. Bob from Brockley writes (from Brockley, I presume) to offer compliment and commentary to my last post on Maureen Dowd. Bob and I are usually in close alignment on such issues as have arisen from Dowd’s recent column on the neocons. In this case not. Bob (whom, if you don’t, you really should be […]
The Stink Bomb
. There is so much messy farting going on, the political arena smells like an outhouse. Of course, why should it not? It is an outhouse. Between the craven opportunists and the reflexive ideologues, even a dash past the entrance with cotton plugs in your nose will not spare you the stench. The Muslim world has […]
The Right to Denigrate Religion
. Over at Jeffrey Goldberg’s place (there’s coffee, hamentashen) we have seen a little exchange between Goldberg and Neera Tanden of the Center for American progress. The subtle but not insignificant difference of opinion has been over the balance between the right of free speech and the responsible exercise thereof. The latter, in this case, […]
(Updated) Impenetrable: The Hollow Rhetoric of Judith Butler
. (Update) Tomorrow, September 11, 2012, the birthday of Theodor Adorno, and only chronologically coincident with the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attack, Judith Butler is set to receive the triennial Adorno Prize, awarded by the city of Frankfurt. Resonant with the themes addressed in the commentary below, originally posted last week at the Algemeiner, is this […]
Conventional
. It is the week to think about it. The Democratic Convention, this week, like the Republican before it, will be utterly so. (Well, we’ll allow a small exception for Elvis’s performance on Wednesday night.) At the Democratic Convention 100 years ago, in 1912, Woodrow Wilson gained the nomination for the presidency on the 46th […]