After more than 30 years at the New York Times, Frank Rich is departing the newspaper to write a column for New York magazine and its website. Rich has had a Sunday column for 17 years, which followed 14 years as a theater reviewer. [...]

The changes come as the NYT prepares a major overhaul of the Week in Review section. Rich’s weekly 1,500-word column (previously most columns were around 800 words) was part of an expanded Op-Ed page that the Times introduced in the Week in Review section in 2005.

Since then, the proliferation and acceleration of commentary on the web has called into question the role of a weekly opinion section. It’s also called into question the state of most weekly magazines, but for a variety of reasons—including its web sensibilities, New York magazine has been able to withstand those pressures (even Gawker’s Nick Denton has praised the publication).
posted by not_the_water on Mar 1, 2011 - 56 comments

Party Like It’s 2008 [SLNYTOE] Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars. That’s why race keeps being portrayed as dooming Mr. Obama — surely Jeremiah Wright = Willie Horton! — no matter what the voters say to the contrary. [more inside]
posted by psmealey on May 11, 2008 - 144 comments

What If ... 9/11 Never Happened? "The broader culture would have gone its own way, 9/11 or no 9/11—progressing effortlessly from the obsessions of Gary Condit and Survivor in summer ’01 to Brangelina and American Idol in ’06. The Oliver Stone project of August ’06, however, would not be World Trade Center, but, with exquisite timing, Fidel."

One possibility from many in a collection of "could've-beens" compiled by New York Magazine. Other contributions of note: Tom Wolfe, Fareed Zakaria, an alternate-future blog by Andrew Sullivan, and perhaps best of all, a simple sketch from Ex Machina's Brian K. Vaughan.
posted by grabbingsand on Aug 15, 2006 - 118 comments

Mel Gibson wanted Frank Rich's bloody entrails on a stick, wanted to kill Rich's dog. But now... In the buildup to his new film, Mel Gibson said, about Frank Rich, "I want to kill him. I want his entrails on a stick I want to kill his dog" (The New Yorker, September 15) . Any american non-celebrity teenager who uttered such threats would have been immediately arrested, interrogated, and forced to submit to lengthy counseling. Yet to right wing US press media, it seems, the "entrails" threat was immaterial. Indeed, chirps WorldNet's Barbara Simpson, "Gibson is the bravest man in Hollywood. Perhaps, he's the bravest in the country....Gibson's hell has been very public. " Now, on Leno, Mel has granted Rich forgiveness and absolution for Rich's sin of criticizing "The Passion" : "You try to perform an act of love even for those who persecute you", said Gibson to Leno.
posted by troutfishing on Mar 7, 2004 - 39 comments

Terrific Frank Rich piece (NYT link) on Angels, Reagan, and AIDS in America.
posted by adrober on Nov 16, 2003 - 35 comments

Is Gore the New Nixon? The disembodied heads of Al Gore and Tricky Dick shared the screen in Futurama's season premiere. But the kinship between the two men goes deeper. Nixon won the White House twice, in spite of his critics and his own lack of charisma. Gore's done it once -- why not a second time? The Situation Room's analysis (which was inspired by Frank Rich's piece on Gore in Saturday's NY Times) offers food for thought, as the first outlines of the 2004 campaigns begin to take shape.
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Nov 25, 2002 - 44 comments

1 Mayor, 2 Guys, 1 Shih Tzu. NY Times columnist Frank Rich reports that NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani -- a Republican -- has been bunking frequently at the home of a gay couple as he goes through his divorce. "Has the mayor picked up any pointers on gay life? 'I taught him a lot of expressions... He didn't know what a Friend of Dorothy was.' " Tee hee. (Log in as metafi/metafi.)
posted by Tin Man on Aug 4, 2001 - 24 comments

Death with Commercials is how the ever apposite Frank Rich sums up the media-saturated McVeigh execution, the ultimate reality show. Rich thinks all the hoopla my have served to turn more people away from punishment by death.
posted by caraig on Jun 23, 2001 - 8 comments