It came as a surprise to me to learn that Mickey Mouse is eighty today. He is forever young, although he was even around a few years before I was born. Truth is he was never one of my favorites. As a child I found him cheerful, amiable, loveable, and...

A couple of years ago the autos that were parked overnight in the streets of New York City were having their car radios heisted by agile crooks. Car owners were then removing their radios from their dashboards overnight and posting hand written signs in their windows announcing "No car radio"...

"I knew Jack Kennedy: Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator you're no Jack Kennedy."

The famous rejoinder of Vice Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle who had the temerity to compare his service to that of the late President resonates today as comparisons are made between...

Like most of you I recently became aware of Elizabeth "Liddy" Dole's TV attack ad against her opponent Kay Hagan, in which she accused the Democrat of taking money from an organization of the godless. In this ad Ms. Dole or her surrogate pretended that Ms. Hagan gave a...

We all know the (in)famous tales of Sarah Palin shooting wolves from a helicopter, turning the Alaskan wilderness into her personal blood spattered penny arcade. Now, in the final days of the McCain/Palin campaign, the Republicans are shooting from their helicopters at any Obama target in sight, from a mild...

I just spoke to my old college friend Roger. We confessed to each other that we cannot wait until this election is over and for Obama to be elected President. We are older men with reasonably good nervous systems tested and toughened by life, death, and everything in-between, and yet...

A few weeks ago my nephew John McNamara asked me to write about the failure of the U.S. Congress as well as the New York City government to help the sick and the dying among the city's first responders to the 9/11 catastrophe. So many firefighters like John, as well...

In the heart of darkness that is the McCain campaign we know what they are waiting for, their last and best hope, the late October video from Osama threatening to "Bomb, bomb, bomb you Christian-Jewish dogs." We've been there. Done that. And since 9/11 it has always worked for the...

Like many other progressives, I watched the Friday night debates closely and felt sure that McCain had won the night. I was delighted and surprised to find that most after-debate focus groups gave the win to Obama, if not by a knockout, on points. Then I had to question myself...

Every day I am more and more struck by the resemblance of John McCain to Shakespeare's "Macbeth." Since I'm no Shakespeare scholar that takes some doing on my part and McCain's, but the resemblance is too striking to escape my notice. Since "Macbeth" is the shortest of Shakespeare's plays, in...

It does not surprise me when I read that Sarah Palin has helped to tilt the election towards John McCain. She is a major force to contend with, and contend we must. Let me cut to the chase. I believe that the election of McCain and Sarah Palin would be...

John McCain must be in deep trouble, or why would he be begging me for money? He sent me a letter last Tuesday morning calling me friend twice and crying out that he needs "men and women like you...to help our Party...working beside me." Later he warns me that if...

As one who watched Obama and McCain in that Evangelical quiz show, I was disappointed in Obama for his inexcusable innocence, and disgusted by McCain for his signature dishonesty. Personally, I couldn't care less about Barack Obama or John McCain and their religious beliefs but I do care about the...

I was going to write about my celebration of the birth of my twin grand-daughters three days ago, a joyful move over Brangelina post, but in the midst of all this family happiness I came upon the McCain ad comparing Obama to Britney and Paris. And it stopped...

Sometimes nothing does it for me as much as the slang of my youth. As one who was a boy in the nineteen forties, I can recall that someone who was unctuous, untruthful, and distasteful could be described as a creep, or giving one "the creeps." My late, beautiful, older...

Last week I was quoting the great poet Emily Dickinson to express my unease about the Obama campaign's swing to the right which is now erroneously called the middle. The radical right has been falsely claiming that ours is a conservative country -- forgetting that we were born in...

It's a short poem but well worth reading past its first catch-phrase line. I haven't done so since college and that was when Emily Dickinson may well have been alive.

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune--without the words, And never stops...

I can truly say that I was the youngest person in America to vote for FDR in his first term election. When my mother pulled the lever for Roosevelt I was in her womb, so I suppose I could be called an intra-utero Democrat. My mother, Lillian Yellen, is long...

You can chalk up the following to jealousy if you wish. When I die I am sure to be mourned by my wife, my sons, and my cat. Maybe. I'm not so sure about the cat. When Tim Russert died last week I watched with amazement the unending flow of...

Last week someone asked me as a long married man what I thought of gay marriage. I said I was all for it; it was straight marriage I sometimes have my doubts about. I was joking, but like most jokes there was a kernel of truth in it. With the...