In one ear and out, on the test

    “Our children,” wrote Marshall McLuhan decades before Facebook and Twitter, “are engaged in extraordinarily hard work, and that work is growing up — because to grow up in a modern electronic environment is a fantastically complex and difficult job.”     “Pshaw,” will come the auto-rejoinder. “Their lives are too easy — and nothing the…

Time to govern? Harrumph

    In Blazing Saddles, cross-eyed Gov. William J. Le Petomane, hearing the town of Rock Ridge has met disaster at the hands of outlaws, announces to his coterie:     “We’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentleman. We must do something about this immediately, immediately, immediately.”      “Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!” goes his…

That voodoo that they do

    One can’t paint recent job figures as anything but dismal. However, anyone who says the economy is grim across the board isn’t paying attention.    “Board” is an apropos word. Boards — as in “chairmen of the” — have been doing spectacularly of late. In the last year, annualized corporate profits rose 42 percent. In…

How not to be a one-term wonder

   In the news business, advance obituaries are written even for public figures in the best of health. Because you never know.    So, those who gleefully predicted Barack Obama’s early demise last November can still hold onto their frantic tomes. Because you never know.    However, what happened in the Pakistani night a few…