I keep thinking about her. I don’t know her name, and we’ve never met. All I have are two seconds of video showing her working, likely in the 1950s. The attraction is neither lust nor love but nagging curiosity. Maybe it’s because she’s the only woman whose face is visible among a sea of men […]
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When will a reporter, especially one for the mainstream media, write: “He lied. Here’s the truth.”? I long for the day and never more than this week. For two consecutive days, NPR reported on the fallout about Rush Limbaugh’s comments about the Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. In both instances reporter David Folkenflik described what […]
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Reincarnation as this owl — that’s what I want. Not merely to flaunt my aerial adroitness, fierce gaze, and stunning plumage. I like the idea of staying up all night and hooting from trees. I found the video here via a journalist whose work I admire. But James Fallow‘s likening of owls to cats with […]
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Two years ago, I was waiting in the hallway of a small Portland high school. I was there to interview students and a teacher for a story. As kids milled about in the din between classes, many hugged each other. Some embraces looked like reunions between dear friends who hadn’t seen each other for years. […]
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I hope Roger Cohen of the New York Times wins a Pulitzer Prize for his remarkable commentary from the streets of Tehran. (He discusses the coverage here.) But world-stage politics aren’t his only topic. Yesterday’s gem, “The Meaning of Life,” uses a study of monkeys’ caloric intake to explore universal themes. And his image of […]
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Seeing the world through the eyes of four year olds must be like looking through a peephole. This narrow, constrained view also bestows them with blissful ignorance. Take as evidence an exchange today involving our little boy and his friend: NPR, soundtrack of our life, blares in the kitchen. Michael Jackson’s name is mentioned, again. […]
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Read the words. Listen to the words. Watch them sung. Then ask yourself what have — or did — we become? Ask why nearly every major news organization can’t bring itself to equate waterboarding with “torture” when, in fact, the United States executed World War II enemies for the same practice? Maybe Jonathan Mann’s song, […]
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Not only did we learn this week that Portland is the country’s unhappiest city, a new study says it’s among the least manly. But according to whose definition? These criteria aren’t my idea of manliness. The Portland Business Journal reports that “cities scored higher based on the number of sports teams they have, the number […]
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I spent a long time on the print side of newspapers and a good number of years starting and nurturing their online offspring. These days I’m online much of each day and night but still have this thing for the printed page. It began, like many things, with a childhood ritual: plodding barefoot to the […]
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Rarely do I find commentary as incisive and articulate as that of Scott Horton. His “No Comment” blog for Harper’s Magazine illuminates current affairs not with polemics but cohesive facts and analysis. Reading his work I see the fog of he-said-she-said media coverage lift to reveal what looks like truth.
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