Contrarian reader Miles Tompkins: I would like to see that little kid ask Anderson Cooper where the hell he's been for the past 20 years....

25 January, 2010

Cliff White defends Ormiston: I happened to catch both the clip of Ormiston holding the hand of, and then carrying, the little boy, and the one of  Cooper tousling the head of another. I didn't think there was any comparison. I was moved by the first and disgusted by the second. Watching Ormiston's reports over the last week or so, it's obvious she has been deeply affected by what she's seeing and reporting on. Her actions conveyed a real human warmth. It's not such a bad thing for viewers to occasionally see that reporters are not just automatons, but  are real people...

25 January, 2010

Last Saturday, 57-year-old Jules Paul Bouloute, got off a flight from Haiti to New York. While attempting to find his way out of  Kennedy Airport's American Airlines Terminal, he accidentally opened an emergency exit door and set off an alarm. [caption id="attachment_4221" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Jules Paul Bouloute"][/caption] This has happened to most of  us. In confusion, inattention, or an ill-considered attempt to find a shortcut, we open a restricted door and set off an alarm. Sometimes it leads to an embarrassed chat with the on-duty Commissionaire; sometimes there are no consequences at all. In Bouloute's case, however, security officials evacuated Terminal 8 for...

22 January, 2010

I was struck by the portentously antiquarian wording of the New York Times' lead headline the morning after the calamity in Port-au-Prince: Haiti Lies in Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead I may eventually have something to say about this ghastly, stultifying event, but for the moment, I am speechless. ...

14 January, 2010