2006
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Spielberg’s One-Stop
The real Munich massacre gets ABC News highlights, but Spielberg, below, picked Budapest to play Rome. Ihave a question for…
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Ancient Evenings
Ennio’s world, built for (but in contempt of) the aging Christian Democrats elite, was both fastidious and clever — like…
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The Iran Follies
Here’s some liberal history, as in liberally dispensed. Who built the Atom Bomb? The United States, with European minds. “What,”…
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Who Do You Love?
“A Rottweiler,” wrote The Observer, “[has] changed its bark and bite.” The Pole and the German can’t be compared. That’s…
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Comedy Central
Pork chops to a whirlwind… Religion is not particularly funny. The pope is not funny. Patriarchs have beards but are…
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Spaculation
Beware the depression rash… Mr. Morrie, the gardener, said not to bother Mrs. Gorman. That didn’t seem very hard since…
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Casablanca
Letters from J.P. Morgan and Teddy White. I’m not sure why I keep the vintage red cardboard folder, tied closed…
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Rain Man
Albert Camus as photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Albert Camus disliked raincoats. They apparently served too specific a purpose. Among my…
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Spam the Man
Spam. I’m tired these days. I attribute it to too much Viagra. Or maybe too many sex aids. It could…
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Pumps
Pumps. Cheaper flights are cheaper still. Last month London ran €13 plus tax. Before that Brussels cost a plate of…
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Henchmanship
Oh, the drama! Let us now praise foul men; killers; thugs; political niggers. Let us now praise them lest we…
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Resurrection Chronicles
Lew Alcindor and Elvin Hayes, battling. Aweek after my father tried killing himself with the popular barbiturate known as sodium…
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Early Worms
Earl of Worms. When George was caught eating the Earl of Worms we all got in trouble. Petie found the…
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White Dwarfs
For the secretarial demographers of intelligent design, the darkness picked Muslims over Christians. Darkness at Noon is a strange brew.…
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Dated
The Matthew is John Cabot’s student newspaper. You want dated? No, not a date. Dated. As in out of date.…
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Red China
What if Carmine Mow entered the neighborhood? What if — and Stewart was growing increasingly agitated — they kidnapped Sally,…
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Tirana Central
Enver Hoxha (far right, smiling), tyrant of tyrants for five decades, was if nothing if not Albanian. The writer Ismail…
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Binding words
A million shattered pieces for James Frey. Iam a writer. The quality of my work is irrelevant to what follows.…
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The Orient Express
Once upon a time, Joey announced there were Prussians in his bomb shelter. “Big ones,” he said, widening his palms…
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The Correction
Hellas Verona’s 1985 Series A title was a stunner. Only four other “provincial” teams have won in the last 40…
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Da Flop
Revived and on loan, Silas might make a credible James Bond villain. Here’s what’s good about “The Da Vinci Code,”…
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Nipples
Damsel in… It was a warm spring day in 1964 when we decided to cure cancer. We were bored. We…
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Meltdown
Iraq has been liberated into civil war, a pedestrian irony but an irony nonetheless. It is demoralizing to hear about:…
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Corpse Envy
Zarqawi, above, and Che Guevara in 1967: proof of death. There he was, Zarq, doing his best Che Guevara impersonation,…
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Independence Day
Villa Taverna from the author’s balcony. The neighbors have not invited me to my country’s birthday party. All things considered…
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The Right Man
Antonella and Benedetta Cappon in 1980. My favorite shot of him dates to December 31, 1999. We ran into each…
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Pussy Footing
Pussy Galore was James Bond’s cat. All this sounded, rather suddenly, like a horror film. Come on, said my father,…
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The 10 Billion
Italian players celebrate winning the country’s fourth World Cup title. Writers, endearingly pigeon-like, bob for answers to queries of their…
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TUTTO VERO!
Yes, they did… What a difference 24 years makes — at once all and none. On July 10, 1982 I…
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Head Games
Zidane: Regrets… but only to the children. Passion by nature is unintellectual. Thinkers love it because they adore sudden surrenders…
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Pseudo-Justice
The humbling of the Italian game will cost tens of millions of euro and take the sheen off the country’s…
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Beggar’s Day
King Hussein is gone. Arafat is dead. No more middlemen. No more brokers. Rome beggars are men of ways and…
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Breakage
They pay us €30 a day… The three Peruvians have issues. Why is everyone at war? asks the flaccid one…
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Hiram and Ginnie
“Mr. Editor: Why is your newspaper your newspaper? Why does it exist to say things?” Ijust got the post-modern version…
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Noodles
He said Einstein was considerably less important to him than, say, Freud… On his 70th birthday my father denounced retirement.…
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War
I’ll be General Moshy, he said. You play an Arab. When Petie caught the State of Isreal he gave me…
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Lions
What’s that noise? Otter, walrus, sea lion. One of them for sure. They hype their braying like divas. “What’s that?”…
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9/11/06
When the Cold War ended, and after the extended afterglow, a difficult question arose: what could, would become the West’s…
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1 Joe’s Law
Thank Pope Benedict, a theologian, for spiritual due diligence. It’s not easy to address Western crowds and tell them what…
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Oriana
Fallaci in the early 1960s and in 1990, after the publication of her novel “Inshallah.” In autumn 1979 my mother…
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Piazza
We live instead in the global, electronic piazza, where whispers graduate to conspiracy in a nanosecond. Among the first Italian…
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Duck angst
The canister, I repeat, has exploded… The Israeli plumber named Dan says I need a duck. Zona di guerra, he says…
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Izzy
Stone in 1988; his weekly and his later articles for the New York Review of Books made him a legendary…
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Fallacy
Years of pain. Iraq is proving what it existed to prove, that you can’t have things both ways. You can’t…
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Dominoes
They’ve come for your sugar…. The problem, said my father (who had designated me the resident adult), was the Domino…
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Moonfog
That Saddam Hussein would eventually be sentenced to death was expected. By hailing the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, the…
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Cover letter
My references say it: someone who executes. To Whom it May Concern: I am aware, trust me. I’ve done this…
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Debiti
Italian television is a political football. Here is an anecdote: A party does modestly well in national elections. Its chief,…
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Draft
Middle class students imagined themselves as redeemers in a pseudo-intellectual fight against authority. Having come of age during the Vietnam…
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The fix
America concocts wars to suit proselytizing vengeance, keeps the bedroom door cracked to doubt’s night light, waits and hopes for…
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A spotless mind
Berlusconi: The plutocrat. This is Italy in 2006: Two reality show stars — middle-aged men — face off on a…
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Franco sarebbe morto
The Rome Daily American in 1974. The problem, Chantal Dubois declared, was one of stubbornness. Testardo, she said. Obstinate. Defiant. Why, she…
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Italian election aftershocks
It’s no surprise that Berlusconi requires demagoguery to maintain his magnetism. Once, bosses took umbrage for sport. It might have…
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May days
The Red Brigades left Moro’s body in central Rome. Anecdotes were our campfire songs. The night before it ended, Anette…
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Olympic Blues
Gold medal winner Deborah Compagnoni forged a reputation as Alberto Tomba’s female counterpart and conscience. The pre-Winter Olympics have tripped…
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Prelude to a vote
The race between Romano Prodi and incumbent Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is likely to be close. It’s a campaign filled…
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The 2006 Vote
Despite Prodi’s thrill, the results leave Italy governable in name only. Neither side won a clean mandate. The good news:…
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Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Pope John Paul II in France in 1980. When the Spanish psychiatrist got the news, he did not behave as…
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