The National Newsroom
The National Newsroom
The (lost) art of dinner party patter
It’s holiday season, which means plenty of gala lunches and meals with family members. God help us.
December 2nd, 2010
We were going around the Thanksgiving table last week giving thanks when one of my in-laws seized the opportunity to grandstand about the plight of Native Americans. The table fell into a dead silence. Read more »
The National Newsroom
Dancing With the Scars
December 2nd, 2010
Who said Sarah Palin doesn’t read? In September 2008, I wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Mark Burnett—the creator of Survivor and the father of reality television—had become the Republicans’ intellectual god as the GOP had grasped, with something like creative genius, the fact that in contemporary American democracy authority had to be humbled before it could lead. Read more »
With Medicare plan changes coming soon, seniors should re-evaulate their coverage
December 2nd, 2010
Nobody likes to deal with their medical plan choices—maybe least of all seniors. About 80 percent of older Americans remain in whatever Medicare plan they started with, even when unhappy with the care, according to a recent survey by Allsup, an Illinois-based Social Security and Medicare consulting firm. Read more »
The National Newsroom
Looking at Heaven With Frank Gehry
The architect so famous he spawned his own Simpsons character bets big again in Manhattan
December 2nd, 2010
“Where would you like to go?” a construction worker asked. Everyone was in hard hats. “Uh, we’re going to 37, take us to—” someone started to say. “Heaven!” Frank Gehry chimed in. “We’d like to go to heaven. Press heaven!” Read more »
Personal Finance
Gold buyers and sellers should beware of shady dealers
November 25th, 2010
Howard Wolfe watched gold prices soar for several years before he finally decided to jump. Last year, the Mississippi retiree answered an advertisement for a company selling gold bullion. He wired $20,000 when the metal was retailing for $1,100. As of last week, gold was selling for Read more »
The National Newsroom
The Death of the Phone Call
November 25th, 2010
My phone bills are shrinking. Not, unfortunately, in cost. I mean they’re getting shorter. I recently found an old bill from a decade ago; it was fully 15 pages long, because back then I was making a ton of calls—about 20 long-distance ones a day. Today my bills are a meager two or three pages, at most. Read more »
The National Newsroom
Where Are They Now?
If you’re looking for the biggest players in the Wall Street mess, most of them are right where we left them
November 25th, 2010
Have you ever noticed,” the chairman of Citigroup, Richard D. Parsons, asked The Observer on Nov. 15, “that in the NFL, or in the NBA, or in Major League Baseball, this guy was a failure at Cleveland, and then he becomes the coach in Houston? These guys just move around from one team to another. Why is that? Because there isn’t a very deep pool of skilled talent that exists. Read more »
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Dealing With a Touchy Subject
November 25th, 2010
“Don’t touch my junk!” Will this be the battle cry of the next American Revolution? If you think about it, it’s amazing. Why this? But thinking doesn’t have anything to do with it. There’s a good reason, which we’ll get to. Read more »
Personal Finance
More tools now available to shop for medical procedures
November 18th, 2010
In bygone days, when more workers had comprehensive health-care insurance, the price of medical procedures was not much of an issue. But now, with many people having to make do with high-deductible plans—if they have insurance at all—price becomes a huge consideration. “We are seeing more and more of this, and it’s only going to grow over time,” said Martin Rosen, executive vice president and co-founder of the Health Advocate, a Philadelphia consulting firm. Read more »
The National Newsroom
The Tina Brown Turnaround
The editor’s support of a Newsweek–Daily Beast merger followed some moments when all seemed lost
November 18th, 2010
Tina Brown was in a state. It was Tuesday morning, Nov. 9, and the Daily Beast editor was in Barry Diller’s office at IAC headquarters on the West Side. Talks with Sidney Harman about merging the site with his recently acquired Newsweek were back on—big time—and to Brown, they teetered on the brink of inevitability. “Oh, my God,” she thought. “This is really going to happen.” Read more »
