With Oscars coming up Sunday, I thought I’d reflect on one of the more interesting developments in film over the last year: the return of the documentary. Of course, the documentary was never gone, but last summer saw a couple of high profile releases that outshone the art house features in box office and buzz […]
Dan Kennedy points out how John Edwards’ compromise position on gay marriage - though not radically different from Kerry’s - stands in sharp contrast to the convoluted semantic-mincing of Kerry. In sum, Edwards says (at least now) that DOMA is unnecessary because the full-faith clause doesn’t apply here and that the federal government should allow […]
One of the odd turns of this primary season has been to see John Edwards - formerly the centrists candidate - pick up Dick Gephardt’s protectionist mantle and rail against NAFTA. And the news media - reporters and commentators alike - have devoted a lot of attention to corporate outsourcing. In the face of the […]
Proof that too much backlighting can be a bad thing.
Via Matthew Yglesias comes another fun internet quiz: Yankee or Dixie. And despite being a Yankeefied Massachusetts liberal, I still showed tenacity in my Southern dialect and managed to pull score of 85 percent (Dixie).
The test by the way is based on a dialect survey done at Harvard, though the author of that study […]
From the President today:
Today, I call upon the Congress to promptly pass and to send to the states for ratification an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife.
Lately, I have been more or less convinced by those who have argued that […]
So Sex and the City has gone out with, not a bang, but a whimper. Granted, it could have been worse. It could have been schmaltzier. Or off the deep end like Seinfeld’s finale. But in playing it safe, the writers played it a little too safe. I was struck thinking back to the replayed […]
Everyone is busy with their summations of the Dean candidacy, what went right and what went wrong. See for instance, Timothy Noah’s critique of fake populism in Slate. I don’t really have anything thing to add to the substance of the issue. But since politics is in no small part about style over substance, I […]
I’ve been wondering for some time now how the Chinatown bus operators could make money charging only ten bucks from Boston to New York. Now, from the investigate desks of Time Out NY (sadly, story not linked at their website) comes word that the Chinatown bus lines have been locked not only in a price […]
In an otherwise smart analysis of the fallout of the Wisconsin primary, Slate’s William Salatan makes the following observation:
Remember, Democrats are as likely to vote for Edwards against President Bush as they are to vote for Kerry against Bush. It’s far more likely that independents and crossover Republicans will determine the outcome. In states where […]
Last Friday, Greater Boston (available streamed, click on “Beat the Press”) has a great survey of the week’s news coverage of the gay marriage debate. Their findings? While news and television showed gay protesters of all sorts, the photos and footage of couples kissing were almost invariably lesbian.
No surprise, really, though it is […]
A filibuster has ended the Convention and provided a momentary victory for the gay-marriage forces: three amendments . I’m not as optimistic as others (such as blogger Andrew Bayer) that ultimately we can keep an amendment off the ballot - the recess is only a month rather than a year, after all, and I doubt […]
The Convention has adjourned for lunch and for more strategizing and dealing. No successful vote on anything yet, but it’s already clear that the Convention will vote on some amendment to the Constitution barring same-sex marriage. If those wishing to keep gay marriage intact - or at least keep from amending the Constitution - […]
Those following the gay marriage debate going on currently in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention will undoubtedly be reading the news coverage. But I’d encourage everyone to take a look at some of the thorough coverage of the proceedings - this really is a fascinating read.
For drama, the Rick Klein’s (Boston Globe) rundown of the […]
Let me pretend for a minute I’m removed from the gay marriage issue, that I’m an outsider called in to advise the pro-marriage forces in the state on how best to achieve their objective. Or at least that I’m a New York Times op-ed writer getting paid to offer 2nd-person fictional advice to non-fictional politicians. […]