Columns, pieces and posts
One way to look at life is that we’re all waiting. You’re born, you grow into the autonomy of adulthood, and then you have to find a way to pass your time until a) you enter your real life, the one that never ends and is full of joy, or b) you enter the meaningless […]
I want to like Howard Dean. I don’t mean I want to support him; I mean I want to like him, or find him admirable even if I don’t agree with him. I want the Democratic Party to have a strong nominee this year, for several reasons. One is that it is one of our […]
We have all seen the stories this Christmas season—they are not new, they are only more so—of the local struggles between what I suppose might be called the forces of modernity versus the forces of faith. Tussles in schools and townships over the Christmas display, the prayer, the T-shirt, the cross, the statue of Mary. […]
Here’s some happy news this Christmas season, an unexpected gift for those who have seen and admired Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, “The Passion,” and wish to support it. The film has a new admirer, and he is a person of some influence. He is in fact the head of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic […]
“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.”—Paul Bremer First, let’s just be happy. Let’s feel a burst of joy. Let’s not be boring people who Consider the Implications. Let’s not talk about the domestic political impact. For just a day let’s feel the pleasure history just handed us. All morning the words of an old song […]
What a great man Bob Bartley was. He had guts and he was honest and independent and he worked hard. He was living proof that journalism doesn’t have to be a vanity production. It can be big. It can change history. He did. It is hard to convey, in the age of the conservative ascendancy, […]
A week ago today Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, Bishop Wilton Gregory, the head of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Council, and a handful of bishops met in Washington with a few dozen Catholic laymen to discuss the future of the church. The official name of the conference was “A Meeting in Support of the Church,” […]
Seems like a long time ago; seems like yesterday. Actually we’re in that awkward period of historical memory in which it’s too soon to see 9/11 as History Channel fodder and too late to feel it freshly. It was 21 months ago; life moves on; we don’t talk about “Where were you?” anymore. And yet […]
This is a book about love. That’s an odd thing to say about a collection that spans 9/11/01 to 9/11/02, and that centers on the attacks on America. But the primary emotion I felt in those days was a love, or a tender sense of appreciation, for everyone who played a part in the drama—the […]
Last Thursday night Tom Brokaw carried a war report that featured an American GI who’d been shot in the leg outside Baghdad. They showed him being treated in the field on a gurney. His pants had been cut away, and you could see his shorts. They were red, white and blue. They had stars and […]