Michael Olesker
by Michael Olesker | 2 hours ago | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Michael Olesker
I haven’t had such a sad Passover season since the mid-1950s, when Stanley Nusenko, Larry Carson and I went to the New Theatre in downtown Baltimore to see the ultimate Hollywood Old Testament extravaganza, “The Ten Commandments,” whose running time was longer than... read more
by Michael Olesker | Apr 6, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Coronavirus Opinion & Commentary, Michael Olesker
In my home, high on a living room wall, is a photograph of a sweatshop on the Lower East Side of New York City around the turn of the last century, where a bunch of men sit in their undershirts, and electrical wires hang from the ceiling and swatches of cloth are... read more
by Michael Olesker | Apr 3, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Michael Olesker
There’s a difference between most Americans and President Donald Trump. Most Americans have been told to keep a distance from each other. Trump’s trying to keep a distance from his own litany of lies. Now, he wants us to believe it was his own quick action that may... read more
by Michael Olesker | Apr 1, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Coronavirus Opinion & Commentary, Michael Olesker
The late critic and essayist Alfred Kazin, obsessing as usual about being a Jew in America, wrote in one of his private journals of a poignant conversation with a gentile friend. “Have you always felt like an American?” the friend asked. “I’ve never felt like an... read more
by Michael Olesker | Mar 30, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Coronavirus Opinion & Commentary, Michael Olesker
As thousands die all around us, Bob Dylan now delivers a musical lament about a single death that once seemed more than America could bear. The new offering, “Murder Most Foul,” takes us back to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas nearly 60 years ago.... read more
by Michael Olesker | Mar 27, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Coronavirus Opinion & Commentary, Michael Olesker
In our time of national anxiety, Larry Hogan shows it’s possible to be a mentsch as well as a politician. The Republican governor of Maryland has transcended politics at a time when we need someone calming us instead of injecting political slander, misinformation and... read more
by Michael Olesker | Mar 25, 2020 | Baseball, Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Coronavirus Opinion & Commentary, Michael Olesker, Orioles, Sports
The Baltimore Orioles will play baseball again one day. But it won’t be tomorrow. They were supposed to open their 2020 season on Thursday, Mar. 26. It would have been the earliest start in the club’s history, which goes back two-thirds of a century. Now, it’ll be the... read more
by Michael Olesker | Mar 23, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Coronavirus Opinion & Commentary, Michael Olesker
I drove to New York two days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and remember the emotional disconnect I found there –- a disconnect that comes back now in the midst of our latest catastrophe. In downtown Manhattan back then, the scenes of devastation were... read more
by Michael Olesker | Mar 18, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Coronavirus Opinion & Commentary, Michael Olesker
At the Greenspring Shopping Center in Pikesville, I come out of Shoppers grocery store still blinking from the empty shelves that once contained acres of toilet paper and tissue, chicken breasts and meatloaf, and bump into a woman who runs a local bank branch. “I... read more
by Michael Olesker | Mar 17, 2020 | Blogs, Blogs & Opinion, Michael Olesker
When it comes to the life and death of the great delicatessens of Baltimore, I am particular. I do not rate delis on such trivia as the cut of the corned beef or the aroma of the pastrami. I speak today for the quality of the kibitz and the pungent tang of the sour... read more
Read the latest views and thoughts from Jmore Publisher Scott Rifkin, MD 