In yesterday’s Times, the estimable scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. had an odd op-ed article entitled “Ending the Slavery Blame Game. ” What made it odd was its construction. At the heart of the piece was Gates’ very interesting summary of recent scholarship about the complicity of African tribes in capturing African people and selling …
SLAVERY REPARATIONS: THE BILL HAS BEEN PAID, IN BLOOD Read More »
Sorry to be so late to the party, but I was reading something the other day that placed Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell‘s discussion of slavery and Virginia and the Civil War of a couple of weeks ago in particularly sharp relief. You’ll recall that as a sop to the Sons of Confederate War Veterans, McDonnell …
Last Sunday, the Briarcliff Committee for the Arts had its second in a series of authors’ readings. My friends Joe Queenan and Giulia Melucci participated, and I was very pleased to be able to introduce them. Joe from his excellent memoir Closing Time, an often hilarious, more frequently harrowing account of his upbringing in a …
At about 2:30 this afternoon, an out-of-control panel truck full of bottles of juice rear-ended a Briarcliff school bus at the intersection of Route 100 and Chappaqua Road, about a mile from the house. Thankfully, it seems no one was badly hurt. I took these pictures. Later I sent the to The Gazette. We’ll see …
Congratulations to Lisa Birnbach, a colleague from Spy and a collaborator from Loose Lips, whose resurrection of her mega-successful The Official Preppie Handbook in the eighties earned her a front page article in The New York Times on Saturday. That’s Lisa in the center, talking to the famous designer and Batman buff Chip Kidd, and …
Just in time for tax season comes the report in yesterday’s New York Times that the top 25 hedge fund investors earned a collective $25.3 billion (with a B) in 2009. This includes seven who earned more than $1 billion, one of whom, David Tepper of Pittsburgh (pictured), earned a record $4 billion. “We bet …
WHY AREN’T WE TAXING THE SNOT OUT THE HEDGE FUND MANAGERS? Read More »
Headed down to DC yesterday to meet Cliff Etheredge, the rattlesnake-hunting, poetry-writing, one-armed Texas wind magnate whom I am privileged to be assisting on a memoir he is writing. Over a very fine lunch of lalibera rib and yesom wot at the Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant on 14th Street (first time with that cuisine for either …
At The Earth Institute of Columbia University’s State of the Planet 2010 Conference last Thursday, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs (left, photo by Eileen Barroso), the economist, intellectual tummler, and director of said Earth Institute, summed up the State of the Planet as “interconnected, crowded and complex.” Later, he threw in “wondrous” and “challenging,” and nary a …
For years we’ve thought of Democrats as the Mommy party and Republicans as the Daddy party. A crude division, but useful. Republicans were stronger on defense and fiscal discipline, Democrats were more compassionate and willing to spend money. Let us recall that one of the big reasons the Democrats won in 2008 because the Republicans …
Nobody will accuse Joe Biden of committing oratory, but nobody will accuse him of overstatement, either. When the Democrats in the House of Representatives passed a health care reform bill on Sunday, they did something that was thought to be impossible (after all, presidents since Teddy Roosevelt have sought to accomplish this); doomed by the …