Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed author Floyd Brown to the newsmaker line to talk about his new book Counter Punch.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio for the first edition of Aaron’s Analysis.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss the narrative of his new book American Refugee and the literary process.
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Warren climbed the wide steps from Marlborough Street to the door of the Province House, the old mansion with its Tudor-style chimney stacks and ornate gables built a century ago by a wealthy Boston merchant. But for generations now it had been the residence of the royal governors of Massachusetts. For a moment he studied the large royal seal affixed over the door, a reminder of the awesome empire that the governor represented, then looked above it to the eight-sided cupola crowning the mansion, noting the weathervane at the very top shifting in the breeze.
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by Roger Kimball Oscar Wilde was such a card. Sitting for his viva voce examination in Greek, he was given a passage to translate from one of the Passion stories in the New Testament. He started in and was barreling along fluently. At some point, one of the examiners interrupted, noting that he was satisfied by Wilde’s performance and that he could stop. Wilde ignored him and kept at it. The examiner interrupted again. “Really, Mr. Wilde, you may stop now. It is clear that you know the Greek.” “Oh please let me continue,” Wilde is supposed to have responded. “I want to see how it ends.” Yuck, yuck, yuck. Who knows whether the story is true? I like to think it is. It’s not that I believe Wilde was ignorant of the plot of a Gospel story. He knew how it ended all right. But I admire the insouciance of his response. Many people think the world is in a position akin to Wilde’s with respect to the 2020 presidential election. We’re all assumed to know how it ended. Joe Biden won. Any demurral on that score is put down to feigned ignorance, attempted cleverness, or petulant perversity. After…
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by George Rasley Thursday, some 300 newspapers published editorials attacking President Trump for calling certain media figures and companies “the enemy of the people.” The effort was conceived by the Boston Globe and promoted by the American Society of News Editors, the New England Newspaper and Press Association and other groups. Marjorie Pritchard, the Globe’s deputy editorial page editor, told CNN the goal was to raise awareness in the public mind of “the importance of a free and independent press.” If that was the goal, as far as we can tell it failed to deliver. And the reason that it failed is because the American public, outside the largely coastal enclaves of the self-appointed urban elite, long ago realized that most of today’s “press” is neither free nor independent. The days of the feisty independent newspaper publisher are long gone. They have been replaced by corporate managers in thrall to next quarter’s profits, who are not rewarded for speaking truth to power or fighting for the little guy, but for how many column inches of ad space they place. And that same progressive corporate ownership of multiple newspapers must have made getting the orders to push the Boston Globe’s…
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