Gregory Rodriguez: All Related Content

Give Karl Rove a break. His meltdown on election night may not have been entirely about Fox News prematurely calling Ohio for President Barack Obama. After all, the poor guy had every right to get upset while watching the Republican Party nominee’s campaign crash and burn.

For all intents and purposes, Mitt Romney trampled on Rove’s once vaunted GOP playbook–and leaves a weakened GOP in his wake.

By all rights, I should hate coyotes. When I was 14, one ate my charming pet cat, Spike Liebowitz (sometimes known as Vasco de Gama), as if he were nothing more than a Vienna sausage.

I was heartbroken, but even at that age I knew that in suburban Los Angeles, owning an outdoor pet was tempting not just fate but the hunger of our wild neighbors. It wasn't pretty, but that's the way things were. Southern California is a coyote-eats-cat world.

Here we go again. The Census Bureau has released yet one more milestone data point that supposedly reveals the profundity of America’s ongoing demographic change. This time, it’s news that, as The New York Times put it last week, “Whites account for less than half of births in the U.S.”

It’s one of those front-page headlines that give you pause. You know it means something significant—why else would it be on the front page?!—but you can’t quite put your finger on it.

Hate speech is a form of vandalism. It defaces the environment, and like a broken window, if left untended, signals to other hoodlums that the coast is clear to do more damage.

Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas," one of the biggest-selling songs of all time, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Although the wistful tune soothed homesick soldiers in such God-awful places as Guadalcanal more than half a century ago, and no doubt it still plays in Kandahar today, Berlin most likely wrote what he called "the best song that anybody's ever written" somewhere in the sunny Southwest, probably while sitting by a swanky hotel swimming pool.

Who the heck would want to be like Betty or her ad man ex, Don?

That's what I asked myself recently when I passed a Banana Republic window display featuring the retailer's new "Mad Men"-inspired clothing collection.

"Are you a Betty?" read a poster with a lustrous photograph of a thin, blond model looking almost as uptight and miserable as the former Mrs. Draper in the Emmy-winning AMC television series.

Politics is making Americans dumb and mean. It's turning a generous, forward-thinking people into glib, defensive, narrow-minded bores.

Pundits tell us that the answer to all this nastiness — from the disgusting comments on message boards to the smarmy lies of TV political hacks — is to get more people civically engaged. By their logic, the moderation of crowds will temper the zealotry of activists. But I don't buy it.

What's wrong with this picture: Even as the world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, we seem to be approaching conflicts more in zero-sum terms and with all-or-nothing politics.

Because digital networks and the global economy have humans more tightly bound than any time in their history, our well-being is inextricably intertwined with that of strangers from around the globe.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's office released a mildly amusing list of 53 suggestions for surviving "Carmageddon," one for every hour the 405 will be closed this weekend between the 10 and the 101. In the hope that you'll stay off the streets — please! for God's sake! — the list suggests planting a tree, shopping online (from county-based stores, of course), throwing a block party.

In a world overrun by half-truths and wall-to-wall opinion, the simple words "I don't know" might very well become the most valuable phrase in any language.

There's plenty of grousing about the lopsided ratio of opinion to fact in our lives. But what irks me more is that these days it seems everyone is obligated to have a point of view on every issue.

Mexican food and beer. That's what retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggests might pull this fractured nation back together again. Those were the tools she used to reach consensus in the 1970s when she was a leader in the Arizona Legislature.