Newsweek is painting the Brigham Young protest against Dick Cheney’s speech as a further rebuke of the Bush presidency and a sign of ebbing support. Here’s a sample:

Is there any place left where the vice president can be sure of a friendly welcome? Dick Cheney is traveling later this month to Utah, the reddest of Red States, to deliver the commencement address at the Mormon Church’s Brigham Young University. But even there, support is ebbing for George W. Bush and Cheney. The university has approved a rare campus protest this week against Cheney’s visit, and is considering a second on commencement day. One online petition asking BYU to rescind the invitation has gathered more than 2,000 signatures, many from students and professors as well as alumni. The university says such criticism is normal.

Calling this a political protest — or a reflection of sagging poll numbers — is unfair. It’s unfair to the students and to the university. The Chicago Sun-Times gets it right:

Cheney is target of rare protest at Brigham Young

April 3, 2007

PROVO, Utah — Some students and faculty on one of the nation’s most conservative campuses want Brigham Young University to withdraw an invitation for Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at commencement this month.Critics at the school question whether Cheney sets a good example for graduates, citing his promotion of faulty intelligence before the Iraq war and his role in the CIA leak scandal.

The university, which is owned by the Mormon church, has “a heavy emphasis on personal honesty and integrity in all we do,” said Professor Warner Woodworth.

“Cheney just doesn’t measure up,” he said.

It’s not a political protest. It’s a moral protest. It’s an important distinction.

Newsweek has a great little sampler of the books some noted writers say are most important to them. Here’s Walter Mosley’s list, which seems closest to my own reading — you’ll note that in addition to Camus, Garcia Marquez, and Freud (all represented by books I read, and some of which wound up on Doug’s Reading List), it includes Fantastic Four issues 1-100 (also a prominent suggestion to Doug — and to you). Mr. Mosley is a man of taste.

I have a great deal of respect for Dana Gioia’s work at the National Endowment for the Arts in bringing art to people who’ve never gotten much of it before, and his speech at a national conference several years ago similarly impressed me. One of the things he talked about was the death of his child, and how when something like that happens to you it burns through your life like a prairie fire, bringing instant clarity. It was thereafter that he set about quitting his (very successful, very lucrative) corporate marketing executiveship and dedicated himself to being a full-time writer. Here is his list of the five most important books to him; given his personal story, I think I’ll be reading the Merton book.

Over on Slate, Joshua Green urges Democrats to adopt the mythologizing tactics of the GOP.

I understand — and agree with — the advice not to be boring. (And not to remain stuck in the 60s.) And I well recognize the power of myth. After all, that’s what got us into Iraq.

…that:

a. Thanks to the internet, the written word lives forever

b. My opinions are long-lasting and strongly held. (Phew!)

Yesterday I was grousing to a friend about DC’s yearlong weekly comic, “52,” which purported to be of cosmic significance yet changed nothing.

Today I found this posting on the internet.

Just when you thought a former principled POW and American hero couldn’t make himself look any sillier after a year of debasing himself for people like Jerry Falwell, the tank moment has definitely done it. John McCain’s ludicrous denial of the war all around him has gotten him and the unflattering images onto news pages all across the web, including this piece from the New York Times (linked to from the home page of the Huffington Post).

Remember Michael Dukakis in a tank? It was the quintessentially foolish moment of a very foolish campaign.

I think we’ve just seen John McCain’s tank moment.

As ThinkProgress has it, McCain

“recently claimed that there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.” In a press conference after his Baghdad tour, McCain told a reporter that his visit to the market today was proof that you could indeed “walk freely” in some areas of Baghdad.

This picture clearly makes his case. The people alongside him (assistants, I guess) seem, um, heavily armed. And that’s a nice flak jacket he’s sporting himself. And I suppose it’s just lucky that Blackhawk helicopters and Apache gunships were patrolling overhead.

Yep, just a stroll in the neighborhood.

Karl Rove gets into the act.

My good friend, actor-writer-director and crank Mark Chaet, has joined the blogosphere.

If “crank” implies a criticism, it shouldn’t. There’s lots to be cranky about. And Mark is a smart, funny, cranky guy.

And, as I noted here, Mark is a famous guy.

A review in today’s LA Times Book Review of “Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys’ Founding Genius” has me thinking that I love Wilson’s music too much to read an academic dissection of its tonal underpinnings. Musings I would read. A discourse might ruin it forever. In the way that seeing the brain-damaged Wilson “perform” (and I’m using the word generously) “Smile” two summers back almost did.

Yes, The Screw Iran Coloring Book is in the collection of the Michigan State University libraries.

And no, I have no idea how it got there.