“Frost/Nixon” at the Kennedy Center

This afternoon my wife Rene and I went to the Kennedy Center in Washington to see a matinee performance of Peter Morgan’s acclaimed play Frost/Nixon, starring Stacy Keach as Richard Nixon and Alan Cox as David Frost, in a dramatization of their celebrated TV...

Aglet: Another Name For A Whatjermecallit

Back in the ’80s, Rich Hall invented Sniglets: Words that should —but don’t— appear in the dictionary. Such as: ACCORDIONATED (ah kor’ de on ay tid) adj. Being able to drive and refold a road map at the same time. CARPERPETUATION...

What Would the Sage of Fair Lane Think?

As the big boys from the big three pressed their case this week for a taxpayer funded bridge or bailout (pick your metaphor), the role of big labor in Mr. Obama’s coming administration is being seriously tested even before the guy gets to say “so help me God.” Of...

A Summing Up

Robert Novak suspended his column last summer when he learned he had a brain tumor.  The long-time Washington observer and uber-reporter arrived in the capital in the latter years of the Eisenhower administration. In this month’s Washingtonian magazine, he talks...

Catch-2008

Erica Heller is a New Yorker in her fifties.  In her twenties and thirties she worked in advertising. Then she dropped out of the field and wrote a novel, Splinters – a natural thing to do when one is the daughter of the late Joseph Heller, author of Something...

Pen to Paper (or Finger to Keyboard)

Ted Stevens conceded defeat in his bid for re-election to the Senate today, strengthening the Democratic hand in the upper chamber but at least saving the GOP elders some embarrassment.  This eliminates the prospect, at least immediately, that Gov. Sarah Palin, as...