Humor has certainly changed.
Imagine listening to this 100 year old humor record, for which someone in 1916 paid the equivalent of $30 in today’s money, and finding it funny.
Emmett
Raise taxes on the rich?
This meme has been making the rounds, in various forms, online. It’s almost credible. Yes, taxes were so high in the ’50s and ’60s that many reasonable people thought them to be confiscatory. Yes, America built the interstate highway system — but used eminent domain to do so. Would you be crowing about this accomplishment if it was your…
Read more
Guess that tune!
Okay folks, let’s see who listened to the radio in the ’70s. This tune I hadn’t heard in 40 years, but I never forgot it: indeed, I hum it to myself at times and have to wonder why. Give it a listen here: Guess this tune!
Trump and the Republicans
Donald Trump is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party in this year, 2016. This is so beyond belief that I’m sure years later as I read this entry, I will feel an enormous sense of relief that this nonsense is over. What has it meant, really, that a dimwit like Trump has a shot…
Read more
The New Arab Wars: a review
This book, by Marc Lynch, is worth reading if you are looking, as I was, for a book that puts the whole post-Arab Spring thing into perspective. If any part of the world is misunderstood by Americans, surely it is the Middle East. It’s a very complex part of the world, made infinitely more complex…
Read more
The future of elections
We have the extraordinary good fortune of living in the greatest period in human history. Most Americans would blithely dismiss that statement even without seeing it as untrue. It’s like being healthy: you just wake up and do your thing. Nobody but a survivor of a near-death experience thinks about waking up and thanking the universe for…
Read more
Why Sanders Is Nonsense.
Okay, allow me a little hyperbole. He’s not an abstraction. Bernie Sanders probably has a higher IQ than my cat, or me, for that matter. It’s just that he is gifted by nature with the appearance of a crazy professor, but he’s not been given a concomitant dose of professorial sense. Here is his stance…
Read more
Ben Carson is one of the scariest people in America.
Yep, you probably didn’t hear it here first: Ben Carson is nuts. But this isn’t your web site, it’s MINE, and I can say what I want. So there. Ben Carson is nuts. He scares the shit out of me. That slow delivery. That oh-so-sure cadence. You hear it and think, “Where have I heard that before? …
Read more
Cuba! (Posted for a friend.)
Cuba has been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in fighting Ebola in Africa along with its outstanding health care solidarity work around the world. And with good reason! When most countries including our own stood aside as the epidemic raged in West Africa, Cuba without hesitation rushed to the side of…
Read more
The Real Thing
It just occurred to me: at the root of all human behavior is the desire to discover and to hold The Real Thing. It can be a god. It can be a can of soda. It can be an author. It can be a house. It can be an article in a magazine. The Real Thing gives us…
Read more