The Lions' Den
Sticking To The Union
For the most part, labor is not to blame for its shortcomings, mainly the product of countervailing historical forces. In 1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act, which granted private-sector workers the right to form unions, collectively bargain, and strike. Growing in number, unions eventually counted one-third of the American workforce in their memberships.
Bye Bye Bloomy
I hated him, and most people in Rockaway, Queens felt the same. We lived on the edge of the outer boroughs, 40 minutes into Lower Manhattan by car and an hour-and-a-half away by subway. Bloomberg was always booed at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. My father thought the mayor only cared about people who lived in “the city.” My mother remarked that municipal services had been better under Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg was no Giuliani, and nothing like Ed Koch, that irascible, ideal-type Jew Yorker who had endeared himself to white ethnics with straight talk and a hard line on riots.
Queerness Considered
The sine qua non of the social media provocateur, the “V” represented an unsparing critique of today’s gay rights paradigm. Attacked from the left by self-styled “radical queers,” the model has been faulted for its emphasis on reform and integration. Latching onto the slogan “assimilation is not liberation” and hearkening to a glorious past, the queers have appointed themselves guardians of LGBT identity, insisting on retaining the early movement’s destabilizing mission.
They're the Top
I thought at first there was little to admire in my grandparents’ musical ken. Porter’s lyrical witticisms, dated though they are, were cause for mirth. The Gershwins, with their synthesis of jazz and the French classical style, clearly merited respect. Berlin’s compositions had a ritmo allegro that lent themselves to occasional listening.
