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)
Trump's ‘Rookie Error’ Revisited
Chuck Schumer asked the question about the health-care bill that no one at the White House asked. The New York Democratic senator put it rhetorically to The New York Times: “Why,” he asked, “would you risk voting yes for a bill that is devastating to your constituents and has no chance of becoming law?”
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp
Killing O’Reilly on TV
Ladies and gentlemen, this long national nightmare is over. Bill O’Reilly, for 21 years the host of The O’Reilly Factor, the voice and face of the Fox News Channel, and on-air avatar of the Pantone-red conservative movement, has left the Fox News building in Manhattan. Long the subject of sexual harassment lawsuits alleging wanton misogyny, bullying, intimidation and innuendo, O’Reilly was fired on April 19th, reportedly receiving an exit payout somewhere in the well-heeled neighborhood of $25 million.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp
Through the Latest Looking Glasses
When Snap Inc., creators of Snapchat, announced in September its plans to roll out its first actual product, the video-enhanced Spectacles eyewear, speculation was strong that the product would be a game-changer in the world of wearable technology.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in Futurism
When Artificial Intelligence = Not Enough Intelligence
It’s a staple of science fiction: the devices made by humans run afoul of their creators by learning how humans think. From the renegade HAL9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey to the replicants in the sci-fi classic Blade Runner to the robot in the 2014 hit Ex Machina, and others besides — all would eventually achieve the same cunning and brutality as the human beings who created them.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in Futurism
The, um, Evolution of Donald Trump
This time a year ago, Donald Trump was throwing red meat to the crowds with both hands at campaign rallies across America; their appetite as political carnivores helped power Trump into the White House. But reality has a way of intruding on fantasy -- to be expected when the fantasy depends on the reality to exist.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp
The Inconclusive GOP ‘Autopsy’
Nothing blunts the inconvenient discomfort of failure like the narcotic of success. Achieving victory has a way of obscuring the pre-existing conditions that could have otherwise led to defeat. The Republican Party avoided defeat in 2016, but the GOP had fundamental, deeply structural problems brewing long before the 2016 election. Those problems didn’t vanish when Donald Trump raised his right hand in January.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp
Race and Racial Impersonation: Three Views in Three Books
The national dialogue on race, already fraught enough before the Trump presidency and even more so now, will soon feature three new books with which to settle an argument, or start one, about an intriguing variation on the topic that’s still the third rail of American life.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in Humans
For Whom the Dictionary Trolls
The idea of “the resistance” has taken on many forms since Jan. 20th. Much of its new power and identity has been a product of visible protest in the streets, on blogs and in the airwaves since Donald Trump took office. But for months now, there’s been another free-floating resistance, a pushback of words and language by the people whose business it is to know words and language, and how to use them.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp
Messages to the President
President Donald Trump finally commented on the Oscars, finding his own way to make it all about him: “I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end,” Trump said in a Monday interview with Breitbart News.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp
Taylor Sheridan's State of the Union
Hell or High Water, the Oscar-nominated film starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster, has won high marks for its gritty, understated portrayal of two bank robbers pushing back against the bank that's foreclosing on their family land, and the laconic Texas Ranger bent on one pre-retirement objective: bringing them to justice. For Taylor Sheridan, the actor and screenwriter who wrote the script (nominated for Best Original Screenplay), the film has parallels with the fractious, volatile state of the country today. West Texas is a stand-in for America.
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp
Trump’s Dark Triad, and Ours
A month ago we could only suspect what Donald Trump would do to lead a nation to the suspicion — voiced more and more often since his installation as president of the United States on January 20th — that (in the words of GQ Special Correspondent Keith Olbermann) “there’s something ... wrong with him.”
By Michael Eric Ross7 years ago in The Swamp