Satire–A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision or wit. I quit writing satire years ago when too many angry readers took what I wrote literally. I blamed their lack of discrimination on an increasingly dippy world in which reality too often seemed bizarre. I made the break with [...]

The October 31st headline on The Washington Post editorial said it all: An ‘Idiot Wind.’ Long after the election, I expect that wind will continue to blow, because such habits of mind have a way of perpetuating themselves. The phrase was uttered by Rashid Khalidi, an American-born scholar who heads a Middle East Institute at [...]

John McCain is taking his lumps for the decision to make Sarah Palin his running mate. The Washington Post said its endorsement of Barack Obama was simplified by McCain’s “irresponsible selection” of Palin “who is not ready to be president.” The New York Times declared that McCain’s choice of someone “so evidently unfit for the [...]

There are journalists and then there are so-called journalists. In the latter camp is Anthony Martin, featured in a hour-long program on Fox news recently, in which he was presented as a journalist. Martin is an obsessive critic of Barack Obama (he says Obama once trained to overthrow the government) and is the source of [...]

As reports proliferate about greed and crime in the suites, it was refreshing to hear praise for a pair of principled newspaper corporate executives, Anthony Ridder, CEO of the former Knight Ridder chain, and Gary Pruitt of McClatchy. John Walcott, Washington bureau chief of Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) lauded both Oct. 7 in remarks on [...]

I’ve written several times recently about how the press, including the leading news organizations, has been running away from damaging stories about John McCain, hiding them. The response is mixed: In emails today and yesterday, a former colleague thanked me but a Naval Reserve lieutenant commander said I was writing drivel. Interestingly, several people took [...]

Washington-based editors have apparently found an exit strategy for Iraq, but it couldn’t be more short-sighted: They’ve decided to pull their reporters out of the country. This morning’s Washington Post features a front-page story by Ernesto Londoño and Amit R. Paley describing how the number of foreign journalists in Baghdad is “declining sharply, a media [...]

Anyone think there are too many commercials on network television, and that some of them cross the line of decency and good taste? It wasn’t always that way. Or do you think that all those commercials for this drug or that one are unseemly and possibly dangerous? That wasn’t always permitted. Are you as confident [...]

This is the time of the year the government perpetuates a problem for millions of Americans, and most of the press goes along because of its superficial knowledge. The issue is Medicare Part D, which too few of my colleagues in the press know about. Each year since the Part D drug benefit, passed by [...]

George J. Esseff, Sr., who describes himself ” as one of the world’s most successful Titanium entrepreneurs,” bought a full-page ad in the New York Times to publicize his “sincere recommendation” to the heads of the three largest television networks. “If you truly want to restore the credibility of your News Bureaus by getting back [...]