Columns, pieces and posts
So, Tampa. Last weekend I walked onto the floor of the convention for the first time, and it was beautiful—all the lights and the dazzle and the sound checks, all the bustle. We forget how exciting it is, some of us, because we’ve been here before, we’ve seen the huge cavernous stadium dressed up in […]
Seven years ago I wrote a column on blogs. At the time they were new, and mainstream journalists were deriding bloggers. I defended them. I said everyone should have a blog. I now take my own advice.
It is good that Joe Biden is going to the Republican National Convention to hold high the flag of his party. People make fun of his gaffes, of his embarrassing verbal forays, but he’s no fool and he knows how to take it to the other guy. The speech he is working on, to be […]
Americans are not ideologues. They think ideology is something squished down on their heads from on high, something imposed on them by big thinkers who create systems we’re all supposed to conform to. Americans are more interested in philosophy, which bubbles up from human beings, from tradition and learned experience, and isn’t imposed. Lately we […]
It’s been a week marked by mistakes, some new and some continuing. The pro-Obama super PAC ad that essentially blames Mitt Romney for a woman’s death from cancer is over the line, and if it’s allowed to stand the personal attacks that have marked the presidential campaign will probably get worse. If the president rebukes […]
From a friend watching the Olympics: “How about that Michael Phelps? But let’s remember he didn’t win all those medals, someone else did. After all, he and I swam in public pools, built by state employees using tax dollars. He got training from the USOC, and ate food grown by the Department of Agriculture. He […]
At a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” the other day on Manhattan’s East 86th Street, three cops were posted outside, two in a cruiser and one on a motorcycle. An usher said they’d been coming by since the shooting in Aurora, Colo. She was relieved they were there; we now can add movie ushers […]
Thoughts on three recent failures to communicate: In the controversy surrounding the uniforms of the 2012 U.S. Olympic team, the problem isn’t China. That the uniforms were made there is merely a deep embarrassment and a missed opportunity. Our textile and manufacturing companies deserved that work. You wonder how it could be that no one […]
The 2012 presidential election is unusual. It is a crisis election like 1932 or 1980, with the American people knowing we’re at a turning point and knowing that who we pick now really matters. But crisis elections tend to bring drama—a broad sense of excitement and passion. We’re not seeing that this year. We’re not […]
There’s something Haley Barbour reminded me of called the Gate Rule. The former Mississippi governor said it’s the first thing you should think of when you think about immigration. People are either lined up at the gate trying to get out of a country, or lined up trying to get in. It says something about […]