The Olympics turns out to be mixed blessing for Mitt Romney’s candidacy. On the one hand, he touts his role in running the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City as if that were a major accomplishment and, for reasons that escape me, the media seem to take it at face value though it is not clear what running the Olympic games has got to do with one’s ability to be a good president. [Read more…]
Gore Vidal, a class traitor of the best kind, died yesterday.
Born into a well-connected and politically influential family that could have opened doors to a patrician life, he became instead a populist outsider and a scathing critic of the politics of the US. He had wide-ranging interests, writing novels, essays, and screenplays and also acting in films, such as Gattacca where he was pretty good. [Read more…]
Back in the 1960s, satirist Tom Lehrer sang in Pollution about how dirty American cities had become. [Read more…]
News reports say that the Democratic party platform committee has unanimously endorsed same-sex marriage. This reflects the fact that a new Pew poll finds two-thirds of self-identified Democrats support this position. [Read more…]
The Daily Show is fond of pointing out that Americans learn their geography about other countries only when they go to war with them.
But international sporting contests are another source of information about countries and the Olympics is a good way to hear about countries that would otherwise never make the news. [Read more…]
Readers of this blog know that I have a fondness for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (as well as other satires) and frequently link to them if I happen to think them funny and informative. But each of them has his faults. Colbert seems to idolize the military while Stewart is terrible when directly interviewing powerful political figures or news media bigwigs like Brian Williams or Fareed Zakaria, so much so that I don’t even bother to watch those segments anymore. Stewart is best when he has on writers and artists and academics who are experts in some field. In fact, a rule of thumb that I have developed is that the less familiar I am with the name of the guest, the better the interview is likely to be. [Read more…]
Mitt Romney on his current trip has made a big deal of saying that he will not criticize Barack Obama while overseas, thus reinforcing the sentiment that ‘politics should stop at the water’s edge’. [Read more…]
I didn’t watch the opening ceremonies for the London Olympics. For that matter, I still haven’t seen the lavishly-praised 2008 Beijing ceremonies either or any Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade or any of the Royal weddings or state funerals. The truth is I am just not a big fan of long, elaborate, staged, set-piece ceremonies. I find them incredibly boring. Give me a ten-minute clip of the highlights and I might watch. But I am glad when the events go off well, given all the hard work (not to mention money) that goes into them, and so was pleased to see that the London event had been well-received. [Read more…]
Herman Cain continues his “Look at me! I’m an idiot who is willing to be made a fool of by comedians just for the attention!” tour by talking with John Oliver of The Daily Show about how he would lower the price of gas by allowing drilling over most of the national parks, thus effectively destroying the jewels of the American landscape. Because that is part of god’s grand plan. Besides, how many picnic tables do people really need? And do you really need more than one giant redwood tree to appreciate their grandeur? [Read more…]
Pakistan is a country that seems to be standing at the intersection of secular and religious currents. One leads to a modern state that could become a powerful force in science, technology, and commerce. The other leads to a backward looking theocracy. Although modernism will eventually win out, as it always does, the signs are not hopeful in the short run. There are many signs that the craven political leadership is giving in to the clerics and religious fanatics. [Read more…]