The governance, or lack thereof, of the great republic.
“For goodness’ sake, will they hear? Will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please! All we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.” (Desmond Tutu) In difficult economic times such as the sort the whole world has struggled through since 2008, …
I sometimes think of it like he’s from a different planet. Every time he talks about how persecuted the rich are, or how feminism is turning our kids into homosexuals, or how my “people” wouldn’t understand this or that because we aren’t really part of the great Western tradition, I pretend …
It has been sportswriting law since 1992 that any article dealing with women in baseball must quote that line from A League of Their Own, and I have never been one to swim against the tide. (Though, of course, it was written by someone who’s clearly never spent any time inside …
A long time ago, back when the invasion of Iraq was as fresh as a spring rain and hadn’t yet curdled into the biggest waste of life, wealth, and moral authority in this country’s history, I found myself reading an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that was strongly against the war. …
I don’t know who Bomani Jones is, because he is involved in sports media, and generally speaking, I would rather bathe in hydrofluoric acid than listen to sports talk radio. However, he had some things to say about l’affaire du Donald Sterling that were so sensible and righteous that they should have …
If there are two great bugaboos of the American conservative weltanschauung, they are the idea that socialism might ever possibly accomplish something unachievable by unfettered capitalism, and the idea that black people might actually be good for something other than forced labor. These terrors have manifested themselves in a number of …
Wil Wheaton’s career has described a curious arc around the atmosphere of pop culture. He came to fame starring as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a teenage prodigy and transparent Mary Sue figure; though nerd culture was still a fringe activity and not the dominant force that it …
Do You Have To File? Of course you have to file. What, do you think you’re special or something? With your fancy lawyers, or your inability to speak English? You think that means you don’t have to pay taxes? Well, surprise, surprise, Mr. I Think I’m Exempt From Government Regulations: …
“Taylor.” “Chief, I know. It’s just that…” “Taylor. Don’t talk. Listen.” “All right.” “What is the press going to say?” “…” “You can talk now.” “The press will say what we tell them to say.” “They’re not going to buy this, Taylor.” “You always said that journalists were dumb, chief.” …
The question came over a week ago, from one of my oldest friends: why don’t you write about politics anymore? At first, it struck me as an absurd thing to ask: don’t I write about politics all the damn time? Didn’t I write for one of the internet’s spunkiest lefty …
Life takes you in strange directions, it cannot be denied. I myself used to be a liberal, and a communist before that, in the days when it seemed worthwhile to care about things. But I am an old man now, and it profits me neither in mind or spirit to …
It is the most infamous segment of time in American political history. It is the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap left on the Watergate tapes, the result of an attempted erasure of the material by then-President Richard Nixon himself. For over 40 years, historians, conspiracists, and Nixon’s friends and foes alike have puzzled …
Author’s Note: In 2008, just before the presidential elections, I took a trip (funded in part by a group of troublemaking liberals) to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Washington, DC. My goal was to take massive quantities of drugs and write about my experiences in the belly of …
“Sir?” “What is it, Nixon? I’ve got things to do. This place doesn’t run itself.” “Well, I was wondering…” “And what are you doing in the Palace of Sin? According to my Palm Pilot, you’re supposed to be having your blood replaced by napalm right now, followed by a full-body …
2004: VIENNA, Austria – Even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq, the U.S.-led war was justified because it eliminated the threat that Saddam Hussein might again resort to “evil chemistry and evil biology,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday. Saddam’s willingness to use such weapons was …
