Remember Archie Bunker from the 1971 TV show All in the Family? In it’s stride, it was a number one show and drew viewers from over 21 million households. By the Hollywood standards of then and today, Bunker was a authoritarian, racist, sexist, anti-semite, homophobic “Nazi.” He used nearly every religious and ethnic slur you […]
The Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court Senate confirmation hearings reminds me a lot of another congressional hearing in the early 1990s. No, I’m not talking about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. I’m thinking of the testimony by the 15-year-old Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ in 1990, just prior to the United States first war in Iraq. To understand this […]
Every election cycle, voters hope that a savior or an organized group of righteous elites will come along and reinvigorate the economy, raise wages, restore communities, and reform broken institutions. When these bearers of hope fail to provide even a modest reprieve, the cycle begins anew. They hope that the next Clinton, the next Obama, […]
By now, most people reading this will have heard of the Alt-right. Are they really just racist trolls, or are they the right wing version of Occupy Wall Street: young, technologically savvy, and a bit counterculture? Perhaps they are both or neither depending on who you ask, but the Alt-right is defined less by their beliefs […]
It is wildly ineffective to try and convince people that Trump is dangerous if protesters carry Mexican flags while burning US flags, smash storefronts, and are photographed acting in an even mildly threatening demeanor. Effective protest have to work just like political campaigns. They have to be unoffensive, measured, and carry a ‘common-man’ sensibility. Based on […]
In many ways, a writer is a prophet, not of the future but of the present. A writer digest reality ahead of the crowd. He or she makes sense of a senseless world and bends the links of random events into a chain that hopefully can stand up to the fabrications of history. For the truly subversive […]
Yesterday, the New York Post published a front page story on presidential candidate Donald Trump’s most recent diatribe against Senator John McCain. The Post (and others) actually misquoted him, but he said: “He is not a war hero. He is a war hero. He’s is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” […]
In today’s online version of the paper, WSJ writer Jon Hilsenrath blames you for the poor “recovery.” Here’s a brief excerpt of the story headlined “A Letter to Stingy American Consumers,” edited only for brevity: Dear American Consumer, This is The Wall Street Journal. We’re writing to ask if something is bothering you. The sun shined […]
A nurse must portray a sincere sense of caring, but more than that, a calm, unemotional competence. They want to create the impression that everything is under control, even when death is certain. The job of a palliative care worker is to create the illusion of health for those who are dying, to make the symptoms of […]
Superheroes are the modern versions of classical mythology. They offer answers to philosophical questions about morality, what it means to be human, our responsibilities to each other, and more. Most importantly, they reveal our culture’s inner values. Put simply, they are a legitimate part of our cultural heritage, but in recent years superhero movies and other […]
