News
Putting Things In Perspective
Arthur S. Mole ---1889-1983--- was an English commercial photographer who took a series of striking and innovative “living photographs” of American soldiers during and after World War One. Working with his American colleague John D. Thomas, Mole organized and...
Dumbing Decorum Down
Over at Politico, Glenn Thrush highlights a new ukase from House of Representatives Rules Commitee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter. Talk about breaking a butterfly on a wheel..... Instead of allowing his own sense of shame and/or his colleagues' contumely to deal with...
Edward Kennedy: Watergate’s “Hidden Hand”
On today’s Daily Beast, Chris Matthews exalts Senator Edward Kennedy’s prominent ---indeed, in Matthews’ telling, pivotal--- but hitherto largely unheralded role in using Watergate to cripple the Nixon administration and end the Nixon presidency. The headline ---most...
Frost/Nixon Is Forever
Now that Frost/Nixon is comfortably settled in the racks of your local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, and the touring production with Stacy Keach has run its course, Peter Morgan's play has started to be produced in repertory theater, with the Austin Playhouse's...
Larry Gelbart, 1928-2009
As I write, either on TV Land or the Hallmark Channel, the inevitable strains of Johnny Mandel's "Suicide Is Painless" are beginning, the chopper is coming down, and the men and women of the 4077th are getting ready for another session of OR drama and off-hours...
Vietnam: Boots On The Ground And In The Mud
In July, in response to a post about Neil Armstrong's famous first footstep onto the Moon on 20 July 1969, Barbara Nelson posted a comment about a photograph her husband took that same day of a soldier's boots leaving their own distinctive prints in the mud of...
Health Care at Morton’s Fork
As defined by Wikipedia, a Morton’s Fork is “a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives.” In the health care debate, this is the choice between government run health care, or corporate run health care. We progressives like to call this choice --- reform or...
Laughing Matters
Here's a clever bit of editing by Nick Dorazio, a citizen frusted because his Congressman wouldn't hold a real time town hall on the subject of health care. So he took the raw material of an old episode of Dragnet, in which Jack Webb (as Sgt. Joe Friday) and Harry...
Some Politics Is More Local Than Others
In Sunday's Boston Herald, the inimitable Howie Carr ---the longtime bane of Kennedy and scourge of Kerry--- examined the odds and the consequences of Joe Kennedy running for his uncle's Senate seat. Apparently the former congressman has renounced the seat that would...
Book Review of “The Heart of Power.”
Here is your homework assignment for the coming health care debate... Note what the review says about RN.