Against The Grain

Opinion

A Note To Readerland

May 13, 2009 • Writing hundreds of columns yields a lesson that resonates for journalists and newspeople at a time when their business is crumbling. That lesson is similar to that most basic bromide of American commerce: The customer is always right.

Opinion

100 Years, 100 Novels, One List

May 7, 2009 • Some years ago, at dinner with my wife and a friend, we started composing a list of best 100 novels of the 20th century. We soon gave up. But I squirreled the list away and tinkered with it occasionally. Now, it's time to share and see what you think.

Opinion

New Lows In TV Advertising

April 30, 2009 • These days, TV is filled with raunchy ads and shows targeting teens. When nothing is off-limits, when nothing is sacred, when nothing offends, then nothing is, well, sacred. Who wants a world where nothing is sacred?

Tax Me, Tax Me!

April 16, 2009 • In the middle of a whopper recession, a new poll finds a big increase in the perceived fairness of how Americans are taxed. That suggests that perhaps President Obama's popularity is contagious, and the whole of government has greater legitimacy and support because of it.

Opinion

The AIG Tea Party

March 18, 2009 • The public furor over bonuses paid to AIG executives may be a tipping point that helps inhibit future executive behavior in a small number of cases. Then maybe the scapegoating and vitriol will have a purpose.

Opinion

Does The God Gap Matter?

March 12, 2009 • A new study about believers and nonbelievers in America could enflame the already overheated fretting about the culture war we are allegedly waging.

Opinion

Wall Street Blame Game: Tag, You're It

March 5, 2009 • President Obama's tenure can be measured in weeks, but that hasn't stopped The Wall Street Journal and others from faulting him for the Dow's plummet. The idea of blaming one person for the downfall of a giant, complex economy is nuts.

Opinion

Obama As Ideological Rorschach

February 26, 2009 • Professional partisans and intellectuals are projecting political theories onto Barack Obama. But trying to pin an ideological mission on the new president seems wrongheaded; it fundamentally misunderstands his aspirations.

Opinion

Literary Death Spiral? The Fading Book Section

February 19, 2009 • One of the sad, little sidebars to the sad, big saga of the waning of American newspapers is the disappearance of professional, edited book sections. This comes at a time when the nature of reading is changing — and not necessarily for the better.

Opinion

A Puritan View Of The Crash

February 12, 2009 • If the Puritan superego were alive and kicking in the American psyche, which it isn't, we'd be racked by shame and guilt today. That's because we would believe our economic misfortune was caused by a binge of covetousness, hubris and moral sloth.

Opinion

Picketing The Ethics Police

February 5, 2009 • The spitballs are flying in the first counterrevolution to the Obama revolution. The issue is ethical prissiness. Now that Barack Obama's in office and actually trying to put some teeth to his words, some counterrevolutionaries are carping that the whole "we can do better" thing has gone overboard.

John Updike At Rest

January 28, 2009 • The writer, let us hope, died more peacefully than his most famous character, Rabbit Angstrom. Rabbit died about 19 years ago, when Rabbit at Rest was published. Rabbit has disturbed some readers ever since.

Opinion

The Wisdom Of Obama's Crowd

January 22, 2009 • For the past 30 years, the American voter has had a consistent and unwavering lack of trust and confidence in government and governors. But the massive crowd on Inauguration Day, and the millions and millions who were there in spirit, seemed to be saying, "Lead with class and we'll watch your back."

Opinion

Investigating Bush's 'War On Terror'

January 14, 2009 • President-elect Obama will have to decide if he is going discourage or encourage aggressive investigation into the Bush administration's policies and practices on torture, rendition and domestic surveillance. It will be a high-profile, highly symbolic and highly difficult decision to make.

Mr. Obama, Give D.C. The Vote, Now

January 8, 2009 • The nation's capital city, as it says on its license plates, endures "taxation without representation." Washington has no vote in the House or Senate. Barack Obama should use his inaugural address to demand that residents of his new home city receive the basic rights of citizens.

Opinion

Madoff And Blagojevich: Lessons From Creeps

December 18, 2008 • What drives the rubbernecking with Rod Blagojevich and Bernard Madoff is not the nature or even scale of the alleged crimes. It's the chutzpah. Barack Obama wrote The Audacity of Hope. These characters could write "The Audacity of Hubris."

Opinion

Give Obama His Honeymoon

December 11, 2008 • President-elect Obama is getting extremely high marks from Washington insiders for how he is handling the transition. But the press insists on looking for bad news.

Opinion

E-Greens: The Rise Of Media Environmentalism

December 4, 2008 • Americans are susceptible to a variety of sneaky maladies associated with the Media Age: information overload, couch potato-obesity, social isolation. The simple key to being a media environmentalist is proper use of the off button.

Opinion

Ideas And Politics: Frenemies For Life

November 20, 2008 • Many voters and commentators responded to Barack Obama as if he were a candidate of great, big ideas — a transformational thinker, a visionary. But, by Obama's own account, he is a pragmatist, not strongly bound to any "isms."

Opinion

Asking Not What Their Country Can Do For Them

November 13, 2008 • A suggestion that Americans should look for their own ways to help their country, rather than wait for Barack Obama to ask, elicited many reactions from readers. "Call it idealistic ... if you want, but people want to be involved," one wrote. "We are not 'consumers' of democracy. We are the democracy," said another.

Opinion

You Wanted Change? It's Time To Help

November 6, 2008 • Civic improvements are accomplished by individuals, not primarily in a "top down" manner. Why not ask — or at least ponder — what we can do to help?

Opinion

Post-Election Unconventional Wisdom: A Guide

October 31, 2008 • If Barack Obama wins, pundits are sure to make sweeping pronouncements about what it all means. Does a Democratic victory signal a massive, lasting political realignment? Maybe not. Has blue America vanquished red America? Not necessarily.