A recent full-page ad in many of the national daily newspapers pictures the newly deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and his youngest son, who replaced him as supreme ruler, Kim Jong-un. Both are deep in concentration, as if they are planning something grotesquely stupid or painful to perpetrate upon their people. But the ad […]
I want to join the small band of people who are advocating that Vice President Joe Biden graciously retire so that Hillary Clinton can join President Barack Obama on the 2012 Democratic presidential ticket. I have no complaints about Joe Biden term as Vice President (his weasel-like behavior in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings years […]
Both Santorum and Gingrich played the race card last week, which should serve as a not-so-gentle reminder that much of the appeal of right-wing rhetoric reduces to the seemingly intractable racism that has poisoned the United States since its inception and has been destroying it since the end of World War II. Their statements are […]
The friendly looking and sharply dressed middle-aged African-American man looks out at us from a full-page ad with a confident smile. A headline in a type face that looks like someone wrote it out by hand reads the words this impressive executive-looking man is supposed to be saying to us: “I’m an energy voter.” The […]
It sure seems as if there has been a lot of news lately about people trying to carry firearms onto airplanes. As it turns out, people have been trying to sneak guns on board for a long time, at the rate of 2 per day 18 months ago. In December, that number more than doubled, […]
Read More… from No one should get a free pass for trying to take a gun on an airplane.
Yesterday was a glorious, almost celestial day for Rick Santorum. He lost last night’s Iowa caucus to Mitt Romney by a mere eight votes. Earlier in the day, he was highly praised in a deceptive article by conservative columnist David Brooks. The Iowa caucus represents what’s wrong with our electoral process and the Brooks article […]
When the news hit last month that Lowe’s, the home improvement chain, was canceling its ads on “All-American Muslim,” a reality show about Muslim families in Michigan, it was with some guilt that I decided not to write about it. The guilt came because I felt very strongly that the Lowe’s decision was overtly anti-Islamic, […]
The New York Times “Thursday Styles” section today published its list of the 75 things that New Yorkers talked about in 2011, one of the silliest and yet most ideologically tinged of the seemingly infinitude of annual lists published in the news media the last two weeks of the year. Let’s start with the premise […]
Almost overnight Ron Paul began to rise in the Iowa polls. And it seems as if it were only a day later that we discovered that he lent his name to some odious assertions and cuckoo beliefs. Do you see a pattern here? Bachmann gets popular; Bachmann’s husband is outed. Cain gets popular. Women whom […]
Read More… from Why do media wait till a Republican candidate is on a roll to bring out the dirt?
Last night I flipped on Turner Classic Movies for a half hour after returning from participating in a revered Christmas Eve and Christmas tradition among American Jews—having Chinese food with family and friends. I caught the last 20 minutes of the original (and thankfully uncolorized) 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street, in which a […]