-
The Shame of the Vanderbilts
By Jeff Kisseloff
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, I had occasion to enjoy a lunch and a few subsequent interviews with Frederick Vanderbilt Field. Fred, who was raised in a mansion on Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, spent his life fighting for peace and justice and against racism and economic oppression, so of course he was considered the black sheep of the Vanderbilt family.
Fred was also forced to flee the US during the McCarthy period. It figures doesn't it, that he was a pariah in this country, while his robber-baron great-grandfather was some kind of national hero?
That's one reason why I was so intrigued by Steve Fraser's review in this week's magazine of "The First Tycoon," T.J. Styles's new biography of Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt. Through Fred, one of the country's most notorious tycoons and I were are only three-degrees of separation apart (And my friendship with Alger Hiss, leaves me only two degrees of separation from Richard Nixon. Enough of that game).
(0) CommentsNovember 17, 2009
-
Calling Mariano
By Jeff Kisseloff
Last week marked the first anniversary of President Obama's historic victory over John McCain. But as I looked over the progressive agenda laid out by Katrina vanden Heuvel last November, it occurred to me that it is littered with too many disappointments. Then I realized why -- the president doesn't have a good closer.
He needs Mariano Rivera!
When legislation is in trouble, the president should be able to pick up the phone and call his bullpen. The gate would open, and out would come Mariano, the greatest closer of all time. With a blazer draped over his shoulder, a briefcase full of arguments in his hand, Mariano, with that confident smile on his face, would stroll up to Capitol Hill to strains of Metallica's "Enter Sandman." All it would take would be a few pitches to close the deal. Why am I always the first one to think of these things?
(0) CommentsNovember 9, 2009
Jeff Kisseloff
Your guide to the richness of The Nation's past.
- Atrios
- Arts and Letters Daily
- The Caucus
- Campus Progress
- Crooks and Liars
- The Daily Gotham
- Daily Kos
- Echidne of the Snakes
- Ezra Klein
- FAIR
- Feministe
- Feministing
- Firedoglake
- Glenn Greenwald
- Gothamist
- In these Times
- Hendrik Hertzberg
- Huffington Post
- Hullabaloo
- Matthew Yglesias
- Media Matters
- Mother Jones
- My DD
- New York Review of Books
- Openleft
- Pam's House Blend
- Pandagon
- Political Wire
- The Progressive
- RaceWire
- Real Clear Politics
- Roberto Lovato
- Romenesko
- Swing State Project
- Talking Points Memo
- Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Tapped
- Tech President
- Tompaine
- The Washington Note
- Utne Reader
- Wonkette
- ZNet
RSS