November 10, 2016
So Trump’s Not Your President, Huh?
In his first post in almost two years, Killough explains his perspective of the election as a son of the New York Republican establishment....
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June 10, 2014
The Cognitive Dissonance of the Modern American Conservative
I’ve long learned to skim over online comments left by wingnuts both right and left. Just as you know to steer clear of shouty-crackers schizos in the streets, you shouldn’t engage or even acknowledge extremists.
Still, I couldn’t help but respond to a right-wing whackjob the other day, who stated that Las Vegas meth-head shooters Jared and Amanda Miller were socialists because they were Neo-Nazis.
November 5, 2013
It’s November 5th, So Where’s the Revolution?
Since I can remember, I’ve preferred the fifth of November, a.k.a. Guy Fawkes Day, to Halloween. It was a secret I kept close because it’s a perverse preference; it goes against what everyone else likes, and most Americans have no idea what it is, anyway. It’s also a rather plebian celebration, a cause for British working-class hooligans to misapply the name of anarchy and burn stuff and torture cats… there are always horrible tales of cat torture, usually with firecrackers.
The similarly themed American Independence Day has never held any interest for me. Yes, it celebrates a worthy revolution
October 1, 2013
Content Creation: What the Shutdown Meltdown Says About Us
For those of us who loathe the modern GOP with as much vehemence as they loathe the Obama Administration — with the notable difference that our loathing is rational and based in verifiable, substantive fact — the latest shitstorm out of Washington has ceased to be boring business as usual with this do-nothing GOP-led Congress; it’s becoming something of a cause for celebration. Or it would be if it isn’t seeming that the inexorable decline of the GOP,
November 2, 2012
ELECTIONS 2012: Seeking That Objective Reality
From the viewpoint of my own particular reality, it makes no sense whatsoever to vote along party lines. It’s a type of tribal thinking that I have never been able to grasp; it just seems so terribly wrong. And when it comes to America in particular, with its leadership position in the world, it seems all the wronger. As with any job, we hire a person based on qualifications, not party allegiance; that’s something China and Iran does, not here.
A piece I wrote over a year ago (shit, but this election has been endless!), “Do Republicans Dream of Electric Elephants?,” has been getting some traction recently on a political forum by way of a quotation of mine someone appropriately named Bonkers reposted. I’d forgotten I’d written these words, but I stand by them even more today:
I guess my warped way of thinking just can’t embrace the notion of supporting a political party. I understand the need for governance of some kind to maintain social order, I understand being conservative in your views, or liberal, but I question the whole concept of being part of a political organization when so many members of that party are so manifestly corrupt, morally subversive or just plain vile. Why would you want to be part of anything that has even a little bit of rot in it?
October 23, 2012
Left Wing, Right Wing: Chicken Wings?
Last night’s debate was ostensibly about foreign policy, but was really a zinger-fest, a game of darts with the candidates using each other as targets. Obama scored more bull’s-eyes and therefore carried the night. “Obama Stuns With More Sharp, Snarky Zingers,” trumpeted HuffPo, quite correctly.
September 21, 2012
America’s Croissant Moment
Like any media organization, we have to keep an eye on our stats to determine which kinds of stories are more popular. Despite the fact that our most viewed article on a single day ever, We Own You, Marcia Bachmann, was a political one, in general we do much better adhering to our core competencies: entertainment and fashion. When this site was still a group blog, I used to joke that we aspired to be as fluffy as a Dior tulle gown, and I stick by that joke. Despite the fact Galliano has stopped designing for that venerable couturier, no doubt entirely because of my piece about once having caused him to be spanked, their gowns have become no less fluffy under Bill Gaytten’s design direction.