Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Gloria Steinem gave feminism its face, its wit, and its nerve. But iPINIONS notes that her death at 92 also recalls the old battles over what the women’s movement should become, and the strange irony of young women now embracing the tradwife life Steinem and Betty Friedan fought to liberate them from. Read my full… Read more.
Alex Eala enters the US Open amid extraordinary hype, millions in endorsements, and predictions of global superstardom. But iPINIONS contends that Emma Raducanu shows what can happen when fame and fortune outrun achievement. Read my full take on Substack: https://ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/womens-tennis-media-hype-doomed-emma Read more.
Five years after America’s ignominious retreat from Afghanistan, the Taliban are back to veiling women, excluding girls from school, and presiding over a culture in which powerful men rape vulnerable boys under the euphemism bacha bazi. iPINIONS argues that Taliban 2.0 preaches sexual purity for the powerless while allowing powerful men to profane it. Read… Read more.
Kwanza Jones says Princeton ignored her attempts to donate until $20 million suddenly made the intercom work. iPINIONS asks why she was chasing rich Princeton for White clout while Black institutions struggle for donations to survive. Read my full take on Substack: https://ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/black-kwanza-jones-gives-rich-princeton Read more.
Hakeem Jeffries is catching hell for meeting Jared Kushner. But iPINIONS urges Democrats confusing political contact with ideological betrayal to remember Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment. Governing requires negotiating with people you despise, resisting purity tests, and keeping your eye on the gavel. Read my full take on Substack: https://ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/hakeem-jeffries-meeting-with-jared Read more.
As catastrophic floods devastate Nepal, the contrast is stark. Obama America once mobilized more than 130 disaster responders and roughly $130 million after Nepal’s 2015 earthquake. Trump America, after dismantling USAID’s disaster-response capacity, is offering $500,000 and one adviser. America once played the world’s fireman. iPINIONS laments that it’s now standing by as Nepal drowns.… Read more.
Somehow, in 21 years of writing online, iPINIONS never mentioned Dolly Parton’s name. But the story of how she used roughly $10 million from Whitney Houston’s magnificent “I Will Always Love You” to buy offices in a Black Nashville neighborhood, then called it “the house that Whitney built,” tells me more about Dolly than any… Read more.
Trump has turned breaking norms and laws into a governing method. Act first, create the irreversible fact, then dare Congress or the courts to put Humpty Dumpty back together. iPINIONS notes that, from his billion-dollar ballroom-cum-bunker and illegal visa ban to tariffs, war powers, and presidential immunity, Trump keeps discovering that even an eventual court… Read more.
Not since breakdancing has a dance become a craze quite like biama. And thanks to social media, it hardly matters that it originated in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, instead of the Bronx, New York. TikTok is replete with biama dance-offs from Beijing to Buenos Aires, and all points between. But iPINIONS says don’t let the algorithm… Read more.
Darline Graham’s spectacular national-security flub drew boos and ridicule. But in fairness to Graham, she admitted what Donald Trump never will. She knows what she doesn’t know. But iPINIONS argues that her humiliation also exposes a larger Trump pathology. The dumber and more sycophantic the people around him, the smarter and stronger he feels. Read… Read more.
