Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
We are surprised and dismayed that Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons would permit Dr. Mehmet Oz to occupy a faculty appointment, let alone a senior administrative position in the Department of Surgery. (CBS News, April 16, 2015) I was not surprised last week when a group of prominent doctors called on Columbia University… Read more.
Gore Vidal vs. William F. Buckley Jr. shocked the world in the late 1960s, when Vidal began shooting holes in the intellectual blimp that kept Buckley’s ego afloat. What’s more, the hype and blows that attended their political debates rivaled those that attended heavyweight bouts between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Well, not since then has… Read more.
I am an unabashed liberal. But I can’t tell you how often my ideological comrades upbraid me for proffering discordant views on controversial issues. Such was the case earlier this year, when I sang out of tune with their chorus of support for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. I reasoned in “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie,”… Read more.
The death of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and dealings of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma have dominated the news coming out of Southeast Asia thus far this year. Actually, you could be forgiven for thinking that Western media place a quota on coverage from this region, and that… Read more.
The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. The standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge… Read more.
I am still nursing the virtual wounds real friends inflicted after reading yesterday’s commentary, in which I dismissed the social media they revel in as “a vast wasteland of cultural hedonism.” Never mind that they ended up making my point. For they had nothing to say when I asked follow-up questions about their enthusiastic participation in the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. That, of… Read more.
I’ve been railing for years against trend-setting, skeletal models strutting their dry bones on runways across the fashion world. This is why I was so heartened earlier this month when France enacted legislation to ban them from runways in Paris. Here is a little of my abiding lament: By today’s standards, former supermodels like Cindy… Read more.
MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky is arguably the most accomplished thinker in America, if not the world, today. Whatever one thinks of Wikipedia, it fairly describes Chomsky as an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator, social justice activist, and anarcho-syndicalist advocate. That established, Chomsky shared “his views on the current media landscape” in… Read more.
I was never a fan. But anyone who knows anything about Madonna’s singing career knows that it has always been more about theatrics than music. It speaks volumes, for example, that she won more critical acclaim for Sex, a 1992 coffee table book of soft-porn photographs, than she has for any of her albums. This… Read more.
Given media coverage of the killing last summer of Eric Garner in New York, New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, coupled with coverage of the killing last week of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina and Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you could be forgiven the impression that White cops think they… Read more.
