They’re everywhere – these little men. No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.” But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, [...]
The Oregonian has an odd policy about running letters, or rather, not so odd, unfortunately. Like many other withering daily newspapers, it tries to hold onto its old and addled but nonetheless loyal readers at the expense of publishing, daily, such complete nonsense that other readers must find pretty discrediting to the paper, not to [...]
Over at Huffpo I stumbled upon one of the most spectacularly asinine pieces of Democratic concern-trolling I’ve ever read, from some manipulative and obtuse nincompoop named Peter Connolly, which amply demonstrates why establishment Democrats only win, occasionally, because their opponents are just slightly more untrustworthy, corrupt, and authoritarian than they are themselves, and they are [...]
While watching or reading about the headliners at the 2010 CPAC, the title of that great Stephen Sondheim song Send in the Clowns from the musical Little Night Music kept ringing in my head. Using some lines from that song, here in parenthesis are the kind of thoughts that are in the minds of the [...]
Listening to the Ed Schultz Show today on the radio at work, I was enjoying the discussion brought forth by substitute host Norman Goldman, when he opened the show by asking listeners, “What do you want from your government, and how would you like to pay for it?” The question was drawn from the debate [...]
I got home today, and as I usually do, popped into Glenn Greenwald at Salon, to see if he’d gotten all Greenwaldian and put up another post while I was at work, knowing that if he hadn’t, the letters would have poured in since 6:00am and it could take a whole bottle of something to [...]
As a blogger and avid reader of many blogs, I’ve always found fascinating the behavior of the trolls who frequent them. Comment threads can provide a rich tapestry of behavioral pathology and often, particularly after a few drinks, I imagine a comment thread as a party, in which several of the guests appear to, for [...]