Brad Paisley went on Ellen this week to explain his new country song, “Accidental Racist.” Ellen Degeneres asked: “So you’re basically saying?” Paisley answered: “I don’t know.” Pop music is disposable by design. Pop music is also a space for society to work through its collective feelings, anxieties, sentimentality, hopes, and dreams. As such, LL […]

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Just over 40 years ago, the United States signed an “Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.” It did neither. President Richard Nixon called it “peace with honor.” But it wasn’t. All the agreement did was end direct U.S. involvement in the war, but certainly not the war itself, nor the conflict […]

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We welcome our readers to this first issue of the Washington Spectator’s new monthly format. It’s still the portable Spectator, but there’s more space for the longer reporting pieces readers have requested—you’ll see the dividend when you read Lou Dubose’s cover story on how the Voting Rights Act has helped preserve democracy, and Jim Goldston’s […]

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No Democracy Without Reform The last election was an absolutely disgusting spectacle in Ohio, largely but not totally due to the stunning influx of TV and radio commercials from the so-called super-PACs. [“Smart Money,” Washington Spectator, December 1, 2012] Many of us just about wore out the mute button on our TV clickers! It seems […]

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The New York Times list of “well-known and polarizing figures in public education” on the board of the new advocacy group StudentsFirstNY includes: former D.C. School Superintendent Michelle Rhee; former New York School Superintendent Joel Klein (now working for Rupert Murdoch); Eva S. Moskowitz, who now runs a charter-school chain; former Mayor Ed Koch, and “venture […]

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