I Gave Up On New Poetry Myself

It Takes Great Self-confidence To Write A Newspaper Column. Some Might Say It Takes Arrogance. Be That As It May, My Willingness To Pronounce On A Great Many Matters Of Which I Have Little Or No Knowledge Is One Of My Prime Qualifications For This Trade.

Rereading A.j. Liebling Carries Me Happily Back To An Age When All Good Journalists Knew They Had Plenty To Be Modest About, And Were.

A Group Of Politicians Deciding To Dump A President Because His Morals Are Bad Is Like The Mafia Getting Together To Bump Off The Godfather For Not Going To Church On Sunday.

How Many More Years Will Our Educators Continue To Lecture Us On The Evils Of Whipping Children Until They Bring Home High Grades? Year After Year We Listen To These Fellows Tell Us That It Is Not The Grade That Counts But The Development Of The Child's Personality. After The Lecture They Go Back To All The Best Schools And Reject Our Children Because They Have C Averages.

A Man Writing A Letter Is A Man In The Act Of Thinking, And It Was An Exercise Reagan Obviously Enjoyed. After His First Meeting With Gorbachev, For Example, He Sent A 'dear Murph' Letter About It To His Old Friend George Murphy, A Former Senator And Actor Who Had Once Played Reagan's Father In A Film.