Politics

Let Them Play!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

As I’m still not quite over my post-New-Orleans euphoric haze, I wanted to post one more thing about that city and its blessed horns before returning to more serious material on this blog. This time, however, the news is not good… One of the most fantastic and unique things about New Orleans is its street…

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Thanks x 50K

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson BlogCounts, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

We’ve reached another milestone here at Dr J’s blog: 50,000 hits! We passed 10,000 hits back in our second year, and so it’s exciting to reach the 50K mark at just under four years! Here’s a big THANK YOU to all the readers who keep coming back to this small little speck in the blogosphere….

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Parsing the “Anti-“s

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 8 Comments

Read no further if you’re not willing to consider the possibility that “anti-Israeli state policy” claims are NOT tantamount to “anti-Semitism.” The recent deadly attack on an aid-bearing flotilla headed to the Gaza Strip has re-stoked the fires at home and abroad over Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza. That blockade has been in effect since…

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In Praise of Smartypants

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 11 Comments

This morning, in stereotypical egghead fashion, I tuned my radio to the Saturday NPR programming, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down to read the most recent (June 7) issue of the New Yorker. In the mini-essay section “Talk of the Town,” located near the beginning of every New Yorker, there was a…

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My Poor Memphis

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Memphis, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 5 Comments

The New York Times ran a story earlier this week entitled “The New Poor: Blacks in Memphis Lose Decades of Gains,” which painted a very grim picture of the recession’s effects on African-Americans in Memphis. According to most demographers, Memphis will soon be the first metropolis in the U.S. with a predominantly black population, which…

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Say What?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 3 Comments

Straight from the You-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me Files, we have this update from the Supreme Court of the United States: if you want to invoke your right to silence, you better say so. OUT LOUD. Oh, SCOTUS, why do you hate Miranda so? As you may remember from Civics class, the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees…

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Dr. J Answers Your Questions

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Dr. J's Lists, Just Ask, Memphis, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

A while ago, I invited readers to submit questions through my “Ask Doctor J” site over on Formspring and promised I would do my best to answer them here on the blog. Then, I quickly forgot about the whole thing. Oops. I just went back and found that there was quite a list of questions…

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Yes, Jessica, You CAN Do Anything Good

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 2 Comments

I’m not usually one to forward or re-post YouTube videos of cute kids doing cute things, of which there are literally hundreds of thousands, but I recently came across one that I just couldn’t resist. It’s a little girl named Jessica– I’m guessing around 4 or 5 years old, probably pre-school age– standing on her…

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Lazy Relativism, Again

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Relativism, RMWMTMBM Archive 9 Comments

As readers of this blog (and students in my classes) know well, I hate lazy relativism. I readily concede that there are lots of things about which we cannot know the Absolute Truth (s’il y en a), but regardless of the strengh or weakness of any particular truth-claim, it will ALWAYS be the case that…

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The Political

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who regularly bemoaned the habit, common among philosophers, of referring to (questions, theories, problems and issues of) “the political” or “the ethical.” His objection, as I understood it, was not to engaging political and ethical questions qua philosophical questions, but rather to the use of…

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