Tag Archives: politics

Tea Party Plays Chicken with America

Are there other way in which Rebel without a Cause applies to the budget battle? Maybe Jim Boehner is the weak father, unable to stand up to his Tea Party fantatics and failing to teach them that governing requires compromise. Maybe President Obama is the man in the apron, failing to robustly address a future deficit that will be unsustainable, thereby letting radicals step into the vacuum.

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A Plague on Both Your Houses!

“A plague on both your houses!” So I found myself venting at both Christian and Muslim zealots as I heard the recent news in Afghanistan. In this case, the Montagues were Pastor Terry Jones and his fundamentalist followers who burned a Koran in South Carolina while the Capulets were the fundamentalist Muslims (a crowd exiting a mosque) who attacked and killed United Nations workers in Afghanistan.

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The Triangle Fire and the Face of Labor

Suddenly everyone is interested in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and not only because tomorrow is the tragedy’s 100th anniversary. As the Wisconsin state legislature rolls back the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers, questions of worker protection are once again in headlines. The best poem I know that mentions the fire is “Shirt,” […]

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Leaders Who Don’t Want to Govern

“Nature, be thou my goddess,” exclaims Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester in King Lear as he prepares to embark on a course of action that, before he is stopped, results in the disinheritance of his legitimate brother, the blinding and banishment of his father, the poisoning of one sister by another, and the execution […]

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The Powerful Urge for Freedom

  I am in awe of the protesters in Tunisia and Bahrain and Egypt and Libya and Iran and Yemen and the Sudan and elsewhere in the Middle East. Their yearning for freedom is so great that, day after day, they put their lives on the line. I pray particularly for those in Libya and […]

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Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” Franklin Roosevelt memorably told a nation in the midst of its greatest economic crisis. As I look at America today, I see a lot of our politics dictated by fear. It is as though the unscrupulous and the irresponsible are stampeding us into extreme positions. Some want […]

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We Shall Not Be Moved

I have to give the American far right an award for chutzpa: somehow they have managed to turn every one of their failures into an attack point. A schizophrenic student buys a glock and turns it on a Congresswoman, a child, and others in a shopping mall? Use this as an argument that we need […]

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Mexican-U.S. Relations: A Touch of Evil

Film Friday I have been teaching an adult film class this semester in conjunction with a fascinating exhibit on fences that our college’s art gallery has mounted with help from the Smithsonian Museum. My contribution is to exhibit and talk about films that focus on fences, walls, and other types of boundaries. This past Tuesday […]

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Twain and Libya’s Bloody Endgame

The slaughter continues on in Libya, with the number of dead now in the thousands as Qaddafi turns his mercenaries, machine guns and tanks on his own people. While other parts of the country are in the arms of the resistance, he is holed up in Tripoli. It appears that he will indeed fight to […]

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