Public Service. Ah, what  a noble phrase! It conjures up images of a virtuous but humble toiler in the vineyards of goodness, bringing succor to the weak and friendless. Yeah, right. In actuality, the toilers exercise their best efforts to oppress the weak and friendless. (As a general principle, this is a pretty good idea. […]

In 1958, a newly minted chanteuse named Connie Francis released her debut album, whose title song was “Who’s Sorry Now?” In this particular case, the singer is expressing refreshing schadenfreude, gleefully telling her former boyfriend, who has just been dumped by his latest light o’ love, that she rejoices in his misery. One feels that […]

Jack Kennedy spent his term so stoned on painkillers to treat his ruptured disk that he approved the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Ronald Reagan spent both of his terms nodding off in jelly-bean-induced comas. Barack Obama spends more time on vacation than he does in the White House. So who actually runs the […]

A few (well, many) years ago, Francois Truffaut, the great artsy French director,  made a film based on Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel “Fahrenheit 451.” The premise of the novel was that a future society would ban the reading of books, and would enforce this dictat by burning them. The title came from the fact that […]

As you walk through one major airport in the Northeast, you will encounter a sign in the form of a yellow rhombus, on which is painted a bomb. Not a modern bomb; rather, it is an old fashioned kind of bomb: round, with a protruding sputtering fuse. A hundred years ago, anarchists, dressed in top hats […]