I thought 2008 would be tough to top, but 2009 was made in blogging heaven. Never in my long scriberly career have I had so much at my fingertips to sound self important about, and practically every day has been an adventure in bathos, pathos, mythos and . . . uh, hathos.
Herewith some posts from the past 12 months in which I stuck my neck out -- and as events would prove, occasionally got it loped off:
SARAH PALIN'S MEDIA PUSHBACK:
A STORY PREGNANT WITH LESSONS FOR BLOGGERS
(January 15) Within nanoseconds of the announcement that Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol was pregnant, rumors of a fake-birth conspiracy were spreading. The story 
was much pursued but not published by the mainstream media, but bloggers such as Andrew Sullivan had no such compunction. What followed should be a cautionary tale for the denizens of this emerging but decidedly still Wild West medium. LINK
POETIC JUSTICE VANQUISHES IMPROBABILITY:
THE INEVITABILITY OF BARACK OBAMA
(January 21) Barack Hussein Obama would not have been sworn in as the 44th president of the United States had the Supreme Court not stolen the 2000 election 
for George Bush, had the smirking frat boy from the Texas oil patch not been so spectacularly bad a leader, had the economy not belly flopped, and had the relatively inexperienced senator from Illinois not run on a mantra of hope and change that galvanized an electorate desperate to turn America back from the dark side. LINK
HUMAN FEELINGS & UNIVERSAL TRUTHS:
THE TIMELESSNESS OF BOB MARLEY'S 'EXODUS'
(February 3) Exodus is not just a masterpiece. It is the finest example of the reggae genre, but more importantly one of a small handful of recordings that the term 
"concept album" does not do justice because of how it brilliantly distills the most mundane of human feelings with universal truths through words and music that are at once simple and deeply complex. Selfishly, I found it somewhat galling that Time magazine in 1999 named Exodus the best album of the 20th century. How could this mainstream rag appreciate the stories that Exodus told? LINK
THE REPUBLICAN FEAR MACHINE BACKFIRES
(February 27) Fear has been the Republican Party's greatest weapon, and notably so during the Age of Bush: Fear of people 
with funny names and skin colors. Fear of people who do not worship a Christian God. Fear of people who are not red-blooded Americans. Fear of people who don't spout patriotic slogans or wear American flag lapel pins. But now the screw has turned and fear has become the GOP's greatest enemy. And as perverse as it may seem, if fear is now the party's greatest enemy it is Barack Obama's greatest friend. LINK
NEW LEXICON FOR OUR TI . . . TI . . . TIMES
(March 4) A lexicon is a stock of terms; in short, a vocabulary. These crazy times certainly have rendered passe the 
traditional meaning of words like clown, fail, ghetto, implosion, leadership, morality and quitter. Then there's balls, hillary, obvious, transparency, xenophobia and zombie. And it's not for nothing that a surrealistic painting accompanies this list. LINK
OBAMA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME
HAS STOPPED BEING SOMETHING TO RIDICULE
(April 8) The murder of three Pittsburgh police officers by a young man who bought into right-wing lunatic fringe fears that the president is 
going to outlaw guns is an extreme manifestation of Obama Derangement Syndrome. But to suggest that people like myself who make such connections are irrational is the grown-up equivalent of a child closing his eyes, putting fingers in his ears and chanting nothings to try to drown out a parent or teacher. LINK
THE MONSTER OF MAHMOUDIYAH IS SPARED
DEATH WHILE BUSH & RUMSFELD GO FREE
(May 22) While it was never in doubt that the Monster of Mahmoudiya would die in prison, it has been decided that 
his death should come later rather than sooner. That is the result of the four-week trial of Steven Green, the boy-man ringleader of the gang rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, her parents and young sister in a village south of Baghdad on March 12, 2006. LINK
THE JOYS OF WORKING WITH YOUR HANDS
(May 29) While I had felt out of balance many years ago, I did not realize how cattywampus my chi was until I had spent a few months 
away from rush-hour traffic, fluorescent lights, typewriters and the occasional word-processor screen working with my hands. And if you've spent your life sitting on your keister, it's never too late to trade in your executive desk chair or Barcalounger for dirty fingernails even if it's only some of the time. LINK
SARAH PALIN: INTIMATIONS OF SEXISM AS
THE FERTILE FEMALE DANCES WITH THE BIG DOGS
(July 2) Despite Sarah Palin's lack of any redeeming qualifications for high office, well proven by her inability to grow as a politician, policy wonk or person during the 2008 
presidential campaign, her staying power as a magnet for publicity becomes less mysterious the longer she's out there making a fool of herself and the Republican Party. That staying power begins and ends with the fact that to some if not many men she is a babe, and arguably the most babe-a-licious pol to ever take the national stage. LINK
BUDWEISER LIGHT BEER: LIKE AMERICA ITSELF,
A TRIUMPH OF IMAGE OVER QUALITY
(July 31) It is fitting that Harvard prof Skip Gates and Cambridge Police Sergeant Jim Crowley joined Barry Obama for a Bud Light at the White House to smooth over 
their own and a nation's bruised egos and hurt feelings. This is because as one of the best selling beers, Bud Light is very much representative of the country that so adores it: A triumph of image over quality. LINK
THE KATRINA HOSPITAL CONTROVERSY
AS A CAUTIONARY TALE & MODEL
(September 1) Profound life and death issues were raised when Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans became marooned by Hurricane Katrina four 
years. Some of these issues also are being confronted, albeit under less disastrous conditions, at struggling hospitals around the country overwhelmed by indigent and uninsured patients, while the story is a model for how quality investigative journalism can survive at a time when it is disappearing. LINK
MORE PEOPLE DIED FROM TEXT MESSAGING THAN SMOKING POT & OTHER SUMMER MUSINGS
(September 8) I never minded going to school, but even as a youth felt a certain melancholy when Labor Day rolled around. In later years there were summer 
loves that fizzled out right on schedule and later still sadness as my children boarded the school bus for the first time each September. But year in and year out there was one constant: Going to the seashore as early and often as we could to sun and swim. But this summer has been strangely different and then some. LINK
THE BERNIE BERNARD PHOTO: WHEN HORRORS
OF WAR & RULES OF JOURNALISM COLLIDE
(September 10) The traditional if sometimes shopworn rules of newspaper 
journalism -- from making sure every story answers the classic Who, What, Where, When, Why and How to more complicated considerations, sometimes have to be observed in the breach during war. Two developments in Afghanistan -- the abduction of a reporter and a grisly photo -- put those considerations to the test. LINK
THE SLIDE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
FROM DISTINGUISHED TO DOWNRIGHT DESPICABLE
(October 12) Times change and so do political parties, but the metamorphosis of the Democratic Party from what it was and what it stood for when I was 
growing up in the Fifties and Sixties and what it has become and stands for today is beyond disgraceful. What deepens this disgrace is that many of us were naïvely led to believe that things would be different after years of Republican hegemony when the Democrats took back Congress and the White House in 2008. LINK
A COLLISION OF SCANDALS: MAMMOGRAPHY
MEETS HEAD ON WITH HEALTH-CARE REFORM
(October 22) Why are more women dying for breast cancer-related reasons despite 
the increasingly sophisticated screenings that they undergo? A big part of the answer -- arriving like an earthquake amidst the debate over how to fix a health-care system with wildly out-of-control costs -- is that the benefits of breast cancer screenings have been overstated and come with a the risk of overtreating small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly. Same for prostate and some other cancers.
LINK
STATE OF PLAY IN THE USA: TOO BIG TO FAIL,
TOO MIGHTY TO NAIL, TOO PUNY TO MATTER
(November 2) When the term "Too Big To Fail" first reared its head back in 1991, it was little noticed. But by 2008 with the 
economy hurtling southward and major financial institutions teetering on the brink of collapse, the term was everywhere -- from regulators and politicians with furrowed brows to finger-wagging pundits to acid-penned bloggers. Well, a couple more terms need to be added to the lexicon. LINK
WHAT A BUMMER, MAN! THE PSYCHEDELIC
REVOLUTION WASN'T GONNA BE TELEVISED
(November 9) Aldous Huxley's creative powers were at their peak in 1960. But the parapsychologist was perplexed. As had so many other great minds before and after 
him, becoming immersed in taking and studying the effects of psychedelic drugs had produced an embarrassing consequence: The more he tripped, the more he traveled to the so-called Other World and the more that he mused over the profundities of these voyages and how they could improve mankind's lot, the less insight he had to offer. LINK
IT'S LONG PAST TIME TO BURST THE MYTHS
OF BIG BUSINESS AND BIG GOVERNMENT
(November 23) The lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, which seems to be slowly but surely becoming the Republican Party, is absolutely right about one thing -- there are few 
things these days in which big government and big business are not in agreement. It matters not that the only solution the Tea Baggers and their ilk have for this state of affairs is to cut taxes. The problem is very real, is only going to get worse and threatens to undermine the recovery from the Bush Recession, the worst since the Great Depression, which will soon become the Obama Recession barring another huge injection of federal stimulus money or a miracle. LINK
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