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Month: June 2024
Drinking the “Liberal Arts” Kool-Aid
I know, I know. I should be writing about Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’m still shocked and dismayed that I didn’t see one single non-white face in the Convention audience on television last night. And I’m also still amused that, at one…
Read MoreWake Up!
I’m teaching a course on “Existentialism” this semester, which is not only one of my favorite philosophical movements, but also one of my favorite things to teach. As I’ve said to my colleagues many times before, existentialism is the one philosophy that seems to have been created for 18- to 25-year-olds. The list of existentialist…
Read MoreAn(other) Omen Read Wrong
Recently, I was reminded of a passage from Micheal Herr’s excellent 1977 memoir Dispatches. Herr was a war correspondent for Esquire magazine during the Vietnam War, he helped write the screenplays for Coppola’s Apocolypse Now and Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, and he (along with Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe) pioneered the literary genre…
Read MoreWhen There Is No “Why”…
There is quite a bit of buzz about the upcoming release of the new film Man on Wire, which is a documentary account of Philippe Petit’s 1974 illegal and clandestine 110-story high tightrope-walk between the World Trade Towers (pictured left). I remember first learning of Petit’s stunt a few years back when I read about…
Read MorePolitics in Gracelessland
We Memphians just saw the conclusion of what has been a truly U-G-L-Y battle between the candidates for Tennessee’s 9th U.S. Congressional District, incumbent Steve Cohen and challenger Nikki Tinker. As you may already know, our district Representative before Cohen was the DNC wunderkind Harold Ford, Jr., who was famously done in by his Senate-race…
Read MoreSay It Ain’t So, John
Alas, the mighty have fallen. The news was released yesterday afternoon that John Edwards engaged in an extramarital affair in 2006 and that he lied about it during his campaign for President last year. Edwards’ paramour, Rielle Hunter (who, apparently, is also the inspiration for a Gen-X literary character), now claims that Edwards is the…
Read MoreR.I.P. Isaac Hayes
Memphian and funk-and-soul legend Isaac Hayes died early this morning here in town. Hayes was one of the driving forces behind Memphis’ own Stax Records and he remained a faithful and active citizen of our fair city for his entire life. Most people know Hayes as the voice behind South Park’s character of “Chef,” but…
Read MoreIt’s Hard Out Here for an Infidel
Yesterday, I did an “all sad songs” episode of my Rhodes Radio show Americana the Beautiful. (If you’re interested, you can listen to or download the podcast here.) In the process of putting together my song list, I was struck by the fact that so many of the songs involve some kind of cheatin’, lyin’,…
Read MoreWho’s Your Dandy?
It all started back in April of this year, when an ill-worded comment by Obama suggesting that some white voters were a tad “bitter” prompted his then-opponent Hillary Clinton to accuse him of being “elitist.” Since the end of the primaries, McCain has jumped on that bandwagon as well, most famously running the television ad…
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