In his explanation of why he refused to release the photos of the dead body of Osama bin Laden, President Obama told 60 Minutes “”We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies. We don’t need to spike the football.” I don’t agree. Put me down as standing with the Beatles on this one. As they …
Terrific article, amazing photos in the New York Times about President Obama‘s vantage on the killing of Osama bin Laden: “On Sunday afternoon, as the helicopters raced over Pakistani territory, the president and his advisers gathered in the Situation Room of the White House to monitor the operation as it unfolded. Much of the time …
A self-proclaimed actor and writer named Will Hines has written about Spy on a website called splitsider.com. “Maybe you’ve heard of Spy Magazine, the satirical magazine that was one of the funniest things ever in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but never read it. Now that Google Books has put much of the Spy …
I didn’t want to write about Donald Trump anymore, but he is making me do it. Today, President Obama published on the White House website a long-form version of his birth certificate. This “certificate” is a longer, more complete document than the “certification” that his campaign released in 2008, which is what a citizen of …
Thanks to Gerry Prokopowicz, a professor of history at East Carolina University, for having me on his program Civil War Talk Radio. We passed an enjoyable hour talking about the Disunion series, the drama of the secession winter, and misappropriated turkey sandwiches. For all those who care to listen, please follow this link: http://www.impedimentsofwar.org/singleshow.php?show=722. I …
In an elegantly-written article in the Times today, Cathy Horyn talks to Christine Baranski, a girl from Buffalo, apparently Polish, who turned herself into an artist–a person of intellect, refinement, passion. She comes across as kind of wonderful, most especially in this passage: “All this talk about former haunts led Ms. Baranski to observe: “We’re …
Having foresworn discussing the sad spectacle of a diseased man (Charlie Sheen) imploding, I am now also foreswearing, following this post, participation in the current Donald Trump Naked Self-Promotion Campaign. This effort involves promoting the ratings of his cheesy TV show by pretending that he has an interest in running for the presidency, and, as …
Thanks to good luck and good connections, I got to write not one but two articles about The Conspirator, the new firm opening this week about the trial before a military tribunal of Mary Surratt, one of the alleged conspirators who joined with John Wilkes Booth to kill Abraham Lincoln and attack other high government …
. . .although talking about fighting might be best of all. I had a great time last night moderating a TimesTalk discussion at, natch, The New York Times, on the subject of Disunion and the Civil War. I had an excellent panel to work with–Adam Goodheart, a Disunion series mainstay and author of a new …