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Obama 'Cold' and 'Bloodless' The UK Telegraph has a remarkable story from America about a new trend that, so far, seems to be going unreported in the American media. Americans, turned off by President Obama's cold demeanor, are missing George W. Bush. "In a sign that the Obama honeymoon truly is over, I began to hear this week the first stirrings of a wistfulness about Mr Bush. 'I never thought I'd hear myself say it,' one Democrat told me. 'But Obama makes you feel that at least with Bush you knew where he was on Americans Are Starting to Miss...

During the election campaign, Barack Obama's cool detachment was a winning quality, the "No Drama Obama" a welcome contrast with the "Mr Angry" John McCain, never mind the hot-headed "I'm the decider" President George W Bush. A year into his presidency, however, Mr Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone's guess as to whether an event or issue truly moves him. More serious perhaps was Mr Obama's strange disconnectedness over the Fort Hood massacre of 13 soldiers by an Army major and devout Muslim who opposed the wars in...

Communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in human history. Twenty years ago, suddenly and improbably, it fell into its death throes. The end began the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was opened, allowing East Germans to leave the prison that constituted their country. Throughout Eastern Europe, one Communist regime after another disintegrated. Within two years, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not only out of power but banned by law. A system soaked in the blood of millions was gone. It was the most dramatic, life-affirming...

In the dense forests of the idyllic Danube island of Persin, home to the endangered sea eagle and the pygmy cormorant, lie the ghastly remains of a communist-era death camp. Hundreds "enemies of the regime" perished from beatings, malnutrition and exhaustion in 1949-59 in Bulgaria's Belene concentration camp, where dead bodies were fed to pigs. Twenty years after the fall of communism, Belene is largely forgotten -- only a small marble plaque tells its horrific story. And nostalgia for the past is growing in the small Balkan country and across the former Soviet bloc. Capitalism's failure to lift living standards,...

When Owen Schmitt, fearsome fullback for the Seattle Seahawks, opened a game last month with a presentation of his manly bona fides that consisted of skull-bashing himself with his helmet until blood ran down his forehead like it was the lobby of the Overlook Hotel, what should your response have been? (a) Laughter (b) Alarm (c) Disbelief Trick question, The answer is (d) Nostalgia. Owen Schmitt, for being the snarling, sweaty avatar of pumped-up, hoarse-throated, brain-damaged heavy metal manhood, did you ever know that you’re my hero? You are the idiot wind beneath my wings. Owen, my good hombre, your...

Back when Norman Rockwell ruled Saturday evenings, Adobe wasn't even a gleam in some nerd's eye, but a new book shows that the painter was, nevertheless, a photoshop god. Very few Gizmodo readers were even born when Rockwell painted his last Saturday Evening Post cover, but we all know them. You hear that name and suddenly you can picture those overly detailed, cartoonishly dramatic but ultimately kinda corny depictions of American life. Well, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, written and compiled by Ron Schick, has given me immense newfound respect for the man, for the meticulous photography, the real people...

I won't post anything here because I'm not sure of their rules.

If you’ve been waiting since the ‘80’s to see an overstuffed talking chair catapult a suit clad man-child into a fantastic like sketch, you’re day has finally come. The Pee-wee Herman Show  is back and this time, Paul Reubens promises to keep it in his gray polyesters. Reubens said, “It’s time…. I've put part of him away for a long time, but part of him has always been here with me. I think it will be like riding a bike - which is not a bad analogy for Pee-wee, by the way." That’s right; the long-awaited return of Pee-wee Herman...

"WHAT'S up, old friend?" I asked the other day. But there was no response. The old friend was muffled, muzzled, unable to say anything, trapped in his new black straitjacket. I looked at him sadly. He looked back silently. I wanted to offer comfort, but what could you say? What could you do? "Thanks for the memories," I said, walking away. And Yankee Stadium -- the old one, the real one, the one presently wrapped by black scaffolding as it undergoes a painful transformation from national treasure and civic landmark to picked-apart, torn-asunder rubble -- didn't say a word. Noble...

"Feel-good nostalgia tells us that 1969 was the height of the hippie, warm-fuzzy era of peace and love," said Murray Whyte in the Toronto Star, but Charles Manson's "stamp on the culture is arguably deeper and more lasting" than even Woodstock's. Forty years ago, "puppetmaster" Manson orchestrated "a generation's defining criminal atrocity"—the "Helter Skelter" killings in Los Angeles, Calif., during which director Roman Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was among those murdered. To this day, "legions of gawkers" still make a "macabre pilgrimage" to the scene of the crime. "Long after his capture and incarceration," said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment...

During the recent presidential election we heard the all too familiar suggestion of “returning to the good old days.” Every candidate talked about returning America to a sense of values. I don’t know about you but each time I heard that suggestion I get a little queasy in the stomach accompanied by a little bewilderment, confusion, and absolute disgust! Whenever I hear the suggestion I often wondered exactly what period in time they want to take us back to! Could it be the days of our slave-holding forefathers? Perhaps they want to take us back to the glorious war that...

American Jews overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama, the Candidate of Change, despite credible warnings and ample evidence that he would obsessively seek to create a Palestinian state at Israel's expense and "engage" nuclear-arming, Islamist Iran. After four months of Change, Obama's support in the Jewish community seems rock solid. Besides, many Jews say, Obama's appointment of two Jews to key White House positions - Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff and David Axelrod as presidential senior adviser - proves Obama is OK for Israel. So what if the meeting with Netanyahu didn't go as well as first advertised? Bibi's a...

This screed is going to be a little different from some that I have posted recently. Instead of worrying about dire threats to our nation's sovereignty, we are going to take a trip down memory lane, with the aid of a remarkable couple of children's books. While we are doing this, there will be a couple of wistful reminisces and (of course) a passing reference to the title of the piece. As C.S. Lewis wrote in a dedication of one of his Narnia series, the person to whom he dedicated the book was too old for fairy-tales; but the time...

A cheerful wave of the deacon's stole to Doc Mac, who reminds us that today marks a little milestone in broadcast history, when Fulton Sheen made his TV debut. The good doctor quotes one writer who described the archbishop's appeal thusly: He was elegant, elevated, relaxed, often very funny. Only Jack Benny could top Sheen’s ability to back a punch line—gazing calmly at the camera the entire time. The shows had a precise formula. Sheen, wearing his bishop’s cross, crimson cape and skullcap, would stride into a parlorlike studio, pause, tell a funny story, and then pose the problem...

Most of us as children had objects from which we derived great comfort in childhood’s scarier moments, a trait embodied in the Peanuts character, Linus, who is seldom seen without his security blanket. Of course, few of us still carry — or admit to carrying — such comfort objects into our adulthood, but that does not stop us from turning to childhood mementos in uncertain times. Consider, for instance, how the decline of our economy has precipitated a resurgence in nostalgia.....

Legends of Doo Wop

It’s almost ironic, really, that less than two weeks after he once again excoriated the United States — this time to a second-grader — Sen. Barack Hussein Obama suddenly finds himself having to respond in some way to reality — and, in the process, once again demonstrate just how utterly vacuous he, and the political party that is promoting him, really is. A nasty little shooting war has broken out in the Republic of Georgia, a shooting war in which Russia is flexing its military muscle. In reaction to what has transpired, Obama immediately called for action on the part...

MOSCOW -- The Byzantine Empire fell in 1453. But you wouldn't know it in Russia, where Vladimir V. Putin has been behaving as though the 15th century never ended, as though he is the direct descendant of the Byzantine kings and Moscow remains the "Third Rome" it declared itself to be in 1472. Just like the leaders of Byzantium centuries ago, Putin and his supporters talk about Russia today as if it were a divinely ordained power, destined to withstand the decay and destruction of the West. The "double eagle" emblem, originally adopted in Russia about the time of the...

Those of you of a certain age will recall a time when TV stations didn't stay on the air constantly but signed off late at night (with the National Anthem) and signed on again early in the morning. And in those days televisions had tuning buttons on them that had to be adjusted by hand so the snowy signals from far away could come in as clearly as possible. Each morning the station would begin the day with a "test pattern" (usually with an Indian's head somewhere about for whatever reason) so the viewer could tune his set for the...

I can’t wait! This is the beer I was raised on, long before certain people at Schlitz got greedy, leading to Schlitz beer becoming known as “Schitz” beer. The downfall of Schlitz, combined with a bottler’s strike at Anheuser-Busch in 1976 allowed Old Style, a sleeper brand that had been in Chicago since the early 1900s, to take over the Chicagoland beer market. OS distributors took their battle for supremacy to neighborhood taverns, bottle by bottle and case by case until the brand dominated more than 40% of the local beer market. The problems of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company...