Ten days before he died, I met Robert Altman at a party in New York for his friend Gore Vidal’s new book. I was on a couch and he was in an armchair when a friend started telling him how…
I caught Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian/American activist and author of a new book calling for a single Arab and Jewish state in Palestine, at Columbia the other night. Abunimah made a few interesting points: 1. Having been to Northern Ireland,…
Jennifer Siegel of the Forward has turned in another fine piece of reporting, this on the fact that Republicans count their Jewish vote in the recent election at 26 percent, while the Associated Press puts it at half that, 13…
The idea that there are two narratives about Israel/Palestine in this country, and never the twain shall meet, was reinforced last week by the Times’ two-parter on the special relationship of Israel and the U.S., titled “Anatomy of an Alliance.”…
Those of us who love a tiny Polynesian nation in the South Pacific are distressed by the reports out of Tonga of anti-royalist riots that have left at least six dead and destroyed the downtown of Nuku’alofa, the capital of…
This morning I overheard my wife giving relationship advice to a friend on the phone: “This is the rule. In the beginning of a relationship, those first two or three golden weeks, you can confess anything. You get permission to…
Janet Malcolm is one of my idols, I’d read her shopping lists if someone would print them. Her book The Journalist and the Murderer is a cultural landmark, it changed the relationship of journalists and their sources, giving more power…
Some readers are abusing this site by leaving comments “signed” by Phil Weiss. I didn’t write these comments, I’m going to start taking them down when I get a minute; they’re misrepresentations. If you want to go after me, fine,…
Last night at Columbia’s school of international affairs, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector, and former Marine, opened a speech about Iran bracingly, by speaking not of Iran but about the “elephant in the room”: Israel. He said that Israel…