Cranky T-Rex's Blog

"Mr. Rex, do you think President Obama is a Christian?" "What?" "Do you think the President is a Christian?" "Why the hell are you asking me? I'm not the Pope. It doesn't matter what I think of the President's personal religious values.  What the President thinks is his religion is none of my damn business, and even if it mattered in the least as to his particular policies, he'll be out of office in short order anyway so it's a moot point either way. The fact that you would even formulate those words in that order is insulting to me, the President, and your entire profession.  All the stuff that's happening in the world and you're going to sit there and ask me the journalistic equivalent of 'Oh my God , did you see what Tiffany was wearing last night!?' How the fuck did you get this job in the first place? See this is why people hate you people and everyone in pretty much every political office from dog catc...

Star Trek has had a profound effect on my life. I grew up watching the original series in reruns and seeing the movies in theaters. As Star Trek: The Next Generation matured into a great show, so did I mature through my teenage years. The ethical debates we had in college classrooms had nothing on heated arguments I had about Captain Janeway’s decisions in Star Trek: Voyager . Even when I finally developed an interest in politics, I was more concerned about the reboot of Star Trek than I was about Obama’s attempt to reboot America. Such is the world for people who don’t have time to follow the minute by minute machinations of Washington. It’s why politically savvy people my age spend so much time trying to impress upon conservatives just how important it is they engage in the culture. Not only does it inform our politics, it reflects what we value as a nation. In fact, the difference between the original Star Trek and the rebooted version demonstrates how drastically A...

Sometimes the hero is the one you least expect... Their goals and their demands vary. Their movement requires almost nothing of its members to join, and so their diversity of both personalities and physical traits is astounding. They're also the last people one might expect to get into a culture war. "They" are the supporters of #GamerGate, and they have been confounding people for almost a half a year now. Even after all that time, it's still a Herculean task to convince people of the significance of #GamerGate, with all "the happenings" as the gamers would call them making it nigh-impossible to wrap it up in a neat little bow for people to understand (though I did take a stab at that .) Those who do take an interest are often stymied by the chaotic nature of a leaderless Internet subculture. David Pakman , for example, spent many of his initial interviews grappling with the notion that a movement with such a low barrier to entry can simultaneously ...