Articles by: Robert Lipsyte

Being Anything But a Good Sport in Saudi Arabia

Being Anything But a Good Sport in Saudi Arabia

Here’s the big question in Jock Culture these days: Is the Kingdom of Golf being used to sportswash the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Or is it the other way around? After all, what other major sport could use a sandstorm of Middle Eastern murder and human-rights abuses to obscure its own history of bigotry and greed? In fact, not since the 1936 Berlin Olympics was used[Read More…]

by 19/08/2022 Comments are Disabled World
A Country Armed to the Teeth

A Country Armed to the Teeth

The gun I carried on the streets of New York City in the late 1960s was a Beretta, similar to the pistol James Bond packed in the early Ian Fleming novels. It was a small, dark beauty that filled me with bravado. I was never afraid when I had it in my pocket, which is why I’m so very afraid[Read More…]

by 13/06/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Why Is Muhammad Ali the Last American Hero? Who Else Is There?

Why Is Muhammad Ali the Last American Hero? Who Else Is There?

At least once a week, a stranger writing a book, magazine article, newspaper feature, or blog; representing a documentary film, radio serial, or podcast; researching a paper for middle school, high school, or college asks me for an interview about Muhammad Ali. I’m on the short list of live resources because I began covering him when he was Cassius Clay[Read More…]

by 28/01/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Will the Four Horsemen of the Media Continue to Trample Us?

Will the Four Horsemen of the Media Continue to Trample Us?

The Four Horsemen of our media apocalypse — Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump — have ridden roughshod over us this past half-century leaving their hoofprints on our politics, our culture, and our lives. Two of them are gone now, but their legacies, including the News Corporation, the Fox News empire, and a gang of broadcast barbarians[Read More…]

by 08/03/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Reopening Day 2020? Big-Time Spectator Sports Are the Last Things We Need

Reopening Day 2020? Big-Time Spectator Sports Are the Last Things We Need

  As controversies about the “reopening” of America loom over our lives, nothing seems as intrinsically irrelevant — yet possibly as critically important — as how soon major spectator sports return. If sports don’t trump religion as the opiate of the masses, they have, until recently, been at least the background music of most of our lives. So here’s my[Read More…]

by 24/04/2020 Comments are Disabled World
When Comedian Dick Gregory Tried to Bust the Word 

When Comedian Dick Gregory Tried to Bust the Word 

One afternoon in New York City in the spring of 1964, I marched at the head of a small civil rights demonstration, one of the few white people in the group. I was carrying a watermelon. It was a Dick Gregory joke. To say the least, not everyone liked that joke, but I thought it was hilarious, a jab by[Read More…]

by 09/08/2019 1 comment Life/Philosophy