Bob Dylan: Nobel Laureate?
I can’t say that I am a huge Bob Dylan fan. I may have been born just a little too late to have been caught up in the folk craze, though I do remember singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” along with “This Land is Your Land” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” during chorus in elementary school. I have my share of Dylan discs, of course, covering all periods from the early “protest” stuff to the mid- and late-1960s electric period and onto more recent back-to-the-roots material with Love and Theft being a particular favorite. …
How “Blue Lives Matter” Perpetuates Police Violence
Far from a peaceful call to protect police lives, the movement fosters an environment of fear, hatred, and racism.
In the aftermath of the recent killings of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte at the hands of police, the Blue Lives Matter hashtag rallied around a video of a group of black youth attacking a white man and taking his pants off in a parking garage in Charlotte. The caption that the most popular Blue Lives Matter twitter account provided for …
Does this Meme Prove Donald Trump is a White Supremacist?
In a development that is no doubt utterly inexplicable to many, Donald Trump has gotten himself in trouble for associating with an amphibian: an internet meme known as Pepe the Frog. Pepe isn’t the only frog to “blow up” on the internet in 2016. But he’s undoubtedly the most infamous. After Hillary Clinton referred to “half” of Trump supporters as “a basket of deplorables,” Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., retweeted a photoshopped spoof of The Expendables’…
The Woman Who Might Have Been President
As former Goldwater Girl Hillary Rodham Clinton is poised to become the first woman president of the United States, it is worth asking: what prevented Elizabeth Dole — Clinton’s former Senate colleague — from breaking that historic barrier?
Sexism, not just within the Republican Party but also in a larger political world saturated by media coverage, is one obvious answer. The misogynistic rhetoric emanating from the campaign of Donald J. Trump has a long history in both parties. …
Borders and the Politics of Mourning
In early 2014, the artist Anton Christian placed a shattered wooden boat in front of the impressive baroque Cathedral of St. Jakob in the heart of the Austrian city of Innsbruck. Christian had found the boat on the shores of the Adriatic Sea and brought it to Innsbruck to evoke images of Lampedusa, the Italian island that has become the symbol of the refugee crisis. After the boat was partially destroyed by vandals, the artist decided to keep the damaged object in front of the cathedral, supplemented by a marker that explained the attack. …
