Politics

Dirt-Cheap Ideas

In his seminal text Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous narrator, Johannes de Silentio, remarks: Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to…

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Hypocrisy, Hyperbole, Historical Inaccuracy and Hatred

I highly recommend Russell King’s “Open Letter to Conservatives,” which lays out a well-argued and well-documented case for how the American Right has gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

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Yes, Mr. Vice-President, This IS A “Big F**king Deal”

Nobody’s ever going to accuse Joe Biden of mincing words. Sometimes that mouth gets him into trouble… but you gotta love his uncensored enthusiam when introducing the President as he turns to Obama and says: “This is a big f**king deal.” Priceless.

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It’s Something In Our Souls That Makes Us Memphians… And “Miserable” Is Not A Part Of It

Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton recently released an “Open Letter to Steve Forbes” contesting the ranking of Memphis as the 3rd of America’s “Most Miserable Cities” in Forbes Magazine. I reproduce Wharton’s letter here in its entirety, without comment, because the Truth speaks for itself. I have, however, added links for Mr. Forbes, so that he…

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War Is A Drug

Nothing yet has made so crystal clear to me exactly how much I do NOT understand about what is going on in Iraq than this year’s Oscar-nominated film The Hurt Locker. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who has been endlessly (and a little annoyingly) praised for her skill at capturing the hyper-masculine emotional intensity and complexity…

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Sunset for Sundown Signs?

File this away in the E-for-Effort folder of “Things The New York Times Gets Wrong About The South.” There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today titled “Race in the South in the Age of Obama” about James Fields, a black State Representative from predominently-white Cullman, Alabama. As the author Nicholas Davidoff notes,…

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Trials for Terrorists

Earlier this month, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of Justice Department funds for prosecuting alleged 9/11 plotters in federal courts. The aim of the bill (and a similar one introduced in the House by Representative Frank Wolf from Virginia) is to tie the Obama administration’s hands and…

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More On Tenure

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a follow-up piece on the Amy Bishop story called “Reactions: Is Tenure a Matter of Life and Death?”, in which they ask several academics (at varying levels of seniority) to repond to the questions: What are the psychological effects of academic culture, particularly on rising scholars? Can or should…

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Rove at Rhodes: A Master Class in Sophistry

This past Wednesday evening, exactly one year to the day after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, I attended “An Evening with Karl Rove” at Rhodes College. Rove was invited by the Student Lecture Board with support from the Young America’s Foundation, and he delivered a “closed” address to Rhodes students, faculty, staff and alumni….

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