Category Archives: Politics

Blunt-Talking Non-Lunatic Mavericks?

John McCain lost any residual appeal to me when he revealed very clearly around 2003 that he had gotten off the Straight Talk Express and boarded the Fawning Courtier Slow Coach instead. Now he’s even managed to paint himself into … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 12 Comments

More on Free Slave-Holding Phallocratic Fascists Defending Freedom

War Nerd says it way better than I did.

Posted in Politics, Popular Culture | 7 Comments

Champagne in the Castle

This story has led to the resignation of the head of the Smithsonian. A familiar pattern in both business and public life, but often times these scandals don’t touch the people they really ought to touch. Namely, the people whose … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments

The Granularity of Respect

There was a surprisingly heated discussion in a meeting I was at today about adding transgendered identities to a list of recognized identities in our anti-discrimination policy. Part of the problem, in my view, was that the document we were … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 9 Comments

If Presidential Perjury Worried You, If You Followed Investigations Into Whitewater Intently…

Then I assume you’re far more concerned about the far more systematic and dangerous abuse of executive power by the current administration. Whether Lewis Libby is a fall guy or not, whether there’s a grey area in terms of his … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 7 Comments

Why Centralization Isn’t the Answer

I continue to be frustrated by the folks criticizing American universities and academic culture who imply (or outright say) that tight central control over public and maybe even private institutions is the solution. My mind especially reels when this comes … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Politics | 8 Comments

Media Non-Literacy and Representational Authoritarianism

Following some links from a discussion of the visual imagery in some computer games, I ended up at the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, as well as a short BBC news item on the study. … Continue reading

Posted in Politics, Popular Culture | 3 Comments

Obama and Blackness

The worst job interview I ever had for an academic position included among its memorably difficult moments an interrogator with extremely strong Afrocentric views. She started by asking me what books I had read recently that I found useful or … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, Politics | 3 Comments

A Quick Comment on Hillary Clinton

The problem I have with Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate is not that she’s too liberal (or not liberal enough), not her gender, not her association with Bill Clinton, not many of the things that are said for or … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 25 Comments

That Was the Month That Was

Catching up on some of the things that I failed to comment on in the last month but nevertheless have opinions about. 1) I’m deeply impressed by the report of the MLA’s Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Blogging, Politics | 3 Comments