If you’ve come this far to read a bit about me, I urge you to visit my own website, WWW.JOELENGEL.COM, where I also post, though usually items that are a bit off-center—you know, the P. 17 story that says quite a bit about our world and yet gets little or no attention. (Also follow me on Twitter @joelengel)
This is from my longer bio there:
I’ve authored or co-authored more than 15 books (including a New York Times bestseller)—narrative nonfiction, essays, sports, satire, pop culture, biography, and autobiography. As a journalist for the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among other papers and periodicals, I reported on everything from politics to hot-air ballooning, pregnancy to cancer research, pop culture to business. I’ve also sold several feature-film scripts to Hollywood and produced about 60 hours of (cable) television. Two professional experiences that I remember with inexplicable pleasure are writing an infomercial hosted by a celebrity who insisted on being introduced as “the beautiful and talented actress” when in fact she was not quite either, and getting fired from a documentary about Elvis fans for telling the network executive—who until months before had been a Russian interpreter—that her clunky suggestion for the show’s opening sequence was “not good television.”
+54-2Opponents of nuclear power plants were cheered by the results of a recent study suggesting that, with public health in mind, more of these marvels that turn out cheap, clean energy ought to be shut down.
Clos...
Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise visit to Iraq to plead with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to stop granting Iran permission to Iraqi airspace and territory. Iran, which has a vested interest in maintaining the Syrian regime, flies arms and other material support that aid Assad.
President Obama is in the Mideast, geographically not all that far from where Bashar Assad may be using chemical weapons against his own people.
Verification of that would be a “red line” for the administration to get involved militarily—something the president wants to avoid after the debacle in Libya. (Apparently it’s tough...
Watching Sarah Palin’s canny performance at CPAC the other day—and particularly the moment she held up that Big Gulp in a Statue of Liberty pose after a provocative double entendre about her “rack”—two words came to mind:
In a lot of ways, the philosophical parallels are striking.
Like Palin, Bruce enjoyed sticking...
Everything that’s wrong with the corruptocracy known as Los Angeles is contained in this L.A. Times report about the departure of Tim Leiweke as head of Anschutz Entertainment Group—and there’s little doubt, given how the details were spaced out in the 1,000-word story, that reporters David Zahniser and Kate Linthicum didn’t...
The other day I was moved to reflect that the world liberals believe in—a Utopia where bad guys are just one tax hike on “the rich” away from being good guys—exists only on car bumpers.
Anodyne, nonsensical phrases seem to be the exclusive province of the left, which is no revelation given...
Every time I see a car with a War is not the answer bumper sticker, I try to catch up and ask the driver, “What’s the question?” Because if the question is, “How many feet in a mile?” then it’s true that the answer is not war. But what if the...
Hollywood is apparently unhappy with Seth MacFarlane’s hosting of the Oscars on Sunday night. So says the New York Times</...
Secretary of State John Kerry (go ahead, just try to type those words) is making his first overseas trip since confirmation as a member of the president’s cabinet—and as fourth, dear lord, in the line of succession. Via Heritage:
Secretary of State John Kerry’s first overseas trip began by sending mixed signals...
Mainstream reporters have spent so many years square pegging round holes—crediting Bill Clinton alone for the boom of the late 90s, blaming Bush alone for the crash of the late 00s, praising Obama’s intelligence, etc.—that they may not even recognize their own nonsense.
Take Jim Puzzanghera in the Los Angeles Times, who begins...
Wow. Just…wow:
For decades, hundreds of college players have gathered each year at the N.F.L.’s scouting combine, where their strength is tested, their speed is timed and, in a test to measure their intelligence, they are asked questions like “When a rope is selling 20 cents per 2 feet, how many feet...
California made a move yesterday that makes about as much sense as throwing away your telescope to get back at that meteor for hitting Russia.
And yet, in California, it’s strictly business as usual (via LA Times):
The nation’s biggest public pension fund is taking a stand against gun violence by voting to sell...
The apparently principled opposition of Republicans in the Senate to Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense appears to be over.
Via Slate:
Sen. John McCain says that while he doesn’t believe former Sen. Chuck Hagel is the right man to lead the Pentagon, Republican senators will stop using tactics to delay the...
It’s a good thing for anti-Semites that Israel exists. If it weren’t for the Jewish state, they’d have no place to hide their “socialism of fools.” What used to be considered déclassé—“Jews run the world,”etc.—can now be safely repackaged with little or no critic...
