Leigh M. Johnson

Who Is The Decider?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics Comments Off on Who Is The Decider?
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Still here…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Uncategorized 3 Comments

Several of you have written to me recently inquiring after my absence here on the blog. So, I wanted to let you all know that I am, in fact, still alive. I was in a fairly nasty auto accident about a week ago. (See my poor, beloved, now “totaled” car to the left.) Short story:…

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Wake Up!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Teaching 3 Comments

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…

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Drinking the “Liberal Arts” Kool-Aid

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Teaching 7 Comments

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…

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An(other) Omen Read Wrong

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics 5 Comments

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…

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Say It Ain’t So, John

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Politics 5 Comments

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…

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Politics in Gracelessland

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Politics Comments Off on Politics 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…

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R.I.P. Isaac Hayes

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 2 Comments

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…

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Who’s Your Dandy?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, Women and Gender Issues 6 Comments

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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Classroom Governance

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Teaching 7 Comments

I had a somewhat odd conversation with a friend and colleague of mine recently about the implications of being considered a “cool” professor by students. Neither one of us were really sure what our students think of us, but we both guessed that if there were a kind of Kinsey Scale for such a thing,…

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