\The Self-Made Man\, a new film by my friend Susan Stern, will have its television premiere on the PBS series “P.O.V.” this coming week (and while I’m boasting about my friends, let me say that “P.O.V.” was created by another friend of mine, the prodigiously talented Marc Weiss). Most stations will air it on July …
Something is happening that raises my spirits: ultra-respectable liberal commentators — folks no one can reasonably dismiss as wild-eyed radicals (such as Elizabeth Drew, whom I wrote about on July 5th) — are standing up and speaking truth to power in a forthright fashion that knocks me off my feet. Latest case in point is …
When I read about your predicament as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presiding over hearings on the Bush administration’s next Supreme Court nominee, I think of Queen Esther. The biblical Book of Esther tells the story of a young Jewish woman who wins a beauty contest to become a queen of Persia. As time …
Some of us have it in our nature to sound the alarm, and some to say that this, too, shall pass. Both are right, of course. Panic generates fight or flight, and we’ve seen the limitations of those tools for problem-solving. (Have we ever!) But an impenetrable conviction that all will be well without our …
Controversies about public cultural funding continue to pile up, even though the amount of money involved is insignificant in comparison to taxpayers’ investment in such public-spirited priorities as prisons and weapons of mass destruction. Today’s New York Times carried a piece reporting that a House Appropriations panel recommends cuts of about half in current appropriations …
We who attended school in the U.S. have a little chip in our collective unconscious that gets activated this time of year. It happened to me as I walked by the water yesterday afternoon. Even though I’m not planning a vacation and don’t have kids in school, something about the angle of the sun and …
I’m learning a lot from young people about the problem of drawing the line, by which I mean the expectation that we will take fixed stances on certain questions, choosing up sides. In his 1945 essay, “Reflections on Drawing The Line,” the late, great Paul Goodman pointed out that it is the absurd frameworks and …
This just in: it really ticks people off when you mess with whatever they perceive as holy. I’ve been reading about the demonstrations around the world against U.S. use of the Koran as an interrogation prop at Guantanamo. Newsweek published an article on May 9 charging that interrogators tried to psych out Muslim prisoners by …
In the past few weeks I’ve had a remarkable number of experiences that lead me to reconsider some principles that once seemed rock solid. The through-line I want to write about today has to do with a particular dialectic: for now, let’s call it “inside/outside” or “exclusion/entitlement,” but it will take more than two words …
A good friend visited last night from New York. He’s thoughtful and well-informed, so I always enjoy talking about social issues with him. As in so many political conversations these days, it wasn’t long before we got around to blowing each other’s minds with the surrealism of everyday public life. Starting with the baffling case …