Archive for June 2026
“I don’t know. I’ve never kippled.”
by David Benjamin “Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.” ―Diane Ravitch MADISON, Wis.—When I was in fifth grade, a kid named Terry had the desk next to mine. We weren’t friends. We barely spoke to each other. So, I was a…
Read More“That’s mighty white of you.”
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis.—When I dropped in, the other day, on Wilhelm “Clorox” Bienfang, America’s foremost idea man, he was wearing a red baseball cap emblazoned with four cryptic letters: MEOW. Of course, I figured his latest brainstorm had something to do with cats. Way wrong! After Bienfang revealed that the acronym on his…
Read More“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
by David Benjamin “There’s no living with a killing. There’s no goin’ back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand … a brand sticks. There’s no goin’ back. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her … Tell her everything’s all right. And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”…
Read MoreThe tone-deaf saga of four-day Charlie
by David Benjamin “In England, very early in the second world war, we were all provided with buff-colored cards which told us, as well as any interested authority, who we were. They were called identity cards, and while no one much cared for them, they were grudgingly accepted as one of the nastier, if necessary,…
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