As Rush Limbaugh celebrates his 20th anniversary as host of his nationally syndicated radio show, I think back 15 years to NR’s cover story of September 6, 1993, which I wrote, titled “Leader of the Opposition.” The title was not mine. John O’Sullivan, then the editor of the magazine, had learned both journalism in politics…
Like pretty much everybody else — apparently including Barack Obama himself — I’m assuming that the coming Obama presidency can be treated as a foregone conclusion, something just a little bit less inevitable than tomorrow morning’s sunrise or the media’s eventually turning on their darling. But if in spite of all reasonable forecasting we are…
This summer, on eight successive Tuesday evenings, I am presenting a series called Isn’t It Romantic? Romance at the Movies, 1934-1989 at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. (go to www.eppc.org/movies for details or to register to attend). The seventh film in the series was Annie Hall (1977), by Woody Allen, shown on…
[See “Entry from July 30, 2008” under “My Diary”]
There is something screamingly funny about the media’s lecturing John McCain about the impropriety of his saying in New Hampshire last week that “This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems…
This summer, on eight successive Tuesday evenings, I am presenting a series called Isn’t It Romantic? Romance at the Movies, 1934-1989 at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. (go to www.eppc.org/movies for details or to register to attend). The sixth film in the series was The Apartment (1960), by Billy Wilder, shown on…
[See “Entry from July 23, 2008” under “My Diary”]
The death last week of Les Crane, sometime talk-show host, actor, musician and software tycoon serves to remind us of the passing of another of the comic monuments of the generation of peace and love, which was Crane’s Grammy-winning reading of the soppy poem “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann in 1971. You know the one I…
Barry Blitt’s now-notorious New Yorker cover of Obama as Osama, fist-bumping with Michelle as Angela Davis while an American flag burns in the fireplace, seems to me like those old Jules Feiffer cartoons that you were sure must be very deep, even if they weren’t very funny. Or perhaps they were funny, but only in…
This summer, on eight successive Tuesday evenings, I am presenting a series called Isn’t It Romantic? Romance at the Movies, 1934-1989 at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. (go to www.eppc.org/movies for details or to register to attend). The fifth film in the series was An Affair to Remember (1957), by Leo McCarey,…
[See “Entry from July 16, 2008” under “My Diary”]
Last week, Gail Collins of The New York Times offered a novel defense of Barack Obama’s rightward dash for votes since clinching the Democratic nomination last month. It was that he really hadn’t changed at all but was only saying what he had been saying all along. We just weren’t listening. Ridiculous as this may sound…
