Jen McCreight has a very smart take on the issue of a lack of ethnic diversity among we seculars. The biggest problem in her mind is the denial that a problem exists by many within the atheistic ranks. Many dismiss it as a simple fact of the matter, and that to highlight minorities at things like conferences and in the media would be to, as one commenter put it, default to “second-rate” personalities in favor of the allegedly first-rate old white men... Read more
That’s where the two thugs who attacked me are going, I found out today. I don’t know for how long yet. I hope to be able to tell you more in the coming weeks. But that much I do know. I guess it’s something. But I can just imagine them, indignant pouts on their faces. Angry, cursing me, cursing the police, the attorneys. Not changed at all, not feeling sorry for anything they’ve done, just feeling embarassed for having been caught, feeling wronged for... Read more
I still intend to write in more detail about my recent assault, but what’s most on my mind about it in my day to day life has to do with my kid. You see, in the attack, I was knocked down face-first by the thugs, and braced myself each time with my hands. Then, as I tried to stagger home following the attack, I fell at least once face-forward and again braced with my splayed hands. So now they are strained... Read more
John Heilemann might be my favorite political journalist these days, if for no other reason than because of this phrase from a 2007 profile of Mitt Romney: At first glance, he has the appearance of an attractive standard-bearer. A successful businessman (he made a fortune as the CEO of Bain & Company and founder of Bain Capital) and organizer of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics before becoming the Bay State’s governor, in office he pushed for the passage of a health-care... Read more
Michael Gerson has gone off the rails. Common wisdom holds that he’s one of the sane Republicans, a man of words and ideas rather than rage and wrath. I’m sorry, Mr. Gerson, we’re going to have to revoke your sanity card. Gerson’s column this week is jaw-dropping in its pandering and its juvenility, betraying any claim he has to being considered a reasonable conservative voice. Sound strong? Go with me. Gerson writes: … President Obama has hit upon a closing argument. “Part... Read more
In 2004, I decided to begin to move away from my life in theatre to one in professional politics. I was tired of being on the sidelines, feeling unable to take part in what felt like was “the important stuff” while doing Shakespeare around the country (which I also think is very important, but I’d been doing it for years by then). Coming off a life of a touring actor, I was, in effect, following the lyrics of Mike Doughty: My circus... Read more
Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, Ken Buck, made a little news today saying on Meet the Press that he believes that being gay is “a choice,” and that homosexuality may be akin to alcoholism in that some can be predisposed to it from birth. His opponent, incumbent (and appointed) senator Michael Bennett, asserted this placed Buck outside the “mainstream” of opinion. There’s a lot wrong with this beyond the obvious. First, I’ll tackle the lesser infraction. The question of whether... Read more
Ryan Lizza’s recent New Yorker piece on the aborted climate change legislation of John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsay Graham is dispiritingly illuminating. Like previous long-form pieces we’ve seen of late (George Packer’s New Yorker article on the Senate, Todd Purdham’s morbid look at Washington in Vanity Fair) it is heavily discouraging in its recounting the mangling of a well-intentioned bill, as well as the juvenile and often pathetic relationship between official Washington and wealthy lobbying groups. Perhaps inadvertently, the Lizza piece presented a contrast that to me was inescapable;... Read more
For your reading pleasure, I present the first comment posted on a short and fairly banal Politico blog post about Charlie Crist and the Florida U.S. Senate race, written by “Eileen for Freedom/Liberty”: LEAVE NO DEMOCRATZI ‘LOON’ STANDING IN NOVEMBER’! America…I believe there are more old time Democrats…like my parents and grandparents…then there are Democratzi ‘loons’! Those patriots will NOT vote for this fraud and the continued agenda of the Democratzi ‘loons’ who are seeking to destroy America from within one big spending... Read more
I was at the RNC’s winter meeting in 2007, immediately following their electoral drubbing the previous year, interning for ABC News. There, I watched Ken Mehlman, manager of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and then the outgoing RNC chair, give a speech on expanding the GOP’s appeal beyond its base. Even then, it struck me as out of place. Yes, this RNC meeting was full of despondency, reevaluation and the nursing of wounds, but even following a massive defeat in which... Read more
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