Clint Eastwood’s endorsement of Mitt Romney in Idaho last Friday did not really surprise me. The endorsement probably made Mitt’s day, but whether this will have any SUDDEN IMPACT on the electorate, or raise A FEW DOLLARS MORE for the billionaire’s presidential campaign, remains to be seen. Actually, I have a confession to make. I…
Not once during his lengthy and moving eulogy in Tucson, Arizona, at the memorial service for those whose lives were cut short by gunman Jared Loughner, not once in his many references to Christina-Taylor Green, the nine-year-old girl who tragically died alongside five others, did President Barack Obama mention his own daughters, Sasha (also 9)…
I’ve always admired Hillary Clinton, but there’s no denying that, once the Republicans saw the handwriting on the wall and the glass ceiling breaking, our Hillary gave birth to their Sarah Palin, who then spawned such shrews as Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Linda McMahon, Christine O’Donnell and Meg Whitman. I don’t want to sound misogynistic,…
Having spent nearly forty years of my life teaching in classrooms at the University of Kansas and elsewhere, it puzzles me that, on the one hand, Americans in general seem to believe in the virtues of a good education but, on the other hand, they ultimately also seem to distrust their teachers. Barack Obama was…
In her autobiography Thursday’s Child, Eartha Kitt talks about growing up in the cotton plantations of South Carolina in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and how she was ostracized by blacks and whites alike because her lighter skin color made her neither black nor white. So how did she go on to become a great celebrity…
After over half a century of reading and collecting paper place mats from Chinese restaurants all over the world, I’ve decided to collate my collection and share the Wisdom of the East with anyone who believes that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by western horoscopes. As you probably…
President Obama, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech at Oslo, spoke at length about “a just peace” and, of course, “a just war.” He uses the word “just” only as an adjective, meaning “honorable and fair in one’s dealings and actions…consistent with moral right; righteous…valid within the law; legitimate…based on fact or sound reason;…
It’s Black Friday. Merchants are seeing Green as consumers continue to dream of a White Christmas in a Red economy. The English language is nothing if not colorful, and the word “black” is the one which evokes the greatest range of polarities and emotions. On the one hand, we blackball or blacklist people for being blackguards who…
This past weekend, after 21 years of mostly good and wonderful memories, English Alternative Theatre presented its final production of an original script by one of my playwriting students at the University of Kansas. But, thanks to the awful temper tantrums of one of the actors, who had earlier asked me if he could also…
One of my favorite novels is Mary Renault’s The King Must Die (1958), a compelling portrait of Theseus, the mythical Greek hero and King of Athens who danced with bulls and slew the dreaded Minotaur. For me, the title says it all. Don’t ask me why, but people in America all seem to have a need to create…