The awful power of Rush Limbaugh
There’s no denying that Limbaugh is a major player in American politics, feeding a stream of liberal-bashing propaganda to rapt listeners. Mike Stark describes it this way: Rush Limbaugh is heard by...
View ArticleThe unbearable lightness of being a Tea Partier, part II
In The unbearable lightness of being a Tea Partier, I wrote: The Tea Party is another manifestation of a rightwing phenomenon whereby carefully crafted talking points are force-fed to the public...
View ArticleEliminationism: how hate breeds violence
Hate breeds violence. Anyone who listens to the relentless liberal-bashing on rightwing radio and other conservative outlets will quickly realize that the level of vitriol and derision directed at the...
View ArticleGabrielle Giffords and the rightwing hate machine (on the bogus equivalence...
Reaction to the horrific Arizona shootings, where six people were slaughtered including a 9-year-old girl, quickly congealed along clear-cut lines: a) The left blamed the right, pointing to violent...
View ArticleEpic irony: Mideast moves forward while America moves backward
The contrast between events in the Middle East and the political reality here in America is striking: as the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere rise by the millions to protest injustice, and...
View ArticleAmerica’s decline and the assault on women’s freedom and the environment
The right’s target list speaks volumes: from public broadcasters and scientists to health providers, unions, academics and women. Nothing drives the right into greater paroxysms of rage than NPR and...
View ArticleThe ugly truth about climate denial
Little should surprise us in a world where intolerable injustices are widely ignored, from preventable hunger, poverty and disease to irreversible environmental destruction to the global oppression of...
View ArticleHow the Democratic establishment shunned the left, spawned the Tea Party and...
In the aftermath of the debt ceiling fiasco, there’s a lot of head-scratching and soul-searching going on among activists, pundits and political observers. How can the Tea Party exert such outsized...
View ArticleGOP radicals and the end of American exceptionalism
Last November, Karen Tumulty wrote an interesting article titled American exceptionalism: an old idea and a new political battle: [T]he idea that the United States is inherently superior to the world’s...
View ArticleOccupy Wall Street versus Tea Party: a video comparison
As OWS defies the skeptics and gains national traction, I figured it would be worth contrasting these interviews, the latter of which were conducted during Glenn Beck’s “Restore Honor” rally: OCCUPY...
View ArticleLow-information nation: What do Americans really know about “big” government?
Information is the currency of democracy. –Attributed to Thomas Jefferson Get a brain! Morans –Sign displayed by conservative protester In Low-information nation: Palin, Beck, Tea Partiers and American...
View ArticleThe unbearable lightness of being a Tea Partier [Updated]
Anecdotal evidence continues to mount that the Tea Party is another manifestation of a rightwing phenomenon whereby carefully crafted talking points are force-fed to the public through Fox, talk radio,...
View ArticleDemocrats stood for nothing and fell for anything
Over the course of two years, President Obama and the Democratic Party achieved a remarkable feat: they passed significant, in some cases historic, legislation, yet managed not to tell the America...
View ArticleLow-information nation: Whose Constitution is it?
In a post titled Low-information nation: Palin, Beck, Tea Partiers and American ignorance, I argued that the single most under-appreciated and understated aspect of American life, the elephant in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
America’s decline and the assault on women’s freedom and the environment
The right’s target list speaks volumes: from public broadcasters and scientists to health providers, unions, academics and women. Nothing drives the right into greater paroxysms of rage than NPR and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How the Democratic establishment shunned the left, spawned the Tea Party and...
In the aftermath of the debt ceiling fiasco, there’s a lot of head-scratching and soul-searching going on among activists, pundits and political observers. How can the Tea Party exert such outsized...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Climate change: our generation’s great failure
Future generations will look back with anger and disbelief at our recklessness. We’ve turned our planet into a garbage dump, while millions of Americans — led by a radicalized Republican Party — are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Democrats stood for nothing and fell for anything
Over the course of two years, President Obama and the Democratic Party achieved a remarkable feat: they passed significant, in some cases historic, legislation, yet managed not to tell the America...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The awful power of Rush Limbaugh
There’s no denying that Limbaugh is a major player in American politics, feeding a stream of liberal-bashing propaganda to rapt listeners. Mike Stark describes it this way: Rush Limbaugh is heard by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The unbearable lightness of being a Tea Partier, part II
In The unbearable lightness of being a Tea Partier, I wrote: The Tea Party is another manifestation of a rightwing phenomenon whereby carefully crafted talking points are force-fed to the public...
View Article