Magazine

Occasionally, I even buy one for old times’ sake. Spider-Man, like me, appears to have grown up, but his marriage seems to be on the rocks. Still, it’s getting harder and harder to find comics because a big cultural shift has taken place: Kids don’t read them anymore. Comic books, like paper routes and small […]

Unfortunately, there’s a catch, though you’re unlikely to hear about it from television ads, phone operators, or tow-truck drivers. Just because Uncle Sam gives you a $1,000 tax deduction for donating your car doesn’t mean that Easter Seals will receive a check in the same amount. The problem with car donation programs is that most […]

It’s an old joke, yes, but for too many of the nation’s accountants it’s something else. It’s a living. There they were, the accountants from the prestigious Big Eight firm of Arthur Young and Company giving “unqualified” audits–that’s professional jargon for EVERYTHING’S OK OVER HERE–to Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan. This was at the […]

Even within this tradition of U.S. neglect, President George W. Bush stands out for his obliviousness. A Texan and an aspiring Spanish-speaker obsessed with courting Latino voters, Bush has made opening markets southward his overriding foreign policy goal for the Western Hemisphere. He treats Canada, by far America’s largest trading partner, as at best an […]

It was a strange friendship; and regardless of the individuals involved, it would have been a strange diplomatic relationship. Post-Soviet Russia needed America’s financial help to reenergize its ruined economy. But that did not give America total leverage over its old enemy. As Russian officials knew, it would not be in America’s interest to see […]

“Lockheed called her the Ghostrider. The pilots called her the Frisbee, the F-19A, the secretly developed Stealth attack fighter. She had no corners, no box shapes to allow radar signals to bounce cleanly off her. Her high-bypass turbofans were designed to emit a blurry infrared signature at most. From above, her wings appeared to mimic […]

Only last fall, America’s foremost political mavericks, John McCain, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan, came calling at the state capital to size up this phenomenon, perhaps hoping to absorb some of his magic or learn how to win voters with blunt talk. Even Al Gore cozied up to him. Ventura was the third-party candidate who […]

The Wasp old guard put up the white flag without a shot being fired. Suddenly bars began to drop: in formerly restricted neighborhoods, in previously elite country and city clubs, in once white-shoe bank, law, and investment firms. Once-snobbish institutions loosened up, opened up, disappeared. The closest thing to an aristocracy that America had known […]

In mid-afternoon, when I was stripped down to my underwear and put in the box, it had been in the mid-eighties and the cool darkness was welcome. But it had been forever since the slit in front of me had gone black–near midnight I bet–and I had been shivering for hours. The shakes started soon […]

The family leave act would languish another three years, as conservatives and right-wing pro-family groups argued that it would only encourage more women to abandon their God-given roles as mothers and seek the monetary rewards of the workplace. Opponents characterized the bill as an attempt by women to have their pursuit of pin money subsidized […]