Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
On Tuesday the New York Times published an op-ed by actress Angelina Jolie on her decision to have a double mastectomy. Almost immediately she became the subject of media beatification the likes of which we have not seen, well, since Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president of the United States in 2008. But let me hasten to… Read more.
Recall that it was not the nature of the murders, or even who was murdered, that kept us so riveted on coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial. Rather, it was the fact that O.J. was such a bona-fide celebrity … period. Well, the level of celebrity it took O.J. decades to earn was conferred upon… Read more.
On second thought, perhaps FOX News can be forgiven its dogged determination to bring down President Obama the way the Washington Post brought down President Nixon. And there is no shortage of not just reporters but two-bit commentators vying to be the next Woodward or Bernstein. After all, whatever the shortcomings in claims about Obama… Read more.
My heart aches every time there’s a natural disaster or man-made tragedy in some poor country. Not least because it usually results in the deaths of many more (relatively hapless, helpless and hopeless) people than would be the case in some rich country. Think, for example, of the tsunami in Indonesia, the Bhopal gas leak… Read more.
Disaffected and disillusioned voters were throwing out nine European leaders who prescribed austerity measures as the bitter pill to cure their ailing economies and manage their debt crisis. Nowhere was this demonstrated in more foreboding fashion for Sarkozy than in Greece with the unceremonious fall of Prime Minister George Papandreou last November. After all, Sarkozy was not… Read more.
You probably know by now that Jodi Arias was convicted yesterday of the first-degree murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander. Prosecutors presented gory and salacious evidence, which proved beyond all reasonable doubt that in 2008 this “black widow” had sex with him, and then stabbed him 27 times — all before slitting his throat, and… Read more.
No doubt you recall widespread media reports on that ragtag bunch of terrorists who attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11 last year, killing four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. I tune in to FOX News from time to time for comic relief and reports on the X-files in American politics, in which… Read more.
I have infuriated more than a few people in friendly debates by dismissing Niall Ferguson as being to academia what Donald Trump is to business. Ferguson is a professor of History at Harvard who seems to prefer playing a political pundit on TV. But the following should give you a sense of why I think… Read more.
Jacob Zuma, the constitutionally gaffe-prone president of South Africa, had his long-suffering people scratching their heads again last week. This time because it seems he saw nothing undemocratic, or even improper, in granting permission to one of his patrons, the Gupta family, to use a South African military base as their private airport. Evidently, the… Read more.
