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 are engaged in a struggle between freedom and the forces of terror, my little macacas, and mostly I side with freedom, such as the freedom to look at big shots and stick out your tongue and blow, but of course terror has its place too. The dude strolling down our street at night does […]
Read MoreI was misunderstood growing up and have often been misunderstood since, but then so is everyone else. People are busy, and you can’t expect them to drop everything and try to understand you. If you want to be understood, practice kindness and mercy. Kindness is seldom mistaken for anything else. Small kindnesses reverberate a long […]
Read MoreOctober 12th, the traditional Columbus Day, is a day to reflect on the nature of celebrity. Columbus was a pirate and tyrant who sailed off and bumped into the Bahamas, had no idea where he was, and to his dying day believed he had reached the Indies. By the time he arrived in the New […]
Read MoreOctober is a month for intellectual clarity. Try to keep that in mind. Cold is a stimulant, heat a depressant. The chilly month of October is when the Reformation began. Our guys in Germany were walking around enjoying the fall colors and the beer and the madchens and they thought, “Hey, why am I paying […]
Read MoreMy sandy-haired gap-toothed daughter likes to snap my picture on a cellphone as I’m eating my bran flakes in the morning and brooding over the front page of the Times, over which there is now more to brood than ever. She is 8 and she looks stunning in pictures, and I look stunned, as if […]
Read MoreI wish the pope had talked to me before he gave his “evil and inhuman” speech that got Muslims so testy at him. I could have told him, “Don’t quote some old emperor’s thoughts about Muslims unless you’re willing to have people confuse his views with yours.” You don’t tell a Mormon, “My neighbor used […]
Read MoreAnd now you can’t bring your cup of coffee on board the airplane. It’s the latest new rule laid down by the nation’s security wizards. Everyone knows it’s ridiculous – the notion that you can toss together a few liquids and make an explosive is a fiction from late-night movies. You might as well prohibit […]
Read MoreGrowing up in the fifties, we imagined our country defended by guided missiles poised in bunkers, jet fighters on the tarmac and pilots in the ready room prepared to scramble, a colonel with a black briefcase sitting in the hall outside the president’s bedroom, but September 11th gave us a clearer picture. We have a […]
Read MoreIt’s the best part of summer, the long lovely passage into fall. A procession of lazy golden days which my sandy-haired gap-toothed little girl has been painting, small abstract masterpieces in tempera and crayon and glitter, reminiscent of Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning (his early glitter period). She put a sign out front, “Art […]
Read MoreIt was painful to hear the woman in anguish on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center, crying, “I’m going to die, aren’t I? I’m going to die.” Melissa Doi was 32, beautiful, with laughing eyes and black hair. She was lying on the floor of her office at IQ Financial, overwhelmed by smoke […]
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