politics

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 2: Your Least Favorite Song

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Comments Off

Day 2 of the 30 Day Song Challenge asks for “your least favorite song” and I really thought this one was going to be harder to choose than it actually was. I mean, there are whole genres of music that I don’t like– speed metal, experimental jazz, anything Celtic, the endless musical masturbation of jam…

Kyle Ference Mans Up

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 6 Comments

The picture to the left is of a former student and advisee of mine, Kyle Ference (author of the Refudiating Through Life blog). During his time at Rhodes, Kyle was in many ways the very ideal of a liberal arts student. He was smart and hardworking, affable and well-liked, committed to socially-conscious extracurricular activities, a…

2011 State of the Union Address

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Comments Off

Making of the 2011 State of the Union Address

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 1 Comment

Entre Nous?: The Merits (and Demerits) of Gossip

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 2 Comments

Let me begin by illuminating the obvious: we live in a gossip-obsessed culture. You don’t even have to make all that much of an effort to find yourself more intimately familiar with the very personal details of celebrities, politicians, athletes and other real(ity) pop-culture figures’ lives than you are with those of your own friends…

Groovy, Man

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Comments Off

ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore just passed 70,000 hits! Again, a big THANK YOU to all the readers who keep coming back. Especially those of you who have contributed to the recent Why I Chose Memphis series, which prompted an interview by the Memphis Flyer that I gave today and which will appear in print soon. (Keep those stories…

2010 Year In Pop Culture

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 1 Comment

Right out of the gate, 2010 looked to be a very promising pop culture year. Back in January, at one of the early American Idol auditions, we were introduced to aspiring contestant General Larry Platt, who regaled the judges with his seemingly-improvised yet totally-infectious original composition “Pants on the Ground.” Before America’s favorite non-plussed judge…

Tortured Reasoning

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Comments Off

I haven’t posted much on human rights recently, the primary focus of my research, though I continue to plug away at thinking and writing about it every day. One of the topics that I spend a lot of time with is torture, an issue that I intend to use as the go-to “case study” in…

Notes From the Other Side of the Job Market

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 3 Comments

In my first 3 years at my current position, I served on 2 tenure-track search committees, a process that literally took up every spare moment of my time (and many non-spare moments) for the 4 or 5 months that it lasted. Although I certainly learned a lot in my time on SLAC Search Committees– including,…

Democratic Political Playbook (Revised, 2010)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 4 Comments

It shouldn’t come as any surpise that the “Red Wave” did, as predicted, wash ashore in Washington, DC after polls closed on the 2010 midterm elections last Tuesday. Although Democrats managed to hang on to 51 Senate seats, they lost their “house” (a trauma all-too-familiar to many of their constituents). Republican, Tea Party and Independent…

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 2: Your Least Favorite Song

Kyle Ference Mans Up

2011 State of the Union Address

Making of the 2011 State of the Union Address

Entre Nous?: The Merits (and Demerits) of Gossip

Groovy, Man

2010 Year In Pop Culture

Tortured Reasoning

Notes From the Other Side of the Job Market

Democratic Political Playbook (Revised, 2010)

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