President Barack Obama is returning from an overseas diplomatic mission in which he’s now being criticized for being too diplomatic. Yes, it’s true. His courtly bow before Japanese Emperor Akihito was deemed demeaning by that Miss Manners of international relations, Dick Cheney. Cheney said it “showed weakness” for a U.S. president to observe such formality with one of our closest allies, ...
My mother stared at the new cable remote the way the ancients must have stared at a solar eclipse. For a minute, I thought she was going to run into her bedroom and slam the door. But the powerful demands of another glowing pagan god, the 42-inch Toshiba flat screen, exerted an even greater pull and my Mom is convinced she’ll perish without Diane Sawyer in the morning. Thus, we began the ritual ...
I selected my best duds, tidied up an ugly tangle of stray nose hairs and took steps to ensure I wouldn’t be too hungover for the big day. That left only one item on the big to-do list: watch a taped “Green Acres” marathon. You can take Perry Mason or Arnie Becker. For me the most persuasive television attorney of all time was Oliver Wendell Douglas. He was the erstwhile New York lawyer who ...
