I met the late Abe Rosenthal once and spent a couple of hours with him, long enough to experience his famous temper. He had alot of rage inside him, which the fly-by psych in me would pinpoint to a tortuous…
One of the chapters left out of yesterday’s Times obit of Rosenthal was his treatment of gay staff members when he was managing editor and executive editor. Gay people say he was oppressive. “It was the presumption of everyone at…
Lately I fingered Anonymous as Joe Wilson. Anonymous promptly responded: I posted as anonymous, and I’m not Joe Wilson. I just thought your piece was unkind and unnecessary. Thank you for being open minded and reading Ambassador Wilson’s book. I…
When Brandeis shut down an exhibit of Palestinian art last week, the organizer promptly found a new home for it across town at MIT. Then this week a group of Brandeis faculty started a petition drive to have the exhibit…
I went to a friend’s son’s bar mitzvah on Saturday and in some part because of my blog, and its discussion of Jewish politics, felt a little alienated. I forgot to get a yarmulke, then I ran to get one….
A kind reader points out that Nation Magazine’s Washington correspondent, John Nichols, has written a a bio of Dick Cheney. Dick: The Man Who Is President (Dick Cheney). New Press, 2004.
Chris Matthews made a giant breakthrough tonight: He pronounced Dick Cheney’s name right. CHEE-knee. Rhymes with Meany. That’s how Cheney’s family pronounces his name. I heard his wife say it that way at the 2004 convention. And after Cheney’s hunting…
Helen Newman Memo to all plagiarists, fabricators, jailhouse-memoirists and other literary charlatans: This is a story about a writer. Helen Newman, 29, lives at her mother’s place in Brooklyn. She teaches English at a cram school for Korean kids, sometimes…
I don’t care whether it was Ambien or alcohol; I wonder whether Patrick Kennedy isn’t—unconsciously—seeking a way out of politics with his latest run-in with the law. Kennedy last went into rehab just five months ago, now he’s going back….