Rahmbo: Shape Up or Fork Out

An Israeli ballerina-turned-Mayor of Chicago is now demanding that Windy City workers participate—willingly or not—in a wellness plan. If those on the city payroll refuse to register, they’ll pay $50 a month as a ...

With Toy Story 3, Pixar Wins Disney Divorce Battle

In 1965, Gordon Moore of Intel noted that silicon chips had been quickly doubling in transistor density, and forecasted that computers would continue to get twice as powerful every 18 months to infinity and beyond! (Or ...

Central Park, N.Y.

Central Intelligence

I celebrate two Easters every year, the Catholic and Orthodox one, which means I get very drunk on two successive Sundays. This time both days were spent with very good friends, which is a prerequisite at my age when under ...

Elvis Presley

“Experts” Part II: The Dementia Guardrail Paradox

I grew up with a healthy skepticism of doctors. As anyone who knows the Cole origin story is aware, my biological father was the Beverly Hills surgeon/personal physician to the stars who’s accused of killing Elvis by ...

George Gascon

Do These Black Lives Matter to L.A.’s Idiot D.A.?

Hey, whatever happened to that story about Sandra Shells? She was the 70-year-old nurse killed by one of Los Angeles' many "unhoused" individuals (drug-addicted psychopaths) while she waited for a bus at 5:15 in the morning ...

Losing the Great Game in Afghanistan

Ten years ago, I watched the Twin Towers fall. A San Francisco Examiner headline the next day summed up my feelings fairly well: “Bastards!” Of course we had to fight back. I thought there’d be a bit of a scuffle, ...

Evolutionary Zen

The upcoming presidential debates will likely sidestep details of immigration, employment, offshoring, or public safety. Instead, valuable minutes will be given to philosophical issues, providing ample opportunity for each ...

Mark Felt

The Outing of Deep Throat

As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism. The myth? That two heroic young reporters at The Washington ...

T.E. Lawrence

Leave Syria to the Syrians

This is not a good time to be running the Middle East desk at the State Department. If you happen to be him or her, take my advice: Do nothing. Especially in Syria. Let all the think tanks and lobbyists submit their ...

Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian

Stars v. Jocks: The Great Dummy Derby

Who's easier to mock"€”athletes or celebrities? It's a neck-and-neck race, each one stretching to be more idiotic than the other. When celebrities and athletes come together, they multiply one another's idiocy. Consider ...

The French Problem

Is this a Jewish joke or a Gypsy joke? What do you get when a Jew and a Gypsy go into business together? A chain of empty stores. About fifteen years ago, a friend of mine opened a shop selling fabrics and other household ...

Demi Moore

‘Blind’ Ambition

Blind is an indie movie with an original screenplay by John Buffalo Mailer and directed by his older brother Michael Mailer. It stars Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore, and the cast includes yours truly. Personal feelings aside, ...

The Third Opium War

In the mid-1800s, Great Britain engaged in two wars against China’s Qing dynasty. The conflicts began when the emperor attempted to crack down on the illegal opium trade that was causing widespread addiction with ...

Mass with Pat Buchanan and the King of Rwanda

I live on Capitol Hill. And on Sunday mornings I walk to Mass, either to St. Joseph's on the Hill for convenience or, if I'm not too hung over, the earlier nine o'clock Tridentine Rite at Old St. Mary's in Chinatown where ...

Aretha Franklin

The Week That Perished

The Week’s Most Captivating, Titillating, and Nauseating Headlines ARGUMENT OVER “QUEEN OF SOUL” LEADS TO SHOOTING Aretha Franklin passed into the giant donut shop in the sky last week, causing many to remember ...

Job Openings in Closed Captioning

New federal regulations make it mandatory for religious broadcasters to put captions for the deaf under their TV programming unless they can prove that paying for running text would bring them economic hardship. This is ...

Jakarta, Indonesia

Reading, Writing, and Road-Building in Indonesia

JAKARTA"€”Anies Baswedan, the brilliant and thoughtful young president of Paramadina University here in this capital city, beams as he describes Indonesia Mengajar (Teach Indonesia). Similar to the Teach For America ...

The Secret of Eternal Youth

Spetses. I was filled with unbearable nostalgia. There I was again, boating, swimming, sunning, wine drinking with good friends, feeling the ecstasy that only a Mediterranean afternoon can arouse in me. Transforming one’s ...

The Old Right’s Jewish Problem

The Alternative Right website has posted an interesting symposium on the topic: Is the traditional Right anti-Jewish? Taki starts it off with a fiery rant against the vindictiveness of neoconservatives like Podhoretz and ...

The Book of Genesis by R. Crumb: A Review

Most people know Robert Crumb as that esoteric cartoonist from the 60s who did the "€œKeep on Truckin"€™"€ guy. Comic nerds like myself, however, see him as the second coming of Christ. He has completed dozens of ...

Sandra Bullock

From Beautiful Bullock to Ghastly Gaddafi

NEW YORK—They say when sexual attraction sets in, all other brain functions shut down. It’s nature’s way of ensuring procreation. My brain shut down last week, and for a Hollywood actress to boot. Of German ...

Mau-Mauing at ‘The New York Times’

Donald McNeil worked at The New York Times for 45 years. He was recently nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his articles on the pandemic. In a discussion several years ago with a teenager about one of her classmates, ...

Amsterdam, 2021

Pandemic Pluses

When the restaurants in our little town reopened after several months of forced closure, I thought there would be a mad rush to get into them. Nothing of the sort—and so much for my powers of prediction (which I have ...


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