55 Quotes by Charlie Pierce

I judge the jobs I've had in this business by the places they took me, and by that standard, there simply has been nothing to match 'The National Sports Daily.'

In theory, at least, all presidents are servants of the people who elected them. In the case of Barack Obama, it has seemed from the start that the idea as applied to him was more than mere metaphor. He is the first president in my lifetime whom the country felt obligated to remind that he know his place.

This has been the new normal since September 11. Everyone knows, but nobody says, that if something happens again, the elite consensus in this country, and the overwhelming consensus of the citizenry, will be to pitch the Bill of Rights out the window and start rounding folks up.

The entire existence of the NFL - and of football at any level, for all of that - rests on whether or not the game can keep fooling itself, and its paying fan base, that it is somehow superior to boxing and to the rest of our modern blood sports.

The Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank’s marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.

As a writer, I have to admit, there is something darkly compelling about Alzheimer’s because it attacks the two things most central to a writer’s craft – language and memory, which together make up an individual’s identity. Alzheimer’s makes a new character out of a familiar person.

According to the people who dearly would love to throw him out of office, Barack Obama was elected to be ‘above politics.’ He wasn’t elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude.

One of the great changes wrought by the increased public awareness of Alzheimers – and thank you, Nancy Reagan, you wonderful tough old dame, you – is that people in the early stages of the disease are now speaking out while they still have the capacity to do so.

It’s better to be black than gay because when you’re black you don’t have to tell your mother.