So here’s E.J. Dionne Jr.—a good guy, a reliable liberal—writing in this morning’s Washington Post: “The Obama administration keeps having to learn that bland centrism is not pragmatic, that it’s not helpful in resolving a big crisis and that it certainly doesn’t buy you any love.’’ And here’s David Ignatius, as smart a columnist as …
Is It the ‘Roids or the Records? I don’t like cheaters and I don’t like perjurers and I couldn’t care less if Alex Rodriguez spends the next nine years getting booed (if you’re sympathetic, envision Madonna giving him a nightly cuddle to soothe his bruised ego and saying “Now now, Alex, it will be all …
I put this item on The Huffington Post this morning, and already I got 24 comments–passionate, argumentative comments, pro and con. Amazing. Maybe I missed it, but where was the Fireside Chat? Eight days after his swearing-in, Franklin Roosevelt went on the radio for the first of the so-called fireside chats. He had declared a …
About a month ago I received an email from a gent named Rusty Wornom, wondering if we had ever met. More specifically, wondering if we had ever met at a sci fi convention in Baltimore. Having no memory of ever meeting Rusty or attending a sci fi convention, I could not in good conscience conjure …
On January 29th, Larry Dubrow wrote an article on AdAge.com called “Magazines Worth Saving,” among which he included Playboy: Playboy has featured some wonderful journalism in recent months (true-crime profiles don’t come much darker and more enticing than Richard Stratton’s recent piece on James “Whitey” Bulger) and continues to showcase as many A-list journalists as …
If I were a Steeler fan, I’d be pretty damn proud right now, not only for winning the Super Bowl, and not only for the tough, hard-nosed way they won the Super Bowl, but for the way they played their entire season. Something like a third of their games were won in the final period, …
There are more than 800,000 CCTV cameras in London, about 4.5 million in the UK, more per capita than any other place on earth. In Central London, they are everywhere.
Two final meetings today. I had breakfast with Mark Law (above, clear), a veteran journalist who runs thefirstpost.com, one of the very best websites on either side of the Atlantic. It was fun to trade tales with such an accomplished and experienced editor. Afterwards I journeyed to the South Bank to the headquarters of No2ID, …
Why I had to go all the way to London to hear an expatriate report on a New York cop’s version of US Airways Flight 1549’s miraculous and unexpected landing in the Hudson I don’t know, but I did. “What’s there to say?” the cop reportedly told a TV reporter. “A bird. . .a plane. …
Another busy day, led off by a phone interview with David Davis, a conservative member of Parliament who was shadow Home Secretary. For those who don’t understand the British system, the out-of-power party has a shadow cabinet, so that when an election is called, voters know who will hold post if that party is elected. …