Election years are always crazy years for American politics. They’re not always Clint-Eastwood-talking-to-an-empty-chair crazy, though. Nor are they, as a rule, “legitimate rape”- or “binders full of women”- or “fiscal cliff”- or “austerity”- crazy, that is, so crazy that one requires a Crazy-to-English translator to watch the evening news. And although American politics is never…
Read MoreLegendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi once said: “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?” In spite of the many ways sports serves as an apt metaphor for life, Lombardi’s sage reflection keys in on one of the important differences between sports and life. Namely, in sports, they keep score. On a scoreboard. And…
Read MoreThis has been a quiet year here on RMWMTMBM, but I didn’t want the year to end without my annual retrospective wrap-ups of 2012. Following in the tradition of the last couple of years, I’ll break the lists up by topic, beginning with 2012 Year in Music. (If you’re feeling nostalgic, check out 2011 Year…
Read MoreYesterday, one of the worst mass-killings in United States history occurred, taking the lives of 20 children and 8 adults, including the shooter. Especially in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy, it is sometimes too easy to ignore the immeasurably valuable and radically singular worth of each and every human life. Even those lives that…
Read MoreIn a press conference shortly after the horrible news of the Connecticut grade-school shooting broke, White House press secretary Jay Carney said: “There is, I am sure– will be, rather– a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I do not think today is that day.” Carney could not have been more…
Read More“I say that I do philosophy, which is to say that I try to invent concepts. What if I say, to you who do cinema: what do you do?” –Gilles Deleuze French philosopher Gilles Deleuze famously speculated in Cinema 1 (1983) that what he called the “movement-image,” a unique creative product of cinema, makes it…
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