A Public Square Farewell

It’s Been Three Great Years For Me. It Will Be Many More Great Years For Zócalo.

I initially expected to work at Zócalo for a few weeks. Gregory Rodriguez, Zócalo’s founder and publisher, needed some help in a pinch, and I owed him. Three years later, Gregory still needs occasional help in a pinch, and I still owe him, but things have changed a lot. What was a nonprofit known mainly for putting on public events has evolved into a full-fledged Ideas Exchange that convenes scores of events and publishes hundreds of essays each year, shared with more than 100 syndication partners around the country.

Helping to …

Want To Know Something Horrible?

Never Have We Been Offered So Much Tragic Yet Pointless News. And Yet I Read It.

Recently I had the misfortune to be in a Days Inn, and, on CNN, which I’d turned on for the sake of companionship, was non-stop coverage of the horrible things …

Editor T.A. Frank

The Zócalo Staffer Most Likely to Sing Barbra Streisand at a Karaoke Bar

T.A. Frank is the editor of Zócalo Public Square. Before moderating a conversation in Phoenix with Matthew Guerrieri about Beethoven’s Fifth and genius, he talked Danish cheese and Danish advice …

Obama Has Finally Hit His Foreign-Policy Stride

James Mann on How the White House Stumbled Its Way To Competence

Like most presidents, Barack Obama took office with minimal foreign-policy experience—and, notes James Mann, author of The Obamians, it showed. But a philosophy did underlie White House policy: a return to …

Why Julie Andrews Might Sing Again

Harvard's Steven Zeitels Hopes to Sell a Swell Gel

Last November, Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment, invited a few hundred guests to a soiree at his compound in Bel Air. “Many of you know me as a movie …

Over-Joyed

What Our Osama Glee Says About the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

Yes, I’m glad Osama bin Laden has been killed. I admire the detective work and the soldiering that was involved. I agree that it’s a symbolically important blow against al-Qaida. …