Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
After Ireland canceled all St. Patrick’s Day parades, it seemed only a matter of time before the United States would too. Sure enough: New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the largest such celebration in the world, was postponed late Wednesday over concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, the first time in more than… Read more.
Remarkably, this “novel coronavirus” outbreak is generating more public hype and hysteria than the ongoing US presidential election. And, as I determined with the latter, I fully intended to limit commentaries on the former to one, which I published a few weeks ago. I’ve been persuaded, however, that another commentary might help those fighting not… Read more.
For all intents and purposes, Joe Biden dealt Bernie Sanders a knockout blow in their (now two-man) fight for the Democratic presidential nomination on Super Tuesday. I duly celebrated with the Ali-like headline, “Super Tuesday: A Biden Shocker,” March 4, 2020. More to the point, though, Bernie himself effectively threw in the towel one week… Read more.
I have been championing calls to ban horse racing for over a decade for all manner of reasons. Here, for example, is what I wrote in “Sadly, the Bell Tolled for Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby,” May 6, 2008: ____________________ The sport of kings? Indeed. But so is the barbarism of fox hunting. …… Read more.
This time last year, I was mourning the sudden loss of my big brother Christy. His death proved the harbinger of a year of unimaginable losses that included my publisher Barry, my darling tašta Bibi, and my baby brother Derek. I pray Margaret’s death does not prove a harbinger of similar bells to toll this… Read more.
It is making the mass migration John Steinbeck dramatized in The Grapes of Wrath look like a giddy gold rush. In fact, it’s often difficult to tell these days whether Europe is trying to cope with a migration or fend off an invasion. The EU refused to prepare for a predictable rekindling of the migration… Read more.
Evidently, some of you have taken offense to my “flippant” take on this unfolding coronavirus pandemic. I regret that. But I feel constrained to note that I invariably juxtapose my take with far more deadly concerns like the seasonal flu and the tornado that just devastated Tennessee. It is in this panic-driven context that I… Read more.
It was tornado this time. But it could be hurricane, earthquake, or fire next time. And, more to the point, the devastation caused would be just the same. The tornado outbreak killed at least 24 people and injured dozens more, making it the deadliest in Tennessee since at least 2011. A state of emergency was… Read more.
By now, you’re probably aware that Joe Biden shocked the political world with his performance in yesterday’s Super Tuesday primaries. Joe Biden dominated across the South on Tuesday and scored a dramatic upset victory in Texas while surprising in Minnesota and Massachusetts, roaring into contention in a Democratic presidential primary that increasingly looks like a… Read more.
Or, perhaps more ominously, it’s aping the Hutu-Tutsi violence that played out in Rwanda. Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan have been laying sovereign claims to Kashmir, respectively, since 1947. This has caused three major wars and numerous skirmishes between them, and spawned a spate of terrorist attacks by Kashmiri separatist groups. This is why so… Read more.
