Author Archives: Daniel Atherton

In a political game chock-full of empty rhetoric and waste-of-time spectacles, the annual State of the Union address that President Bush will give to the nation in front of a joint session of Congress tonight is the most vapid, inconsequential, meaningless and self-reverent of them all. (Hold for the first of 470 standing ovations.) Most […]

Let’s face it. Americans like spying on one another almost as much as they like Jesus and NASCAR. It’s in our blood. Paul Revere spied on the British ““ the result was his famous horseback ride. John Hancock spied on Thomas Jefferson having relations with his slave ““ this allowed him to blackmail Jefferson into […]

Imagine if, after you read his book “It’s Not About the Bike,” you found out that Lance Armstrong never had cancer, just a bad case of the flu that caused him to lose a little bit of weight. Or if you had been reduced to tears by “Tuesdays With Morrie,” only to later learn that […]

Winter break was going swimmingly until my mother picked the middle of a perfectly good day to teach me a life lesson by wrapping herself in a blanket. She took it in her hands, licked an edge of it, and then rolled herself up, all while plaintively asking me, “What am I? What am I?” […]

Thursday is Thanksgiving, when you will likely gather with friends and loved ones around a prodigious pile of food that would feed a sub-Saharan family of 27 for a fortnight, and, between forkfuls of stuffing, reflect on all in this world for which you are thankful. Seven Kaiser Permanente employees in Anaheim have quite a […]

There’s a brouhaha on Bruin Walk. A loquacious loggerjam of a knock-down drag-out. A heavyweight title fight on the sidewalk, with punches being hurled from the tongues of man and child alike. A man shouts, “Whore!” A girl yells back, “Idiot!” A young child screams, “Repent, sinner!” And I have a front-row seat. I just […]