Month: March 2011
BILL MAHER STRIKES OUT
Bill Maher has always seemed to me to be like that power hitter in baseball who hits a lot of home runs but who strikes out a lot and doesn’t hit for a particularly high average.You can usually count on him to say something very funny and perceptive, but you have to endure a lot …
ALL SOUND, NO TREE
Donald Trump is a socialite and publicity hound whose performance as a businessman on television adds value to the properties that he licenses to use his name. In his capacity as a TV actor, he is out puffing his reality show “Celebrity Apprentice,” a tired program full of tired celebrities. Trump’s job is to get …
BIG FLOPPY
Newt Gingrich, that amazing political combination of great intelligence and great recklessness, is thinking of running for president. I kind of doubt that even with the intelligence he possesses he will be able to overcome his years of mistakes and the great liability of a messy private life. But he cannot have helped himself with …
LEXINGTON, CAVALRY AND HORSE
Our visit to Lexington wasn’t all college services, matriculation, basketball, and Wildcat tchotckes. As it turns out, a fortuitous left hand turn plopped us into the middle of beautiful, charming Historic Lexington, where we saw the home of John Hunt Morgan, the Thunderbolt of the Confederacy, one of rebeldom’s dashing, glamorous, gallant, and ultimately ineffectual …
CALL US WILDCATS
Months ago Cara chose the college where she will spend the next four years, and there really wasn’t a second choice: Cara fell in love with the bluegrass of the University of Kentucky, and the good news is that apparently Kentucky returns the affection: they have offered her a $40,000 scholarship. (Please don’t anybody tell …
WAS THE CIVIL WAR INEVITABLE?
Thanks so much to my new friends at the Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York, who invited me to speak at the monthly meeting last Wednesday evening at the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Avenue. It was terrific to meet so many people who were so well-read and so insightful about the Civil War. …
JOURNOS: STOP FLACKING FOR TRUMP
The usually sharp-minded Michael Falcone and Amy Walter at ABC News’ The Note embarrassed themselves today by allowing themselves to be manipulated by notorious celebrity presshound Donald Trump into spreading his totally self-serving, self-promoting nonsense that he is considering running for president. Trump, who is trying very hard to pump life into his nearly exhausted …
UNDIMMED BY TIME
Complimentary words from Matthew J.X. Malady in Slate: “A few weeks ago, Kurt Andersen tweeted the following: “Google’s digitized every issue of Spy magazine. Half up now, the rest soon. (The internet has justified itself).” Media nerds and pop culture junkies rejoiced. Spy, which Andersen co-founded in the mid-1980s with current Vanity Fair editor Graydon …