With the Republican and Democratic National Conventions officially wrapped up, many political analysts refer to the next few weeks as the figurative “home stretch” of the presidential race. Less than two months remain until the Nov. 5 election, and most major polls show President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney either neck and neck with results comfortably...
Three weeks ago I met Pat Ward, the preacher presiding over The Orchard, a Christian Methodist church in Oxford, for coffee. During our conversation we spoke of his church, the doctrine of Christian Exclusivism and the value of faith. Ward was a good sport, letting me play Nietzsche with him and granting me permission to print the results. When I speak of “Christian...
This is a sensitive issue, I’m quite aware. Native Ole Miss students are hypersensitive to out-of-state students who have not been lifelong Ole Miss fans and have allegiances to more than one football team. I, having grown up in New Orleans to an LSU alum, hold dual fandom and have been called a traitor for even suggesting that I like LSU. Please refrain from tweeting...
Last week Democrats had a chance to come together in massive numbers in Charlotte, N.C., to host our national convention from Sept. 4-7. I had the distinct pleasure of making the trip with the Mississippi delegation. This year we were treated to powerful party leaders and quite a few upcoming stars, from primetime speakers such as Michelle Obama, Julian Castro, Elizabeth...
Here is the scene in Chicago currently: the city, in the midst of an all-time high in revenue, has decided to decrease teacher’s pay by 16 percent over the next four years and is pushing to do away with an accountability system that would measure the teachers’ performance in the classroom. The teachers, whose first priority is and always will be the students,...
Last week I drew from Benedict Anderson to introduce the notion of a national imaginary — those ideas and ideals that help link us to a national community from which we are otherwise separated by space and experience. Last week I discussed football; this week I’ll consider music and celebrity culture. You might ask why I’m not talking about movies...
“We the people” are the first three words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, and they identify those responsible for upholding the foundations of that document. This description comes from a nonprofit website called TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) that according to its mission statement is devoted to ideas worth spreading. The site’s...
When President George W. Bush began planning the war in Iraq, he must have known he would face vocal opposition. It’s unlikely that he thought he would be called to face criminal charges for those actions. This past week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu penned an editorial in the UK’s Observer newspaper calling for just that. The noted South African anti-apartheid...
