April may be the cruellest month, not only for mixing memory and desire, but also for allergic rhinitis. For some people, a foreign substance (pollen) stimulates the body’s production of a reactive chemical, histamine. The allergic reaction can be mild (swelling of mucous membranes, production of mucous), or, in the case of some allergies, quite [...]
From Mavis Gallant’s diaries while living hand-to-mouth in Spain in 1952: Chose cinema over potatoes. I found myself watching the women’s clothes, drinking in their texture, appreciating every bite the actors put in their mouths. When one of the characters (because of some imbecility of plot) wore old clothes and pretended to be be poor, [...]
According to a posting on Being Liberal’s Tumblr site: (W) I am posting the summary of the messages that I have received from Facebook after being banned from posting ANY content ANYWHERE on Facebook. The Being Liberal page in last week had received several “warnings” for alleged violations of Copyright and propagating hate speech. There [...]
Appearing in the news on the same day (oh bless the gods of synchronicity!) . . . “Romney campaign gave bonuses to top staff ” and Conservative punditista Peggy Noonan announces “Romney Needs a New CEO.” Clearly in the Republicon world, pay-for-performance is for the suckers below the executive suite.
One of the advantages of being an old whore who’s been working these mean streets for decades is that you’ve seen it all before; you take names and you remember faces (some fondly, some not). So in the current presidential campaign, permit this old whore a walk down memory lane to 1992. [Cue flashback music.] [...]
A recent Facebook meme presents you with a picture of white elementary school children making the Pledge of Allegiance and invites you to “LIKE if you did this every morning and think that they still should!” So far it has nearly half a million “Likes” and over 30,000 “Shares.” But consider: The generation (the so-called [...]
By now infamous, Republicon Congressman Todd Akin’s medical discourse on rape and pregnancy– “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I [...]
We were once a great nation, but we have strayed from our founding principles and now stand at the edge of the abyss. We face certain ruin unless we return to our founding principles. If that rhetorical formula sounds familiar to Americans, it should. It’s called the “jeremiad” (after the biblical prophet Jeremiah), and it [...]
My first foray into gay activism occurred in 1976 while I was at the University of Illinois, and a group of us from the Gay Student Alliance met with the management of the local Sambo’s Restaurant, the only place open after the bars closed. After spending several hours twirling, twinkies, drag queens and our retinues [...]
My friends and colleagues outside the US have been appalled by the recent gun carnage in Colorado and puzzled why there is not a more vocal debate about controlling certain kinds of weapons. What they don’t understand is that the US, while it tries to maintain a separation of church and state, is dominated by [...]
Romney criticizes people who expect “free stuff,” but I guess that doesn’t include the salary he got in his last years at Bain Capital when he really wasn’t at Bain Capital before he retroactively resigned from Bain Capital.
In a fine analysis, “Unpopular Mandate,” in the 25 June 2012 issue of the New Yorker, Ezra Klein notes research indicating that we don’t “make up our minds” so much on the basis of evidence and logic as on our tribal affiliation (and its shifting principles and alliances). Documenting the Republicon origins of the health [...]
Keep in mind that Texas sets the textbook agenda for much of the US: Romney can tick off the failings of the president like any other Republican but he precedes each one with a friendly word or tip of the hat. It drives conservatives crazy, not only but also in Texas, where the preferred oratorical [...]
The 1920 US Census marked a historic milestone in American social history: For the first time a majority of Americans lived in urban metropolitan areas rather than in rural or small-town regions. That was nearly 100 years ago, and in the interim the migration to cities and suburbs has continued undiminished. So why are we [...]
‘Tis the season for Faux News to crank up its annual “Secularists War Against Christmas.” Since Republicons are usually hysterians rather than historians, this page from our Puritan founder William Bradford (1590-1657) might be instructive: “On the day called Christmas-day, the Governor called them out to work, (as was used) but the most of this [...]
The 2012 Republicon presidential primary campaign debuts Republicons’ new family values: Marrying the mistress with whom you were unfaithful to your previous wife. Pictured here, serial adulterer Newt and his latest wife Callista Gingrich. (Is that necklace from Tiffany’s?)
Twenty years ago I drew the ire of the governor of Virginia. I was an instructor at a public community college (the second lowest genus on the higher education food chain), and L. Douglas Wilder was the governor. Virginia’s economy had slipped into recession, and the US was in the midst of a presidential primary [...]
Readers of a certain age will recall George H. W. Bush’s (i.e. George I, not his idiot boy, George II) characterization of Ronald Raygun’s proposed economic policies when they both were running for the Republicon presidential nomination in 1980: “voodoo economics.” Laurie Essig has a better metaphor for it: “zombie economics.” Writing for the Chronicle [...]
Republicon governor Rick Perry has declared a public day of prayer and is organizing a major national public prayer event, using the typical language of the 17th-century jeremiad: America in crisis . . . facing doom . . . must act now . . . But what would Jesus do? Fortunately, we know without any biblical ambiguity, [...]
OK, American; you’ve had a taste of what life under Republicons would be, and you don’t like it. As reported today, “Disapproval of Congress at Historic Level,” in the New York Times: The debate over raising the debt ceiling, which brought the nation to the brink of default, has sent disapproval of Congress to its highest [...]
George Packer, writing in the 25 July 2011 New Yorker: The sociologist Max Weber, in his 1919 essay “Politics as a Vocation,” drew a distinction between “the ethic of responsibility” and “the ethic of ultimate ends”–between those who act from a sense of practical consequence and those who act from higher conviction, regardless of consequences. [...]
Denizens of erotic culture and aficionados of American slang will know that “tea bagging” is the term of art for the practice of a man’s inserting his scrotum into the mouth of a sexual partner for the purpose of deriving pleasure. This sexual feat is sometimes performed (and photographically documented) while the passive party is [...]
James Fallows, writing on the Atlantic Monthly Web site, “Another Chart for Your Debt Ceiling Discussions,” graphically displays our current debt crisis: “. . . the Bush-era tax cuts, extended last year under Obama, were the biggest single policy source of deficit increase over the past ten years. Therefore you can be for reducing deficits, [...]
Donald Trump, frontrunner for the Republicon presidential nomination, revealed today that his hair was designed by American architect Frank Gehry. This revelation came on the heals of Trump’s victory in forcing the hand of President Obama to make available his alleged Hawaiian birth certificate. Since then critics and bloggers had begun to question the national [...]
