My various critics, enemies, and complaintents, please, use this space to make yourself heard. Don’t start on Twitter, it’s unseemly; if you aren’t willing to confront someone with your problems, you aren’t actually interested in solving them. Frankly I can’t keep track, at this point. So get in line or shut up. It’s pathetic.
Continue reading →The Conference on College Composition and Communication, where I’m hanging out right now, is organized by the National Council of Teachers of English. It’s good to be a part of that organization; John James deBoer, my paternal grandfather, was the 32nd president of the organization. A professor of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, […]
Continue reading →Hey guys, the comments moderation system has failed to send me notification of some comments waiting to be cleared lately, leading to a delay in me releasing them. I believe I have unleashed all the comments now. I apologize for the delay.
Continue reading →“Ricks is free to think what he wants about Greenwald and Snowden’s political beliefs and if he has some evidence that they have signed on to Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine agenda, as a top journalist I’m sure he can figure out a way to prove it. Otherwise this is just another example of a certain strain […]
Continue reading →In the six years or so that I’ve been writing online, I’ve been motivated, more than anything else, by the emails of young lefties who write to me. They write to me, usually, because they’re facing some sort of crisis of conscience. These crises are inspired by particular events, particular political controversies. But almost always, […]
Continue reading →Well gang, it’s spring break for Purdue. I’ll be spending most of next week in Indianapolis– no airfare! no Greyhound!– at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. I’ll be filing some dispatches from there for this here blog. If my past two CCCCs experiences are any indication, it’ll be fun, frustrating, inspiring, depressing, an […]
Continue reading →Last year, I wrote a piece about ten of my favorite writers. I got an email that praised the piece, which I appreciated, but it contained a sentiment I find incredibly exasperating. The writer of the email complimented my list, particularly noting its diversity. Half of the people on my list were women; four were […]
Continue reading →Gang, I’ve got a new piece out for n+1 today about my old home, Hartford, Connecticut. It’s a subject of great personal and emotional commitment for me. You should read it. It’s really good.
Continue reading →Today, Hamilton Nolan argued that Twitter is public. That is true. I mean this in the old fashioned sense, that is, it accurately reflects reality. I know because I have a web browser open right now and it enables me to access public Twitter feeds. Predictably, some people are mad at Nolan, calling him condescending […]
Continue reading →This post contains spoilers for the first season of True Detective. The moderate, qualified disappointment being expressed about the ending of the first season of HBO’s True Detective, and with it the end of that storyline and characters, seemed highly predictable to me from the earliest stages of the show’s ecstatic critical reaction. You could argue […]
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