Creative Commentary
Babe Ruth on Steroids
“Boys, it’s great to be back. Too bad it’s off season. I haven’t been anywhere since 1948, and I’m ready to play.” “Babe, have you had time to read Jose Canseco’s book ‘Juiced’ that says eighty percent of major league baseball players used steroids?” a reporter asked. “Just finished it.” “Do you consider the new…
Read MoreLetter to Holocaust Deniers
A few days ago I received several e-mails from a group that says it didn’t happen. To the RePorter NoteBook: Your insinuations and assertions that the Holocaust never happened are preposterous and insulting, and your general explanation of how the ruse was pulled off is pitiful: Americans in the conquered West and Russians in the occupied East lied about the…
Read MoreCourageous Iraqis Prepare to Vote
It is most ironic that a historic political event in Iraq – the first free election – is, or should be, a fundamentally apolitical occurrence in the United States and other democratic countries. Today – January 30, 2005 – everyone who believes in liberty is in the same cheering section. For at least a day…
Read MoreLetter to Division I Personages
This story is in the collection “Basketball and Football”
Read MoreFear Not, California – Bakersfield Shall Save You
Have you been to Bakersfield? Ask that of most people in California and they’ll say, “No, but I’ve been through it.” They just kept on rolling over parched Central Valley earth en route to Los Angeles or the Bay Area. Why didn’t they stop? Perhaps they were startled or saddened by the eternal glare from…
Read MoreLetter to President Bush: You Rose from the Canvas
Dear President Bush, It’s astonishing what preceded your comeback. First, you got your ears boxed the week before by a debating opponent who reduced you to a series of inane and lethargic utterances. Then you received another public report emphasizing your error in asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. At the same time…
Read MoreTake Note, Security Moms: Kerry Manhandles Bush in First Debate
Many folks from all points on the political spectrum had begun conceding the election to our robust and resolute warrior-president. They had to. The polls were revealing the most horrifying perception of John Kerry. Married middle class white women, whose support he’d been counting on, had decided he couldn’t protect them as well as George…
Read MoreStereotypes Trounced at the Olympics and Elsewhere
If someone asked you if you occasionally think about others in stereotypical ways, you’d probably be insulted and deny ever having had even a moment of biased perception. And you’d be full of prune juice. We all, in boundless imperfection, are periodically burdened by our unfair assessments. However, if you still insist that your thinking…
Read MoreCool Cat Bush Improves Position
The polls say ninety percent of the people are already firm about who they’re going to vote for. And many of them made choices based not so much on the economy or the war in Iraq but on the far more mundane, and critical, determination of who’s the cutest and who’s the coolest. When the…
Read MoreSaddam Back on Stage as Insurgency Grows
The man’s a bona fide survivor, isn’t he? Hundreds of thousands of his victims inside and outside Iraq are dead. His sons are dead. Thousands of people mired in the mess he left have recently died. But Saddam Hussein lives on. He’s harder to kill than a cockroach in the deepest crevice, more difficult to…
Read MoreGaddafi’s Daughter Joins Saddam’s Exciting Legal Team
Google and Yahoo are search engines of astonishing reach and daily utility but I’m a little disappointed in them tonight: they were only able to provide one picture of Aisha Gaddafi, daughter of Muammar and newest member of the rapidly growing Saddam legal team that now numbers twenty-one professional and hundreds of volunteer lawyers. If…
Read MoreWhat Are the Iraqis and Saudis Going to Do?
We can long debate what the United States should do about the recent beheading of two of its citizens in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Most will agree the murderers should be captured and punished. But how can that be done? Will a police-style manhunt, orchestrated by the military, be enough? Or, as many in the…
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