How did “liberal” get to be a dirty word? I know that seems to contradict the headline, but it frosts my grommet that the popular usage of an important word gets twisted around to mean something almost diametrically different than what the dictionary says. A word that Merriam Webster and I agree denotes a...
Archive for June, 2011
Tawdry Tale of 2 1/2 Wars …
I’ll try to put this as succinctly as I can: we went to war in Afghanistan out of an understandable desire to bring to justice the mastermind of the attacks on 9/11, and we’ve stayed there for another decade – and counting – because of a logically defensible proposition that to abandon that accursed...
Comic book fetish in movies gives me a pain …
I’ve been a big movie buff for as long as I can remember, dating back even to the 1950’s as I watched grainy, black-and-white classics from the postwar era. At 7 or 8 years old, my appreciation and understanding was limited perhaps, but there was something about the story telling and the magic of...
Republican voter suppression efforts nothing short of deplorable …
One supposes that the great challenge of daily life is to stay connected to those things that matter the most despite the nearly overwhelming temptation to turn away when the frustration level seems too great and the cost of trying to change something for the better seems impossible. That would seem like a fairly...
Rooting for NYS to honor its heritage with gay marriage nod …
As a longtime New Yorker now transplanted to the Midwest, I am watching the doings at the New York State Legislature with a good deal of interest. The Senate is expected to vote tomorrow on a bill that would add New York to a list of a handful of progressive states that have granted...
Sarah Palin has snookered every one of us, me included …
I’m fairly certain the photo I’ve planted alongside this article has been altered in some fashion to make Mrs. Palin even more provocative than she actually is, which I suppose is pretty silly given the seriousness of someone ostensibly aspiring to the highest office in the land. I use the word ostensibly, because I...
Thoughts on OSU, Lance and the great Gary Carter …
Gee, I was only kinda half kidding a couple of weeks ago when I suggested that the world was upside down a bit with sports turning into really serious if not gloomy business and politics edging closer and closer to becoming little more than hysterical, if salacious entertainment. Now in the course of a...
We’ve got to redefine the role of corporations in America …
“The business of America is business,” said President Calvin Coolidge in 1925, and for nearly 100 years we’ve been pledging allegiance to that pithy mantra without ever questioning its continued primacy and legitimacy. The “business” represented in his aphorism is the corporation, which has now been elevated to an exalted place in our national...