Full disclosure up front. I have been a Helen Thomas friend ever since we stood on a tarmac, interviewing Jackie Kennedy through a crack in the window as The First Lady sat in a limo, waiting for her infant son, John, and three-year-old Caroline, to arrive in a plane and commence life in the White [...]

In all the media hoopla about Richard Blumenthal’s Vietnam military record, a major issue has been ignored. Democrat Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general now running for the U.S. Senate, has been in the hot seat ever since the New York Times reported he erroneously stated that he had served in Vietnam. Among other speechifying moments he [...]

A bit of magic happened at the Philadelphia Theater the other night that has a lot to do with American journalism. The whiskey voice of Molly Ivins – the satirist of all things worth assaulting in Texas and most of America – came alive again in the whiskey voice of actress Kathleen Turner. Molly’s voice [...]

As I was the lone passenger on an airport shuttle bus from Santa Fe to Albuquerque the day after Senator Edward Kennedy died, the loquacious bus driver naturally started talking to me. He had been listening to talk radio and the host was having trouble finding anyone to say a good word about Kennedy. When [...]

The elevator opened on the penthouse floor of the Statler Hilton and I dashed into the hall, late for the press conference, so late that it was all over. Two burly guards halted me with a not too friendly stiff arm on the shoulder. “Where ya goin’ kid?” said one while the other yelled back [...]

This great and compassionate man was a “writer’s writer” and a “reporter’s reporter” — someone we all vainly hoped to emulate in his vision and passion for the average man and in the care he took to encourage young writers. He was 96 when he died, and yet it seems way too soon. His voice [...]

With help from the media, this past week proves that down and dirty campaigning can be considered a success. Economic collapse and suicide bombers in Baghdad were no match for the media’s rolling thunder that greeted the slime-time ad that John McCain approved regarding Obama’s canceled visit with wounded troops in Germany. As the New [...]

During the primary, the national press corps, led by Maureen Dowd‘s continuing Obambi imagery, depicted Obama as a doe-eyed, political naïf, too inexperienced and unseasoned for hardball Hillary. Instead of mouthing such silliness, if they had done some legwork and looked into his Chicago political roots, they would have seen one tough pragmatist not above [...]

Like many, I am sure, who have seen the new New Yorker cover, I am still reeling. Nothing the far right wingnut media brigade has promulgated is as offensive or damaging as this cartoon: Obama in full Muslim gear, Michelle in an Angela Davis style Afro, terrorist rifle slung over her shoulder, fist bumping while [...]

“Say it Ain’t So, Joe” was the legendary plea of a young fan when famed baseball hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, testified to his part in throwing the games during the great Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919. (The boy apparently was more grammatical and said “it isn’t so, is it Joe?” but media hype being [...]