Rude Interruptions

Earth Last: Environmentalism in the Age of Trump

Kathleen Sgamma, for one, is delighted with the direction of environmental policy in the age of Trump. As president of the Western Energy Alliance, a trade group of indie oil and gas…

Something in the Air

We’ve got to get together sooner or later Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right —Thunderclap Newman, “Something in the Air” In 2020, the voting revolution will be here, and…

Prophets Without Honor

It’s only natural that in times of social upheaval and political turmoil, we are tempted to look back, rather than forward, as we desperately seek to flee the stress and anxiety of…

Shall We Overcome?

I don’t say this lightly, but it’s not often you experience what is literally a transformative, life-changing experience. Yet that is what I found on my recent journey through the Deep South…

Ronald Reagan’s Unfairness Doctrine

It was long ago and far away, but between 1949 and 1987, there once was a time when American broadcasters actually behaved with a sense of civic responsibility and honored their obligation…

First, As Farce…

It was Karl Marx, borrowing a line from Hegel, who observed that if history repeats, it does so first as tragedy, then as farce. In my political experience, Marx got it backwards.…

For Want of a Nail?

As transfixing as the #NeverAgain movement and the Stormy Daniels saga continue to be, I’m more interested in a complicated, unfolding story that’s flying below the radar of the American news media.…

Gunning for the NRA

Have we finally turned a corner on public tolerance for gun violence and the NRA? Consider this Dishonor Roll: University of Texas, Austin, Texas (1966), 14 people shot dead by “Texas Tower…

Journalism’s Historic Moment

As I have every year for the past two decades, I recently began teaching my Winter Quarter UCLA Extension course in opinion writing, which at UCLA’s request I rebranded a few years…

I Helped Cover Up the JFK Assassination Conspiracy

Now it can be told: I helped cover up the JFK assassination conspiracy. When the first President Bush signed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act on October 26,1992, it called on the…