Erik Tarloff

They may have flirted with other, spicier candidates, but Republican voters will return to the one who is stable, reasonable, and thoroughly unexciting.… More »

The former Speaker for the House may enjoy support as an alternative to Mitt Romney, but one way or another, he will be brought down by the party establishment… More »

Public protest isn't about anything as mundane as ten-point programs and lists of demands… More »

In the 1950s, the author's father was interrogated by the House Un-American Committee and blacklisted by his profession. Years later, too many Americans fail to grasp the moral of his story.… More »

If he wants to win reelection in 2012, the president will have to stand for something. He needs to get angry -- eloquently angry.… More »

Obama made the better argument Monday night, but that doesn't mean he's going to come out on top once the battle over the deficit winds down… More »

Some Republicans are having a hard time distinguishing the serious part of politics from the posturing, just like in 1995… More »

Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation" and Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman" prove there are creative ways to recreate books on screen… More »

Some controversies, like Don't Ask Don't Tell, warrant debate, while others -- like gay marriage and the Cordoba House -- don't… More »

A clip from the BBC comedy TV series "Not Only...But Also" ushered in a new type of humor—one that has no purpose or logic… More »

We're more like Neanderthals than we thought.… More »

Can we judge a book, opera, or symphony by its creator's racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic views?… More »

What we shall take as a given is the incredible vacuity of the opposition. By now, everyone is surely familiar with the dishonest, fear-mongering arguments peddled by opponents of health care reform; it shouldn't be necessary to rehearse (or refute) them here. I don't mean to suggest there weren't reasonable arguments to be made, merely that, by and large, and for whatever reason, they weren't. Instead, the other side chose the route of hyperbole and hysterical…… More »

What a chess match teaches us about health reform, Obama, and his presidency… More »

The world has changed a lot since the poet wrote his seminal "Annus Mirabilis." Why 22nd-century audiences might be confused when they read it.… More »

About a decade ago, when I was a frequent contributor to Slate, two horrifying events occurred in the Middle East that occasioned a great deal of commentary in the magazine's free-form, unrefereed letters-to-the-editor feature, "The Fray." One involved Israeli soldiers repeatedly firing their rifles at a young unarmed Palestinian boy in the West Bank as he desperately scrambled to find cover. The other involved the lethal bombing of a Tel Aviv pizza parlor where a…… More »

Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO, is running for the Republican nomination for governor of California. Armed with a considerable personal fortune, she shot out of the starting blocks early, inundating the airwaves--both radio and television--with advertising. These spots are entirely content-free, total pablum, but that hardly makes them noteworthy; most campaign ads have lacked anything resembling substance at least since it was morning in America. These do,…… More »

Here's an example of a moment with which every classical music lover is familiar: There comes a point in virtually every concerto from the classical period when the orchestra comes to a sudden halt and the soloist takes flight with a couple of minutes of difficult (or at least difficult-sounding) passage-work interspersed with fragments of melody derived from what's been previously heard. This music usually culminates in an extended trill, after which the…… More »

Somewhere along the line, right wingers stopped complaining about "New Deal judges"--presumably because an actual FDR-appointed judiciary had largely passed from the scene--and began assailing "activist judges" instead. There was a certain logic to it; by 1968, the appointment power had been in liberal hands for 20 28 of the previous 28 36 years, and therefore, any judicial activism on display was likely to have been liberal activism.But it was also a canard, an…… More »

What is it about Sundays?They usually start fine: Liane Hansen and the estimable Will Shortz on the radio, a few cups of coffee with my weekly dose of network TV bloviation, followed by a Bach cantata or a Haydn mass on the stereo, and then an hour or so with The New York Times.But somewhere during the late morning or early afternoon, a weight begins to settle on my chest, a pervasive melancholy that evolves over the next few hours into something worse, a feeling…… More »