My writer friend Gail, who lives in London but is fluent in all things American, has been closely following our daily travails. We’re in touch often, sharing our mutual, grim, and often bleakly funny stories about Trump here and Brexit there. Continue reading
Dr. Adam Gaffney is the brand new president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), the national, Medicare for All advocacy group of medical professionals and others committed to single-payer universal healthcare “provided equitably as a public service rather than bought and sold as a commodity.” Continue reading
The fact that his predecessor was a smart, witty and popular black man makes Donald Trump crazy. Especially the black part. Continue reading
Watching Donald Trump’s State of the Union Tuesday night, I kept flashing back on the routine I saw a talk show host perform years ago at the Kennedy Center in Washington—God help me, I think it was David Frost—in which he imitated a politician giving a speech that was one endless, meaningless string of empty, non-sequitur rhetoric. Continue reading
Donald Trump is the real anchor baby in America—childish yet so outsized and unwieldy that he doesn’t hold the ship of state upright and in position like a good anchor should but causes it to sink like a stone. Continue reading
WASHINGTON, DC—As the old saying goes, putting a shoe in an oven don’t make it a biscuit. Continue reading
I’ve been trying to write something about the events of the past few days for the last week and a half, and every time I set out to achieve editorial brilliance, or at least try to keep typos and the splitting of infinitives to a minimum, something else wacky happens and it’s back to square one. I’d say it’s Sisyphean if only I knew what that meant. Continue reading
In 1961, the poet Robert Frost was asked to recite one of his works at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. At the ceremony, as Frost tried to read the poem he had written for the occasion, “Dedication,” the sun was so bright and the text on the page so faint that it was difficult to see, even when Vice President Lyndon Johnson handed Frost his silk top hat to shield the glare. Continue reading
I come to you more from sorrow than from anger, President Trump seemed to be trying to say when he addressed the nation Tuesday night. But he was lying, of course, and the effect was more like that of the Big Bad Wolf dressing up in grandma’s nightgown than a person truly concerned with the fate of anyone other than himself. Continue reading
There was a time when, once they left the job, a former cabinet head or member of Congress would find employment back home casting their seeds of knowledge and experience in the local groves of academe. Or return to naps on the cracked leather sofa at his or her old law firm in South Bend or Twin Falls or Toledo. Continue reading
We are a nation that was founded in opposition to hereditary rule. The founders rejected the notion of a king and embraced the principle that there were to be no royal families who generation after generation governed on the assumption of divine right. Continue reading
I remember the first time I saw a movie that was written by William Goldman, the great screenwriter and author who died last Friday. Continue reading
Here in the West Village, in beautiful downtown Manhattan, Election Day morning was overcast, with an autumn chill and some mist in the air. It was early and I was surprised by the number of people waiting to vote—a line about as long as in 2016—which was great but seemed a little odd because in this very, very blue neighborhood there were plenty of names on the midterm ballot but no contests of any great contention. Continue reading
Here’s my closing argument. Continue reading
This is not who we are. We are better than this. Continue reading
BERLIN—On the last full day of two weeks spent in this city, the requisite visit was paid to Checkpoint Charlie, the spot at the Berlin Wall where, from 1961 to 1989, allied forces and other foreigners crossed the uneasy border between East and West Berlin. (Germans had designated checkpoints of their own.) Continue reading
Visiting Berlin for two weeks, and in the evening I go to bed in a small hotel room, tuning the radio to a German-language station. I understand barely a word but it features a strangely compelling, eclectic mix of Bach, Brubeck and Tim Buckley, unfortunately sometimes interrupted by electronic dance music, the dreaded EDM. Continue reading
Thursday’s Senate hearing with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh brought back memories. Continue reading
Call me a sentimental fool (pipe down out there) but I keep waiting for the big Frank Capra moment that, rationally, I know may never come—you know, like the climax of Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington when the corrupt, patrician senator played by Claude Rains, finally undone by the truth told by Senator Jefferson Smith (earnestly played by Jimmy Stewart), tries to shoot himself. Continue reading
Part of my awkward youth was spent in service of the New York State Democratic Party, an act of true hubris if you grew up, as I did, in rural upstate, where it was easier being a Menshevik than a Democrat. Continue reading
Back in 2004, I was involved in giving John McCain an award for his stand against media consolidation. There were several times after that when something outrageous he said or voted for or against made me regret I’d ever been involved! Continue reading
I know that some find it odious to compare Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler, that doing so violates what’s known as Godwin’s Law. That’s the idea first put forward in 1990 by author Mike Godwin that morphed into the notion that in an argument, whoever first compares someone or something to Hitler, loses. Continue reading
A number of years ago, at the height of the whole Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky insanity, a certain someone figuring prominently in the right’s exploitation of the scandal occasionally lunched with friends of theirs at a restaurant where I hung out on a near daily basis. Continue reading
Our “I alone can fix it” president has gotten us in another fix, all right. Continue reading
The May jobs numbers were good last week—so swell, in fact, that our putative president couldn’t resist hinting about them in an early morning tweet last Friday morning, a major breach of confidentiality and protocol that instantly affected Treasury yields—basically, the interest rate at which the government borrows money. Continue reading
Friday afternoon, May 18, I was walking across my West Village neighborhood running some errands. Here and there my path crossed with college students in graduation gowns from NYU, Columbia and The New School. Continue reading
You may know this famous old political joke, but please indulge my current fantasy. Continue reading
What a petty, venal, corrupt and foul thing it is. More media-generated homunculus than man, every day, Donald Trump behaves more and more like the cornered animal desperately trying to save itself by viciously biting in every direction, pulling out every nasty trick that has worked for him before. But now he gnashes his teeth on a global stage so vast that the pettiness of his vindictiveness is unconcealed, cast in a spotlight that diminishes every American. Continue reading
Trying to write about the current resident of the White House and his odious pals is like being trapped in a warehouse, condemned to assemble endless Ikea products without instructions or that little hexagon key doohickey. The work never ends, you have no idea what goes where, illogic reigns and there always are extra parts left over. A screw loose, for example . . . Continue reading
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Don’t let the Ilhan Omar fight hide two essential truths
Posted on March 12, 2019 by Michael Winship
The other night, I was watching an NBC News report on the thousands of endangered red-crowned cranes whose migration route takes them through the DMZ between North and South Korea. Amidst land mines and other dangers, they somehow manage to survive. Continue reading →