News
We Have Ways Of Making You Laugh
Leave it to a German academic ---Helga Kotthoff of the Frieburg University of Education--- to conduct research establishing that, as a headline in the Telegraph puts it, "Humor is an act of aggression." (Which, as headlines go, is in the category of "Dog Bites Man.")...
Unworthy Of Trust, Confidence, Or Being Read
On 2 August the New York Post ran a long excerpt from Ronald Kessler's new book In the President's Secret Service. Mr. Kessler has an impressive record as a responsible journalist, a serious author, and a go-to blogger, so I was surprised at the titillating and...
Getting Away From The —Oval— Office
Today's Daily Beast offers a "Media Gallery" of Presidential vacations. The slideshow includes TR's 1909 post-presidential African safari. HST vacationed aboard the presidential yacht USS Williamsburg, or at the Little White House in Key Biscayne --- where he relaxed...
All The Way The LBJ Way
Up close and very, very personal: newly nominated Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas receives the "LBJ Treatment" in July 1965 in this classic photo by Yoichi Okamoto. Over at the Daily Beast, former LBJ aide Tom Johnson addresses WWLBJD? --- how the 36th POTUS would...
If You’re Tired Of “Frost/Nixon”….
....then the Orlando Sentinel has an article that may tickle your fancy - about Bill and Sue Wills, a Maryland team of husband-and-wife actors who, for years, have been presenting two-person shows in which they portray a President and First Lady. So far they've...
Ted Kennedy’s Plea
The absence of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy last week from the funeral of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, followed by the death on Tuesday morning of columnist Robert Novak, who was diagnosed with brain cancer not long after the lawmaker fell ill from the same cause,...
I Just Flew In From District Court, And Boy….
From 1993 until 2001, few figures were more prominent among the critics of the Administration then in charge than Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch, who, during those years, launched eighteen civil suits against the Clinton White House, and was often to be...
8.18.71
President Obama and his family enjoyed and praised the beauty of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon during their recent whirlwind western tour. And Douglas Brinkley has written a doorstopper celebrating TR's role in creating our National Parks. But it was RN's Legacy...
“Angry White Males,” Health Care, And Richard Nixon
Commentators such as Thomas Edsall, Charles Cooper and Michael Crowley have blamed protests against Obamacare on a GOP effort to stir up "angry white males." It all goes back to Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," they say. The main problem with such arguments is...
Mass Appeal
Unguided Missal? Mass composer Leonard Bernstein in 1971. Last week on The New Yorker’s website, music critic Alex Ross wrote three articles based on newly released Freedom of Information Act-obtained government documents regarding inquiries into...