Bruni on an Italian Thanksgiving

Frank Bruni wrote a very funny column today. Go read it. It's about how Italians do Thanksgiving and it sounds exactly like my family.

(Don't mind the O'Connor name. My drunken Irish daddy left before I was three and my Italian mother replaced him with a nice, solid Italian guy. So I'm as Italian as anybody.)

All Italian holidays, not just Thanksgiving, are exactly as Bruni describes them. It's all about too much food and just the right amount of family.

It looks like we're going to be snowed in today but every family member has already arrived safely (to beat the snow). So all is well.

Happy Thanksgiving, crew. Have a great time.

Bruni on the Secret Service

In a column called "Serving Without Protecting", Frank Bruni manages to be quite serious while sneaking in some delicious lines. I urge you to read the whole thing. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite.

At the hearing, there were acute questions and ludicrous ones, genuine concern and disingenuous grandstanding, florid preening and runaway egos, which is to say that many politicians were crowded into one room.

There was verbiage so oblique it barely qualified as English, which is to say that government officials testified.

And the result was a wondrous column, which is to say that Frank Bruni once again channeled his brilliance through a keyboard.

Bruni for your Sunday

Frank Bruni has an excellent column this morning at the NY Times. It's about college life and the way kids are using it these days. But as always with Bruni, it's far ranging. Here's a bit:

The Internet has proved to be one of the great ironies of modern life. It opens up an infinite universe for exploration, but people use it to stand still, in a favorite spot, bookmarking the websites that cater to their existing hobbies (and established hobbyhorses) and customizing their social media feeds so that their judgments are constantly reinforced, their opinions forever affirmed.

I suggest we all develop a habit of reading everything Frank Bruni writes. He is a national treasure who will only grow more valuable in the murky years ahead.

Bruni nails it again

This isn't the first time I'm directing readers to a column by Frank Bruni in the NY Times. There's a reason for this -- the man is prescient and clear. Today's offering is called "America the Shrunken". Here's an excerpt:

More and more I get the sense that we’ve lost it, and by “it” I mean the optimism that was always the lifeblood of this luminous experiment, the ambition that has been its foundation, the swagger that made us so envied and emulated and reviled.

We’re walking small. And that shift in our gait and our gumption has been palpable for many years, during an unusually sustained period of frustration that has the feel of something more than a temporary dive: a turned corner, the downward arc of a diminished enterprise.

It's not good news, but it's real and true and we'd best pay attention. We're on a slide and we're going down fast. Maybe we should do something about it before it's too late. 

Nah, let's just go shopping. Maybe pick up some donuts, or something.

Bruni for your Sunday

Frank Bruni has an excellent column on Pope Francis in today's NY Times. Here are two snippets:

If you’re going to define yourself in opposition to a predecessor whom many people had misgivings about, go all the way. Francis is the Bill de Blasio to Benedict’s Michael Bloomberg, doing a complete semiotic overhaul. Less investment in festive footwear, more in the washing of other people’s feet. He’s not telling priests to stop being priests, any more than de Blasio is telling the police to stop being the police. He’s just urging them to tamp down the brusqueness and bullying. No more theological stop-and-frisk.

He does have a way with words. Here's the other:

“Who am I to judge?” he said. This, from a pope, is like Streisand saying, “Who am I to sing?” It’s a bit of self-effacement that you never saw coming.

How can you not love this guy? No, not Francis -- Frank Bruni. I think of him as a civilized version of Matt Taibbi. 

Happy Sunday, everyone. Now remember, don't go to church. That's the worst thing a person can do on a Sunday. It sullies the day. Instead, go out and enjoy your life, maybe blaspheme a bit. But read Bruni's column first. You'll be glad you did.

Scouts' gay ban offensive to some religions

We keep hearing that the "religious right" is offended by the idea of the Boy Scouts removing their ban on gay members and leaders. Today, Frank Bruni tells the other side of the story in a column at the NYT.

“From my faith perspective, singling people out for exclusion from the life of the church or the life of the community cannot possibly be part of God’s plan,” Ward [a Scout leader and elder in his Presbyterian church] told me on the phone recently.

He added, “If you look at the people Jesus tended to be most suspicious of, they were people who sat in positions of authority to say that they had the unique ability to judge others.” 

It's an interesting take on the situation. And it's a viewpoint we never read about in the news. Short version of Bruni's column: some religions are not obsessively focused on hating gay people. And since the Scouts’ bylaws "require equal treatment of every religion’s teachings", something is very wrong here.