In the spirit of catching up, I never linked to my last two Spot-on columns. Back in February, I wrote a piece called “Days of Wine and Roses,” which was inspired by the fact that I knew a few people who really hated Amy Winehouse. Their dislike seemed to be focused on the fact that [...]
The true meaning of Christmas
Merry Christmas. This is a phrase fraught with political meaning these days. Lots of people love to tell you what this day “really” means. It’s all about the kids, they’ll say. Perhaps it’s really about the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe it’s about Peace on Earth or loving your fellow man. The Fox [...]
Sweet Scandal & Schadenfreude
My new Spot-on column is up and it deals with the cases of Sen. Larry Craig and actor Owen Wilson. One of these is heart-breakingly tragic and the other is gut-bustingly hilarious. To tell which is which, you need to know The Scandal Rules. Entertainment Weekly recently examined this issue from the angle of how [...]
Round-up: Spots
I have seriously fallen behind on linking to my Spot-on columns. I love food, but I love food culture even more. I love exploring past food fads, cultural variances in certain dishes, new exotic trends. So, last week I wrote a piece entitled Eat to Live? Live To Eat? which tied together the new Pixar [...]
Whose standards?
A recent article in WaPo made me think of two of my Spot-on columns: my article on Shilpa Shetty’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother came to mind, because of the later controversy when Richard Gere kissed her, and my piece on Dinesh D’Souza, because he claims that his home country of India is having its [...]
The Magic Negro
The last week of April, the blogosphere finally took notice of a song that aired in March on Rush Limbaugh‘s program entitled “Barack The Magic Negro.” Comedian Paul Shanklin impersonated Al Sharpton singing (to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon”) a lament that Barack Obama appealed to people in ways that the Reverend Al [...]
Monica Goodling: Music Critic
There was an article on Monica Goodling in the New York Times today, with further details about she carried out the politicization of the Justice Department. I’ve only ever seen one photo of her, I’m guessing from a Regent University alumni event, but it actually loooks like it’s from a sorority mixer. There are plenty [...]
This means war.
Last September, I wrote an item entitled “Culture Wars Redux,” in which I anticipated the arrival of a couple books that would ramp up the old Culture War (“Rock ‘n’ roll is destroying our kids!”) to a new level (“Hip-hop is responsible for the death of thousands!”). In my new Spot-on column, I take a [...]
VT shooting and the Culture Blame Game
On Friday, I posted my latest Spot-on piece, which focused on the pop culture fallout of the VT shootings (“Seeking Tragic Answers in the Aisles of Best Buy“). On Friday, Stephen Hunter wrote a great piece on how Seung-Hui Cho might have been influenced by movies. Hunter is a former soldier and a gun owner [...]
Huh. Good God, y’all. What is it good for?
Here in the U.S., tomorrow is Election Day. This is what we call the Mid-Term Elections, which means that we are not electing a President, which also means voter turnout will be lower than it was in 2004. The central political issue this year has been Iraq. This is a timely moment to say a [...]