Ted Kennedy and the paradox of class
To achieve equality we must first accept the undeniable existence of inequality. In a class-free liberal analysis, where individual responsibility for success or failure in life reigns supreme,...
Tag: u.s.
Mourning Ted Kennedy – and picking up reform where he left off
Ted Kennedy was my senator from the time I knew what a senator was. He loomed over Massachusetts politics like no one else ever has or ever will—forty-seven years in the Senate, and fighting until...
Superheroines, sports and sexuality: or, why can’t we be both?
Gina Carano might have appeared on the show American Gladiator, where she wore a spandex costume and goes by a superhero nickname, “Crush,” but her real job is Muay Thai and mixed martial arts...
Arab reaction to Obama’s Middle East policy: an excerpt
By all accounts, the new American administration is moving at a frenetic pace in trying to break the seemingly interminable deadlock between Israel and the Arab world. Recent press reports suggest...
#WeLoveTheNHS: Healthcare misinformation targeted on Twitter
The fight over health care reform in the United States has gotten nastier and nastier. Part of what passes for debate has been shrill charges from those opposed to providing health care for the...
Food, fat & progressive politics: a saga
America's foremost food evangelist, Michael Pollan, has a new article in the New York Times Magazine, decrying the decline of cooking in America and the outsourcing of our meals to corporations. He...
The death of Dae’von Bailey and lessons not learned in California
In a state which devalues the lives of its poorest, most vulnerable citizens, one young child has paid the ultimate price for California’s gross negligence in overseeing his care. Dae’von Bailey,...
Corporate interests always win: the silencing of the O’Reilly-Olbermann feud
Glenn Greenwald, the Salon blogger known as much for his stinging critiques of the corporate media as he is for his passionate defense of civil liberties, highlighted this New York Times story about...
“More to Love”: That means FAT GIRLS, too!
If someone was unfamiliar with the demographics of the United States and watched an evening of television, they would be likely to believe that no overweight people actually exist within the nation's...
The myth of the American middle class
Lyndon Johnson famously said, after Walter Cronkite's criticism on air of his adventures in Vietnam, “If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.” Soon after, Johnson announced that he would...