Last night I tasted a really nice Montepulciano and read the torture memos. How did you spend YOUR Saturday night? Stop staring at me. Anyway, so I come home early last night, trying to get a little rest (no, I don’t have swine flu, thanks for asking) because I’ve been suffering from an allergic eye…
Sometimes the world gets better. Twenty years ago tomorrow, Hungary began taking down the barbed wire partition between itself and Austria. It wasn’t attended by all the fanfare of the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months later. But it was a quietly heroic start of that gloriously literal, physical dismantling of the Iron…
Some people have so little credibility that even if they happen to say something correct, we are entitled to tell them to shut up. But that doesn’t mean we adopt the opposite posture just because we want to oppose them.Dick Cheney is such a person. Hillary Clinton is correct that Dick Cheney has no business…
During my month-long visit to India, I have noticed the disturbing trend of “Hindu Fundamentalism,” which mirrors the same sort of culture war incited by all reactionary movements.In fact, there is only one Religious Fundamentalism in the world, designed to cultivate a shared sense of righteous rage at some perceived “enemy” among a certain historically…
January 26 is “Republic Day” in India. It’s the day their constitution was ratified and it is celebrated with almost as much fanfare as the day they got their independence from Britain. People — some people — volunteer to register voters in remote villages. Kids enter essay contests. In Calcutta they have cookouts (it’s actually…
It’s weird to be abroad this week. I must admit, I am missing the around the clock coverage American media must be giving to the transition in Washington. Of course, the whole world is watching – and I’m thankful for the unique perspective I’m getting (especially since I’m in a country where the Bush administration…
I want to take a moment to congratulate The Mac. What a wonderfully gracious, unifying, and patriotic concession. I loved that he recognized, explicitly, the wounds of the past and the salve of progress that has been a hallmark of the extraordinary history of this most extraordinary country. He also recognized the importance of the…
