When I first read that a CNN/Opinion Research poll showed that 68% of 935 registered voters said they were against building a mosque in New York City that met all zoning and environmental requirements, I was hopeful that CNN/Opinion Research had asked a trick question, a favorite technique of pollsters wanting to cook the results. […]
I never said I didn’t have opinions. I have expressed a number of views over my first year of writing the OpEdge blog. I think I have expressed these views explicitly and without rhetorical manipulations and that I have proven my points with facts and reason. So without further ado, here are the ideas that […]
One or even two Supreme Court decisions don’t tell you if the court is drifting right or left. It takes a few years of consistent decisions to suggest where the court is taking us. And a Supreme Court can often give mixed signals as to where it’s headed; for example granting more rights to corporations […]
Of the several definitions of ideology in Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, one is relevant to a discussion of communications and propaganda: “a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture.” What I call the ideological subtext of communications, be it in a TV ad, a news article, a billboard, a website […]
August 5 passed without my noticing that it was a year ago that day that I began writing OpEdge. Over the year, I have posted a total of 177 entries. I thought it might be fun to review what I covered in the first 52 weeks of OpEdge. Interestingly enough, the common themes of a […]
In Saturday’s New York Times, Ron Lieber proposes that there is new class warfare in the United States. Let’s allow Ron to do the talking: “There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions. The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits […]
I think that most people remember history as small packets of information: slogans such as, “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,” events such as the Boston Tea Party, or dates such as 1779. Hearing and reading about the final combat troops leaving Iraq made me think of how we remember history, […]
It’s befuddling to me why the New York Times is doing so much to keep the public from considering the issue of what to do to confront global warming. The way the Times keeps us from thinking about what we can do to stop global warming is by keeping in the news the bogus controversy, […]
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has joined a legion of the usual right-wing suspects to oppose the building of a mosque two blocks north of ground zero, the location of the terrorist-propelled airplane crashes that toppled the former twin towers of the World Trade Center. Just in case the ADL, long a fighter against anti-Semitism and […]
Let’s take Mr. Peabody’s WABAC (Wayback) Machine to the not-too-distant past of September 2006, when George Bush II and John Kerry were just entering the final sprint of the presidential campaign. Dan Rather, the most well-known and well-respected television anchor in America, fronted a report prepared by experienced and well-respected TV news producer Mary Mapes […]