Top Comments appears nightly, as a round-up of the best comments on Daily Kos. Surely you come across comments daily that are perceptive, apropos and .. well, perhaps even humorous. But they are more meaningful if they're well-known ... which is where you come in (especially in diaries/stories receiving little attention).
Send your nominations to TopComments at gmail dot com by 9:30 PM Eastern Time nightly, and indicate (a) why you liked the comment, and (b) your Dkos user name (to properly credit you) as well as a link to the comment itself.
If you have listened to National Public Radio over the years, chances are that you have heard their Rome correspondent, who covers much of Europe and has especially led the network’s coverage in the Balkans. And many of her colleagues say that they are always asked about her (especially from men) who love the way that she says her name Sylvia Poggioli – but who are then surprised to learn that she was born in the Italian city of …… umm ..... Providence, Rhode Island?
She was born there in 1947 to parents who were both literature professors, but who fled Italy in the 1930’s when her father refused to sign a Fascist Party card – in effect, a loyalty oath to Mussolini. Renato and Renata Poggioli taught at some of New England’s prestige institutions (Smith, Harvard and Brown universities) and Renata later helped found the classics department at UMass-Boston.
There was a definitive 2001 Boston Globe profile of her that is now behind a paywall, but a cached partial version has her talking about the dinner parties her parents held, complete with 'ladies with cigarette holders' from eastern Europe and her meeting the poet Robert Lowell as well as the novelist Vladimir Nabokov over dinner. Incredibly, these two highly-educated people (her father spoke seven languages) were embarrassed about their accented English – at home, Sylvia would speak to them in English and they would reply in Italian.
But in 1963, when driving Sylvia to see Reed College in Oregon, a car crash took the life of her father and seriously injured her mother. Sylvia attended Radcliffe in order to help her mother recuperate, and eventually won a Fulbright scholarship to Rome. And never came back; marrying an Italian journalist and eventually settling into a flat overlooking the Tiber River in Rome.
She worked at the English-language desk of Italy’s news agency ANSA – and while attending various journalism conferences, met up with correspondents for NPR. In the aforementioned Boston Globe profile: many female NPR reporters felt that she was underemployed, given her education and background – as being a female reporter in Italy back in the 70’s-80’s was not easy (with Poggioli noting that doing so at the Vatican has always been difficult for a woman). Those reporters convinced NPR to hire her to do freelance work beginning in 1982, and she was later hired full-time in 1986.
She has impressed many with her coverage of the events in the Balkans - which included, fittingly enough today, her input on the Ratko Mladic arrest. That Globe profile mentioned her visits to NPR affiliate stations, and how station managers described how she spoke to emigrants from the different Yugoslav republics, who may not have agreed with her analysis: but no one questioned her integrity or work habits. She has won several awards for her work, including a George Foster Peabody as well as an Edward Weintal award (from Georgetown University) during the 1990’s for her coverage in Bosnia. She also spent the year 1990 as a research fellow at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
But lest you think this woman (who turned age 65 last week) is all business or war reporting: well, the Car Talk guys certainly don’t. Tom & Ray Magliozzi take every opportunity to utter, "And even though Sylvia Poggioli says 'Mama Mia!' every time she hears us say it" ….. until an alert reader corrected them - indicating that she actually lets out an expletive and asks, "Who are these idiots?!?" And finally, a reporter knows they're successful when they not only appeal to eggheads - but also when the cartoonist Bill Griffith explains the appeal of this woman to the figure pictured below, one Zippy the Pinhead - "Not only does Zippy love to chant Sylvia Poggioli's mellifluous moniker like a mantra, but he considers her reports from Belgrade and Rome to be indispensable."
Now, on to Top Comments:
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From nonnie9999:
In last night's open thread for Night Owls - trix has the perfect idea in this comment to have Congress debate the Afghanistan war for more than just a few minutes.
From trashablanca:
ericlewis0 wants to know why impact is called "bharns" and Man Oh Man comes up with a great response. For those who don't know, here's jotter's definitive diary on the subject.
From Crashing Vor:
Hawesdawg took one look at Rick Santorum's yearbook picture in today's Mid-Day Open Thread - and nailed the former senator's high school experience in an unforgettable turn of phrase.
From Dragon5616:
"Eviscerate" is a dirty word? I'm with DrTerwilliger in this pie fight. Read the great letter by a teacher in Happy Rockefeller's Biology Teacher Eviscerates Obama's Education Secretary. And then .....
smileycreek pops the cork in kos' Happy 9th birthday, Daily Kos!
From joanneleon:
From my own diary about renewing the Patriot Act - barbwires retort about rotating villains are a "Top Comment if I ever saw one".
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening:
In this front-page story follow-up: dansk47 heard Congressman Peter DeFazio call Patrick McHenry a "twit" because of the way he spoke to Elizabeth Warren, and added "God, I wish we had more Dems like DeFazio".
And in the diary by Brit that broke the news of the arrest of the fugitive General Ratko Mladic - HoundDog had an eloquent plea - saying that we should "make sure average Americans are informed" and that this is a better way of winning the "war-on-terror", among other sage advice.
Finally, we are still waiting action from the service department on resurrecting Top Mojo - needless to say, we'll advise when it returns.
