The American Spectator

In a breather from an epic good monster v.  bad monster tickle fight with my four-year-old across-the-hall neighbor, he looked at me and asked, “Are you a boy?” I said, “No, Will. I’m a girl.” My dear partner overheard our exchange, leaned in, and explained, “She’s not a boy. She’s gender nonconforming.”

My galpal then went on to explain that people expect girls and boys to wear certain clothes, play certain sports, and act certain ways. When they don’t, it sometimes confuses people. She concluded, “But Kate is definitely a girl.” Will seemed perplexed…

(June 2012)

Rolling Stone

A middle-aged guitarist from some moronic band called Rage Against the Machine takes umbrage at one of Congressman Paul Ryan’s sunny pleasantries and runs up his blood pressure in an op-ed excursus of pishposh for a famous children’s magazine. Tsk, tsk: 

…Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

Ryan claims that he likes Rage’s sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don’t care for Paul Ryan’s sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

I wonder what Ryan’s favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of “F—k the Police”? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Don’t mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta “rage” in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he’s not raging against is the privileged elite he’s groveling in front of for campaign contributions. You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed….”

(August 16, 2012)

New York Times

And that which AmSpec perceives as absurdity, the columnist Miss Maureen Dowd envisions as a polemical thrust of genius:

Tom Morello, the Grammy-winning, Harvard-educated guitarist for the metal rap band Rage Against the Machine, punctured Paul Ryan’s pretensions to cool in a Rolling Stone essay rejecting R&R (Romney ’n’ Ryan) as R&R (rock ’n’ roll).