You may have heard of President Obama’s deficit commission (AKA the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform ) to cut, er, the deficit, led by Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat (and be-speckled former UNC Prez) Erskine Bowles. You may have even heard that the commission’s early recommendations seek to scorch the proverbial pork (and… [Read more…]
September 20, 2010
One need only glance around the arena to see the true Gaga effect. Matures and tweens, hand-in-hand, all caught in a Bad Romance. She isn’t really selling sex; we’re just buying it. And in the process, Gaga gets us: if you can’t help but sing and dance to these songs, if her albums sweep the airwaves like contagion, she might as well control the message. And if “born this way,” were a drinking game, we’d all have been hammered by 10 PM.
April 24, 2010
In my lifetime, I’ve watched hundreds, possibly thousands, of people die on television. While some of these emanated from news coverage at home and abroad, most were fictionalized versions of what death is supposed to look like. Mostly quick. Some Painful. For the most part, unexpected. Yet, none have touched me more than watching the death of a woman suffering from the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s in HBO’s new Jack Kevorkian biopic “You Don’t Know Jack.” As you can imagine by the subject matter, this woman’s death was neither unexpected nor especially painful.
March 22, 2010
I haven’t always agreed with the Obama Administration. For the first year plus of this less-progressive-than-advertised presidency, I’ve watched attempts at bipartisanship met only with rhetoric, tail-chasing, and the embarrassing losses of American hearts and minds to a blindingly vitriolic and vapid conservative white-out. Even recent attempts at conciliation, like those with the Republican House… [Read more…]
March 22, 2010
One week ago, 24 years back, I remember being sick. It’s tough to forget now. It was around 11 a.m. and I sat with my head on the library table—as a 10 year-old is apt to do when sick in an elementary school library—lumped among the rest of my 5th grade class. My father had… [Read more…]
January 19, 2010
When I bought the six-pack of Charmin, Harry was alive.
September 19, 2009
I didn’t enjoy Inglourious Basterds. As much as I’m a fan of most of Taratino’s derivative salutes to reckless celluloid abandon, I also, for better or for worse, hold a great deal of deference for the sights, sounds and stories of the World War II era. As such, for me, the caricatured depictions of Nazi-occupied… [Read more…]
September 16, 2009
Dearest Liberals, For a while now, I’ve been relatively quiet about the “choose your own adventure” topic of health care and/or health insurance reform. Quiet, in the sense that I’ve embargoed any personal blogging during a period in which it (a) was tough to hear myself think over the vitriolic and incendiary propaganda being hurled… [Read more…]
June 16, 2009
This past weekend, I had the distinct honor of being the only female groomsman in what might be considered—with the exception of my presence—a traditional, Southern wedding in the smallish hamlet of Eden, NC. And through the year-long process of being coaxed into the wedding party (“of course you don’t have to wear a dress”),… [Read more…]
May 27, 2009
For those who don’t remember, or, [ahem], were not alive, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) beginning on April 14. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse… [Read more…]
December 2, 2010
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