Columns, pieces and posts
Simi Valley, Calif. I was to write on something else this week but an event in California sent me back in time. Friends of Ronald Reagan gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of his speeches at Normandy (June 6, 1984), and the 20th anniversary of his death (June 5, 2004). The dates remind me that […]
I’m seeing something and maybe you are too. We talk in our country about political polarization and it’s real: We’re split into a thousand pieces within two big camps of left and right. We decry the harshness of our political discourse, particularly online, where outrageous and dehumanizing things are said. But what I’m seeing is […]
Some Memorial Day thoughts on the importance of love: Children don’t need to be taught to love their parents. From the moment they come out you are everything to them. They seem to arrive with a certain amount of love built in and fix it on the mother who holds them and looks into their […]
I have a friend who lives in western New Jersey near a lake. Dee is middle aged, works in sales in a service industry, had been a politically independent moderate most of her life, voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and, less fervently, 2020. When I last saw her, in February, she and her husband […]
Six months to election day and things feel sort of fatalistic. There seems little to discover and nothing new to say about each of the candidates. It’s not going to dawn on you suddenly that Joe Biden is too old and infirm or Donald Trump too crazy. You’ve factored that in. You know what you […]
I wish to protest the current ugliness. I see it as a continuing trend, “the uglification of everything.” It is coming out of our culture with picked-up speed, and from many media silos, and I don’t like it. You remember the 1999 movie “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” from the Patricia Highsmith novel. It was fabulous—mysteries, […]
Most politics is day by day, and certainly we consume it that way. But the thought that presses on my mind has distant horizons. The criminal trial of Donald Trump, de facto Republican presidential nominee, commenced Monday in Manhattan Criminal Court. The case revolves around charges that he directed hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, […]
Our crazy country. The O.J. Simpson case was the beginning of knowing we were crazy and admitting it. It was 30 years ago this June, the murder followed by the Bronco chase, and I find myself wanting to tell those who weren’t there what a sensation it was, what an amazement. Everyone over 40 this […]
There’s a funny thing that happens in a nation’s thoughts. At some point everyone knows something is true, and talks about it with each other. The truth becomes a cliché before it becomes actionable. Then a person of high respect, a good-faith scholar who respects data, say, comes forward with evidence proving what everyone knows, […]
Easter’s coming, Holy Week’s here and Passover is a few weeks away, so it’s a good time to look at the work of a great artist who’s brought considerable beauty into the world, Paul Simon. Alex Gibney’s two-part MGM+ documentary on the making of his most recent album is also beautiful—moving, mellow, sweet and deep. […]