From the moment America went full-on industrial, it seems like it's been a steady path towards people never having to be physically present in order to satisfy their needs.

Social media has created a legion of social delinquents, billions of people speaking not their minds but their spleens, venting everything from the gum-cracking snark befitting a hair-twisting mallrat to the froth-flecked rage of a bell tower marksman.

A nation is not a budget, no matter how much ideologues want it to be so.

Fantasy-based ideologies invariably have neat happy endings where all the bad people and all the bad behavior goes away when the volume is turned up and enough force is applied.

The element which is conveniently missing from today's Republican Party is the human one. People's hopes and realities become numbers and words, devoid of personality and easy to erase.

If only Coca-Cola had had the kind of message to accompany its addictive deliciousness that Fox News has, we'd all be speaking Cokelish today.

I've rarely gotten a good review in my life, yet, to paraphrase Noel Coward, I am happy to console myself with the bitter palliative of commercial success.