Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner

Two dear old unmarried sisters, who live two floors above me and have spent most of their lives in this Wilmersdorf section of Berlin, much of it in this house, recently called my attention to nearby locations associated with the pre-emigration years of Marlene Dietrich, so this afternoon I finally got around to making a [...]

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By comparison those graphic horrors look like a day in the country with Uncle Don when you read this journalistic triumph just published in “The Nation” - long, very long, but well worth reading in its entirety if you sincerely care about what the Bush administration has perverted the USA into during the past few years….
If [...]

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I believe this usage of that exclamation originated with a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Herb Caen, for whom I ordinarily had little use and less journalistic regard.
For an exclamation as to why I’ve temporarily revived it, click here.
Technorati Tags: Herb Caen

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A used item discarded onto a sidewalk in my Berlin neighborhood took me back down Memory Lane this morning to a splendid example of political humor that came my way back during the Eisenhower administration.  (Can you remember?  Five-Star U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, victorious as Supreme Commander of the British, French, and American [...]

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I’d like to zing in an enthusiastic plug for two estimable websites I’ve just discovered mere minutes ago: <http://afterdowningstreet.org> and <http://carryabigsticker.com/>.
If you’ll check ‘em out, you’ll immediately see why.
The first thing at the former that caught my eye and warmed my heart:

“Our Anti-War Shirts are Illegal
“3 new shirt designs feature names of 3,461 fallen U.S. [...]

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When this book, now published in English translation as Peeling the Onion, appeared here in Germany last year, it caused one hell of a flap because Grass’s previous books (which won him the Nobel Prize) had long since established him as a sort of living conscience of the German nation and now here he for [...]

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Unless you’ve spent the past several months under water, you’ll almost certainly long since know about Berlin’s latest superstar and present unrivalled all-out celebrity darling: a snow-white polar bear-cub named Knut, rejected at birth by his circus-traumatized mother Tosca and raised by a model bipedal foster-mother named Thomas Dörflein, a member of the staff of [...]

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I’ve just discovered a link to his MSNBC “Countdown” program that’ll keep you thoroughly up to date on his uniquely commendable campaign for honesty and democracy in Washington.
From now on I myself, even from here in Germany, intend to pay regular attention to this admirable American - the kind that makes me sincerely proud of [...]

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Egbert Roscoe Murrow, later known as plain Ed Murrow, born April 25, 1908 near Polecat Creek, near Greensboro, in Guilford County, North Carolina, half a century ago set the standard for responsible American television journalism.  His finest hour came on March 9, 1954, when a half-hour documentary quoting the documented utterances of Wisconsin’s hysterically red-baiting Senator [...]

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My No. 1 stateside television hero Keith Olbermann, bless him, has dropped one of his better journalistic blockbusters on the administration in Washington during an interview he conducted with former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whom he reached by telephone out in Santa Fe.  Clicking here will get you a powerful double feature: not only the videoclip of [...]

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