{"quotes":[{"text":"Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.","author":"Tariq Ali","tags":["2010","affordable-care-act","barack-obama","bravery","cowardice","health-care","health-care-reform","politics","power","united-states","united-states-elections-2008"],"id":31004,"author_id":"Tariq+Ali"},{"text":"What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.","author":"Terry Eagleton","tags":["2010","2010-uk-student-protests","academia","arthur-rimbaud","humanities","imagination","justice","margaret-thatcher","public-university","radical-politics","radicalism","reactionary-politics","rembrandt","tradition","tuition-fees-uk","university"],"id":32277,"author_id":"Terry+Eagleton"},{"text":"[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.","author":"Terry Eagleton","tags":["2010","2010-fifa-world-cup","bolsheviks","british-petroleum","capitalism","conformists","david-beckham","deepwater-horizon-oil-spill","football","liverpool-fc","marxism","opium-of-the-people","oprah","politics","revolution","soccer","social-change","tories"],"id":47947,"author_id":"Terry+Eagleton"},{"text":"Indian cricket, and the youngsters themselves, are dealing with issues inconceivable a few summers ago. Riches and all the attendant temptations are thrown at them before they have started shaving regularly. It's not their fault. It's no one's fault. That is the marketplace. Inevitably, though, it can distract attention from the long struggle towards mastery. Cricket does not give itself away; it expects players to apply themselves, to think and study and seek. It plays tricks, too, pretends that sixes and slower balls and the other shortcuts matter. Cricket sets traps, flatters players and calls them kings when they are barely princes.","author":"Peter Roebuck","tags":["2010","cricket","cricket-in-india","india","indian-national-cricket-team"],"id":55883,"author_id":"Peter+Roebuck"},{"text":"My feeling is this whole country is founded on the principle of 'if you are not hurting anyone, and you're not fucking with someone else's shit, and you are paying your taxes, you should be able to just do what you want to do.' It's the freedom and the independence.","author":"Adam Carolla","tags":["2010","freedom","independence","liberalism","podcasts","taxes","united-states"],"id":94151,"author_id":"Adam+Carolla"},{"text":"If Feingold does it, if he wins this race in this year, it will not be as just another Democratic senator. It will not be as a maverick, nor even as an idealist. It will be as a signal that maybe, just maybe, people power can still beat the money power. That senators aren't just extensions of parties and presidents, and that politics can be about something more than Democratic toothpaste versus Republican toothpaste.","author":"John Nichols","tags":["2010","democratic-party-united-states","idealism","politics","politics-of-the-united-states","republican-party-united-states","ron-johnson","russ-feingold","united-states-elections-2010","us-senate-wisconsin-2010"],"id":143851,"author_id":"John+Nichols"},{"text":"McChrystal's defenders at the Pentagon were making the case Tuesday that the president and his men—(the McChrystal snipers spared Hillary)—must put aside their hurt feelings about being painted as weak sisters. Obama should not fire the serially insubordinate general, they reasoned, because that would undermine the mission in Afghanistan, and if that happens, then Obama would be further weakened.So the commander in chief can be bad-mouthed as weak by the military but then he can't punish the military because that would make him weak? It's the same sort of pass-the-Advil vicious circle reasoning the military always uses.","author":"Maureen Dowd","tags":["2010","backstabbers","fuzzy-logic","hillary-clinton","hurt-feelings","military","stanley-mcchrystal","strength","united-states-presidents","vicious-circle","weakness"],"id":149933,"author_id":"Maureen+Dowd"},{"text":"Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.","author":"Maureen Dowd","tags":["2010","intelligence","jealousy","military","soldiers","stanley-mcchrystal"],"id":154968,"author_id":"Maureen+Dowd"},{"text":"It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.","author":"Tariq Ali","tags":["2010","20th-century","activism","civil-disobedience","civil-rights","civil-rights-movement","politics","protest","racism","united-states"],"id":179757,"author_id":"Tariq+Ali"},{"text":"The great cause of the new Republican intake is the reduction of the deficit but to anyone seeking evidence of sincere attempts at deficit-reduction the evidence is baffling. The Republicans showed before Christmas that they would seek to reduce the deficit but not when it came to a matter of the tax breaks that had aggravated the deficit in the first place.Now there's a date set for the abolition of Barack Obama's healthcare plan, parts of which only came into operation at the start of this month. The Republicans are out to destroy the plan. Or, more precisely, to pretend to destroy the plan in the name of making good on election pledges. The measure won't get past the Senate.But suppose it did get past the Senate, what effect would this have on the deficit? The answer is it would aggravate the deficit. Somehow, somewhere, there's an override mechanism that makes destroying Obamacare more important than destroying the deficit. If only one could figure out how it works.","author":"James Fenton","tags":["2010","2011","barack-obama","bush-tax-cuts","christmas","healthcare-reform","healthcare-reform-in-the-us","politics","presidency-of-barack-obama","republican-party-united-states","united-states","united-states-elections-2010","united-states-public-debt","united-states-senate"],"id":197592,"author_id":"James+Fenton"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":29,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}