America's Most Critical Journal since 1999
Where are the witty reviewers of yore; the Alexander Woollcotts, the Dorothy Parkers, the Walter Kerrs, and the rest of an erudite and often acerbic cohort? Gone to the internet or simply gone, every one. Now it hardly matters if the item at hand is a film, a ... More »
Yoko Ono. Heather Mills. Yoko Ono Lennon. Heather Mills-McCartney. Two women. Two Beatles. Who knew? Just remember – everyone – even the allegedly sycophantic, royally aspirational, need someone to look up to… Dear Ms. Ono: I am writing to you because sa... More »
By Dan Geddes 21 January 2015 America’s fullness is a bad fullness; an emptiness. America is full of emptiness, because it is too full of fullness. It is even empty of emptiness—but in the bad way. –Yamamoto Shunryu Yamamoto (’JA-MAH-’MOH-TOH) wa... More »
Many Americans identify themselves through compound forms based on national or regional origin—African-American, Italian-American, Irish-American, Mexican-American, etc. Such individuals often band together and hold parades, have parties, and get politicians... More »
By Harvey J. Lieberman 19 January 2015 Revelations about concussion injuries among professional football players and the resulting National Football League settlement challenge cherished notions about our iconic national sport. The following translation of an ... More »
WASHINGTON – Buried deep in the thousands of classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, journalists have uncovered evidence of a little known non-kinetic warfare device currently being tested by the Pentagon. News of the technology has been kept secr... More »
By Neal Starkman 10 January 2015 Republican Congressman from Louisiana Steve Scalise is in deep trouble with colleagues after it was revealed that in 2012 he spoke to a local chapter of the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union. Moira Bagley Smith, a Scalis... More »
by Dave Norton NEW YORK – In a stunning display of solidarity and disrespect toward New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, the New York Police Department again turned their backs on De Blasio outside of the funeral of a fallen officer on Sunday, to the utter de... More »
(A Jason Half-Pillow Ennui Existential) When Amy One Eye Shut, an almost pathologically shy Navajo Maid at just another in a scattered series of California desert town Ramada Inns between Barstow and Bakersfield, bends her round figure down to prop up Room 113... More »
Robert Charpentier WASHINGTON—Republican Congressional leaders are calling the President out for his handling of the ongoing, destructive lava flow in Hawaii. “We want to know what the President knew and when he knew it,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitc... More »
by Fred Russell 4 January 2015 In May 1726 Voltaire sailed up the Thames, London-bound. He was thirty-two at the time, a scrawny Frenchman with a big mouth. Everyone was after his ass. Back in France he’d had a run-in with someone called the Chevalier de... More »
The following are five new mental disorders that have been included in the American Psychiatric Association’s 2015 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the reference book for those working in the field of mental hea... More »