In Praise of Folly

The New York Times provides further evidence of the absurdity that has become our economy today: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/...

(500) Days of Summer may very well become the Singles, Swingers, Empire Records (kind of) or Reality Bites of its moment. It is that rare ...

I am currently reading an advanced copy of a book on the Iraq War and humiliation for a review that should come out in the next few weeks. I...

Whenever a popular book is turned into a movie, fans tend to debate the choices made, the actors who will play their favorite characters, wh...

In the run-up to the election, after the media decided Obama was “Black enough” to be called a Black candidate for president and absurd them...

When Bush won the election in 2000, the consensus was that he should be bipartisan in his approach to governance. He, of course, did the opp...

George Lakoff has been writing for several years about the importance of framing and metaphors in political discourse ( http://berkeley.edu/...

A recent study by University of Chicago economists Bertrand and Morse looked at the opportunity costs of payday lending and whether more inf...

Soderberg’s latest, The Girlfriend Experience (2009), continues his trend of intermingling small and large projects. Coming on the heals of...

In some ways, it was a heartbreaking weekend for the old timers – with Tom Watson blowing it on the 18th hole of the British Open ( http://w...

Two articles today highlight the competing visions of America’s future. In the first in the Washington Post , we learn that AIG wants to giv...

Remakes are a tricky undertaking under the best of circumstances. Take Landslide by both the Dixie Chicks and Smashing Pumpkins. I find the...

Interesting news day. The spectacle of Jackson’s funeral, of course, leads the papers and online mags ( http://www.slate.com/id/2222409/ ), ...

The early summer movies have been pretty disappointing, as has been the case for several years. Wolverine was episodic without any real hea...

Josh Marshall at TPM has an interesting snippet today on the way that Palin has built her entire career around victimhood at the hands of li...

Several years ago I received a Rolling Stone with N' Sync on the cover. This followed a Brittany Spears cover and one for Backstreet Boy...

The LA Times leads today with the likelihood that we will have another jobless recovery, following those of 1990-91 and 2001 ( http://www.l...

This story is a few days old, but a perfect example of the increasingly common Republican tactic of invoking their victimhood at the hands o...

Fox News has a wonderful habit of labelling Republicans as Democrats whenever they do something wrong: http://crooksandliars.com/node/29158/...

Terminator Salvation, the fourth installation in the Terminator series, is a major disappointing, putting the latest Star Trek triumph into ...

The Iranian political situation is demonstrating the complex nature of contemporary media, where libratory and repressive dynamics play out ...

The 2007 remake of the van Gogh dutch film Interview (2007) will not go into the annals of great, or even good, indie films. And yet direct...

I recently did a presentation on political discourse, and started with this speech by the "CEOs of America Benevolence Society" . ...

I'm back from a self-imposed hiatus and hope to start again with daily updates. Obama has just passed a bill that radically alters the s...

It's morning in America and hope has been restored for those of us who see a road forward to the future, not an idealized, mythical past...

Been off the past few days, busy with other tasks. Today we find out who the next president will be. I was teaching a class yesterday and ar...

The latest polls seem to show Obama expanding his lead, and while I was teaching when his 30-minute ad ran -- it appears to be getting popul...

This from an Amazon disscussion board (I'm quoting it verbatim, with thanks to MDS) . . . Congressional Quarterly gave this a rare twi...

Just out from the AP, two young white supremist males planned to go on a killing spree they hoped would end with the assassination of Obama....

An article today details the growing rift between Palin and McCain aides: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/25/palin.tension/index.html?er...