Rick Horowitz

After New Haven: Random Ruminations on Race

            * At some point, the surgeon has to pick up the knife. When that time comes, the only thing that matters -- or more precisely, the only thing that should matter -- is whether the surgeon knows his stuff. Or, for that matter, her stuff.

            The surgeon’s gender, the surgeon’s skin color: irrelevant -- of no more importance than the surgeon’s eye color, or hometown. Cast the widest possible net to locate undeveloped talent, to encourage it, to nurture it. Give that talent every reasonable opportunity to emerge.

            But at some point, the surgeon has to pick up the knife. The fire captain has to send his people into the burning building.

            They need to know what they’re doing.        

Sanford: In a Family Way

             “You saw the press conference?”

            “Of course I saw the press conference. Very strange.”

            “Very strange. And you read the e-mails?”

            “Of course I read the e-mails. How could you not read the e-mails?”

            “Absolutely.”

            “Very strange.”

            “Very strange. So he’s cooked, right?”

GOP on Iran: No to Nuance!

            Tired of being ridiculed by tin-pot dictators? Fed up with kowtowing to “international opinion”? Frustrated by those constant challenges to American influence from losers who should know better?

            Your worries are over!

            Yes, friends, with E-Z Diplomacy, you’ll never take another backward step, and you’ll run the world with the same old confidence you used to have. Why settle for settling when you can have it your way? Why pussyfoot around a problem when it’s simpler than ever to eliminate it and get exactly what you want?

            E-Z Diplomacy will show you how. Our renowned instructors will share the know-how they’ve acquired over years of service in Washington’s elite corps of Republican strategists and conservative commentators. And our easy-to-follow instructions -- available on DVD, Blu-ray, or downloadable to your iPod -- will have you throwing your weight around in no time.

Murder, in the Name of Life

            Just two more, you’re thinking, and it can stop.

            Just two more murdered doctors, you’re thinking, and it will have to stop. They’ll have run out of targets.

            The clinic in Wichita is closing, you hear -- closing permanently. The murdered doctor’s family announced the decision just days ago, and now it’s down to two. Two clinics in the entire country where a woman can go for a late-term abortion. A legal, late-term abortion.

            Opponents are exultant. Already the president of the group that calls itself “Operation Rescue” says he’d like to buy the building where the clinic was located, and perhaps move his own group’s headquarters there.

            File this under “Dancing on Dr. Tiller’s Grave.”

Palin and Gingrich: Enough Limelight for Two?

            Newt and Sarah,           

            Sarah and Newt,

            One so brainy,

            The other so cute.

             They make a lovely couple, don’t you think? And wouldn’t you just love to be right there in a room with the two of them when they start discussing...anything?

            What a feast for the senses that would be! The Old Professor, with his rumpled ways and his cerebral bent, his million-dollar-vocabulary and his slash-and-burn tactics. And the Hockey Mom, with her soap-opera family and her down-home-Up-North “You betcha”s and her heart on her sleeve. (A designer sleeve, of course.)

            From all outward appearances, so little in common that you --

            Well, there is one thing. But it’s such a minor thing, it’s hardly worth mentioning:

Cheney, Selling Cheney

             There’s another way to look at it.

            Dick Cheney’s “I’m Not Going Anywhere” tour, that is. You can’t turn on your TV these days without seeing the former veep filling the screen with his latest account of what they did back when they were in charge, and why they did it, and how wonderfully it all worked, and how if it didn’t work it was somebody else’s fault. (Think George Tenet. Think Richard Clarke.) And most of all, how the new guys are messing everything up.

            Cheney’s former boss -- and we use the word loosely -- may have slunk back to his beloved Texas when his time was through. But not the veep.

            And the question is, “Why not?”

GOP on Obama: Complain, Complain, Complain

             They don’t like his Broadway shows.

            They don’t like his standing Os.

 

            They don’t like his condiments.

            They don’t like his elegance.

 

            They don’t like his way with words.

            They don’t like his fawning herds.

 

            They don’t like his cushy life.

            They don’t like his pushy wife.

Smoke-Free at Last! Smoke-Free at Last!

            [After years of opposition from business interests, Wisconsin’s legislature finally enacts a smoking ban for the state’s many restaurants and bars. Syndicated columnist Rick Horowitz sees the new law as just the latest chapter in a long -- and important -- story. Here’s the text of his recent commentary on Milwaukee Public TV’s “InterCHANGE” program.]

             Look, I admit it: I don’t cut tobacco much slack. Both my parents were smokers -- lots of cigarettes, over lots of years.

            My mother died of pancreatic cancer, which they say is a smoking-related disease.

            And my father? My father died of lung cancer.

            Just so you know where I’m coming from.