Aren’t you just a little bit bothered that it takes a German court to give the Attorney General of the United States lessons on due process and basic fairness in a criminal trial? Quite a reversal in the historical scheme of things as Americans have known it. To say it’s ironic doesn’t quite cover it. I am […]

The death yesterday of Robert L. Bartley might soften the edges of his portrait for some. But it’s not likely to bring much private sympathy from the Journal’s reporting staff, which tended to regard him as crazily biased. Bartley was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom last week (see Imperial Accessories) for being a far-right […]

Let us now praise the presidential genius of our Maximum Leader. Here’s a commander in chief who also plays chief doofus (see < FONT color=#003399>Hu’s on first) of his own administration. This has been evident since he took over the White House. But this morning’s front-page story nicely illustrates the point: “President Bush found himself in […]

It should come as no surprise that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi would say in her acceptance speech that 9/11 has been exploited by the U.S. government as an excuse to violate international law and human rights. So let’s have a look instead at J.M.Coetzee’s Nobel Lecture. The self-effacing Nobel Prize laureate in literature […]

Need a good laugh? Try this. Condi Rice and the Maximum Leader of the Banana Republic of America take a page from Abbott and Costello.

You may recall that before being elected, Der Gropenfuhrer apologized to all the women he offended with behavior that earned him his nickname. To prove his sincerity, he maintained that he would look into the complaints. But now Der Grope has changed his mind. He says: Nein! CNN reports that the “independent investigation of pre-election allegations […]

A rightwing friend of mine worries that I’m suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Here’s why he thinks so:  BDS, according to the well-named Charles Krauthammer, is “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.” I thanked my friend for the […]

From the blast of all the trumpets, you’d think the new millenium had re-arrived Sunday night. Everyone from big fry like Frank Rich and John Leonard to small fry like Dan Oldenwald hailed the coming of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” on HBO. “Much of what will attract viewers,” Oldenwald wrote, “will surely be the bigness […]

Once in a blue moon a play comes along that restores my belief in the vitality of the theater. I’m not talking about Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” which made its TV debut last night on HBO, but about the production of Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife,” which just opened on Broadway at the […]

It’s good to see a serious appraisal of Gore Vidal’s views about the current state of the Banana Republic under our Maximum Leader and his cronies. Edward S. Morgan, author of the highly praised biography, “Benjamin Franklin,” and Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale, gives the lie to attacks like Ron Rosenbaum’s that have […]

Earlier this week, our Maximum Leader phoned Robert L. Bartley, editor emeritus of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to congratulate him on winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We hadn’t meant to overlook such an august honor for a far-right ideologue, but on the day the award was announced we were tied up with the […]

Seems the U.S. State Department is bringing the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to Washington, where it’s booked at the Kennedy Center for a free concert Tuesday evening with D.C.’s own National Symphony Orchestra, featuring Yo-Yo Ma. … Didn’t know Iraq had a big band, did you? Must make our Maximum Leader proud. Strange he hasn’t talked it up. Or maybe you […]

From a quipper: “Nathan Algren? Didn’t he write ‘AWOL on the Wild Side,’ ‘The Man With the Golden Tool,’ ‘The Napalm Wilderness,’ ‘The Last Carousal,’ ‘Notes From a Sex Diary’ and ‘Chicago: City on the Wane’”?  –Leon Freilich

Have a look at this eye-popping stuff from the Hubble Telescope. It may take a short while to load, but it’s worth the wait. The combination of the moving images and the music by Australian Web designer Richard Pree evinces a feeling of otherworldliness rivaling anything by Stanley Kubrick. Some people say the images resemble abstract paintings. […]

Leave it to Studs Terkel to put things in perspective. “Colin Powell, we know, is the African-American butler to the new Bertie Wooster,” he tells Salon in an interview about his latest book, “Hope Dies Last: Keeping Faith in Difficult Times.” Here’s the full quotation and the context: You notice I dedicate the book to a […]

What’s wrong with this picture? Roy Disney’s resignation from the board of the Walt Disney Company was big news yesterday. Today, Sharon Waxman, in a follow-up in The New York Times, reports: “Roy Disney’s parting words to the company his uncle built were harsh, but few resonated more painfully than the charge that the Walt […]

The time was 1991. The place was the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif.  Der Gropenfuhrer helicoptered in from the set of the first “Terminator” sequel. The Unindicted Co-Conspirator was star struck. It was a meeting of minds. “I’m a Republican because of Richard Nixon,” Der Grope proclaimed. Is he “a Nixon Republican at heart?” Sandy […]