.915-04:00How humans may go extinct Sam Smith - I
have recently come to the conclusion that humans may not become extinct
thanks to warfare or climate change but rather that they may starve to
death owing to the number of forms they will have to fill out in order
to buy something at their local grocery store. If
you think I'm exaggerating, consider that in the past 24 hours I have
spent about 20% of my waking hoursUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-45801092373551038102022-03-03T17:44:00.017-05:002022-04-10T09:22:00.005-04:00SummerFrom Multitudes: The Unauthorized Memoirs of Sam Smith During the
war, summer was much the same as winter -- only hotter. Even if you could
afford to leave town, gas was rationed. But as the war wound down, my parents
started looking for a place to spend the summer.
Before the
trouble they had rented a house in Marion,
Mass. Not much sticks in my
memory: the address (One Pie Alley), gossamer Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-86012833262979695512018-10-11T14:58:00.009-04:002022-03-08T16:03:28.073-05:00Multitudes: The unauthorized memoirs of Sam SmithDo I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large -- I contain multitudes -- Walt Whitman
Sam Smith - On a warm September evening in 1994, approaching the corner where you turn towards Old Rag Mountain -- just this side of the Exxon station that is both on the edge and near the center of Sperryville, Virginia -- I hit a cow. The bovine miscreant had wandered from behind Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-3683100387780688622018-08-28T10:03:00.004-04:002018-08-28T10:06:41.963-04:00Corruption as a culture as well as a crimeSam Smith - Corruption is not just a crime, it is a culture. And, by its nature, it
can have different effects. I have become convinced, for example, that
contemporary culture is, in no small part, the direct effect of the
culture of television, in that corruption used to be a feudal system in
which communities were served even as they were being scammed. With the
major force in politics Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-15328308550276206802018-08-26T19:44:00.000-04:002018-08-26T19:44:07.103-04:00The end of home ruleSpeech by Sam Smith at the conference of DC New Democracy, February 25, 1995
Whatever it was that was optimistically called home rule is now gone. It died when our mayor offered to give much of it away. It died when our congressional delegate first suggested trading it for tax relief, and then proposed turning it over to a tyranny by accountants.. It died when much of the media — led by theUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-36042100416635708062018-08-26T14:22:00.002-04:002018-08-26T14:22:55.774-04:00The story Spike Lee didn't tellSam Smith - Watching Stokely Carmichael pictured in
BlacKKKlansman brought back memories of sitting in a Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee meeting in the mid Sixties listening to
Carmichael tell us that white SNCC members were no longer welcomed in
the civil rights movement. As he had put it elsewhere, "Integration is
an insidious subterfuge for white supremacy." And he told a crowdUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29717220.post-39004398924642624342018-08-24T13:43:00.000-04:002018-08-24T13:43:25.631-04:00How to jump start a progressive movementSam SmithDefine your politics issue by issue, not icon by icon. One reason progressive politics fares so poorly is because we spend too much time on individual campaigns and not enough on issues. While the former tend to drive away the independent, the skeptical and those who don't like a particular a candidate, the latter can attract all sorts to join with others who may agree only one issue. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com