Frank Rich

Last night, The New York Times turned its lobby into a party space, complete with couches, at least three open bars and a band. Press was denied access, but as was most of the newsroom.

Except for those who were invited. A press release said that the building opened before a "glittering crowd" and here's who they consider glittering: Thomas Friedman was there, along with reporter Helene Cooper, Maureen Dowd, Baghdad bureau chief James Glanz, Beijing bureau chief Joseph Kahn and assistant business editor and columnist Gretchen Morgenson. They all spoke on a panel to a crowd that included Arthur Sulzberger, Bill Keller, Frank Rich, Ray Kelly and--if they made it, though the Media Mob never spotted them while peering through the glass of the lobby for about 45 minutes--Eliot Spitzer, Chuck Schumer and Michael Bloomberg.

In a move akin to firing Bobby Knight and replacing him with Woody Hayes, CBS Radio has at last settled on Don Imus's successor: Craig Carton.  read more »

In all the fuss and hype over the film version of Michael Bennett’s 1981 Broadway musical Drea  read more »

As a devotee of Chris Matthews, I'd point out a couple new trends on Hardball. A, he's been using profanity, saying "damn" a lot and "bastards," usually about our failed foreign policy; and B, he's trying to give the neocons their comeuppance, but isn't able to. The trends merged last week when he said to Frank Rich, "Dammit, that's what a leader's supposed to do, avoid the traps people are leading him into" (that's not verbatim, but its close) in faulting Bush for invading Iraq and dismissing the "bad intelligence" canard.

Matthews's great virtue, and limitation, is that he's so street-smart. He has political understanding and shrewdness in his fingertips. And so he recognizes the continued effectiveness, politically, of Bush's idea: the way we fight terrorism is over there, not here, and aggressively and unilaterally; that will make America safer. It still works on the street. But Matthews is enough of a thinker to recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of those ideas, and to wonder at why the neocons and their fellow travelers (who have never shouldered a weapon, as he points out) are not now smoldering on the ashheap of history. Last week he said, in so many words, Someone has to come up with a better idea to counter that Bush idea. This is a great political challenge. It's one thing for any thinking person to know that Bush and the neolibs and John Podhoretz and David Frum got it wrong in Iraq and the Middle East, it's another to come up with a positive vision of limited American power that can be stated in a slogan and that has traction on the street—that people think will make them safer in an unsafe world. Matthews himself joined the Peace Corps in the 60s because of such a vision, put forward by JFK. Myself, I think the neorealists are doing the best thinking here, from Robert Pape to Stephen Walt to Anatol Lieven—along with the understanding that we win hearts and minds by offering a helping hand, the idea of Navy Secretary Winter. But someone smart and political has to imbibe the ideas and then regurgitate them into the tiny beaks of the general populace. Any takers?

Many a complacent D.C.  read more »

Many a complacent D.C.  read more »

The hour is growing late, politicians and public officials are sleepwalking toward disaster, so forg  read more »

According to the Oprah Winfrey Show Web site, tomorrow's program will revisit the questions surrounding James Frey and A Million Little Pieces.

A source at Doubleday said that Frey, publisher Nan Talese and Frank Rich will be appearing on the show, which is being taped tomorrow morning for airing at 4 p.m.  read more »

--Sheelah Kolhatkar

Let us begin this week with two recent items from the news.  read more »

To: XXXX@nytimes.com From: XXXXX@nytimes.com Subject: News from Culture

TO THE STAFF:

Jodi Kantor came to The Times in early 2003 with a mandate to remake the Arts & Leisure section. Now, having accomplished this task with great skill, spirit and aplomb, and having helped in the process to remake the entire Culture Department, bringing new reporters, critics, editors and many, many new columns of news and opinion into its report, she has asked to take on a new challenge. Starting next month, Jodi will be a reporter on the "Way We Live" team, reporting to Suzanne Daley. "After a couple of years in the building," she said, "I'm dying to actually get out and report some stories myself."

Before she goes, though, it's worth taking some time to recognize Jodi's achievements here in the Culture Department. They have been myriad and important. First and foremost, of course, is the way in which Jodi has transformed the Arts & Leisure franchise, giving it not just a handsome new look but completely revamping its tone and substance. In the two-plus years since she brought in the low black chair and long gray couch that will now mark the position of A&L editor as surely as the inability to make dinner reservations on Tuesday nights, Jodi has not only given the section a news-driven focus (a real feat, given A&L's terrifying five-day lead time), but she has done so without sacrificing its devotion to richly narrative, long-form journalism -- or its punishing schedule of special issues. It's been a hell of a run.

Beyond Arts & Leisure, Jodi has also been at the center of the department's restructuring process. With Frank Rich, Steve Erlanger and some guy named Adam, and later with Jon Landman, Jim Schachter and me, Jodi helped draft the plans for the department as it now exists -- divided among subject areas, with vastly expanded roles for reporters, editors and critics--and played a crucial role in landing some pretty big fish: Manohla Dargis and Nicolai Ouroussoff among them. Hers will be large shoes to fill.

More on that subject later. In the meantime, please join the Culture Crew under the yellow umbrella on the northwest corner of the fourth floor, on Wednesday, July 27 at 5:45 p.m., to raise a glass to a woman who can't drink these days, but to whom so many of us owe thanks and to whom we'll offer a standing ovation for a job well done.  read more »

Sam

"I am someone who's always changed my career a lot," Frank Rich said.  read more »

And so, to the moment the nation has been waiting for!  read more »

The Times' li'l culture czarina; what an audition! what mentors!  read more »

The Republican Party no doubt figured it had gotten rid of a nasty problem when its U.S.  read more »

When there was a Soviet Union, there were cultural commissars to give directives: Shostakovich good;  read more »

Ghost Light: A Memoir , by Frank Rich.  read more »

A Sexier Street News ?  read more »