Trethewey focuses her keen verbal gifts on the most sensitive nerve in American life.
"It's time to declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture."
Not everything that's fun is a consitutionally protected right.
The "hope and dreams" in Springsteen's song are those of the immigrant, the refugee, and the runaway slave.
The Walmart workforce has begun to publicly rattle its chains.
Should America reconsider our open market in bigoted ideas?
Average Americans, the supposed winners of the global rat race, are overworked and overstressed—and still falling behind economically.
Solidarity may be all but dead in our politics, but it still lives around the edges of our culture.
Tom Morello's approach to politics is as unique and incisive as his best guitar solos.
Springsteen sings what politicians won't say: We were robbed and the thieves have escaped justice.
From Mississippi to Kentucky coal-mining country, churches are taking on the public health crisis of obesity.
Piano-playing cats or union organizing drives—Google and Facebook don’t care. They just keep a sieve in the flow to collect information that can be sold to advertisers.
Muslim cops and football coaches (oh my!) -- the next step in the right wing's efforts to keep Americans in fear.
Thirty-four years later, nearly two decades into the Internet age, the September 2011 break-up of the rock band R.E.M. reminded me just how right Bangs was. R.E.M. was one of the last traditional rock bands still doing relevant work.
Consensus decision-making can make an old-style Senate filibuster seem purposeful and engaging.
How blind commitment to 'free trade' throws working people under the bus.
Springsteen has always understood that the rock-and-roll story is about freedom.
How strange sightings, the Cold War, and the national security state add up to a truth we'll never know.
The mainstreaming of Rand is, in large part, the work of one man (and his money).
In 1886, members of America's fledgling labor movement called a general strike for May 1 to demand an eight-hour work day.
"A white man's country" became the multiracial, multicultural democracy we now inhabit.
THE EGYPTIAN revolution started on Facebook. True. The Iranians who took to the streets last year to try to overturn a fraudulent election used Twitter to coordinate their actions and to communicate with the outside world. Also true.
American alienation is the real killer that stalks our past, and our present.
In the past two years, the culture wars have been complicated on the Right by the rise of the "tea party." In a time of grave economic crisis and massive government action, the traditional right-wi
Here's some 2010 midterm election commentary ripped straight from the headlines -- of 1886.
For a while it looked like the battle for "Net neutrality" was won when President Obama appointed his own chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
It happens every summer. Newsmakers go on vacation, real news gets slow, and novelty stories rush in to fill the vacuum. One summer it's child abductions; the next it's shark attacks.
The Main Reason: They upend the power structure to give people at the bottom a better chance.
A school claims video games help students learn to "manage complexity." But will they understand culture?
Let's just call the Music City deluge a naturally occurring metaphor.
Will one-fourth of our citizenry be left in the digital ditch?
I have a relative up in the Rust Belt who owns a small machine tool company and watches Fox News.
My oldest child is applying to colleges, so there’s been a lot of talk around my house this year about the underlying purpose and real value of education.
Was Jack Kerouac a keeper of visions or a self-destructive individualist?
Capitalism: A Love Story examines a "filthy, rotten system."
Vacation Bible Schools isn't nearly as bad as, say, the Inquisition.
Two multimedia projects see Africa as the planet's musical heart and soul.
Smart people concocted a fantasy empire based on investing in other people’s debt.
When I began writing this column back in 1985, my page could hold up to 1,000 words. Over the years that number has shrunk, first to 800, then 700.
