Tonight and only tonight

Well I have not blogged in awhile, but I've been doing some really great things with my time and I wish I could go back and recount them, but it would take too much time. And I'd get frustrated, so I'm just going to tell ya'll about tonight, and move forward in the coming weeks...hopefully. Anyhow! Onward and Upward!

First off I had to go to a dance performance at the Kennedy Center for my modern dance class. Everyday the Kennedy Center puts on a free performance of some kind (music, theatre, or dance), 365 days per year on its Millennium Stage. Really, most of the time the performances seem boring to me, when I look at the schedule I never recognize any names, except back in September when Ben Kweller came. Actaully, now that I think of it, just last night a band called The LK played. I only know because I went to see them play a $5 concert at the Swedish Embassy right over in Georgetown and they said they'd be playing the Kennedy Center Sunday night.

Onto the dance. I have to admit I didin't really like it. I am amateur at best at judging dance, this class I'm in now is my first experinece taking dance. But, from my beginner perspective the dances were not great. The dancers often were not together in their movements and I'm a little sick of the gaucho pants being the go-to modern dance uniform. Anyhow I skipped out a bit early because I didn't want to be last for the interview I was going to see at the National Press Club.

I hopped on the shuttle to the metro outside the Kennedy Center and headed to Metro Center. I made it to the National Press Club at about 7:15. The show started at 8 and I wanted to get a good seat. The interview was great! It was being recorded by C-Span and CBS Radio and some other cameras. Marvin Kalb a fellow of Harvard and George Washington University interviewed Christiane Amanpour. It's part of a series called the Kalb Report, earlier this year I saw him interview Katie Couric and I missed the Dan Rather show. Tickets are free for GW students, so I swiped those up a few weeks ago.

Christiane Amanpour is the Chief Foreign Correspondent at CNN. She is apparently a very well-respected and accomplished journalist. One guy said there's a quote "Where there's war there's Amanpour." She grew up in Iran and was 20 when the '79 revolution occurred. She came to the US for college, attending Rhode Island Unicversity, kind of a random school choice. She then worked herself up the ranks first doing the words on the weather report on a local RI news show and then joining CNN in 1986, i believe. She seemed very intelligent, and very opinionated. She often disagreed with Mr. Kalb or would not answer his question in a straightforward way but I really liked her. She said in 2003 her bosses at CNN were intimidated by the "patriotic of Die" climate of the Bush Administration and failed to ask the necessary questions of officials. She says that journalists failed as a profession in the lead up to the Iraq War.

She did a documentary called "God's Warriors." A six hour-three part series on Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Some people criticized it as pushing a "moral equivalence" between extremist of all three religions. Almost like saying that a car bombing Muslim is the same is a far right wing Conservative Chrisitian. Mr. Kalb tried a few times to ask her what she thought of the allegations and she denied that there was a "moral equivalence" made and would not even recognize how someone could see it that way. Like I said, very strong in her convictions.

Anyhow, a great night overall! The NPC is a beautiful place for journalists to gather and to make announcements, Ralph Nader announced his VP here before coming to GW a few weeks ago. I need to find out how you join and become a big-wig there though. I'd like to get invited to some of these exclusive dinners! I'm fascinated by journalists because they have seen so much. Christiane said that she remains an optimist even after seeing all the war she has. That's amazing! I feel I am an optimist, I realized you can tell just by the way people speak. A cynic or a pessimist would have said that the news media is going to pot covering entertainment and celebrity news all the time, but Christiane had a different take. She said journalism is just different, and the fact the CNN people tune into to 24 hour news networks all the time shows that people do want news. I don't remember what she said exactly. But she was extremely pro-CNN and would not give into criticism regarding it.

That's all for now. I had a nice relaxing walk home past the White House. Except for seeing a scary motorcade with secret service and army guys looking out the windows. It reminds me of being in a police state or something. I think they were looking out for snipers or something, since I guess the driver can't do it while driving. I don't know who they were escorting, maybe Cheney.

Anyhow, Goodnight and Good Luck.