America is way deep into the presidential race, and the party conventions are fast approaching. Democrats gather in Milwaukee on August 17 and Republican start their whoop-up a week later. In the coming weeks, the media will produce an ocean of purple prose on these Cow Palace jamborees. If the past is prologue, much of […]
Mark Leibovich, This Town (Penguin Group...
Political junkies indubitably will devour Leibovich’s chatty take on Washington, DC. I myself have a limited interest in and patience for the self-obsessed DC press-political gaggle. I tend to be more interested in political and social phenomena than chatter about them. Yet, I enjoyed Mark Leibovich’s This Town (Penguin Group, 2013). For one, Leibovich frequently […]
Aaron Swartz, Obituary, The Economist Ja...
It is terribly sad when anyone commits suicide. Aaron Swartz, the genius who created RSS, helped make Reddit.com, and more, took his own life on January 11, 2013. He was a mere 26 years old. His life was a mix of fabulous successes, but also mental illness and misery. The Economist gave Swartz quite the […]
Francis Wheen, “The Lady and the Vamp,”
This is an amusing article on the acrimony that breaks out when a new editor arrives at the staid, 127-year old The Lady magazine. Anglophiles will particularly enjoy it. The redoubtable Mrs. B., clad in twinset and pearls, was a magnet for quote-hungry reporters. “It suited the impression that this was just a Wodehouse novel […]
Patrick B. Pexton, “The Post Needs Less
In an episode of the West Wing, a reporter tells the Bartlet Administration he is not going to write about a mini-scandal. When asked why, he pithily responds, “It’s gossip, not news.” Politics and personality do matter. To get things done, it certainly helps to have people who can get along with one another. (See […]
Do We Still Need Public Libraries?
The December 27, 2012 New York Times online “room for debate” asks the question, “Do we still need libraries?” (See here.) There wasn’t much of a debate, alas. The four contributors all basically said they liked public libraries. Their short essays little addressed the questions posed by the Times, which were, “Many public libraries are seeing […]