Due to a combination of being sick most of last week and supposedly being busy with an important “project,” I don’t have a column in this week’s Time. I did have a last-minute opportunity to write something about the XM-Sirius merger, but decided I didn’t have much of anything more to say than what I posted here on Tuesday. So it was interesting to pick up this morning’s Times and see the column I would have written (warning: it’s behind the TimesSelect wall), were I as wise and knowledgeable as Floyd Norris.
Anyway, I’ve discovered that I hate having the magazine come out without my column in it, so this won’t happen often if I can help it. I guess if I’m desperate I could just call Floyd and ask him for ideas.
There are of course lots of other excellent reasons to rush out to your local newsstand and buy a copy of the new Time, among them an article about nonprofit juggernaut Jane Leu, who happens to be an old friend of mine, and Bobby Ghosh’s great cover story about the Sunni-Shi’ite divide.
The intrepid Ghosh’s story is something of a journalistic landmark, in that it appears to mark the full conversion of his byline from “Aparisim Ghosh” to “Bobby Ghosh.” A couple of weeks ago he took the interim step of changing it to “Aparisim ‘Bobby’ Ghosh,” and now the transition is complete. (“Bobby” is what everybody here called him all along.)