findingDulcinea

Assassins and Their Fatal Fictions - A Common Thread Through History

Today's "On This Day" covers the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. He was killed by Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist son of Polish immigrants who took "class warfare" to an extreme. He later said “I killed President McKinley because I done my duty.” I didn’t believe one man should have so much service, and another man should have none.”

Our  "On This Day" for July 2 contained several fascinating, little-known facts about the assassination of President Garfield. The defense asserted by assassin Charles Guiteau at his trial: “Some of these days instead of saying ‘Guiteau the assassin’, they will say ‘Guiteau the patriot.’”

The beliefs of Czolgosz and Guiteau are hardly exceptional as assassins go. Self-delusion of a noble, heroic purpose is a common thread connecting murderous lone actors of history.

What convinces an assassin that he’s a national hero? How does one man, out of so many millions who might share similar political beliefs and passions, conclude that it is his destiny to commit murder for the greater good?

Guiteau defended his action as “a political necessity,” and was so confident of general approbation that he instructed General William Tecumseh Sherman, “I am going to the Jail. Please order out your troops and take possession of the Jail at once.”

Our “On This Day” about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln reveals a similar theme, as John Wilkes Booth was shocked at the public’s grief and failure to applaud the murder. His letters provide disturbing insight into his motivations, such as this excerpt printed by the New York Times: “When a country like this spurns justice from her side, She forfeits the allegiance of every honest freeman, and should leave him untrammeled by any fealty soever, to act, as his conscience may approve.”

The 2009 assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller once again echoed this same sad, deluded tale. Although many tried to link the murder to the heated rhetoric of our cable news culture, only one man translated this passion into violence.

FindingDulcinea Senior Writer Shannon Firth analyzed Tiller's murder and explored the motives of assassins, detailing the three types categorized by author Kris Hollington. There are “wolves,” who seek notoriety, “jackals,” who are hired hands, and finally “foxes,” who are “novices hoping to make a political statement.”

According to Hollington, these foxes are intensely passionate, but are also “ordinary, unremarkable people, often failures: the antithesis of the men and women they try to kill.” Although they justify their actions in political and often religious language, “it’s all within the troubled mind of the lone individual… almost a movie in their mind.”

Do their personal failures, then, prod them towards an alternate reality, in which they can play the film-star heroes? John Hinckley, Jr., possibly inspired by the movie Taxi Driver, believed that by shooting Ronald Reagan he could win the love of actress Jodie Foster. He later explained himself, according to PBS, with this rumination on fiction: “The line dividing life and art can be invisible. After seeing enough hypnotizing movies and reading enough magical books, a fantasy life develops which can either be harmless or quite dangerous.”

I suppose heroism, and even history, is always something of a fiction, a combination of reality and the myths built around it. But I can’t stop wondering what it takes to push an individual into a myth so fatal, so extreme, and so disconnected from the society he believes he is saving.

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

"All of a Sudden This Thing Came to Me"

During the 2008 Presidential primaries, we published an article asking whether traditional political rhetoric is a declining art.  We analyzed several view points, and provided historical context by harkening back to a few of the finer political speeches in recent American history.

In a separate blog post, I recalled the sad spectacle of our political leaders reading the Gettysburg address at the first anniversary observance of 9/11. A Newsday columnist wrote that the"appropriation of a distant generation's tragedy strikes me as lame and uninspired"and asked why George Pataki wouldn't "offer a new Gettysburg address instead, one that he crafts himself from the heart and not from a hired speechwriter?"

I then concluded that the problem with political oratory today is that it is always so calculating, so negotiated, so cowardly. I recalled that when Ronald Reagan first met with Mikhail Gorbachev at a Geneva chateau, Reagan's team carefully planned every move. Gorbachev's limousine would pull up and Reagan would stand regally at the top of the steps, forcing Gorbachev to ascend while looking up at Reagan. When Gorbachev's car stopped and no one exited it for a minute, Reagan bounded down the stairs, helped Gorbachev from the car, and slipped his hand under Gorbachev's arm to support him up the steps.  A Soviet aide later said "I left like we lost the game during the first movement...We started with the wrong move."

I realized that is what I really miss - politicians who are willing to suddenly bound down the stairs.

Today's On This Day covers the "I Have a Dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the National Mall in 1963. We developed the On This Day series because, no matter how well I think I know about an event in history, I learn something profound from nearly every article we publish in this series. And today I learned that nowhere in the manuscript King carried with him to the podium that day did it say "I Have a Dream."

King dutifully recited the first part of the prepared speech, but then "all of a sudden this thing came to me that. … I’d used many times before. … ‘I have a dream.’ And I just felt that I wanted to use it here. … I used it, and at that point I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether. I didn’t come back to it.”

Clarence B. Jones, who drafted the original script of the speech, asked in a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, "What could possibly motivate a man standing before a crowd of hundreds of thousands, with television cameras beaming his every move and a cluster of microphones tracing his every word, to abandon the prepared text of his speech and begin riffing on a theme that he had used previously without generating much enthusiasm from listeners?"

We'll never know how the public may have reacted to the original draft of the speech. But I'm willing to bet that, had King continued to recite it, our On This Day today would be about an event other than a speech he gave 47 years ago today. And the civil rights movement itself may not have accomplished nearly as much as it did.

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

Remembering the Start of World War II

A war veteran stops by the monument of World War II casualties in Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

On Sept. 1, 1939, World War II began with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. This week’s 70th anniversary commemoration of the event saw diplomatic gestures between former enemies. The war killed 6 million Poles, Christian Science Monitor’s Elizabeth Pond reports from Gdansk, Poland, in an assessment of “old enemies” on the 70th anniversary. Half of them were Jewish.

Poland is the center of this year’s commemoration because it “suffered the highest ratio of war deaths per population.” But today, “Poles and Germans are friends and allies,” Pond notes, and another old foe, Russia, this week made efforts to denounce the Hitler-Stalin pact forged just before the outbreak of the war. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany described her country’s role in the atrocities of World War II at a ceremony yesterday, saying Germanybears an “‘eternal’ responsibility” for what happened, Bloomberg reported.

“There are no words that could even remotely describe the suffering caused by this war and the Holocaust,” Merkel said at the Westerplatte peninsula in Gdansk. “I bow before the victims.”

This week also saw British wartime songstress Dame Vera Lynn reemerging on the UK album chart at number 20, becoming the oldest living singer on the chart (she is 92).

As her Allmusic biography explains, the “mere mention of Vera Lynn's name evokes images of London skies filled with barrage balloons, and Britons riding out the German blitz in shelters and subway stations.” Wartime songs like “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart” became hits in the U.K. and U.S., and Lynn became the British troops’ “sweetheart” when she travelled to entertain them, “often at great personal risk,” AFP explains.

Learn more about the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of World War II with findingDulcinea’s article, “On This Day: Nazi Germany Invades Poland, Starting World War II.” Then, read about the final day of the European portion of the war with “On This Day: V-E Day Ends World War II in Europe.”

Liz Colville
Senior Writer

Sweet Sites | A Eulogy to Kennedy and Obituaries

Photo: AP

Last night, Sen. Edward Kennedy passed away after a yearlong struggle with brain cancer. Any newswire reveals this much, but only the obituary pages offer a comprehensive look at Senator Kennedy’s life and national importance. Technically an announcement of death, an obituary can also serve as an authoritative biography, and it is often written while its subject is still alive and continuously updated until its fatal debut. Before you tire of the phrase “lion in the Senate,” read the following thoughtful and detailed looks at Senator Kennedy’s life, and bookmark those newspapers’ obituary sections for some excellent biographical resources.

Declaring Sen. Kennedy “a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life,” the six-page New York Times obituary delves scrupulously behind the senator’s public image, offering a detailed, chronological account that balances the discipline of his public career with his private excesses and troubles. After an overview of the circumstances of Kennedy’s death and his recent role in the health care debate, reporter John M. Broder breaks down the phases of the senator’s life, from a youth overshadowed by more powerful brothers to his role as influential statesman. The Times supplements its written obituary with multimedia resources, including a 13-minute video tribute.

Focusing more on his legislative accomplishments and priorities, The Washington Post obituary provides a slightly different emphasis in its extensive coverage of Kennedy, but still wraps up with a thorough and interactive biographical timeline. Reporter Joe Holley also offers his personal reflection on the senator on the Post’s “Post Mortem” blog, which goes behind the day’s obituaries in regular features like “The Daily Goodbye.”

For an international perspective, including details on how he “annoyed several British administrations,” read Kennedy’s obituary in The Daily Telegraph. Interspersing its obit with illuminating quotes and anecdotes, The Telegraph offers a more personal and visceral account of the senator—and of its other obituary subjects—than the American papers do.

Finally, if you would like to research an older or more obscure death than Senator Kennedy’s, the Internet Public Library has written a helpful guide to finding obituaries.

Jill Marcellus
Senior Intern

Go-Go Boots, Baby Boomers, Peace Movements and Pop Art: Minced Metaphors of the 1960s

AP
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair of 1969, perhaps one of the least dramatic events of the decade.

There’s a new line of thought being developed by many journalists. They’re making a plea for a fresh look at the protesters that have usurped town hall debates across the country, arguing that many civil rights activists in the 1960s didn’t always know what they were doing either, as Mitch Albom suggests.

Albom may be onto something. The 1960s may not be as rosy as second wavers and civil rights activists imagine. In the early 1960s, black people rose in rebellion all over the Deep South in response to the memory of slavery. Their deep and constant humiliation was found in poetry, music, occasional outbursts of anger and more frequent sullen silences as they pledged themselves again and again to passive resistance.

The 1960s also marks the decade when two buses left from Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, only to be burned, with riders beaten because of their affiliation with other Freedom Riders; when prisoners, instead of shattering rocks on a work gang in Georgia, smashed their own legs with sledgehammers to call attention to the daily brutality they suffered; and when civil rights workers go missing. Come to your own conclusions about Albom’s analogy. There are plenty of resources for mining the Internet for cultural and political historians of the 1960s. Here are a choice few of them:

PBS produced a timeline of the 1960s with resources for teachers and students.

The Seattle Times presents a discussion of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

Ron Jones’ famous social experiment, The Third Wave, was a proto-fascist movement among his high school students in 1967, and is a cultural artifact of the 1960s.

Ella Baker, who advocated for civic engagement in a participatory democracy, is one of the superstar civil right activists of the 1960s, and has a Web site dedicated to retelling her biography.

To sate the increasing interest in presidential private thoughts, catch up with John Quincy Adams on Twitter, read George Washington’s diaries or visit the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum to take a peek at Johnson’s diary. 

Joshua Goldberg

Get Acquainted With Health Care Reform Issues

I don’t think that health care reform will be Obama’s “Waterloo,” as South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint was quoted as saying by Ben Smith of Politico. But the stakes are high, both personally and politically.

An article in Slate Magazine explains how private insurance companies give incentives to employees to drop expensive accounts—just before a major surgery—“based on stupid technicalities.” These are called rescissions. According to Slate, an employee at WellPoint received a high score on her job evaluation due to “the dollar amount [$10 million] she had managed to deny through rescission.”

My mother was a victim of rescission. After suffering from gingivitis for 15 years, she had two teeth taken out. The cores of the teeth had rotted with infection. Unfortunately, these teeth anchored her permanent dentures, so she not only needed two teeth removed but also a new denture. Her insurance company, which paid for her previous dentures, dropped her two days before she was scheduled for a $38,000 procedure on the basis of an “undisclosed previous condition.”

More than half (51 percent) of Americans admit that they don't understand the issues involved in health care reform. The numbers are even lower for Americans’ faith in members of Congress: Only 27 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress have a good grasp of health care issues.

The sheer complexity of the current health care debate needs to be understood. Get informed with a variety of perspectives on health care reform:

Jonathan Cohn, a writer for The New Republic, is stationed in Washington, D.C., and reports what he sees in The Treatment, The New Republic’s health care blog.

The Washington Post's health care blog, Health Care Rx, is a reliable source of breaking news. Turn here for new research on the complicated social policies involved in the debate.

The Cato Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., presents different philosophical views on the health care debate in its blog, Cato @ Liberty.

Jim Sabin's blog, Health Care Organizational Ethics, keeps an eye on policy ideals and the most efficient distribution of health care.

David Williams, cofounder of MedPharma Partners, covers business issues in health care in his blog, Health Business Blog.

Health Beat is a project of The Century Foundation, an organization that examines public policy. The blog is maintained by Maggie Mahar, a fellow at the Foundation and author of “Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much.”

The Covert Rationing Blog, written by a former professor of medicine, explains why it's unavoidable to ration health care, and distinguishes between productive and unproductive means of rationing health care.

Read findingDulcinea's four-part article series on health care to learn more about landmarks and issues leading to President Obama's plan:

Part I: Surveying the Facts of the American Health Care Landscape
Part II: Revisiting HillaryCare: What It Proposed and Why It Failed
Part III: Does Socialized Medicine Work? A Look at British Health Care
Part IV: Deconstructing the Democratic Plan for Health Care

Josh Goldberg

What I Didn’t Know About Tiananmen Square

Photo: Elizabeth Dalziel/AP

In the spring of 1988, I traveled to China with a small group of other high school students and a much larger group of older adults. I’ve always liked to say that I learned more about American tourists during that trip than I ever learned about the Chinese. There were the two ladies who refused to eat anything but white rice. The woman who had to keep purchasing new luggage to fit all the souvenirs she was buying. Her daughter, who was so focused on videotaping everything, that she never seemed to look at anything with her own eyes. The man who thought it was funny to kick the back of my seat on every short plane flight, and who apparently decided that the very real machete fight that we inadvertently witnessed and which left one man with serious head wounds was light entertainment put on for his benefit.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have any encounters with the people who actually lived there. Unlike my trip the previous year to what was then the Soviet Union, no one tried to block us from making contact. The other students and I talked with young people on the streets of Shanghai who were anxious to practice their English, waved to an adorable, rosy-cheeked kindergarten class who chanted “Good morning! Good morning!” as we passed, ignored the desperate vendors who tried to sell us trinkets through the windows of our bus and watched an elderly woman with bound feet painfully limp down a flight of steps in the Forbidden City, leaning on the arm of a soldier.

Although my high school friends and I felt that we were obviously better behaved travelers and more open to truly experiencing the country than the adults with us, that did not mean that we ever really had a clue about any of China’s most pressing political issues. One peaceful evening in Beijing, we lay in the middle of Tiananmen Square and sang “You Can Call Me Mao,” parodying a song popular at the time, Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” A little more than a year later, that spot was overrun with protesting students, tanks and soldiers firing on civilians.

It was deeply upsetting to me that a site I associated with a silly memory became associated in the eyes of the world with such horrifying bloodshed. It’s equally upsetting that in the 20 years since, the Chinese government has made significant efforts to obliterate all recall of that terrible event, and have forbidden people to commemorate it in any way. During the days leading up to the anniversary this year, authorities have tried to block discussion about it on the Internet.

Learn more about what happened in June 1989 by reading findingDulcinea’s Web Guide to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Gay Rights in the Mainstream Media, Gay Rights in the Twitter Stream

Rep. Beth Bye of Connecticut holds her marriage license, the first issued to a gay couple in the state, on March 6, 2009. (Photo: George Ruhe/AP)

When Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot in November 2008, gay rights were not yet a mainstream topic. Ironically, when Prop 8 passed, support for gay marriage started to mount. Whereas once homophobia was considered “the last accepted prejudice,” people came out in large numbers to protest the ban, and the media covered it. More states started to push harder for marriage laws. Recently, Iowa and Vermont passed laws in favor of gay marriage, and the District of Columbia council voted to recognize marriage in other states.

Now, the media watch on gay marriage is so tuned in that The New York Times City Room blog published a piece yesterday about N.Y. Gov. David Paterson’s anticipated but unconfirmed plans to introduce a gay marriage bill. Ten years ago, homosexuality was still a taboo topic, but in the past year, most media outlets, and many Americans, take the importance of gay rights as a given.

But perhaps the best example of all was the fast spread of news about the so-called #amazonfail on Twitter. A handful of gay authors found that their books had been reclassified as “adult” on Amazon and therefore could not be found on search. A decade ago, I genuinely believe that those few authors would have been the only ones to know or care about that situation. But this weekend, #amazonfail became the most popular search topic on Twitter.

Amazon decided it was such an emergency that employees were called in on Easter Sunday to fix the problem. The fact that the mistake is being called a PR disaster tells me that somewhere along the way, this country’s attitude toward homosexuality has shifted. No longer is homophobia “the last accepted prejudice.”

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Inauguration Highlights: Where to Watch and Listen on the Web

Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP

Maybe you were busy today and weren’t able to catch President Obama’s inauguration ceremony; or you tried to stream it live from your computer and ran into some problems. Don’t worry: there are plenty of places online where you can watch video highlights, look at photo slideshows from citizens and photojournalists, and listen to the speeches and performances from the ceremony.

The New York Times “Readers’ Album” collects the fruits of readers’ photo submissions from the D.C. inauguration celebrations, including the concert, parade and ceremony.

The Huffington Post has numerous videos of key points from Inauguration Day, a live blog from the ceremony and a slideshow, all on the same page.

The transcript of President Obama’s inaugural address is available on BarackObama.com.

MSNBC has extensive video coverage and cool supplemental features like “Watch 18 past inaugurals” and “360-degree views of D.C.” and an article (including a transcript) about the verbal stumbles that occurred as Chief Justice John Roberts swore in President Obama.

CBS has an organized inauguration page that includes videos of speeches and performances from the inauguration ceremony, as well as slideshows of celebrities in the inauguration audience, the crowds, world reactions and more. CBS also has ample background information on President Bush’s departure, the Obama family and global reactions to Obama’s win and this week’s events.

Check tv.yahoo.com to search for prime time television recaps of Inauguration Day in your area.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

For fun trivia and information about inaugurations past and present, visit findingDulcinea’s special section of “Inauguration Features,” which includes articles on D.C., inaugural balls and ceremonies, President Bush's exit and more.

Michelle Obama Wears Isabel Toledo

Photo: Tannen Maury/AP

After weeks of speculation, it’s official. America’s newly minted First Lady Michelle Obama stepped out on Inauguration Day 2009 wearing a pale yellow dress and coat ensemble by designer Isabel Toledo. Made of Swiss wool lace, the outfit is evocative of a look associated with another Mrs. O—Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

The blog Mrs. O, devoted to the fashion sass of the new first lady, points out that the color “Mimosa,” the shade of a champagne and orange juice cocktail, was named by Pantone as the color of 2009 because it “embodies hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change.”

Toledo said in an interview with The New York Times’ The Caucus blog that she had wanted to dress Michelle Obama in “a very optimistic color, that had sunshine.”

The designer didn’t know until this morning whether Mrs. Obama would choose her ensemble. The first lady is also a fan of Ikram, a boutique in Chicago that carries clothes by designers Maria Cornejo and Narciso Rodriguez; Rodriguez designed the red and black dress that Mrs. Obama wore on election night.

But who is Isabel Toledo?

Based in New York, Toledo was born in Cuba in 1961 and later moved to New Jersey to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. For years, she worked under her own label, which earned a name for itself as a bastion of clean lines and classic American style.

In 2007, Toledo was tapped by all-American fashion house Anne Klein to serve as the label’s creative director. Toledo left that post a few months later. Nonetheless, fashion critics have named her as part of the lineage of “Great American Designer.” Among Toledo’s sartorial ancestors is Claire McCardell, a designer who fellow classic designer Norman Norell said could “take $5 worth of common calico and turn it into something a stylish woman would wear.”

May the Obamas continue to embrace simple American ingenuity through this new presidency.

Anne Szustek
Senior Writer

To read more about fashion trends with political leanings—both purposeful and inadvertent—see the findingDulcinea story, “Shoes Thrown at Bush Launch Latest Political Trend.” Another findingDulcinea story, “Penny-Pinchers Go Preppy in Economic Downturn,” highlights America’s return to classic fashion during the current recession.

Watching the Presidential Inauguration

Inauguration prep at the Capitol building in Washington (Evan Vucci/AP)

Barack Obama’s victory on November 4, 2008, was arguably one of the most momentous events in American history, and his inauguration on January 20, 2009, will carry on that spirit of hope and enthusiasm. Officials are expecting it to be the best-attended inauguration in history. Even if you can’t attend, you can still immerse yourself in coverage, on TV and online.

Katie Couric might have earned Obama a few supporters over the course of her grueling interviews with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. On January 20, she’ll spend the entire day covering the inauguration for CBS viewers. Couric will report on the event from 10 am–5 pm and host a television special from 9 pm–10 pm; immediately following that, Couric will answer viewers’ questions in a webcast.

Check the CBS Web site for information on all of their inauguration coverage. The page currently hosts numerous inauguration articles and even a section that rings out the old by reviewing Bush’s legacy.

If the Web is your medium of choice for watching the events, the Chicago Sun-Times will stream live inauguration coverage all day long. Check the site for headlines and photos covering Obama’s journey to inauguration day as well as the event itself.

The Sun-Times also lists all the ways to watch the inauguration on TV and online. Many stations and sites are offering different types of coverage and special features. Choose a favorite newscaster or the particular angle that interests you.

Even if you’re not going to the inauguration, experience it vicariously via US News and World Report’s Interactive DC Map. Track the festivities through our nation’s capital so you’ll know exactly where things are when you’re watching them on TV or on the Web.

Find out more about the events scheduled for Obama’s inauguration and information about inaugurations past in findingDulcinea’s “Inaugurations Past and Present.”

If you’re inspired to head down to D.C., consult our travel feature on “Last-Minute Tips for Where to Stay During the Inauguration,” learn vital information about getting around the city on January 20 with “Getting Around D.C. on Inauguration Day,” and explore the best that D.C. has to offer with the findingDulcinea Washington, D.C. Inauguration Travel Web Guide.

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Women Firsts in 2008

As most of us know, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were big achievers in 2008. But there are many other women from around the world who set milestones this year. FindingDulcinea teamed up with WowOwoW, otherwise known as The Women on the Web, to profile 20 such women, including Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, New Hampshire's first female senator Jeanne Shaheen, Clinton, Palin, and 16 more. 

Visit WowOwoW's photo essay to see pictures and learn essential facts about the women.

Visit findingDulcinea's special section, 2008 Firsts for Women, to learn more about each of these women's lives and how they achieved their unique accomplishments.

Liz Colville

Senior Writer

Audience Development

Site of the Day: The Week in Rap

A new Web site from the creators of Flocabulary.com, a music project initially intended to expand students’ vocabulary by teaching them rap songs, is now also making current events more accessible by rapping about them. The new site is called The Week in Rap.

In their recent election edition, the rappers riffed about the day’s importance from a historical perspective, explaining how far America had come. In the next beat, however, they touched upon the challenges ahead, such as the country’s soaring unemployment and the divisive issue of gay marriage in California.

The listener’s experience is enhanced visually with a montage, and links embedded in the song lyrics lead to articles and videos that explain the stories in more detail. Cofounder Blake Harrison told CBS that kids want to learn but many students lack access to news that engages them: “It’s hard to care about something that you don’t know about.”

Shannon Firth
Writer

Inauguration Day Travel: Get a Glimpse of History

Workers build a viewing stand for the Inauguration Day parade.  (Gerald Herbert/AP)

With the exception of the coming holidays, the biggest event in the next few months will be the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama. Always a historical and wildly popular happening, the significance of this year’s election has made January 20th one of the hardest tickets to get. Reports already show virtually every hotel in Washington, D.C., booked for the event, months in advance.

However, there are always cancellations and last-minute openings. With this in mind, we set off in search of the best ways to enjoy Washington, D.C. this January.

Triphow offers an Inauguration Day primer, complete with information about where to find tickets for the event, where to watch the ceremony, where to stay and what to do when you’re not watching the swearing-in.

Travel CUTS is the perfect resource for the student traveler heading to D.C.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Big Blog has a post with useful information on snagging tickets to the inauguration.

Expedia, the budget travel site, has gone all out and created an entire page dedicated to the swearing-in of our next president, with sections dedicated to hotels, events, tourist destinations and package deals for individuals or families.

Chris Coats
Senior Writer

For more inspiration, visit findingDulcinea's Travel Tale on Washington D.C.

Sasha, Malia and the Unnamed Dog

The Obamas heading to the polls on Nov 4, 2008 in Chicago (Jae C. Hong/AP)

During Barack Obama’s election night speech, he mentioned two subjects of potential media fodder in the same sentence: his daughters and the family dog.

“Sasha and Malia, I love you both more than you can imagine, and you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House,” Obama said before the crowd at Grant Park in Chicago.

The next day, the Times of London posed an important question, one that will no doubt be illuminated over the coming months: “How are those two little girls going to have any semblance of a normal life when their father is not just the American President, but also the first black American President?” The media tends to focus its critical eye on female appearance, which could make Sasha and Malia especially vulnerable, argued the Times of London article.

Case in point, Chelsea Clinton, who has emerged essentially unscathed from years of media scrutiny. The worst of which, perhaps, was a nasty joke about her told by John McCain.

But perhaps the media’s overwhelming focus on personal matters only made Chelsea stronger and more able to defend herself. While out on the campaign trail with her mother, Chelsea fielded questions from the crowd, at one point brushing off a Monica Lewinsky-related query with confident poise.

Hopefully, Sasha and Malia won’t have to endure what Chelsea did. At least they’re off to a good start with the new puppy. The Oregonian reports that the Obamas will be adopting a dog from a shelter—commence media hypothesizing over breed, name, etc.

For a rundown of presidential children, the blog Upstairs as the Whitehouse provides a brief biography of each child of an American president.

Grab more post-election coverage from our Election 2008 section.

Sarah Amandolare
Senior Writer

The Election's Over. How Will the Media Cope?

Once our commander in chief has been chosen, media coverage of politics will undoubtedly continue, with pundits scrutinizing every last presidential detail en route to the January inauguration. But once we’ve had our fill of White House fodder, what will we shift our focus to? There are many worthy subjects in need of media attention. Here are a few options:

Africa’s Humanitarian Crises

Darfur has become a popular celebrity cause, but according to New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof, world leaders are still too slow to respond to strife in the war-torn region—most recently, the late October attack on a refugee camp in North Darfur.

In Somalia, violent clashes involving Ethiopia and sectors of the Islamic Courts Union have reached a boiling point. Clouded in religion and politics, the conflicts are decades old, but now have distinctly anti-American undertones. Late last month, a typically peaceful area of northern Somalia was hit by five suicide bomb attacks within 15 minutes. Blame fell on a group with possible al-Qaida affiliations.

Piecing Together the Economy

Whether we blame Fannie and Freddie, Wall St., Reaganomics, President Bush or Alan Greenspan for the economic downward spiral, the bottom line is that it must be fixed. To Steven R. Weisman of The New Republic, “This has been the Great Incomprehensible Recession of 2008. Incomprehensibility was at the root of the problem, and it is at the root of our difficulty getting out of it.”

Bolstering Environmental Awareness

Will environmental policies fall by the wayside in the wake of economic hard times? In Europe, the global financial crisis has already threatened “plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions” in Germany and Italy. But French president Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing the EU to maintain “the fundamental framework” of its environmental policies, despite the burden it could infringe on companies, reports Agence France-Presse.

Understanding Islam

Islam is often a central issue in African and Middle Eastern conflicts, and many Americans are uninformed on the subject. Without a basic understanding of the complex religion, how are we to establish progressive diplomatic relationships with Muslim countries, and with practicing Muslims at home? Mahnaz Shabbir, a second-generation American Muslim woman, raised the issue of the media’s portrayal of Muslims in a talk at Kansas State University last month, and emphasized the cruciality of education. “Knowing about other people and other religions starts with how you’re taught,” she said.

Sarah Amandolare
Senior Writer

Election 2008: The Temperament Factor

Carolyn Kaster/AP

Temperament has played an important role in this year’s election. Whether you’ve been struck by Obama’s poise and apparent calm, or riled by McCain’s facial gymnastics, there has likely been a point at which a candidate’s temperament overrode what he was actually saying.

A recent article by Nancy Gibbs in Time magazine focused on presidential temperament, and the fact that candidates’ people skills and disposition can distract from poor decision-making skills. “We put so much emphasis on character because of Nixon. Until Bush came along, we’d forgotten how important judgment also is,” said former presidential advisor David Gergen.

What’s needed, argues Yale historian Beverly Gage, is “the right blend of confidence and humility.” The formula is simple, but elusive. What appears at first to be a candidate’s confidence can quickly spiral into erraticism when tested.

An editorial in the conservative publication Investors Business Daily quoted several senators who bore McCain’s verbal wrath, including one who dubbed the Arizona republican “hotheaded.”

Regarding McCain, American Conservative Union chairman David Keene said, “In his world, it’s very difficult to have a simple policy disagreement. Everything becomes personal.”

Salon.com published a similar article, which quoted Georgetown University political science professor Stephen Wayne, who is studying the personalities of McCain and Obama. Wayne expressed concern over McCain’s temper, and an emotion-driven, “less rational response” to crisis.

But Wayne’s perception of rationality is just that—perception. Psychologist and Kansas City Star columnist George Harris writes, “[E]veryone seems to disagree about the set of characteristics that compose personality.” Some psychologists use a mathematical approach, but the term “temperament” does not specifically factor into such theories. Instead, “emotional stability” and “impulsivity” are measured, according to Harris.

Regarding the Time magazine article, Harris feels that despite having “a fine discussion of presidential temperament,” the piece lacks any scientific basis, relying on anecdotes and TV footage. In which case, Harris wonders, “Are our impressions really reliable and accurate indicators of who the candidates really are?”

Only time will tell.

Sarah Amandolare
Senior Writer

How to Track the Election Online

The past four years have seen great gains in snazzy election-tracking technology. For Election 2008, millions more voters and overseas observers will be able to get all their information from the Web, if they so desire. Here are some resources to get you started.

CNN’s Electoral College calculator is one of a few similar tools floating around the Web. It lets you play around with the U.S. map, clicking on states to turn them red or blue. Divvy up the swing states, look at the 2004 results and see which candidate will win under different scenarios. CNN will also be live streaming its political coverage on the site, so you can have a TV-like experience.

USA Today’s Electoral vote tracker is like CNN’s tool, but has mapped results from every election dating back to 1960.

NPR’s Election Map has four interactive maps, one each for the presidential, Senate, House and gubernatorial races.

Twitter’s Election 2008 section will be providing quick, succinct reports on Election Day results and events. On this page you can see tweets from all Twitter users talking about election topics. These include major news sources like Talking Points Memo and Time magazine.

WNYC, New York’s NPR station, will be inviting the public to blog alongside the station’s staff, which they also did for the final presidential debate.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer & Audience Development

Keep abreast of findingDulcinea's rolling election coverage in our Election 2008 section.

Voting Help for the Undecided

Ed Andrieski/AP

After a campaign that has lasted longer than some marriages, it’s hard to imagine someone not having a clear idea of which candidate they will vote for. But here it is—a Time magazine survey finding that one in seven voters is still on the fence.

With just hours to go before the polls open, we’ve cobbled together a few sites that allow you to choose your ideal candidate based on policy issues only, through a short series of questions. Log on, answer truthfully and then go vote.

Who should you vote for? provides a 30-question survey covering an array of issues, providing quick advice on who you should cast your ballot for. Some of the questions appear to provide surface explanations for very complex issues, but it should supply basic guidance on how to vote, based on your views of the candidates’ most notable policy opinions.

VoteHelp offers a similar survey of about 30 questions, but with an added option to rank the importance of each issue to you. You can request results based on 10, 20 or 28 questions, and are provided with results complete with explanations of how you differ from the candidates on each individual issue.

ABC’s Match-o-Matic skips the survey questions and instead focuses on policy statements from each candidate on a variety of topics. Offering short quotes from each, without attribution, undecided voters can chose which explanation best describes their own point of view. After about a dozen questions, the program offers you your ideal candidate.

Chris Coats
Senior Writer

In Reverence of the Stagflation Stud

Paul Volcker, right, and Alan Greenspan

Former Federal Reserve Chief Paul Volcker represents something different to different people. Some associate him with raising the roof on interest rates in the late 1970s. Critics of that release said that was a hit on the economy, and led to a major recession in the early 1980s. Yet Volcker still has his share of groupies who associate him with his monetary performances during the New (Economic) Wave of the 1980s.

Regardless of past reviews and directions in his work, Volcker is back on tour—this time as an economic confidant to Democratic headliner Barack Obama. Some are so excited about Volcker’s move back into the groove that they’re calling for a repeat performance of him as economic frontman.

But Volcker enthusiasts who really want to show their love will have to wait for the collectible industry to catch up. Meanwhile, you can cuddle up to an action figure of current Fed chief Ben Bernanke.

To read more about the life and times of top-(interest) rated economic rock star Paul Volcker, see the Beyond the Headlines story “Volcker and Obama: A Balanced Economic Partnership.” Or learn more about where your hard-earned cash goes with the Federal Reserve’s comic book series. Both newbies and longtime followers of the economy will thrill to these “Behind the Money”-esque narratives on money supply and inflation alternatives.

Anne Szustek
Senior Writer