Most Recent Posts

In politics, conventional wisdom can have a certain power. But, sometimes the obviously true thing isn't so true upon inspection.

The new Republican Congress hits Capitol Hill on Monday, but the latest round of that wisdom seems to have already been established — from how it's going to work to its relationship with President Obama. Here's a look at 2 1/2 pieces of that wisdom.

1. Republicans are going to have to show they can govern.

At this point, it's been said so many times it's become an established Washington truth.

In his NPR interview late last month, President Obama said: "They are going to be in a position in which they have to show that they can responsibly govern, given that they have significant majorities in both chambers."

And Colorado Republican Sen.-elect Cory Gardner on Fox News Sunday back in November had a similar sentiment: "If Republicans don't prove that we can govern with maturity, that we can govern with competence, we'll see the same kind of results two years from now, except it will be a wave going back a different direction."

He's saying Republicans could lose their majority if they don't show they can govern. Or not.

"You're creating a test that you cannot pass," says Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor at the conservative publication National Review, which ran an editorial titled "The Governing Trap." "That requires the support of people who have an incentive for you not to pass it."

That is, if the definition of governing is passing bills the president signs into law, then Ponnuru says congressional Republicans shouldn't make that their goal. Instead, he says, they should do the basics, keep the government open for business and outline an agenda they'd implement with a Republican president. That, Ponnuru says, is what Democrats did when they took the majority in 2006 for President Bush's final two years in office.

"They don't run in 2008 on the basis of the things they cooperated with President Bush to accomplish, and it's just I think sort of absurd to think that that's the right strategy for Republicans to employ," he says.

2. House Democrats will be totally irrelevant.

They'll have fewer members than they had in the last Congress. "Make no mistake about it, Minority Leader Pelosi would much rather be Speaker Pelosi by any condition," says former GOP Rep. Tom Reynolds. "She is the steward of the minority in some real tough circumstances."

But John Lawrence, former chief of staff to Pelosi, says hold on. "I always refer to it as the Rodney Dangerfield of politics. They get no respect." But in this case, he says, the House Democrats are "very salient" for two reasons.

First, when it comes to legislation where Republicans aren't united — like votes to keep the government funded — some Democratic support will inevitably be needed for passage. And second, Lawrence points to presidential vetoes. Take a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Many expect the president would veto it. Republicans don't need House Democrats to get it passed.

"But you can't override vetoes with only Republican votes and that means that Pelosi and the House Democrats have an ace up their sleeve," Lawrence says. "And then the House Democrats become highly, highly relevant in terms of upholding those vetoes."

2 1/2. The president will start wielding the veto pen.

How often will there even be vetoes to uphold? That's our final bit of conventional wisdom. President Obama has said he expects his veto pen to get a workout. But with only 54 Republican senators in the new Congress, it will be rare for a bill Obama dislikes to get the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles and make it to his desk.

I don't know when people started to think they could successfully make fun of you for being a person who grew up listening to a lot of Billy Joel — and perhaps still does — but they can all forget it.

Friday night, PBS is running a special concert in which Joel gets the Library Of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, and it's great fun, and he deserves it. Somehow the model-dating and perceived rock posturing and rehab have been rolled up into something that makes people feel entitled to write hyperbolic essays of contempt that bubble over with bizarre levels of anger at the music itself (while, in that case, choosing "The Longest Time" and "An Innocent Man" as the man's only defensible music, which I personally find the height of hilarity from a self-proclaimed tastesplainer). And, too, where even thoughtful defenses are kind of grudging and "with friends like these"-y. Somehow, people who hate Billy Joel are very, very sure that their critiques are devastating to the people who like him — they are comforting the afflicted (with Billy Joel) and afflicting the comforted (by Billy Joel).

As a longtime listener, I respectfully can say only this: I don't care.

Here's the scoop on Billy Joel, whose music I listened to unrelentingly from about age 10 to about 25, not an unusual length for a fandom that begins in youth: some of his music is good. Some of it is bad. Some of it is dumb. Some of it is wise. Some of it would be good if it weren't really strangely and badly produced, such that it benefits from being revisited and rearranged. Some of it really sticks with you. Some of it is really hard to play on the piano. He really wanted to be a rock star, but some of his best stuff is pretty, hymn-like or lullaby-like. He is not a symbol of either everything good or everything bad in the world. But yes, in those records, there is plenty to justify a position as a celebrated writer of 20th century popular song.

The special is, as these tribute concerts often are, a bit all over the place. It seems a little on the nose to send out Boys II Men to sing "The Longest Time" (a song I've always considered pretty disposable, if charming in the attempt). I wanted LeAnn Rimes to take it easier with "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)," which is pretty and simple and does not need to be sung quite so hard. And if I agree with detractors on anything, it's that I don't need "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me," particularly, sung by Gavin DeGraw. And Josh Groban singing "She's Always A Woman," while I think it's pretty, is not going to win over the people who have written the whole thing off as A Thing For Uncool People.

On the other hand, Natalie Maines has a lovely take on "She's Got A Way" that does bring out the musicality of it nicely (though the third-personing of the song so that the "me" is a "him" seems strange and unnecessary). And "New York State Of Mind" does indeed, when sung by Tony Bennett, sound utterly timeless and classic.

I don't know what to say about the all-hands-on-deck performance of "Piano Man." You have to see it. I will say this: it's not my favorite song of his. I know. But this performance, particularly the way it starts, is ... something.

So yes, it's a little up and down. But I think if you watch the clip of Joel singing "Only The Good Die Young" in Russia, when he was young enough to stand on the piano and jump off it like a goof, and where people stretched their arms toward him, and when he sweated and high-fived them, and you can't understand the appeal of it at all, that's not necessarily an objective, level-headed appreciation of the line between shlock and culture so much as it is an expression of the natural variance in the things people like, which I understand makes for a much less interesting piece than "WHY THIS MUSIC IS TERRIBLE EVEN THOUGH MANY PEOPLE LOVE IT."

The special, the performances, didn't do all that much for me. But the performance clips — the early ones and then the footage of him performing in the concert special itself, where he's in better voice than I've sometimes heard him in recent years — sent me directly back to the music, which is still good. (A clip with Paul McCartney is a good reminder that even the most revered songwriters have their ups and downs.) It's worth listening to the ones that aren't from his radio-pop history: he plays "Vienna," which he's long been known to like very much — as do I — despite the fact that it never was a hit. Same with "Miami 2017," which I consider a high point in cheeky apocalypse pop. (And nobody sang "And So It Goes," which is tragic. That's so pretty.)

Yes, this will show you a lot of awkward-looking people in fancy clothes singing and clapping. That's what I would have been doing had I been there. Even those of us without our own kids ultimately become the people who listen to what becomes defined against our will as Music For Parents. It's all very, very unfashionable if that's the eye with which you look at music. I get it. I accept it.

I don't care. I wish I remembered how to play the beginning of "Vienna" the way I once could. Perhaps that's the best thing you can take away from giving this particular guy a listen: that finger-twitching feeling.

I should get a piano.

haters gonna hate

An Ethiopian kitchen can be a place of both succulence and self-denial.

As I stand in the restaurant kitchen of Abyssinia, a popular Ethiopian eatery in Nairobi, the owner, Abebe, shows me how his cook prepares the dish called kitfo. It's raw minced beef whipped together with cardamom and chili and a spicy butter with a texture and taste closer to delicate cheese than to steak tartar.

Kitfo is actually Abebe's favorite food, but it's one he's not allowed to eat this month. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, one of the world's oldest, observes Christmas on Jan. 7, following a calendar similar to the Coptic. The 40 days prior to Christmas (including Dec. 25) are observed with a vegan fast.

The 12 Days Of Quirky Christmas Foods Around The Globe

That usually means just one meal per day, in the afternoon or evening.

This 40-day Nativity Fast — also observed by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic and Coptic Church, among others — typically prohibits meat, dairy, eggs, oil and wine. (Some traditions are ambiguous around the restriction of fish.)

The church considers refraining from some meals and some foods to be a form of purification and spiritual preparation. While the term "vegan" was coined only 70 years ago, prohibitions against eating meat and dairy for extended periods have been around for millennia. But no church has as many fasting days as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Abebe says that at a time of year when others are gorging, there's something gratifying in self-denial, Abebe says. "In fact that gives a psychological edge to those of us who are fasting." And the hungrier he gets, the closer he says he feels to God.

Abebe, who like many Ethiopians goes by only his first name, has a lot of practice serving food he's forbidden to touch. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has 250 fasting days, 180 of which are obligatory for laypeople, not just monks and priests.

During the 40-day advent fast, only one vegan meal is allowed per day in the afternoon or evening. Abebe says that he's come to enjoy that feeling of apartness. "It enables me to deal with this world. Because this world is full of challenges," he says.

i i

Doro wat, the traditional dish eaten in Ethiopia on Christmas Day, served with injera bread. John Elk/Getty Images/Lonely Planet Image hide caption

itoggle caption John Elk/Getty Images/Lonely Planet Image

Doro wat, the traditional dish eaten in Ethiopia on Christmas Day, served with injera bread.

John Elk/Getty Images/Lonely Planet Image

It also makes the Christmas feast, when it finally arrives, that much more of a party. The traditional dish for Ethiopians on Christmas Day is doro wat, which features pieces of meat swimming in a rich red sauce.

Unlike the doro wat eaten the rest of the year, the Christmas dish is prepared with a slaughtered rooster rather than a hen, and carved into exactly 12 pieces, representing the 12 disciples, says Abebe's wife, Shitaye. (Each wing is divided into two pieces. Those four pieces plus the breasts, thighs, drumsticks, neck and back make 12.)

Then come the 12 hard-boiled eggs, which some say symbolize eternity. But eternity is what it can feels like to make the sauce, which requires simmering down 9 pounds of chopped onion for every one rooster, with a chili called berbere. It's a process that normally takes 5 hours.

I ask Shitaye if the specialness of this dish is perhaps lost on her many Kenyan and expatriate customers, for whom doro wat is just another dinner option, instead of a long-awaited reward for asceticism.

"Yeah, if you [eat] it every day it's true," she says. Catching herself, she adds: "But our guests are very special for us!"

There are some traditions that the Ethiopian diaspora in Kenya have to miss out on this holiday season. Kenya has outlawed the sale of homebrew, so there will be no honey wine, called tej, or barley beer, called talla. Likewise, there will be no sound of children playing the traditional Christmas game of Ethiopian field hockey, or genna. Legend has it that this is what the shepherds played when they heard of the birth of Jesus. (Abebe says he used to play a mean right wing, or skipper.)

Today, however, as every day this month, they will be eating just like their relatives in Ethiopia. At 2:45 p.m., when the day's fast can be broken, Abebe emerges with a woven basket on which is laid the spongy sour flatbread called injera, with a generous dollop of a chickpea-and-white bean dish called shiro (11 ingredients, nine of which are spices). It's accompanied by scoops of lentils, kale and other greens.

We dig in, using more of the injera as knife and fork. Unlike the white injera you often find in the U.S. is made of corn flour, this one is brownish, made from an ancient grain called tef specially imported from Ethiopia.

With fasting food this delicious, you could say asceticism has its perks.

Christmas foods

vegan

Ethiopia

Clockwise from top left: Dr. Simi Mahesh examines a patient. A chart shows the number of abortions performed at the clinic. Illiterate patients sign the consent form with a thumbprint. Palo Khoya waits with the doctor's assistant. Poulomi Basu for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Poulomi Basu for NPR

Dr. Mahesh prepares to carry out an abortion for Palo Khoya. "They just come because they don't want to continue the pregnancy," the doctor says. "They're not bothered whether it's legal or not legal. But we're doing awareness campaigns to tell them it's legal, it's not wrong, to get rid of the stigma attached to it." Poulomi Basu for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Poulomi Basu for NPR

i i

Palo Khoya, in the operating room, explains her decision: "I got an abortion because I have two little children and I would like them to grow up a little more before I can think of conceiving again and have a third and fourth child," Khoya said. Poulomi Basu for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Poulomi Basu for NPR

Palo Khoya, in the operating room, explains her decision: "I got an abortion because I have two little children and I would like them to grow up a little more before I can think of conceiving again and have a third and fourth child," Khoya said.

Poulomi Basu for NPR

Poulomi Basu for NPR

Dr. Simi Mahesh and Palo Khoya talk after the abortion. "I was traumatized and terrified, wondering whether I would be in massive pain," Khoya says. "The doc reassured me and carried out the abortion safely." She now visits the doctor regularly for family planning advice. "Women don't know the methods [of family planning]," Dr. Mahesh says. "So the key is educating women." Poulomi Basu for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Poulomi Basu for NPR

Poulomi Basu is a documentary photographer based in New Delhi, India. She is part of the VII Photo Agency Mentor Program.

family planning

India

abortion