Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
1976, Donald Warren—a sociologist from Oakland University in Michigan who would die two decades later without ever attaining the rank of full professor—published a book called The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation. Few people have read or heard of it—I learned of it about 30 years ago from the late, very eccentric paleoconservative…
Despite what Donald Trump and many other politicians have told you, the major threat to America isn’t Muslim extremism. In fact, statistics show that the real danger lies with domestic extremists who aren’t of the Muslim faith. The New York Times reported back in June that since Sept. 11, 2001, almost twice as many people have died at…
More big Donald Trump news today: Now that he’s finally found a Bible verse he likes (even if it doesn’t exist), he is doing his very best to suck up to the wackiest fringes of the evangelist movement. Not necessarily the biggest figures on the Christian Right, but the hucksters and “Prosperity Gospel” crazies, the folks who…
Sept. 25, 2015 11:25 a.m. ET Go back, for a moment, nearly 30 years. In March 1987, Margaret Thatcher visited Mikhail Gorbachev, the reforming leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in Moscow. Sitting in the Kremlin, the two argued for hours. At one point, Mr. Gorbachev accused Mrs. Thatcher of leading the…
In a video and interview publishing Tuesday, Carl Icahn shares Donald Trump’s criticism of the U.S.’s failure to overhaul taxation and immigration and raise interest rates. Icahn backs Trump’s calls to end carried-interest loopholes and rules that encourage corporations to relocate overseas and avoid repatriating profits. “I would say it’s an endorsement. I think at…
On the opening day of Trump Plaza in Atlantic City in 1984, Donald Trump stood in a dark topcoat on the casino floor celebrating his new investment as the “finest building in the city and possibly the nation.” Thirty years later, the Trump Plaza folded, leaving some 1,000 employees without jobs. Trump, meanwhile, was on…
Donald Trump spoke with CBS’s Scott Pelley on Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes” and then promptly attacked his interviewer on social media, adding Pelley to the long list of journalists Trump has lashed out against during this campaign cycle. Trump appeared excited enough for the interview that aired alongside an interview with Russian President Vladmir Putin…
Many Stephen Colbert fans worried that his move to CBS and to a market requiring a more mainstream audience would deflate his sharpness. Leaving Comedy Central and an audience of just over 1 million for a network and an audience three times as large was certain to carry with it an adjustment. There would be all…
START “MORE ON” SINGLE STORY BOX v. 2 END “MORE ON” SINGLE STORY BOX v. 2 The United States seems poised to follow up its summer of religious freedom with an autumn of Islamophobia. Last week, in New Hampshire, Donald Trump was questioned by a man who said President Obama was a foreign Muslim…
Far from destroying our democracy, he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not. And changing it in the process. As the summer of Donald Trump came to its end — and the prospect of a springtime for Trump no longer seemed like a gag — the quest to…