I’m not planning to break up with President Obama, but he is definitely giving me flashbacks to relationship dysfunctionality. Tolstoy is forever being quoted on the subject: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But I don’t think he had it right. There’s often a familiar, cyclical character …
The 2012 election campaign is in full swing, beginning, once again, to stage the vast (and vastly repetitive) drama that periodically mesmerizes the body politic. Like a huge pod out of Invasion of The Body-Snatchers, it replaces actual democracy with an expensive similacrum. From time to time, I’m going to focus on the culture of …
Public policy should be driven by a few essential questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? How do we want to be remembered; what is our legacy to the future? These foundational questions underpin this second essay on the jobs plan we need. Before you dismiss this out of hand as absurdly idealistic, …
After seeing the economy bleed jobs for so long, it was hard to watch without ambivalence as President Obama finally rose on Thursday to call for a transfusion of public funds for job creation. I felt some measure of relief: at last, our national leaders are paying attention to the suffering caused by economic policies …
The east is awash in Irene and earthquakes, and commentators everywhere are noticing how utterly shook up the world order also seems to be. Here’s Tom Friedman in the New York Times: [T]he European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China’s growth model is under pressure and America’s credit-driven capitalist model …
The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular …
I’ve been thinking about it steadily since a friend said it a week ago. “I know it sounds far-out, but I think they’re blackmailing Obama. I think they took him aside right after the election and said that if he wanted his family to live out his term, he’d better toe the line.” My friend …
Here in Richmond, California, we have our official Independence Day fireworks on the 3rd of July, which I like. Not too many people, not as many drunks on the road as on the 4th. As it happens, I live on the harbor where the fireworks barge is anchored, so it as easy thing to stroll …
Last Sunday I read a piece on executive pay in the business section of the New York Times. Ever since, I have been wondering how to write about it. Here are some of the images I did not want to include: bad apples spoiling a whole barrel; pirates (and other types of marauding bandits); weeds …
Gender is not a two-party system, that much is clear. As with almost all such categories, you find more variation within groups than between them. Some men like football and guns, while others are into cooking and fashion—and the same goes for women. No matter how you parse it, gender is a clock rather than …