On April Fools’ Day: Celebrating America’s Irreplaceable Court Jester
Sean MurphyTake this joke, please. Or this one: Funny, for sure. But cut with way more than a sliver of dead seriousness. This is what Bill Hicks brought to the planet,…
Iraq: Ten Years Gone
What's ten years and a couple trillion dollars between friends, huh? And I mean, it's not like anyone could have seen this coming, right? Right. Anyone who's read this blog knows…
Wishing For Eternity So Dick Cheney Could Spend It In Disgrace
I'm not sure what it says about me, but I've gone on record declaring, at times, a fervent wish that there was a God. Because if there was a God,…
Bob Woodward, Badly Wired
Fascinating piece. I remember reading Wired at the time and hating it, not because it was so ceaselessly negative but that, even as a young teenager, I understood nuance and…
Coal Mines, Unions, Big Business and (of course) George Orwell (Revisited)
Watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes people inhabit. --George Orwell Quite by chance (no, really), I saw an old classic that had been languishing in my…
Malcolm, Malcolm – Semper Malcolm*
On Feb. 21, 1965, former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address a rally in New…
2012: When Rhetoric Meets Reality (Revisited)
I read the news today. Oh boy. Looks like one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry is beginning to spring a rather unseemly leak. Sounds like art may have…
Some Day A Real Rain Will Come: What Travis Bickle Can –And Cannot– Tell Us About Tucson (Revisited)
Voices In Our Heads You talking to me? It is the pivotal scene in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and it remains one of the seminal moments in movie history. Not so…
Goodbye and Good Riddance, Joe Lieberman
Waaay back in November 2008 I put my feelings about Joe Lieberman on the permanent record. In a post entitled File Under: Teflon Joe (formerly filed under: Are You Fucking…
Born In The U.S.A. or, Every Day Is Veterans Day (Revisited)
I. Personal Remember when Born in the U.S.A. was ubiquitous? The album and the song. Bruce was already big, but he wasn’t over the top. Born in the U.S.A. put…