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Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web

Some books just aren't worth the time

It’s a new literary genre — books by former staff members and aides who now want to dish about the awfulness of Donald Trump or his White House. Last month, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie debuted the latest book in that field, “Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey and the Power […]

Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web

Government officials need to feel the pain, too

Next time, they should redistribute the pain. That’s an expression Martin Luther King used — he credited Jesse Jackson — in the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike as he urged boycotts and other forms of economic coercion in support of the strikers. Those men had been suffering alone, he said. Now, let the whole town […]

Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web

Redistribute the pain of the shutdown

Greetings from Albuquerque. As these words are written, it is Thursday morning and I am in New Mexico to promote my new novel, “The Last Thing You Surrender.” I have to be back home before Monday to teach a class. If my return flight were canceled because, say, the TSA went on strike, I’d be […]

Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web

Obscenity is not just a set of words

As a general rule, I don’t curse a lot. I’ve found that I can usually express myself effectively enough without it. And it’s always seemed to me that foul language, used ubiquitously, loses its primary value, i.e., its ability to shock or to state a thing with force. How seriously should anyone take the F-bomb […]