Eugene Robinson's Blog, page 113

Remembering Gabriel García Márquez, and Macondo

Years before I met him, Gabriel García Márquez changed my life.

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” gave me a new way of looking at the world. The label “magical realism” does not begin to capture the poetry of García Márquez’s imagination or the evocative power of his prose. Reading his masterpiece was like stepping through a portal into a Technicolor reality where the streets are paved with metaphor and the air is fragrant with dreams.

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On climate, business as usual

The world’s predicament on climate change reminds me of an old saying: “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”

Despite mounting evidence that global warming is an urgent crisis, emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases grew faster between 2000 and 2010 than over the previous three decades, according to an authoritative new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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Obamacare’s victory lap

It’s all over but the shouting: Obamacare is working.

All the naysaying in the world can’t drown out mounting evidence that the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature domestic achievement, is a real success. Republican candidates running this fall on an anti-Obamacare platform will have to divert voters’ attention from the facts, which tell an increasingly positive story.

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Here’s an emotional response to the torture report: I’m outraged

Torture is immoral, illegal and irreconcilable with this nation’s most cherished values. If defenders of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program disagree, they should come out and say so. Instead, they blow smoke.

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Tilting at windbags over Russia

I had no idea so many Republicans were nostalgic for the Cold War. President Obama should dust off the zinger he used in a campaign debate against Mitt Romney: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

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Robinson: Tilting at windbags over Russia

I had no idea so many Republicans were nostalgic for the Cold War. President Obama should dust off the zinger he used in a campaign debate against Mitt Romney: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

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Paul Ryan’s culture attack is an excuse to do nothing about poverty

Blaming poverty on the mysterious influence of “culture” is a convenient excuse for doing nothing to address the problem.

That’s the real issue with what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said about distressed inner-city communities. Critics who accuse him of racism are missing the point. What he’s really guilty of is providing a reason for government to throw up its hands in mock helplessness.

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Robinson: Paul Ryan’s culture attack is an excuse to do nothing about poverty

Blaming poverty on the mysterious influence of “culture” is a convenient excuse for doing nothing to address the problem.

That’s the real issue with what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said about distressed inner-city communities. Critics who accuse him of racism are missing the point. What he’s really guilty of is providing a reason for government to throw up its hands in mock helplessness.

Read full article >>
       

Robinson: Without facts on the missing airliner, the media make stuff up

Let me go out on a limb: The Malaysian airliner did not get sucked into a black hole, vanish over the Indian Ocean equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle or crash-land on the spooky island from “Lost.”

Those “theories” were actually discussed on CNN this week. Host Don Lemon dismissed them as “preposterous” before asking one of his assembled “expert” guests — there were six of them waiting expectantly in their boxes on the screen — whether, you know, such ideas really were so preposterous.

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Without facts on the missing airliner, the media make stuff up

Let me go out on a limb: The Malaysian airliner did not get sucked into a black hole, vanish over the Indian Ocean equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle or crash-land on the spooky island from “Lost.”

Those “theories” were actually discussed on CNN this week. Host Don Lemon dismissed them as “preposterous” before asking one of his assembled “expert” guests — there were six of them waiting expectantly in their boxes on the screen — whether, you know, such ideas really were so preposterous.

Read full article >>