Brainwashed
When I was far too young, I watched The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury at a friend’s house back when television didn’t have too many choices and Saturday afternoons showed old movies. The movie disturbed me the rest of my life. One...
School profiteers
Little is more disturbing than watching Republicans privatize public education. They’re turning low-performing schools over to campaign donors. It won’t work out well. The GOP spent years pushing the false notion that our schools are failing. They’re not. Like every...
Harvey Weinstein and the protected class
Watching the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse story play out shows what’s wrong with our society. It’s a story of power and corruption to be sure, but it’s also about privilege and elitism. The coverage illustrates an out of touch corporate media and the rush to...
North Carolina’s surly electorate
A series of recent polls show a surly electorate in North Carolina. They don’t like Donald Trump and they think the country is heading in the wrong direction. That’s bad news for incumbents, the majority of whom are Republicans. According to polls by Elon University,...
A brief history of local terror
Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson was back in North Carolina this week for the NAACP convention. He was student body president at North Carolina A & T, graduating in 1964. Jackson reflected on his time in North Carolina, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement,...
The damage continues
The General Assembly’s never-ending session continued doing damage to the state this week. Republicans sent unfunded mandates that will hurt counties and schools. They continue micromanaging the Attorney General’s office to spite Democrat Josh Stein and leave the...
Yes, Roy Moore’s a racist
Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore is a racist. He doesn’t try to hide it though I’m sure he would deny it. He shared blatantly racist memes on a Facebook page that he and his supporters would probably claim are just legitimate opinions. They’re not. They’re meant...
Vietnam and other memories
Watching the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Vietnam documentary on PBS last week brought back a flood of memories, not just of the war but of that whole disruptive era. As a kid, we only had one TV and every night, it was turned to the news, first the local news on WSOC in...
Stopping the slide from democracy to autocracy
Today, the Supreme Court hears arguments that could change redistricting forever. The court hears a Wisconsin case in which challengers argue that partisan gerrymanders are unconstitutional, while the state says that the redistricting maps are matter that should be...
Now is exactly when we should talk about preventing gun violence
Contrary to the views of too many pundits, now is exactly the time to talk about gun control. We’ve awakened to the worst mass shooting in American history. At this point we don’t know much about the shooter except that he’s a dead white guy who opened fire on a crowd...
