BY CLAIR MALENEY Listening to the president’s State of the Union speech last night, I was (once again) struck by two things: his perversion of inclusive language to divide and alienate and his warped notion of politics as a high-testosterone blood sport intended to hurt and humiliate anyone who disagrees with him, and thereby is his sworn enemy. Trump has always had a cruel way with phrases. Consider the closing from last night’s speech: “As long as we are proud of who we are and what we are fighting for, there is nothing we cannot achieve. As long as we […]
WORTH REPEATING: American Hustle
THE ATLANTIC: Shortly before the announcement of his job inside Trump’s campaign, Manafort touched base with former colleagues to let them know of his professional return. He exuded his characteristic confidence, but they surprised him with doubts and worries. Throughout his long career, Manafort had advised powerful men—U.S. senators and foreign supreme commanders, imposing generals and presidents-for-life. He’d learned how to soothe them, how to bend their intransigent wills with his calmly delivered, diligently researched arguments. But Manafort simply couldn’t accept the wisdom of his friends, advice that he surely would have dispensed to anyone with a history like his […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: If watching President Trump and listening to American political discourse these days makes you feel something’s gone wrong, our guests today will tell you it’s not your imagination. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent years studying what makes democracies healthy and what leads to their collapse. And they see signs that American democracy is in trouble. In a new book, they argue that Trump has shown authoritarian tendencies and that many players in American politics are discarding long-held norms that have kept our political rivalries in balance and prevented the kind of bitter conflict that can lead […]
SMUS: The Sh*tholing Of The American Presidency
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY No doubt this nation does need to be made “great,” (as if we were ever really and truly “great,” but I will grant you that our WWII participation and follow-up Marshall Plan achievements were exemplary exceptions) but for reasons you are about to be made fully aware of, I am extremely reluctant to add the word “again” to any such plea, plan or plaudit. One thing we surely DO NOT need — nor should we EVER become dependent upon — is a bigoted, racist, Russia-hugging, Nazi/fascist-embracing, thieving, bankruptcy reliant, altogether phony, traitorous, money laundering, pathologically […]
INJUSTICE: The Inky’s Dirty War On Larry Krasner
IN JUSTICE TODAY: It didn’t take too much deliberation for the Philadelphia Inquirer to render its guilty verdict against District Attorney Larry Krasner after he took office on January 2: “the first days of Krasner’s administration,” the editorial board intoned nine days later, “seem more about imprudence than jurisprudence” Zing. A rhyme. But what does it all mean? Well, Krasner swiftly ousted 31 prosecutors who packed up their desks along with others who had resigned on their own accord before he took office. Last year, Krasner, a career civil rights and defense attorney, rode a surge of grassroots organizing to […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Day Martin Luther King Had To Explain To His Daughter Yolanda That Little ‘Colored’ Girls Are Not Allowed To Go To Funtown
PLAYBOY: Dr. King, are your children old enough to be aware of the issues at stake in the civil rights movement, and of your role in it? MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, they are—especially my oldest child, Yolanda. Two years ago, I remember, I returned home after serving one of my terms in the Albany, Georgia, jail, and she asked me, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?” I told her that I was involved in a struggle to make conditions better for the colored people, and thus for all people. I explained that because things are […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: It’s Mueller Time!
TIME: The special counsel is, like Trump, the scion of a wealthy family, raised at a boarding school and educated in the Ivy League. But the life choices of Robert Swan Mueller III, 72, suggest a decidedly different temperament from the one that occupies the Oval Office. Unlike Trump, who says he has few if any personal heroes, Mueller’s path was marked by a profound admiration for a role model he met at Princeton, a student a year ahead of him named David Spencer Hackett. “I played lacrosse with David,” Mueller explained last year in a speech at West […]
WORTH REPEATING: My Life In The Ghost Of Bush
THE INTERCEPT: Bundled against the freezing wind, my lawyers and I were about to reach the courthouse door when two news photographers launched into a perp-walk shoot. As a reporter, I had witnessed this classic scene dozens of times, watching in bemusement from the sidelines while frenetic photographers and TV crews did their business. I never thought I would be the perp, facing those whirring cameras. As I walked past the photographers into the courthouse that morning in January 2015, I saw a group of reporters, some of whom I knew personally. They were here to cover my case, […]
Since His Inauguration, Trump Has Told 1,950 Lies
WASHINGTON POST: With just 18 days before President Trump completes his first year as president, he is now on track to exceed 2,000 false or misleading claims, according to our database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. As of Monday, the total stood at 1,950 claims in 347 days, or an average of 5.6 claims a day. (Our full interactive graphic can be found here.) As regular readers know, the president has a tendency to repeat himself — often. There are now more than 60 claims that he has repeated three or more times. The […]
IN ORWELL WE TRUST: Q&A With Pulitzer Prize-Winning National Security Reporter Tom Ricks
EDITOR’S NOTE: This week we will be re-posting choice Q&As from the past year. We start with this still-timely interview with nat-sec reporter Tom Ricks, which originally posted on May 25th, 2017. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Under the darkening skies of the late 1930s, liberal democracy was on the ropes and fascism and totalitarianism was on the rise, reason and common sense were overwhelmed by racist entreaties, economic misery and nationalist fury, press freedoms were under attack and the facts had become a matter of opinion. Sound familiar? Two less than distinguished men rose to the occasion: a tarnished, […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Sweet Home Alabama
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Jesus, God, whoda thunk it?! Whoda ever thunk that that imbecilic Oval Office swamp pig could actually outdo himself?! Yes indeed ladies and gentlemen and “children” of all ages, the pin-brained White House boar hog in residence has actually pulled off the heretofore believed impossible: he has totally and completely outschmucked himself! Way down yonder in Alabysmal — it’s a state of mindlessness and misogyny just inside the southeastern boundaries of the Great Republican Swamp — resides a pedophile by the name of Roy Moore who’s doing his slithering best to fill a vacant U.S. […]
BOOKS: ‘I Believe Anita Hill’
[Illustrations by ALEX FINE] EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published on December 7th, 2011. We are re-posting it now, for obvious reasons. BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of her reading at the Free Library tonight to promote her new book Reimagining Equality: Stories Of Race, Gender And Finding A Home, we present a conversation with Anita Hill, professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University. Discussed: The fantasia of a Post-Racial America; the mendacity, narcissism and hypocrisy of Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain; the right wing’s racializing the blame for the 2008 financial crisis; how she passed […]