Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Florida Columnist's Blog

"Optimism," said Cacambo, "what is that?"
"Alas!" replied Candide, "it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst."

-- Voltaire, Candide (1759)
Speaking of bookmarking worthy blogs, as we were the other day, Pierre Tristam is an editorial columnist with the Daytona Beach News-Journal. He also writes one of the most outspoken, erudite, and fascinating blogs in Florida -- a welcome counterpoint to the usual, predictably "safe," and boring newspaper blogs.

The blog is called Candide's Notebooks, after the classic satire written by one of the leading philosophers favored by our Founding Fathers.

Mr. Tristam is a self-confessed liberal who describes himself as having been "born and raised in Lebanon, schooled in the United States, salaried in journalism ... making me one of the 0.3 Arab-Americans with a column in the mainstream American press." His coverage of the latest Middle East violence by and against Hamas in the West Bank and Hezbollah in Lebanon has been outstanding.

The Candide's Notebooks blog is factually rich, opinionated, internationalist in outlook, and informed by a historical context about which most Americans are completely clueless. If you want an RSS or Atom feed, you can start with the Blogger version of Candide's Notebooks here.

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