Too long; do not read.
Mmmm! What’s that devilish flavor, Midge? It’s got a base of frowning judge and overtones of cold marble and concrete, sprinkled with arbitrary traditions and with subtle hints of collective punishment! Wait, I know — it’s austerity! Yes, it’s the hot new lifestyle trend that’s sweeping Europe, and it’s coming to America, …
Of all the issues over which Republicans and Democrats have butted heads in recent elections, none have proven as shockingly polarizing as health care. When President Obama managed to pass a health care reform bill, it so enraged the opposition — despite the fact that it was a monstrously compromised …
Most Americans — and I hope to excuse the broadness of this claim by absolutely, unreservedly including myself — are really, really bad with money. This is not to say that they are simply stupid about their finances, or that when they are, it’s their fault. As has been widely …
The recent cultural fisticuffs over Amanda Palmer’s initial decision to hire local musicians to play for her in exchange for the non-negotiable instruments of “beer and hugs” has rippled far beyond Palmer herself, becoming a talking point in a larger conversation about what it means to be an artist in …
One of the great losses of the Internet age is the legendary quality of the you-had-to-be-there moment. Once upon a time, it was possible to evoke the unrepeatable glory of some event, some concert or performance or speech, and assure your audience that it was a thing of transcendent greatness, …
Blame is a tricky thing in politics. For one thing, you have to be particularly careful about the entire notion of blame — for blame, after all, implies agency and power, which can easily backfire. People who say that the current administration is responsible for all the woes of the …
I am not the first, and may not even be the one millionth, person to point out that a lot of voters approach politics as something about halfway between a sports fandom and a religion. In every election, there are massive numbers of people who treat the process not as …
I was adopted when I was two days old. I never met my birth parents, and my adoptive family is the only one I have ever known. But I know a few things about the couple who conceived and bore me: my mother was a white American, who married quite …
Elections, as people on the losing end of them are painfully used to being reminded, are as much about personalities as they are about politics. A candidate can have the most reasonable, sensible policies imaginable, but doesn’t stand a chance of winning office if, as they say, the dogs don’t …
An angel came down from heaven and give me twenty dollars, so I rolled my bones out to the picture show. My plan was to see the evening screening of The Dark Knight Rises, perpetual Batman mark that I am, but I had plenty of time to kill before it started, …
There are a number of symptoms of rot amongst the “New Democrats” — the dominant aggregation of technocratic centrists who have given us the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — that keep progressives and leftists from doing our party-bound duty to embrace new realities of forced austerity and …
The use of violence is not only one of the most powerful conundrums not only in fiction, but in life. In art, the most problematic aspect of violence is that it is often used as a framework for threat and action, designed to bring viewers into a story who might …
The Booth at the End is a lonely little animal, tucked away in Hulu’s menagerie of “search all” television along with Korean retail soap operas, low-rent British dramas too crass for the BBC, and reruns of American shows nobody wanted to watch in the first place. It was originally produced …
That well-fed fellow up there is the Reverend Douglas Wilson. A product of Idaho’s state university system and a recipient of the largesse of his flock, this noble sky pilot is best known for his series of debates with the notoriously godless Christopher Hitchens on the topic of whether or …
Goodness knows who I am disappointing in this matter, but The Hunger Games is probably the best blockbuster film I’ve seen in years. Which isn’t, unfortunately, to say it’s a great movie. It suffers from a lot of the same problems all blockbusters do, and as is the case with all …
