“RIDICULOUS”
Donald Trump, he of Undaunted Idiocy, tries to birther the waters with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. To his credit, Blitzer will have none of it. On the other hand, why did Blitzer give the blowhard a platform from which to spew his nastiness?
FLOTILLA FINALE
The Royal Philharmonic, accompanied by the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir, really brought it for the musical finale of the Diamond Jubilee Flotilla. I tell you, those girls can sing in my boat anytime. Sorry for the lousy production value, a lamentably shorter but much sharper version can be found here on the BBC …
OSSINING CIVIL WAR DAYS
Many thanks to Miguel Hernandez (above, holding the top hat) and my new friends at the Ossining Historical Society for inviting me to participate in their Civil War Days event yesterday at the Campwoods Meeting Ground. I had a terrific afternoon talking about Civil War history, discussing my book, and learning about Ossining history. I …
THE CAR CRASH OF CRAZINESS THAT’S ALL ID AND ALL EGO
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy A jury acquitted John Edwards of one count of campaign finance crimes last week, and hung on five other counts, allowing the smarmy ex-senator to go free. Afterwards, Edwards offered a self-serving but fairly innocuous comment to the media (it appears at around …
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OBAMA’S FATAL FLAW?
As Joe Nocera reminds us today in the Times, “Not a single top executive at any of the firms that nearly brought down the financial system has spent so much as a day in jail. . . .What is also true, and which is every bit as corrosive to our belief in the rule of …
OLD SCHOOL STORY
There’s a very nice article about me and the Disunion blog in the Spring issue of LaSalle magazine, the alumni publication of my alma mater. Thanks to Jeremy Rosen for a very complimentary piece.
MAURICE SENDAK AND HIS ANTI-HEROES
Here’s a new piece done for my new friends at The American Interest: The incidences of writers taking ownership of words are few and far between. Moses or whoever wrote Genesis certainly owns begat; the authors of the Declaration own inalienable; and Maurice Sendak owns rumpus. I cannot hear the word without thinking of reading …
THOMAS MALLON’S NEW NIXON
With the fortieth anniversary of the Watergate break-in arriving this June, we should prepare ourselves for a deluge of Watergate- and Nixon-related material. This may well be the last good anniversary opportunity to revive and relive this massively frightening, entertaining scandal before the vast majority of those who cared about these matters as they were …
MAESTRO ROBERT CARO
In the Times yesterday, Joe Nocera wrote a column that groused, if I read it correctly, about a man attaining excellence in his life’s work, and gently chided the man, it seems to me, for being great. Nocera, whom I generally admire for his lucid writing about the turgid field of business and economics, took …