Al-Jazeera has started a new project–an online dictionary of words and phrases the mainstream media (which I–though not everyone–would argue they’re a part of) uses when writing/talking about whatever the…
There’s an awesome Mother Jones article on how we intake our science like lawyers and how our reasoning is inextricably linked to our emotional centers. We’re used to scientific evidence…
The founding editor of Bookslut offers an eclectic selection of books that might help us confront our own deeply American sense of political alienation. One of them I especially want…
This last year Ishmael Reed published a book of satirical essays targeting the current American media: Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers. Despite…
In 1968, the year I was born, Ronald Reagan was considered too extreme to be the Republican nominee for the presidency. Richard Nixon was the nominee and served a term…
“My parents, with admirable foresight, had their first child while they were on fellowships in the United States. My mother was in public health, and my father in a library-science…
Mohaned works at a small hotel in Palmyra, a desert town in northeast Syria. On the side, he helps a friend pitch taxi rides to tourists. (Mohaned speaks Arabic and…
Joe Lieberman is introducing something he calls the Terrorist Expatriation Act–TEA Act for short, though the redundancy seems lost on them–which would make it possible for the State Department to…
“Over the last decade Hispanic immigrants have become the main focus of American hate groups. According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, after September 11, 2001, the…
“It is the official art of authoritarian governments, aimed at extending state control through propaganda. Totalitarian kitsch exists to glorify the state, foster a personality cult surrounding the dictator and…