Miniver Cheevy

David “ The Wire ” Simon, from an interview with Bill Moyers. These really are the excess people in America. Our economy doesn’t need them...

Think about how poisoned the word “liberal” is in American political discourse. Now think about this: almost 1 in 6 Americans disapprov...

Matt Zoller Seitz perfectly explains something I didn't even realize should have an explanation. Hollywood is a dream factory run mos...

A Norwegian movingly responds to the terrorist attack in in his country. He wanted to save the world from the muslim threat. He was a...

Like any good geek, I have a lot of love for Christopher Nolan's Batman films, and I eagerly look forward to the third and final instal...

An extra thought (after my earlier Captain America post ) in honor of the Captain America movie: John Seavey’s wonderful speculation t...

So being a geek, I've enjoyed the embarrassment of riches in superhero movies this summer. Thor was good fun and Asgard looked great...

Timothy Burke, in the middle of struggling with why we should even talk about politics at all, says a bunch of things I think: I think in...

Yes, Minister is one of the funniest, cleverest television shows ever made. It’s also a work of political propaganda. The original is...

Conservatives consistently talk about reducing government spending. Lately we've been hearing a lot of talk from them about the evils...

Posts on this subject are obviously fraught, so first: I keep an index of resources the moral question is simpl...

I consider this essay largely supplanted by my later, hopefully more astringent, version , but you may still find it interesting. To...

Yes. The only way to cultivate organic symbols is midrash. As a discourse, midrash is completely different from scientific discourse. [......

Lady Gaga: “Essentialized conceptions of gender, sexuality, and other identity categories compel a celebration of diversity. Also, at H...

I stumbled across this clever little trifle today. It's a takeoff on Ice Cube's “It Was A Good Day,” depicting a good day as a you...

X-Men: First Class is elaborately plotted, smart, and melodramatic. It's full of in-jokes, sexy ladies in absurd costumes, and symboli...

This, in a nutshell, is how I reconcile magickal practice and the understanding of reality we get from the natural sciences. I take Uncle ...

I just succumbed to the temptation to respond to someone who said this: I do not want anyone to assume this is anything to do with trying...

I used to go for cocktails at a restaurant bar near my old apartment, where they sold “soup shots,” which were exactly what they sounded li...

Via Rick “Nixonland” Perlstein, I learn of a disconcerting article about the demographics of affluence in Ad Age, seen through the creepy...

In a couple of recent conversations, I've heard folks invoke the Manhattan Project as a demonstration that given a vigorous enough gove...

A few months back, I snarked to a friend: few things say culturally conservative American Protestant hegemony with an “I’m not an anti...