Months after Stonewall 50….
September 10, 2019
I am passing on this visit I made to the Brian Lehrer Show on June 26 2019 to talk about LGBT folk and popular culture in the 1990s. I’ll try to do better 🙂
Category: Uncategorized
Mediapalooza, Part Eleventy: the Brian Lehrer Show
May 8, 2019
Today it was a very enjoyable half hour on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, taped in front of a live audience: you can listen to it here. I was paired with Jay Caspian Kang, a writer-at-large for the New York Times Magazine who wrote this piece about Pete Buttiegieg. Jay is laid back, smart and … More Mediapalooza, Part Eleventy: the Brian Lehrer Show
The Medievalists Are At It Again
May 5, 2019
According to Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Times. Is it a field that is just not dealing with white supremacy? You decide.
In case you ever wondered….
May 5, 2019
…what it feels like to wake up in the morning, go downstairs to walk the dog, and see yourself on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review, it feels fabulous. So far, the hate mail has been surprisingly light, given how many potential readers there are. This is the only personal email … More In case you ever wondered….
Making America Good Again
November 27, 2018
A little more than two years ago, I launched a regular column that I named Purple Wednesday, a series that comes to a close today. The title post, “The Mo(u)rning After” riffed off the theme song for The Poseidon Adventure(1972), sung by an otherwise little-known singer named Maureen McGovern, was written a few hours after Donald … More Making America Good Again
What Does “For the People” Mean?
July 26, 2018
Would someone please reconsider the prominent role of marketing in politics? Or perhaps I should rephrase that question — could we take a close look at the substitution of marketing and branding strategies for politics? I ask this question only days after the Democratic leadership, well-embarked on flipping the House of Representatives from Red to Blue, has … More What Does “For the People” Mean?
Roseanne Bombs
May 31, 2018
Yesterday I checked my Twitter feed and learned that Roseanne Barr had finally blown herself up. Up all night tweeting about Soros and Clinton conspiracy theories (including a bizarre exchange with the cool-headed Chelsea Clinton about whether her husband is a member of the Soros family), Barr capped off her literary output with a tweet … More Roseanne Bombs
Understanding Conservative Political Incorrectness
May 14, 2018
How do we understand the contemporary conservative pride in political incorrectness? One of the core principles of contemporary conservatism today is that identity — race, gender, sexuality — should neither entitle anyone to rights, nor imprison them in an ideology. Identity, conservatives argue, is something that liberals use to create constituencies around “special rights,” rather … More Understanding Conservative Political Incorrectness
