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 MoreYesterday, 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 MoreIt 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…
Read MoreJohn McCain announced his running-mate (in this case, his running-matron) yesterday, barely before the Democratic Convention euphoria could even begin to wane. When I first learned of his choice, Alaska Governor and former “Miss Alaska” Sarah Palin, I was a little embarrassed that I had no idea who she was. No worries, though. Apparently, neither…
Read MoreExiled Russian novelist, political activist and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn brought the horrors of the Soviet labor camps to the attention of the world in his 1973 The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn’s criticism of the Soviet police state resulted in his exile for almost two decades, but he returned home to Russia in…
Read MoreI just dicovered the website Capitol Words, which provides an “at-a-glance view into the daily proceedings of the United States Congress through the simplest lens available.” What is the “simplest lens available” you may be asking yourself? Well, it’s really simple. Like, a single word. That’s right, for every day that Congress is in session,…
Read MoreFrom our alternative weekly, The Memphis Flyer:—————————- Bozo the clown, Jesse the racistLarry Harmon, the man who popularized the show business character Bozo the Clown, has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 83. Harmon did not create the flame-haired character, but played him in numerous appearances over the years. He purchased the…
Read MoreThere’s an interesting article in the New York Times today– “The 60’s Begin To Fade As Liberal Professors Retire”— that touches on a number of issues surrounding what appears to be an impending “generational shift” in the American professorate. According to the author, over 54% of full-time faculty in the United States were over the…
Read MoreI feel very fortunate to have been invited to serve as a respondent for an eSymposium on “The Meaning and Implications of the Obama Phenomenon” over at The Zeleza Post. The Zeleza Post is the web-home for “informed news and commentary on the Pan-African world,” and the regular contributors there are among some of the…
Read MoreI know embarrassingly little about banking, but even my ignorant ears perked up a bit yesterday afternoon during President Bush’s press conference when he said (in response to a question about whether or not he thought banks were in trouble) that “Americans should remember that up to $100,000 of their money in the bank is…
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