The Louvre, Johann Strauss, Mickey Mouse, Mahatma Gandhi, Fred Astaire, Whistler’s Mother, Dante’s Inferno, Pepsodent … Or how about Jimmy Durante’s nose, the National Gallery, a Bendel bonnet, a Coolidge dollar or Camembert? Those 13 people, places and things were all mentioned in a popular song, back when our popular culture was still a culture. …
Many of the folks who have been fighting to overturn Roe v Wade for years have other things on their agenda. Same-sex marriage. Interracial marriage. Transgender rights. Extramarital sex. Contraception. Just ask them. Some of these people will openly admit that no one should be having sex unless they want to have a baby, and …
A little more than two years ago, when the pandemic began killing off Americans, I had a strange thought. I remember hearing how lethal COVID-19 was, particularly for older people with compromised health, and I remember what went through my mind. “I know how I’m going to die.” I was 70 years old, extremely overweight …
“We are being forced into a corner by these enemies of the People. If it is civil war they want, they will get it in spades. Perhaps the best way to pull us back from the brink is a good public lynching.”— DAVID DIETRICH, Virginia Republican official It may or may not surprise you to …
The National Lampoon magazine may no longer exist, which is something of a tragedy. There were so many wonderful things about it, from “Mrs. Agnew’s Diary” to Vinny Shinblind, the invisible sex maniac. There were stories that became movies and magazine parodies that were unsurpassed. But it was the Letters to the Editor section that …
As much as I hate to admit it, the apparently successful 50-year crusade to reverse Roe v Wade isn’t about protecting children or even babies. It’s about controlling women. and always has been. When Roe gave American women the right to safe and legal abortions in 1973, guess what other unrelated right they got a …
When I was little, back in the days of Howdy Doody, Davy Crockett and the Mouseketeers, I used to ask my mother a question. If there is Mothers Day and Fathers Day, why isn’t there a Children’s Day? Of course her response was that every day is Children’s Day. Whether that’s true or not, mothers …
If the news out of Washington is true, and if the Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v Wade, all I can say is that it was pretty much inevitable. Ever since Mitch McConnell essentially stole two seats on the court, a solid right-wing majority has been poised to take down Roe and take …
I grew up thinking Pete Rose was a wonderful player. From the time I was 13 or 14 and for the next 20 years or so, he was my favorite athlete. When I became a professional sportswriter, I interviewed him four times — in 1982, ’84, ’85 and then in the early ’90s after he …
I’ll bet you didn’t know that when Congress voted on the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery, Connecticut voted to keep slavery. Actually, it didn’t happen that way. But if you saw Stephen Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln,” the screenwriters made it happen that way because they thought it would be more dramatic. I’ll bet you didn’t know …
