The Invisible Counterpoint

But before any of these inquiries are but a twinkle in Isaac's eye, I know I'm going to face an interrogation about vegetarianism. At some point soon, he'll ask why our family doesn't eat this stuff called "meat" that's everywhere. I have my substantive answers already lined up, so I'm not worried about what I'll tell him. (We don't eat meat because it's unhealthy, environmentally irresponsible, expensive and inhumane.) With this question, I'm more concerned about the prompting. Why is he almost certainly going to ask at such an early age? I think I know the answer -- and it's not the ad campaigns that make meat seem like a rational choice ("Beef: It's What's for Dinner"), a healthy alternative food ("Pork: The Other White Meat") or a compassionate cuisine decision (Chik-fil-A's billboards, which show a cow begging you to spare his life by choosing chicken). No, Isaac's going to have questio...

There is a shadowy group of malcontents in America today, plotting a grand takeover of our political institutions in order to completely remake the country according to their wishes. Despite the fact the members of this group are a small minority of the population, and an unpopular one at that, they seek to infiltrate the courts and the government at every level, in order to replace our long-standing system of law with their own extremist, undemocratic religious code. These true believers are especially dangerous because they think they're doing God's work, and you ignore them, or play down the threat they pose to America, at your own risk. This tiny band of fanatics is largely distrusted and despised by regular Americans, but a terrified media coddles them and pretends they're harmless. I am speaking, of course, of the Tea Parties, a group now officially less popular among Americans than Muslims. Professors David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam have a column in today...

Since you all abandoned the other thread "Starkey racism row: It is the political elite's ceaseless denigration of white working-class culture that has 'turned kids black' " (Link:http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100101050/starkey-racism-row-it-is-the-political-elites-ceaseless-denigration-of-white-working-class-culture-that-has-turned-kids-black/) What changed is not so much that blacks, followed by whites, immersed themselves in the lingo or outlook of their ancestors, but rather that white working-class culture has in recent years been denigrated to an extraordinary degree. From the way the white working classes speak (un-PC, foul) to what they eat (”junk food”, which makes them “obese”) to what they wear (the girls dress like “slags”, the boys like “scum”), virtually every facet of white working-class life has been subjected to the ridicule of the political and cultural elite, finding itself mocked on TV shows and tut-t...

If the rest of us are sweating through a wretched climate-change-seared August, it's a good bet the super-rich and powerful are calm, air-conditioned and happily summering in the world's most posh retreats. Of course, to paraphrase the late great Molly Ivins , most Americans do not employ the word "summer" as a verb, because such usage implies an annual season of luxury that the typical prole can only dream of during his few days off at the local state park (if he's lucky to have a vacation and lucky enough to live near a state park that hasn't been shuttered by budget cuts). But summering is what the wealthy do -- and when they do it so ostentatiously in such a pulverizing recession, it all but screams "Let Them Eat Cake." So, too, does the rhetoric of a presidential race beginning in earnest. As the 2012 candidates now romp through primary-state hamlets, they are already road-testing a carefully sculpted type of "Let Them Eat Cake" ...

Lauerman : There's still a lot to be concerned about. But do you get giddy with the progress you're seeing? Dan Savage : [Laughs.] Yeah, I actually am! You know, we're winning. Anyone who wants evidence that we haven't won yet just needs to look at the Republican field. You know, we live in a two-party system, and for one party, the only thing they can seem to agree on is hating gay people. They hate us like they hate evolution. Unfortunately, they just can't wish us away, any more than they could wish evolution away. It's not a done deal and it's not sewn up. But they're now fighting a rear-guard action, while we're advancing on all fronts. The heartening thing, even if we are cursed with a President Santorum, which is not going to happen, or President Perry or Bachmann, is what we've seen over the past 20 years, under Democrats, there's been some progress. There's been great progress since the Democrats got the wake-up call ...

Not only is the United States slouching toward a double dip, but so is Europe. New data out Tuesday show even Europe's strongest core economies -- Germany, France, and the Netherlands -- slowing to a crawl. We're on the cusp of a global recession. Policy makers be warned: Austerity is the wrong medicine. [. . .] But chalk up a big part of Europe's slowdown to the politics and economics of austerity. Europe -- including Britain -- have turned John Maynard Keynes on his head. They've been cutting public spending just when they should be spending more to counteract slowing private spending. The United States has been moving in the same bizarre direction. Cutbacks by state and local governments have all but negated the federal government's original stimulus, and no one in Washington is talking seriously about a second. The pitiful showdown over increasing the debt limit has produced the opposite: a Rube-Goldberg-like process for capping spending rather...

"This isn't about me." That's what eager, well-intentioned and lily-white aspiring writer Skeeter tells the nervous African-American maid Minny in "The Help." It's her pitch to try to get Minny to open up about her experiences as a domestic, and her feelings on the roiling racism of Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s. But it's also one of the most telling moments of what's shaping up to be one of the most controversial and surprisingly divisive movies of the year. Because novelist Kathryn Stockett wrote a book that wasn't just about her. And that has a made a lot of people very uncomfortable. [. . .] On Monday afternoon in Times Square, the audience for "The Help" was surprisingly packed and unmistakably diverse. For a few hours, a variety of young people and older matinee goers, men and women, black and white, sat down together and watched a movie about what happens when black and white people sit down together. Then, as Vio...