Patrick O'Hannigan
Being on the email distribution list maintained by my aunt Beatrice is like asking your friend Forrest if you can sample something from that box of chocolates that his mama was forever going on about. The other day, Beatrice asked…
My local paper of late has been the (Raleigh, NC) News & Observer, and although one neighbor calls it the “Refuse & Disturber,” I have a soft spot for its opinion page, if only because the opinion section is run…
The Washington Post headline of August 15 played it straight: “Obama Says He Can Unite U.S. More Effectively than Clinton.” Staff writer Dan Balz pinned the tail on that donkey by giving WaPo readership a taste of the paragraph from…
Because my wife is a great cook, our kitchen cupboard holds many different condiments, not least among them a bottle of coarse sea salt “harvested by hand, unrefined, from the pollution-free isle of Noirmoutier, off the Atlantic Coast of France.”…
How many professional political operatives can you name? I don’t mean politicians or party bigwigs; I mean the people on their staffs. I’m not thinking of the Secretary of State or the Undersecretary for Lima Bean Inspection, but of the…
Southern California has a vibrant music scene that dates back at least as far as the Beach Boys, and if you drive inland enough to recognize what Bakersfield did for country music, or add the Grateful Dead half of the…
Want in on an argument? On one hand, there’s me, and maybe some of you. On the other hand is Dennis Prager, and my friend Bookworm. Prager you probably know by reputation, seeing as how his radio show and philosophical…
The speech that Pope Benedict XVI gave at his old stomping grounds last week continues to reverberate in unexpected ways, like the last note of a Bach fugue played by a ballpark organist on loan from the nearest cathedral. I…
I have never been to Cuba. But as the world waits with varying degrees of patience to see whether Fidel Castro has assumed room temperature, I can’t help wondering why Hollywood films about Cuba almost inevitably portray that island nation…
Have you noticed that even as professional movie critics toss well-deserved bouquets at Cars, the new animated film from Pixar and Disney, many of them temper their praise with “yes, but…”? Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times: “The movie is…
