Akim Reinhardt is a professor of History at Towson University in Baltimore. Born and raised in the Bronx, he has also lived in Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona. He is the author of several books with more in the hopper. Email: yankeeslim [at] gmail.com
Website: https://ThePublicProfessor.com
by Akim Reinhardt “In Memory of Franz Klammer” Franz Klammer soared down alpine mounts, His glory assured by the clock’s count The lord of Austria, the king of the hill, the master of the Alps, the bringer of thrills His grace, his speed, defied laws of nature His beautiful name redefined nomenclature Franz Klammer! Franz…
by Akim Reinhardt Spectator sports can reflect a society’s worst inclinations by promoting pure partisanship. Pure partisanship is profoundly anti-intellectual. Pure partisanship can disable a person’s moral compass. Anyone who follows sports, even tangentially, witnesses this frequently. This team’s victory or that team’s loss have led to countless riots. Here in Baltimore a few years…
by Akim Reinhardt “It’s a long, long way from the Trump administration to an actual fascist dictatorship,” I said, “but it’s a straight line.” Although generally reserved, Julius (I’ll call him) belly laughed a good while at that, his outburst fueled by personal experience. He’d spent his childhood in General Francisco Franco’s fascist Spain. Specifically…
by Akim Reinhardt It’s an exhaustive list. Far longer and deeper than you might suspect. The Tribune tracks U.S. school shootings of the past 50 years. A well documented list by Wikipedia goes back to 1840, when a student named Joseph Semmes shot University of Virginia law professor John Anthony Gardner Davis. Three more school…
by Akim Reinhardt Old white men wearing ties can do anything they want. -Mike Cooley, “One of These Days” (2001) I am more powerful than I used to be, and it unnerves me. I am a white man. And to be a white man in America is to have more power than women and people…
by Akim Reinhardt There are, of course, many ways in which I am nothing like Donald Trump. I do not publicly berate subordinates. I never drink Diet Coke. I am not a piece of human filth. I have not run for president, especially in a state of gross unpreparedness and unqualification. But it should go…
by Akim Reinhardt Pocahontas was an informal childhood name, a nickname meaning "playful one" or "mischievous girl." Although "Pocahontas" is what the British colonists came to know her by, her formal name in public was Amonute. Her ritual name, known to her kin, was Matoaka. Amonute spoke an Eastern Algonkian (sometimes spelled Algonquin) language. While…
by Akim Reinhardt Every time of year is ripe for bread and circuses in America. There is nary a day when you can't eat cheap fast food and indulge in aimless distractions. There are all the holidays, like Christmas, Memorial Day, and Labor Day, which used to mean something but now are little more than…
by Akim Reinhardt "….Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart." -Donald Trump via Twitter (January 6, 2018) Oh, that was good. But here's the thing. What exactly are his two greatest assets? Or yours? Or mine? Trump's tweet is funny/horrifying not only because it's the…
by Akim "Hot Cha Cha" Reinhardt *Omg, so excited about Prince Harry announcing he's getting hitched to the absolutely fabulous Meghan Markle. Way to go, royal family! *The Trump presidency continues shifting Foucualtian microtechnologies power, including the reinforcement select biopower apparatuses around immigration and race but, despite this, has thoroughly betrayed earlier promises to disrupt…
by Akim Reinhardt No, I'm not suicidal. Not that it would matter much if I were. If an adult decides they've had enough and want to call it quits, who are we to say they don't have that "right?" Rights are, after all, little more than make believe: dinner table manners and Christmas gift lists…
by Akim Reinhardt Factor 1: More than anything else in the world, more than having a happy marriage, more than raising healthy, well adjusted children, more than God, Mom, or Apple Pie, Donald J. Trump wants to be a WINNER. Trump has always been hell bent on publicly proclaiming himself a winner. And for him,…
by Akim Reinhardt Generational analysis, when done poorly, is half-a-notch above astrology: All the people born at this time are like this! Of course there's plenty of good generational research and analysis by demographers and other social scientists. However, most people don't delve into that stuff. Most people simply absorb generational analysis from popular culture.…
by Akim Reinhardt It began with Emmett Till. He was a fourteen year old black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1954 when two white men lynched him to death for whistling at a white woman. That in itself, sadly, wasn’t so unusual. Thousands of African Americans were lynched to death during the…
by Megan Golden and Akim Reinhardt One time he showed up at the lake, having driven two hours straight from the city, climbed up to a massive rock wearing only his green speedo, took a last sip of vodka, and executed a perfect swan dive from thirty feet. One time he sewed the head back…
by Akim Reinhardt Roger Moore died last week at the age of 89. He is the first important Bond to pass (sorry David Niven!), so predictably heated arguments ensued: Where does Moore rank in the canon of Bond actors? It was a boring debate. Moore was the worst, plain and simple. He helped drive the…
by Akim Reinhardt Last week, Barack Obama got beaten up on social media and called out by the press for accepting a $400,000 speaking fee from a Wall Street investment firm. It was the day's major kerfuffle, the non-Trump story of the week, and reactions to it by many of my smart, well reasoned friends…
by Akim Reinhardt Donald Trump's first hundred days as president are nearly tallied. Enough time has passed that we can now divide people who voted for him into two groups: 1. Those who: never liked Trump (but made a calculated decision to vote for him); have more recently developed doubts; or will soon become disillusioned…
by Akim Reinhardt Donald Trump is going down. His house of cards will collapse at some point. The leaks will keep flowing and eventually his position will become untenable. Conflicts of interest. Connections to Russia. All of it will become too great a weight to carry, especially since The Donald has very few genuine allies…
by Akim Reinhardt I have a friend of Indian descent who was born in Africa, but raised almost entirely in London. Or, I should say, I had such a friend. About a year ago, maybe more, we got into an online argument about the Pope, and that was that. Much to my surprise, he de-friended…