Columns, pieces and posts
I have taken a few days off and gone to a place where there are beaches, palm trees, tan people, men in shorts and cotton-weave shirts, and women in sky-blue and pink and yellow dresses and broad-brimmed straw hats. It is nice here. The breeze is gentle and unstopping. In the houses you can smell […]
God made the world or he didn’t. God made you or he didn’t. If he did, your little human life is, and has been, touched by the divine. If this is true, it would be true of all humans, not only some. And so—again, if it is true—each human life is precious, of infinite value, […]
It appears we’ve reached the pivotal moment in the Terri Schiavo case, and it also appears our politicians, our senators and congressmen, might benefit from some observations. In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem […]
Ashley Smith and Brian Nichols were together for seven hours. This is Nichols’s mug shot. This is Nichols’s face after he gave himself up to police Saturday. Something changed. Something happened. This is from the transcript of Ashley Smith’s testimony when she met with reporters in her lawyer’s office on Sunday, March 13: It was […]
There are two predominant journalistic memes since the Arab spring began. The first, from the left: What if Bush was right? This was most famously and appropriately grappled with on Comedy Central, when Democratic foreign-policy thinker Nancy Soderberg consoled Jon Stewart with the hopefully facetious, but either way revealing, advice to hang on, things can […]
Let’s think more about how America gets the news. The network news organizations and their old flagship shows, the evening news, are in flux: falling ratings, an aging demographic, competition from cable, a general loss of prestige, Rathergate. But it’s foolish to think the network evening news shows don’t matter anymore. Dan Rather’s show, which […]
“Salivating morons.” “Scalp hunters.” “Moon howlers.” “Trophy hunters.” “Sons of Sen. McCarthy.” “Rabid.” “Blogswarm.” “These pseudo-journalist lynch mob people.” This is excellent invective. It must come from bloggers. But wait, it was the mainstream media and their maidservants in the elite journalism reviews, and they were talking about bloggers! Those MSMers have gone wild, I […]
I have been thinking about John Paul II. Everyone has, I suppose. The pope yesterday missed Ash Wednesday services at the Vatican. This after a recent hospitalization. Ash Wednesday reminds Catholics that we will leave this world some day, that from dust we came and to dust we will return. We are asked to renew […]
George Bush finally began his second term on Wednesday night with an address that marked the return of the Bush of the stump, the Bush who was re-elected president three months ago and whom the nation knows well. His State of the Union address underscored that he meant what he said when he ran: Efforts […]
I have been called old, jaded, a sourpuss. Far worse, I have been called French. A response is in order. You know the dispute. Last week I slammed the president’s inaugural address. I was not alone, but I came down hard, early and in one of the most highly read editorial pages in America. Bill […]