I am a big fan of Lindsay Ellis and her video essays analyzing film and literature. I can’t click “play” quickly enough when one of them appears on my YouTube feed. Thanks to Ellis’s piercing intelligence, keen social observations, and abundant wit, they are smart, insightful, and entertaining, Needless to…

In trying to come up with a metaphor that captures the ill-considered approach used by many Republican governors to address the COVID-19 pandemic that is impacting their states, I have decided on this one: tickling the dragon’s tail. Allow me to elaborate on where the expression comes from and why…

I think it’s time we sat down and had “the talk,” the facts of life talk, that is. In this case, it’s going to be the facts of life under COVID-19. Yes, it’s going to make us both a bit uncomfortable, but, after all is said and done, it’s better…

If you’re a registered voter in Georgia, you should receive an Application for Official Absentee Ballot in the mail by Friday, April 10. If you haven’t, or if you’d like to go ahead and get the process underway, there is a Fillable Absentee Ballot Form 20 (PDF) on the Georgia…

If your Facebook newsfeed is anything like mine these days, it is filled with COVID-19-related posts, some of them good, some of them bad, and some of them downright ugly. For that reason, I thought I’d step in and offer some advice. You should keep in mind that I’m no…

Holding the American electorate in low regard is hardly something new. Quoting journalist and social commentator H.L. Mencken from a 1926 article in the Chicago Tribune: “No one in this world … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” What may…

Although “A Warning” by an unnamed a senior Trump administration official won’t be released until November 19, advance copies are out and reviews have already appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. I must admit that I have a guilty interest in the lurid tales that the…

You might think that this double-barrelled cannon sitting next to City Hall in Athens, Georgia could be prop in some sort of misguided Civil War comedy. And, if you did, you wouldn’t be far from right. According to a plaque nearby, the cannon, the only one of its kind, was…

As I have discussed elsewhere, one constructive side-effect of the Donald Trump administration and its abundance of deliberately orchestrated constitutional crises has been to get me to reflect on what that document says and how it works to resolve or, more aptly, to fail to resolve the aforementioned crises. The…