Marc Cooper

No Way With Gray

Marc Cooper
First, this disclosure: The odds of my ever complying with the Weekly‘s tortuously acrobatic endorsement of Gray Davis and actually voting for the guy were always about nil to zero. But any slight chance of my slipping from my stand was blocked by my teenage daughter this past weekend. Next......
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The Latin Implosion

Marc Cooper
Illustration by Jordin Isip READING ANN LOUISE BARDACH'S ACCOUNTS OF life among the Cuban elites of both Miami and Havana, you reach one major conclusion: that arbitrarily stuffing all Cubans into one of two categories -- either pro-revolutionary Fidelistas on the island or counterrevolutionary gusanos (worms) in Miami exile --......

Case of Spinelessness

Marc Cooper
As I watched George W. Bush deliver his Big Speech on Iraq earlier this week, I half-expected to see the freckled, grinning visage of Dick Gephardt pop right out of the president’s breast pocket. But then I remembered the House Democratic leader had recently attached himself to a lower part......

A Year Later

Marc Cooper
This first anniversary of 911 marks not only a horrific tragedy, but also a year of tragically missed opportunities -- for both the right and the left. For the right, September 11 offered the possibility of transcending a national case of smug insularity. I had hoped that the crumbled twin......

Davis to the Uninsured: Let Them Eat Dodger Dogs

Marc Cooper
Photo by Ted Soqui IMAGINE DODGER STADIUM FILLED TO the brim. Fifty-two thousand souls. Now imagine a line of 50 Dodger Stadiums -- stretching from Chavez Ravine down through maybe the Miracle Mile -- each and every one with every seat taken. Two and a half million people, one out......

Move Over, Mike Dukakis

Marc Cooper
During my last visit to Baghdad, on the eve of last decade’s Gulf War, I sat for three long hours in the middle of the night arguing with one of Saddam Hussein‘s top strategists. I thought both he and his mustachioed boss, whose smirking visage shone from his wristwatch, were......
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A More Honest Gamble

Marc Cooper
LAS VEGAS -- As the stock market was swooning last week, there I was, wide-awake at 3 a.m., pondering my next move. I don’t play high tech or small caps. I ignore semiconductors, telecoms and certainly dot-coms. I‘m oblivious to margin calls, and I abhor options. I don’t go short......

The September 11 That Never Was

Marc Cooper
GIJON, Spain -- It started as soon as I got in the airport taxi on the way to this Spanish coastal city‘s annual Semana Negra writers’ festival. I was scheduled to participate in a high-profile public panel discussion billed as ”The Hidden Truth Behind September 11.“ And it seemed everyone......

The Last Defender of the American Republic?

Marc Cooper
HE MIGHT BE AMERICA'S LAST small-r republican. Gore Vidal, now 76, has made a lifetime out of critiquing America's imperial impulses and has -- through two dozen novels and hundreds of essays -- argued tempestuously that the U.S. should retreat back to its more Jeffersonian roots, that it should stop......

Say It. Ain't So, Miguel.

Marc Cooper
Photo by Slobodan Dimitrov L.A.'S LABOR BOSS, MIGUEL CONTRERAS, PULLED A nasty, fast one last week and needs to be rushed to the woodshed for some wall-to-wall counseling. As head of the 800,000-member County Federation of Labor, Contreras is often lionized as the linchpin of local progressive politics. But when......