About Joe Weber

Now the Jerry and Karla Huse Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska's College of Journalism and Mass Communications, I worked 35 years in magazines and newspapers. I spent most of that time, 22 years, at BUSINESS WEEK Magazine, leaving in August 2009 as chief of correspondents. So far, I have worked in central New Jersey, New York City, Denver, Dallas, Philadelphia, Toronto, Chicago, Beijing, Shanghai and Lincoln, Nebraska. The adventure continues.

Trump and the press

Posted on July 13, 2026 by Joe Weber

We’re getting a master class in would-be autocracy

Joseph Weber

Nearly a decade ago, during his first presidential term, Donald J. Trump infamously tweeted that major media outlets were “the enemy of the American people.” That drew an intriguing response from a fellow Republican, Sen. John McCain.

“I hate the press,” the Arizona war hero sarcastically told NBC News’ Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” “I hate you especially. But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital.”

And McCain – whom Trump had derided as “a loser” — made the risks of losing an unfettered press all too clear.

“If you want to preserve – I’m very serious now – if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press,” McCain said. “And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.”

So, now – after he has coopted Congress, the Senate and much of the Judiciary, and weaponized parts of the military against Americans – Trump and his minions are going after the press anew. The administration subpoenaed five New York Times reporters after they reported that the new Air Force One, a Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, lacked advanced security features, including antimissile capabilities. The journalists cited sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, a common technique when sensitive matters are involved.

Chillingly, federal agents showed up at the homes of some of the reporters to serve the documents on them. “The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, said in a statement.

The administration will likely try to force the reporters to name their sources, who presumably would be prosecuted for divulging information this leak-wary White House seeks to suppress. The DOJ insisted that the reporters are not the targets, but rather those leaking classified information are.

What seems more likely is that l’affaire Air Force One is simply embarrassing to Trump, one of a string of incidents that have been leaving the president red-faced. After all, how could his much-adored “flying palace” be ill-equipped? The reports coincide with his repeated failures to resolve the ill-conceived Iran War, the Reflecting Pool “Algaegate,” and his bizarre misstatements during a NATO meeting (for the record, there’s no “Islamic Republic of Japan.”)

The New York Times is expected in the first instance to fight the subpoenas in court. Taking such a stance paid off earlier this year when the Justice Department sought to compel testimony from journalists at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The feds withdrew the subpoenas after both news organizations fought back in sealed filings.

As the Times reported, the Justice Department had sought information from three reporters at The Journal about an article detailing how top officials warned Trump of the risks of a military campaign against Iran. It also sought information from a reporter at The Post about reporting related to U.S. military action in Venezuela.

Whether Justice is on firmer legal ground in the Air Force One case could prove to be a crucial matter for journalists. The stakes are every bit as high as McCain suggested they could be so many years ago, as several journalism organizations have contended:

“The National Press Club calls on the Justice Department to immediately withdraw these subpoenas and reaffirm a principle that has long distinguished the United States: a free and independent press serves the people, not the government,” National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. said in a statement.

White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang said the organization stands with the Times reporters, saying they were “targeted for doing their jobs to uphold the public’s right to know how its government operates.”

“The WHCA condemns any act of intimidation against journalists, including attempts to pressure them into revealing sources,” Jiang added.

And Stephen J. Adler, chair of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said, “When the public’s right to know is crushed, as the Trump Administration is trying to do with its subpoenas against The New York Times, all of us suffer irreparable harm, as does the freedom upon which this nation is built.”

Of course, if the journalists do get hauled up to testify before a grand jury, they likely would refuse to disclose their sources. That could set up a painful and costly time for those reporters, as several cases over the last quarter-century have shown.

In 2001, a Houston-based author writing a book about a local murder spent 168 days in jail because she would not identify sources or give her notes to law enforcement. Four years later, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was sentenced to jail because she refused to reveal who told her that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent and Miller served 85 days, testifying ultimately because her source gave his permission. Then, in 2008, a subpoenaed USA Today reporter in an anthrax-by-mail case was held in contempt of court and ordered to pay $500 per day for the first seven days in which she refused to comply, $1,000 per day for the next seven days, and $5,000 a day for the next seven days after that – all from her own pocket, not her employer’s. That contempt charge was later thrown out.

The orders for the Times journalists to testify could put the DOJ official who issued them into interesting political crosshairs. Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York who issued the subpoenas, was recently nominated by Trump to serve as director of national intelligence, succeeding Tulsi Gabbard. Clayton, who had chaired the federal Securities & Exchange Commission in Trump’s first term, appears to be one of Trump’s most devoted toadies.

For instance, Clayton did not object when the Trump Administration fired Maurene Comey as a prosecutor in the Southern District office in 2025 in a vindictive political move. Comey’s main problem: she is a daughter of James B. Comey, the former FBI director who is one of Trump’s most prominent adversaries. She also handled cases against Trump’s longtime friend, child molester Jeffrey Epstein.

Clayton is to testify on July 15 before the Senate Intelligence Committee and journalism advocates are calling on committee members to press him on the administration’s latest assault on journalists.

“Donald Trump’s war on the press is looking for another victim, this time the storied federal prosecutors office in Manhattan,” Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement. “The subpoenas it issued to journalists at The New York Times break from longstanding Justice Department practice to protect the public interest and press independence by requiring prosecutors to only seek information from reporters as a last resort when all other avenues have been exhausted. When Jay Clayton appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, members of both parties must not let him escape accountability.”

Thankfully for journalists and the public, Trump and his minions have been set back on some of their anti-press efforts.

In January, FBI agents descended on the home of a Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, as part of an investigation into a government contractor’s handling of classified material. The agents seized phones, laptops and a smartwatch after executing a search warrant.

But, in the following month, a federal judge ruled that he – not Justice – would review her materials.

“Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well-chronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product — most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources — is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Magistrate Judge William B. Porter wrote in his opinion.

Not surprisingly in this appeals-happy administration, the judge’s order is under appeal.

Of course, Trump and his lapdogs have also scored some victories in high-profile assaults on the press. They’ve sued TV networks that have produced critical coverage of Trump’s actions, including ABC, they’ve made them the target of regulatory pressure from the once-independent Federal Communications Commission; and they’ve cut press access or significantly curtailed it at both the White House and Pentagon.

Under CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, “60 Minutes” bowed to Trumpian pressure in killing a story involving deportation. The network also heavily edited an interview with Trump on the program, including omitting comments about whether the 2020 election was rigged. Weiss was hired by David Ellison and his father, Larry, the Trump-backing billionaires who own CBS parent Paramount. Trump praised her as “a great new leader.”

Trump’s administration has even used labor law to pressure The New York Times via an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit that was decried by the newspaper as “politically motivated.”

As Trump continues to try to cow the press, the work of the Times, the Journal, the Post and other outlets has grown more important than ever. And, given the largely supine Congress, courts have emerged as the last bastions in helping them fight on behalf of the public.

Ultimately, however, the largely Trump-friendly Supreme Court will likely have to weigh in on some of the press cases. And, so far, the prospects look poor for the press.

For instance, the Supreme Court recently declined to intervene to halt an $800-a-day fine imposed on former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge involving her coverage in 2017 of a Chinese American scientist who was investigated by the FBI but never charged. The issue: Herridge has refused to disclose a confidential source.

If Sen. McCain were around today, he would likely be appalled at how the system lately is ill-serving the press and, by extension, the public. Of course, he was onto Trump long before many others. He once excoriated the president for “naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats.”

Lately, the last charge seems the most resonant.

“Time and tide wait for no man”

Posted on June 29, 2026 by Joe Weber

Chaucer was onto something there

Joseph Weber

If you’ve been a member of Facebook for a while, you know that one of the bittersweet features is the Memories area.

Why bittersweet? Well, glancing over the old posts and photos – especially when in reels – offers a sobering reminder of how quickly everything passes. Today, for instance, the site shared a look at a celebration of the arrival of our first grandchild, who now is 9 years old.

As the cliché goes, that seemed like just yesterday. And yet, the hair styles, wrinkle-free faces and, for some of us, trimmer waistlines, suggest it was actually something of an age ago. Older posts, of course, can make one feel older still.

When one breaks life into (nearly) decade-long chunks, you get a deep sense about the fleeting past. One decade, long gone, was the time when our children were as old as some of their kids now. The next was one when college took those children off into different lives. And the one following was where they set up their own households, complete with spouses.

Those days flew by. That never seemed so at the time, of course. Hindsight differs from foresight, something we don’t really appreciate when we’re young, when we’re in the mix of countless changes.

But now that there are fewer days ahead than behind for some of us, one’s appreciation of time changes. When you break down the decades into the impossible-to-know future, things get more pressing, more urgent in some ways.

We know that we have only X number of years left to cram in so many things, to appreciate so many things. Or, better said, we hope that we have X number of years left to us for things such as spending time with kids and grandkids, travel, sports and such. Just how much longer can we ski, hike, walk the dog, etc.?

The flip side, perhaps, is that we can appreciate those things even more, knowing their days are numbered.

Tempering things further, though, is the idea that we don’t really know what those numbers are. A decade? Five years? Ten minutes?

When I attended my 45^th grad school reunion recently, I had hoped to see a few particular classmates. Sadly, most didn’t stop in, perhaps because we’re all flung far and wide now and a trip to New York can be a burden.

But then, not long after the reunion, we got word that one of the guys – a wonderful fellow who had enjoyed a stellar career in journalism and then in financial research – had died in a car accident after a possible medical problem. He was 74 and passed his final years boating, fishing, trading stocks, tennis, golf, and spending time with his granddaughters in Washington, D.C., and siblings in Michigan, California, New York and Pennsylvania, as a colleague wrote.

So, we never know when our ticket will be punched, do we? As the Yiddish phrase goes, “Der mentsh trakht un got lakht” or “man plans, G-d laughs.”

Still, we must plan, though, right? We must face each day, paradoxically, as if it could be our last but more likely will be the first of a decent string left to us. We must try to live those days well, heads held high even if our backs or knees twinge a bit.

The New York Times recently reported that a positive mindset — including optimism and a sense of purpose – can help in one’s health and longevity. These things can be as important as exercise, diet and sleep.

That’s kind of a “no-shit, Sherlock” observation, of course. But sometimes it helps to state and restate the obvious, especially when there is science to back it up.

One Columbia researcher noted in the piece that people who volunteered increased their activity levels and felt physically stronger after several months of service. They also modestly improved their scores on tests of cognition and scored higher on a questionnaire assessing their feelings on legacy and making a difference in their community.

The Times piece also reported on a 2022 study, which found that women over 50 who scored highest on a measure of optimism lived, on average, 5 percent longer and had a greater chance of making it to age 90 than those who scored lowest. Another study reported that adults 50 and up who had a positive attitude about getting older — saying they felt as useful or as happy as they did when they were younger — were more likely to maintain, or even slightly improve, on tests of physical and cognitive ability when tracked over 12 years.

Encouragingly, other researchers have found that many of us, as we age, tend to feel a lot younger than our years.

“Sixty-year-olds felt like they were 46,” one researcher told The Washington Post about a study of his. “Seventy-year-olds felt like they were 53. Eighty-year-olds felt like they were 65. It looks like this is pretty consistent across age groups. People know that they are aging, but they are evaluating themselves and their lives and reporting feeling about 20 percent younger than their current age.”

Were these folks deluding themselves? Did they believe, perhaps, that they could continue doing things as they did 20 years before? Well, maybe the attitude isn’t bad, so long as one recognizes the limits.

For my part, the days of running marathons are long gone. But, for now at least, bicycling around Europe (and the Rockies at home) still remains in the toolbox. Spending quality time with my wife and with the young-uns, sometimes in far-flung places, is mandatory.

Even if we live no longer thanks to a bevy of activities, or even to an upbeat attitude and efforts such as volunteering, those things surely will make the time we have left far better. Sadly, I recall the elderly mother of a college friend who alarmed her family when they overheard her praying for her own death – weeping at times – in her room. This woman, who didn’t seem to have any physical ailments or pain, kept a brave and cheery face when with the family, but not when on her own.

I imagine a time comes – perhaps when one outlives all one’s friends and when cherished activities are denied us – when such an attitude may be tough to avoid. As for me, well, let’s put that off as long as possible.

Much as it stirs mixed emotions, the Memories feature is one I hope to enjoy for a long while yet.

An age-old hatred revived

Posted on June 26, 2026 by Joe Weber

Or, perhaps, never-departed antisemitism is just convenient again

Joseph Weber

The “Jewish Hat,” on the right, became mandatory in some European countries in the 12th century. Source: The Public Medievalist

It’s well-trod ground, an often told and always ugly tale. When political leaders want a scapegoat to either gain or hold power, some resort to an age-old trope: blame the Jews.

Thus, Edward I exiled Jews from England in 1290, as The Public Medievalist tells us. Philip II of France—in serious debt at the age of 15—kidnapped Jews and held them for ransom, then confiscated Jewish property and expelled them from France. Phillip II let Jews return to France in 1198 but imposed heavy taxes on them. In 1306, Philip IV of France arrested 100,000 Jews, seized their property, and expelled them on the grounds that they represented “a state within a state.” French Jews were banished and then readmitted in repeated cycles for nearly 200 years.

Are we seeing much of the same sentiment — albeit toned down and dressed in different clothing — today? Are traditional friends of the Jews in the Democratic Party, for instance, spurning them as they seek power? Consider the election in New York City in which the whipping boys are wearing yarmulkes. In the city’s congressional primaries, three candidates backed by anti-Zionist Mayor Zohran Mamdani vaulted to victory by attacking Israel.

One, Darializa Avila Chevalier, had attended a pro-Palestinian rally in the city on Oct. 8, 2023, where some cheered the Hamas savagery of the prior day. As The Times of Israel reported, near the end of her victory speech this week, her supporters started chanting “free, free Palestine.” Chevalier, who had helped organize pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, won in a district that includes Jewish institutions, including Yeshiva University. She defeated a steadfast supporter of Israel who served as a congressman for a decade.

Another Mamdani ally, state Assembly Member Claire Valdez, beat the handpicked successor of a retiring congresswoman. As she addressed backers, Valdez promised, “We will stand up to the genocide.”

And the third, former city Comptroller Brad Lander, bested U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, a two-term incumbent, after lambasting Goldman as insufficiently critical of Israel, as The New York Times reported. Lander slammed Goldman for not backing legislation to block arms sales to Israel and for refusing to call its war in Gaza a “genocide.” Both men are Jews and Lander calls himself a “liberal Zionist” who just opposes Israeli government policy.

While there’s little question that these pols advanced in large part by pillorying Israel, the bigger question is to what extent they represent an anti-Israel swing among Democrats. Indeed, to what degree do they mirror such a swing among young people in both parties, something polls suggest is widespread?

Certainly, in many respects New York is an outlier, the bluest of the blue cities on the East Coast, one where Democrats vie to be further left of one another. All three victorious candidates, for instance, embrace Mamdani’s Democratic socialism, though Lander quit the Democratic Socialists of America after the Oct. 7th massacre.

And it may be that the relatively small numbers of primary voters who chose them reflect only a fraction of voters (though in New York a primary win is tantamount to a general election victory). As the New York Post chortled, just 7 percent of voters cast ballots for the trio and the backers were predominantly under 30, folks it called “The Young and The Clueless.”

But such candidates are not alone. In Denver, voters on June 30 will choose among candidates including Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old political naif who is leading in the polls against veteran incumbent Diana DeGette, 68. DeGette is Colorado’s longest-serving congresswoman, taking office in 1997, four months before Kiros was born. While DeGette has taken a pro-Israel stance, she tempered it with opposition to selling offensive weapons to Israel.

Kiros’s main qualification for office seems to be that, in 2023, she was fired from her job as a lawyer at New York’s Sidley Austin firm after she wrote an open letter in response to such firms signing a letter of support for Israel. In her response, she garnered attention by calling Israel an apartheid state while rebuking antisemitism alongside Islamophobia. Calls to eliminate Israel are anti-Zionist, not antisemitic, she insisted, as she accused Israel of a “colonial role in Palestine.”

Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia and came to the U.S. as an infant, earned a law degree from the University of Notre Dame. Most recently, she worked as a barista while studying for a doctorate in public policy.

Some in Colorado’s Jewish community have blasted her for her comments about Israel. In May, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Colorado released an open letter accusing her of reinforcing “many of the same reductive and dehumanizing dynamics that are making many Jews feel increasingly unsafe and alienated,” as The Colorado Sun reported.

More recently, in an interview with a local TV station, Kiros declined to call a deadly 2025 firebombing of a group of Jewish demonstrators in Boulder an act of antisemitism. Asked about the Oct. 7^th assault in Israel, she said the attack, which left about 1,200 mostly civilians dead, was an “inevitable consequence.” And she also said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. were similarly inevitable.

Liberal Denver Rabbi Rachel Kobrin, who has little use for Israel’s current government and publicly prays weekly for the safety of both Israelis and Palestinians, wrote in The Denver Post that, nonetheless, she is “deeply troubled” by Kiros.

“When she can’t even name the antisemitism Jews in Colorado are experiencing every day, how can we believe that she will work for our safety?” the rabbi asked. “I have deep concerns that the ‘just’ world she claims to want to create does not include Jews like me and my community. She considers Israel an illegitimate, colonialist state and appears to have closed her mind to all other opinions and, indeed, to the human consequences of her rhetoric.”

The rabbi added: “When Kiros speaks about dignity and justice for all people, I want to believe she means it. But dignity that excludes Jews and denies the safety of Israelis is not universal dignity.”

Still, the question remains: to what extent are Kiros and the New York Democrats representative of their party? High profile as they are, they are outnumbered by pro-Israel candidates whom voters backed. These include House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (who ran unopposed in New York) and Adrian Boafo in Maryland, as well as New Yorkers Yvette Clark, Laura Gillen, Gregory Meeks, Tim Kennedy and others, along with several other incumbents from Maryland, all backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

An incumbent congressman from New Jersey who ran unopposed in early June, Josh Gottheimer, has been unsparing in criticizing fellow Democrats for their blinkered approaches to Israel.

“The Democratic condemnation piled on Israel’s government is overwhelming in comparison to other allies,” he wrote in a May commentary in The New York Times. “It’s also louder than Democrats’ condemnation of Iran’s regime for the slaughter of thousands of Iranians in December and January. Israel has been decried by some leading Democrats as an ‘apartheid’ state. But I haven’t heard any of them claim apartheid when it comes to how women and L.G.B.T.Q. people are treated across the Middle East.”

He continued: “Democrats have justly denounced the Trump administration for its broadsides — in some cases, threats — toward some of America’s closest allies. But many increasingly excuse, or join, feverish denunciations of Israel, our longstanding, democratic and strategic ally.”

No doubt, such incumbents will be taken to task in some quarters for their support of Israel as the general election approaches. Consider some observations by Brad Goverman, the Boston-area former technology consultant and college lecturer who runs The Jew News Review. This longtime Democrat says he has “no difficulty criticizing Israeli governments,” as he says most Israelis do, but …

“For decades, support for Israel occupied a secure place within the Democratic coalition,” Goverman wrote in a recent piece bemoaning changes in his party. “Today, criticism of Israel has become not merely acceptable but, in some circles, politically advantageous. Positions that would once have been considered well outside the party’s mainstream increasingly shape primary campaigns, activist organizations, and the language of rising political leaders.”

To be sure, some candidates may have a point in slamming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as many of his countrymen do. After all, a government responsible for the deaths of more than 70,000 people in Gaza -– even if in response to the massacre of 1,200 of its own citizens — has much to account for. This is especially true because Israel has failed to vanquish Hamas, as it aimed to do.

And yet, it all seems terribly convenient for politicians who have no difficulty assailing Zionists – read Jews – and suggesting that Jews, unlike other peoples of the world, don’t deserve a state of their own after all. Do we hear echoes of those medieval rulers who loved to whip their populations up into frenzies with attacks on those they deemed to be foreigners in their midst?

Sadly — tragically — it all seems too familiar.

Not journalism, but maybe better

Posted on June 25, 2026 by Joe Weber

Ann Patchett’s latest offering is packed with insight

Joseph Weber

As every journalist knows, facts can both reveal and mask reality. Reporters telling stories of disasters, of human failures and frailty — and even of triumphs — can go only so far in explaining the personal motivations and deep emotions that may afflict or engage us.

Tethered by facts, journalists rarely can delve into human psyches. Even the weightiest quotes or most touching anecdotes can just scratch the surface.

For real depth, however, we can be thankful for fiction. Novelists – including some who launched their careers as reporters (think Hemingway, Didion and Orwell) – have the power to pick up where straightforward reportage leaves off. They can round out a tale, put flesh on the bones of a story, give a character depth beyond the stark outlines of news accounts.

All this springs to mind thanks to some fresh work by a national treasure, Ann Patchett. Her new novel, Whistler, tells the story of a fiftysomething private school English teacher, Daphne Fuller, who by happenstance runs into a stepfather she hasn’t seen in 44 years. We then read of broken marriages, closeted sexuality, affairs, too much drinking and more – essentially a parade of human comedy and tragedy.

Along the way, Patchett shares a wealth of truth. Facts? Well, there are some, it turns out – but she deftly uses them to get to deeper things.

Patchett, in the way of most authors, drew on personal experiences for parts of the book. For instance, Daphne’s stepfather, Eddie Triplett, stoically endures cancer and Daphne ministers lovingly to him. This echoed the sad death of a real-life friend of Patchett’s, Jim Fox, to whom she dedicated the book.

She wrote, journalistically but passionately, about her time with Fox in nonfiction form in The New Yorker just last year.

“In the last week I would ever spend with one of the best friends I’ve ever had, I was given the gift of being supremely useful,” Patchett wrote. “I brought him vanilla ice cream and black coffee. I emptied the urinal, found the remote and the hearing aids, changed the sheets, tended to the sacral ulcer, greeted other helpful visiting friends. When, three days later, Jim was discharged into my care without a single thing relating to his health having been resolved or discovered, I got him dressed and wrapped in a blanket, then pushed him the three blocks home in his wheelchair, because I couldn’t imagine how I would get him into and out of a taxi. We spent our final day together making lists, organizing bottles of pills, and cleaning out the linen closet. I located, purchased, and installed a riser on the toilet seat. I soaked his feet and cut his toenails. He gave me the small china dog that his father had won for him at a fair in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, when he was a child. ‘I’ve had that dog with me everywhere I’ve lived,’ he said.”

So, it’s no wonder, perhaps, that some of the wisdom in Whistler comes from Eddie Triplett.

Consider this jewel that he utters:

“There is so much randomness to youth. The person assigned to share your room becomes your friend, the girl you pass on your way out the door becomes your wife, and from these random encounters our entire lives are built, four beautiful children came into the world and they, in turn, found the people they were meant to spend their lives with.”

And, as you ruminate on that paragraph, ponder the accidents that may have shaped your life. Of course, we all have such things.

A friend from my childhood, for instance, met his wife of nearly 50 years when she happened to be in a car that picked him up while he was hitch-hiking. For my part, I met my wife thanks to a mutual friend who just happened to take a Henry James class in college with me and thought we’d be a good match.

That proved right and for us that was three children and eight grandchildren ago.

While randomness plays a role in the book, Patchett is hardly just about happy happenstances, though. Daphne and her sister, Leda, a therapist, root around in their psyches and those of others in the book in ways journalists would be hard-pressed to do.

“I knew what Leda would say,” Daphne reflects at one point. “She would say it was because childhood never leaves us. We seal the room up and cover it in sheetrock. We dry and sand and paint, but the pocket of history remains, and sooner or later someone always winds up tapping on the wall, commenting on the way it sounds strangely hollow in there, and then the whole thing comes tumbling down.”

Such wonderful and wise turns of phrase there. Such a great and simple metaphor, gently delivered.

The wounds and scars of childhood are one of Patchett’s major themes in Whistler. At another point, Daphne’s husband, Jonathan, sorts through his deceased mother’s belongings. He is helped by his sister.

“I wonder what Leda would think about that – put two siblings in their childhood home and let them go through every single object in the house, see what comes up,” Jonathan says. “Memory, loss, love, anger, all the usual suspects.”

Indeed, don’t we all know siblings who seem to have lived entirely different childhoods – even under the same roofs? One can only wonder what varying recollections a bit of domestic archeology in the family home would produce for many of us. Certainly, the experience of reliving those years could be a joyous, funny and awful experience, all at once.

And in Whistler some of that experience, of course, inevitably is ugly. In a basically upbeat book, Patchett delicately digs into that, too. She offers a savvy insight into the purpose and style of psychotherapy in the process.

Referring to less pleasant experiences in her young life while talking with Leda, Daphne says: “I packed it away … I put the whole thing in a box and shoved it behind the hot water heater in the basement. Then I forgot about it. Isn’t that what people do? They pack things up and then years later they hire you to unpack it for them.”

And then Patchett also offers some eloquent musing about children and parents, and how they might see one another with blinkers on. “Our parents did not depend on us for their sense of identity. They had their lives and we had ours,” Leda tells Daphne at one point. “Bless them.”

Of course, didn’t we all see our parents through very narrow prisms?

Those folks were our protectors, providers, guides, perhaps. Or maybe they were the banes of our existences. But they were also characters and personalities in their own right, wholly separate of us. If we were lucky, maybe, we’d see a bit of those interesting people when they visited with friends and relatives.

Not surprisingly, Patchett gives Eddie Triplett a bevy of great lines. His important backstory is revealed only slowly, so I will share no spoiler here. But the griefs he suffered through gave him potent insights.

“Your mother and I both have a small shard of glass in our hearts where the other is concerned: her disappointment, my shame, her regret and my regret,” Triplett says. “This helps to pry it loose. All these years later, you can still pry something loose. There’s no sense carrying shame and regret into the next life.”

A similar gem: “… I have found that when you start to wonder about who you’ve hurt in this life, you can easily lose your mind.”

And still another, from a conversation with young Daphne: “Everybody’s got to be vigilant against the bad people. I get that. But there are so many more people who are going to want to help you … it’s mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges.”

Finally, Triplett shares a touch of what may be Buddhism. He says: “… no one wants to change even though change is the never-ending engine of existence. We are attached to our life, so we want to stay alive even though we know we’re going to die …. So by practicing nonattachment and recognizing impermanence, we might have a happier life, and we might have an easier death.”

These selections – little homilies, one might say — pop up unobtrusively along the way as Patchett sketches out a difficult but ultimately redeeming family history. It’s filled with warm and intriguing characters we’d all love to know.

In these cynical and dark times, perhaps we should all be blessed to know such figures.

“Is there a place in serious literature for kind, happy characters and kind, happy stories?” a New York Times reviewer wrote of the book. “This intimate and entertaining novel makes the strong case that there is; as demonstrated across her work, such sturdiness of spirit is part of Patchett’s generous worldview.”

Now, when we need it so badly, let’s be thankful for that worldview. It’s not journalism. Maybe it’s something better.

Gordon Gekko is having a moment

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Joe Weber

Where has generosity gone among the megawealthy?

Joseph Weber

Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, source: New York Times

In the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” corporate raider Gordon Gekko infamously praises what some religious thinkers peg as near to the top of the list of the seven deadly sins, one behind only pride.

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed – for lack of a better word – is good,” says the character, portrayed by Michael Douglas. “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed … has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Perhaps Elon Musk is proof that Gekko was speaking truth — or, maybe, he proves something else entirely.

This week Musk graduated from being the world’s richest man to becoming our first trillionaire, logging in with a net worth of about $1.1 trillion thanks to the initial public offering of SpaceX. He owns the lion’s share of the company’s stock – variously calculated at 42 percent or 46 percent – and its shares altogether are now worth $2.1 trillion.

So, given all that wealth, we might expect that Musk might also be the world’s most generous man, right? After all, he has only 14 children and doesn’t currently have a wife. He has plenty of money to give away, of course, and he’s no Gordon Gekko, right?

Curiously, however, it seems Musk routinely makes the stingy lists.

Even before SpaceX’s offering padded his pockets still more, he was reported by Forbes early this year to have given away just 0.06 percent of his net worth over his lifetime so far. Granted, that’s a half-billion dollars out of a net worth then totaling $780 billion, but everything’s relative, right? To Musk, that’s a few coins in one of his no-doubt many sofas.

By contrast, Warren Buffett has donated nearly 32 percent of his $146 billion, or $68.3 billion. And Buffett, who is 95, has pledged to give away 99 percent of his wealth during his life or upon his death. Together with Bill and Melinda Gates, in 2010 he set up the Giving Pledge, an outfit that encourage the megarich to give away most of their money to charity.

“The reaction of my family and me to our extraordinary good fortune is not guilt, but rather gratitude,” Buffett has said. “[T]hat … 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs.”

Musk, it seems, has far bigger needs.

As it happens, Musk is also a signatory of The Giving Pledge – but he seems to have a long way to go to fulfill that. And some friends, such as billionaire Peter Thiel, have been urging the trillionaire to opt out of the nonbinding pledge. In recent transcripts and audio lectures given by Thiel to Reuters, Thiel warned Musk that his donations would go “to left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by Bill Gates.”

Indeed, Thiel, who has preferred giving his money to Donald J. Trump and JD Vance, has been pressing the 250-plus megamonied on The Giving Pledge list to back away from it. “I’ve strongly discouraged people from signing it, and then I have gently encouraged them to unsign it,” said Thiel, who derides the GP outfit as an “Epstein-adjacent, fake boomer club” – whatever that means.

Musk may be heeding his rich buddy’s advice, as he finds it tough to find needy – and deserving – folks to share the largesse of his namesake foundation with. “The biggest challenge I find with my foundation is trying to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people,” he told interviewer Nikhil Kamath. “It’s very easy to give money away to get the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness.”

The Musk Foundation is enormous. Its resources were pegged at $14 billion in a 2025 New York Times report. “But unlike some other billionaires who have dedicated their nonprofits to broader social or political causes, Mr. Musk in recent years used his nonprofit in ways that narrowly track the interests of his for-profit businesses,” the Times noted.

For instance, more than three-fourths of the $474 million the foundation gave away in 2024 – some $370 million — went to a nonprofit in Texas led by Musk’s top aide, the newspaper reported. That nonprofit appears to provide a benefit to Musk’s business empire: It operates an elementary school in a rural area where many of his employees live, near many of Musk’s companies.

Self-interested philanthropy? Perhaps there are other words for it, and they arguably don’t meet his test of “the reality of goodness.” That is, unless goodness is defined as benefitting both some of his workers and himself. It appears it’s not in Musk’s nature to give money selflessly to needy people. Selflessness seems not to be part of his vocabulary.

In some respects, Musk mirrors the times, reflecting a new Gilded Age that – literally – emanates from the Trump White House. It’s as if the megawealthy don’t need to bother with the little people or those in need anymore.

“This is an era of a more voracious capitalism, of billionaires trending right and getting ahead by embracing an administration that is happy to dole out favors,” The New York Times recently reported in a piece headlined The Billionaire Backlash Against a Philanthropic Dream. “Many of today’s ascendant billionaires are dismissive of philanthropy as nothing more than public relations.”

The piece quoted sociologist Aaron Horvath as calling the Giving Pledge a “time capsule” of a bygone era, albeit just 16 years ago. “It feels old school,” he said. Billionaires, he said, now think: “I can keep my head down and keep making money. I don’t have to put up with this charity charade anymore.”

Perhaps they are following Trump’s lead. Recall that the Donald J. Trump Foundation was forced to close down in 2018 after New York’s Attorney General at the time said it functioned “as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests,” and engaged in “a shocking pattern of illegality” that included unlawfully coordinating with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The Trump foundation had been charged with “improper and extensive political activity, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions, and failure to follow basic fiduciary obligations or to implement even elementary corporate formalities required by law.” A couple of notable examples cited by the Times: the foundation bought a $10,000 portrait of Trump that was displayed at one of his golf clubs. And one transaction was revealed by a note in Trump’s handwriting that said $100,000 of foundation money should be directed to another charity to settle a legal dispute between the Town of Palm Beach and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

To be sure, there is a reasonable argument that one of the best ways for wealthy people to give back to society is by running successful, growing businesses that create jobs. Some 150,000 or more people work for Musk companies, for instance. With such a job base, it’s not surprising that he has said that his businesses “are philanthropy,” according to the Times.

But where does this leave people who can’t work? People with disabilities, inadequate skills or education, people who aren’t going to be software engineers or, literally, rocket scientists? Where does this leave children in disadvantaged families? Are the rich just blind to them?

Studies have shown that as people get wealthier, they not only lose touch with those on society’s margins, but they lose empathy for them. “Wealthy people are less likely than poor ones, in lab settings at least, to relate to the suffering of others,” The Atlantic reported in 2021, in a piece headlined “Research Proves It: There’s No Such Thing as Noblesse Oblige.”

Researchers hooked volunteers up to ECG machines and showed them two short videos: a “neutral” video of a woman explaining how to construct a patio wall and a “compassion” video of children receiving chemotherapy treatments for cancer, the magazine reported. Compared with wealthier subjects, poorer subjects not only reported feeling greater compassion for the kids but also exhibited a significantly larger slowdown in heart rate from one video to the next. It seems our hearts slow down when people experience compassion.

Yes, wealthy families donate significantly more money to charity on average than poor families do, but they tend to give away a smaller share of their income. “As wealth goes up, the stinginess seems to increase,” one researcher said.

And people such as Musk are unembarrassed by their lack of fellow feeling.

Notoriously, he told podcaster Joe Rogan in 2025 that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Citing a Canadian marketing professor who has written on the topic, Musk warned against “civilizational suicidal empathy,” explaining “I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.”

Civilizational suicide, it seems, means having too much compassion for the less fortunate. That’s not a problem for Musk and his buddies, especially his on-again, off-again friend in the White House. Even though he’d be committing the worst of the sins, Gekko would be proud.

Paranoia abounds

Posted on June 9, 2026 by Joe Weber

The left has taken up the mantle from the wackos on the right

Joseph Weber

When he was an up-and-coming singer in 1963, but hadn’t hit the big time, Bob Dylan famously walked off the set of the Ed Sullivan Show during a rehearsal because a network exec wouldn’t let him sing the “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” Rich with biting cracks about right-wing fear, the tune mocked the anti-Communist sentiments of the day, but CBS feared a libel suit.

Here are a few of the lyrics:

Well, I was feelin’ sad and feelin’ blue
I didn’t know what in the world I wus gonna do
Them Communists they wus comin’ around
They wus in the air
They wus on the ground
They wouldn’t gimme no peace . . .

So I run down most hurriedly
And joined up with the John Birch Society
I got me a secret membership card
And started off a-walkin’ down the road
Yee-hoo, I’m a real John Bircher now!
Look out you Commies!

Now we all agree with Hitler’s views
Although he killed six million Jews
It don’t matter too much that he was a Fascist
At least you can’t say he was a Communist!
That’s to say like if you got a cold you take a shot of malaria

Well, I wus lookin’ everywhere for them gol-darned Reds
I got up in the mornin’ ’n’ looked under my bed
Looked in the sink, behind the door
Looked in the glove compartment of my car
Couldn’t find ’em . . .

I wus lookin’ high an’ low for them Reds everywhere
I wus lookin’ in the sink an’ underneath the chair
I looked way up my chimney hole
I even looked deep down inside my toilet bowl
They got away . . .

Today, some of the more troublesome paranoia comes from the left, particularly about the media coverage of Graham Platner, a Senatorial hopeful in Maine. For instance, a very bright progressive friend shared a Facebook post, seemingly oblivious to its paranoia, journalistic ignorance and borderline antisemitism.

Platner, with the tattoo that covers the skull and crossbones; source: WGME

Platner, readers of this Substack may recall, is a deeply flawed Democratic candidate who also is an outspoken critic of Israel. Recall that for years, until he covered it up, he sported a tattoo linked to Nazis, a skull and crossbones image resembling a specific symbol of Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS. And he appeared on a podcast whose host had basked in antisemitic conspiracy theories; Platner said he was a longtime fan of the host.

In 2014, combat veteran Platner praised the tactics of a Hamas raid that killed Israeli soldiers.

The Facebook entry, attempting parody or satire, gives us a fictitious letter from the New York Times to “it’s [sic] readership,” explaining the paper’s critical coverage of Platner.

“OK, we sent a team of reporters to Maine, led by crack reporter Katie Gluek [sic, it’s actually Glueck], an ardent Zionist whose parents are part of the Israeli settler movement, to scour the state for anything that might derail the Platner campaign,” the piece begins. “We’ve been there for months and have spent thousands of dollars on the story.

“We are now publishing a lengthy piece of ‘investigative’ journalism which introduces no new facts at all. But we do have some juicy gossip for you. We found three ex-girlfriends that told us he drank too much, was ‘volatile,’ and sexist, even misogynistic at times. We also found bunch of exes that said he was loving and that they felt safe with him.

“The most damning allegation is that he was physically threatening, and that he knew that the skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest was a Nazi tattoo. These allegations come from a Republican political operative, which we mention.”

So, let’s break that down a bit. Glueck, it turns out, has covered politics for more than a decade. By her own description, she wrote “about extraordinary presidential elections, battles for control of Congress and governor’s mansions across the country, and two wild New York City mayor’s races, serving as the chief metro political correspondent in 2021.”

Glueck covered Ted Cruz for Politico in 2016 and was the Biden beat reporter for The Times during the 2020 presidential campaign. She graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, worked in Washington at Politico and in McClatchy’s D.C. bureau before moving to New York. Before joining the Times in 2019 as a politics reporter, Glueck had been published in The Wall Street Journal, Washingtonian magazine and the Austin American-Statesman.

So, in other words, Glueck is a seasoned reporter.

But, to the critic, she is “an ardent Zionist.” The evidence of that? Well, at Northwestern 17 years ago, she was a co-president of Students for Israel. Is she still a supporter of Israel or, more precisely, the Netanyahu government? Guess we don’t really know that, do we? No real evidence there.

Of course, she is a Jew, though. For the critics, that seems to be enough. That’s enough to disqualify her from covering a Maine Democrat, apparently.

As for her parents being part of the Israeli settler movement, well, turns out there’s no evidence of that either, even though this claim and the “Zionist” charge against the reporter have spread across the Net like a virus. In fact, at last report, in 2018, her parents – Dr. Robert M. Glueck, a cardiologist, and Miriam Glueck – lived in Haifa, where he directed the clinical operations at the Technion American Medical Program and Mrs. Glueck was a volunteer fundraiser for a health program.

The critics readily found that info, drawn from the journalist’s marriage announcement years ago. But are the parents settlers? Perhaps in some antisemite’s imagination.

Still, the attacks on Glueck and the Times can be found in a bevy of sites. And some of the posts go well beyond the Facebook poster in their slams, damning Israel and “the Israel lobby” for Glueck’s work on Platner.

The post my friend cited is particularly pernicious in a way that, despite its leftist cast, is reminiscent of the Birch Society attacks from the right. They were fear-filled, laced with unsubstantiated innuendo, and ultimately baseless.

The FB comment contends that Glueck’s reporting on Platner is “basically a gossip column dressed up as news. Shameful,” for instance. It goes on to attack the Times as “a ruling class, pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist institution. Have we forgotten their coverage leading up to the Iraq war, or the [sic] their long record of coverage on Israel-Palestine?”

First, can anyone seriously call the coverage in the Times pro-Israel? Perhaps such folks have missed all the Gaza coverage, as well as the Lebanon coverage of late. Guess they missed headlines such as “Gazans are dying of starvation” and “As Israel Pounds Gaza City, and Overwhelming Exodus.” Maybe they were absent when the paper ran “Israeli Expansionism is Shaking the Middle East.”

Certainly, many of the editors at the Times would consider themselves “pro-capitalist,” as most Americans would. “Pro-imperialist?” That’s a hard one to prove and the poster doesn’t bother to offer any backing for that.

And then, is it gossip when a political journalist digs into a candidate’s background and finds some disturbing stuff? Is it gossip when other media outlets find similar problems, such as the sexually explicit texts Platner exchanged with numerous women while he was married, as the Wall Street Journal reported? Or that various women came to Platner’s former campaign political director to share what she called “their own disturbing stories” about him, as she recounted in The Washington Post.

It’s the job of news outlets to uncover and report on the baggage politicians and would-be politicians carry. That’s not motivated by political bias, by Zionism, by partisanship or by capitalism even. It’s what reporters do so voters can see their candidates, warts and all – some of which Platner has acknowledged.

“Throughout this campaign, I’ve been open about what was a very dark period of my life where I struggled with undiagnosed PTSD, too often self medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend,” Platner said in a statement to CNN. “I take responsibility for all of that, and wish I had been better. Any characterization beyond that is false, and I believe, politically motivated. I’m not proud of who I was then, but I am proud of the work I’ve done since, and the movement we are building in Maine.”

Despite the flaws slowly becoming apparent, voters very likely will choose Platner in the June 9 primary and he’ll likely run against Susan Collins in the fall. Then, it will be up to Mainers to make yet another choice. Will they see him as a flawed but reformed character? Or will they look at a 41-year-old political naif’s past and be unsettled?

If more voters had looked at Donald J. Trump’s sordid past more critically, would he have become president, twice? Lord knows, that was amply covered by the Times and the other publications. Was that “gossip?”

Some critics have suggested the best course for Democratic leaders would be to put as much distance between themselves and Platner as possible.

“To defend Platner, Democrats will have to choose between two strategies: denouncing as liars a possibly growing number of women—or else accepting the stories, but then arguing that twisting a woman’s arm and locking her in a room is not quite the same as beating her,” David Frum wrote in The Atlantic. “Do they want to haggle over just how inappropriate these romantic relationships were, even as they argue that wearing an SS tattoo throughout most of one’s adult life does not prove that one is a literal Nazi?”

In the meantime, we’ll likely hear lots from the conspiracists who don’t understand the role of the press, who feel free to attack reporters who happen to be Jews, and who warm to baseless information just because it floats around on the Net. To them, no doubt, there are plots everywhere “in the air, on the ground,” as Dylan might have said.

Instead of “gol-darned Reds,” however, the offenders whom these Birchers of the left see are journalists. They are reporters doing their jobs on behalf of voters.

Watch the parkin’ meters

Posted on June 6, 2026 by Joe Weber

Why do so many politicians disappoint us?

Joseph Weber

In 1965, Bob Dylan released “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a nod to the Beats of the 1950s, particularly Jack Kerouac’s novel, The Subterraneans. The stream-of-consciousness autobiographical book explores a deeply flawed writer struggling in an ill-fated romance.

In Dylan’s hallucinatory, fast and wonderful song, many of the lyrics are memorable, but perhaps none more than these:

Look out kid
You’re gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hang around the
theaters
Girl by the
whirlpool
Lookin’ for a new
fool
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’
meters

Let’s pounce on the “leaders” lines for a moment. When we look at the number of politicians – i.e., leaders – with serious personal flaws, Dylan’s libertarian final lines in that verse seem prescient and, sadly, all too enduring.

From awful presidents, such as Donald J. Trump, to accomplished ones, such as William J. Clinton, to many in lesser offices, we see people who use their power and various professional positions for sexual manipulation and dishonesty of all sorts. In some cases, we see financial misdealings and political malfeasance.

One key question is: why do such deeply flawed people – often individuals with tortured personal psyches — seek public office? What is it that they seek in politics? And, perhaps more important, why do voters elect them (though not always, as we’ll see below)?

Certainly, many of us are not paying mind to Dylan’s caution.

Everyone knows that the dirt in the lives of the people with feet of clay has a way of coming out. Surely, folks in media know that all too well.

Just as Trump and Clinton’s sometimes sordid misadventures with many women were front-page news, so, too, were those of John F. Kennedy (at least, after his presidency and assassination) and Ted Kennedy. Same with former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, whose presidential hopes were shattered by the “Monkey Business” scandal.

More recently, we had former Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from Congress in 2023 after repeated scandals came to light, including colorfully falsifying his background. A prodigious liar, the Republican congressman made up stories about his college education, his employment, his real estate, his religious background, his athletic achievements, his wealth and even his mother’s death (he claimed it was on 9/11). What nailed his career were convictions on wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Santos was sentenced to 87 months for his criminal convictions but served just three months because Trump commuted his sentence. Trump said the fraudster had been “horribly mistreated.” Birds of a feather, perhaps?

Recall that Trump is a felon, convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. He was also civilly found to be liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll, on whom he has sicced his Justice Department for alleged perjury. Trump is on the hook for more than $80 million in the Carroll affair.

Trump also just pardoned the unfortuitously named Stephen Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who served nearly two years in prison for making illegal stock trades based on inside information after he left office, as The Guardian reported. Buyer was sentenced in 2023 for trades he made while working as a consultant and lobbyist. He was released in 2025, and the Supreme Court in May rejected Buyer’s appeal without comment or noted dissent.

Even though three of the six conservative justices on the court are Trump appointees, the president in effect overruled them in granting a full, complete and unconditional pardon to this convicted felon.

Again, birds of a feather, it seems.

Of course, plenty of Democrats have much to answer for, too. Now, we have a Senatorial aspirant, Maine’s Graham Platner, a 41-year-old political naif who is expected to win the Democratic primary and to run in the fall against the 73-year-old Republican stalwart Susan Collins.

Platner brings a steamer trunk full of personal baggage. Among his offenses are making demeaning social media posts about women, sporting a since-covered up Nazi tattoo and alleged (but denied) reports of physical intimidation of at least one woman he dated. His wife has said he sexted with several women early in their marriage, as she suggested that “no marriage is perfect.”

For his part, Platner has said that recent reporting about him “struggling, not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol,” is something he’s been “very up front since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service,” as Forbes noted. He added there are things in media reports that he “absolutely will take responsibility for…But those serious allegations are just not true.”

Nonetheless, his chances of beating Collins have “plummeted,” as the news outlet reported. “Bettors on Kalshi predict the race is now a toss up with the Democratic candidate’s odds falling from 72 percent last month to 54 percent early on Saturday [June 6]. On the crypto betting platform Polymarket, Platner’s odds have a similar drop, falling from 78 percent on May 23 to 60 percent …”

The stakes in the Maine fight are enormous, though. A win by Platner could tilt the balance in the Senate toward Democrats, putting party officials in a precarious position. Do they hold their noses and support a tainted candidate? Or do they shun him, offended by the stench of a senator sitting with them for the next six years (at least) with much to apologize for?

David Frum, writing in The Atlantic, posed the matter as a choice between “character and power.” He compared the Platner quandary to the choice Republicans faced in 2017 with Roy Moore, a Senatorial candidate from Alabama who, as a 32-year-old assistant district attorney had “initiated sexual contact” with a 14-year-old girl, as well as three other women, whom he pursued when they were underage.

GOP leaders including Sen. John McCain and two dozen other Republican senators as well as then-Senate Leader Mitch McConnell urged Moore to quit the race, even though the Republicans had hung onto the Senate by a thread. Moore refused to quit but ultimately lost the race to a Democrat.

“Not as paragons of moral virtue but as pragmatic politicians, the Senate Republicans of 2017 made and executed a calculation: We are better off sacrificing the Alabama Senate seat for three years than enduring Roy Moore as a Senate colleague for who knows how long,” Frum wrote. “To defend Platner, Democrats will have to choose between two strategies: denouncing as liars a possibly growing number of women—or else accepting the stories, but then arguing that twisting a woman’s arm and locking her in a room is not quite the same as beating her.”

Certainly, the l’affaire Platner knocks the Dems on the back foot.

“Do they want to haggle over just how inappropriate these romantic relationships were, even as they argue that wearing an SS tattoo throughout most of one’s adult life does not prove that one is a literal Nazi?,” Frum asked. “These are not conversations that Democrats should wish to prolong in a year that might otherwise deal with Trump’s abuses of power, corruption, and economic mismanagement.”

Whether Platner could serve as a perfectly fine legislator, despite his dubious past, is an open question. Some argue that personal foibles, especially sexual ones, are irrelevant to an elected official’s ability to do a decent job in office. After all, the argument goes, we’re not choosing someone for sainthood, but just to do a decent job for constituents.

But the problem is that character outs, it seems. It seems likely that the citizens of New Jersey would have been better off if Robert Menendez, now a felon residing in a prison in Pennsylvania, had not been elected. He was convicted in 2024 of multiple corruption and bribery charges involved gold bars, cash and luxury cars and is now serving an 11-year sentence.

And, certainly, the nation would have been better served if Vice President Spiro Agnew hadn’t accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks while serving in various offices before the White House. He resigned in disgrace but avoided jail time even as he paid back hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For Menendez and Agnew, their mendacity didn’t go public before they attained their electoral heights. It took a while for their dirty laundry to get aired. With others, such as Clinton and, certainly, Trump, the flaws were well known and apparently forgiven by the electorate. Now, with Platner, the smudges on his escutcheon are slowly becoming apparent.

But the question remains: why do such flawed people seek the limelight, even when it can sear them? Is there something in their tortured psyches about seeking redemption or justification? Do they turn to public adoration as a way to fill holes in their character and mental makeup?

Perhaps more important, though, why do voters look past their sometimes obvious faults? Have our standards plunged so much that character is irrelevant now?

For Dylan and for plenty of journalists long accustomed to covering political scandal, the lesson is clear. Keep a skeptical eye on all politicians and would-be politicians. Don’t fall in love with them, especially those whose views align with yours. Vote for those who seem to speak for you but recognize that they’ll usually disappoint you in the end.

And, even as you watch their often troubling antics, be sure to watch your parkin’ meters. Perhaps happily, there’s no doubt that the stuff of our ordinary workaday lives deserves more attention than many of the people we choose to represent us.

Moi, moi, moi

Posted on May 31, 2026 by Joe Weber

Trump apes a 17th century king – without his grace or taste

Joseph Weber

In 1655, King Louis XIV of France may or may not have uttered the aphorism widely credited to him: “L’État, c’est moi.” The phrase — meaning “I am the state” — has come to symbolize a national leader’s extraordinary egotism.

Whether he said that or not, there’s little dispute that Louis’s self-regard was exceptional. He saw himself as the direct representative of G-d, the personification of the divine right of kings, and even chose the sun as his emblem. At least in his own mind, he was the omniscient and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) around whom the entire realm orbited, according to “History.”

But there’s also no doubt that Louis created remarkable monuments during his 72-year reign, the longest in monarchical history (he was anointed at age 4). Among his projects in Paris were the Les Invalides hospital and retirement complex, the Place Vendôme and the Place des Victoires, as well as the tree-lined avenues that later became the Champs-Élysées. He reigned over the creation of the 150-mile Canal du Midi, linking the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. And he built the stunning Palace at Versailles.

Are we hearing echoes today in Washington, D.C., however pallid, thin and embattled they are? Are we seeing a leader’s massive ego (without the substance of a Louis XIV) in a display of cloddishness that looks like a parody of Louis’s grace? Are we seeing a cartoon caricature of a monarch trying to immortalize himself as he dodders toward an 80^th birthday?

It’s not only the gilding of the White House, the construction of a huge ballroom abutting the place or the planned 250-foot-tall Triumphal Arch near the Arlington National Cemetery that seems to be part of a pathetic parade of self-adulation by Donald J. Trump. It’s also festooning his image on passports, on banners that decorate federal buildings, on a proposed $250 bill, on commemorative coins and a national park pass, his name on the Kennedy Center (though that soon seems about to end, thanks to a judge). And, of course, we have the bluing of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, as contractors – whom he may or may not have picked — repaint it to look like a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago.

Now, with a breathtakingly self-indulgent effort, we have Trump’s latest plan to cast his self-admiration across as big a canvas as possible. He plans to turn what was to have been a 250^th celebration of the history of the United States, on the National Mall in D.C., into rallies for himself — opening the fair with a MAGA rally and giving a July 4 keynote speech.

At least seven of nine musical artists have dropped out of the multiday celebration, slated to begin in late June, because of the partisan cast it was taking. So Trump posted this on his Truth Social:

“It’s difficult to read this without laughing, but it’s no joke,” wrote former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who served under Presidents Ford, Carter and Clinton. “His malignant narcissism is ramping up even higher than its usual galactic level.”

But the enduring mystery is why Trump’s devotees apparently see no flaws in their leader’s perverse psychology. To the extent that they are aware of history, why do they not see a man casting himself here as a tacky version of a 17th century French king? Or, more sinisterly, as a Stalin, Mussolini, or Kim Jong-Un, someone desperate to feel and seem all-powerful — but even that in a distorted fun-house mirror way — “a man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime.”

Pathetic? Perhaps the very definition of it. But do his followers really see his image-spreading as signs of strength that they applaud?

Certainly, Trump sucks up attention and flattery like a pampered puppy. Watching a Cabinet meeting, for instance, can be painful because of the way otherwise bright people prostrate themselves before him, as if they are supplicants before Pharoah.

The New York Times reviewed over a dozen hours of Cabinet meeting footage and found that, on average, at least one of every six sentences out of the mouths of his acolytes either flattered Trump, gave him credit or criticized his political opponents.

“You have saved this country,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. “You have changed America and created the golden age,” crowed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. And the arch-flatterer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking bizarrely of the lingering Ukraine-Russia War, effused “… the country owes you a great debt of gratitude and the world, really, because I mean you’re the only leader in the planet that can bring the two sides together …”

Cynically, one might say that these Cabinet lapdogs are simply doing what foreign leaders have learned to do to try to stay in Trump’s good graces: speaking glowingly of him to his face, and in front of the cameras, in hopes of a friendly pat on the head. Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, told him in February: “I firmly believe it is only you, Donald, who can achieve peace across the world.” Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken of Trump’s “unmatched leadership.”

Indeed, one can imagine that such people — with their spouses or trusted advisers behind closed doors — dismiss Trump as, instead, a horse’s ass. Perhaps one day, when Trump is gone, and the memoirs come out, we’ll hear what they really think.

Certainly, the words some former associates have used are far different than those of today’s toadies.

As The Guardian reported, their terms have been “fascist,” “conman,” “predator” and “cheat.” Former White House Chief of Staff and former Gen. John Kelly called Trump an “idiot” and the head of a “Crazytown” administration. Another former General, Mark Milley, who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff called Trump a “fascist to the core” who was doing “great and irreparable harm.” And former National Security Adviser John Bolton has said Trump is “unfit to be president” and “hasn’t got the brains” for a dictatorship.

Still, when Trump assembles his crowds at the bizarrely low-end June 14 Ultimate Fighting Championship matches at the White House and later at the Great American State Fair, plenty of MAGA fans will show up. Recall that many showed up on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump beckoned them to the Capitol, where they rioted.

Trump, like monarchs and despots, is drawn to spectacle, especially when he is at the center of it. But, despite the crowds that will show up, there’s plenty of reason to believe that Trump’s act is wearing thin with many Americans.

About 58 percent of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s job performance, according to the latest polls. Just 21.7 percent strongly approve of the job he’s doing, while another 17.2 percent only somewhat approve and 48 percent “strongly disapprove.” As pollwatcher Nate Silver has reported, that’s less popular than Joe Biden was at this point in his term (-13.6) and less popular than Trump himself was during his first term (-10.6).

Whether such distaste for Trump shows up in the November midterm elections remains to be seen, of course. But, for now, with all his desperate self-promotion, this Sun King-wannabe is looking more like someone on whom the sun is going down and pretty fast.

Great Caesar’s Ghost!

Posted on May 29, 2026 by Joe Weber

There’s life in news yet, at least in D.C.

Joseph Weber

For people in the news business – and maybe for the country at large – the news about a brewing newspaper war in Washington, D.C., seems quite welcome.

But this won’t be your father’s journalism duel. Instead, it seems likely to be something of a battle between a very right-wing magnate and a perhaps less hands-on magnate with an ax to grind. And it will be largely digital.

Of course, this refers to The Washington Star, which recently debuted, and NOTUS (a.k.a. News of the United States). As it aims to go inkwell to inkwell, NOTUS plans to rebrand itself as The Star, a far-more newspapery sounding moniker.

Aside from confusing us all with the names, just how this will play out in the Trump era is unclear, though. And whether either publication will be a worthy successor to The Washington Post, much-shrunken as it is, is just as opaque.

But, already, the magnates involved – Politico founder Robert Allbritton and Dovid Efune, the British-born publisher of The New York Sun – are scrapping. Efune filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against NOTUS for its planned use of the Star name. This comes after NOTUS twice engaged in talks with The Washington Star Company to buy the trademark but couldn’t reach a deal. Instead, Allbritton’s team just opted to drop the “Washington.”

Presumably, they will battle one another for scoops, as well.

The Star (should that name prevail) already has a jump on things. It debuted, as NOTUS, in January 2024 and claims that its news site now reaches almost all of the Senate and Congress, as well as the White House. As the Columbia Journalism Review reported, Allbritton says NOTUS’s morning newsletter lands in more than 90 percent of House offices, and 80 percent of the Senate. “I know everybody in the White House reads it,” he told CJR. “I know all the heads of the agencies read it, or their chief of staff or whoever.”

Like Politico, it has focused on politics and inside-the-Beltway news, but it aims to move into local news and sports – voids that staff-cutters at The Washington Post have left. As The New York Times noted, The Post in February abruptly laid off more than 300 of its 800 journalists, pared back its metro section and shuttered its local sports coverage. After those moves, the Times reported, the leaders of NOTUS decided to accelerate their expansion plans.

NOTUS (the perhaps-Star) has hired Post veterans including Jeff Stein, as chief economics correspondent; Dana Milbank, as a columnist; Paul Kane and Kadia Goba, as congressional reporters; and Sam Fortier, as a sports reporter. Other new hires have come from other Washington outlets, such as The Hill, Politico and Axios. It plans to double its newsroom staff to as many as 95 people.

But Efune and the folks at The Washington Star have started publishing on Substack, and are planning to offer a custom website within the next two months and a weekend print newspaper by the end of the year. For now, Efune plans to hire up to 50 fulltime journalists and contributors, but will operate under the oversight and resources of The Sun’s newsroom until it names its own editor in chief.

Like Allbritton, Efune has publishing chops. He is a former top editor of the Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner, and has been reinvigorating The Sun, a once-shuttered outlet that now publishes online and has a weekly print edition. The Sun now counts two million subscribers, “tens of thousands of which are paid,” the Times reported.

“We’re reviving one of the great and epic rivalries of American journalism,” Efune told the Times. “For decades, The Star was The Washington Post’s fiercest competitor and an important editorial and ideological counterweight in the press in our nation’s capital.”

For his part, Allbritton is a billionaire – helped by his sale of Politico for $1 billion to Germany’s Axel Springer. His late father, Joe Albritton, owned The Washington Star, a conservative-leaning alternative to the Post, from 1975 to 1978, according to the Times. The paper folded in 1981. The younger Albritton founded the nonprofit Albritton Journalism Institute in 2023, intending to train young journalists. The institute publishes NOTUS.

Efune has thrust his stake in the ideological ground already. In announcing The Washington Star on May 28, he featured a photo of Ronald Reagan reading the paper and quoted the former president as bemoaning its disappearance. Reagan wrote a personal note of regret, Efune wrote, describing The Washington Star as “one of the most admired newspapers in America.”

The (new) Washington Star’s political bent is also apparent in its headlines and news selections. Among them: “Virginia Released Illegal Immigrant With Long Criminal Record Days Before He Allegedly Sexually Assaulted DC Woman,” “Clarence Thomas Dissents on Supreme Court Refusal to Weigh Illegal-Immigrant Commercial Licenses,” and “The White House Has Seen Worse ‘Desecration’ and Weirder ‘Gimmicks’ Than Trump’s UFC Octagon.”

A Fox News clone online, perhaps? A D.C. version of the New York Post? In Efune’s words, his priority is to “stay true to the editorial legacy of The [Washington] Star.” That means supporting “limited government” and opposing “bureaucratic corruption and federal overreach.”

Allbritton’s inclination at his The Star, it seems, is more middle-of-the-road or perhaps a mite leftish, at least judging by the recent headlines on NOTUS. Among them: “A Judge Has Temporarily Blocked Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization’ Fund,” “Judge Orders Removal of Trump’s Name From the Kennedy Center,” and Louisiana Passes a New Congressional Map Leaving Only One Majority-Black District.”

But Allbritton may have long maintained close ties to the pre-Trump Republican establishment, as well. As a writer for The Wesleyan Argus wrote in 2009, the former president of Allbritton-founded Politico, Frederick J. Ryan Jr., served in the Reagan White House for eight years, ascending to the title of Assistant to the President in 1987. Then, from 1989 to 1995, he was responsible for designing, planning and funding the construction of the Reagan Presidential Library.

In Washington’s usually polarized elite ranks, Ryan then served as Publisher and CEO of The Washington Post from 2014-23. He now chairs the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute and is leading the launch of a new Center on Civility and Democracy.

For now, Allbritton’s motivations seem less ideological than Efune’s. As a writer for Puck scathingly described him, “Inside Politico, Robert was seen as an oblivious-but-harmless Mr. Magoo type, the kind of guy who enjoyed owning a news company and the prestige it conferred but wasn’t interested in the management or production of a daily news report—or even wielding the political influence of the institution.”

The Star says it intends to “cover government, politics, policy, local news and D.C. sports with the power of The Washington Post in the 1970s, the punch of Politico in the 2010s and the audience focus required to build a sustainable news organization in 2026.”

And, if hiring liberal columnist Dana Milbank is any indication, it could lean left. Milbank, in a post on X, said he jumped to the Allbritton paper because it presents “an irresistible chance to both to create the hometown publication the D.C. region needs and to build a scrappy and fearless national news organization.”

Just how big a deal this will prove in D.C. – or outside – isn’t all that obvious, though. Despite the travails of The Washington Post, the town is awash with lots of outlets including Politico, Axios, Punchbowl News, and out-of-towners Semafor and Puck News, which regularly dip their toes in. Of course, The New York Times covers the political world in D.C. to a fare-thee-well, too, as does The Wall Street Journal.

“Does the town need another media company? Obviously not. But Robert does, and bless his heart for it,” the Puck writer asked in a piece headlined “Little Allbritton” and bearing a subhed dismissing him as “the son of a yesteryear D.C. media baron.”

The answer may, indeed, prove to be “obviously not.” But, for now, new life in a journalistic landscape that, nationwide at least, has been something of a desert seems as welcome as a spring rain.

“Losers” abound

Posted on May 28, 2026 by Joe Weber

But all of us are suffering for that

Joseph Weber

John Lennon in 1964; source: San Francisco Art Exchange

Sixty-two years ago, the Beatles released a song that, like so many others from that time, speaks to us today.

John Lennon wrote: I’m a loser/I’m a loser/And I’m not what I appear to be

The song resounds today because “loser” is one of Donald J. Trump’s favorite words. He has applied it to Democrats, to Republicans, to generals, to soldiers killed in battle, to CNN and other networks. He uses it for pretty much anyone who crosses him or sees the world differently – i.e., realistically.

For instance, leading members of his own party – including usually loyal toadies – are troubled by a potential deal Trump has tried to cook up to get Iran off his plate. The critics include Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and Roger Wicker, who all worry about an undefeated Iran posing an ongoing threat to the world.

Trump’s response on Truth Social: “So don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.”

Of course, it now appears there is no deal, even though Trump claimed on May 23 — just before the senators raised their concerns — that one had been “largely negotiated.” The following day, in fact, reporters were briefed on the terms of a deal.

But all that gave way to the more recent Trump post: “… nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet.”

And then Trump followed up with a line suggesting that he’s a long way from settling anything with Iran. During a Cabinet meeting on May 27, he contended that the leaders of the Islamic Republic “thought they were going to out-wait me, you know. ‘We’ll out-wait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms,” the president insisted, as The Hill reported.

The reality seems to be that the astonishingly self-contradictory Trump, in fact, is the loser in the war he started on Feb. 28. Recall that he initially suggested it would all be over in “four to five weeks,” though it has now stretched to three months with no end in sight.

Indeed, the shooting has continued, albeit at lower levels. And Trump has even now threatened a longstanding U.S. ally, Oman, against partnering with Iran to jointly control the Strait of Hormuz. “Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up,” he said during his Cabinet meeting.

Such bizarre comments reflect the inflated claims and contradictions Trump has made throughout the war.

The New York Times recounted many of them in “The War Is Over. The Strait is Open. We Totally Won. The Iran War According to Donald Trump.” As the piece reported, “[o]ften, there was a wide disconnect” between reality and Trump’s comments. It added: “Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened to use extreme force, only to hold his fire. In many cases he has made claims of major diplomatic progress that later proved unfounded, fueling criticism that he is trying to calm markets and relieve political pressure.”

Here’s a sampling of Trump’s remarks:

“There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” — Truth Social post on March 6

“… Iran, which is totally defeated and wants a deal …” — Truth Social post on March 13

“… VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS …” — Truth Social post on March 23

And more recently:

“I am fully aware that my Representatives are having very positive discussions with the Country of Iran, and that these discussions could lead to something very positive for all.” — Truth Social post on May 3

“I’m getting a letter supposedly tonight, so we’ll see how that goes.” — Press gaggle on May 8

“I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” — Truth Social post on May 10

“We were getting ready to do a very major attack tomorrow, and I put it off … because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran …” — Press gaggle on May 18

“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly.” — Truth Social post on May 23

“… I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal in that time is on our side.” — Truth Social post on May 24

“It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all …” — Truth Social post on May 25

Feeling a bit whipsawed? And, really, is there ever a reason to believe him?

“Only two questions remain regarding the U.S. war with Iran,” Times columnist Tom Friedman has written. “One, how big a plate of crow will President Trump have to eat to end this conflict with at least some achievements? And two, will he tell us the crow he’s eating is lobster or filet mignon?”

Depressingly, Friedman suggests that the war has just served to entrench “the vile, murderous Islamic republic regime.” His claim: “For starters, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will all be remembered as the team that gave the Islamic republic a second lease on life just when it was more on the ropes than ever with its own people.”

And David French, a former United States Army Reserve major, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a Harvard-trained military lawyer who was awarded a Bronze Star, summed it up this way in a Times newsletter he writes:

“The Trump administration hasn’t accomplished any of its war aims. The Iranian regime is intact, perhaps even more hard-line than before the war now that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps appears to exert greater control. There has been no unconditional surrender; Iran still possesses substantial stocks of highly enriched uranium; it still possesses a formidable missile arsenal; and it still supports terrorist proxies that wage war against Israel.

“We have weakened the Iranian military, but the regime is unbeaten and unbowed. If anything, its regional and global position may even be stronger than it was before the war. Before the war, Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz was theoretical. Now it’s actual. And we don’t seem to possess a plan — or the will — to open it once again.”

In other words, Trump and his gang have blown it. They are the losers.

Of course, the president will never admit this; his narcissism won’t permit it. His reaction, instead, will be classic “projection,” with him making incendiary claims about his opponents that really apply to him.

His reaction will be consistent, as we can expect from a doddering nearly 80-year-old. Going back to his earliest years, Trump was known as a bully, according to his niece, psychologist Mary Trump. One can easily imagine him strutting about elementary school playgrounds, taunting classmates as “losers.”

When Mary Trump suggested early this year that her uncle was “losing control” and humiliating himself “on an almost daily basis and often in the most public ways imaginable,” the White House reaction was predictable. Parroting his boss, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung issued a statement to The Daily Beast, saying “Mary Trump is a stone-old [sic] loser who doesn’t have a clue about anything.”

Trump’s vocabulary has scarcely improved since his earliest days, it seems, though he has often added vile expletives. The sad reality today is that along with his bullying, cloddish and ill-informed actions in Iran serving as an echo of the John Lennon song, he has turned us all into losers along with him.

The Big Picture

Author Archives: Joe Weber

About Joe Weber

Trump and the press

We’re getting a master class in would-be autocracy

“Time and tide wait for no man”

Chaucer was onto something there

An age-old hatred revived

Or, perhaps, never-departed antisemitism is just convenient again

Not journalism, but maybe better

Ann Patchett’s latest offering is packed with insight

Gordon Gekko is having a moment

Where has generosity gone among the megawealthy?

Paranoia abounds

The left has taken up the mantle from the wackos on the right

Watch the parkin’ meters

Why do so many politicians disappoint us?

Moi, moi, moi

Trump apes a 17th century king – without his grace or taste

Great Caesar’s Ghost!

There’s life in news yet, at least in D.C.

“Losers” abound

But all of us are suffering for that