Michael Eric Ross
Michael Eric Ross writes from Los Angeles on pop culture, politics, film and other subjects. His writing has also appeared in TheWrap, Medium, PopMatters, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, msnbc.com, Salon, and other publications.
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.
Michael Eric RossPublished 5 months 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.
Michael Eric RossPublished 10 months 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.
Michael Eric RossPublished about a year 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.
Michael Eric RossPublished 2 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.
Michael Eric RossPublished 2 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.
Michael Eric RossPublished 2 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.
Michael Eric RossPublished 2 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.
Michael Eric RossPublished 2 years ago in The Swamp
