No one speaks of a century’s first decade as “the aughts.” Few of us speak of the second decade as “the teens.” But by the time the third decade comes around, we seem to have gotten used to the charming fact that we’re in a new chapter of history. Our shouts of “It’s the 21st
The Drudge Report on Thursday featured an arresting headline: “D.C. Tourist Savagely Beaten, Stomped, Spit on by Gang of Youths.” Who could resist clicking on that? The link went a Gateway Pundit story, which supplies the additional information that the attack took place outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, where President Ronald Reagan and
When I was a boy, everyone said the epitome of Shakespeare is Hamlet’s soliloquy. The soliloquy, the one from Act III, the one that poses the question: “To be, or not to be.” Those words, like the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, are instantly recognizable, a pocket summary of an entire
The crook is in a parking lot trying to break into a car when he sees a lady with shopping bags approaching her vehicle. Pretending to be a friendly stranger, he insists on helping her load the bags into her trunk. She tells him that since she didn’t ask for his help, he
At the end of his documentary series “The Civil War,” Ken Burns bids farewell to many of the figures who drove that story. They departed this earth in touching, even inspiring ways. There’s General Ulysses S. Grant, stricken with cancer, racing the Reaper to produce an autobiography and thereby provide for his family,
In the spring of 1519, the Aztec god-king Montezuma II received word that strange, marvelous creatures had appeared on his empire’s eastern shore. Fearing either to receive or destroy them, he sent envoys with orders to greet them, offer them gifts, and bid them leave the way they came. The emissaries went down
Former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, now governor of California, heard a still, small voice the other night. The voice said, “Gavin, the intentional killing of another person is wrong.” So His Excellency stepped forth the next day and announced he was taking steps to close every military installation in the state. Sorry,
Did you hear that Phil Robertson has a new book out? Yes, the “Duck Dynasty” patriarch, author of Happy Happy Happy, UnPHILtered, and (in a previous life) War and Peace, has just written The Theft of America’s Soul: Blowing the Lid Off the Lies That Are Destroying Our Country. You can tell by
Mean People Suck."I first saw that bumper-sticker slogan almost 20 years ago, pinned to the office bulletin board at the newspaper where I worked. It struck me as a little strange, much like what Jon Stewart called a “moment of zen.” Isn’t it mean to tell people they suck? Yet my progressive media colleagues
