The Existential Hell of This Year’s Super Bowl

Editor’s note: Our Opinion section enjoyed a record audience in 2017. Here is a brief summary of some of the most popular opeds of the year. 1. Gregg Jarrett: Did the FBI and the Justice Department, plot to clear Hillary Clinton, bring down Trump? Fox News contributor Gregg Jarrett and Florida Attorney …

I often try to devote the last column I write each year to readers and their responses. In the old days, Dear Readers, you would put pen to paper and painstakingly write your comments, pop the letter into an envelope, write down the address and stick a stamp on, then mail it. Some sent hand-written cards.

In the early 2000s, when I was a middle schooler in Florida, I was subjected to a trauma that was meant to erase my existence as a newly out bisexual. My parents were Southern Baptist missionaries who believed that the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy could “cure” my sexuality.

An unlikely voice has joined the passionate debate over internet regulation known as net neutrality: Burger King. The fast-food chain released a nearly 3 minute video on YouTube that portrays the downside of being asked to pay more for speedier service. In it, customers at a Los Angeles restaurant …

We purveyors of commentary tend to find multitudes in the teeniest speck and mirrors of the zeitgeist wherever we turn. I grant you that. But grant me this: America really is about to get the pathetic Super Bowl that it deserves. I don’t think that I can even food-bribe myself into watching. There aren’t enough …

If we are mindful of the dangers of politicizing the professions, then certainly we must heed the so-called “Goldwater rule,” or Section 7.3 of the American Psychiatric Association code of ethics, which states: “it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion [on a public figure] unless he or she has …

All of this put me in mind of another article published this weekend, this one by the novelist and feminist icon Margaret Atwood. “My fundamental position is that women are human beings,” she writes. “Nor do I believe that women are children, incapable of agency or of making moral decisions. If they were …

Historians have long looked to a few key criteria in evaluating the beginning of a president’s administration. First and foremost, any new president should execute public duties with a commanding civility and poise befitting the nation’s chief executive, but without appearing aloof or haughty. As George …

The years immediately following the 2008 financial crisis were a golden age of inflation derp, at various levels. There were the Glenn Beck/Ron Paul frothing-at-the-mouth Austrian types predicting hyperinflation just around the corner. But there were also the seemingly respectable monetary “experts,” from …