The D.C. newspaper novel, the media, the Washington area, tech and other surrealism: David Rothman at large
Donald Trump is still demonizing billionaire George Soros and other “globalists,” just as he did in a 2016 campaign commercial with anti-Semitic dog-whistles, or at least something very close. But Trump is picky about which Jewish billionaires to smear, and for good reason. None other than Sheldon Adelson, the Jewish casino billionaire, helped finance our demagogic […]
Read MoreActually, any woman would have been too sexy in this case. In line with its no-females-in-photos rule, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper zapped Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from a photograph of Obama Administration officials watching the bin Laden raid. More details here, here, here and here. Wow, a Jewish Taliban—or maybe a second one! I […]
Read MoreFor every two Jews, said David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, three opinions exist, and maybe when we’re talking about literary works, the number of viewpoints would be five or six. Jewcy is out with The 50 Most Essential Works of Jewish Fiction of the Last 100 years, as compiled by the […]
Read MoreGroucho Marx once said any club that would admit him wasn’t worth joining. Marx was Jewish, of course, as am I, along with many of the characters in my novel, The Solomon Scandals; and I’m curious if the same logic might be behind rabbis’ traditional reluctance to convert nonJews without sufficient preparation to join our […]
Read MoreAre politicians and judges what they read? Senator-elect Rand Paul is a “big fan” of Ayn Rand, the ultimate novelist for the greed-is-good crew—even though he assures us that his first name is just short for “Randal.” Check out Paul on YouTube. I’ve long known about Ayn Rand and another admirer—Alan Greenspan, the ex-Fed chairman. […]
Read MorePhilip Roth was an evil literary influence on me. I don’t write like him, but love his sarcasm, irony and well-crafted dispatches from the battles of the sexes, the very stuff that unsettles Leah Hager Cohen, author of a favorable New York Times review of Nemesis, Roth’s latest novel. Ms. Cohen until recently despised Roth’s […]
Read MoreI know—I’m a few days behind on the Helen Thomas controversy—but I wanted to reflect. This was a little close to home. I respected the maverick side of Ms. Thomas even if her White House questions were often activist rather than journalistic. At one point I tried to see if she’d read Scandals for a […]
Read MoreFour Kent State University students—including Bill Schroeder, an ROTC cadet whose funeral I wrote up for the Lorain Journal—died 40 years ago on May 4, 1970. Nine suffered bullet wounds. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds at a crowd no closer than 150 feet. Shot in the back while lying on the grass, young […]
Read More