THANKSGIVING REMEMBRANCE
The Two Great Classes, by Winslow Homer for Harper’s Weekly, Thanksgiving 1860
TAKE IT AWAY!
I had the pleasure of appearing this morning on the National Public Radio program The Takeaway to talk about the Disunion blog I’m doing for The New York Times. The hosts were John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee. The most highly motivated among you may feel free to listen.
THE MYTHS OF THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of editing an article written by the investigative reporter Jefferson Morley for playboy.com that had to do with strange CIA connections to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which happened, of course, 47 years ago today. I enjoyed working with Jeff; he was a patient, meticulous …
WHAT MAD MEN WROUGHT
Here are a collection of some fairly amazing vintage advertisements, collected by the French news site OWNI.eu. Shake your head and enjoy!
A BATTLEFIELD ORDEAL
I recently discovered the excellent and informative blog Georgian London by Lucy Inglis, and am enjoying it enormously. She recently posted this brief memoir of one man’s Battle of Waterloo, that of Colonel Frederick Ponsonby, a 32 year-old career cavalry officer, and the brother of Lady Caroline Lamb. He was part of the charge of …
COMPLAINING AND BLAMING
In his column in The Washington Post, George Will takes on the TSA inspections by citing an unimpeachable source. “Fifty years ago,” he writes, “William F. Buckley wrote a memorable complaint about the fact that Americans do not complain enough. His point, like most of the points he made during his well-lived life, is, unfortunately, …
INSIDE JOB
After reading Michael Perino‘s The Hellhound of Wall Street, I was wondering if we would ever see the likes of a Ferdinand Pecora who would explicate the figures and practices behind the financial crisis of 2008 as well as Pecora, the Manhattan prosecutor, did during the Depression for the Crash of 1929. Well, opportunities for …
THE MANY LIES OF ROGER AILES
The head of Fox News, the prodigiously jowly former Richard Nixon tub-thumper Roger Ailes, gave an interview to Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast earlier this week. It is instructive to read what Ailes said, because his comments are full of lies of every sort–simple untruths, hyperbolic overstatement, nasty misinterpretation. They show what a low, …
THREE CHEERS FOR HOWARD!
My friend Howard Samuels was the recipient of the 2010 Hollywood Arts Inspiration Award last Saturday night in Los Angeles. Congratulations, Howard! Well done!
DUMBEST OP-ED ARTICLE OF THE YEAR
Yesterday in The Washington Post, Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell, two formerly hotshot pollsters, wrote what certainly has to be the most disingenuous, cynical and purely dumb op-ed article of the year. Called “One and Done,” Schoen and Caddell argue the entirely preposterous position that to be a great president, Barack Obama should not seek …