Here’s a quickie to help you prepare for the Republican debate on Thursday August 9. In 2012, my wife and I noticed certain phrases being repeated and decided to make a list. That list follows. You shouldn’t consider it a debate drinking game—just drink and
The folks who produce Survivor think that they understand tribes. Jeff Probst’s first official duty, on the first episode of every season, is to divide the contestants into tribes—for competition and drama. And of course all of that happens even within the tribes, because who joins which
“God bless Donald Trump. This campaign has been a masterwork of performance art. He couldn't be doing a better job to illustrate just how absurd our election process has become.” Texas_Vinyl said that in the Comments section of an article about Trump vs. Rick Perry. These days,
We are all Donald Trump now. In 1963, JFK went to the Berlin wall and said, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner). Following 9/11, many people around the world said, "We are New Yorkers." Now former National Lampoon writer P.J. O'Rourke has stepped forward
Obama’s had a great couple of weeks politically, but he’s still gone as of January 20, 2017. That leaves a vacuum that the political arm of Mother Nature must find a way to fill. It’s one reason why more Republicans than you could stuff into
"Monsters, John! Monsters from the Id!" That's the warning delivered by a dying Warren Stevens to Captain Leslie Nielson just before the climax of Forbidden Planet. And he's explaining the downfall of a civilization. Last week's monster from the Republican Id stepped out all elbows and insults. Do I have
No, not that race card. But some candidate will play it before the election. Promise. I mean the horse race card. I’m abandoning the Survivor metaphor for this time out, in honor of the first Triple Crown winner in nearly four decades. We’ll come back to
Every campaign has at least one noir moment, when (as in film noir) the protagonist tries to do The Right Thing but winds up doing exactly the opposite. That's a powerful plot device in fiction, getting the lead into deeper and deeper trouble, so that
When Stephen Colbert coined the word "truthiness" in 2005, he meant "
We're back on the boat deck filled with potential Survivor contestants, waiting to see who will commit by jumping into the water and swimming to shore. The action has picked up considerably since I last wrote. The water in front of us is now churning
