Quentin Tarantino made a movie so brilliant in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that critics and audiences love it despite missing the point. Like so many good films, it operates, and works, on many levels. When one uncovers all…

A specter is haunting America — the specter of white nationalism. Like all specters, white nationalism appears invisible to some but plainly apparent to others. Some possess the gift. They see “invisible racism” with great clarity. They decipher language that…

Fifty years ago tonight, followers of Charles Manson murdered actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child, Jay Sebring (hairstylist to Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Jim Morrison, and other stars), coffee heiress Abigail Folger, her boyfriend and director Roman Polanski’s boyhood friend…

Robert Dean Lurie’s Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years tackles its subject at a peculiar time. Eight years after their breakup, R.E.M. appears less relevant and listened to than ever, and the band’s early, indie years strike as a strange…

Americans, a compassionate people, have elected presidents crippled from polio (Franklin Roosevelt), diagnosed with Addison’s disease (John Kennedy), and suffering from Tourette syndrome (Donald Trump). But some maladies ask too much from voters, including RBF, which explains why Kamala Harris…

Not since Chauncey Gardiner has Washington, D.C., so overestimated a figure. Robert Swan (Song) Mueller exhibited a Being There quality on Wednesday. Gardiner and Mueller, two creatures of the capital, long served as blank screens upon which everybody projected sundry…

Man ascended to the glorious heavens and sank to the murky depths 50 years ago this weekend. The juxtaposition serves as a metaphor for modern times, when our technology races to infinity and beyond as our behavior periodically knuckle-drags toward…

Beto O’Rourke divulges that a “paternal great-great-great-grandfather of mine” owned slaves and that a “maternal great-great-grandfather” likely owned slaves, as well (he adds that his wife’s line includes a slave owner and a man who fought for the Confederate army)….

Nancy Pelosi issued a spanking to the enfants terribles of her caucus this week. The corporal punishment elicited more of the temper tantrums that brought about the spanking in the first place. Pelosi, channeling her inner Bill Belichick — the…

The San Francisco School Board last week authorized $600,000 in spending to destroy a mural depicting George Washington at a high school named for him. “It’s rude and disrespectful to people’s cultures,” a junior at the school told the San…