Every so often, a television series appears that is so unusual, so distinct and with such a deliberately crafted worldview, so unlike anything else that surrounds it in the shifting bars of the channel guides, that it seems like a small miracle that it ever made it on the air …
Who owns the working classes? The question would not seem to be a complicated one. Starting from a philosophical position, the working classes are comprised of individuals who own themselves; they must achieve their liberation through collective action, and only then can they truly become themselves and realize the potential …
The Great Man interpretation of history — the idea that civilization is driven by a few exceptional men of will who impose their vision on the world and shape the development of humanity — was never particularly true, but it’s only been recently that it stopped being taught. Most of …
I don’t know who coined the delightful term “ratfucking”, or when, though I first encountered it in reference to the Richard Nixon administration, which seems entirely appropriate. As a term for acts of political sabotage, it is without peer, as the American political system is largely comprised of rats, and …
I’ve been writing these May Day sermons for, it must be, fifteen years now. I haven’t the courage to look back at all of them to see how my politics have changed over those years; all I know is that it’s been a change for the better, and that I …
Two weeks ago, in the early evening hours of a mild Paris night, the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris burst into flames. The images of bright orange flames cast against a steel-blue sky, eating up the very outline of one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, bought …
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“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow I have a pretty shaky educational history. I skipped kindergarten; I went to a religious grade school whose course of study was not especially rigorous; and I dropped out …
The dominant mode of the crime novel in pre-war European fiction was much as it had been since the birth of the genre: the whodunit. Unreeling a mystery, clue by clue, until some heroic or slightly quirky detective could triumphantly announce the identity of the evildoer was the essential nature …
Larry Charles’ comedy credentials, if there is such a thing as comedy credentials and his new Netflix docu-series Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy makes a fairly strong argument that there isn’t, are impeccable. Working as a jokesmith and filmmaker for four decades, he’s been writer for Fridays, Seinfeld, and …
You’d be forgiven if you didn’t know anything about Letterkenny. It came more or less out of nowhere, debuting as a series of one-man web videos starring creator Jared Keeso, then transitioned to a full-blown sitcom on something called “Crave TV” (apparently a video-on-demand service in Canada), before finally ending …
In the mid-1960s, a young man from a well-to-do New York family began attending the Little Red School House, a private high school that practiced progressive educational policies and was in favor with some of the city’s most artistic and left-leaning luminaries. It championed humanitarian values, cooperation, internationalism, and a …
So, he’s running. Bernie Sanders, who will be 79 years old when the 2020 election takes place, has announced his decision to run for President of the United States again. To say I am extremely conflicted about this announcement would be an understatement on the level of saying I have …
Ever since America, or at least as many Americans as it takes to determine the fate of the world under our flawless electoral system, ate the big one and decided that Queens-based self-publicist/casino swindler Donald Trump should be President, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about how he’s the …
Oh, hello! You’ve probably noticed that Leonard Pierce Dot Com is back. You’ve probably also noticed that it’s gotten a whole new look, which is very exciting, and that some of the functionality is broken and a lot of the image links don’t work and a lot of the posts …
