The Wages of Pain and the Pit of Despair
Do not spoil yourself by sparing not the rod but the right to answer the most important question. Do not answer this question with a […]
War Without Victory
Beware of politicians bearing arrows instead of olive branches, whose bellicose words further belligerent ends; whose only end is not an end to war but […]
A Gnawing Pain That Takes No Rest
The hardest note to write is a hardship for friends and loved ones to read. Whether the words speak of peace, the subsequent act is […]
McCain and Able: In the Arena Till the End
John McCain’s favorite novel is For Whom the Bell Tolls, which is also the title of the new HBO documentary about this man for whom […]
Dreaming of Things That Never Were
It was a Pyrrhic victory. It was a battlefield win in a political war that was lost. It was an uncontested primary, not a real […]
Roseanne Barred Herself
Working on a hit TV series is a rarity. It provides steady employment for people of many gifts, including sound and lighting experts, hair and makeup […]
Tom Friedman, Or ‘The Man Who Freed Himself from Thinking’
I miss Charlie Rose. I miss his interviews of Tom Friedman, theNew York Times columnist, who looks like a holdover from the 19th century—with his […]
To the Class of 2018: A Commencement Address
This is a day of debts both moral and monetary. The moral being, debt is not determinative but circumstances are. Your circumstances will determine whether […]
The Flags of Memorial Day
From a distance, it looks like a tabletop covered with sheets of artificial turf, featuring squares of green plastic and mats of textured, sage-colored brush […]
A Human Face Without Fascism
Definitions of fascism differ as much as fascists beg to differ that their respective brands of justice are unjust. But there is no such thing […]
When He Was Good: A Remembrance of Philip Roth
He was prolific but never prosaic. He was rhapsodic but never routine. He was also outrageous but (almost) never obscene; because, in this mixture of […]
Not Feeling Her Pain: Hillary Clinton’s Never-Ending Goodbye
On June 3, 1966, Richard Nixon delivered the commencement address at the University of Rochester. On that day, three days before the 22nd anniversary of […]
The Write Stuff: Remembering Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe tailored his sentences like he wore his suits. Each was a bespoke piece in a seemingly endless wardrobe of exclamation points and onomatopoeia, […]
All the Way with RFK
He stands in an open-air convertible, a boat of a car as long as a suburban driveway, with two couches for seats and a giant […]
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
It was a distress signal disguised as a military display: a Mayday for May Day, where the peoples of the Soviet Union were forced to […]
Ancient Chinese Secret: Asian and Mexican Drug Cartels Flood the U.S. with Synthetic Opioids
A postscript to Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s televised catechism from the residence of the White House, in which the first lady, dressed in red and […]
Ted Cruz Gets Zucked
Ted Cruz: Why am I here? Mark Zuckerberg: Senator, your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming […]
The Emperor’s New Hoodie
Mark Zuckerberg dangled more than he bedazzled, with his posterior atop a seat cushion while his ass was not on the line; while he traded […]
‘Educated’: A Product of Intelligence and Character
A mountaintop is as much a summons to greatness as it is a summit graveyard, where Mother Nature smites the worst elements of human nature; […]
And the Oscar Goes To . . .
The best acceptance speeches are the most gracious ones. I will be grateful if those are the only speeches actors and directors deliver at the […]