Michael Eric Ross
Bio
Michael Eric Ross writes from Los Angeles on politics, race, pop culture, and other subjects. His writing has also appeared in TheWrap, Medium, PopMatters, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, msnbc.com, Salon, and other publications.
Stories (47/0)
GOP déjà vu: Minority outreach goes down, again
Keep both hands inside the ride, folks: The Republican party is whiplashing the country once again with respect to its never-evolving efforts at minority outreach. The Daily Beast and The New York Times have both reported that the Republican National Committee has been closing community centers created for the purpose of reaching minority voters, as well as laying off staff.
By Michael Eric Ross4 months ago in The Swamp
The 5 Blunders of Vladimir Putin
The war in Ukraine is two months along, and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s dangerously quixotic quest to restore the geography and influence of the old Soviet Union is not going as planned. According to news reports, Russian forces have been frustrated, losing control of towns once thought to be under their control, and were more recently forced to endure the sinking of one of their flagship warships, the Moskva, probably at Ukrainian hands. Other news reports and analysis from the Pentagon have said Russian troops are deeply demoralized, undersupplied, and confused as to the very nature of the mission.
By Michael Eric Ross2 years ago in The Swamp
American Makeover
It had been expected for weeks and months, but its arrival on August 12 – a chronicle of an evolution foretold - announced itself like a thunderclap: According to results of the 2020 census, the United States of America is experiencing unprecedented growth in its minority communities, with black and brown populations showing robust growth, and numbers of white Americans growing more slowly, so much so that the nation’s white majority is the smallest it’s been in more than 200 years.
By Michael Eric Ross3 years ago in The Swamp
A house of many basements: Biden’s media strategy and why it’s working
It’s been more than briefly fashionable to dismiss or distill the current pandemic-driven style of former vice president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign as a war being waged from his basement in Delaware. The Trump 2020 re-elect campaign, denied the chance to go after Biden on traditional campaign turf (the country itself), has doubled down on the Biden-in-the-basement meme, alleging that Biden’s phoning it in, taking shots at President* Donald Trump from the equivalent of a bunker in New England.
By Michael Eric Ross4 years ago in The Swamp
Ghost-town world: Coronavirus and the new abnormal
As we confront the velocity of the Wuhan novel coronavirus into modern life, there’s been a timed-release shutdown of the events and gathering places that are sites of our intersectionality as fans and worshippers and citizens — as human beings.
By Michael Eric Ross4 years ago in Humans
Edible Breakthrough
As cannabis further works its way into everyday American life, the corner of La Brea and Lexington Avenues in Los Angeles makes history as the intersection of hospitality and cannabis industries in a mainstreaming of the cannabis experience that changes everything by reaching pot aficionados where they eat.
By Michael Eric Ross5 years ago in Potent
Along Intraparty Lines
We're a year and a half from the 2020 presidential election, and the campaign has already been a shape-shifting thing, with the biggest Democratic field in history, and a Republican president determined to prove that he and he alone can defy political gravity, a second time.
By Michael Eric Ross5 years ago in The Swamp
Watch Kamala Harris. Now Keep Watching
Don’t fall asleep on Kamala Harris. The Democratic California senator, who jumped out front as a declared candidate for the presidency, has been quietly going about her business since her splashy Oakland campaign rollout in January, when Harris both announced her candidacy, and set the emotional bar for the campaign–a deft blend of ebullience and duty–that no other Democrat in the race has matched yet.
By Michael Eric Ross5 years ago in The Swamp
Why Trump Bombed in Hanoi
When major summit meetings end as fast as the one just wrapped in Hanoi, it’s for one of two reasons: Either the summiteers realized they had no differences of opinion to slow things down, or they found out early that their differences of opinion would short-circuit anything else from happening.
By Michael Eric Ross5 years ago in The Swamp
Liam Neeson and the Outrage Age
When you first heard it, it sounded as if Liam Neeson was offering an expression of life imitating art, speaking in an outtake from any of his Taken trilogy or Gangs of New York, or from Non-Stop or The Commuter, or a scene from his latest film, Cold Pursuit: the famed Oscar-nominated Irish actor as the bludgeoning avenger, the everyman prowling the streets, seeking justice — or at least vengeance.
By Michael Eric Ross5 years ago in The Swamp
Florida's Gubernatorial Primary Colors
FLORIDA FLORIDA FLORIDA: it’s the ultimate swing state, crazy from the heat of the weather or its own legislative invention, a lawless free-fire zone with guns more abundant than in the wild wild West. And with roughly nine weeks left before the November elections, the Sunshine State’s gubernatorial race is shaping up as the one to watch, thanks to an upset no one thought possible, a racist dog-whistle everyone knew was probably inevitable, and the reliable intrinsic potential for surprise common to a region in the center of the American Venn diagram of race and ethnicity, politics, and the evolving national future.
By Michael Eric Ross6 years ago in The Swamp
After ‘Black Panther’
When you fight for a seat at the table long enough, it seems that you get to run the table—for a minute, anyway. That’s one takeaway from Black Panther’s already phenomenal success—a success whose casting and narrative essence force Hollywood to make some overdue decisions on casting that the industry can’t avoid.
By Michael Eric Ross6 years ago in Geeks
