I borrow my title from Jonathan Swift, who was writing about the problem of starvation in eighteenth-century Ireland. Swift’s proposal for solving the problem, considered one of the best examples of irony in English literature, was for the starving Irish to solve the problem of starvation by boiling and eating their babies. Swift’s proposal was, of course, anything but modest. It was also satire—educated people of the time were not expected to take it seriously. Today’s Republican Party, however, has been proposing actions, while not as horrific as boiling and eating babies, would foster almost as much misery for the . . . → Read More: A Modest Proposal
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In “That Ol’ Black Magic,” in reference to the Ol’ Black Magic of love, Robbie Williams says he’s loving the spin he’s in. Love isn’t of course, the only “Black Magic,” that puts people in a spin. In the U.S., we’ve grown increasingly aware of the “spin” used by major corporations and politicians to influence politics and consumer behavior. “Spin” is basically a biased interpretation. While some form of “spin” has undoubtedly been with us throughout human history, the “father” of modern political spin is usually thought to be canaries in cages down in coal mines so that, when the . . . → Read More: The Spin I’m In  Comments are closed  Blog  Agent Orange, bats, bees, birds, bomb, bombs, butterflies, canaries, canary, clear the airway, coal, coal mining, Coca Cola, Coke, corporations, deforestation, Edward Bern's, global climate change, GMO, Good Samaritan, health, insecticides, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, Lincoln, long-term problems, Mandy Patinkin, Miami, Mideast, military and civilian first-aid, Monsanto, natural gas, neonicotinoids, North Vietnamese, oil, Ol' Black Magic, politicians, public relations, Robbie Williams, sea-level rise, short-term thinking, Spin, Stephen Colbert, stone age, stop the bleeding, The Late Show, trees, Vietnam War, walking dead, well-being |
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