Bush’s War of Art
This essay originally appeared in riotmaterial.com I was on the phone with my father and I can’t remember exactly how we got to the part of the conversation we were destined to get to—the part of the conversation everyone was destined to get to—as we watched the unfathomable unfold on that morning of September 11, […]
Coastal Elite Elegy
Originally for Los Angeles Review of Books, November 30, 2016 Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. -Alfred North Whitehead OF THE MANY forensic narratives that have been stitched together to try and shape the potentially-nightmarish November 8 election results into some kind of cloth of understanding, one in particular […]
Is Trump manipulating fears to mobilise the masses?
May 2, 2016 / Huck 55 – The Freaked Out Issue Image: © Anthony Gerace Fear and loathing in the United States WATCHING THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL primaries play out is like walking down a long hallway lined wall-to-wall with fun-house mirrors. What we see is ugly, twisted and distorted – but in the case of our […]
The Red Scare and Average Joes
Originally published in the LA Weekly WITH PRECIOUS LITTLE TO DISTINGUISH HIMSELF from the Bush years, except possibly more intransigence than even W. when it comes to moving off failed domestic and foreign policies, John McCain is losing the battle of reason in this election — which says that the Bush era has been a […]
Florida, Florida, Florida: Where Hillary Supporters Turn to Palin and Working-Class Men Love Joe Biden
THE GREATER TAMPA – St. Petersburg area is a weird neck of the woods, a place where porn empires, strip clubs, regional banking, drug money, upscale resorts, seedy beach towns, Spanish-moss-adorned oak trees and wispy sea oats all struggle for footing in an ever-shifting landscape of development and erosion. Decaying old money and jittery Nuevo […]
Leaving Home
Originally published in the LA Weekly COUNT ME AMONG THOSE WHO WOKE UP on November 3 and thought: secession! My turn toward the idea that California should secede from the Union was based on some bedrock logic that my father used to admonish me with as he suspiciously eyed my derelict teenage friends: You can […]