Enter Carly Fiorina, the latest flavor of Republican hell bent on repeating her own versions of self-aggrandizement indifferent to lies or truth. She believes what she says not because it is true but because she believes in herself. And this is something The Faithful require since the prerequisite to “truth” telling must be faith,…
Welcome to the Republic of Bananas. Who else remembers when Banana Republic sold, you know, stupit [sic] safari clothes and stores were dressed up like ersatz yoga huts that conjure a Costa Rica retreat center? Do you remember hearing Jethro Tull’s “Bungle in the Jungle” and sound machine tropical birds before there were apps? I…
I live in the New Confederacy. It’s nowhere near the Old Confederacy but rather in rural western New York about forty miles from the city of Rochester. I’m a college professor, the kind that corrupts young people into thinking for themselves and subverting every opinion including their own. It’s a quiet life out here in the sticks…
The last week before Labor Day and summer closes with a bang. Literally, but in the old sense of the word. Neither something strange nor anything new happened today. How much less exceptional? And while we’re talking about things unremarkable, like how being offended is a necessary feature of the perils of learning in college (Duke University) along with…
It is no small matter to advance the courage of one’s convictions, especially if your values and actions fail to identify with majority culture or, in this Age of the Meme, those who manage the discourse. Whose story gets told is not an equal opportunity promise. The fiction of unity often holds us together when…
To choose with whom we will forge a life in intimacy, with all its imperfect implications, is a remarkable human gift and, as we have learned, it is indeed not a blessing conferred by God but rather by social contract. The Justices in dissent of the majority Supreme Court ruling have been able to deflect…
As Thomas Jefferson made clear the Constitution’s First Amendment intended to build “a wall of separation between church and state.” Do note how Jefferson maintains it is possible to live in such a world: Citing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, he writes to the Danbury Baptists: Believing with you that religion is a…
Today America reacted again to redeem itself through sacraments of political exigency. I watched unamazed as the Governor of South Carolina, followed by a series of would-be Republican Presidential nominees each pursue their absolution and provide the required rhetoric. As Governor Haley surrounded herself with those appealing to hope to confer upon her newfound awareness…