One year ago, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. Is his presidency delivering on the promise of his candidacy? Yes. I think he's off to a very good start. But I'm not doing handstands.

I keep Obama's book containing his campaign program, Change We Can Believe In,...

"Everything's going to be okay."

-- Don Draper

No, Don. It won't. It really won't.

A day we've long awaited on Mad Men, November 22, 1963, has arrived in "The Grown-Ups," the second to last episode of this very fine third season.

As always in these reviews, there...

President Barack Obama is getting ready to reveal his latest strategy for Afghanistan, perhaps after the election a week from Friday. He appears to be preparing to split the difference. Perhaps he should be preparing to split the territory.

Afghanistan has a government, of a sort, but it doesn't really...

"The Gypsy and the Hobo" is a great episode of Mad Men. For those who've been thinking that the pace of the show was more than a bit slow earlier in the season, that's certainly not the case now.

As always with these reviews, there be spoilers ahead, so...

In one of the great ironies, the 35th anniversary edition of Chinatown came out this month, nearly at the same time that its director, Roman Polanski, was arrested in Switzerland after fleeing Los Angeles over 30 years ago following a downward guilty plea and brief imprisonment for unlawful sex with...

Considering that he is the most recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama is in a seemingly curious set of positions. He's spurred major military offensives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has been deeply enmeshed in a tense stand-off with Iran.

There are many complex things...

Last night's "The Color Blue" was a cracking good episode that, after last week's rushed and rather arbitrary plot developments, returned Mad Men to its strongest ground. That's the advertising business and the mystery of Don Draper.

As always in these reviews, there be spoilers ahead, so you've been warned.

No, we don't get the classic Sinatra song in this episode. What we do get is an hour of people behaving stupidly and making big mistakes. And a few things I don't necessarily buy.

As always in these reviews, there be spoilers ahead, so you've been warned.

Don Draper is...

When the Vulcans finally make first contact with the peoples of Spaceship Earth, there's no doubt who most will choose to represent us. Which is when we may learn that President Barack Obama really is a "Manchurian candidate," an alien agent, albeit not of the sort featured in even the...

Six years ago last night, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in a 17-point landslide. It was the dramatic California recall election, and I spoke with Schwarzenegger in his suite at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles before he went downstairs to deliver his victory speech in the...

The eighth episode of this Mad Men season is really the Betty Draper show, We learn some key things here. Not the least of which is that Don Draper is not as suave as we, and he, think. And that it is Betty who may have made the mistake in...

There was some good progress in Thursday's international negotiation sessions with Iran on its nuclear program. But anyone who imagines the problem is solved is quite delusional.

Let's focus first on the positive from Geneva.

Contrary to much posturing by Iran and its advocates around the world, the Tehran regime's...

On the eve of the first formal negotiations between America and Iran in 30 years, there's been a flurry of activity on all sides. Especially so since the sides include the other parties to negotiation -- Britain, France, China, Germany, and Russia -- as well as Israel.

All this comes...

In history, the solar eclipse is an omen of things to come, frequently upsetting. And so it is with "Seven Twenty Three," an episode which caused some confusion in advance. And some after as well, with a major newspaper blog still failing to grasp what the title is about, mistakenly...

As any hiker knows, high altitudes often lead to headaches, and President Barack Obama has had a few at his New York summits. They center around AfPak, the perennial question of Israel and Palestine, and Iran. And today the latter went front and center, with war a real possibility in...

Last night's repeat win at the Emmy Awards further enshrined Mad Men as television's best series on a night when it aired a consequential new episode.

Before getting to the review of "Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency" -- a very ironic title, as it happens -- replete with...

While things are going quite ruggedly for America in Afghanistan, they may be going worse for Al Qaeda everywhere. Osama bin Laden's taunting 9/11 anniversary message was days late and very lame. And President Barack Obama's lethal approach to dealing with the organization that attacked America on 9/11 took a...

The rather slow-developing third season of Mad Men continues gathering steam in its fifth episode, "The Fog," with five major plot developments. As always in these reviews, there be spoilers ahead. So if you haven't seen the episode yet, consider yourself warned.

Five major plot developments in this episode --...

Eight years since 9/11. It feels like 18 years, if not 80.

So much has changed since then, yet so much is still the same.

We all remember how America seemed unified in 9/11's aftermath, especially in contrast to the disunity engendered by the Florida election debacle. And much of...

In an unusual move, AMC chose to air the fourth episode of this season's Mad Men on Labor Day weekend. As it happens, after a couple of episodes marked mainly by mood, texture, and positioning of plot points and character arcs -- which left some viewers a tad bored --...