But there\’s also a less benign explanation for the media\’s negligence, and it\’s captured by something President Andrew Jackson said nearly two centuries ago: \”If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.\”
You have to go back to Spiro Agnew and his bullyboy ventriloquists, Pat Buchanan and William Safire, to find this kind of sneering contempt for educated people.
This is not just a Jewish phenomenon, though a few thousand years of expecting to be scapegoated, persecuted, exiled or killed certainly contributes to the melancholic gene Jews are known for carrying, the optimism of a Ben-Gurion or Sandy Koufax notwithstanding.
If John McCain wins this election, it will be because of Hollywood.
The Muslim issue is a way to talk about race without talking about race, and without having to squirm about saying that race is not an issue.
But by and large, despite those enticing pitches, adulthood turns out to mean acceptance — of how you played the hand you were dealt, of mortality, of beshert — even if it sometimes includes flashes of 40-f—ing-8-like fury at the way the world turns out to work.
If you listen to what cosmologists say about the origin of the universe, you have to put your mind in a place where mystics also dwell.
Why do I have the feeling that if hundreds of billions of dollars\’ worth of Chinese imports and of American business investments in China were not at stake, quiet diplomacy wouldn\’t be the slogan du jour?
First they came for the Outdoor section, and I said nothing. Then they combined and demoted the Opinion and Book Review sections, and I said nothing.
His follow-up message, in response to my away-from-my-e-mail auto-reply, vibrated in my pocket during dinner, where no one else at my table had a clue what scandal had erupted. I stole a look at the screen, my transgression, I hoped, concealed by the tablecloth.
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