Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Jenny McCarthy month will last no more than a few days, I hope. She starts on “The View” on the 9th. I’ve written about her for The Atlantic and CNN. Monks with the Black Death One of the things that interests me about the anti-vax movement is how it has both right-wing and left-wing elements, …
Matt Walsh wrote a blog post called, “Dear Son, don’t let Robin Thicke be a lesson to you.” Great. I don’t like Robin Thicke and I have never even heard one of his songs, but I’m judgmental, and I’m sure I don’t like him. I did watch that MTV video with the sound off, as …
My semester began this Monday with the usual hectic sprint. My wife left the house (for the week) at 4 AM, I woke up the kids at 6, and by 8 I was on my way to the university. I called it manly. On Tuesday, keeping with the higher ed theme and my interest in …
Let’s also talk about how white men get rewarded for presenting a watered-down, uncritical, privileged image of feminism. — Shanley (@shanley) August 26, 2013 Ok, let’s talk about it. I don’t know Shanley, but she does have 6000 more twitter followers than I do, which is a pretty solid following. More importantly, she writes well …
In a few minutes I will be on Talk 910 with Gil Gross. I’ve been on AM 910, a San Francisco station, twice before, once to talk about gender with Gil and once to talk about Jenny McCarthy with Frosty. If you are coming to this post from the Talk 910 listener area, here is …
Yesterday, CNN published an essay of mine on the Ethan Saylor case. Following the advice of some friends, I emphasized a classic point from disability studies: We are all, at best, temporarily able bodied. This hook seems to have worked as the piece is receiving a good readership. For new readers, twitter followers, facebook friends. …
I am endlessly fascinated by the ways that people shape and appropriate historical memory. One common thread, as common in the 13th century as now, is to assume that historical examples support one’s own agenda, regardless of the facts. Here’s a doozy (originally from Talking Points Memo). A New Mexico lawmaker took to his blog …
#JusticeForEthan has a petition. If you read my blog, you have probably either signed it or chosen not to do so, so that’s not news. What’s amazing is that it is only 1200 from 300,000. Once, just getting to 1200 would have been an accomplishment, as petitions withered and died. Some of this is because …
I haven’t done as much writing about the humanities as I intended during the summer, as other topics moved to the fore. It was one of the sub-themes in my piece on public writing for the Chronicle. Yesterday, a good friend of mine, a libertarian medieval historian, linked to the “Imaginative Conservative.” There are essays …
Today is the first day of the new semester and my wife is out of town (she left at 4 AM). I rose at 6, woke up both my kids, snuggled them for a few minutes in my son’s bed, then went to the kitchen. I assembled breakfast for each, got my daughter onto the …