The D.C. newspaper novel, the media, the Washington area, tech and other surrealism: David Rothman at large
Think Donald Trump will give us many positive surprises in the near term? Dream on. His EPA nominee hates the agency’s mission. Among at least the long-shot possibilities for secretary of state? The head of ExxonMobil. What is this, reality or a cartoon? I caught up with James Fallows of the The Atlantic, once Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter, for his own take […]
Read MoreDid Harry Truman really say, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”? Or maybe “buy a dog”? In The Solomon Scandals, an eloquent Afghan named Thackeray II quotes that line in a Truman act at the Cosmos Club. But he gets corrected by Prof. Rebecca Kitiona-Fenton, author of the foreword and afterword […]
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 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 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 MoreThe Georgetown Dish has the details about the women of 3303 Water St., N.W. Once again Life catches up with Scandals, which the item in fact mentions. Shown is an example of the “minimalist aesthetic” amid which a plot might have unfolded against the White House social secretary.
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