The Lie of the So-Called Liberal Media

For a couple decades now, but especially during the rise to power of  Limbaugh, Gingrich, et al., we’ve heard how liberal the “mainstream media” supposedly is. It’s probably the most devastatingly successful con job of the last two decades, if not in journalism history.

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Bernie Madoff Isn’t Our Worst Villain

 The mass media were all over the Madoff fraud story recently, broadcasting how well-heeled Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme the size of Fort Knox and bilked so many people, including old and dear friends, out of billions of dollars.
The story has its own hero, Harry Markopolos, the whistleblower whom no one heard, and its own red herring distraction, Bernie’s wife, [...]

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Disney Does the Zoo

I have a lot of ambivalence about animals in cages or pens. It’s born of childhood visits to Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota, and seeing the pacing cats behind bars in small cages. Fortunately, those cages are long gone now, and zoological parks have generally been upgraded and are more “humane” (ahem). Someone [...]

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My Most Hair-Raising Moment

Okay, so we were at Disney, and Disney isn’t really known for hair-raising rides. So the competition wasn’t too stiff.

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The egalitarian impulse

What is this neural spark inside us that brings about concepts such as one person, one vote; the idea we might ever achieve justice for all; the notion that any one of us could be president or famous or a millionaire? Why did we set up a society that strives so, against the odds, to give others a fair shake?

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California Proposition 8 — An Elegant Argument

 One of the best arguments I’ve heard so far on Prop. 8, the California proposition banning gay marriage that was heavily funded by church groups, was a letter to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 30, 2008, titled “Unholy matrimony.”

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Thankfulness for National Public Radio, amidst a stumbling

I had NPR on my radio headset while walking the dogs out along the shoreline Thanksgiving morning, as they discussed Obama’s cabinet and economic panel selections so far. Both the interviewer and his political pundit agreed that “left wing bloggers” are upset so far about Obama’s choices, and they made much of the irony that conservatives [...]

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Bankruptcy for Ford, GM, and Chrysler

 Amidst the national election, the mortgage crisis, the banking bail-out, and everything else going on from endangered polar bears to Somali pirates, I’ve been listening to the pundits talk about throwing a $25 billion bone to the automakers. At first, I accepted the notion that cars are different from airlines. An airline can reorganize under bankruptcy without [...]

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Hey, the News Is Fun to Watch Again!

 Well, maybe fun isn’t the right word — maybe “not too depressing” or “capable of disseminating optimism” or “might increase your faith in our leaders.”

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Hope and Apprehension for the President-Elect

 Two thoughts about our president-elect:
 
The first is that I share the optimism for his victory – at home and abroad. While it is foolish to become too optimistic about what anyone can accomplish given the fractious state of the electorate and body politic, the change of administrations does remind me of a joke I heard a long ago about [...]

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