Tom Wolfe's 1987 masterpiece Bonfire of the Vanities captured the greed, class, ambition, and politics of Reagan era New York City. So, too, does Mark Leibovich's This Town capture early 21st century Washington, D.C. Bonfire, however, is fiction and This Town is for real. Leibovich, who is the New York Times magazine national political reporter, …
Month: July 2013
Anthony Weiner more than a sick joke
Yesterday may have been National Hot Dog Day, but Anthony Weiner has nothing to celebrate. Anthony Weiner is a .....Good taste prevents me from playing with the punning headlines of the New York Post and Daily News. I'm sure there is a clinical explanation, some personality disorder classification having to do with reckless, self-destructive behavior, …
Zimmerman verdict gnaws at us
Arrests were made overnight in Los Angeles and Oakland as crowds protesting the "not guilty" outcome in the Trayvon Martin murder case turned violent. Had the verdict gone the other way, others would have protested. Even though, according to juror B37, the jury doesn't seem to have viewed the case through the prism of race, it's hard …
Nervous at All Star break
I'm a life-long Red Sox fan, though I have some fair weather tendencies. I even admit to some fair weather anxieties. The major one is that, if the Red Sox are in first place at the All Star break, I take it as a bad sign. It's the idea that the boys of summer simply …
Charlotte Golar Richie: the next mayor of Boston?
I have crossed paths with Boston mayoral candidate Charlotte Golar Richie at various times over the last few decades, but without getting a real sense of her as an individual. Certainly, I knew her from her bio: Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya; two master's degrees; two-term member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where she chaired the Housing …
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Warren unfairly under fire on affordable housing
Newton Mayor Setti Warren is catching flak from some Garden City liberals for withholding $1.4 million in city-controlled federal money for a ten-unit building in a former fire station in the Waban section of Newton. The so-called Engine 6 project would house nine chronically homeless and an attendant, bringing to the residential neighborhood individuals with a history of …
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Book ideas for summer nights
My family's return from a glorious week in London shows how salutary it is for a political junkie to purge herself- albeit temporarily - of politics. So before I get sucked back into the nearly unspeakable frustration of focusing on the ongoing national political dysfunction, I want to reflect on the pleasures that lie between the covers of a …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 