May 7, 2010
To go or not to go? That was the question.I agonized over it for weeks after the letter arrived from Chapel Hill announcing that my college reunion would be held in May. The letter also noted, without quite saying so, that this was A Big One. That made at...
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April 2, 2010
When Dan Pollitt died recently in Chapel Hill, the headline in one state newspaper read: "Chapel Hill radical dies at 88." Pollitt was a witty man who would have been amused by the "radical" label.
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March 5, 2010
If the truth about President Franklin Roosevelt's massive disabilities had ever been published, he would never have been elected president for one term, much less four. Roosevelt -- a paraplegic bound to a wheelchair but never photographed in one for the...
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February 19, 2010
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why President Barack Obama is accused of being 1) a radical, 2) a socialist, 3) a liberal. All three labels, of course, are toxic in American politics.
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February 5, 2010
With the stroke of a pen, President Harry Truman did a courageous thing back in July 1948. He signed Executive Order 9981, abolishing segregation in the armed forces.
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January 22, 2010
Dee Dee Myers is the author of "Why Women Should Rule the World," but if you expected a feminist rant this week when she spoke at Elon University, you'd be wrong. "I like men," said Myers, who is married and the mother of two children.
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January 8, 2010
I often drive by a billboard in Greensboro that puzzles me. The words emblazoned across it read: “Bill Gates started a business during a recession. Recession 101.”
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December 25, 2009
There’s a saying in journalism that nobody reads newspapers on Christmas Day because they are incredibly busy. But just in case you have a moment to spare, I would like to recommend a movie that’s perfect fit for the Christmas season. &nb...
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December 11, 2009
The Christmas "wish list" had arrived from New Delhi, India, and was a fervent request for "lots of toys." It came from my three grandchildren, ages 10, 7 and 5, who live in India where their father, my son, works. The children request...
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November 27, 2009
President Obama said Tuesday that he intends "to finish the job" in Afghanistan. Whatever that means. Our mission in Afghanistan has become muddled, our exit strategy is unknown and public support for the war is waning at a time when Obama...
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November 13, 2009
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eventual collapse of communism. I was not in Berlin that November night in 1989 when jubilant East and West Germans danced atop the wall. But months earlier I had been in Ea...
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October 30, 2009
When Social Security was enacted in 1935, conservatives were outraged. They called it socialism and accused President Franklin D. Roosevelt of bankrupting the nation with his "financial hocus-pocus," as an editorial in The New York Times said.
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October 16, 2009
When I made the appointment for my annual mammogram, it happened to coincide with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I didn't expect anything to be wrong, but life can change in an instant. The American Cancer Society says one out of eight wome...
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October 2, 2009
Roman Polanski, the Academy Award-winning director who's been on the lam for 31 years for raping a child, was arrested in Switzerland last Saturday. Should U.S. courts let bygones be bygones for the brilliant filmmaker, or should Polanski, now 76, b...
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September 18, 2009
The bad news about President Obama is that he got off his game this summer. He sat on the sidelines and let the screamers and fist shakers dominate the debate about health care and turn it into a firestorm. The good news about Obama is that he admit...
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September 4, 2009
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's funeral was as close as it gets to a state funeral without being one. The great cathedral, the statesmen, the honor guard. All of the trappings were on display. Yet hovering in the shadows of the funeral Mass was the darker...
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August 21, 2009
I was glad when Tiger Woods lost the PGA tournament to the South Korean, when the hurricane season cranked up in the Caribbean, when the Obama family went out West to visit national parks. Why? Because these stories momentarily diverted our attentio...
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August 7, 2009
I write this on behalf of the thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- of Americans who've had what I shall call "a bad airport experience" this summer. I had one last Friday at New York's LaGuardia Airport, one of the nation's busiest.
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July 24, 2009
When my sons suggested we have our family reunion on the West Coast and much of it on Whidbey Island, I reached for a map. Whidbey Island? I'd never heard of the place. I'm an East Coaster who's fairly familiar with barrier islands off the Atlantic coast......
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July 10, 2009
Saddam Hussein made news the other day despite the 24-hour media saturation focused on Michael Jackson's death, Sarah Palin's bizarre resignation and Gov. Mark Sanford's philandering in Argentina. The Saddam story illustrates how a nation's leaders -- bot...
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June 26, 2009
Like Bill Clinton before him, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina has "a zipper problem." You've heard the riveting details. On Father's Day weekend, Sanford, 49, mysteriously disappeared. It's one thing for a private citizen to go missing but f...
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June 12, 2009
Think back for a minute to your own school days. Do you remember that special teacher who exposed you to bold ideas and a bigger world? Somebody whose standards were exceedingly high and expected nothing less from your own?Meet Johnson Harriss, a beloved...
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May 29, 2009
I was in Washington last weekend and happened to drive through Georgetown, that posh neighborhood of elegant houses inhabited by senators, cabinet members and the well-heeled. Among Georgetown's former residents were John and Elizabeth Edwards of North Ca...
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May 15, 2009
The topic today is: How to kill the Republican Party. I'm not referring to the GOP's perennial foes, the Democrats. I'm talking about Republican leaders who are spouting off stuff that's a recipe for political disaster. Let's start with Dick Cheney, our f...
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May 1, 2009
As readers of this column know, I occasionally visit Seattle, that city of stunning beauty in the Pacific Northwest. I don't travel across America for the scenery but to visit Clara, Louisa and Jack Dee. Oops! I just heard you yawn. As a friend once said...
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