Columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
I saw Hillary Clinton once working a rope line for more than an hour, a Secret Service man holding her firmly by the hips as she leaned over the rope and reached into the mass of arms and hands reaching out to her. She had learned the art of encountering the crowd and making it […]
Read MoreThe sight of Percherons makes me happy. So do deep-fried cheese curds, newborn lambs and those designer chickens with feathery pompom anklets, and then you enter the Horticulture Building and see pumpkins the size of studio apartments, large enough to house a man and his wife, so today I am happy, having attended the Minnesota […]
Read MoreThe cap does not look good on you, it’s a duffer’s cap, and when you come to the microphone, you look like the warm-up guy, the guy who announces the license number of the car left in the parking lot, doors locked, lights on, motor running. The brim shadows your face, which gives a sinister […]
Read MoreLife is good if you have your health and not all bad even if you don’t, which is sometimes forgotten in an election year, what with the high-pitched oratory on behalf of the embittered rich and people with ingrown toenails and what not. Apparently we are on the verge of losing our Second Amendment rights […]
Read MoreSummer weather leads toward cranial relaxation and you know it and I know it. You walk out your front door into the heat and an 800-pound anvil falls out of the oak tree on your head and flattens you like a pancake. It’s the anvil you bought because it cost $150, which is a good […]
Read MoreThe word “loser” is spoken with such contempt these days, a man might like to forget the losses in his own life that taught him something about good judgment. The money he invested in that casino in Atlantic City that went bust, the university course he enrolled in that promised to teach him the secrets […]
Read MoreI saw one of my novels at a yard sale last week, and it appeared to have been used as a coaster. The interior was quite pristine, but there were rings on the cover where wet glasses had been set. It was on sale for 35 cents. Had I known I was only writing a […]
Read MoreIt is the most famous ducktail in America today, the hairdo of wayward youth of a bygone era, and it’s astonishing to imagine it under the spotlight in Cleveland, being cheered by Republican dignitaries. The class hood, the bully and braggart, the guy revving his pink Chevy to make the pipes rumble, presiding over the […]
Read MoreThe father of the graduate is a footman at the festivities, a porter, a supernumerary. Through cunning and perseverance, he has accumulated the pots of gold required to raise a girl nowadays, supply the wardrobe and the array of lotions and emollients, pay the string of retainers and therapists, foot the bill for class trips […]
Read MoreWe trooped off to the Memorial Day service in light sprinkles Monday and listened to the speeches and wished it would rain hard, for the interest. The usual themes of ancestor worship and Pax Americana, and then a moment of silence and Taps, and we dispersed, feeling we’d not honored the fallen as they deserve […]
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