Category Archives: Media

For Those Who Still Hear the Guns

It’s easy to play the ugly American when the target is right here in America, in the American South. We love making fun of all those ignorant bohunks with their Southern twangs. As the Confederate battle flag comes down in South Carolina (and elsewhere), perhaps Civil War re-enactments will end, too. Then maybe we can […]

Race and Consequences

Take a long look at Rachel Dolezal, and don’t be surprised if you see Margaret Seltzer in blackface. Both of them needed the black experience to give their lives meaning. In today’s America, being white is so … boring. Especially basic white – no gayness, no bisexuality, no gender grievances, no family dysfunction, no historic […]

Black Tantrum in Baltimore

Excuse me, but did Martin Luther King, Jr. just get assassinated again? It would appear so. “We’re making history here in Baltimore, Maryland,” said Ephelyn Smith, who told NPR she took two buses and got lost to get to Freddie Gray’s funeral. Freddie Gray? He had a string of arrests dating back to 2007, most […]

A Narrative Without Moral

Which is the bigger journalistic sin – a media celebrity embellishing a war story to appear more heroic, or a journalism professor lying to free a murderer? Without a doubt, the first receives a lot more publicity. Who hasn’t heard about Brian Williams? But how many people know what David Protess did? If you haven’t […]

John and Cylvia’s Game Plan

Had Oregon’s former First Lady Cylvia Hayes looked more like Sonia Sotomayor, John Kitzhaber might still be governor. Had Hayes looked like a Supreme Court Justice, Kitzhaber probably wouldn’t have been so quick to show her off, to announce that she would be his “first lady” and that his staff should treat her as his […]

Passing the Kleenex

When the 11-year-old girl in Stevensville, Mont., didn’t want to have sex with her grandfather, he would sit on the couch and sulk. “He would … pout if he didn’t get what he wanted. … He’d wait to see if I could come out and look at him and feel sorry for him, but I […]

Interview With a Butthole

Wouldn’t it be funny if Kim Jong-un kidnapped Seth Rogen and held him hostage in North Korea, forcing him to make movies for the Supreme Leader? There is some historic precedent for this. In 1978, Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-Il, a movie buff, kidnapped Choi Eun Hee, a popular South Korean actress, and brought her […]

Bullwhipped in America

If the United States had never traded in African slaves, would we now have the troubles in Ferguson, Missouri? Probably not. The shooting by a police officer of a young man he believed was assaulting him and trying to steal his weapon would not have been judged on skin color. Slavery has been practiced at […]

The Virtuous Terrorist

It was a fine autumn day to sentence a man for attempting to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. A day as agreeable as that day in 2001 when terrorists brought down the Twin Towers. Mohamed O. Mohamud’s ambitions were smaller. He wanted to blow up the Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Ore. Two […]

Hanging on to the N-word

Twenty-five years after Spike Lee burned down Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, his people are still trying to do the right thing. Some of them don’t have a clue. Take LaRue Bell, a black senior at Cajon High School in San Bernardino, Calif. Earlier this month he said that when he arrived in math class, he asked […]