Aug 17th, 2010
I’ve avoided writing about this whole “ground zero mosque” fiasco simply because I was hoping it would drop out of public conversation. Seriously, you’re going to object to a house of worship in an American city? On patriotic grounds? Really? I hesitate even to link to these fearmongers, for fear of enhancing their cause. The [...]
Jun 7th, 2009
Two days after his historic Cairo speech, President Obama made an appearance at the ruins of the German concentration camp Buchenwald, calling the chilling site the “ultimate rebuke” to Holocaust denial, of which Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been the most insidious recent example. It seemed a brilliant rhetorical move: take the cultural capital and [...]
Apr 13th, 2009
According to cultural critic Frank Rich, the culture wars are over. Between the economic crisis and the election of a President who has bridged the red-state/blue-state divide, and the accompanying splintering of the religious right, Rich argues, we have no time for the “divisive moral scolds” that haunted us in the Bush era. Stem-cell research [...]