This is what you do when it all goes to hell again. You casually turn the television on while the coffee water boils, but the news punches you in the gut and takes your breath away. You instantly revise the whole history of the world in order to make the… More
This is from a news story on Thursday: “We are not saying this is definitely going to happen. But there’s a danger, and it should receive a lot more attention.” What danger? Sez who? I’ll get back to that. But check out the last word in that quote first. I… More
Last week, Gallup asked Americans if they were watching news about the presidential campaign “very closely.” Four out of 10 said yes. I’m one of them. That’s crazy. Are you one of them? That’s crazy, too. There are plenty of high-minded reasons to follow campaign news. It informs us about… More
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is at it again. You might think an outfit calling itself an academy would be, you know, academic. But as Jon Stewart put it, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is as much an academy as the “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product” called Kraft Singles is… More
As Joe Biden polls family and friends about entering the presidential fray, he’s getting two kinds of advice – personal and political. The personal is about his life, his values and what he can give to his country. The political is about Hillary Clinton’s vulnerability. Honesty and trustworthiness are top… More
What will we do without Jon Stewart? I hear that a lot. Of course I hope his writers will be able to make more magic with his successor, Trevor Noah. And no matter what happens on “The Daily Show,” we will still have John Oliver and Larry Wilmore, and I’m… More
The last best hope to stop Big Money’s rout of American democracy is a former trade group lobbyist who’s reluctant to stretch his spandex superhero suit too thin. Plutocrats have been on a roll for a while in the U.S., and campaign finance reform is in full retreat. Though Americans… More
Here’s Kyle Clark grilling Republican Cory Gardner, who went on to oust Mark Udall from his Colorado senate seat in 2014: “You continue to deny that the federal Life at Conception Act which you sponsor is a personhood bill to end abortion, and we are not going to debate… More
“Oh, by the way, Leonard,” I say into the phone, as breezily as I can feign, “what did you think about Diane’s belt?” Leonard Nimoy is on location in Cambridge, Massachusetts, preparing to direct The Good Mother for Disney, starring Diane Keaton. I’m the executive on the movie, on the… More
On May 4, 1970, when 29 Ohio National Guardsmen shot 67 rounds of ammunition at a group of unarmed Kent State University students protesting Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, killing four students and wounding nine others, I was the president of the Harvard Lampoon, the nation’s… More