Henry Kissinger

Whenever I want up-to-date information on the dynamics of what attracts men and women to each other, I go right to the most comprehensive source available, which is, of course, USA Today.Recently, the paper printed this little gem: As part of something called "The Nesting Habits of New Yorkers Survey," a group of men and women were asked which celebrity they'd want to live next door to if given the choice.Naturally, the survey quickly degenerated into lasciviousness, as the men's top choice was Michelle Pfeiffer.

Director Eugene Jarecki, who fashioned a brilliant expose of American foreign affairs with The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002), outdoes his previous achievement with Why We Fight. This unique examination of the American way of war centers on the rationale for invading Iraq. It's a topical, iconoclastic documentary with the warmth and pace of a first-rate personal essay. Jarecki interviews men and women across the social-political spectrum, from bomber pilots proud of their missions to battlefield and Pentagon veterans who question their past service, and from crafters of neoconservative policy like Richard Perle to longtime critics of American conduct like Gore Vidal.

KISSINGER: A BIOGRAPHY. Walter Isaacson. Simon & Schuster. 781 pages. $30. I don't know anyone who is neutral about Henry Kissinger. The flamboyant former secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, now a TV talking head whenever American foreign affairs heats up, prompts a visceral response. Is he a genius with a passion for peace and public service -- or a power-mad egotist who would sell out his best friend to advance Henry Kissinger?He's both. That's the view Walter Isaacson circles around in "Kissinger: A Biography," a huge, leave-no-stone-unturned life that comes closer to explaining the man than anything yet written by or about him. Mr. Isaacson, an editor at Time, bases his hefty book on extensive diggings in declassified documents and interviews with more than 150 leaders, including Mr. Nixon and Mr. Ford.

"One might also argue," said Vice President Dick Cheney Tuesday, "that untruthful charges against the commander-in-chief have an insidious effect on the war effort." That would certainly be an ugly and demagogic argument, were one to make it. After all, if untruthful charges against the president hurt the war effort (by undermining public support and soldiers' morale), then those charges will hurt the war effort even more if they happen to be true. So one would be saying, in effect, that any criticism of the president is, essentially, treason.

SUN SCORE ***1/2 The title is misleading. Trials contain prosecutions and defenses. This documentary presents the most aggressive case imaginable against Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser and secretary of state who gave America a new image of the "action intellectual" while his attackers say he was committing war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Chile. It treats some of his defenders (including Alexander Haig and Brent Scowcroft) as hostile witnesses. Yet the movie never undercuts his brilliance and his unexpected charisma.

Deutsche mark uber alles.Seems like old times. Henry Kissinger is lashing out.The Democrats wanted George to veto family leave. George did just that. And he's supposed to be such a smart campaigner.Cheer up. Yugoslavia was expelled from the U.N.

It was hard to keep this scandal going until the Olympics, but now they can take a two-week break and then come back with fresh material.F8Here's hoping our bombs are smarter than last time.Tony Blair is a Clinton look-alike who is going over better than the real thing.The Asian crisis is not bad for all Americans. Bob Dole is shilling for Taiwan, Henry Kissinger for Thailand.Pub Date: 2/06/98

Join the Baltimore City Police Department. Low pay but free sensitivity training.Don't drink milk! Evidence is that users may risk contracting a white mustache.Polls show that half of all adult Californians would favor Hillary Clinton for U.S. senator from New York.Cheer up. Olympics meister Samaranch has asked Henry Kissinger to consult on the business ethics of the Games.Pub Date: 4/12/99

DIPLOMACY. By Henry Kissinger. Simon & Schuster. 912 pages. $35.HENRY Kissinger I was a brilliant emigre political scientist who wrote a masterful book on the Congress of Vienna of 1815, and another that started the nation thinking about the strategic and political uses of nuclear weapons. (He kept changing his mind about whether nuclear wars are winnable.)He was the hot professor at Harvard three decades ago. His graduate "seminar" in defense policy was a huge lecture series, held in awed respect, largely about why the U.S. should get into Vietnam.

Director Eugene Jarecki, who fashioned a brilliant expose of American foreign affairs with The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002), outdoes his previous achievement with Why We Fight. This unique examination of the American way of war centers on the rationale for invading Iraq. It's a topical, iconoclastic documentary with the warmth and pace of a first-rate personal essay. Jarecki interviews men and women across the social-political spectrum, from bomber pilots proud of their missions to battlefield and Pentagon veterans who question their past service, and from crafters of neoconservative policy like Richard Perle to longtime critics of American conduct like Gore Vidal.

Maryland's chapter of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities presents the Baltimore premiere of Why We Fight, winner of the 2005 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for documentaries, Monday at 7 p.m. at the Charles Theatre, as part of a program called "Securing Iraq." The director, Eugene Jarecki, who fashioned a brilliant expose of American foreign affairs with The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002), outdoes his previous achievement with Why We Fight. This unique examination of the American way of war is one of the few political films that's prismatic, not dogmatic or polemical.

Just as home audio and video runs in the blood of the tragic family in Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans, documentaries run in the Jareckis'. In 2002, Andrew's brother Eugene directed The Trials of Henry Kissinger, the focus of tomorrow's "FilmTalk" at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St. Unlike Capturing the Friedmans, which exploded guilty verdicts into shards of ambiguity, this documentary aggressively indicts Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser and secretary of state who gave America a new image of the "action intellectual" while his attackers say he was committing war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Chile.

"Power is the great aphrodisiac." - Henry Kissinger Was Ed Norris not paying attention? Did the name Bill Clinton not ring a bell? Or Gary Hart? Or JFK? Were there not enough cautionary examples? Not enough powerful figures brought low by sexual recklessness? Maybe someone should have told The Commish that sometimes these things get out. When they do, they have a way of ruining reputations and careers, tarnishing legacies, imperiling marriages. The good news for Norris may be that a little infidelity - well, a lot, apparently - may be the least of his troubles now. In an indictment handed down this week, Norris was charged with illegally spending about $20,000 from a police fund, allegedly including a number of expenditures on lady friends.

SUN SCORE ***1/2 The title is misleading. Trials contain prosecutions and defenses. This documentary presents the most aggressive case imaginable against Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser and secretary of state who gave America a new image of the "action intellectual" while his attackers say he was committing war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Chile. It treats some of his defenders (including Alexander Haig and Brent Scowcroft) as hostile witnesses. Yet the movie never undercuts his brilliance and his unexpected charisma.

Steven Spielberg's E.T. may have premiered on DVD this week, but watching it at home you miss the surge of group feeling that you experience in a theater because of how lovingly Spielberg focuses an audience's attention on the most benign alien in movie history. So the Senator Theatre is offering a great pre-Halloween gift with its free screening of E.T. today at noon, preceded by its annual costume parade (co-sponsored by the Belvedere Improvement Association). No advance tickets required.

"Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Towards a Diplomacy for the 21st Century," by Henry Kissinger. Simon & Schuster. 318 pages. $30. Readers of Henry Kissinger's memoirs, the last volume of which, "Years of Renewal," came out in the spring of 1999, will be familiar with the insightful -- though self-serving and sometimes inaccurate -- portrayal of diplomatic history written by President Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state. What is new and dismaying in "Does America Need a Foreign Policy" is the frequent imprecision of Kissinger's writing.

I KNOW there are a lot of you out there who want to know how to be a great date, right?And the December Cosmopolitan magazine has some hints for those of you who are single and searching.You know Cosmo, that magazine that's never made up its mind between sex kitten and feminist dogma, placing somewhere between Playboy and Good Housekeeping.I'm having lunch with Pammy, my single friend with upward mobility. We're mad as hatters without the hats over the article. We see it as taking women back to the '50s with a bunch of corny come-ons.

TACOMA, Wash. -- The Senate's POW committee has bee forced to delay the release of its final report, with senators still deeply divided over the possibility that U.S. prisoners of war remain alive in Southeast Asia and whether top U.S. officials, including Henry Kissinger, in effect abandoned the men.The report -- the conclusion of a 15-month investigation that cost an estimated $1.9 million -- was due tomorrow. Its delay seems sure to fuel allegations that the Senate investigation raised more questions than it answered.

"Black and White" is as nasty and cynical a film as any to come down the pike this year. Starting with a raunchy and gratuitous scene of three people having sex in Central Park and devolving into a free-for-all of jittery, aimless improvisation, James Toback's latest movie feels less and less like a film and more like an excuse for the director to work out yet another batch of his notoriously varied sexual issues. With its cast of rap stars, young up-and-comers and slumming super-models, "Black and White" is supposed to be an edgy, urban exploration of affluent teen-agers' co-opting of hip-hop culture.

Join the Baltimore City Police Department. Low pay but free sensitivity training.Don't drink milk! Evidence is that users may risk contracting a white mustache.Polls show that half of all adult Californians would favor Hillary Clinton for U.S. senator from New York.Cheer up. Olympics meister Samaranch has asked Henry Kissinger to consult on the business ethics of the Games.Pub Date: 4/12/99