The Contraception Contretemps and the Siren Song of Sanity
Sean MurphyDid you see Rick Santorum today? Did you hear him yesterday? A year ago? A decade ago? Look: I've had little to say about this recent (very manufactured, very cynical)…
Reagan & Dickens or, The Money Dread (Redux)
Did you know Reagan and Dickens almost share the same birthday? I didn't. One day apart: Dickens --and his readers-- celebrate his 200th birthday this week. Reagan --and his disciples--…
The Terror Card, Torture and You or, The Evil of Banality (6/09)
Anyone who happened to miss this piece by Lakhdar Boumediene, entitled My Guantánamo Nightmare should check it out, here. Here is a taste of the sickening, yet predictable torment this…
We Shall Overcome
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” –Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963) *This should be…
There’s Just A Meanness In This World (11/09)
As obstreperously opposed to the death penalty as I remain, it is nevertheless difficult to feel uncomplicated emotions regarding the execution of John Allen Muhammad. I --and any individual living…
Some day a real rain will come: One Year Later
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…
It’s All Part of Der Process (12/08)*
From Andrew Sullivan's invaluable blog (TheDailyDish), comes the following (quoted from Roger Cohen's typically sane and salient perspective--this one, here is must reading--via The New York Times): Of the 770…
Vaclav Havel, R.I.P.
This representative quote has been reprinted many times elsewhere, with good reason, so I have no qualms utilizing it here: Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the…
Sui generis on the rocks: Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.
The best way to compliment a writer, as a reader, is to recommend their work to others. That I wholeheartedly do --and have done. The best way to compliment a…
“I’m An Idea Man…”
Predictably, that bastion of sober, probing and reasonable analysis, The Washington Post (more on my relationship with that rag here, here and here) has surveyed our political moment and is ready…