People aren’t doing it for the free doughnuts. But they might do it for America. — The great patriotic holiday of July 4 came and went, and so did the brief hullabaloo in the press over our failure to hit Joe Biden’s deadline for getting at least one COVID shot into the arms of 70% of U.S. adults. The president made a speech promising to go…

The Republican Party’s culture of lies continues to bring out the worst in humanity — A few weeks ago I wrote about the fleecing of my fellow Americans by the Republican Party. The piece was, for the most, part inspired by the pathological con artistry of New York’s newly minted congressional rep George Santos. But it’s an idea that’s been running through my mind for…

If the Republicans were a private company instead of a political party they’d all be in jail — The election of serial liar George Santos to represent New York’s 3rd District in the U.S. Congress tells you everything you need to know about today’s Republican Party. A lot of adjectives get thrown around when trying to describe the current dysfunction of what we once thought of as The…

Wanna-be House Speaker Kevin McCarthy fails at partisanship, while his party picks a Democrat in Pennsylvania — For the past hundred years, the vote for the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has been uneventful, like filling out the customs form upon your return from a trip abroad. …

The quiet stretch bookended by Christmas and New Year’s is perfect for thinking about what comes next — The mad rush of Christmas is behind us. The new year is yet to arrive. For me, the days in-between are one of the best parts of the year. For one thing, the ad agency where I work shuts down. We’re all too distracted to be truly productive in our…

T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece turns 100 years old this year, and is still filled with inspiration for writers — I had a fever the first time I read The Waste Land. Maybe that explains the way the words burned themselves so indelibly into my life. I was a young copywriter at a hot ad agency, and I’d landed a dream assignment. A new ad campaign for Harley-Davidson motorcycles would…

A modest suggestion for those who mistrust Elon Musk’s stewardship of Twitter but aren’t ready to deplatform — It’s possible that by the time you read this, Twitter will have completed its self-destruction under the erratic ownership of Elon Musk. In that case, you can disregard the following. My guess is Twitter will be with us still. Not quite yet the “free-for-all-hellscape” Mr. Musk promised to steer clear…

The most beautiful of seasons is also the most fleeting — I took my mother for a drive on a splendid fall day. At 93 years old she’s suddenly found herself looking at a new chapter in her life, and here she thought she’d already authored all the chapters that might be required for a compelling life’s story. She needed cheering…

The lesson of Liz Truss is that trusting right-wing politicians to fix inflation is like pouring gas on a dumpster fire — So, British Prime Minister Liz Truss is out, resigning after a wild 44 days and setting a record for brevity in the office. …