A mere 37 days before leaving office, our Lame-Duck-in-Chief President Bush was all the news yesterday. During a press conference in Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite Iraqi journalist (Muntadar al-Zeidi) stood up and threw one of his shoes– and then the other– at President Bush’s head, missing Bush by a hair…
Read MoreWhile just about everyone else is full of yuletide joy, this is a dreaded time of year for philosophers. It’s Job M**ket time. (The very word conveys so much Sturm und Drang that it feels like a profanity.) I imagine that this year is even more ulcer-inducing than years past because of the depressed economy…
Read MoreMany of you probably read Daniel Drezner’s recent Chronicle of Higher Education article about the decline of public intellectuals (“Public Intellectual 2.0”), in which Drezner wants to contest the presumed Götterdämmerung that many–like Francis Fukuyama, Russell Jacoby and Daniel Bell— believe began in the 1950’s and has yet to abate. Specifically, Drezner takes to task…
Read MoreWith Hurrican Ike, Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, and the sale of Merril Lynch to Bank of America, it was pretty rough last weekend in the news. So, you may be interested to learn that according to The Rapture Index, which is a “Dow Jones Industrial Average of end-time activity,” we’re sitting at a very uncomfortable level…
Read MoreThere are plenty of nut-jobs out there who dominate the news for a brief time, then sort of fade away. While they’re laying low, it’s easy to forget about them– until they raise their ugly heads again and show up on something like VH1’s The Surreal Life. Such is the case with David Duke (pictured…
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 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 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’,…
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