All this breathless, borderline hysterical enthusiasm about Oprah running for president is, sadly, doing a great deal to help me understand how Trump became president. It's different demographics to be…
Let’s politicize these acts, if for no other reason because, in America, we politicize everything else. Of course it’s a mental health issue. For starters, the mental handicap of anyone…
i. Orwell, Again (Obviously) Even before the Reality TV circus American politics and, by extension, American life, degenerated into late last year, George Orwell was the go-to guy for…
Toward the end of Sydney Lumet’s ’70s classic Serpico there is an unnerving scene that encapsulates the conundrum faced by the eponymous cop: already persona non grata within the law…
I. TRUE STORY. MY WIFE teaches grade school. In addition to the stories I can tell, and the ones my many friends who teach or are married to teachers can tell,…
Nine years ago today we lost not only one of our better comics, but one of our most vital and intelligent voices. George Carlin was incendiary, he was hilarious, he…
I’VE BEEN THINKING A lot?—?since the election and particularly during the past two weeks?—?about the cliché (typically, in personal experience, uttered by my right-leaning friends) involving our so-called “participation trophy”…
ALLOW ME TO BE contrary for a moment. That rambling, semi-coherent, solipsistic rant (half campaign speech; half cry for attention) Trump delivered at the CIA fills me with hope and…
Ian Anderson called it, in '74: The ice-cream castles are refrigerated; The super-marketeers are on parade. There's a golden handshake hanging round your neck, As you light your cigarette on…
WELL, THAT PRESS CONFERENCE was…something, huh? Predictably shambolic to the point of parody. Only more so. Satire and ridicule no longer register; we’re down the faux-golden rabbit hole, and it…
Sean Murphy