Historical rumor has it that a subordinate once asked Napoleon, “What kind of generals do you want?” “I want lucky ones,” he replied.  Luck is important, and it does nothing to belittle Obama’s intelligence and hard-earned achievements to say that he’s been lucky (heck, he was in the Illinois State Senate less than 5 years […]

In early 2004 Howard Dean was running for the Democratic presidential nomination and went on a tour of the Holy Land to shore up his foreign policy credentials and squash speculation that he was a secularist who couldn’t connect with religious Americans.  A New York Times story of January 4, 2004 details some of the […]

Walking down 68th Street yesterday between Lexington and Third Avenues – the spot where, historians think, Nathan Hale was hanged in September of 1776– I felt the world change. A sidewalk vendor was selling pretty decent neckties for $5 each.Neckties are one of my subjects. Since I was thirteen years old, I’ve spent more time […]

When I was a young kid living in South Carolina, you would still sometimes see mule-drawn wagons on country roads.  You also saw advertisements for Burma Shave: typically a series of six to eight small road signs at short intervals with a rhymed message of some kind.  “Don’t go passing up a slope/Unless you have […]