“We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?” I’ve thought about that line from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” ever since I saw JD Vance in drag. The “little mad” line comes from cross-dressing psycho killer Norman Bates, who, like Vance, is a little bit odd. How odd, we only find out in the shower scene.…
They came packed in boats – rain-drenched, wide-eyed, every color in the crayon box. MAGA’s nightmare. Except for the blazers, in dazzling colors. Except for the well-fed and athletic builds. Except for the joy, the anticipation as the River Seine delivered them to glory on the Olympics’ glittering opening night in Paris. Oh. Never mind.…
If Donald Trump said road apples tasted better than sweet red ones, Republican leaders would hustle out and sink their teeth into the nearest dairy dropping. Ted Cruz would roast his at the end of an AK. Being one who wants Trump, Cruz and party to lose and lose big, when I heard the stupid…
“You’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” When he said that last week to a bleach-eyed coven of idol worshippers assembled by Turning Point USA, Donald Trump played the room. To those outside…
At this somber moment, the end of Joe Biden’s candidacy, recall a horribly crass moment. It was 2020. After addressing the fawning zealots of the Conservative Political Action Conference, then-President Donald Trump sashayed over to the U.S. flag, grabbed it, pulled it to his face, swayed with it, kissed it and mouthed, “I love you,…
Not only do too many Americans show the perils of low information; they also show the effects of no memory. For instance, too many can’t recall all the way back to the depths of a horribly mismanaged pandemic, what historians will call “Days of Ivermectin.” Something else many may not recall: when Joe Biden was…
You bet, it’s big news when a fellow party member in Congress steps to the mike to say the president is unfit. Members of a party back their own. That’s the whole idea. So relative to such big news . . . Just imagine when the person speaking against the president is the third most…
If your interest here is intonation and inflection in a presidential debate, read no more. If your worry is words fumbled along with political chances, forward your attention elsewhere. The internet is long and wide, so if you want to fixate on any rhetorical opportunities Joe Biden may have squandered, you will find others to…
KYOTO, Japan – A laundromat is the very last place at which an American in the Orient expects a political discussion. Then again, the subject was Donald Trump. I didn’t bring him up. A well-read, quite elderly lady did. Oriental travelers must launder their T-shirts and shorts. There I was one night doing that in…
The unsigned newspaper editorial is a vaunted tradition: a local institution taking – one hopes — a gutsy group position. Most of my working life I wrote them for editorial boards of which I was a member. Most times I felt good — that the editorial I wrote was not a repeat of a rerun of…