“Never Before Has Revisionist History Been Accepted As Fact So Quickly”

A few weeks ago (wow, maybe a couple of months already), I got a call asking for donations for some group supporting our brave, misunderstood, and oft-attacked police officers. Recent news events made it very easy to hang up on them, but as soon as I did, I regretted not having asked the rep what the organization’s official stance was on the Tamir Rice shooting (this gives you several possible time-frames for when I got the call). This time around, it was an email, not a phone call, and I want to take a bit of time to unpack it. [Read more…]

America, America

I remember reading a particular issue of Mad Magazine back in the seventies. As it so often did, it included some song and poem parodies, this time on an environmentalist theme. I can recite two of them from memory–one a spot-on Dr. Seuss, and the other a version of the song “America The Beautiful”:

O cancerous, for smoggy skies
For pesticidal grain
Irritated mountains rise
Above an asphalt plain

America, America
Thy sins prepare thy doom
Monoxide clouds shall be thy shrouds
Thy cities be thy tomb!

[Read more…]

And To Think That I Saw It On National News

On the tube or the net, the distraction I choose
Is to sample a bit of the national news
I look for the stories that tug at my brain—
The ones that are tricky, or hard to explain
But the story today? Well, we’ve seen it before;
Just another sad death in a long, bloody war;
A conflict that seemingly never will stop…
Just another black kid who’s been killed by a cop.
[Read more…]