“So, what do you guys sell?” “Traditional science fiction and high fantasy.” “Your average author isn’t 83 years old and nearly dead, then?” “Traditional science fiction and high fantasy.” “Oh. Okay. But, I mean, you don’t just do space operas based on the technical education of someone who was an …
Paul Krugman, who is wrong about things slightly less often than he is right about things, was very wrong about something today. “Unless you were a victim or were close to a victim,” he tweeted, “IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.” With all due respect to the victims of the horrendous mass …
As I have discussed elsewhere on this site, I do not actually believe that Donald Trump, the scrapings from the bottom of a dumpster behind an overpriced steakhouse, actually represents some dire worst-case scenario for America. I don’t even think he varies much from the average Republican, and the party’s …
With Hillary Clinton’s victory in California, and her definitive if a tad presumptive anointment by the press as the Official Democratic Candidate for the 2016 elections, we can move from Stupid Season into Silly Season, and from there to Oh God Why Can’t This Just Be Over season. Few people …
Imagine the boy. He is twelve years old. Like many victims of poverty and racism, he has learned early on that there is very little space for him in the great white world. He knows that those who get out are able to get out because they can either make …
Barring some unforeseen development — a deeply justifiable act of propaganda by the deed, for example, or the revelation that he thinks Marine Todd is a big sissy Mary — Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. Less than a week after dragging Carly Fiorina back out for another round …
The mid- and late 2000s were an especially rich time for the comedy of failure. Perhaps it was the fact that we’d suffered a blow to our sense of national invulnerability that led us to elect a shit-talking faux-cowboy millionaire who reintroduced us to the concept of a pointless war …
The Funny Names Foundation has often faced accusations of excessive focus on each year’s new crop of professional athletes, while ignoring the rich historical vein of people in sports-related support positions who, while not necessarily athletes themselves, still have names that sound like they should instead have been a porn …
The arrest and trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman, didn’t just fit the bill of ‘Trial of the Century’ as well as anything that’s ever happened. It was an event of seismic cultural significance, a slow-moving disaster that was …
SERGEANT’S DUTY LOG Week ending 04/29/2016 31 incidents of jawin’ with intent to slanderfy 26 incidents of reported sinful doin’s involving minors, blood kin, livestock and tree hollers 16 incidents of a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ 9 lynchings without a permit 8 incidents of Katie-bar-the-door Saturday night dust-ups 6 incidents of ee-legal …
I have been fascinated with religious cults since before I even knew what they were. I was barely old enough to understand what was happening at Jonestown, Guyana, when the greatest mass slaughter of American citizens to date took place under the auspices of a lunatic named Jim Jones, but …
The question has haunted some of the more politically and socially aware sections of the Internet in recent months: are police unions unions? That is, are they mechanisms for the solidarity and protection of the worker, just like any other, or are they a thing unique unto themselves, and should …
Apparently there is much angst in the funny pages these days about the status of “Millennials”. This is apparently a generation that happened when no one was looking, and it is a subject of some controversy whether this generation is the worst of all generations to have ever existed, or …
There is likely no one more qualified to have written China’s Second Continent than Howard W. French. A veteran foreign affairs correspondent for the New York Times, French is well-versed in Chinese politics and was raised in Africa by American parents. Almost a decade ago, he left the paper to pursue one …
It’s baseball season, and that, friends, is the best of all seasons. Baseball writers, who, given their love of a game that has historical weight over all other American sports, tend to be a poetic and sentimental lot, even more obnoxious than people who mark out over other sports. They’re …
