Michelle Obama hosting the White House poetry jam

“Perhaps for the first time ever, the White House jammed and slammed last night,” says a report in the Washington Post covering a poetry jam held in the White House East Room on Tuesday night that was hosted by Barack and Michelle Obama.

According to the Post’s DeNeen L. Brown, “Poets and playwrights, actors and musicians packed the ornate East Room, delivering cool jazz and glorious spoken-word poetry, sprinkling a bit of hip-hop and a bit of the heroic couplet. And through it all, the president and the first lady watched — and applauded.”

“I have wanted to do this from day one. The notion of standing in this room and hearing some poetry,” said Michelle Obama told the crowd, who was introduced by her husband as “my poet.” He also said, “We’re here to celebrate the power of words … [that] help us appreciate beauty and also understand pain. They inspire us to action.”

The good news for Washingtonians and other under-rock dwellers is that the article goes on to give a helpful definition of the difference between a poetry “slam” and a poetry “jam.”

HarperCollins has announced it will be publishing a memoir by failed vice presidential candidate and current Alaska governor Sarah Palin next year when she is running for re-election. According to an Associated Press wire story by Hillel Italie, “Palin’s memoir, currently untitled, will cover her personal and political life, from her childhood in Alaska and last year’s campaign to her political beliefs and her family life, including the pregnancy of her teenage daughter, Bristol Palin, who gave birth in December to a baby boy, Tripp. (She and the baby’s father, Levi Johnston, have since ended their relationship.)”

The book will be co-published by HarperCollins imprint Harper and its Christian imprint Zondervan. Terms were not disclosed, although some of them will have to be on her financial disclosure filings when she runs for re-election. Italie reports it is “widely expected” to be a multi-million dollar deal.

Says Palin, “Being a voracious reader, I read a lot today and have read a lot growing up. And having that journalism degree, all of that, will be a great assistance for me in writing this book, talking about the challenges and the joys, balancing the work and parenting, and, in my case, work means running the state.”

As for her voracious reading, Italie notes that two years ago “Palin told PBS’s Charlie Rose that her favorite writers were C.S. Lewis (’very, very deep’) and a Runner’s World columnist, Dr. George Sheehan.”

Elizabeth and John Edwards

A new book by former presidential candidate John Edwards‘ terminally-ill wife, Elizabeth Edwards, tells the story she wouldn’t tell when her husband was caught having an affair with his videographer. In fact, according to a report in the New York Daily News by Celeste Katz, the book — Resilience, coming out on May 12 from Broadway Books — dishes considerable dirt, and reveals considerable anger. You can read the sordid details here if you’re so inclined. If you’re not, here’s the takeaway that’s not so sordid: Why did she put up with it, pretend to be the happy politician’s wife, stay with him in the end? Quoting the book: “I lie in bed, circles under my eyes, my sparse hair sticking in too many directions, and he looks at me as if I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. It matters.”

In a now famous clip of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith saying, on air, “We do not fucking torture,” there’s also something else: Trace Gallagher, the co-host of The Live Desk, accuses former CIA case officer Robert Baer of distorting facts about torture to sell books: “Bob Baer… is trying to sell books and does a very good job of that.” Baer is the author of fours books, including See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know.

On April 22, Baer had appeared MSNBC’s Hardball and insisted that no information was gained from waterboarding Al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That appearance was also criticized by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who claimed that Baer was “vomit[ing] out bad information” and later apologized to MSNBC viewers for Baer’s comments and warned other MSNBC producers to not book Baer.

The truth, however, seems to agree with Baer’s version of things: Timothy Noah has a great piece in Slate debunking the oft-cited claim that torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed preventing a terrorist attack in Los Angeles.

John Githongo, Kenyan whistleblower

CNN reported today that a new book from Harper Collins UK is making trouble in Kenya. It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower, by Michela Wrong, chronicles the culture of corruption in Kenyan politics, “making booksellers and government officials uneasy, but for different reasons,” says CNN. The “fear of reprisals is keeping sellers from stocking it, while top officials named in the book are threatening to sue for libel.

The book is about whistleblower, John Githongo, a former journalist whom the Kenyan government hired in 2003 to head an anti-graft unit, and apparently did his job too well. He resigned in 2005 and fled to England. Author Wrong, an old friend and fellow journalist, initially offered him shelter there.

Githongo’s investigations traced the intricate webs of corruption within the Kenyan political system, and featured top Kenyan politicians. According to CNN, “The most noted scandal — Anglo Leasing — revealed fraudulent deals, in which a fictitious company was paid millions of dollars for contracts using government funds.”

According to Wrong, after Githongo fled Kenya in 2005 the government started a manhunt for him in the UK … where, “a year later, Githongo released an explosive report detailing government fraud, which led to the resignation of some Kenyan politicians linked to the scandal.”

It’s Our Turn to Eat, though unavailable in Kenya, is enjoying a lively underground life there. A pirated PDF version is being circulated, and travelers are smuggling copies in to sell to their friends. Booksellers are afraid to carry the book for fear of reprisals from the government, though a government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, says their fears are unfounded. Mantua tells CNN, “I am not aware that people are afraid of selling the book, because we have freedom of expression here and any book can be sold.”

But booksellers like Chand Bahal say, “There are lots of names mentioned. You can’t say, ‘I am going to sell this book and make it big.’ … You will be the scapegoat; you will be in trouble.”

And, in the interesting twist for e-books, Harper has released an e-book version that Kenyans can download legally from the Internet. The book will be also available in the US in June.

Hugo Chavez presents Barack Obama with a book by Eduardo Galeano

It was a shocking moment, if only because it was the sort of thing that no one would have thought to do with our previous president: When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met President Barack Obama on Staurday, he gave him a book.

The book in question was notable — Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano — but the whole thing — Chavez + Obama + book — provided a good opportunity to see how the cultural media has or hasn’t changed four months out of the Bush miasma. So what’s the story that came out of it? That the book immediately shot up the Amazon bestseller list (to number 2 as of this writing), according to a very brief Associated Press wire story, which calls it “astounding.”

It’s business as usual in other ways, too. For example, the AP reports that “The English hardcover edition is listed as out of print.” Hmm, could that be because … it’s in paperback? Which a reporter would have know if they had, you know, looked at the book’s Amazon page … which is where you would go to see, um, its ranking … which was, you know, the point of the story? Oh well. More sigh-inducing, the sans-byline AP report seems even more astounded (or is it horrified?) by the news it feels compelled to deliver in a dramatic last line: the book is “a favorite among leftists.”

Oh, NOW they want to smear a president with ideology ….

Well, at least the results on Amazon can be read as people paying no heed to the mainstream media that sold them out for eight years. (Call me crazy, but: another theory as to why news papers are croaking?) What’s more, it’s the second time Chavez has had the Oprah effect on an American book: As a BBC News story reminds us, when he praised Noam Chomsky in a 2006 appearance before the UN General Assembly, Chomsky’s sales also exploded.

Left Forum 2009 kicked off in New York City today, offering a three day smorgasboard of discussion events with intellectuals and activists from around the world. This year’s theme is ‘Turning Points’. It’s a little dry as themes go, and not one to set the blood racing, but the question being posed this weekend, according to the Forum’s website, is: Could we be at a historic juncture in the evolution of American power and politics? Now there’s something to sink your teeth into.

And that’s just what the (remaining) great and the (remaining) good of this world will do this weekend as they dedicate themselves to a global left dialogue. There’s a broad and impressive range of speakers and panels on offer, no small number of which will address the new administration and whether it’s business as usual for Obama. Harper’s Magazine publisher — and Melville House author — Rick MacArthur, author of You Can’t Be President will be putting in his two bobs worth on a Sunday panel ‘Liberalism, Imperialism & the Politics of Human Rights’, which is sure to allow him to expand on some of his recent (and oh so refreshing) criticisms of the new president, such as this one for Harper’s.

Get your tickets on the door, or here. Enjoy.

Bobby Jindal

You know he’s running for president, I know he’s running for president — all God’s children know that the right wing governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, has been designated as the Republican challenger because he’s as close as the cynical-unto-numbness Republican party believes it can get to Barack Obama. That is, he’s a person of color of supposed brilliance who can supposedly talk a while. Except, er, when he was designated to rebut Obama’s first state of the union he flubbed it badly, apparently believing himself to be speaking to a room full of door knobs rather then, well, people with something in their brain pans …

Nonetheless, the rest of the culture is going forward as if this is still a good and legitimate plan, and lo and behold, Jindal got a book deal yesterday, just like his predecessors in the party’s far right, Condi Rice, Carl Rove, Laura Bush, and of course the guy who drove the car that left us off here, George Bush.

According to a report from the New Orleans Picayune, the newspaper with the best name in the history of American newspapering, “Jindal said he has reached an agreement with Regnery Publishing, which has published political tomes by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, actor Chuck Norris and political commentator Ann Coulter, among others.”

‘Nuff said.

Car used in a suicide bombing in Iraq that's part of the It Is What It Is tour

Melville House author Nato Thompson (editor of Experimental Geography) is currently on tour with his latest project It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, an art project by Jeremy Deller. The concept is simple: Nato, Jeremy, Esam Pasha (an artist and formerly a translator for the chief advisor in the British Embassy of Baghdad), and Jonathan Harvey (a veteran of the Iraq war) are traveling from New York to Los Angeles in an RV, stopping along the way to prompt discussion about the war. They are stopping all over: Washington DC, St. Louis, Houston, and numerous other stops. A car destroyed in a suicide bombing in Baghdad is being towed on a flatbed trailer hitched to the RV—an artifact they hope will inspire their discussants. It’s great.

This week, the crew was in New Orleans. Here’s a glimpse of discussion. The video, by Benjamin Brown, is pretty interesting and a nice sample of the kind of discussion that Nato is posting in his ongoing “Road Diary” about the trip.

Meghan McCain with the reason she has a job as a writer

Well, Americans may have turned out the far right in the last election but New York publishers are welcoming them with open arms — not just the politicians themselves, but their entire families! First it was Laura Bush, now it’s Meghan McCain. Yes, John McCain’s 24-year-old daughter has signed a book deal with Disney imprint Hyperion for a reported “high six figures,” according to a report in the New York Observer. The announcement did not say what the book would be about, however.

McCain is a columnist for The Daily Beast, where recent columns have had headlines such as “Looking for Mr. Far Right” and “Quit Talking About My Weight, Laura Ingraham.”