This afternoon, MSNBC is broadcasting a town hall meeting with John Kasich that is being held in Lima (named after the city in Peru but pronounced like the bean), a small city in west-central Ohio where I live. Because my political views are apparently not as masochistic as they are ardent, I have been switching…
BY MARTIN KICH During the 1964 presidential campaign, the Johnson campaign ran a four-minute television ad called “Confessions of a Republican.” In the ad, a man who purports to be a lifelong Republican explains why he cannot vote for Barry Goldwater. More than a half-century later, this ad is going viral because it seems to…
For all but two of the titles there are links to the reviews in The Guardian and to the authors’ biographies in Wikipedia. A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola), translated by Daniel Hahn and published by Harvill Secker. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Italy), translated by Ann…
March 4 was World Book Day [See: https://academeblog.org/2016/03/05/world-book-day/]. It was also National Grammar Day. National Grammar Day was established by Martha Brockenbrough, author of “Things That Make Us [Sic]” (2008) and founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. The celebration of National Grammar Day was, somewhat surprisingly, given an official endorsement by President…
BY MARTIN KICH The editors of and contributors to the books section of the Independent, one of the United Kingdom’s largest newspapers, have published a list of “43 Books to Read before You Die” in honor of World Book Day, which in case you missed it was yesterday. The list includes the following titles, with annotations…
BY MARTIN KICH The first is not so much a parody as a political re-adaptation of The Producers featuring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OemqVWi_R0k&sns=em The second is the new film by Sacha Baron Cohen, The Brothers Grimsby. Here is a thoughtful commentary by Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim on the film’s strange pre-release buzz: “Audiences…
It is a rare event when the often fractious, overly politically correct, and typically apathetic left is forced to get past their myopia and carefully constructed boundaries. It is therefore with deep thanks and gratitude in which I welcome the Donald Trump campaign. I mean think about it -when was the last time that a…
BY AARON BARLOW The focus of discussion on Donald Trump is, understandably, the man himself—but the phenomenon of his success arises elsewhere. What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, that “there is no there there,” applies to the man: all we have “there” is a massive ego. Trump is simply a skilled entertainer, Howard Beale of…
BY MARTIN KICH At the very end of 2015, Emily Schwartz Greco, the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote a piece titled “Enstrictly Speaking, 2016 Could Be a Trailrazer,” which was republished by Common Dreams. In the piece, she begins by detailing how the…
BY MARTIN KICH The British army’s fife and drum corps famously played this tune as it was giving up its weapons following the surrender at Yorktown. The sentiment seems very apropos during this strange presidential campaign in which Donald Trump sits atop the Republican primary polls because of, and not in spite of, his utter…