How wrong mere logic can be when it becomes detached from reality. –Edward Upward, 1988. With fakes everywhere—including fake news sites, fake news stories, faked incidents and even fake journalists—teaching journalism or any… Continue reading →

Are we stuck with the hatred unleashed by Donald Trump’s success? Are we seeing something that has always been there, but repressed, bubbling to the surface? I don’t think it’s quite so simple.… Continue reading →

Originally posted on ACADEME BLOG:
In 2012, I proposed the term ‘breitbarting’ with a narrower definition than, I think, the word deserves today. At that time, I limited it to what Andrew Breitbart…

Doughboys on the Western Front: Memories of American Soldiers in the Great War appeared last week and I am quite pleased with it. One of the people I discovered in compiling the book… Continue reading →

Originally posted on ACADEME BLOG:
There’s an essay on Chronicle,com by NYU professor Eric Klinenberg called “What Trump’s Win Compels Scholars To Do.” After discussing the overreach of Big Data, Klinenberg writes: There’s…

Ninety-Eight years ago, this day, began the American century. The center of the world shifted. President Woodrow Wilson was now the most important person on earth. At the other end of the spectrum… Continue reading →

We of progressive and humanitarian belief have been out-organized and out-maneuvered for half a century, now. The result? A slowly unfolding disaster, a regression from the hope and idealism that were the bedrocks… Continue reading →

With the rise in power of the alt-right and its influence on today’s election, I’m reminded of this newspaper article my great-grandmother saved, about my grandfather. There is no date or more than… Continue reading →

When I was a little boy in Richmond, Indiana, my parents decided to go to the drive-in to see the new Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift movie Raintree County. There must have been a… Continue reading →

Or is he the harlequin? Or both? Harlan Ellison’s Nebula-winning short story from the sixties, “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” is seeming a little too recent. He starts with a quote from Thoreau… Continue reading →