Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
With all due respect to critics and members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy), how much a film makes, not whether it wins an Oscar, is the generally recognized measure of its success. Especially considering that winning an Oscar is more the result of crass political campaigning than any assessment of… Read more.
I’ve written many commentaries over the years on the Ukrainians. Most notably, in “My Favorite Ex-Communists…,” October 2, 2007, I bemoaned the chronic political dysfunction that had Ukrainians emulating the Italians’ promiscuous penchant for changing governments; and in “Ukraine: a New (Post-War) Germany in the Making,” August 30, 2014, I decried the political and military… Read more.
History is replete with episodes of people migrating in droves from one place to another in search of a better life. And, in far too many cases, their migration challenged them to make it through a known hell to get to an uncertain heaven. Hispanics and Haitians migrating to America blighted the twentieth century in… Read more.
Brian Williams, America’s top news anchor, became a national laughingstock last week when videos of him telling all manner of self-aggrandizing lies went viral. It spoke volumes, however, that he responded in self-aggrandizing fashion by announcing that he was taking himself off the air “for a few days” – presumably until the next viral scandal… Read more.
I have written many commentaries denouncing Edward Snowden as more traitor than hero for leaking NSA secrets. Here are illustrative excerpts from two of them. From “Judge Ruling on NSA Spying…,” December 18, 2013. __________________ I too would be championing Snowden’s professed cause if he had taken his treasure trove of NSA secrets to a… Read more.
Frankly, I haven’t experienced such scripted boredom since my classes in Organic Chemistry thirty-something years ago. So much was so wrong about last night’s broadcast that I shan’t dignify any of it with a comment. Except that I feel constrained to lament the way digital voice enhancements are doing to music what digital image enhancements… Read more.
For years, anchor Brian Williams has been regaling not just family and friends, but viewers of his top-rated NBC Nightly News over the years with brazen brazen lies about derring-dos throughout his career. They often centered on life-and-death adventures he “experienced” reporting everywhere from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina to Iraq during the Gulf War. Scrambling… Read more.
Tiger Woods reveled in the media fanfare that occasioned his return to the PGA tour. In fact, he waxed even more triumphal during his pre-tournament press conference last week than Tom Brady did during his post-Super Bowl press conference this week … after winning the Super Bowl! Specifically, Tiger regaled reporters not only about feeling… Read more.
To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel about racism and criminal justice in early twentieth-century America. I enjoyed reading it more than any other required reading in high school. And I don’t mind admitting that I found the 1962 film adaptation even more enjoyable; so much so that I’ve watched it over and… Read more.
In this digital age of viral tweets and snapchats, war crimes committed in Europe during the 1990s are no more present in public consciousness than war crimes committed in Europe during the 1940s. The decision resolved claims and counter-claims Croatia and Serbia had been hurling against each other for almost two decades: Croatia claimed that Serbia… Read more.
