A series on the stuff that delighted us on the Internet this year.
Watergate, The Night Stalker, the Church Committee, Rod Serling's "Night Gallery," the Pascagoula Abduction and the Jonestown Massacre: this was my 1970s youth. My mom, who recalls taking pro-communist flyers from Lee Harvey Oswald outside the downtown New Orleans building where she worked as a secretary, once lifted a tobacco pipe left behind by Jim Garrison at a cocktail party, and kept it in a place of honor. My dad would occasionally reference the mysterious classified part of his job at NASA in Texas, on the team that prepared the Eagle [...]
Here's part of the stage show that's gotten former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters in trouble with the Anti-Defamation League. "Of course Waters has every right to express his political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through his music and stagecraft," said ADL head Abe Foxman in a statement. "However, the images he has chosen, when put together in the same sequence, cross a line into anti-Semitism." (To wit: "An animated scene has projected images of planes dropping bombs in the shape of Jewish stars of David, followed by dollar signs.") Foxman, of course, just has tons of credibility after his anti-Park 51 stance. But maybe he's got a [...]
During a casual conversation with a small group of acquaintances this weekend I heard someone express the opinion that we were somewhere near the middle of a double-dip recession and that there was going to be a "white riot" when the second dip hit. This was more than a little troubling, since it certainly was not the first time I've come across that sentiment. I generally try to remind myself that due to the massive volume of political opinion I read, it's very easy to get caught up in whatever disaster scenarios people are trying to promote for political advantage, but I feel like this kind of fear-with its implicit [...]
