Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Truth be told, the first thought that came to mind when I read the news about the assassination of Shinzo Abe was that it must be fake; or that it must have happened somewhere here in America. Because gun violence in Japan is so rare, it never even crossed my mind that this could have… Read more.
The media have been replete this week with comparisons between Japan’s Princess Mako marrying the commoner Kei Komuro and Britain’s Prince Harry marrying the commoner Meghan Markle. Yet a cursory reading of their respective courtships, engagements, and weddings would disabuse any reasonable mind of those comparisons. Therefore, I see no point in doing any disabusing… Read more.
Much ado is made every Olympics about how countries fare in the final medal count. But nothing demonstrates US dominance in this respect quite like it winning a total of 2941 medals, including 1166 gold, between the 1896 Athens Olympics and these 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The Soviet Union and Russia combined is second with a… Read more.
Imagine the devastation in The Bahamas if Hurricane Dorian had triggered an earthquake to boot. Tragically, that’s the double whammy Japan is coping with today. Seven million people have been told to evacuate in Japan as a typhoon [Hagibis] forecast to be the nation’s most powerful in six decades made landfall on Honshu island. …… Read more.
China on Wednesday warned U.S. President Barack Obama against meeting with the Dalai Lama at the White House, saying that hosting the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader could damage mutual trust. Obama has met the Dalai Lama several times before and calls the monk, who is revered by Tibetans but portrayed by Beijing as a dangerous… Read more.
President Obama is on a state visit to Japan. It’s the first by a sitting U.S. president in almost 20 years. Therefore, you’d expect the media to be covering each step he takes on Japanese soil as if he were John Glen walking on the moon. Yet his visit is competing for coverage not only… Read more.
Much is made in the international media of the way North Korea ignites military tensions with Groundhog Day-like precision. It does this, of course, by threatening to nuke not just wary neighbors like South Korea and Japan, but even the United States. By contrast, relatively little is made of the way Japan ignites similar tensions… Read more.
War between China and Japan over the Senkakus would make the war Argentina and Britain fought over the Falklands seem like a barroom brawl between mindless drunks. Not least because the United States would be compelled to honor its treaty obligations to defend Japan… [But] notwithstanding the mob-like passions of their respective nationalists, I’m sure… Read more.
It would be easy to blame media focus on stories like the Casey Anthony murder trial, the UK phone-hacking scandal, or even the political bickering over America’s debt ceiling for the relative lack of coverage of this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Germany. This quadrennial soccer tournament has actually been playing out over the… Read more.
[Author’s note: This commentary was originally published on Saturday, March 12 at 12:07 am. However, given the saturation media coverage of this disaster, I have decided to reprise it with an UPDATE appended.] Earthquakes and other natural disasters should always remind us that there but for the grace of God… But there’s no denying that… Read more.
