Cultural Appropriation and Control

There was an altercation recently that involved a white college student at San Francisco State University and a black woman who confronted him about his dreadlocked hair. The woman, who is reportedly a campus employee, told the student, Cory Goldstein, that he...

Victims of Our Own Success

Watch the news on any given night, or pay attention to the political realm for any stretch of time, and you’re likely to conclude that Western civilization is descending into barbarity. The rancor that people show, the ire they feel, the outrage they claim, the...

The Shame Game

Imagine a classic schoolyard scene of yore: the big bully “calling out” the scrawny kid for some infraction, real, imagined or fabricated. The bully knows he’s perfectly capable of beating up the scrawny kid, knows that he’ll validate his...

Trading Places – A Liberal Bestiary

Life lessons can sometimes appear in the oddest places. Today, it occurred to me that the movie Trading Places, the 1983 comedy starring Dan Aykroyd as a blue-blood snob and Eddie Murphy as a street hustler (and one I’ve watched many times), provides superb and...

Revenge of the Nerds

It’s a good time to be a nerd. All across the landscape, nerd culture is paramount. The top-rated comedy on television is The Big Bang Theory, a show about a group of very smart, very nerdy science types who work at CalTech on science stuff. Police procedurals,...