October 14, 2012

"High Information" as a Low Compliment

Election years are full of hackneyed phrases, but my new favorite is the compound adjective "high information," used with or without a hyphen to compliment people for being unusually diligent readers or viewers. Andrew Sullivan supplied a recent exa...

August 12, 2011

Chimps, Chumps, and Air Traffic Controllers

Georgetown University professor Joseph McCartin has a book coming out in October about the enduring significance of the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) strike.  McCartin, a historian of the labor movement, also parlayed his exp...

October 10, 2009

Defending Palin with Orbison

Continuing education can be a tricky business when it involves teaching people who sometimes treat arguments like songs. That's why a friend who despises Sarah Palin made me want to defend her. Pounding out a four-count indictment on the drumhead of ...

May 9, 2008

Character Rather Than Sexism

Kyle-Anne Shiver does not ask frivolous questions, and so when she pointedly wondered whether it was Hillary Clinton's sex rather than Barack Obama's race that has driven media coverage   of the two Democrats, I figured she deserved a thoug...

March 20, 2007

The Linguistic Case Against Barack Obama

Barack Obama may have frightened Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton into rewriting the civil rights section of her autobiography (was that erstwhile  "Goldwater Girl" really a staunch supporter of  Rev. Martin Luthe...

February 4, 2006

Wiretap This

She wasn't much for knocking. With her figure, she didn't need to be. She swept into my office on a perfumed wave of good posture and practiced indignation, looking like six feet of perturbed. I put down the Wall Street Journal and pulled my feet off...