The GOP debates could make a profit on Pay TV if they let Stephen Colbert join the panel. How much would it be worth to see him match wits with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry? Sadly, like his other ventures, Colbert’s South Carolina candidacy is only fodder for his reality-blurring show, the perfection of a trend that began to emerge in the 1960s when TV made American life too complicated for Bob Hope-Milton Berle one-liners. Rough sketches for the persona Colbert now presents were subjects back then...

As Mitt Romney tries to seal the deal in the Palmetto state and keeps slipping in the polls there, memories come back of a culture clash when I was in basic training there during World War II. How much has changed in those seven decades? The country boys in my company were excited by anything exotic and, given their lives before induction, it took little to tickle them. One day they were chortling over a guy in the next battalion named Zero. He had been at City College of New York a decade before...

After all the demographic slicing and dicing, the final primary figures disclose one New Hampshire result pundits are ignoring: The only two candidates who unequivocally want to take us of out of Afghanistan and most of the Middle East muddle now, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, together received 39.8 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 39.6 percent. In contrast, Rick Perry, who advocates going back into Iraq, got one percent as superhawks Santorum and Gingrich drew single figures. Granted, the contest...

Tomorrow residents of the Granite State will be feeling like Roxie Hart after the verdict in her “Chicago” trial, abandoned and forgotten by hordes of reporters and camera crews who have besieged them over weeks for every detail of their decision-making, leanings and doubts about the candidates. All that ends tonight when votes are counted, and as the crafty lawyer explains in the movie, the “journalists” will all be rushing off for “fresh blood on the streets” in Florida and South Carolina. As...

As Republicans loudly proclaim marriage as between one man and one woman, Democrats are quietly debating White House partnerships—-not only in a new insider book on the First Lady’s role but renewed discussion of Hillary Clinton joining the President on this year’s ticket. In the book, a New York Times reporter describes Michelle Obama “as a woman who, despite her public face as ‘mom-in-chief’…has been a behind-the-scenes force helping shape her husband’s presidency as a steady...

Just in time, our frayed nerves go back to the quiet and calm of “Downton Abbey” in World War I after a weekend of Republicans crying havoc over Barack Obama, pausing only in sniping at one another for restful outbursts of road rage, blaming the President for everything wrong in the 21st century world. Robotic Mitt Romney, as befits a frontrunner, leads the pack in letting “slip the dogs of war,” stabbing today’s Caesar with a Tiffany icepick at every possible turn, claiming that the nation...

With a double-header debate this weekend, memories arise of the legendary Satchel Paige who, before baseball was integrated, was the greatest pitcher in America, often starting two games in a day and was considered by Joe DiMaggio et al the best they never had to face in the big leagues during his prime. Satchel pitched well into his sixties, famously saying, “Never look back, something might be gaining on you.” Ron Paul, who will turn 77 in August, like Paige, is an all-star in his own Libertarian...

Three moderate GOP weathervanes—-George Will, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks—-are being blown by Iowa winds in Rick Santorum’s direction, but in a wobbly way. The usually dour Will starts out almost giddy, claiming Republicans “crave fun. Supporting Mitt Romney still seems to many like a duty…Suddenly, supporting Santorum seems like a lark, partly because a week or so ago he could quit complaining about media neglect and start having fun, which is infectious.” Backing off quickly,...

Parsing Iowa results is like trying to solve the old riddle of why French intellectuals loved screwball comic Jerry Lewis, critics gave “The Nutty Professor” their Oscar and the government showered him with honors. In the world of slapstick, you never know which way the croissant will crumble and, post-Iowa, Michele Bachmann is gone, Rick Perry has his foot on a banana peel and Newt is revving up to pummel Mitt in a round of revenge debates. In the Anyone-But-Romney Sweepstakes, the umpteenth...

For those who may be confused by the sophisticated ritual to take place tonight, explains the NY Times Caucus, “the process requires a commitment of several hours for a voter. And it encourages campaigns to have a level of organizational sophistication that often helps separate candidates who can go the distance from those who cannot… “Once voters show up at their caucus location, it is not as simple as just making a quick decision. Representatives of each campaign are typically given the...

No matter who faces him for the White House, Barack Obama starts 2012 with one advantage against the GOP—-the poster boy for intransigence, Eric Cantor, who proves again on 60 Minutes that there is no way to “humanize” him. In an interview, the usually genial Lesley Stahl starts by saying flatly, “President Obama’s nemesis throughout the year was 48-year-old Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader of the House, who played a major role in the Republican strategy. “The...

The new year brings news of a 16-year-old girl named Heaven Chamberlain, arrested with Occupy the Caucus protesters in Des Moines along with her mother. Heaven, detained once before at an Occupy rally in October, says her rap sheet is like lines on a résumé (“It shows that I’m active with the community and that I care about people’s opinions”) and that she plans to run for president in 2036 after a stop brief in the Senate. Ms. Chamberlain (no descendant of Neville, by all evidence) takes...

The candidate’s son Matt steps into a brouhaha by answering a question about his father’s refusal to release tax returns by being flip about Obama’s birth certificate. Bad move. The elder Romney has a valid Michigan birth certificate, but there is also the question of a death certificate, officially stamped on his passport (“He is dead”) by the French police after a lethal auto accident while he was a missionary there in 1968. If the Birthers can see a Manchurian candidate scenario...

If Mitt Romney wins in Iowa next week, he could find nipping at his heels still another challenger. Two weeks ago, in post-debate stupor, I woozily compared the GOP race to an action movie: “If the Great Screenwriter in the Sky is following the…plotlines, after all the car chases, explosions and reversals, the eventual nominee is clear: Rick Santorum. He’s been a bit player who has never had a big scene and, by all conventions of the genre, has to be revealed as the powerful genius who...

Breaking up is hard to do, but much more expensive in today’s Hollywood than rural Georgia of three decades ago. Mel Gibson is finally divorced from his wife of more than 30 years and mother of seven children after turning over an estimated half of his $850 million in movie earnings. At the same time, the nation’s other Lethal Mouth seems to have been lying about his first divorce three decades ago as CNN unearths Georgia court documents showing that his wife wanted to stay married. Even worse,...

Reading bloggers’ own favorite posts of 2011 is a reminder of how much political and social sanity has been lost in this Tea Party world. Satire and rage abound. Yet it’s cathartic to read these notes in a bottle from survivors and realize we are not alone in this shipwrecked world. Such comfort is provided by keeping alive a tradition started by the late Al Weigel, who wrote brilliantly under the nom de plume of Jon Swift and was tireless in promoting the work of others, an effort now being...

In the residue of Christmas spirit, an attempt to understand what’s behind a toxic cloud that the Tea Party has cast over American government all year: Yes, the economy has been bad, and many of us have been hurting—-from young people without jobs to the retired with no increases in Social Security and no place to earn interest on their life savings. Yes, bailouts and stimulus have been very costly yet still not enough to turn the recession around, creating huge deficits. Yes, government has...

A mutual grandparent at holiday dinner confronts me with the accusation that I fired a cinema icon in the 1960s. Guilty. So I may as well share my confession with the whole world. I brought out the worst in Pauline Kael. She started irritating me the minute we met and never stopped. Looking for a movie reviewer with intelligence and style when I became editor of McCalls, I had read and admired Kael’s work in periodicals with small circulation. Another editor and I took her to lunch. The ice in...

We’ve all done it, and Mitt seems like someone who wouldn’t hesitate to pass on a second-hand present. He did it to a voter the other day. Asked by a New Hampshire man who was being foreclosed by Bank of America even though he had made all his mortgage payments, a problem Romney has clearly never faced, the candidate suggested he go to court or occupy bank headquarters until he gets satisfaction. “That would get their attention,” Romney said. Problem is, neither the Governor or his staff...

I can’t gift-wrap this, but it’s the closest thing to a Christmas treasure that I have to share. Decades ago, I published it twice in different magazines. Eric Sevareid was a gifted writer who spent most of his life as a radio and TV journalist working with Edward R. Murrow during World War II as part of “a band of brothers” and later at CBS-TV in its glory days. He was a hero and a role model to me and, in the light of the new Clint Eastwood movie, it’s noteworthy that J. Edgar Hoover...

Washington’s new impasse could ironically lead to a gift of sanity as the House Tea Party is finally revealed for the berserk faction it has been all year, holding the nation hostage to a scorched-government ideology. Senate Republicans, after passing a short-term payroll tax extension by 89 to 10, are outdoing the President in denouncing them for “harming the view, if it’s possible anymore, of the American people about Congress” (John McCain), “playing politics” (Scott Brown) and thinking...

Lately, I have been watching hours of scratchy black-and-white film about my childhood years, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and seeing through very old eyes a different America, peopled in turmoil by those who don’t resemble their descendants today. Instead of fighting for bargains on Black Friday, they stand patiently in breadlines with gaunt faces and hopeless eyes, waiting for food. Instead of blaming government for their poverty, with 25 percent unemployment, they look hopefully to it...

If the feisty Libertarian, who now leads in Iowa, should win the nomination, all of us who have qualms about 21st century government will be put to a test. With Congress tied in knots and a narrowly divided Supreme Court, we have had a sneak preview of what may be coming—-total loss of faith in a flawed system that has more or less worked for centuries and, in an election between Barack Obama and Ron Paul, the choice of a continuing struggle to repair it or dismantle it completely and start over. The...

When scoring athletes look upward and thank God for His help, why don’t opponents ever shake their fists at the sky for being disfavored? Debate over piety displays by Denver’s Tim Tebow and a Barry Bonds conviction for using testosterone enhancers prompt broader questions about the definition of manhood today and its manifestations. We are a long way from the culture’s strong, silent heroes (Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Unitas, Clint Eastwood) to a generation of Dancing with the Stars on the diamond,...

His opponents sound like Occupy Wall Street protesters as the SEC files charges against six top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who seem not to have profited from Newt Gingrich’s $1.6 million of advice as a historian. The indictments could be a harpoon to bring down the GOP’s white-haired whale, sharpening attacks on his self-enrichment with court cases rather than vague accusations. Asked if those ties should disqualify Gingrich as a presidential contender, Rick Perry tells Iowans,...