Features

Post-debate note: The political wind seemed to change at the second debate. So--praise cheeses!--this may be the last Trump-centric column. He’s what’s happening, baby! His

For me, the internet can be like standing in line at the supermarket. Oh, those tabloids! My eye is also drawn to the lurid

What’s so embarrassing for me (an old white man) about watching an old white presidential candidate say—almost indignantly—“Well

In the 1998 film Bulworth, Warren Beatty played a disillusioned politician who puts out a contract on himself, and then feels free to say exactly

Michael Ondaatje’s eponymous 2011 novel grants romance and intrigue to the lowliest dining area on a ship—The Cat’s Table. There was absolutely no romance

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

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

“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

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

When I started on this mission of writing about songwriters and how they weren’t being properly acknowledged, I had absolutely no idea that I’d

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

Sometimes, someone posts something on Facebook that is of intrinsic value. The following thought-piece—published here with the author’s permission—is such a post. I was

"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.

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

If you follow economic or political news at all, you know there has been a lot of discussion about our national infrastructure and the

Every campaign has at least one noir moment, when (as in film noir) the protagonist tries to do The Right Thing but winds up

When Stephen Colbert coined the word "truthiness" in 2005, he meant "

For the first decade of this century I didn't pay much attention to the music business. After close to 30 years in the business

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

WHEN TO WATCH: Pick a broadcast network and watch the nightly news. Any day. Or pick a cable network opinion-veiled-as-news show. Watch any minute.