As fun and sexy a song as “Do What U Want” may be, it’s only fun and sexy down to a shallow point along the shore; past that, it falls into a sea of provocative pessimism and stupidity. And those waters run deeper still, so to speak; it’s a pop song, surely, overall one of the better ones in the past year, but it also goes to the heart of some of the biggest problems between men and women—even if Mother Monster and her whole bandwagon don’t know it. Continue reading
Whether or not these people are or were somehow crazy doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is the possibility that they were much simply dumb, and moreover that there are many people out there who are not merely dumb, but worse: content with being dumb. But far worse than even stubborn stupidity is the way the rest of us are content with tolerating and appeasing it. Sure, some people are passive; they wouldn’t hurt a fly. Others, however, are much too ambitious for passivity, for the obscurity of all the shadow around the spotlight—and they are the ones with the most alarming, most frightening potential. Continue reading
While media outlets prone to sensationalism push the phantom fact that apparently most if not all politicians are untrustworthy and oppressive thieves and connivers and scrounge to find any vague speck of dirt on a lawmaker to substantiate that notion, it’s often the case that governments by the people and (for the most part) for the people are taking the necessary steps to ensure our safety—even if we haven’t either a clue as to what those steps entail or, more controversially, any real entitlement to those clues to begin with… Continue reading
Much like the travesty of me and Hitch, my newfound hero of journalism and intelligent conversation, I hadn’t known anything about the late David Foster Wallace before his death (by hanging, in 2008). I hadn’t read any of his novels, and admittedly, given my aversion to even literary contemporary fiction, I likely won’t any time soon (at this stage, … Continue reading
To review a book about Africa while knowing very little of Africa is at once a gift and a curse. My response, both in writing and in thought, is by default, limited in breadth and in depth; I happen to be suspended at a distance better suited for lobbing the broader, flimsier generalizations typical of … Continue reading
Prior to Dwarf: A Memoir, the only book I ever bothered to read about “little people” was The Hobbit. Unlike The Hobbit, Dwarf is not epic medieval fantasy, nor is it about hobbits or “actual” dwarves, neither of which exist … I think. It’s rather a biography of a real“little person”: one in whom we observe more or less obvious signs … Continue reading
The first book I reviewed for PolicyMic was America, You Sexy Bitch (AYSB) by conservative Meghan McCain and liberal Michael Ian Black. Politically at odds with each other, the Senator’s daughter and the stand-up comedian take a road trip across the continental United States to learn about America. One of their stops was in Texas; on their way, McCain remarks … Continue reading
[Puns are almost completely unavoidable when discussing a book about vaginas, so please bear with me—and pardon any accidental (and purely coincidental) misspellings of “come”.] When I was in elementary school (before I could figure out my dad’s overly simplistic codes for the parental locks and watch “Skinemax”), I’d stay up late to watch Howard Stern on … Continue reading
Last May, well before I started reviewing books for PolicyMic, Oxford University Press published Defending Politics: Why Democracy Matters in the Twenty-First Century by Matthew Flinders, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield. I only discovered it last Saturday while browsing the shelves at B&N, and I ended up buying it on impulse. I just had to. Though it may … Continue reading
In an appealing 381-page package that reads like 80 pages, legendary investigative journalist Bob Woodward narrates the political fighting over federal spending and tax policy, as well as the controversial (mis) management of the U.S. economy, by both the executive and legislative branches between 2009 and the summer of 2012. Delving into one fascinating turn … Continue reading
The Salem Thinker Post 