I never much cared for Gore Vidal, and I don’t like quoting him. He was an anti-Semite and a cynic whose sniggering contrarianism extended to expressing sympathy for Timothy McVeigh Read More
Pinstripe Pity Party: What Wall Street, the Yankees and President Obama Have in Common
Robinson Cano capped another in a long line of dismal postseasons with a record-setting 0-29 stint at the plate, yet maintained that “I’ve been hitting the ball hard, just right at people. Read More
The Lie This Time: The GOP’s Latest Phony Argument for War
What makes old people cynical is listening to the exact same lies being propagated year after year—and seeing them be just as effective as they ever were. I grew up during the Vietnam War Read More
After Botching Central Park Five Case, City Goes After Filmmakers Who Told the Tale
It’s not every day that you pick up the newspaper and read that three of your friends have been subpoenaed—assuming, that is, that you don’t work for an international bank, the mafia, or the New York State Assembly. Read More
How to Steal a City: Bruce Ratner and Co. Just Rolled Brooklyn
“We did it!” developer Bruce Ratner crowed a reported 14 times at the opening of his new Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn this weekend. Read More
The Unlikely Resurrection of Ralph Reed
What a relief it was to pick up my New York Times this Sunday and see that Damien really is back in town. I thought I’d spotted him at the Republican convention, felt sure I’d caught a whiff of sulfur when he passed, found myself swarmed by his usual entourage of flies. It would have been hard to miss him, since he was wearing a pink tie and a green plaid jacket at the time. Read More
The Romney Camp’s Reckless Middle East Foreign Policy
Are a few political points worth tripping into another Central Asian quagmire? Read More
Evangelicals Hug the Sidelines as Catholics and Mormons Seize the National Stage
Grab any time machine you can find, take it back to any year from the founding of the Republican party until about 1970, and show the bios of this year’s GOP presidential ticket to the party leaders of the past. No doubt, their first response will be, “Weren’t there any Christians available?” Read More
Those Republican Blue-Collar Workin’-Man Backgrounds Are Beginning to Seem Rather Belabored
The blue-collar success stories piled up so fast at the Republican Convention in Tampa that one would have been forgiven for assuming that the party was made up entirely of the sons and daughters Read More