I’d like to invite everyone to join my friend Kev Wright and me for a very special presentation at the Joliet Area Historical Museum on March 3rd. We will lead the audience through a tour of the American troubadour tradition, paying particular attention to the songs of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and John Mellencamp.

In my most recent essays for Salon, I approach a series of political and cultural with a careful eye, and pugnacious spirit.

In the first, I interview John Mueller, one of the world’s leading researchers on terrorism and public safety. We have an insightful dialogue on the dangers of exaggerating the terror threat, and wasted trillions on “chasing ghosts.”

Next, I write about the hypocrisy and inconsistency of right wing opponents of “political correctness.” While I agree that politically correct liberalism is foolish, boring, and often tyrannical (see post below on the new Devil’s Dictionary), the right wing is not the true champion of free speech and open culture. In fact, they are often the worse purveyors of speech codes and taboos. Read my explanation.

Finally, in my most recent essay, I dismantle the inescapable cliche that what America really needs is a “businessman in the White House.” Subscribers to this naive idea betray their own historical ignorance and political illiteracy.

In my new essay for Splice Today, I eviscerate the lexicon of political correctness polluting cultural discourse, and creating conditions of mediocrity. With apologies to the brilliant, and increasingly relevant, Ambrose Bierce, I offer a new Devil’s Dictionary to “delineate definitions more honest and representative than what explicators of contemporary jargon believe they’re illustrating.”

See my own definitions of the terms ugly and stupid terms, “whitesplain,” “mic drop,” “concern troll,” and others at Splice Today.