by JS O’Brien

In case you missed it, the Daily Show’s John Stewart called out Fox’s Sean Hannity during his November 10 broadcast. It seems that Hannity’s show covered the anti-health care bill rally in Washington, and Hannity asserted that more than 20,000 people showed up (his guest, Michele Bachmann, asserted that the number could be as high as 45,000). Hannity then went on to show footage of the demonstration and, sure enough, it appeared that there were many thousands of people on hand. Or were there?

Stewart’s staff discovered something curious about Hannity’s footage. Though the recent demonstration took place on a crisp, sunny, fall day, (as demonstrated by the initial images in the segment) the footage of the crowd showed a cloudy sky and the dense, green foliage of summer. Stewart correctly pointed out that Hannity had used footage from Glen Beck’s 912 rally in September.

Last night, Sean Hannity acknowledged Stewart’s assertion and apologized for “an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.” Full Story »

by Ann Ivins

if legitimate news only gives you the blues
and to cogitate causes distress
if crazed peroration fills you with elation
and bile never fails to impress

if your pupils dilate during civil debate
as you long for a rushian screed
and the times and the post and the bleeding heart host
are far too much trouble to read Full Story »

by John Harvin

Or I did. Now I am not so sure.

I voted for Obama, defended him from the snarks of my Hillary-supporting friends, and maxed out my contribution. In Indianapolis, I walked down dim halls that smelled of vomit and urine begging sick old people to vote.

But his acceptance of the Nobel Prize has turned me off worse than a garlic-breath kiss.  I don’t care that he doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t “deserve” to be President either. (Who does?) I mind that he’s letting himself be used to bad purpose. As Meatloaf sang, “I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that.” Full Story »

by Kelly Bearden

Full Story »

by Rich Herschlag

I want to keep the health insurance I have—which is no health insurance. I was dropped when I had a heart attack. My insurance company called it a preexisting condition, and they were right. Heart attacks have been around a very long time. The important thing is that I treasure my insurance company’s free market right to maximize profits at all moral and ethical costs. I would willingly die defending that right. And now, finally, I may get that chance. Full Story »

by Tom Farmer

Life in the Wrong Lane: Why Journalists Go in When Everyone Else Wants Out by Greg Dobbs is a vivid time-travel dispatch from the heyday of big-iron network TV news.
iUniverse, 205pp

“Sadat has been shot. If you can get to Cairo, do it.”

Breathes there a real reporter who would not thrill to this flash, sent June 6, 1981 by ABC News to its forces across Europe? Got to ice that dinner date, honey. Here’s another chance to narrate history… and spend a fresh bucket of money.

Full Story »

by Joseph Domino

There is perhaps no topic in America where we talk out of two sides of our mouths more than Education. Education is in crisis at all levels, but at the college and university level it cries out and no one seems to be listening. Everyone says education is important but our standards continue to drop and we fall behind other countries. Faculty, the hearts and souls of universities, are being relegated to “operating costs” which are forever scrutinized for reduction. The adjunct system, around a long time, provides that cost control, and it has slowly been eroding opportunities for full-time professors and the salaries and benefits that accompany that status.

When adjunct faculty handle a full-time course load plus work other part-time jobs to make ends meet it compromises the quality of their instruction which affects students. Full Story »

by Josh Sternberg

Michael Vick could be the best thing to happen to the American reputation in quite some time. His heinous acts of violence and horrific judgment were undeniably stupid. But the lesson learned is not about dogfighting or about why individuals do stupid things. It’s about the nature of our society.

America can show the world that we are not only a nation of law, but also a society of forgiveness – that someone could commit a crime, spend their time in a rehabilitation facility and come out to be a productive member of society. We all have made mistakes, some larger than others. But in the end, we all subscribe to the belief that if we make amends, the past becomes just that: the past. Full Story »

by Wufnik

In thinking about technological change, and our relative inability to often recognize the transformational technologies at the time they come along, consider the electric guitar. Particularly the solid-body electric guitar invented by Les Paul, who passed away Thursday at the age of 94. The NY Times story does him justice – he was just messing around and came up with this thing because he couldn’t find it anywhere. And I don’t imagine that in his wildest dreams he could have foreseen the impact it would have; certainly no one else did at the time.

But in retrospect, it’s clear that the electric guitar is one of those things that changed everything. First came rock and roll, which led to the sixties, when led to the breakdown of everything…. No, wait, first came rock and roll, which led to drugs, which led to the breakdown of everything…. No, darnit, let’s see, first came rock and roll, then came… I can’t remember. Full Story »

by John Harvin

“If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas,” supposedly said Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, first woman governor of Texas, in opposing the teaching of foreign languages in Texas schools.  In fact, the college-educated Ferguson probably didn’t say it. But the misquote endures because it captures pretty well one particular segment of the American population – those who are almost always against learning and science, particularly when that science is “inconvenient.”

Whether it’s evolution or landing on the moon or daylight savings time or climate change, there is always a group of people who are just plain agin’ it. Full Story »

by Pollyanna Sunshine

When I first heard about Sarah Palin’s resignation on NPR last Friday, I too was sucked into the whirlwind of speculation—Is this a preemptive retreat from some looming scandal? Is it the first step in a 2012 presidential bid? Why so rambling and incoherent? What is she saying, and if she has any higher political aspirations, why doesn’t she have somebody competent writing her speeches?

After thinking about this for a few days, seeing what the MSM and blogosphere have had to say and finally reading the full text of her speech—posted verbatim in all its rambling, ungrammatical glory on the gubernatorial website–I am only surprised that so many journalists and commentators persist in reading this move as part of some Machiavellian political scheme. At the same time, I fear the schadenfreude crowd may be disappointed in their hopes of a really, really juicy scandal that would take her down for good. Full Story »

by Rich Herschlag

He was only fifty. He had dozens of upcoming appearances planned. His sudden death this past week sent shock waves around the world. There were warning signs, but in the end few people saw it coming. The exact cause of his death is the topic of endless speculation and will not be known for some time. Until that time, the rumor mill will be in full swing on cable news shows and blog sites as this tragic story increasingly takes on a strange new life of its own. Full Story »

by Jennifer Angliss

My city, like many other municipalities these days, has a bit of a budget crunch. Expenses exceed income and so cuts must be made. One of the first things my city cut was the flower pots that decorate major intersections in the summers. To me, that seems like a reasonable cut. Yes, the flowers are beautiful. But they cost $20,000 per year (including water and labor costs). And at the same time, our library is struggling with its budget and has a hiring freeze, even with several open positions. In my opinion, if you’ve got an underfunded library it’s not wise to spend taxpayer money on flowers.

In the end, the Rotary Club took up the cause and donated money for the planters. Wonderful, I say. We get to keep the flowers without spending very much city money on them. They are still watered and tended by city workers who have been reassigned from jobs like weeding and picking up litter, but the bulk of the expense has been shouldered by the Rotary Club and private citizens.

However, (you knew there was a however coming, right?) I am a bit concerned about the attitudes of my fellow citizens on this. Full Story »

by JS O’Brien

Despite pie-in-the-sky economic theory, competitively priced, quality products do not always trump those of lesser quality in the marketplace. A variation of Sony’s Beta format video was used for decades by professionals because of its superiority to the VHS format, but this didn’t stop VHS from becoming the dominant consumer format. McDonald’s does not make food that is cheaper, more nutritious, or even better tasting than a good sandwich from a local deli, but this hasn’t stopped the burgermeister from selling untold billions of its artery-clogging offerings. The US health care system gets arguably fewer positive results per dollar spent than any other health care system in the world, but there are US consumers who will defend it as being “the best” right up to their untimely deaths.

The truth is that marketing techniques often trump product value when determining marketplace winners and losers. Full Story »

by Phil Rockstroh

Even as President Barrack Obama waxed eloquent in Cairo, Egypt, on the moral imperatives of the community of nations, public opinion polls released in the United States revealed that, by a substantial percentage, its citizens believe torture is an acceptable option for interrogation of suspects deemed terrorists by various US governmental agencies. In addition, other polls show a majority of the American public hold the opinion that the all-American theme park of state torture, located at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open for business and continue to welcome guests from around the globe, taking them for the ride of their lives through the dark id of the American psyche.

These revelations should not come as a shock. Torture, official secrecy, and other sundry apparatus and accouterments of the national security state are about the only viable enterprises remaining in this declining nation. Full Story »

By Sara Robinson

Dear Conservatives:

Your fellow Americans demand an answer — and we want it now. Just one simple question:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

Just answer the question. Yes or no. Don’t insult us with elisions, evasions, dithering, qualifications, or conditional answers. We need to know what your intentions are — and we need to know NOW. People are being shot dead in the streets of America at the rate of several per month now. You may not want responsibility for this — but the whackadoodles pulling the triggers make no bones about who put them up to this.

You did. Full Story »

by Anam

Been a long hard week. All around the college where I work as a benefits coordinator, programs are out of funding for the summer. Financial aid is strained to the breaking point by the influx of new students. Students come flooding in for vocational training designed to switch them out of their now-defunct line of work.

Worker retraining can pay for tuition, but not books. What program offers to pay for childcare? Can I qualify for financial aid if I worked most of last year? I have to stay in school to keep my food stamps; who has grant money? I field a dozen phone calls a day from students trying to find a way out of the current economic situation.

Trying to find a program to help each student is taxing at best and on bad days it is heartbreaking. Our state is broke and our social service safety net gets more threadbare each month. Full Story »

By Jennifer Angliss

When I was a kid, I listened to the “Free to Be… You and Me” album incessantly. We had it on vinyl (not 8-track!) and I probably came close to wearing it out. At the time, I didn’t really care for the track “William’s Doll”. The chorus of “A doll! A doll! William wants a doll!” grated on my nerves–actually, it still does. But the song tells a story that I think is really important. William is a 5 year old boy who wants a doll. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think that this is a terrible thing for a little boy to want. His dad gets him all sorts of sports equipment instead, which he also enjoys, but he still craves that doll. Finally, Grandma hears about this and gives him a doll. Full Story »

by Rich Herschlag and Bill Staples

We knew LA was a little weird, but we really had no idea. Not even a year out there and sweet old Manuel Ramirez from the Bronx is caught taking human chorionic gonadotropin, a female fertility drug. Soon, Manny will be studying Kabbalah, eating quiche, and opening a Botox clinic in Malibu.

This wasn’t exactly juicing. Let’s call it milking. There are boobs and there are man boobs. Now there are Manny boobs. First there was Octo-mom. Now there’s Octo-Manny. This is not Manny being Manny. This is Manny being Mommy. Just in time for Mother’s Day. And this Mother’s Day, Mom got a hypodermic needle and a syringe.

This is not so much a fifty-game suspension as it is a maternity leave. Full Story »

by Terry Hargrove

The last two weeks of April are a trying time for me. It’s when I typically introduce my middle school students to poetry, real poetry. For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve waded past Shel Silverstein and into the murky metaphoric waters beyond. It’s also when I am inevitably tricked into reading large tracts of adolescent poetry written about old boyfriends or girlfriends or others “who have done me wrong.”

My poetry unit always follows a predictable pattern. I start with a work that is sure to get their attention, and this year that was “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford. In that poem, the narrator has come upon a deer that has been hit by a car on a narrow road, and his civic responsibility is to push the carcass into the ravine, so other motorists won’t be endangered. Full Story »