A friend of mine had his name in the paper the other day. It was an article speculating about who might inherit a prestigious post in the literary world when the current grandee retires. The article said that my friend would have led the list 10 years ago. Ouch! The obvious though unstated implication is [...]
Goldman Sucks?
Apparently, when Greg Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) almost 12 years ago, the legendary investment firm was something like the Make-A-Wish Foundation — existing only to bring light and peace and happiness to the world. Smith, who was executive director and head of the firm’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the [...]
The Worst Campaign Ever?
Barbara Bush said the other day that the 2012 presidential race has been “the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life.” I disagree. My vote would be for 1988, when her husband, George H.W. Bush, built a repulsive campaign against Michael Dukakis based on state prison furlough policy, obscure judicial rulings about reciting the [...]
The Case Against the Case Against Limbaugh
By Michel Kinsley - Mar 5, 2012 The people who want to drive Rush Limbaugh off the air are not assuaged or persuaded by his apology over the weekend. They say he was not sincere: He only apologized, for calling a Georgetown University law student a“slut” and a “prostitute,” because of pressure from advertisers. [...]
Spreadsheets Don’t Lie
By Michael Kinsley - Mar 1, 2012 Every year around late February, the government puts out the Economic Report of the President, which includes a whole bunch of historical charts on the state of the economy that you can download as Excel spreadsheets. Most years I combine them all into one big spreadsheet and [...]
Santorum’s Momemt
Maybe anyone who voluntarily runs the gantlet we call our presidential election process must be mentally imbalanced in some respect, but this year’s crop of Republican candidates has been especially odd. Of the four who remain viable, only Mitt Romney can even pass as normal — and he has that eerie, Stepford-wife quality of being [...]
No Experience Necessary
By Michael Kinsley - Feb 16, 2012 During a presidential debate in 1984, Ronald Reagan, who was then 73, famously said of his opponent, Walter Mondale, who was then 56 and trying to make an issue of Reagan’s age: “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The [...]
The Rise of the American Oligarchy
PITY THE BILLIONAIRE The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right By Thomas Frank 225 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $25 Thomas Frank is the thinking person’s Michael Moore. If Moore, the left-wing filmmaker, had Frank’s Ph.D. (in history from the University of Chicago), he might produce books like this one and [...]
The Emperor Has No Prose
By Michael Kinsley – Feb 9, 2012 It’s been going on for too long, right before our eyes. Inevitably, someone was going to blow the whistle, and wouldn’t you know it would be Felix Salmon, the famous financial blogger for Reuters? The name Felix Salmon (for some reason) always makes me think of those plastic [...]
Being Prudish About Politicians’ Private Lives: Michael Kinsley
Many years ago, when Senator Ted Kennedy was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination, I quit my job at a national magazine in protest over the owner’s refusal to publish an article I had edited about the senator’s extramarital activities. At that time, there was a general consensus among Washington journalists that one didn’t do that [...]