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
We now interrupt Mrs. Palin’s book tour to bring you Thanksgiving, a grand old holiday, and we in the book business are thankful for her, that a busy woman who wanted to tell her story chose the medium of ink and paper between hard covers. Her tour is not about politics. It’s about books. Those […]
Read MoreI was in Chicago with time on my hands and the sweet woman murmured to me — you know how this goes — “Would you like to see the Art Institute?” and I was thinking No No No God No, and I said, “Sure. Fine.” “You wouldn’t rather do something else?” she said. “No,” I […]
Read MoreThere are some things we will never understand. Death, for one. I overheard a woman in the drugstore say, “He went in to the hospital yesterday and he was eating his supper and then he fell asleep and then he died. I don’t get it.” She didn’t seem grief-stricken, just uncomprehending. (Why did it have […]
Read MoreIt costs $722 to fly from St. Paul/Minneapolis to Bismarck, N.D., and you can fly from St. Paul/Minneapolis to Paris for $754. Life is unfair; we all know this. Big prizes go to mediocrities while you struggle on, unappreciated. The righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. Bernie Madoff danced around the Securities & Exchange Commission […]
Read MoreThe former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan because he feels the war is pointless and not worth dying for, deserves all the attention he’s gotten and more. The Obama administration faces hard decisions there, and the man made a good case against deeper American involvement. He says that […]
Read MoreA gorgeous fall here on the upper Mississippi, but among the old grumblers I drink cheap coffee with, the mood these days is dark, due to low interest rates and the advance of the glaciers, which is why I, sunny optimist that I am, seek out the company of the young and ebullient and drink […]
Read MoreEvidently some people were disappointed that Dick Cheney didn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and believe me, I sympathize — I thought Philip Roth should’ve gotten the literature prize instead of that grumpy Romanian lady with the severe hair — but it was Mr. Obama whom the Norwegians wanted to come visit Oslo in December […]
Read MoreOK, it was wrong of me to say last week that we should deny health care to Republicans except for aspirin and hand sanitizer, and thank you to the many readers who kindly took me to task. It was so wrong. And I withdraw the idea that death panels should circulate through red states searching […]
Read MoreEvery so often, sitting down to your Cheerios, you open the New York Times to the crossword puzzle and find clues such as “_ Van Winkle” and “_ of 1812” and “Buried in Grant’s Tomb” and you finish the thing in five minutes flat feeling brilliant and unappreciated, some sort of national treasure, and then […]
Read MoreThe president has declined to talk about racism in connection with the carpet-chewers of the Right who are suffering road rage over his existence, and he’s wise to turn that one down. The country doesn’t need a sermon on race or civility right now. What it needs is to believe that our leaders are trying […]
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