What I Believe: Manifesto
I haven’t gotten here because I’m an ideologue.
Read moreTag Archives: democracy
What I Believe, Part III: The Roadmap
Three core values inform everything I believe.
Read moreWhat I Believe, Part II: The Manifesto
Three core values inform everything I believe.
Read moreJohn, Elizabeth, Rielle and the dumpster fire at the end of the world
There’s a train rolling to a stop just outside of town. It’s a long train, and each flatbed carries 20 dumpsters. Each dumpster is filled to overflowing with nuclear waste and flaming grease. As the copter shot pulls away the final credits roll over the first few bars of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” We can
Read moreThe Best CDs of 2009: the Album of the Year, and the Band of the Decade
Constitution 2.0: Money Talks and Bullshit Walks
Bad attitude and strange bedfellows at the dawn of the Reich, and What Would Hunter Do, anyway? Ever since five members of the Supreme Court declared the Constitution unconstitutional yesterday morning I’ve been in something of a snit. Along the way, I’ve said a variety of things that struck me as insightful, pithy, even witty. Others, however – bitter, lonely
Read moreDemocracy & Elitism 4: equality, opportunity and leveling up the playing field
Pulitzer- and Emmy-winner William Henry‘s famous polemic, In Defense of Elitism (1994), argues that societies can be ranked along a spectrum with “egalitarianism” on one end and “elitism” on the other. He concludes that America, to its detriment, has slid too far in the direction of egalitarianism, and in the process that it has abandoned the elitist impulse that made
Read moreDemocracy & Elitism 2: performance elitism vs privilege elitism, and why the difference matters
Part two in a series. “Elite” hasn’t always been an epithet. In fact, if we consider what the dictionary has to say about it, it still signifies something potentially worthy. Potentially. For instance: e·lit·ism or é·lit·ism (-ltzm, -l-) n. 1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived
Read moreWhy isn’t Rush happy?: Limbaugh inadvertently illustrates democracy in action
America’s democratic ideal doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and in these cases it feeds our cynicism to the point where we’re tempted to conclude that the very possibility of true freedom is a sham. I know whereof I speak, because there are few people out there more soaked in bile than I am. Still, this whole
Read moreTen years on: was Columbine the rule or the exception?
Part two in a series How did it happen? Why did it happen? There’s simply no way to measure how many hours have devoted to these questions in the ten years and four days since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire at Columbine High School, and while we don’t (and never will) have all the answers, we do have
Read moreLet the economy die?! Rushkoff’s goals are noble but his plan needs work
A couple of weeks ago author and NYU media theory lecturer Douglas Rushkoff penned a provocative essay for Arthur Magazine. Entitled “Let It Die,” the essay explains why we should stop trying to save the economy. In a perfect world, the stock market would decline another 70 or 80 percent along with the shuttering of about that fraction of our
Read moreUp next: Meanings
When we launched Michael Tracey’s series on the Ramsey case we frankly didn’t know what to expect. We hoped for intelligent engagement around the essay’s central thesis – a runaway media and what it tells us about the sad state of our democracy. We feared that the place would be overrun by nutters. In the end, though, neither our hopes
Read moreFrom Christmas to August: an S&R exclusive on the JonBenet Ramsey case and what it says about America
Few events in recent memory have inflamed the American imagination quite like the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. More to the point, it’s hard to recall a case where passion and profound ignorance of the facts came together in such an explosive mass media cocktail. Ramsey’s death remains unsolved, but how many dollars has it generated for the nation’s “press”? When
Read moreBlogging USA: Thinkworld vs. Shoutworld
This article originally appeared in the Shoptalk section of the Editor & Publisher online edition. — High hopes for the watchdogs in the blogosphere during Campaign 2004 were only partly realized, as consumers strapped on their blinders and hung a fast left or right, looking for a witty putdown they might agree with. (November 13, 2004) — Expectations were high
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