Feb 28, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, History, mic, Race and Racism
Published: mic (February 28, 2014) It's the NFL off-season and while players are on vacation and there's no good excuse to get debauched on a Sunday any longer, something else is afoot — NFL rule changes. On Feb. 22, news broke that the NFL's Competition Committee is considering an automatic 15-yard penalty for use of the "n-word" on the field and presumably other racial slurs. This opens up a...
Feb 24, 2014 | Foreign Policy, History, mic, Military-Industrial Complex/Security State, Millennials, Other Media, World Affairs
Published: mic (February 24, 2014), Appearance on Channel 69 - WFMZ (February 25, 2014) The news: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel plans to announce billions of dollars in military spending cuts, reducing our armed forces to troop levels unseen since 1940— before America entered World War II. In addition to reducing the size of our standing army, he will also propose limiting pay raises,...
Feb 2, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, History, mic, Science and Technology
Published: mic (February 2, 2014) Millennials are suckers for nostalgia, which is why RadioShack's Super Bowl commercial was an advertising masterpiece. The spot opens with a RadioShack employee completing a phone call and informing his co-worker, "The '80s called. They want their store back." Cue a string of cameos to make even the most oversaturated nostalgia junkie experience an overdose....
Jan 23, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, History, mic, Science and Technology
Published: mic (January 23, 2014) n case you missed it, Wednesday was the anniversary of a revolution. Imagine if 30 years ago (only a few years after Al Gore invented the Internet), someone had envisioned a future in which there would be a personal computer in every home. Well, the geniuses at Apple saw it coming, and their iconic "1984" ad was a milestone event in a revolution that would...
Jan 20, 2014 | Class Issues, Economic Policy, History, mic, Race and Racism
Published: mic (January 20, 2014) If he was alive today, Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have been a Republican. In light of the frequency with which he is cited as a hero and role model, that point cannot be reiterated enough. We often hear about King's crusades to end legal segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North, but far less attention is paid to the inextricable link...
Jan 11, 2014 | Foreign Policy, History, mic, World Affairs
Published: mic (January 11, 2014) "I am 73 years old. I've seen everything. I've met the kings, the queens, the presidents, I've been around the world. I have one thing that I would like to do: to try to reach peace." When Ariel Sharon uttered these words in the first year of his tenure as prime minister of Israel, observers of Middle Eastern politics were understandably skeptical of their...
Jan 7, 2014 | Civil Liberties, Gay Rights and Other LGBTQIA Issues, History, mic
Published: mic (January 7, 2014) In light of the Supreme Court's recent decision to temporarily halt gay marriages in Utah, it's time to take a closer look at some of the most common anti-LGBT arguments. After all, the Mormon Church been conspicuously active in anti-gay marriage movements (most notably by passing Proposition 8 in California,) while Utah has long been ranked as one of America's...
Dec 9, 2013 | Conservativism, Foreign Policy, History, mic, Political Ideologies, Race and Racism, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: mic (December 9, 2013) Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, and other paladins of the American right labeled Nelson Mandela a terrorist. While mainstream conservatives tend to renounce this characterization today, it still has currency in more ideologically zealous circles. Indeed, some people on Twitter are already tweeting away reiterations of the infamous "terrorist"...
Nov 22, 2013 | Conspiracy Theories, History, mic
Published: mic (November 22, 2013) Is conspiracy theorizing a problem? As America recognizes the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, the conspiracy theories continue to abound. Among the most prevalent are: - That he was murdered by the CIA as revenge for his post-Bay of Pigs personnel shake-up and/or his alleged plan to de-escalate the Vietnam War. - That he was murdered by...
Published: mic (November 19, 2013) On Thursday, the Harrisburg Patriot-News printed a long overdue retraction. How long, you ask? Try about 150 years. Indeed, as the Harrisburg Patriot-News looked back to the days when it was still the Harrisburg Patriot & Union, it recalled how it had panned President Lincoln's legendary Gettysburg Address, dismissing his words as "silly remarks" deserving...