If you've never had a winning submission to The New Yorker's cartoon caption contest, you're in good company. It took Roger Ebert 107 tries before coming up with a winning line, while other famous people such as Maureen Dowd, Michael Bloomberg, and Zach Galifianakis have also found their entries regarding what a pig in Read More
Archbishop Dolan had had it—he took to his blog.
“Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America—not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ means.”
The head of the nation’s second-largest Catholic archdiocese and the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a man 60 Minutes had declared “The American Pope” only months before, felt himself staring into the abyss. And the abyss seemed to be staring back: New York was on the eve of voting in gay rights—at the urging of a Catholic governor, no less!—and his months of trying to stop it had come to naught. So he did what a lot of us do and vented on the Internet, seemingly resigned but combative nonetheless.
It was 9:26 a.m. on June 14—10 days, it turned out, before gay marriage would pass.
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"But Obama presents himself as a paragon of high principle. So when he flops around on things like 'don't ask, don't tell' or shrinks back from one of his deepest beliefs about the freedom of religion anywhere and everywhere in America, it's not pretty. Even worse, this is the man who staked his historical reputation Read More
Mostly just to take pictures and hang out in Burqinis.
One of the reasons Bill and Hillary Clinton have proven to be such enduringly fascinating characters is that so many of their actions leave you wondering what they’re really trying to do or say.
Were Hillary’s tears before the New Hampshire primary a sign that, like Ed Muskie decades earlier, she was Read More
Ever notice that the NYTimes.com most-emailed list is slanted toward an older demographic? Maybe because only folks over a certain age—like our Aunt Mabel—still use the email tool. Here's a quick, annotated guide to what grandma and grandpa thought you might be interested in from NYTimes.com ...
1. No matter how many young adult novelists are Read More
Ever notice that the NYTimes.com most-emailed list is slanted toward an older demographic? Maybe because only folks over a certain age—like our Aunt Mabel—still use the email tool. Here's a quick, annotated guide to what grandma and grandpa thought you might be interested in from NYTimes.com ...
1. Here we go, Auntie! Yesterday, we desperately wanted Read More
At a meeting in Manhattan last night of a conservative, pro-Israel group, Anthony Weiner criticized President Obama for bowing to the leader of the Saudi royal family, according to Ira Stoll, the former New York Sun editor.
Here is how Stoll, who attended the event, described Weiner's comments to me in an email: “He Read More
"What's the cost of being a nerd?" read the neon sign that greeted guests emerging from the elevator at Justin Smith's apartment in Tribeca last night.
Provocative though it was, that question was not what had brought Bonnie Fuller, John Stossel, Adam Moss, Nick Denton, Sigourney Weaver, Ira Glass, Read More
On July 6th, 2005, The Observer officially launched the Media Mob under editor Tom Scocca with a post that attempted—and failed—to introduce an awkward portmanteau word we thought would capture large media companies' incursions into the then-still novel medium of blogs. We called it (shudder) blogentrification, and described it as follows:
It starts with the Read More
Another barometer may be the number of A-Listers who couldn't get into a D.C. house party.
On Saturday night, Maureen Dowd threw a rager at her Georgetown townhouse that Read More
On the evening of Monday, January 19th, the publisher David Bradley, stood in the opulent living room of his Georgian mansion off of Embassy Row in Washington D.C., across the road from the Naval Observatory, and spoke of existential angst.
"All of us have those middle of the night sentiments of, ‘Does any of Read More
With a decision from the governor just days away, the list of prominent feminist types who have declared support for Caroline Kennedy to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat is a short one. Among the best-known are New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, 79-year-old Representative Louise Slaughter and former Kennedy White House correspondent Read More
What else do you call a day when the comedic actress and writer is seemingly everywhere all at once?
First up, Vanity Fair, which enlisted The Times' Maureen Dowd to profile Ms. Fey, whom the magazine's cover trumpets as "A New American Sweetheart!" (Punctuation theirs.) The magazine's Web site also features one of those Read More
This week in The New Yorker, Ian Parker profiles Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times columnist and bestselling author Thomas L. Friedman. The story, which is not currently online, is the latest of Mr. Parker's killer profiles (cf., Baldwin, Alec; Clooney, George; bonobos, sexy), and is chockablock with the great scenes from Read More
