Gwen's Take

Entering the "Twitterverse"

Posted: July 15, 2010 at 6:22 pm

You see, that headline is what I’ve always hated about Twitter.  

It’s way too cute.

But, alas, I have been lured in.

My first week on Twitter has been enlightening, funny and a little creepy.

You have to understand first that I have long been a firm anti-Twitterer. Life and news is complicated enough to explain without limiting yourself to 140 characters. Plus, I generally have less than zero interest in the eating, dieting and work day habits of people I have never met.

Yet, and still…

Taking the candor challenge

Posted: July 8, 2010 at 5:05 pm

Let me let you in on a Washington reality game show ----the ongoing push and pull between journalists and the people they cover.  The prize: simple candor.

By candor, I don’t mean that I expect the people we interview to act contrary to their own best personal and political interests.  But in an ideal world, it would be nice if everybody could at least try to play by the same Q&A rules.

To wit: we’ll ask the smartest questions we possibly can, and you will at least take a stab at offering a revealing answer.

Who Knew the Supreme Court Could Be Funny?

Posted: July 1, 2010 at 5:25 pm

Perhaps Antonin Scalia has met his match.

It is all well and good that the high court’s most conservative justice probably disagrees with Elena Kagan on nearly everything involving Constitutional interpretation.

But Scalia and Kagan may find far more common ground when it comes to cracking each other up.

If you were watching Kagan’s Senate confirmation hearings – and you can be forgiven if you didn’t have 10 or 20 hours to spare – you may have noticed a remarkable amount of lightheartedness in the room.

General McChrystal and the Gift of 20/20 Hindsight

Posted: June 24, 2010 at 7:37 pm

Several of us had a debate going on Wednesday morning.  Would the President fire Stan McChrystal?  Would he leave him in charge because change would be too risky?  Or would he kick the can down the road and replace him at some future point?
 
The debate was good-natured, innocent and kind of silly – especially since most of us, in the end, guessed wrong.
 

Covering the oil disaster

Posted: June 17, 2010 at 4:50 pm

As President Obama struggled to assert control over what is clearly an uncontrollable situation, I had the chance to assess the unspooling oil disaster dilemma this week by talking to folks living with it, and folks watching from afar.

If White House officials listened to either conversation, they will detect that their greatest enemy may be the uncapped well, but the second greatest is despair.