Opinions Are Made Of This

 

Harper’s Magazine, March 2013

If one were to hang one’s hat on any articles in this issue as talking points relating to todays significant issues in the U.S., one need only read through the first dozen pages.

That begins with Thomas Frank’s essay, “Blood Sport,” on the Connecticut killing tragedy. Frank takes a stand somewhere between liberal and conservative on the subsequent rush to new gun legislation by siding in minuscule part with the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre that Hollywood and its outpouring of gratuitous violence is in tandem with the NRA’s thinly veiled racism and fearmongering-styled advocacy of guns.

And Jeff Madrick, in his op-ed piece, “The Anti-Economist – the Fall and Rise of Occupy Wall Street,” takes on the issue of modern-day suppression of social protest, specifically that of the Occupy Wall Street protests that spread across the country a year or two ago. Most of us barely remember the combination of preemptive police strikes against OWS and the scattershot of brutal putdowns of peaceful demonstrators during that year – but they were there – and filmed for posterity.

But, Madrick says, social media has kept OWS foremost in the minds of the body politic; thus OWS will be be a political and economic image for decades to come.

 

 

Visit my website here, and my FB Fan Page here for more on ideas and events that matter to me – and possibly to you.