I went home for Passover yesterday and felt guilty. I feel close to my family but little closeness to my tribe. I am less Jewish than I have ever been, and certain statements I have made in the last year,…
Without getting straight to the Out-Now question, it seems obvious that everyone would be better off if the Bushies admitted the plain reality right now, The war is a giant failure. Misconceived, misguided, mis-everything’d—whatever, it isn’t working at all. (And…
The Times is confused about the scandal at the Post. On the one hand, it regards it as titillating gossip. Thus the montage of gossipy photos and the nut-graf dismissing the story as the gossip that everyone is buzzing about….
On the subject of the Clash of Civilizations, consider this. The Rolling Stones played China after censoring five songs (including Brown Sugar and Beast of Burden). Why no hullaballoo over Chinese censorship? The Chinese are just as perplexing and alien…
The introduction of Playboy Magazine in Indonesia demonstrates an important point about the Islamic world. You’ll see that the article notes that the magazine is fifty years behind the American edition in terms of what it shows—not even nipples. The…
Hats off to Eve Kessler, a political reporter at the Forward who is moving on to the New York Post. Kessler is smart and on it. For instance, here she reported that Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee faces a…
One of the cool things about blogging is it makes you take responsiblity for your thoughts. Buddha said we are the sum of all our thoughts, and blogging makes you own them. Because as a blogger, you need all the…
Listen, I despise George Bush as much as you do. I think he should be impeached for incompetence & his contempt for the consequences of his actions in Iraq is evil… And yet—I confess I always like him, in spite…
I was checking out the Christian Science Monitor’s remarkable series of intimate photographs of Jill Carroll’s reunion with her parents, hugging her father, falling over in her mother’s lap, when I felt the tears falling on my keyboard. http://www.csmonitor.com/slideshows/2006/homecoming2/index.html Why…