Matt Labash is a journalist and longtime senior writer at The Weekly Standard, where he was one of the magazine's most prolific and distinctive voices from its founding in 1995 through its final issue in 2018. He was celebrated for his immersive, often humorous long-form feature writing, covering politics, culture, and American life with a gonzo-inflected style. His work at the magazine earned him a reputation as one of the finest narrative journalists of his generation.
This Election Day, like every Election Day, I entered the sanctum sanctorum of the voting cubicle, searched my conscience, remembered that I’d left it in the car, then voted for my own amusement. This time, I pulled the lever for a state-senatorial longshot named Jesse Peed. It felt exciting and…
Ask Matt Labash, who believes in these tribal times we are not enemies but friends, especially when neighborhood barbecues are involved.
Street artist Sabo may just be ‘some guy who lives in some dump,’ but he is taking on and taking down the likes of Jimmy Kimmel and Meryl Streep
Some are dumb, and some are dangerous. Welcome to the Internet: a song of fire and ice buckets.
Ask Matt Labash, who's researching this whole tuition thing as the father of two sons nearing college age, himself.
Charlie LeDuff anticipated all the problems that Trump’s election made plain to the rest of us—then he fell into the Hole himself.
One creature’s selfie is another creature’s suffocation.
Whenever I need to check out of the world, I head to a place called Satan's Creek. I go there to catch-and-release—or maybe catch-and-ogle—God's most perfect creatures: wild brook trout. They come small in these mountain runs. An 11-incher would be considered trophy-size. Still, bringing one to…
Whenever I need to check out of the world, I head to a place called Satan's Creek. I go there to catch-and-release—or maybe catch-and-ogle—God's most perfect creatures: wild brook trout. They come small in these mountain runs. An 11-incher would be considered trophy-size. Still, bringing one to…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Just a few days before America’s Pastor, Billy Graham, succumbed to Parkinson’s or cancer or pneumonia (when you’re 99-years-young, ailments tend to arrive in multiple-choice fashion), I was walking through Washington’s new Museum of the Bible with my family. As local museums go, the Bible museum…
Just a few days before America’s Pastor, Billy Graham, succumbed to Parkinson’s or cancer or pneumonia (when you’re 99-years-young, ailments tend to arrive in multiple choice fashion), I was walking through Washington’s new Museum of the Bible with my family. As local museums go, the Bible museum…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Last February 14, "Ask Matt Labash" dissented from Valentine's Day. One year later, the editorial staff submitted a question (under the name "All Out of Love") asking if he felt any different now. His response, written with his characteristic flourish, was, "No."
Dear Matt,
Like any dutiful Washington swamp creature, I’ve spent the last few days holed up with Fire and Fury. Which is not, if you’ve been in news-cycle hibernation, the new fragrance from Ivanka. Rather, it is a book by Michael Wolff about life inside Mar-a-Lago North, aka the Trump White House.
Correction, 12/21/2017: The piece originally said that "If you have children under the age of seventeen, while you’re getting an additional $1,000 per child, you’re losing their personal exemption, which was worth $4,050 per child. (So you’re still short by $2,050, per child.)" It has been amended…
As we celebrate this Christmas season (or this “holiday,” for Christ-haters), I don’t wish to be a killjoy to the world. But reflecting on the year gone by, it’s hard not to notice that we have lost a few of our favorite things: Tom Petty, political moderation, our dignity.
As we celebrate this Christmas season (or this “holiday,” for Christ-haters), I don’t wish to be a killjoy to the world. But reflecting on the year gone by, it’s hard not to notice that we have lost a few of our favorite things: Tom Petty, political moderation, our dignity.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
As white supremacists go, Joey Gibson makes for a lousy one. For starters, he’s half Japanese. “I don’t feel like I’m Caucasian at all,” he says. Not to be a stickler for the rules, but this kind of talk could get you sent to Master Race remedial school.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Whatever being a red-blooded American man means these days (not much, it seems), I like to think I am one. I chop wood. I’ve never had a manicure and refuse to wear skinny jeans. I relieve myself outdoors with great regularity, even when indoor options are available. And though I don't hunt my own…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
There is nothing more boring than other people’s dreams, so I try to forget most of my own. Life's waking nightmares are vivid enough. But I'm dogged by one I had the other night. I was standing in a favorite fishing hole up to my waist, attempting to release a largemouth bass I'd just caught. Slow…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
For the last many years, my New Year's Eves have had a ritual sameness: Put on my party heels, pour several warm-up pops, then take off for a friend's house to join him, his lovely wife, and a circle of regulars, who, as my friend delicately puts it, "come to watch you make an ass of yourself."…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
The other night, my wife and I went out to dinner with our friends Jen and Jay. Ordinarily, we like to keep things simple. We'll head over to their cottage on the Chesapeake Bay. Jay will smoke meat or steam top-neck clams. We'll dig a pit on the beach, gather dried driftwood, and do what grown…
Have a question for Matt Labash, ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash, ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
The other night, my wife and I went out to dinner with our friends Jen and Jay. Ordinarily, we like to keep things simple. We’ll head over to their cottage on the Chesapeake Bay. Jay will smoke meat or steam top-neck clams. We'll dig a pit on the beach, gather dried driftwood, and do what grown…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
It doesn't seem right, really—romanticizing catastrophe instead of just confronting its grim particulars head-on. Still, they cut quite a swath at Sir Harry's Bar in the Waldorf-Astoria, these brave men with forearm tattoos and walrus mustaches—firefighting volunteers who have swooped in from…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask it here.
Orlando
Cleveland
Cleveland
Cleveland
Los Angeles
It's that magical time in the presidential cycle again, when all the preelection year’s wild conjecture, clueless handicapping, and abject foolishness has ended, so that the election year's wild conjecture, clueless handicapping, and abject foolishness can begin. It's that time when panicked,…
I've never been one for elaborate New Year’s rituals. I don't thump the walls with bread to rid the house of evil spirits, as some do in Ireland. Nor swing caged fireballs around my head to torch last year's misfortune, as they do in Stonehaven, Scotland. I don't make hollow resolutions, since I…
Sanger, Calif.
As a committed, long-standing Twitter detractor, I’ve exhaustively bashed the social networking site for all imaginable crimes, and even unimaginable ones. But through the gift of hindsight, I admit giving Twitter short-shrift in one department: it tends to work like they say old age does,…
Seattle
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been ignoring Bruce Jenner. As a child of the ’70s, I ignored him in the cereal aisle, where his Olympic-champion mug couldn’t entice me to pick his terminally bland Wheaties over more healthful Sugar Smacks. I ignored him in the ’80s, during his star-turn in…
I've had a lot of dogs of many different physical types, but each has come loaded with the same daunting reminder: the countdown clock I can’t help but hear ticking away inside of them. I suppose I come with one of those, too, if I care to confront reality. Denial may be easier on the nerves, but…
Seoul
Editor's note: "[F]our-time former governor and ex-convict Edwin Edwards -- a Louisiana icon, both beloved and reviled -- has lost his first, and likely last, political race at the ballot box," the Times-Picayune reports. We're reprinting this article on Edwards's attempted comeback, which…
The news broke hard in my house this morning that Marion Barry, Washington D.C.’s former Mayor for Life, was dead at the age of 78. Of the profile subjects featured in my 2010 collection, Fly Fishing With Darth Vader, he’s the third I’ve had to eulogize in the last few years. (The other two being…
Of all the rituals I count on to give my life shape, there is none so sacred as witnessing my former brother-in-law, Mike Benton, stand for local office in our pleasant burg of Calvert County, Maryland. Though my wife’s sister wound down with Mike two decades ago, he and I have a…
As a lifelong white person—or Person Without Color, for the more sensitively inclined—I have nothing against white people. I mean, sure, at this late date in their history, I’m all too aware of the dubious and disheartening white-people statistics. Nearly all Prius owners, Vineyard Vines…
If I sported a hairpiece, I’d be wearing it at half-mast right about now, upon hearing that the world just grew a little less interesting. For the most colorful man who ever inhabited Congress, former Ohio Democratic Rep. James A . Traficant Jr., expired today at the age of 73. Traficant—he of…
The surest way to know who you are is to understand who you are not. For as long as I can remember, I’ve thought myself a simple man. I prefer hamburgers to fancy cheeseburgers, with all their dolled-up, dairy-fied excess. I have a “Simplicity” calendar with lots of Lao Tzu quotes. I would rather…
Gonzales, La.
“Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.” —Philip K. Dick The first time I saw someone wearing Google Glass in the wild, I was standing at a friend’s party at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin—the place where the…
Now that “software is eating the world,” in the words of Marc Andreessen, every once in awhile, we dinosaur types like to try our luck in the land of Web 2.0, 3.0, or Whatever.0 we’re on at the moment. To that end, I recently applied to become a driver at Lyft, the “ride-sharing” service where…
Hollywood, Fla.
Though four decades shy of being an octogenarian myself, I’m starting to know how they feel. For at the hurtling speed of change these days, even a casual observer of the scene is unwittingly turned into a perpetual obituarist, forever marking the loss of old friends. So it was again last week,…
Berwyn, Ill.
Baltimore
Like most civilized people of goodwill and sound reason, I’ve always held that violence isn’t the answer. It is, however, an answer. Which is why if I ever see Larry Randolph again, I intend to knock his teeth out.
“The Machine,” they exclaimed, “feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. . . . [T]he Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.” —E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909)
Romney, W.V.
Last week, at the beach with my family, I deliberately ignored all newspapers. Not for the reason most people do—because print is dead. But because whenever I’m surrounded by salt -water, steamed crabs, and even mediocre fishing, I tend to hold that true happiness is having no idea what chronically…
Cambridge, Mass.
I woke up this morning to about ten emails from journalist friends asking if our mutual friend, Andrew Breitbart, was really dead. “Really” was the operative word. Some meant it in the traditional sense: Is it possible for the human inferno that Breitbart resembled to have actually been…
When I think about the American-postcard moments of my life—-Fourth of July fireworks, Veterans’ Day parades, watching American Chopper reruns—there is none so emblematic as the evening I just spent in the flat-screened glow of the Super Bowl, having a few pops and making chitchat with my new…
A few days ago, after the last presidential debate in South Carolina, I was gauging the reaction of some Real People, as opposed to the Fake People who populate my seedy little racket. I don’t talk to Real People often if I can help it, as they tend to confuse the emerging media narrative with…
Manchester, N.H.
No secrets are being divulged when I report that Christopher Hitchens liked a drink every now and then. Preferably now. He wasn’t sloppy about it. In fact, he always seemed in perfect control. (I once saw him steer a beach bike through the streets of Key West without spilling his Scotch.) He just…
For 13 years now, I have been a Yahoo! Mail customer. Notice I didn’t say a “proud” Yahoo! Mail customer. For if you use Yahoo! for emailing, there is nothing to be proud of. As Gmail or even AOL users will eagerly explain, Yahoo! has always had a down-market feel. It’s like buying your suits at…
New York
As a child-rearer, I’ve always prided myself on my carefree attitude and libertine ways. No “helicopter parenting” for this guy, no childproofing my children’s childhoods. If the kids set themselves on fire with their Zippos, not a problem—they can just douse the flames with their beers. Likewise,…
Close after dawn and armed with a local map I take a stroll in empty fields, canyons, woods, but preferably near a creek or river because since childhood I’ve loved the sound they make. Moving water is forever in the present tense, a condition we rather achingly avoid.
Miami
Just how Sarah is Sarah Palin’s Alaska, her new hit reality show on the TLC network? It’s soooo flippin’ Sarah, as Sarah would say. And it’s soooo Alaska, which Palin pronounces “A-LASK-ahhhh.” She repeats this on the show over and over again, as though we might forget where she’s from otherwise.…
In the barbaric cave for the dead
For my recent week in Haiti, I was armed by our art director with a camera, and commanded to take usable pictures. I am not a professional photographer, but he assures me these qualify. (In this week's print edition of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, you can see more photographs from shooters who actually…
For the last many years, my New Year’s Eves have had a ritual sameness: Put on my party heels, pour several warm-up pops, then take off for a friend’s house to join him, his lovely wife, and a circle of regulars, who, as my friend delicately puts it, “come to watch you make an ass of yourself.”…
Surely there are worse PR gigs than flacking for the Libyan government, but I can't think of many. It's not that there's never good news emanating from the province of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, who's displayed humility throughout his 40-year dictatorial reign by never promoting himself to…
Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by; The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. --from Sam Walter Foss's 'House by the Side of the Road,' the first poem Marion Barry recited in church as a boy In most conceptions of Washington,…
On June 15, I went to bed with a pang of melancholy, Father Time having slipped another year out of my back pocket while my attention was elsewhere. Thirty-nine years earlier, I'd been brought into this world the same way that I suspect I'll depart it: naked and crying for my mom.
Orlando
One upside of the recession is that I cut through the newspaper as never before. Since the news is too bad to actually read, I skip it, assuming I know what's there--the sky is blackening, plagues are being unleashed, the rivers are running red with blood--and I instead skim for pretty pictures of…
Look at the outer shell--the parachute pants, the piano-key tie, the fake tuxedo T-shirt--and you might mistake me for a slave to fashion. Do not be deceived. Early adoption isn't my thing. I much prefer late adoption, that moment when the trend-worshipping sheeple who have early-adopted drive the…
This is the place where bad times get sent to make them belong to somebody else, thus, it seems easy to agree about Detroit because the city embodies everything the rest of the country wants to get over.
A strange thing happened to me this election cycle. After examining my conscience, determining that I did indeed have one, I decided not to cast a vote for president. I informed my inner circle, who immediately attacked. I was called an idiot, an irresponsible citizen, and less than a man. Even…
I'm not against children's literature, though I'm not exactly for it either. Books make kids smart. Smart kids grow into smart young adults. And smart young adults will eventually compete with us in the workforce, hastening our obsolescence. As I tell young people when they ask me how to get…
I fish because I love to . . . because, in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion; because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond…
Minneapolis
Anderson Cooper almost got hit by a cardboard sign in the streets of New Orleans! But did he go inside? No, there's no cameras inside! He's brave! When everybody else is coming out, he goes in! He's like the 9/11 fireman of CNN hosts! Or Al Roker! Either/or! Go Anderson! Go Gore-Tex!
Roanoke
Every spring in Washington, a ritual commences with the predictability of the cherry blossoms blooming around the Tidal Basin or the silvery hickory shad making their spawning run up the Potomac. Frumpy reporters put on their party heels and enshroud their hunchbacks in Men's Wearhouse tuxedos,…
New Orleans
Some people think cults are creepy. But as a child in the seventies, I rather enjoyed them. Whether Jonestowners, the Children of God, or the Symbionese Liberation Army, I always waited for the inevitable plot twist, when whatever had attracted the crazy cultists to each other in the first…
Miami
Every four years, I use the period of quiet contemplation that precedes the mad swirl of caucuses and primaries to make myself a better citizen/journalist. I do so by abandoning my usual political position of completely disengaged nihilism, upgrading to a more civically conscious indifferent…
"If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it," the French playwright Beaumarchais once noted. But his heedless naïveté can be forgiven. Beaumarchais expired in 1799, well before the advent of today's endless presidential campaigns. Here, if everything that was not worth saying were sung, the…
New York/Miami
Wilmington, Del.
In our over-eroticized culture, it is common to hear people rate their enthusiasms by saying they are "better than sex." I reluctantly volunteer that information about fly fishing. For I like "spawning" as much as any non-fisherman--more even. But unlike fly fishing, it's a hard activity to perform…
Los Angeles
New Orleans
For independent-minded journalists, there are better ways to see the world than media junkets. But--and my accounting department will back me up here--there aren't many better ways to pay for it. So two weeks ago, I set out for Israel on the dime of the American Israel Education Foundation,…
When I was a college twerp, surrounded by my college-twerp friends, we sat around like Gambino-family capos, deciding how to carve up the kingdom. They resolved to put their marketing majors to work in the captain-of-industry perches that were their birthrights, taking what was theirs as assistant…
Exactly four years ago in this space, I documented the failed campaign of my former brother-in-law, Mike Benton, whom the enemies of freedom decided not to make clerk of the circuit court of Calvert County, Maryland. I owed him ink for an old favor. When we were both setting standards of academic…
We are wayfaring, wandering gypsies alone
Piscataway, N.J.
Las Vegas
WHEN I WAS A COLLEGE NEWBIE, sitting at the scuffed Hush Puppies of my journalism professors, they tried to saddle me with their elbow-patched baggage of what a journalist should be: Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ernie Pyle--lightweights, all. The poor naïfs couldn't have known about the tectonic…
Minneapolis
New Orleans
Weare, New Hampshire
The so--called Christmas wars have raged for two months without my help, and I won't be adding to the din. I will admit, however, to being a Christmas fascist. Frequently lampooned, Christians are expected to silently turn the other cheek. But Christmas, it turns out, is a great time for paybacks.…
LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I remember where I was during the exact hour on July 29, 1981, when Prince Charles and Lady Diana were married. I was in bed asleep, proudly uninterested. Only 11 at the time, I'd already fashioned my lifelong foreign policy toward the Royals. It comes in the form of a question,…
IF YOU'RE IN THE REPORTING game long enough, old stories start repeating on you like a bean pie past its freshness date. So it felt as we gathered in Washington, D.C., last week to celebrate the Millions More Movement, Louis Farrakhan's sequel to his 1995 Million Man March. It seems like only a…
THERE AREN'T MANY GOOD PLACES to get lost anymore, but I know of one near where I live. It's deep in southern Maryland's Calvert County, past the steamed-crab stands and empty tobacco barns, which are fast losing ground to tanning salons, "Embroid Me" shops, and other strip-mall abscesses. Just…
New Orleans
Tombstone, Arizona
Roanoke, Virginia
San Francisco
If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia. --Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer Vancouver, British Columbia
YOU'VE GOT TO HAND IT to our political players. Even with the onset of second-term ho-hums, everyone did his part to convey the momentousness of what some wags call the "peaceful non-transfer of power." Republicans turned out for the inauguration in cashmere-swaddled, mink-stoled finery, dutifully…
THE MOST DESULTORY happenstance can irrevocably alter our lives. So it went last Christmas, the day I became an intolerable bore. My sister-in-law, who'd finally exhausted the effeminate sweater collection from Banana Republic, decided instead to buy me something I'd actually requested. I'd wanted…
Little Rock, Arkansas
Raleigh, NC
AT THE END of every election cycle, we hope to retire the clichés that have bedeviled us. Yet every four years, they reemerge from dormancy, causing pain, discomfort, and minor inflammation. We hold these clichés to be self-evident: (1) that this campaign season, like all those before it and…
SIX MONTHS AGO, in the Kingdom of Bahrain, an interesting television experiment, broadcast throughout the Middle East, came and went without much fanfare. Reality TV, in the form of Big Brother Middle East, made its debut, was embraced by viewers, then in just over a week was shown the door by a…
New York
New York
[img nocaption float="right" width="360" height="358" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8851[/img] I USED TO THINK that there was nothing wrong with street activists that a good scrubbing and a few rubber bullets couldn't fix. But that's before I met Adam Eidinger on the sidewalks of Washington, D.C.…
Boston
Boston
Boston
NO MATTER WHAT KIND of life you lead, there is inevitably a guidebook to help you lead it. Right now, as we speak, on Amazon.com, one can find a Guide to Living and Working in a Multicultural World, or a Guide to Living in Sin Without Getting Burned, or a Fat Girl's Guide to Life. There are…
New York
CONSIDERING THAT I'm writing this from inside the bunker of what many regard as the Alliance of Neocon Warmongers, it bears mentioning that Michael Moore and I have one surprising trait in common: We both believe that the war in Iraq was ill-advised, ill-planned, and ill-executed, an apparent…
I GENERALLY don't advocate drinking whisky for breakfast. But on occasion, when necessity dictates, it does have a way of setting the world right. I was on the fifth day of a Scotches of Scotland distilleries tour, stewing in my Highlands hotel perched on a bluff overlooking Moray Firth. My cell…
IF YOU'RE THE SORT OF PERSON who reads stories by scrambling feature writers who spackle three anecdotal trends together in order to convince you, the gullible reader, that a movement is sweeping the land, then I probably don't have to tell you that four out of five culture critics agree: Jesus is…
WHEN ASKED why they entered journalism, pretentious reporters will say they did so to expose injustice. But honest ones will admit that half the fun is confirming your own prejudices. One of my deepest-held is that 80 percent of the world, outside these United States, is a dreary, dysfunctional…
WHEN I WAS A KID, my parents found Jesus, took to Him like otters to water, and left the more traditional churches of their upbringing to enlist as full-fledged evangelicals. Depending on where my military-officer father's assignments took us, we did turns in all kinds of nearly indistinguishable…
AT LAST WEEK'S OPENING OF Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," I never expected actually to see Jesus. Yet there he was, carnival-barking on the Connecticut Avenue sidewalk outside the Avalon Theatre in Washington, D.C. He stood out in his long brown hair and tunic. "Blessed are the…
I love to do my thing / Ha . . . and I don't need, no one else / Sometimes I feel so nice, good God / I jump back, I wanna kiss myself.--James Brown
Manchester, New Hampshire
NOT ALWAYS, BUT OFTEN, there comes a point in a Howard Deaniac's life when it's no longer enough to blog yourself silly, or to throw Dean-centric house parties, or to quit your job, move to Burlington campaign headquarters, and start dressing like a bike messenger. Sometimes, you've got to take off…
WHENEVER I EXPRESS my penchant for reality television in the circle of snide, knowing, not-as-smart-as-they-think-they-are crosspatches that I'm cursed to call friends, I often do so defensively, as if I am advocating Satan-worshipping or kid-touching. No more. From it's earliest dawn--when MTV's…
WHEN SADDAM HUSSEIN was pulled from his spider hole looking like a bedraggled Walt Whitman after a month-long poetry slam, I experienced joy not just as an American, but as someone whose spirit has been knitted to those of my liberated Iraqi brothers. For a day, anyway, I felt like an Iraqi, and…
SOME DAYS, when the after party in Iraq isn't going so well--which is to say, most days--I'm put in mind of the Bush administration's admonition to be sunny-side-up journalists, to eliminate the negative, to accentuate the positive. God knows I try. I take stock in small victories, often…
Boston, Massachusetts
TRY AS I MIGHT, there's no getting around it: I'm all man. I make this statement of faith not because I checked myself out in the shower before writing this article. Nor because I possess all your typical man-like properties--though I do: I can eat two hamburgers in one sitting, I hate spooning, I…
San Diego, Calif.
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS along the eastern seaboard are hunkered down in fear, weathering the effects and aftermath of Hurricane Isabel. Millions more are rending their garments, collapsing in sustained crying jags, and cursing their Maker over the untimely demises of John Ritter, Johnny Cash, and the…
Des Moines, Iowa
THERE WAS A TIME, not long ago, when primetime television was populated by famous people. Someone appearing on TV meant that they'd likely worked their way up through the ranks: doing school plays, regional theater, and embarrassing commercials, until finally, they honed their skills, perfected…
AT THE RISK of blowing my cover as a debonair man of refinement, I have a confession: I like booty. Not the lust-generating fleshy musculature advertised by J.Lo or Beyoncé Knowles. That would be cheap booty. I like the kind that's free. Often in this business, prospective subjects assume your…
Fairfax, Virginia
WITH THE RELEASE this week of "Living History," it is worth noting that this title is not Hillary Rodham Clinton's first foray into children's literature. In 1996, came her blockbuster smash, "It Takes A Village," in which she condescended to parents as if they were children , by preaching the…
"And so we brought our dead man home. Flew his body back, faxed the obits to the local papers, called the priests, the sexton, the florists and stonecutter. We act out things we cannot put in words." --Thomas Lynch, "The Undertaking"
IN MY CORNER of the world, there are two kinds of people I generally abhor: those who pretend they don't watch television, and those who do watch television, but pretend they don't watch reality television. To the former, I usually display awe--you can also live without Jimmy Reed albums, red meat,…
[img_assist|nid=|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=|height=] Umm Qasr, Iraq
Safwan, Iraq
Kuwait City
Safwan, Iraq
Kuwait City
Kuwait City
Kuwait City
Kuwait City
En Route to Kuwait City
Woodstock, Virginia
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin
WITH FLU SEASON UPON US, millions of Americans have rushed to their immunologists, hoping to avoid the cruel bite of the Moscow, New Caledonia, or Hong Kong strains of the influenza virus that are prevalent this year. But no matter the precautions, these doctors can do nothing to stave off the most…
PERHAPS IT IS UNFAIR, but I've always regarded politicians as I regard lima beans, jazz fusion, and Dr. Phil--as unnecessary evils. For what kind of half-man/half-freak spends his entire life suppressing his true self to ask strangers to embrace a false one? Besides writers, I mean.
SOMERSET MAUGHAM once said, "There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain." But that's easy for Somerset Maugham to say. He never had to go on "Connie Chung Tonight" to play an expert on the Beltway Sniper. For three weeks…
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, journalists are human too. We are not merely hecklers in the human comedy, the suckerfish of tragedy. We have thoughts and feelings. We experience pain and insecurity. We suffer disappointment and sorrow. Sometimes, we just need to be held.
Contra Costa, Calif.
THE LAW OF AVERAGES dictates that if you spend enough time writing for a living, you will eventually make embarrassing disclosures about yourself. Here is mine: Of all the crank left-wing groups I am paid to periodically encounter, I've always harbored a secret soft spot for my friends at the…
Every five years or so, I like to clean up my office. Even by disheveled journalists' standards, it's really quite a dump. Once, when I had an OSHA inspector over for an interview, he thought I was setting him up. "You trashed it on purpose," he said, before literally declaring it a disaster area.…
BRONX, NY I met Edlene LaFrance on the worst day of her life. Or maybe it was the second worst, or the fifth, there are so many to choose from now. Two days after the Twin Towers fell, her 43-year-old husband, Alan, lay buried at the bottom of one of them. Though the city was awash in acts of…
BALTIMORE On a June afternoon, the streets of Baltimore sweat like the inside of a humidifier. But the shirt-clinging stickiness does not hamper Maryland's lieutenant governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. As befits a member of the tribe of Robert F. Kennedy (now 51, Kathleen is his oldest child),…
IN HER OCCASIONAL ARTICLES for the Washington Monthly, the first of them years before she entered public life, Townsend has displayed bold, contrarian impulses, thumping the left for being anti-religious, as well as for secularizing lefty icons like her father when it was precisely his religious…
PERHAPS it is my imagination, but it seems as though we are in the midst of a full-blown summer funk. While trend writers and editorialists will have you believe this is related to the anticlimax of the war on terrorism or the free-falling Dow, astute culture vultures know what is really ailing us:…
AROUND MY HOUSE, we have always counted ourselves happy little capitalists. Sure, we pay plenty of lip service to the eternal verities of God and freedom and high, democratic ideals. But in our dark consumerist hearts, we believe that if we are to truly shine our light upon the Second and Third…
UNLIKE many of my journalistic colleagues, I've never had much use for junkets. Being flown to an exotic locale on some interest group's dime only to be sequestered in panel discussions on European monetary policy seems a cruel tease. I'd rather do something more fun, like clean my hairbrush or…
MAKE NO MISTAKE, I have nothing against wine. When I visit my wife's relatives in Tuscany, I drink their Brunello with an urgency that could be better addressed by an intravenous drip bag. Likewise, I have no quarrel with beer. These six-pack abs didn't build themselves. They're imported--from…
HARLEM With 6 months left until the midterm elections, and 31 months to go before the big dance in 2004, Democrat-watchers can be forgiven their campaign fatigue. It's not that election season has started prematurely, but rather that the 2000 presidential race never ended. So it appears on April…
THE FIRST TIME I recall seeing Jesus, I was in Mrs. Schlaeger's K-4 class at Mt. Olive Lutheran School. My family wasn't Lutheran, but they decided I could pass. As a preschooler, I did my best impression of being a cool customer. I made miracles out of Tinkertoys, and cut a dashing figure in…
Part 5 in a 5 part series.
Part 4 in a 5 part series.
Part 3 in a 5 part series.
Part 2 in a 5 part series.
Editor's Note: One of my colleagues jokes that the five deadliest words in journalism are "Part 1 in a series." Well, not this time. This week we'll be featuring Matt Labash's investigate report on red light cameras and even though it's a series, you won't want to miss it.
ORLANDO It's impolite to notice, but notice they do on the campaign trail: Janet Reno is a lot of woman. She's 6' 11/2" barefoot, 6' 13/4" in her sensible flats. Perhaps no other Clinton cabinet member aroused such disparate passions as the former attorney general and current Florida gubernatorial…
IN THE pre-September 11 world, the culture of correctional facilities used to rely on a certain natural order. A criminal would get busted, be sent to the joint, then along about the first time he got turned out by a guy named Fang while getting Zest-fully clean in the prison shower, he'd decide to…
NEW YORK It's Valentine's Day, and though I'm a married man, I'm standing on the sixth-floor landing of a Greenwich Village apartment building with a box of Russell Stover candy that's intended for a woman I've never met. I'm on a journalistic suck-up safari, and my quarry has warned me that I'd…
AROUND THESE PARTS, the complaint heard most often from readers of America's premier journal of conservative political thought is: "Why don't you have more coverage of teen queens and pop princesses?" It's a fair question, one that prompted me recently to head to my local multiplex to catch the…
NEW YORK It's Valentine's Day, and though I'm a married man, I'm standing on the sixth-floor landing of a Greenwich Village apartment building with a box of Russell Stover candy that's intended for a woman I've never met. I'm on a journalistic suck-up safari, and my quarry has warned me that I'd…
GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA It's 5 A.M. at the Roosevelt Roads Naval station in Puerto Rico, and 20 journalists straggle to the gate in sleep-deprived silence to catch a plane to Guantanamo Bay. Many of us haven't been up this early in years. But after flying thousands of miles, then pub-crawling through…
WHEN MIKE TYSON recently mounted a stage at the Hudson Theater for his pre-fight press conference, started a melee with Lennox Lewis's entourage, then munched a hunk out of Lewis's thigh, the media called Tyson everything from a cretin to a cannibal. But they failed to label Tyson a cliche. For in…
GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA It's 5 A.M. at the Roosevelt Roads Naval station in Puerto Rico, and 20 journalists straggle to the gate in sleep-deprived silence to catch a plane to Guantanamo Bay. Many of us haven't been up this early in years. But after flying thousands of miles, then pub-crawling through…
My Declaration of Independence by James M. Jeffords Simon & Schuster, 136 pp., $14.95 ANY SERIOUS STUDENT of the Bible has, at one point or another, had to grapple with the Moses Paradox. The Moses Paradox is the proposition that Moses was the humblest man in all the earth, information that would…
AT THE END of a long driveway that snakes under a canopy of trees, an angel sits in the Bowie, Maryland, backyard of Hugh and Barbara Cassidy. She is guarded by Easter-Island masks built by metal sculptor Hugh, while former nursery-worker Barbara has fashioned a shade-covered ivy grotto. From a…
[img caption="From the November 24, 1997 issue." float="right" width="144" height="193" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8793[/img]TERRY SCHWALIER was what the warrior class calls a fast burner. He had zipped through the Air Force ranks and was about to pin on his second star, making him a major…
SQUELCHING A FAVORABLE REPORT For the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Record report was a huge headache. The reason Record was given so much time, says a source involved in the process, was not so he could be thorough but to ensure the report came out after the election. The political…
FORT BRAGG, N.C. Despite the low-rent ambiance of Bragg Blvd.--the land of Park'n'Pawns and $1.99 fried chicken plates--Fort Bragg has always been synonymous with the Army's elite. Arriving at the home of the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces, visitors often experience the contact-buzz that comes…
"PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA," Adolf Hitler once wrote, "all that matters is propaganda." When it came to employing propaganda, the Fuehrer was obviously on board. Dedicating two chapters of "Mein Kampf" to the subject, the patron of the art that brought us Leni Riefenstal and Joe Goebbels…
AMERICAN JOURNALISTS TYPICALLY regard their British counterparts with a mixture of pity and disdain. Fleet Streeters, so the stereotype goes, tend to be thieving, dipsomaniac fabulists: quick to sensationalize, slow to fact-check, more likely to hoist a pint than a phone. But I actually think this…
WITH THREE MONTHS DOWN on the Christmas season (which, in some shopping malls, has been on since Labor Day), it is time to begin deciding what not to buy your children. Every year, it seems, there is a raft of horrible toy ideas. One year, it was the Cabbage Patch Snacktime doll, which was supposed…
MAKING HIP-HOP records is a bit like making love: Anyone can do it, but it takes a special knack to do it right. Consequently, history is replete with those who have scribbled rhymes on a napkin, booked studio time, then barreled headlong off the high-dive only to do an artistic belly-flop. Recall…
OF ALL THE PUZZLING THINGS that have been said since the United States started bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age -- or, as pedants would have it, up to the Bronze Age -- none outranks the idea offered during the October 16 press conference with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and…
WITH TWO MONTHS GONE since September 11, my life, like that of so many others, has fallen into a strange new rhythm: Go to work. Surf the Internet for news updates until the point of catatonia. Go home. Kiss the dog, let out the wife, then flop into the Barcalounger for six more hours of the most…
BACK WHEN I WAS a pie-eyed college sprout--juggling a nerve-shattering regimen of 1 p.m. alarm clocks and game-show watching marathons--I elected to ignore the counsel of my pastor, the advice of my parents, and the ridicule of my peers. I decided to do something for me, and became a journalism…
PALM BEACH COUNTY IF ANY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY deserves a respite from dubious headlines, it is surely Palm Beach County. "I remember May of 2000, when that Lake Worth middle schooler shot his teacher in the face," recalls a Palm Beach Post staff writer, pining for a simpler time. "I thought that…
LIKE HERPES SIMPLEX, Jesse Jackson never really goes away—he just lies dormant. Clearly, the present national crisis was too much for him to resist. So Jackson last week announced he had received an "invitation" from the Taliban to lead a "peace delegation" to Afghanistan. Of course, Jackson,…
IT DOESN'T SEEM RIGHT, really--romanticizing catastrophe instead of just confronting its grim particulars head-on. Still, they cut quite a swath at Sir Harry's Bar in the Waldorf-Astoria, these brave men with forearm tattoos and walrus mustaches--firefighting volunteers who have swooped in from…
THOUGH I GRUDGINGLY ADMIT to doing many things that cause me some degree of embarrassment—cow-tipping, white slaving, parking in my church’s first-time-visitor’s space for 73 consecutive Sundays—I fly my freak flag high when disclosing that I watch lots of bad television. To some snobs, the…
Of all the perplexing issues that have been brought to our attention by the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance -- besides the fact that there is such a thing as the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance -- none has been so puzzling as the question JOPERD chewed over in…
Last Monday began like any other day. I woke up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, then let the dog and baby outside for their morning ablutions. The phone rang, and my wife answered it. I heard her say, "Oh no," and saw her eyes grow red-rimmed. Of all the sights that cause me to recoil -- a parking…
Columbus, Georgia
Columbus, Georgia
I've never had much use for neighbors. You can't live with them. You can't smother them with chloroform and feed them through a wood-chipper when you tire of them.
Orlando, Fla.
New York
January 9 -- It is eleven days before George W. Bush's inauguration, and already the protesters are enough to make one nostalgic for 1999. Back then, everyone from the Greens to the anarchists commandeered Seattle streets to protest the World Trade Organization and kick in Starbucks windows. It was…
As the sun sets on Bill Clinton's presidency, it is easy to give in to sentimentalizing, to legacy-assessing, to speculating about his future: Will he run for Senate or host his own talk show? Will he putter around his rutabaga garden in fuzzy house slippers? Where will he take his first date?
Tallahassee, Florida
West Palm Beach, Fla.
West Palm Beach, Florida
New Carrollton, Maryland
Of all the shots aimed at Rep. James Traficant (that he is a profane, ethically shaky, showboating vulgarian, for starters), there are none so cheap as those directed at his appearance. "It's tough being a fashion leader," the Youngstown Democrat admits. Knight-Ridder said Traficant's hair bespeaks…
Concord, N.C.
For all the luxuries journalists enjoy -- the generous medical and dental, the regular bathroom breaks, the gratis ice water -- there is one perk that's noticeably absent: groupies. Sure, you'll see the occasional fan slip by this magazine's lax security, donning his best starched Dockers, starting…
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Philadelphia
"There is a difference between talking about compassion and actually putting your highest ideals into practice."
OVER THE YEARS, Tom DeLay has suffered an impressive array of insults. Former senator Al D'Amato called him a "crazy right-wing wack-job," while George magazine deemed him "The Meanest Man in Congress." Columnist Molly Ivins suggested he bore the "air of a small-town car dealer." And during a spat…
When contemplating all the perks journalism offers, I'm ashamed to complain. Free books, plentiful office supplies, and throngs of eager groupies are but a few of the spoils that come from working at a modest-circulation political opinion magazine. Still, choosing one lifestyle necessitates…
Stanford, Kentucky
Las Vegas
If there's one breed I can't stomach, it's those who appropriate credit for the accomplishments of others. Not because it's immoral -- though it is. But because I can appreciate how hard-fought accomplishment comes, as one who conceived the Human Genome Project, endured five-and-a-half years in the…
Harlem, New York
John Haines is a cautious man. Citing the sniffles, he breaks our appointment. "I can't go out," he says, though he is phoning from his office. "Besides, I don't want to spread germs." I assure John I'm stewing in germs from my own recent illness. "Then I don't want to catch any," he says. A few…
Iron Triangle, D.C.
Los Angeles
New York
As Thanksgiving approaches, I am once again taking inventory of blessings large (good health, loving family, gift certificate to the Outback) and pleasures small (children's laughter, a whippoorwill's song, Internet porn). But it was while sorting through my mail some weeks ago that I most acutely…
Cedar Key, Florida
PATTY SHEPHERD MICCI is a liar. But don't hold that against her. Hers was a commonplace prevarication, the kind of breakfast-nook embellishment most loving parents feed their children between spoonfuls of Apple Jacks. "When my daughter was young," admits Patty, "I told her she could become anything…
Dearborn, Michigan
Whatever my other unseemly habits -- spitting, streaking, breaking twenties in church offering plates -- I've never been one who pretends to greatness. Sure, I have some great qualities: Kids love me, supermodels adore me, enemies cower at my cool assassin-like manner. But beneath the high-gloss…
It's difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when former surgeon general C. Everett Koop, America's most celebrated doctor after Spock, Seuss, and School, went from being the country's foremost healthcare authority to its foremost health-care commodity.
Watch Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the 31-year-old son of Senator Ted, mount the stump at any event, and you can't help but be overcome by pathos. Take February's National Treasury Employees Union conference, when Joe and Rose's grandson appeared at the Capitol Hill Holiday Inn. Our civil servants, in…
Littleton, Colorado
New Orleans
ELIZABETH DOLE DEFIES CATEGORIZATION. She is admirable (one of the "10 Most Admired Women" according to Good Housekeeping). She is fascinating (one of the "10 Most Fascinating" according to Barbara Walters). She is inspiring (the "Most Inspiring Political Figure of 1996" according to MSNBC). She is…
For all of Nathan Landow's admirable traits -- his Democratic fund-raising prowess, his real-estate tycoon acumen, his apple-butter winter tan -- he spends a great deal of time standing accused. Two decades ago, the Washington Post accused him of doing business with organized-crime figures. Two…
Wendell Gauthier loves to smile. Sure, the most renowned class-action lawyer in New Orleans possesses many other trademarks. He has full-bodied Atticus Finch hair, and he's tailored like a mogul from Milan. With a soft Cajun accent, he's a fount of country-lawyer malapropisms (he says his old…
HUSTLER PUBLISHER LARRY FLYNT is a hard man to peg. He's a bounty hunter to Republicans, and a child molester to his estranged daughter, Tonya (he calls her a "liar" and a "retard"). He's a "hero" to First Amendment fetishist Milos Forman, director of the hagiographic The People vs. Larry Flynt.…
THERE WAS A TIME, NOT LONG AGO -- before Bill Clinton became our first black president -- when the Democratic party was a domicile for racist demagogues like George Corley Wallace. In Wallace's 1970 race for governor of Alabama, his supporters circulated thousands of leaflets cautioning, "Wake Up,…
Just look at them sitting together, luxuriating in one another's gazes like fat hounds in the sun: Over there, the First Amendment lawyers, with their chalkstripes and barrel cuffs and owlish widow's peaks. There's the professoriat, suited up in seat-cleaving Dockers and itchy tweeds or…
Newsgathering by nature is the province of voyeurs and jacklegs. It is best practiced by grifters whose conscience seldom hinders them from separating marks from their secrets. My conscience suffered a rare flare-up last February.
IT IS NEVER PLEASANT WATCHING a grown man suffer the indignities of politicking. But we nevertheless gaze, transfixed, as Alabama governor Fob James works the buffet line at Niki's seafood restaurant on the outskirts of Birmingham. Fob is a skilled campaigner, joshing and cajoling and avuncular,…
Surveying the body of director Michael Moore's work, one is quickly overwhelmed by its scope. There was the 1989 documentary Roger & Me -- an indictment of corporate greed, downsizing, and cavalier disregard for the working man. Then there was the mid-'90s television series TV Nation -- an…
SURVEYING THE BODY of director Michael Moore's work, one is quickly overwhelmed by its scope. There was the 1989 documentary Roger & Me--an indictment of corporate greed, downsizing, and cavalier disregard for the working man. Then there was the mid-'90s television series TV Nation--an indictment…
CONSIDER O. J. SIMPSON and Bill Clinton. Save a homicide or two, they're not entirely different. Both cheat on the links and on their wives (Simpson's being former and late). Both do their best acting under penalty of perjury. Both compel us, under a crush of evidence, to pressure their guilt even…
In military parlance, Maj. Jacquelyn Parker was a water-walking blue-flamer, with a resume that would quicken the heart of any service flack. She was born on the Fourth of July, had a genius IQ, and was flying solo before getting her driver's license. In 1989, she became the first woman to graduate…
Of all the skirmishes that refuse to be settled by consensus or judicial fiat, religious expression in the public square remains one of the most stubbornly unresolved. Be it school prayer or firehouse nativity scenes or religious exercises in public buildings, court dockets across the country are…
There was a time not long ago, though it's hard to remember now, when the talk of fellatio in our office was confined to whispered exchanges of Pamela Lee Web addresses. But Monica Lewinsky has changed that. The president has again embarrassed the media into making his privates public. Decorum is…
For all of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's good qualities -- his business acumen, his robust self-esteem as "Lord of the Second Advent," his dynamic leadership of one of the century's most durable cults -- he's a disaster of a wedding coordinator. The food is bad, there's no cash bar, the entertainment…
Terry Schwalier was what the warrior class calls a fast burner. He had zipped through the Air Force ranks and was about to pin on his second star, making him a major general. He was praised by superiors, respected by peers, and loved by subordinates. Then on June 25, 1996, 19 airmen under his…
Look at Bob Diehl, and the word "warrior" doesn't immediately come to mind. He's a retired oil-industry analyst who favors short-sleeved dress shirts with leather suspenders and Puma sneakers. And he spends his days hunched in a gray cubicle at a nondescript office building in a seedy, stucco-…
Her reproof contained the sting of a salt bath in a leper colony. I've been called worse -- in fact, I am worse. But the charge held extra resonance since it was leveled by my wife, who possesses a special knack for pinning the tail on my peculiarities with a fat, blunt acuity that leaves little…
It seems so gloriously square now -- all those raw, vital innocents with their flared-nostril manifestoes like the Port Huron Statement, modestly composed in an effort to change "the conditions of humanity in the late twentieth century." It's been a tough haul ever since for those who suckled on…
Housed at Patrick Air Force Base in four unadorned buildings trimmed in the fecal browns and beiges favored by most military subcontractors, the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute is nuzzled against the Atlantic amidst the burnt palms, Peg Leg's seafood shoppes, and Ron Jon surf…
Thirty years ago, Gay Talese wrote a famous essay called "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." These days, Frank Sinatra has much more than a cold. There's the two recent heart attacks, the Alzheimer's rumors, and now, the tabloids are certain he has bladder cancer. His family says he's fine. But whoever the…
It would be too little to say that Rosie O'Donnell, star of the Rosie O'Donnell Show, is a comedienne-turned-talk-show host. She is our Everywoman, gal-pal to the glitterati, the "human manifestation" of the " Celestine Prophecy" (actress Rita Wilson's words), "everybody's sister" (John Travolta's…
MAYBE YOU'VE HEARD. Ellen DeGeneres, the sitcom actress, and Ellen Morgan, her TV character (from the aptly titled sitcom, Ellen), are coming out, bless them. It seems like only yesterday I was recounting to a colleague how a month had passed since the announcement that Ellen (the character, not…
Thumb through Simon & Schuster's preview of its fall and winter offerings and you quickly see why the publishing behemoth is our most cherished repository of middlebrow eclecticism. There's William J. Bennett with a new collection from our founding fathers on such matters as "civility" and "piety.…
For years, the debate over openly gay clergy has rolled Catholics and fractured mainline Protestant denominations, pitting liberal theologians against rock-ribbed literalists. Those in the ever-receding majority who believe the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God are astonished to find…
"We are the experts in Hollywood on what you can and can't get away with," says Scott Alexander, one half of the screenwriting team that just won a Golden Globe award for its latest film, The People vs. Larry Flynt. " Lawyers love us, because we know the rules. And as long as you don't have Jerry…
Q: How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?
HIS CHIN DIMPLED ENOUGH to insert a bullhorn, his brow furrowed enough to seat two co-eds, Mario Savio was just a Berkeley sophomore when he gave life to the Free Speech Movement by shouting from the roof of a police car in Sproul Plaza in 1964. Conducting the original sit-in and protesting the…
Oh! Can we go to Red Lobster? Can we? It's my favorite!" she implores, batting those pig-bristle eyelashes that make me want to buff my shoes and/or get my car washed. "She" in this case is the former Tammy Faye Bakker (now married to one Roe Messner), and I have followed her to a book signing for…
As falls from grace go, former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders took a hard one. Elders hasn't heard word one from any administration official since she was canned in December 1994 after advocating school children be taught how to . . . butter their own corn, as my pals in the bunkhalls of Camp Alto…
A Year ago, John Sweeney swept away the forces of Lane Kirkland to become president of the AFL-CIO. His triumph was hailed in the media as reinvigorating the labor movement with a breath of go-go progressive air.
Chicago
IF BUCHANANITES THOUGHT they were the only ones being jilted by officials at the Republican National Convention, they now have dinner companions. Grousing over coveted space in the packed-to-the-rafters San Diego Convention Center has become something of a hobby horse for conservative advocacy…
Southern Maryland's Calvert County is where the wife and I perch. Bordered by the Patuxent River and Chesapeake Bay, it lies just 30 miles south of D.C., but to most of my snooty Northern-Virginia-dwelling colleagues it might as well be French Lick, in sensibility if not topography.
Animal-rights soirees usually go off without a hitch, like the Great American Meatout on Capitol Hill, where vegan activists try to convince congressional staffers that Fib Rib veggie sticks really are delicious. Sometimes Animal Rights people (call them AR for short) are nakedly aggressive, as…
Animal-rights soirees usually go off without a hitch, like the Great American Meatout on Capitol Hill, where vegan activists try to convince congressional staffers that Fib Rib veggie sticks really are delicious. Sometimes Animal Rights people (call them AR for short) are nakedly aggressive, as…
POLITICS OF MEANING" -- it's a movelment whose, time has come. And gone. Shhhh! Dont tell that to the 1,800 or so devotees who recently packed Washington's Omni Shoreham Hotel for the Summit on Ethics and Meaning.
He's the "Robin Hood of p.r.," in the words of National Journal. And if your definition of an eminent public-relations man is one who can garner high- profile media coverage -- the truth be damned -- then David Fenton is indeed very good at his work. As boss of the New York- and…
Los Angeles
It takes a be,ating nearly every day, this "Washington culture" of ours. Mostly, it is thrashed by aspiring practitioners, like Steve Forbes. "The culture of Washington is not the culture of America," Forbes intoned at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (known as CPAC). Not true,…
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN TOLD one can never have too many friends, which perhaps was what drew me to the Learning Annex's Inner Child Workshop. Their ad promised not only to put me in touch with my inner child, but "to heal this child and thus make him/her one's own best friend." An avid churchgoer in the…
I've always been told one can never have too many friends, which perhaps was what drew me to the Learning Annex's Inner Child Workshop. Their ad promised not only to put me in touch with my inner child, but "to heal this child and thus make him/her one's own best friend."
When National Endowment for the Humanities president Sheldon Hackney launched his new initiative, "A National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity," he was throttled like a red-headed pifiata. "He thought it would be apple pie," a former NEH staffer says, "but it was P.R. winter."
LYING LOW HASN'T BEEN EASY for Rep. Barbara-Rose Collins of late -- and not just because of her splashy Motor City fur-feather'n'leather ensembles, which a former staffer says bear resemblance to "a Christmas tree sitting down."
WHEN LAST WE LEFT JIMMY CARTER . . .
IT'S OFFICIAL. JOHNNIE COCHRAN is now a society and media darling, virtue incarnate, a double-breasted, hand-tailored Atticus Finch, having garnered the Turner Broadcasting Trumpet Award, the Black United Fund's pioneer award, and even, rumor has it, consideration for Time's Man of the Year.
READ ENOUGH INTERVIEWS, and you'd half expect Teresa Heinz (now Mrs. John Kerry, though she wisely refrains from using the Massachusetts senator's name) to enter Washington's Willard Hotel for the presentation of her Heinz Awards with a communal pacifier dangling from her spare yet tastefully…
High atop a glass and steel Tower of Babble in Rosslyn, Va., Freedom Forum CEO Charles Overby welcomed us to "Publish or Perish," a panel discussion on the Unabomber manifesto.
Fight the Right," beckoned the ad. "Decoding the Right," a four-part series, was to be held at the Social Action Leadership School for Activists ( SALSA). The sessions were sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, the Washington-based booster of Castro, the Sandinistas, and all practitioners…
Amidst metal chairs and rec-center acoustics in a frat house basement along a roughneck patch of northeast D.C., an alliance of Washington-area groups called the Youth Organizers Committee is about to announce its solidarity with Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March -- his invitation for black men…
It's horrifying, really, you just have to put it out of your mind, justice has been served, and now the .healing can begin. That was what should follow the O. J. Simpson verdict, according to the practitioners of African- American talk radio in the District of Columbia.
JUST LOOK AT REV. AL -- with his processed Mother-Popcorn tresses, that canary yellow shirt sheathing the brick-oven belly, and the neckwear explosion that could pass for a Maryland state flag jammed into a six-button sausage casing. Say this for the new gear, it beats the living hell out of his…
PERHAPS MOHAMMED SALEH, one of the World Trade Center bombers, put it best in a letter to an appeals court: "There is no need to say, "Who is Kunstler?" He is as a mountain on the ground." Well, now William Kunstler of the scoliotic stoop and caterpillar brow, is in it -- a victim of heart failure…