“In Death, Jacko’s Flaws ‘Beat It,’” Ellis Henican Sunday Column, Newsday, June 28, 2009, p. 2 Never speak ill of the freshly dead. So deeply embedded is that dictum, people attend funerals of relatives they hated and priests deliver eulogies for mobsters and hoods. Well, watch as the dictum is tested now. Michael Jackson was…
Details“The Curse of 2012,” Ellis Henican Column, am/New York, June 26, 2009 Mark Sanford got caught with an Argentine mistress. Bobby Jindal opened his mouth. John Ensign two-timed with a one-time staffer. By this point, Sarah Palin’s personal calamties are almost too numerous to name. It’s the Republican Curse of 2012. Who else dares to…
Details“Etiquette Enforcement,” Ellis Henican Blog, “The Huffington Post,” June 24, 2009 The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has officially decided we’re not polite enough. They should know, right? These are the people who have done so much to coarsen the local language with expressions like “The train will be moving shortly” (yeah, right!) and “I have no…
Details“Deception No Present on Father’s Day,” Ellis Henican Sunday Column, Newsday, June 21, 2009 It’s the Father’s Day mystery that may never be solved. No, not what happened to Steven Damman, the toddler whose disappearance from East Meadow in 1955 spurred a massive national child hunt. With luck, persistence and a few long memories, the…
Details“140-Character World Changers,” Ellis Henican Column, am/New York, June 19, 2009, page 4 Why should Iranian election protesters have all the Twitter fun? Can’t other world events be hijacked, one 140-character outburst at a time? Sure, they can. And soon they will be. Every day, it gets a little bit harder to tell the social-networking…
Details“Albany Judgement Day,” Ellis Henican Sunday Column, Newsday, June 14, 2009 The court came to order. After days of Albany pandemonium, the matter had finally arrived where it was headed all along, in the lap of a state court. The issue? Effective control of the New York State Senate. The judge? The honorable Thomas McNamara,…
Details“America’s Funniest Statehouse,” Ellis Henican Column, amNew York, June 12, 2009 “These Albany people,” I was marveling Thursday, “they come straight from Central Casting.” Randy Credico, who’s been working for years in the capital on drug-law reform, begged to differ. “A couple of them,” he said, “come straight from Central Booking.” But this being Albany,…
Details“Prez Puts Middle Name Front and Center,” Ellis Henican Sunday Column, Newsday, June 7, 2009 Finally, the middle name was a plus. Barack Hussein Obama spent much of the week in a part of the world where Hussein is like Smith or Johnson. It slides off the tongue, hardly noticed at all. All last year,…
Details“ETHICS TAKE A VACATION,” Ellis Henican Column, amNewYork, 6-5-09 Ethics delayed in Albany! Honesty in government forced to wait! Holy kickback, who would have expected something like this? Only someone who’d never driven within 100 miles of New York’s cozy state capital, where legislators and lobbyists never, ever forget who’s who. (Hint: The lobbyists pick…
Details“Who Wants to Drive Everywhere?” Ellis Henican Sunday Column, Newsday, 5-31-09 Is it still the suburbs if you don’t need a car? That epistemological question lies at the very core of the debate over Long Island’s two most fascinating development proposals – the Lighthouse project around Nassau Coliseum and western Suffolk’s Heartland Town Square. What…
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