Bleeding heart versus what, exactly?
Apparently, I’m a bleeding heart. Twice in two days I’ve sat through tear-jerkers; one about charter schools in New York City and a second about a U...
Category: people
Art capturing life imitating art: Norway and Houston, Taxi Driver and Scarface
A striking parallel from Peter Beste’s celebrated series on Norwegian Black Metal bands and Houston rappers: Archetypes of alienation.
The female executive who gave Walt Disney his big break.
Meet Margaret Winkler, aka MJ Winkler. Since this was [a] male-dominated industry, Peggy reasoned that she should avoid any indication of a female connection to...
What’s so good about being real? The very clever Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga.
Yesterday, I was reading through a blog post that claims Nicki Minaj has undergone surgery to change her appearance and was previously a lesbian. The claim was ...
Nullification or not, a vote for Prop 19 was a vote to end a bloody war in Mexico.
Josh Marshall is right to view California’s failed effort to legalize marijuana in U.S.-centric terms and find it wanting. But when viewed from the perspe...
The fantasy of a religious leader heeding signs from the beyond.
It’s tempting to consider these before and after pictures: 1999 statue by Maurizio Cattelan.Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite 2009 new story.Po...
Sad, funny quote about today’s election in one of the few useful reports in the NYT.
Ha ha. Ha. Sigh. Kathleen Morse, a homemaker from Epping, N.H., described herself as a centrist-leaning independent, but this time she voted for anyone with an ...
You go first. No, you go first. No, you. Adam Fish on conservativism in high fashion.
Adam Fish: When choosing models for high-end catwalks, campaigns, and fashion magazines, I found that clients’ choices of models tended to be isomorphic. That i...
Good on Colbert, Stewart and Co. Haters will hate but comedy is how stable societies evolve. Politics without humor is tribal war.
I’ve read a few comments today from liberals all too happy to piss on the Colbert Stewart Parade because it’s not political enough or not the right ...
The politics of personality disorders: Tom Junod on the Tea Party as a coalescence of resentment.
A few weeks ago I wrote that there might not be a Tea Party if more Americans treated their elders with love and compassion. Tom Junod has written a lengthy ess...
A nail-biter, page-turner, on the edge of your seats drama… about cap and trade.
Ryan Lizza’s recent account of the birth and death of the most promising U.S. response to global warming is by far one of the best written thrillers I hav...
Sean Wilentz revisits the 1950s to witness the birth of the Tea Party; also of Mad Men and Glenn Beck.
Sean Wilentz in the New Yorker: “The current right-wing resurgence has more to do with the inner dynamics of American conservatism in the past half centur...
On dozing, falling in and out of sleep and landing behind the curtains.
Last night, while dozing off to sleep, I had the rare pleasure of slipping in between states of consciousness, neither fully in nor out. I was thus able to obse...
A funny thing happened on the way to the Hollywood Bowl
About an hour into last night’s concert, three tall, broad shouldered guys walk into our aisle. They were dressed in fine sweaters and slacks, well-shaven...
Of buried secrets and the return of the repressed.
In a short review of the new Chinese movie 1428, a reference to a macabre symbol of a massive cover-up: in 2009, the foundations of a concrete plant in Sichuan ...
Anticipating a decade of double digit unemployment until the GOP gets its tent in order.
Talking to my Dad about macroeconomic policy, it dawned on me that we will not have an appropriate response to the complex challenges of our global economy unti...
Nursing homes and the Tea Party of Palin and Beck
Perhaps if Americans treated their elders better the American elderly wouldn’t be so bitter. But when you alienate an entire community, they will eventual...
Kafka’s The Trial is an orderly proceeding compared to the tribulations of the American poor. That’s bad news for the national economy.
When you’re poor and you owe money, you might find yourself in this situation: On another call, Jimmy spoke with a man whose original debt was two hundred...
Movies about the lives of adolescents.
A few weeks ago I panned the movie Easy A as a teen drag performance and a bad one at that. Using teens and teen scenarios to tell adult stories is not inherent...
Goat heads.
From the Wikipedia page for Wōden: Gregory claims that the Lombards demanded of 400 of their Christian prisoners to bow before the goat’s head in adoratio...