Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
TV stations cover natural disasters purportedly as a public service. But there’s no denying that such coverage is a ratings boon for their bottom line – catering as it does to the perverse thrill of suspense that keeps us fixated on the hype of impending [or unfolding] doom…. (Katrina’s coming, Katrina’s coming, The iPINIONS Journal,… Read more.
The royal family betrayed its traditional pretense of being above partisan politics by inviting former Conservative prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major while snubbing former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. By contrast, all living prime ministers were invited to the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981. I… Read more.
Continuing this series, which began with a proper introduction yesterday, this second commentary is from May 4, 2007. I feel compelled to note, however, that the American media are providing blanket coverage of this wedding for the same reason they provide similar coverage of human train wrecks like Charlie Sheen and Donald Trump: it’s a perverse ratings bonanza.… Read more.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that media organizations from around the world have already begun broadcasting from London in advance of Friday’s royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton. Unfortunately, the 24/7 reports being filed amount to little more than mundane observations about the fairytale nature of this event and about the security nightmare it poses. Or,… Read more.
We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to stop. (cbc.ca, HM Elizabeth II – commenting on the American bicentennial in Philadelphia, July 1976) This will seem almost traitorous to many of my fellow Caribbean natives, but I am not… Read more.
No doubt you recall all of the Chicken-Little talk by politicians and pundits alike surrounding this year’s budget. Yet literally within seconds of Congress passing a budget bill to avert a government shutdown, these same politicians and pundits redirected their Chicken-Little talk towards drumming up idle-minded fear over the national debt. Meanwhile, everybody knows that… Read more.
This week the media are commemorating the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Conspicuously absent from their retrospectives, however, are the on-air rants by reporters, commentators, environmentalists, and politicians, including no less a person than President Obama, about this spill causing an ecological catastrophe that will last a thousand years. By… Read more.
It’s not getting nearly as much media coverage as Donald Trump accusing President Obama of faking his American citizenship, but Natalie Portman’s body double accusing her of faking the dance moves that won her an Oscar is far more newsworthy; not least because it actually rings true. I’m not speaking because I feel I should be heralded.… Read more.
Here is how I dismissed Donald Trump as a viable presidential candidate a week ago yesterday: [N]othing demonstrates that his clownish foray into presidential politics is just for personal ego and financial enrichment quite like previewing his campaign platform by speaking more like a right-wing radio shock jock than a politician. (Trump for president?! Don’t be… Read more.
