donald luzzatto
Likable conservative is barometer for state
Sitting across from him, it's hard to shake the impression that Bob McDonnell may well be the state's next governor. Perhaps it's the familiarity: At one time or another a neighbor to almost every Virginian - and a former prosecutor, delegate and attorney general - the 54-year-old McDonnell has been around forever.
By Donald Luzzatto
Reasons for hope in online discourse
Ordinarily, when people leave me messages asking when I plan to remove my head from a certain part of my anatomy, I assume they don't actually want an answer. But it was a weekend, and I was bushed. I blame fatigue for the fact that I found his number in our Caller ID system - he'd somehow forgotten to leave it, along with his name - and I called him back.
Returning oysters, conjuring up memories
The house on Jersey Street was roughly the same distance from the Atlantic and the Delaware Bay, an uninsulated A-frame that could sleep a dozen kids in twin barracks where the attic ought to be.
Moderation might not be enough for Deeds
Among the three men running for the Democratic nomination for governor, state Sen. Creigh Deeds seems to be the one who fits most naturally into the moderate mold shaped by Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. He's also the one who seems least likely to succeed them. That's the conventional wisdom, at least, and there are only a couple of months left to change it before the June primary.
What author John Updike taught, and still teaches
At the end of January, John Updike's unstoppable voice finally stopped. It was the end of a profoundly old-fashioned kind of American literary life, of a man unashamed of a passion for letters and writers. It was the end of the kind of life I'd wanted, once upon a time.
Looking for answers in an online world
As a native of the place, I wrote last week about D.C. statehood - specifically, about a cynical deal to trade a congressman in Utah for one in Washington. A snide and facetious comment about the Constitution inspired as much e-mail and online comments as anything I've written in a while, which proves yet again how badly I predict what will provoke readers.
Let D.C. voters into the House
Washingtonians - true Washingtonians - are rare. I can't explain why there are two on this newspaper's editorial board, but I think someone should demand an investigation. Roger Chesley and I were both born in the District too many years ago. I wasn't even the first generation of my family born there, which makes me rarer still. And more suspicious.
Moran hopes bona fides trump opponent's wattage
A man whose face and words always seem on the verge of a sardonic chuckle, Brian Moran must know something the rest of us don't. Aside from the obvious.
Hunting for the perfect Valentine's Day gift? So am I
It happens every year, on about this date, for all men lucky enough to have women who tolerate them: the freakish fear that no matter how much thought, how much money went into their Valentine's Day expression of love and affection, it cannot be enough. Worse, it will not be enough.
Charisma, partisan baggage mark McAuliffe's bid
The smile is familiar to anyone who pays attention to national politics. So is the back-swept hair, the dark suit. The handshake, literally warm, is a little surprising. So is the orange tie, covered in what appeared to be tiny bunnies (though another person at the table thought they resembled crabs).
Hiding in plain (opaque) sight
If government has to make something public but doesn't really want to, it often relies on something called "practical obscurity." Anyone who has trudged down to the courthouse to check the details of a deed knows about government's propensity to pretend information is readily available when it really isn't.
A nation of adolescents must grow up
It was more than a funk. I was out of work and money, living in a cold D.C. basement in the nastiest January anyone could remember. Somebody stole the back wheel off my bike, and I was too broke to replace it, so I walked through a bitter wind to my part-time gig in TV. Across the park, in the White House, plans were already being made to move Ronald Reagan's second inaugural inside.
Internet's missing link, begging to be born
When television began, its hopeful fathers believed it would provide a way to bring fine arts - opera, symphonies, drama - to everybody. Now that the glowing box is crammed with reality shows and melodramas, shouting numbskulls and people who believe in ghosts, it's pretty much impossible to imagine what TV's founders were quaffing to produce such delusions.
O Christmas tree, what is that thing?
If you want to know what too much information can do to a consumer, just take a look at the Luzzatto family Christmas tree this year. Or, as we affectionately call it, "The Armature."
Budget sideshow masks real problems
Taxes are not good. They're also not bad. They are money, which doesn't really have a moral component, unless of course it is cursed cash, and then the only thing to do is burn it. I've got a barbecue if anyone needs one.
Bar is high to match Illinois' corruption
Virginians love to complain about government. We carp about petty conflicts and microscopic corruptions as if they were evidence of man's fall, of his fundamental inadequacy to the task of being a decent human being.
Editor has been thinker, challenger, teacher
Dennis Hartig doesn't talk with his hands nearly as much as you might imagine. It's the force of his ideas and their expression that gives you the impression that he's always moving, even when he's sitting at a table, eating lunch, trying to explain The Virginian-Pilot to a skeptical job prospect.
Amid our own fretfulness, charities still need us
It might not seem like it right now, but these dark days will eventually end. Like you, I don't know when. I don't know how. I'm not even sure it'll be in time to save the institutions we usually count on to save us. In a few years, perhaps we'll wake up back in the places we've always known, in the houses we bought years ago, working our current jobs, going to the churches we've attended.
Hoover's legacy frightens today's fiscal overseers
Nobody wants to be Herbert Hoover. The 31st president is often considered — when he's considered at all — among the nation's least effective presidents, the do-nothing do-gooder who dithered while the Great Depression raged.
GOP way in Virginia is off-center
If the political map of America was redrawn this week, at least the resulting terrain should be familiar to Virginians. The Democrats' victory nationwide was routed through this commonwealth and owes both its course and its speed to some folks we know pretty well. So does the GOP's defeat.
Nobody asked, but I won't serve
It was an early fall Sunday, and Dad and I were at RFK, Section 513, our corner of the end zone, so high that we missed more than an occasional catch along the sideline.
Green greed keeps World Series at night
Given how badly Major League Baseball is managed, how cravenly, it's not hard to surrender to the conspiracy theory that it is, in fact, run by the NFL. Maybe by Nintendo. At the very least, the schedule for the World Series is proof that the postseason is brought to us by men and women who actively hate the game. Also, I suspect, children, puppies, apple pie and the entire East Coast.
30-minute travel cushion about to get worse
I scheduled the interviews on the hour, in part so I could keep them straight on my calendar, and in part because it provided a place to start and end each one. I somehow managed to get to the office early, to go over the questions and prepare for the day. Then the phone rang. It was 9:30 a.m., and the first victim was waiting downstairs. A half-hour early.
Contemptible comments have consequences
You can hide behind a fake Internet identity and phony e-mail address. You can pretend you're a man, a woman, animal or random collection of numbers. You can write any fool thing you want, just to inspire outrage. But you will be held responsible for what you say and do, if not here and soon, then sometime and someplace.
Charity appears at the corner of Main and Wall
What do I owe you? What do you owe me? And what do we all owe the people who come next?
Help wanted: Just send in the green
The Republican Party of Virginia owes me money and an apology because, like everyone these days, I'm outraged. Outraged! By everything!
Youth shouldn't be served
No matter who wins this presidential race, somebody far too young is going to have a hand too close to the nuclear button, the economy toggle and the dial that I imagine sends hurricanes toward Cuba. Barack Obama turned 47 last month. Sarah Palin is a child by comparison; she doesn't turn 45 until a few weeks after the inauguration.
Party on, even in the darkness
Hurricane Isabel turned that Thursday gray and rainy and dark, with a wind that came in loud bursts across the afternoon. We huddled around a useless radio, holding a newborn and trying to keep the boys from being too curious about all that noise outside.
Once more, on the threshold
I could pretend I parked so far away because I needed to stretch my legs. Or because I was trying to avoid the car-pool scrum near the front door. But what I really needed was to delay this moment as long as I could. And that involved walking a long way. Slowly.
Let skateboarders roll, let kids be kids
It should be illegal for genetically clumsy old guys to ride perfectly good skateboards in lazy arcs across abandoned parking lots covered in glass bits and pebbles. The potential health care costs alone are catastrophic. But that's the only thing about skateboarding that should be a crime.
An antidote to the nation's political poison
When Paris Hilton makes a legitimate appearance in the American political process, with her clothes (mostly) on, it's time to try something new. At the moment, I'd prefer a national round of Twister, which the past quarter century argues has a better chance of determining a decent president than actually voting.
Passive voice? Then it ain't an apology
It's easy. Really. Just two little words: I'm sorry. You don't need anything else. You don't even need to explain what you did - unless you're one of my kids, and I'm trying to make a point about your behavior. You don't have to add any subordinate clauses leaking the air out of what's otherwise a clean, declarative statement: I'm sorry.
As Warner struggles on Iraq, so should we
It isn't unusual for Mark Warner to consider his words before he answers a question. So it wasn't surprising that the U.S. Senate hopeful hemmed a bit when I asked him about America's "moral obligation" in Iraq, toward the end of a marathon editorial board interview this week.
We hate Congress; do we hate each other?
According to a new poll, just 9 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. To put that disgust in some perspective, I bet I could find 10 percent of Americans, eating dinner, who say they think telemarketers do fine work, even as they stand up to answer the phone while spilling hot gravy on their pants.
Tiny robot has lessons for media - and citizens
Whether the science-fiction movie "Wall-E" is a huge hit or just a moderate one doesn't matter. It is an audacious film, well-loved, critically acclaimed - the latest in a string of success for Pixar Animation Studios, which began with "Toy Story" in 1995 and has issued one nearly flawless 100-minute tale after another.
Thanks for the carbon purge, guys
If you believe that a certain presidential candidate is the secret agent of a Belgian beer conglomerate, which even now is conspiring to steal Americans' precious bodily fluids and barley, I admire both your fantasy life and your knowledge of early Stanley Kubrick movies.
Cruising short of maximum potential
I set out, early one morning this week, to do my bit to ease traffic in Hampton Roads and help clean the air. I ended up making things worse. Sorry about that. At 7 a.m., a new bus pulled up at the Magnolia Park and Ride in Suffolk. Calling it - the bus - sleek would be an overstatement, but it was certainly shiny. And blue and gray and partly green. Get it?
Losing candidates could learn a lot from kids
Winning with grace is easy. Losing is something else. Ask any athlete. Ask any coach. Specifically, ask me. Go ahead.
Driven to madness – and resolve by Hampton Roads traffic
AN HOUR and a half and 21 miles later, I slumped into a parking space, saddened by the simple knowledge that I had just wasted an irreplaceable part of my life on a rain-soaked stretch of asphalt in Portsmouth, watching the taillights of thousands of poor souls doing precisely the same thing.
The usual suspects: mice, ghosts, trolls
THE FIRST SIGN of crazy arrived one morning, when I found dog food in my left boot. In my closet. A stash then showed up in a closed kitchen drawer. In the bathroom closet, between folded towels. And, over the weekend, in one of my wife's shoes, in a cubby 5 feet above her closet floor.
From one immigrant's son to another
SO THE ILLEGAL immigration problem is that all these people came into America without permission? We're in a national argument because people didn't fill out the right paperwork, stop at the right desk, come in through the right gate? Because they didn't play by the rules?
Candidates are not children, really
FOR A PRESIDENTIAL campaign that will never end, it's amazing how many folks have already picked a candidate. Decided that the people backing the other guy are utterly wrong. Or stupid. Probably insane.
Just part of the very loud deal
NOBODY TOLD US about the noise. In none of the interviews, the conversations or the voluminous e-mails did my new boss ever say one word about the noise. Maybe it was a setup.
Eight-legged nuisance is terrifying, disgusting
PHILOSOPHERS CAN philosophize all they like on the big questions: Why are we here? What's the meaning of our lives? Why do good things happen to bad people? But they'll never adequately explain the mysteries of this existence until they can answer a simpler, but far more disgusting, question: Why do ticks exist?
On the Internet, anybody can be angry
I HATE YOU, and I'm coming to kill you. Perhaps you figure that threat isn't serious because you know me, or because you've read my stuff before, or because of that silly picture in the left-hand corner. Or maybe you know that people just don't talk that way in real life, or at the coffee shop, or pretty much anyplace but on the Internet, where anybody can be a murderous and anonymous thug.
Missing the sound of silence
The machines have won. Just listen to them. Go to a school, any school. Go to a concert or an assembly, a play or a debate. Now listen. Not to what's happening on the stage. That's still cute. Listen to what's going on all around you, in the audience.
Saluting the soldiers who come home
SOLDIERS DIE in wars - we all know that, perhaps especially in Hampton Roads. So far, in Iraq, the number of American dead is over 4,000, a small town of humans wiped from the planet. But never, in any history, has such a proportion of soldiers been so savaged by fighting and survived.
Paradoxical week is worthy of reflection, not haste
DURING HOLY WEEK, when Christians mark the long trip Jesus made from Jerusalem to the cross and beyond, we're essentially commemorating some pretty unspeakable things, culminating in today - which marks the anniversary of one of history's worst days.
Thievery at a distance
MAYBE IT WAS a stranger, some faceless desk jockey in Russia. Maybe it was someone nearer, more familiar, somebody who sold me a widget or a meal and wasn't satisfied with fair payment for services rendered.
Driven to exhaustion
SUMMER BEGAN this week, the mad drive toward July. It started over the weekend with the ritual abuse of the old man, in my case on the soccer field, and proceeds with the shredding of the calendar under the wheels of the minivan.
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