It turns out that 48 hours is enough time to run any subject of contention into the ground. But at the risk of impertinence, the most galling aspect of Kathy Griffin’s autodefenstration with a fake severed head doused in raspberry jam is not that thing those people you disagree with (whoever they are — disagreement was rumored but scarce in actuality) believe in. The most galling aspect is that victimization has cynically been one-upped into nothingness.

Whether or not the still photos in question were in poor taste is a question left for others to decide — others, like 70,000,000…

In yesterday’s pundit-lauded joint address to Congress, President Donald J. Trump set the tone by addressing the current national backdrop of threats and aggression against non-Caucasian citizens:

Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a Nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.

Ignoring the fact that it took nearly a week for Trump to address the Kansas shooting, and that he had earlier in the day intimated…

Yesterday long-time New York City reporter Wayne Barrett died in Manhattan at the age of 71. Barrett’s 27-year stint writing for The Village Voice, eventually taking over the Runnin’ Scared column, which was a beat devoted exclusively to muck-raking in its most elemental form, was one of the greatest runs in investigative journalism, if for only the number of powerful figures he hounded — Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, Rev. Al Sharpton, State Senator Sheldon Silver, Mayor Ed Koch and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Barrett was solidly in the tradition of shoe-leather journalism, holding public figures to account, and was the product of…

Before I ever learned history, I learned that there were histories that were rumored to exist behind them.

I grew up during the Reagan Administration, and that was a very special time for not ever being trustful of what was actually going on. This was true even without searching out the zines and pamphlets and tiny press publications, as I did later in life. When Ronald Reagan ran for president against Jimmy Carter, at issue was the Iran hostage crisis, in which the Shah of Iran was overthrown and the overthrowers seized the American Embassy in Tehran and held Americans…

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse! The months-long season that immediately precedes the Super Bowl — the season of fellowship and arguing about whether “Die Hard” is a holiday movie — is upon us. And so with this silly season comes, for many, the necessity to transport ourselves away from our residence to gather with family and friends, or the secondary rings of families and friends of loved ones.

Please refer to the traditional carol, “Over the River and Through the Wood.” This so-called song is actually a poem published in 1844 by the prolific writer and…

Thanksgiving beckons! Or does it loom? Either way, it’s coming soon, just around a corner or two. And whether it’s is an annual high- or low-light for you, Thanksgiving is a death-and-taxes truth, as certain as Halloween endcaps in August and Valentine’s Day cards out on New Year’s Day. The early warning system for Thanksgiving, however, is the flood of themed issues of monthly magazines and pumpkin spice-templated food websites, which start hitting the mailboxes/grocery checkout racks/tabs around the Ides of October.

Of course, not everyone looks forward to Thanksgiving (like, say, the non-U.S. portions of the planet), and not…

Not that it’s unusual for a morning read of the A section of the New York Times to be as depressing as hell (in fact, it’s lately more the exception than the rule) but this morning the bad news was terribly bad. Louisiana realizing that the consequences of climate change have moved on from looming, an elephant washed away by a flood, first shunned, then gawked to death, a heart-breaking number of earthquake survivors killed in a crash on the way to collect survivor benefits — worse than usual, bleak as shit, a big sigh to start the workday. …

The Republican National Convention starts today, and expectations are high! I’m not sure for what the height of expectations are — I expect that they may be entirely contextual and dependent upon one’s preexisting point of view. Some may expect a unifying launch of a unified effort in American unified great-making, or at the very least a version of the same that does as little down-ticket damage as possible. At the very least a big old hooplah is expected, with Trump values and Trump speakers and Trump production values. A big splash!

And of course there are those of us…