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The Weekly Screed
Building the better wetback trap by David Benjamin “… I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters…” — Donald Trump MADISON, Wis. — Among the more tawdry spectacles in a campaign that sets a new standard for tawdriness, Donald Trump’s tasteless display — during a…
Read More...The red-and-white blues (and yellow fringe) by David Benjamin “Speech doesn’t just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore. And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea…” — Justice Antonin Scalia MADISON, Wis. — The Stars and Stripes is easily the most battered and beleaguered flag in anybody’s history.…
Read More...Confessions of a navel observer by David Benjamin “It is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing.” — Modern Girl, 1957 MADISON, Wis. — I went to Catholic school and developed a belly-button fetish. Looking back…
Read More...Demagoguery, Nelson Algren and other campaign notes by David Benjamin “I don’t want to seem racist or nothing but the black heritage has been raised in a certain way that there’s no incentive to get out and work because all of a sudden you have five kids and there are no dads around.” — Jack…
Read More...Why is this woman not an episode of ‘Criminal Minds’? by David Benjamin “Hill’ry Clinton took an ax, and gave Vince Foster forty whacks. “When she saw what she had done, she gave Chris Stevens forty-one.” — Popular children’s rhyme MADISON, Wis. — The latest kerfuffle over Donald Trump’s ambiguous call for “Second Amendment people”…
Read More...“Through every Middlesex village and farm” by David Benjamin “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” — The Bill of Rights Grosscup answered the door. He was in his pajamas. His coffee was brewing. He had…
Read More...A letter to my Senator by David Benjamin The Honorable Tammy Baldwin United States Senate 717 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-4906 Dear Sen. Baldwin: Not too long ago, I went back to my childhood hometown of Tomah to drop off a copy of my latest published novel, A Sunday Kind of Love, at…
Read More...The year of the Ape Man by David Benjamin “I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.” — John Dryden, Conquest of Granada (1672) MADISON, Wis. — Lately, my know-it-all attitude has been getting me into trouble. A high-school…
Read More...… Real white of you by David Benjamin “You’re a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your…
Read More...Fix it, America by David Benjamin “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” — Samuel Johnson MADISON, Wis. — Sam Johnson’s observation on the nature of knowledge keeps coming back to me, sometimes unexpectedly. The latest occasion was a comment by Paul…
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