On Monday, I used the time-honored journalistic dodge of “ethically” floating a sensational but unverified allegation by stating it in the form of a question, to wit: Clarence Thomas didn’t just ‘vote black’, did he? Well, according to Mark Joseph Stern, over at Slate, he didn’t. Instead, he voted “Thomas.” “Clarence Thomas Joins Liberals, Shocks…
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Ross Douthat (yes, that Ross Douthat) explains it all for you
I have been perhaps overly hard on Ross Douthat over the years, though I can say with some pride that I haven’t called him “Ross Dumbfuck” since 2012. But, well, that was then and this is now. Ross more or less hits it out of the park with his latest column, “House Republicans Go Off…
Call My Agent!—They’ll always have Paris, because they f*cking live there
Searching for six hours—well, more like 315 minutes—of Trump-free consciousness? Then, if you haven’t already, sign up for Netflix and check out Dix Pour Cent, aka 10 Percent, aka Call My Agent! (which is what Netflix calls it), a catch as catch can tale of agents, actors, directors, wives, mistresses, boyfriends, sons, daughters, and other…
Trumplosion or Trompe-l’œil?
The past several months have been a Trump-loather’s1 dream. Watching the big guy’s world go sideways in so many ways—well, it’s so satisfying that one can’t help but wonder, “When did I ever get everything I wanted all the time?” It’s as though “science” had perfected a peppermint ice cream that causes you to lose…
A Limo at Risk, Part I: A skeptical view of American education reform, 1983-2017
(Author’s note: In the spring of 1996 I began to work as an editor/writer for a newly created non-profit called the “Education Statistics Services Institute,” whose sole function was to support the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Education. I was assigned work on the National Assessment of Educational Progress,…
Why Did Hillary “Lose”?
The most important, and the ugliest, thing to happen in 2016 was the decision of 46 percent of the American electorate to vote for the worst major party presidential candidate in American history. The second most important was the decision of 48 percent to vote for Hillary Clinton. So why did Hillary “lose”? It is…
Rich Bitch Betsy DeVos just can’t stop stepping on her own vagina
Hey, Literature R Us is nothing if not gender appropriate. In case you hadn’t heard, new Sec of Ed Betsy DeVos just couldn’t help making a White House meeting with the presidents of HistorIcally Black Colleges and Universities all about her by “explaining” that these institutions, created in response to southern racism, were all about…
Omigod! That wasn’t a bowling ball bouncing down stairs! It was Noel Kahn’s head!
Yes, Noel is the latest in the cast of Pretty Little Liars to buy the farm. In the first season Noel threw a girl downstairs and now in the seventh someone threw him downstairs, or at least “a piece of him”, as Horatio might say. I started watching PLL after my girlfriend started watching it,…
Ross Douthat, shocked to see Democrats doing to Republicans what Republicans did to Democrats
Ross Douthat, waxing witty, as is his wont, professes to be amused by “the most predictable of spectacles: a liberal holy war against Betsy DeVos, just confirmed as the new secretary of education by Mike Pence’s tiebreaking vote.” What’s the fuss, asks Ross: “the bulk of DeVos’s school-choice work places her only somewhat to the…
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald Trump
On November 9, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte engineered a coup that made him First Consul and ended republican government in France. By the date of the Republican calendar then in effect in France, the date was 18 Brumaire in the year VIII.1 In 1852, Karl Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, commemorating in contempt…