Coming to the end of the second year of the Obama presidency, what is sadly apparent is that one of the most gifted politicians of my lifetime–gifted intellectually, gifted rhetorically–has completely failed to articulate the narrative of our times. It’s perplexing, but he has never explained chapter and verse how and why we have found …
Before George Lois went to work at Esquire and became a giant of the magazine industry, he was a giant of the advertising industry. Thus it makes sense that for its August issue, Playboy would turn to Lois for some comments on Mad Men, which begins its fourth season on Sunday. Now, this does not …
Anthony Gottlieb has a fascinating article about voting in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, in which he talks about the real limitation of Britain’s–and America’s–first past the post system. The really best part of the piece, however, comes at the beginning, where he explains how the Doge of Venice was selected for five …
The oddest entertainment story of the week reports that Aaron Sorkin has agreed to write the screenplay and direct the film of The Politician, Andrew Young‘s account of his disappointing time as an aide to the vain, dishonest and dishonorable Senator John Edwards, and Young’s complicity is hiding the extra-marital affair and pregnancy that Edwards …
Went over to Borders in Scarsdale last week to hear the novelist Jonathan Tropper read from his novel of suburban disintegration This Is Where I Leave You. I just finishing reading the book myself, and enjoyed it very much. Tropper has a very nice touch. The book is a gallery of male archetypes, and pretty …
It’s hard to convince any Yankee fan who has grown up in the love fest era of Joe Torre and Derek Jeter that George Steinbrenner, who died today, is or was anything but a kindly old man who benignly sprinkled money on gifted young men fortunate enough to wear the pinstripes. You have to be …
Yesterday the New York Times reported that in November, the University of California will publish the first three volumes of the 500,000 (!) word Autobiography of Mark Twain. The opinion is that this will restore acid to a writer who has come to be seen as “’Colonel Sanders without the chicken, the avuncular man who …
Wonder Woman has a new look. Tim Gunn approves. “I love Wonder Woman’s new look,” Gunn told Newsarama writer Alan Kistler. “This new look says, ‘I’m confident, I’m powerful, I’m sexy, and don’t mess with me.’ Furthermore, she looks like a citizen of the real world rather than a creature from another land. I would …
In On theatlantic.com, images from the Gulf.
Hey, whatever happened to thunderstorms? You remember–great, violent downpours of drenching rain, accompanied by flashed o lightning and booming thunderclaps? The horrid heat wave of the last week has left me wondering why we haven’t had one or more of those smashing storms that seemed to have almost a daily companion of nearly all the …