There is an imperative to compare America's eight years of active combat in Vietnam -- a defining national experience not only militarily, but politically and culturally -- with its current involvement in Afghanistan, now escalating and in its tenth year.  The fight against the threat of terrorism within the territorial United States has supplanted the Cold War struggle against Communism has in the American imagination.  Now as in the Sixties, a Democratic administration deploys large numbers of American troops in Asia to combat the perceived threat and to keep it at bay, at a great human and financial cost.  We ask why, whether it's worth it, whether we learned anything from our last such venture, and whether our current policy reflects the hard learning of Vietnam. [Read more]

Bob Woodward is the Thomas Pynchon of political reporting.  Woodward was doing in Dick Nixon early in his career, while Pynchon's early career zenith was Gravity's Rainbow.  Both men are paid handsomely for more eagerly awaited work that generally falls short of the genius of their youth.  Obama's Wars, even for those like myself who disliked the Bush at War series and view Later-Career Woodward as a stenographer to the powerful, is an important book. [Read more]

Of West Virginia's lush green mountains, John Denver sang, life is old there, older than the trees.  And so is the Democratic sway over this state.  But all things pass, including trees, mountaintops that get strip-mined, and Democratic hegemony over this state, which now is functionally Kentucky with fewer minorities.  This hit home today with polls showing Governor Joe Manchin falling behind Republican John Raese in the race to succeed Senator Byrd.  While I picked Manchin, I was wrong.  Here's why, and what it means to Democrats going forward.

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As he heads to the Basketball Hall of Fame this week, those of us who watched his career closely know that Michael Jordan doesn't belong there, with George Mikan, Lute Olson, and a host of other excellent players and coaches.  He is somehow bigger than Halls of Fame, bigger than comparison, bigger than the whole business of having peers.  Michael Jordan is simply the greatest athlete of all time.  Why?  Lots of reasons. [Read more]

I had kidney cancer.  Eight months after it was located, three months after doctors correctly diagnosed and explained it to me, and after 102 mostly really grueling and sometimes frightening hours in the hospital, I don't have kidney cancer.  And that makes all the difference.  I am finally at home and resting comfortably after four-plus days at a nearby medical facility.  I am thrilled because I am done with the ordeal of the surgery and grateful for the support of those who love me.

The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Or Rod Stewart says that every picture tells a story.  Well, now it can be told:  This Orlando Motel is located on old Route 66 in northern Arizona, on the segment that runs north of Interstate 40 between Seligman and Kingman.  I'm doing a photo project about old Route 66, and while driving this segment a few weeks ago, saw this particular ruin while driving out of a small town.  I couldn't pass up the chance to take this seedy motel (even seedy kind of understates it) and send the result to O, which I have since done. [Read more]

This website is about Important Things.  About Discussions That Matter.  About the Debates That Move People.  If persistence of a discussion is any marker of its broader significance then, my friends, there is little more important than a considered analysis of Which Star Trek Is Best (and which Captain, and which villain, and so forth).  Because I am all about the Big Issues, I am here to explain it all for you.  Short answer at the end; you have to wade through the Weighty Analysis to get there. [Read more]

This is an opinion site, so I have to use this forum to share a point that burns within me, and the reasons why I think it.  You see, upon careful, studied reflection, and after close consideration of this important issue, I have concluded to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that Orlando is better than Genghis.  There are many reasons this is true, and as usual, I am pleased to share them with you. [Read more]

Welcome to my Top 100 films of all time.  I have not included stalwarts of such lists like Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, or, most heretical of all omissions, Citizen Kane.  My favorite directors?  Kieslowski, Ferrara, Scorsese, Peckinpah, Eastwood, Penn, the Lee brothers (Spike and Ang), and Kubrick are all over my list.  As to subjects, lots of vampirism, Westerns, absurdism, antiheroes, and a bit of romance.  What are your top ten flicks of all time?  For mine, simply read on... [Read more]

Fifty years ago, a New York-based American icon came clean about his history of cheating on the national stage.  Columbia University Professor Charles Van Doren choked up and admitted to the U.S. Congress that he had participated in a rigged quiz show, that he really wasn't the infallible genius our nation and our youth mistook him to be.  This week, another New York-based American icon, home run king Alex Rodriguez, came clean about his use of steroids during the 2001-03 baseball seasons.  Both confessions are eerily similar.  I hope -- but doubt -- that our reactions to them will be eerily similar. [Read more]

On Sunday, the last Chicago Cardinals fan is going to see something he's waited sixty years to see -- a Cardinals game that matters.  He grew up in Peoria, Illinois, and was ten years old in 1948 when the Cardinals won an NFL championship as he listened on the family radio.  This hooked him.  He followed the Cards until Bears owner George Halas chased them from the Chicago market, followed them through lean years in St.

There are those who mistakenly think the Prius is a car -- a tool to get you from one place to another.  Others think of it as a tool to improve energy conservation.  Whatever.  I am here to tell you that in the hands of a true connoisseur, it is so much more than either of those two things:  it is a game, on which you can get a really, really high score.

Like half the blog entries of 2008, this story starts with Barack Obama.  I recently got the Fall 2008 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin, an alumni publication, with the smiling face of Barack Obama ('91) on the cover, whose promise of leadership and excellence was realized so fully and wonderfully in the years after he graduated law school.  Toward the back of the Bulletin is a small-type list of obits.  I read these.  Especially the ones of younger graduates.  And that's how I learned the remarkable and disturbing story of the murder of Melissa Batten, of the class of 1997, shot dead by her husband eight days after she obtained an order of protection.

I saw a homeless man named Howard kill himself in July of 1994.  I was crossing the Chicago River by foot on the Clark Street bridge with my then-wife when he jumped ten feet into the river.  He thrashed around without really swimming.  She figured it out faster than me.  We argued for a second.  Then we agreed.  She ran to the nearest pedestrians, a ways off, to try to find a phone to call 911. [Read more]

I was in the dagblog.com office today, leaning on the bookshelf like I always do, when my friend Orlando came in, with her head jammed into a big ankh or whatever that thing is she works in. "Don't you ever take that big ankh off your head?" I asked.

"You wouldn't understand," she said. "But the avatar is really causing me some neck pain, I have to admit."

"You should just lean on books. Works great for me," I said.

"Whatev." Orlando continued. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." I was feeling generous.

In a Manhattan conference room this afternoon, Senator John McCain (R.-Ariz.) conducted and lost a hastily arranged rematch of last night's Presidential debate, this time to a cardboard cutout of the Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama (D.-Ill.).  According to CNN snap polls following this impromptu affair, McCain turned in more respectable numbers, losing by a narrow 50-45 margin to the cardboard image of the actual man who had trounced him in a debate just the night before, 58-31.  The cardboard Obama was a life-size image of the junior Senator from Illinois purchased by McCain handlers for $40 at Nick's, a Fifth Avenue souvenir shop.  Cardboard Obama depicts Barack Obama smiling and holding his glasses at his waist, and was placed behind the table at which McCain  [Read more]