We live in a society of lies. Our democracy is no longer a democracy, schools are no longer centers of education, the media no longer inform but spout propaganda, health care no longer focuses on curing people but on ...
Each year on April 25, Italians commemorate Italy's 1945 liberation with yet another public holiday. Any sane person would think this ought to involve honoring those who did the liberating: the British, the Canadians, the ...
When Russia's Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership ...
If Western universities were not brimming with leftist professors, the present situation in Ukraine would surprise no one. History would have taught us that the complete destruction of Nazi Germany was bound to clear the ...
Quickly lost among the other manufactured controversies earlier this month was a call among Irish American groups to boycott Urban Outfitters. The clothing chain's sin was to unveil a line of St. Patrick’s Day ...
It is 55 years since my friend, M.….. D……, died. I was 16, he was a few months older. He had suffered all his life from terrible asthma, which had deformed his chest. At the time the most effective relief from acute ...
To watch the hours of celebratory fist-pumping from government officials and black activists after the guilty verdicts against police officer Derek Chauvin this week, you'd think Minnesota had just won the NCAA ...
A cinematic development I hadn"t expected is Oliver Stone evolving into a director who makes movies that are fair, responsible, and forgettable. His sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, with Michael Douglas returning ...
In the past few years the television show The Simpsons, which this year will celebrate its 30th anniversary of being on the air, has come under fire for its stereotypical, white-voiced portrayal of the Indian character Apu. ...
The latest flap over a Benetton ad campaign is far from the first in that notoriously tasteless company’s history. Obama is shown kissing the President of China, French chief of State Nicolas Sarkozy liplocks with ...
Once something is claimed as a right, it enters a different metaphysical plane from all other claims or considerations. It becomes untouchable, immune from derogation, exception, limitation, curtailment, or qualification. ...
If you’ve been to a supermarket recently, you’ve probably noticed how quickly people are buying up toilet paper, hand soap, dry goods, meats, and other necessities. More interesting, and disturbing, though, has been the ...
"War is the health of the state," wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu. America's war on the coronavirus pandemic promises to be no exception to the ...
It’s hard to open a fashion magazine or celebrity rag this year without reading tomboy-this or boyfriend cut-that. Twenty years ago, however, or even five, the word tomboy, both as a noun and an adjective, ...
A report released Wednesday says that in 2010, one in five Americans took medication to relieve conditions broadly described as mental disorders. Such medications include antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, pills for ...
After the heat in Greece, the Alps are cool and green and very comfortable. My sensei Richard Amos is over here, and we squeezed two weeks of intensive karate training into three days. Nothing makes me feel better than the ...
In all but one of the last seven presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote. George W. Bush and Donald Trump won only by capturing narrow majorities in the Electoral College. Hence the grand strategy of ...
A creative writing course at a British university has withdrawn graduation requirement that students should attempt a sonnet, not on the reasonable grounds that it is futile to try to turn people with cloth ears for ...
"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine": so uttered a distraught and heartbroken Humphrey Bogart in the iconic Casablanca. It's one of the film's many lines that get to the ...
When A-list Hollywood director James Gunn got fired last month due to an alt-right (some say “alt-light”...I’ve learned that certain trolls get steamed if you don’t recognize the distinction) campaign to embarrass ...
With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis busy running the third-largest state, enacting a magnificently conservative agenda, promoting a new book, and having to respond to endless demands that he run for president (not to mention ...
If you watched the 2019 Oscars, a spellbinding Nike commercial entitled “Dream Crazier” might have caught your eye. The commercial began with a compelling score, gripping B-roll, and motivating narration from tennis ...
According to a Gallup poll, the percentage of the American population that now “identifies” as LGBTQ+ has doubled by comparison with ten years ago, and now stands at 7.1 percent. Among the youngest cohort polled, it was ...
My eponymous father always kept cigars. I remember when I first stole one. I had drained myself at the thought of the new Filipina maid—it was that time of life, before I’d embarked on the more wholesome business of ...
