Nine to Five (or as it’s sometimes known, 9 to 5) was a popular 1980 comedy in which three secretaries, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, connived to “fix” their overbearing (male, naturally) boss. It was one of several movies in those years, which looked at gender roles–male/female power differentials–in the workplace. (Tootsie was […]
Feeling Sorry for Donald Trump
I’ve been reading and binge-watching, of all things, documentaries on the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. My motivation lies in current events. If we’re going to compare the Trump Administration to the Nazi Party and Trump to Hitler, we should study the real thing. We are awash in both similarities and differences. As one difference, the […]
Chelsea Manning: Obama Did the Right Thing
Human beings are called to feel, to reason things out, and to practice compassion. Because without those higher inclinations, our own weakness, desire, fear, and the ways of the mob, trample all human potential. The shadow side of human nature is strongest when we make war. As I’ve said many times, to go to war […]
I Could Be Darren Wilson
Institutional racism harms everyone it touches: even the privileged, from brilliant Thomas Jefferson to rather average me. It is a rot which eats away at our common humanity. I feel a lot of compassion for Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson. He could have been me. There are differences, of course. Darren Wilson is a […]
How To Become a Racist Laughingstock
Last November, KSTP TV in Minneapolis made themselves a laughingstock. They ran a news segment claiming that Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges had “flashed a gang sign” with an unidentified, faceless, African American man. The “gang sign?” She and voting rights activist Navell Gordon had posed together, pointing at one another! Politicians and everyone else point […]