Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock. “Today is your birthday.” (This is the special section of the Daily Newspaper Horoscope. You remember newspapers — impartial facts, reasoned commentary, comics for the kiddies, and a Zodiac that isn’t truth, comment or let’s face it healthy for children. Now more than ever, Newspapers Are the Future, especially this […]
The most useless habits can be the hardest to break. The three most annoying routines have dwindled to one. None of them ever was harmful. For me, it was a curiosity, why keep on, no pleasure, not even any risk. The first silly habit I knocked off as an adult was to forego the comic […]
It’s been some three decades since I last watched them do it, and I can’t quite replicate it. I wish I could multitask like my parents, who excelled at the feat before it had a name. There’s one round of activities of theirs that I envy. They could read mysteries and novels (Mom) or thrillers […]
Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock Now that the Republicans have done so well in the 2010 elections, they should use their momentum to enact the next sweeping measure for our time: Universal conscription for all American youth. A measure of Democrats would support this as well. Reviving — and broadening and updating — the draft […]
Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sometimes you have to stop and think. Often thinking and writing looks like loafing. As Steinbeck wrote: “I write many thousands of words a day and some of them go on paper.” It can take quite a while. Visiting Washington’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the first time […]
First published in the November 2010 issue of the e-Columnist By Ben S. Pollock President, National Society of Newspaper Columnists “Politics make strange bedfellows” goes the quote by 19th-century newspaperman Charles Dudley Warner, and this fall it’s been columnists getting renown for jumping on the mattress. Columnists, commentators, news analysts, bloggers, interest-group hacks, cable yaks — […]