Russellarbenfox

LATEST ARTICLES ( 587 )

• Thinking About Wendell Berry's Leftist Lament (and More)

  

  [Cross-posted to Front Porch Republic] Wendell Berry’s sprawling, uneven, brilliant, and sometimes frustrating The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History... Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2024 SOCIETY

• Why Even Uneventful Primaries Are Better Than Raucous Caucuses

  

  [This is an expanded version of an Insight Kansas column which appeared in the Wichita Eagle today, March 22, 2024] When my wife and I went to vote last Tuesday... Read more

  Posted on 22 March 2024 SOCIETY

• Do We Really Not Need Another Hero? (Thoughts About Dune)

  

  Exactly a week ago, I and bunch of local Dune-loving friends caught Denis Villeneuve's Dune Part 2 in IMAX. It was glorious--a fantastic, rousing, compelling... Read more

  Posted on 11 March 2024 SOCIETY

• What the Constitution Says About Parents, Public Schools, and Students' Gender,...

  

  [An expanded version of a piece which appeared in the Wichita Eagle and elsewhere on February 27, 2024.] What does the law actually say when it comes to a... Read more

  Posted on 27 February 2024 SOCIETY

• Some Thoughts on Martin Luther King, Mormonism, and the Unfinishable Christian...

  

  Minerva Teichert, “Christian Converts” (1949-1951), Brigham Young University Museum of Art [Cross-posted to Religious Socialism] Martin Luther King, Jr. Read more

  Posted on 15 January 2024 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83 Special: "Puttin' on the Ritz"

  

  Before I call this year to an end, just one more hit. My obvious and unstated foundation throughout this whole year is that I love the popular music of 1983. Read more

  Posted on 31 December 2023 SOCIETY

• The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023

  

  Andrew Bacevich and Daniel Sjursen, eds., Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars. This is a fine and often (though not always)... Read more

  Posted on 29 December 2023 SOCIETY

• The 10 Best Movies I Watched in 2023

  

  As always, this is a list of the best ten movies I watched for the first time this year, whether they came out in 2023 or not.First Cow. Read more

  Posted on 27 December 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "Jingle Bell Rock"

  

  Merry Christmas, everyone! Guess who released a special single for the Christmas season 40 years ago? Daryl Hall and John Oates! Read more

  Posted on 25 December 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "Joanna"

  

  It would be a lie to claim that, as a White teen-age Mormon in Spokane, Washington in 1983, my ear glued to the radio, I was somehow also deeply familiar with... Read more

  Posted on 18 December 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "99 Luftballons"

  

  Of the three pop hits by German-language artists that American radio-listeners heard in 1983, Nena's "99 Luftballons" is, without doubt, the greatest, both in... Read more

  Posted on 11 December 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "Karma Chameleon"

  

  Culture Club, with their lead singer Boy George, were already a thoroughly familiar presence on American radio by this point of 1983. Read more

  Posted on 04 December 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "The Politics of Dancing"

  

  I'm so happy this song made my list; it's one my favorite, perhaps my very favorite, ridiculous and awesome New Wave tune. The London band Re-Flex didn't have... Read more

  Posted on 27 November 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83 Special: "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

  

  Forget Michael Jackson, forget Prince, forget David Bowie, forget Duran Duran, forget The Eurythmics, forget The Police--for many, many, many of my Gen X... Read more

  Posted on 21 November 2023 SOCIETY

• Song's of '83: "That's All"

  

  Early 1980s Phil Collins and Genesis receive far more critical crap than they deserve, at least if one takes into consideration what they were going through at... Read more

  Posted on 20 November 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "In the Mood"

  

  Far more than last week's fun rock tune from Yes, and far more than next week's entry from yet another 70s outfit that went pop in the 1980s, this week's... Read more

  Posted on 13 November 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "Owner of a Lonely Heart"

  

  This week, and for the next two weeks to come, the songs which cracked into the American radio mainstream 40 years ago represented something that has only... Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "Holiday"

  

  I was never a huge Madonna fan, especially not at first. That was almost certainly at least partly due to my teenage Mormon suspicion of her: that she was one o... Read more

  Posted on 30 October 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "In a Big Country"

  

  Big Country's "In a Big Country" debuted on the Billboard charts and American pop radio 40 years ago this week. The story of Big Country's origin was, like so... Read more

  Posted on 23 October 2023 SOCIETY

• Songs of '83: "Rockit"

  

  I'm pretty certain I never heard Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" on the radio in 1983. Its presence in my memory, and its presence on this list (it was actually a... Read more

  Posted on 16 October 2023 SOCIETY