There are certain works of art in every medium– literature, theater, photography, sculpture, film, painting, music, et al.– that somehow manage, through an impossible-to-determinately-calculate alchemical combination of human creativity, the raw materials of Nature, and some other mysterious thing we might generically point toward and say “meaning” or “truth,” to reach beyond the mere representation…
Read More[This is the second installment of my series The Wired Election, employing insights gained from HBO television series The Wire to interpret 2016 Presidential election campaign events, persons and states of affair. The cheese stands alone.] Like many of my fellow web-citizens, I found myself doing a number of dramatic double-takes on Wednesday morning as I watched “news”-casters review…
Read MoreParis was ambushed by seven separate terrorist actions last night, a horrific set of events eerily reminiscent of both the Charlie Hebdo massacre less than a year ago and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Any one of them– the mass shootings in various restaurants and bars, the suicide bombing outside of a soccer match at the Stade de…
Read MoreI’ve received a fair amount of pushback (mostly on Facebook and Twitter, but also in the comments section here) regarding my post on Saturday critical of the Supreme Court’s Ogerbefell decision. I may have been a little quick on the draw with my criticism, which I posted only one day after SCOTUS’ decision and while…
Read MoreThis is just a short post motivated by my #BlackLivesMatter Reading Group session yesterday, where we discussed Albert Samaha‘s excellent essay “Indefensible: The Story of New Orleans’ Public Defenders.” I thought I was long past being shocked by anything
Read More[This is the third installment of my series The Wired Election, employing insights gained from HBO television series The Wire to interpret 2016 Presidential election campaign events, persons and states of affair. The cheese stands alone.]
Read MoreI organized a reading/discussion group for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me a few weeks ago and thought I’d post a few thoughts here as we go along. By way of context, I’ll note that our group is small (8-10 people) and we’re a mixed bunch of (mostly, but not exclusively) academics– from Philosophy, History, Africana…
Read MoreLove did NOT win on Friday when the Supreme Court declared (so-called) “marriage equality” a Constitutional right in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Make no mistake: there were a lot of people/interests/agendas that did win yesterday, innumerably more that lost, but “love” wasn’t even a lowly grunt in that battle. Neither were “dignity,” “respect,” “tolerance,” “acceptance” and least of…
Read MoreYesterday, my good friend, fellow music-lover and ridiculously super-smart guy, Steven Thomas (Asst Professor of English and Director of Film and Media Minor, Wagner College), published on his blog a response to and critique of my post from a couple of days ago on the Thicke/Pharrell/Gaye lawsuit (“On Blurred Lines, Pop Music, Pirates/Thieves and Memphis’ Mustang Sally”). His…
Read MoreThe disappearance of citizens displays a perversely cruel and absolute sovereignty. —Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (2002) I should begin by noting that I started writing what follows last week, after the publication of the New York Times story on the “1.5 Million Missing Black Men in America” but before the popular uprising in Baltimore that began Monday as…
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