Ted Cruz. The crusading evangelical.  But he doesn’t seem to be running on gospel values.  He’s running pretty openly on being a Big Fist, trumpeting promises to smash enemies and cut taxes. Today his rival Trump has broadcast the news that Cruz’ campaign, in days before the Iowa caucuses, spread a false rumor that Ben Carson was going to drop out, and advised many Carson supporters to make their votes count by switching to Cruz. The false rumor was allegedly... Read more

Transparent is the title of Amazon’s hit TV series, a series the Atlantic Monthly called a very 2015 work in a review by Spencer Kornhaber, Dec. 14, 2015.  The show is about a family in which the father becomes transparent in his transition from Mort to Maura, bringing to light what had been in him, but hidden, all his life.  The show is now in its second season. Of the first season, New Yorker reviewer Emily Nussbaum wrote: By forcing... Read more

It’s an astonishing snapshot. The more so because the 2016 Campaign has had every Republican candidate waltzing the dance floor with Evangelicals, preachers, and doctrinal activists.  One GOP candidate, Huckabee, is a preacher.  Carson is a lay preacher, paid big fees for his inspirational speeches.  Rubio just declared his resounding belief in one savior, Jesus Christ during a debate, saying he will always allow his faith to influence everything he does.  Cruz has been collecting evangelical endorsements. Most of these... Read more

Change is a tough nut, really.  You can break your teeth on it, trying to stop it or trying to get hold of it.  And, if you open it wisely, you can find the sweet meat of a very healthy nutrition. If I am counting right, we’ve got fifteen candidates still competing in the major party campaigns, and every one of them is waving a flag for change.  There’s a lot of phony baloney, and there’s a ring of truth,... Read more

Congratulations! said the way-too-cheery voice on my phone message machine.  You have the chance to have breakfast with Ted Cruz! Just call back, and reserve a place at the table with Ted for tomorrow morning in the Old Town Hall . . . I didn’t call back and didn’t go. The Old Town Hall is not a diner, it holds hundreds of folks.  It’s a set-up for a standard stump speech, which I’ve already heard. I’m an Independent, and in... Read more

Here in New Hampshire, three weeks before the primary, there is no escaping the candidates. Click up a website on Google, and there they all are, pulsing their themes  in ads that invite you to click to see – and hear – them.  Turn on the TV and  their ads run back to back all through the nightly news, and increasingly more often as the days count down. Mailboxes are full of their fliers and the phone rings all evening... Read more

Lynchings:  for black Americans, they were a perpetual fear and a regular danger in southern states.  And especially for young black men.  White men, including police, were fired up by the KKK, brought together to sing and pray and drink whiskey, while being exhorted to defend their honor and the honor of white women, from disrespectful behavior by young black men. Disrespect could take any form: not looking down when spoken to; saying something other than Yessir; smiling while making... Read more

Jesus was not a Marrying Parson. He left us no sermons about marriage and family life, paid no house calls on couples with kids and gave no advice about handling the toddler temper, the unruly adolescent, or each other, as the years go by. At Cana, he does not offer a formal blessing to the bride and groom, nor does he offer a few words about love. When the wine runs out, his mother holds him responsible. Why, I wonder?... Read more

The numbers are staggering. It boggles the mind – a terribly British, pretty formulaic, Edwardian era manners drama has become the most watched television show in the world. (Well, excluding soccer). And I do mean the world. In 2012, while escaping it all on a cycling trip in Cambodia, Jim Carter, who plays the Carson the butler, found himself amid the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, wilting in the steamy climate — and suddenly swarmed by a group of Asian... Read more

In the movie Brooklyn, based on a story by Colm Toibin, a young Irish teen, Ellis Lacey, takes the risk of leaving all the world she has ever known, a small town in Ireland, to come to the US, to Brooklyn. She has never travelled, never been asea, never spoken to anyone from beyond her village, never encountered the strange and exotic, and scary, world that unfolds around her in Brooklyn. She has taken this tremendous risk because she has,... Read more