Perhaps the most morbidly funny media story of the year is the spectacle of conservative crackpots falling all over themselves to attack the efforts by Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson to address implicit bias, after the horrifying incident in Philadelphia where a Starbucks employee decided that calling the cops on Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, two […]
Rush Limbaugh
Posted inPolitical Animal
#ShutUpYourDrivel: The Demise of Laura Ingraham
As the old joke goes, like school on Saturday, she has no class. It’s fair to regard the self-destruction of Fox News host and wingnut-radio personality Laura Ingraham as the most morbidly funny story of the year. Ingraham’s self-righteous rhetorical assault on Parkland survivor David Hogg, and her subsequent fake apology to Hogg in the […]
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
A Golden Age for Progressive Media?
30 years after the contamination of our public airwaves via the national syndication of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program–and five years after the unfortunate demise of Al Gore’s Current TV–it’s good to see some progress in the fight to ensure that the non-wingnut perspective has a solid platform in American media. Last year, the New York […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Madness Will End at Some Point, Right?
It almost makes you want to knock yourself unconscious just so you don’t have to deal with it anymore: On Wednesday, as Republicans were clamoring to make public a secret document they think will undercut the investigation into Russian meddling, President Trump made clear his desire: Release the memo. Trump’s directive was at odds with […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
A Sad Way to Go
No one ever wants to speak ill of the dead, but what happens when the dead have spoken ill of themselves? John Coleman, the “Good Morning America” forecasting icon who co-founded The Weather Channel, died [last] Saturday. The 83-year-old Coleman, in his later years, may have become best known for championing skepticism about the human […]
Posted inMain, Political Animal
The GOP Tax Bill Is Reparations for the Rich
This bill is nothing short of a declaration of holy war against the poor.
Posted inPolitical Animal
Deaf to the Truth, Blind to the Facts: Those Divorced from Reality Don’t Care About Michael Flynn
It’s almost as though it didn’t happen. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Michael Flynn affair is the harsh reality that a significant portion of this country simply does not care about Flynn’s acknowledged amorality and Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. They’re addicted to “news” outlets that are downplaying or denigrating the […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
An American Tragedy
Who could have imagined it? Well, we all should have. During the first weekend of November 2006–ten years before it happened—a right-wing Boston talk radio host named John DePetro was fired by WRKO-AM, then the city’s Rush Limbaugh affiliate, for referring to Grace Ross, a third-party progressive contender in the race to replace disgraced Massachusetts […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Who Can Blame McCain for Loathing Trump?
His hatred of the man is more than justified. The obvious contempt Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) holds for Donald Trump goes beyond the bigoted billionaire’s idiotic insult of the one-time Vietnam POW in 2015. When McCain looks at Trump, he sees a man who is soiling the residence he wanted to occupy. Yes, one can […]
