Opinion & Commentary

Ninety-nine point nine percent of what urban planner Larry Beasley says is brilliant, and usually when I do think I’ve got him being wrong on some point, it’s because I’m not being brilliant. It always turns out to be something I misinterpreted. That said, I think he may be one…

Dear Mexican: If dark-skinned people are so “undesirable,” unwelcome and put down by you gringos, how come you bake in the sun like zopilotes to get dark? Summer is fantasy time for all of you, when you can actually get some color in that white skin of yours. Maybe the…

Rudy Bush and Tod Robberson, writers on The Dallas Morning News editorial board, think it’s a great thing that police are barricading a car wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to force the owner out of business. Yesterday to buttress their case against the owner and rebut my own…

Yesterday in a blog item Dallas Morning News editorial writer Tod Robberson stated as fact that the controversial car wash on MLK Boulevard — topic of many Dallas Observer stories over many years — is “a major drug emporium for South Dallas.” The strong suggestion of the piece and an…

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…

Sunday I witnessed first-hand the Dallas Police Department’s new technique to force the owners of that troubled car wash in South Dallas to sell or go out of business. You may know which car wash. The one City Hall hates. See also: Dallas City Hall versus The Car Wash Normally…

The thing I felt when I read of Rick Finlan’s recent death was simple sadness. He was a hero. A jerk. So smart, so funny. A great source for reporters. Friend of mine. A jerk. For the better part of two decades Finlan marched against local government chicanery arm in…

Flickr/eyeliamMixing business with pleasure is a dirty game, isn’t it? While necessary, practice spaces exemplify the tension that comes with sharing a small area with a number of personal friends and acquaintances. It’s like living in a tiny house with eight other unbalanced roommates. Between paying rent, keeping the space…

Whoa. Wait up. Take five. Let’s take another look at that Wallace Hall narrative. He’s the University of Texas regent from Dallas who is supposed to be a crazy, nuts, Tea Party, Rick-Perry-buddy, off-the-wall, Neanderthal education-hater who needs to be impeached, criminally prosecuted and generally expunged. OK. But what if…

I found it in the children’s book section of Barnes & Noble. It was colorful. It had birthday balloons all over it. It was sent to my eyeballs from the devil himself. And now, I share this awful news with you: There is an Elf on the Shelf for birthdays…

It’s been a pretty terrible past few years for country music. The rise of “bro country,” music made for and by red-blooded, America-loving, beer-drinking white guys like Luke Bryan and Eric Church, has turned the country music airwaves largely into a cesspool. There is one glaring exception, though: reigning queen…

Maybe you saw the 2011 movie Bernie by Richard Linklater, starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey, or maybe you remember the story. Bernie Tiede was the real-life funeral home worker who befriended widows of Carthage, an East Texas town of some 7,000 persons about 140 miles southeast of…

Dear Mexican: I am a Mexican who owns a successful wholesale liquidation business, which happens to be an industry dominated by Jews and Asians and some gringos. So why does almost everyone, including mexicanos, that visits my warehouse think my business or any successful business (for that matter) is always…

Real estate writer Steve Brown has a story in today’s Dallas Morning News about massive apartment projects springing up around the site of the new Toyota headquarters in Plano. Apparently these will be part of an even bigger sea of apartments not far from the J.C. Penney headquarters up there…

I was on vacation in an especially beautiful corner of New England — a place darkened at the time by some typically wet, chilly, early spring New England weather — when I saw the piece on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News by Larry Good. Wow. One of…

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…

I’m in my late 20s, and when you hit that period of your life suddenly things start to change. You might have worse hangovers, the bands you liked in college most likely broke up, everyone is getting married, you desperately try to make the things you liked as a kid…

Recently, Time magazine published a baby-name predictor, developed with Chris Franck, an assistant research professor in statistics at Virginia Tech. Using a model that seems to be at the very least more accurate at generating results than The Dallas Morning News’ Best Neighborhood Survey, Franck reports that Noah has unseated…

In a new series, Choice Cuts, Jonathan Patrick talks with artists – both local and international – about their favorite records. As dusk lingers in the sky, DJ Gabriel Mendoza — one Dallas’ richest resources for music knowledge — meets with me to discuss soul music. He’s upbeat and enthusiastic…

Here’s me in a Dallas school board meeting waiting to see if the board will pass a merit pay system for teachers — the single most important element to date in what is now a 3-year-old program of massive school reform. It would be a monumental change, more significant than…

I have a column in the paper, at least for the first part of this week, about paddling my canoe up White Rock Creek. I know what you’re thinking. “So why haven’t you been fired?” No, listen. It has a lot of important stuff in it. I hat-cammed it, so…