What did Dickens say about the best of times and the worst of times, the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness? Next week marks the tenth anniversary of two back-to-back events that still define our politics–and will continue to define our politics for generations to come. The first such event occurred on August […]
Keith Olbermann
Posted inPolitical Animal
Inconvenient Truths on Cable and Broadcast News?
Climate hawks need to put more pressure on media outlets to adequately cover the environment.
Posted inPolitical Animal
Abortion is a Normal Part of Everyday Life
The GOP is uniformly the party of forced pregnancy and the party committed to eliminating female autonomy.
Posted inPolitical Animal
Money Changes Everything
In a perfect world, Citizens United would be overturned and American law would embrace the separation of billionaire and state. In an imperfect world, this appears to be the best one can hope for: Boston hedge fund billionaire Seth Klarman lavished more than $7 million on Republican candidates and political committees during the Obama administration, […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
March Madness: Right-Wing Media Will Take Aim at Youth Opposed to Gun Violence
They can’t help themselves. If you’ve ever doubted the fundamental foolishness and ghoulishness of the American right, just watch—if you can bear it—the right’s reaction to today’s March for Our Lives. If you think the rhetorical assaults on anti-gun-violence American youth in the days leading up to this march were bad, as Bachman-Turner Overdrive famously […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
On the Moral Necessity of Impeaching Trump: Part II
Yes, it was gratifying to see House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) literally speak truth to power for eight hours on Wednesday in defense of the beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Pelosi’s words were surely scorned by the soulless forces who control the GOP, but those who recognize the repugnance of […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Hard to Blame Oprah for Not Wanting to Run for President
To paraphrase a famous Colin Powell line, it’s a calling she does not yet hear: Oprah Winfrey says she doesn’t have “the DNA” for a presidential bid, dismissing the possibility of a 2020 run as “not something that interests me,” according to a new magazine profile. Winfrey spoke to InStyle magazine before her rousing Golden […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Matthews’s Sexism Needs to Be Canceled
What the hell was he thinking? MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews joked about drugging then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton before sitting down with her for an interview in early 2016, according to exclusive outtake footage published by New York magazine’s The Cut Friday. “Where’s that Bill Cosby pill I brought with me?” he asked. The joke […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Keith Olbermann’s Famous Last Words
As soon as I heard the news, I thought back to the fall of 1993, when Billy Joel began hinting in the wake of the release of the River of Dreams album that he wouldn’t be releasing any new material, and Michael Jordan announced his retirement from professional basketball. Yes, the Piano Man did return […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Bush-League Criticism
What was Henry Kissinger’s old joke about the Iran-Iraq war, again? The conflict between Donald Trump and the Bush family is perhaps the silliest of the 45th President’s many feuds, nothing more than the latest outbreak of red-on-red rhetorical violence (see Trump v. McCain, Trump v. Corker, Trump v. Flake., etc.) It’s fundamentally silly because […]
