1. A right-wing troll emailed me a ridiculous Daily Mail article (I know that's redundant) about why the U.S. media isn't pretending that Biden's brief stumble boarding Air Force 1 is the biggest thing that ever happened. So let's talk about presidents... dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…
2. ...and mental health, shall we? The reason so many people focused on Donald Trump's seeming mental and perhaps physical decline during his time in the White House was because it tied into his clear symptoms around bigger issues like Narcissistic Personality Order. That...
3. ...manifested itself in four years of barking irrational and often illegal demands at his bullied aides, and raised legitimate concerns about his control of the nuclear football, etc. Indeed, we saw how his delusional state of mind affected the nation after 11/3, when he...
4. ...refused to accept his electoral defeat and ultimately urged his most radical supporters to storm that U.S. Capitol, rattling democracy and leading to 7 deaths. In contrast, the current knock on President Biden is that a 78-year-old man has memory problems which...
5. ...cause him to sometimes fumble for a word or use the wrong one, or forget a name. This in the context of a president who has replaced narcissism with real empathy for Americans, who's surrounded himself with competent aides instead of lackeys, relatives or neo-fascists...
6. Does anyone seriously think that Biden's occasional verbal gaffes would lead, say, to America accidentally bombing Bermuda instead of Syria? Or that an elderly man who injured his foot last fall struggling with some stairs is as important as a president who stumbled with...
7. ...science while 500,000-plus Americans died? Whatever issues Biden faces with aging, he's hired a largely compassionate and competent government. He's not barking illegal orders that come from a paranoid and delusional mind at cowed aides. In three years, I'm sure Biden...
8. ...will carefully weigh if he has the stamina to run for a 2nd term. Until then, stop raising red herrings about a president who's mostly doing the right things but might occasionally use the wrong word to describe them -- 30 --
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1. So I’m at Kenyon College in Ohio today for my book on college’s role in America’s broken politics and I got to see something really cool: The first-ever-in-the-nation strike by student workers
2. K-SWOC was formed by student workers such as lifeguards, library aides or campus farm employees. They have post-pandemic issues about reduced hours, pay and basic respect at Kenyon, one of the most expensive U.S. colleges
3. About 140 student workers have walked off the job for 24-hours, pressing Kenyon’s administration for recognition. They believe their movement will spread to other colleges and universities
There's a line in Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" that always makes me smile -- "There's good people in Alabama"...because it's true. I worked in Birmingham 1982-85 and some folks there are still my friends 35 years later. They were/are smart, open-minded people who... 1/3
...liked to slam dance to the Jim Carroll Band or make fun of backwoods sheriffs. I never lived in Texas, Mississippi or Florida but I know it's the same way - lots of good people doing their best amid a bigger, backwards culture that can elect the worst leaders. It's because 2/3
...of those great humans that I never damn an entire state, or wish it ill health, or catching a virus, etc. Focus anger where it belongs - on hate, bigotry and the politicians and hucksters who exploit it. Pray for the many good people in those places, and their good health 3/3
1. OK, done with my column, my "back to brunch" (at home with my family pod) and Sunday chores, so here's my thread on why 1970 is the greatest music year of all time. But I have to start with two...
2. caveats. First, most critics think of 1970 for the rise of the singer-songwriter, to which I say...meh. Second, some horrible things happened in 1970 off-vinyl -- the death of Jimi and Janis, breakup of the Beatles. No studio records from the Stones or the Who, BUT...
3. 1970 was the last super great year for the one-off pop-rock 45, including "Venus" by Shocking Blue, "Spirit in the Sky," by Norman Greenbaum, and of course "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image
1. On Rush Limbaugh's passing: Harry Truman supposedly said "it's a damn shame when anyone dies." Fair enough. But
Consider this timeline:
1985: Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" predicts a world where entertainment values wreck civil discourse
1987: Reagan's FCC...
2. ...kills the Fairness Doctrine and creates the possibility of conservative talk radio
1988: Sacramento radio guy Rush Limbaugh goes national with right-wing talk
Now, Limbaugh (as his later soulmate, Glenn Beck) was basically the nightmare predicted in "Amusing Ourselves...
3. ...to Death" -- a smooth entertainer with no real political ideas worth discussing, just a talent for funneling white rage into a 3-hour show. Yet in doing so, he changed U.S. politics forever and set the stage for Trump's American fascism
1. I took 2 hours off last night to celebrate my adult son's birthday. I came back and the world was literally on fire. And I am furious about what is happening in DC, Philly, everywhere. I don't want to hear 1 word about civility. Fuck civility. We need radical change
2. In DC, I saw Trump take HIS new personal Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, out on his Mussolini balcony to wave the final degradation of the Supreme Court in America's face. This is fascism, and if Democrats do nothing in 2021 it will fester. We must expand...
3. ...the court to undo this stain, and expand the judiciary with new jurists who will embody America's diversity instead of crushing it. But this depends on winning an election that Trump, Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh have shown their willingness to corrupt. I was trying to...
1. Some thoughts on Trump, Sanford -- and one of the defining political events of the last 50 years: Reagan essentially kicking off his general election campaign in a city notorious for a racist killing, and ignoring that to proclaim his belief in "state's rights." It happened...
2. ...on August 3, 1980, at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Some urged Reagan not to go because it was just 16 years after the notorious KKK murder of three "Freedom Summer" civil rights workers in that county. But the Gipper cynically knew what he was...
3...doing: Sealing the bond of the GOP's "Southern Strategy" with the region's core of white supremacist voters. And it worked. I arrived in Alabama as a young journalist in early 1982 and saw the South turn red before my own eyes. Flash forward 40 years and America has a POTUS..