For all the Maalox moments of this raucous roller-coaster of a campaign season, one thing can be said of the American people: We sure know how to make each other laugh.
While I certainly won't miss those daily emails that came streaming into my exploding in-box over the past...
Posted September 12, 2008 | 10:30 AM (EST)
And now for something completely different.
Click the image below to see a music video from award-winning composer-lyricist David Yazbek, from his new album, Evil Monkey Man. The song is called "Steps of Another Man's House," and the remarkable animation was done by filmmaker Onur Tukel.
Will watching the...
Posted August 28, 2008 | 03:47 PM (EST)
Their names were Denise, Carole, Cynthia and Addie Mae, and 45 years ago next month, on an overcast morning in Birmingham, Alabama, their lives were taken as they prepared for a Sunday school program. A dynamite bomb, planted by local thugs from...
Posted August 21, 2008 | 12:45 AM (EST)
Their names were Denise, Carole, Cynthia and Addie Mae, and 45 years ago next month, on an overcast morning in Birmingham, Alabama, their lives were taken as they prepared for a Sunday school program. A dynamite bomb, planted by local thugs from...
Posted July 22, 2008 | 12:11 PM (EST)
In discussing the 2008 election last week, Jon Stewart cracked jokes about orphans, Viagra and prehistoric monsters.
God, I love politics.
As someone who moonlights as a satirist, I'm often intrigued by the ever-merging traffic on the election news highway, as the campaign bus...
Posted July 14, 2008 | 03:26 AM (EST)
As the 2008 Olympics in Beijing grow closer, global protests continue to swell. Decrying China's policies on Darfur and Tibet, as well as its notorious oppression of human rights, activists worldwide are keeping up the pressure on the Games' sponsors, most recently holding rallies...
Posted June 5, 2008 | 09:28 PM (EST)
I've always liked Canada. Its health care system apparently works; its comedians are consistently a hoot; and, with the exception of that tired old bickering over Quebecois sovereignty that seems to erupt every few years, the gentle behemoth just upstairs from us always manages...
Posted April 27, 2008 | 04:18 PM (EST)
Posted March 12, 2008 | 01:20 PM (EST)
And now a word (and a few pictures) from an old pal, New York graphic artist Ken Chaya.
"I have always thought that politics and big wave surfing were a lot alike. Both employ the first three keys to human success and domination:...
Posted February 7, 2008 | 02:59 AM (EST)
In the first episode of the new season of The L Word, Showtime's lipstick lesbian soap opera, the character of Tasha has a crisis. Black, beautiful and enlisted in the Army National Guard, Tasha is accused of violating the Pentagon's "Don't Ask,...
Posted December 24, 2007 | 04:58 PM (EST)
Seven Christmases into the new millennium, and it's never been easier to catch the holiday spirit. Through Internet technology alone, we can swap season's greetings without licking a stamp; buy armloads of presents without leaving the house; and even log onto a flash-animated snow...
Posted December 19, 2007 | 02:25 AM (EST)
I almost lost it -- and in a seventh-grade classroom, no less.
It was "curriculum night" at my daughter's middle school, and all the parents were stuffed into small chairs, listening to a parade of teachers describe what was expected of our...
Posted October 31, 2007 | 02:20 AM (EST)
Phil Donahue is getting in the last word.
One of the first television personalities to speak out against America's hapless adventure in Iraq, Donahue was also among the war's earliest media casualties. He lost his MSNBC talk show back in 2003 when,...
Posted October 10, 2007 | 01:51 AM (EST)

OK -- so let's see if that whole power-to-the-people thing is alive and well (as usual) on HuffPo.
I just received a mass email from a friend that begins like this:
Hi Everyone --
As all of you know, my wife and I are...
Posted August 16, 2007 | 06:24 PM (EST)
And here I thought I was an OK dad. What a bummer to learn that I was making my kids dumb.
Researchers at the University of Washington and the Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute published a paper this month in the Journal of...
Posted April 24, 2007 | 01:31 AM (EST)
For the past two months, American television viewers have been on a stomach-turning hellride--strapped into the front car of a kind of media Magic Mountain, then whipped about with such head-snapping fury that it's often been difficult to tell where one story...
Posted April 9, 2007 | 11:29 AM (EST)
Everyone loves a good editorial cartoon--and why not? Even the wonkiest op-ed page addict eventually grows weary of all that purple-prose posturing and windy opinionating. And besides, with the constant stream of headache-inducing stories pouring in from the Middle East, the...
Posted February 22, 2007 | 02:56 AM (EST)
Forty-five years ago this spring, my brothers and I (ages 5, 6, 7 and 9) went to a Saturday afternoon showing of Pinocchio at the Uptown Theater in suburban Baltimore. Our mom had errands to run, so she sent us with...

Posted November 4, 2008 | 06:19 AM (EST)