Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Botched executions have been competing with downed airplanes for 24/7 news coverage lately. Here’s the latest on the former: It took Arizona nearly two excruciating hours to execute Joseph Wood with drugs whose source the state concealed. Executions in California have been on hold since 2006 because of problems with lethal injections. Last week a… Read more.
Many young women wear Spanx these days. But they take umbrage at the suggestion that their Spanx is a modern version of the girdle their grandmothers wore. Spanx: a girdle by another name It takes willful self-delusion to deny this analogy. After all, the natural letdown women see on their Spanx-free bodies reveals the naked truth. The irony is… Read more.
Here, in part, is what I wrote about the Yukos Oil company almost 10 years ago, when Russian President Vladimir Putin was confiscating corporate assets and consolidating political power – all in an effort to reign for life as a latter-day Tsar: The Putinization of Russia continues apace, and Papa Joe Stalin must be very… Read more.
For all my adult life, I’ve been among those calling for the legalization of marijuana. Below are excerpts from just a few related commentaries – dating back to 2005, the year I inaugurated this weblog – that will attest to this fact. From “Landmark Healthcare Decisions by U.S. Government,” June 12, 2005: Consider that every year 435,000… Read more.
The NFL suspended Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for the first two games of the 2014 NFL season on Thursday for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. The news comes after Rice got into an altercation with then-fiancée Janay Palmer at an Atlantic City hotel in February. Rice allegedly struck Palmer unconscious while in… Read more.
Related commentaries: MH17 shot from the sky… Read more.
Not so long ago, the only people who went to cinema to watch porn were presumed to be perverted men. But nothing indicates how mainstream this has become quite like Brian Williams teasing the trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey on last night’s edition of the NBC Nightly News. I did not read this book.… Read more.
Evidently, traditional fans got their panties in a twist yesterday because I insinuated (in a commentary on Lance Armstrong) that the rise in Golf’s popularity over the past decade had more to do with interest in Tiger Woods than in the game itself. It so happens that I’ve been getting under their skin for just as long. The… Read more.
I am not a TV critic. And, unlike many on social media, I have no financial interest in recommending anything on this blog. But I watched ESPN’s 30 for 30: Slaying the Badger on Tuesday night. It glorifies and vindicates Greg Lemond. He, of course, is best known as the canary who sounded alarms about cyclists like Lance Armstrong using… Read more.
I feel obliged to begin by confessing that, when it came to reading the works of white authors in Apartheid South Africa, my interest did not extend much beyond those of Athol Fugard. No doubt this is because Fugard didn’t just write provocative, anti-Apartheid plays (like his pioneering Blood Knot in 1961); he also defied… Read more.
