I was entirely convinced yesterday that it was necessary to release a post mortem photo of Osama bin Laden. DNA evidence is the proof, but photos pack a wallop. I thought it important for the final image of bin Laden to be as unromantic as possible. (Although a post mortem photo of Che Guevera didn’t prevent that […]

Mark Twain said there are three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I’m not sure into which category the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) starting salary statistics for Spring 2011 college graduates will fall, but I am increasingly convinced, based on a flurry of emails I just received, that they rest squarely […]

The National Association of Colleges and Employers just released its starting salary figures for 2011 college graduates.  I say they are bunk. The Association, which sounds to me like a cheerleading group for the higher education industry, says the average starting salary for someone fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree is $50,462. In what world? Here’s how NACE writes this […]

I had a philosophy professor in college named James P. Carse who said something in class one day that I’ve always remembered. His best friend had died some weeks before at Beth Israel Hospital. She had been married to another friend of the professor’s for 25 years, and throughout the marriage the couple had been […]

ABC News just released this fascinating run of events that led to Bin Laden’s assassination.  It all began when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, soon to go on trial for his life at Guantanamo, blabbed during his controversial interrogation ordered by the Bush Administration. Right or wrong, it directly led SEAL Team Six to Bin Laden’s front door. Pretty good […]

News of Osama Bin Laden’s death obscured an extraordinary interview given by 60 Minutes’s Lara Logan last night.  Logan was brutally assaulted by a mob of men in Tahrir Square on February 11, the night Hosni Mubarek stepped down.  She only survived the ordeal because Egyptian women, in traditional head-to-toe-dress, stepped in to save her. The South […]

(This from former Larchmont, NY mayor Liz Feld who is doing a temporary family stint in Boston.) Last night and through the early hours of this morning, thousands of college students paraded through the streets of Boston, escorted by police cars. They chanted, sang, cheered and waved American flags. They weren’t celebrating a World Series […]

“Best Monday morning in years.” That by email this morning from my longest-known friend who escaped the North Tower of the World Trade Center 10 years ago (after evacuating it because of an earlier al Qaeda bombing eight years before that.) I think we all feel that way today, along with gratitude to President Obama, […]

Great piece by Marc Ambinder in the National Journal today about President Obama’s re-election chances.  It is a balanced and cogent analyses of the mood of the nation, and how it may affect the campaign.  Worth a read from parties on all sides.

Republicans look lame to most young people.  We are stiff and mean, always saying ‘no’ to progressive-sounding ideas. Democrats want to revolutionize the world; Republicans want to till it.  We are the authoritarian fathers to the Democrats’ cool aunts or uncles. That’s why for every Alex P. Keaton, there are two Gloria Bunkers, if not […]