Author Biography | Full-Length Samples
Gene Lyons
Gene Lyons, National Magazine Award winner and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, writes a weekly column for Newspaper Enterprise Association. A Southerner with a liberal viewpoint, Lyons comments on politics and national issues with a distinct voice and a no-nonsense approach.
Lyons has written a column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since 1994. He previously spent five years as general editor at Newsweek, and was associate editor at Texas Monthly for a year. In 1980, he won the National Magazine Award for Public Service for the Texas Monthly article “Why Teachers Can’t Teach.”
A prolific author, Lyons has written hundreds of articles, essays and reviews for such magazines as Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Entertainment Weekly, Washington Monthly, The Nation, Esquire, Slate and Salon. His books include The Higher Illiteracy (University of Arkansas, 1988), Widow’s Web (Simon & Schuster, 1993), Fools for Scandal (Franklin Square, 1996) and, with Joe Conason, The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (St. Martin’s, 2000). In 2004, Mozark Productions released a movie version of “The Hunting of the President.”
Lyons graduated from Rutgers University in 1965, and earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1969. He taught at the Universities of Massachusetts, Arkansas and Texas before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. A native of New Jersey, Lyons has lived in Arkansas with his wife Diane since 1972. Diane, an Arkansas native, recently retired as from her position as Vice President for Board Relations at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Their two adult sons live in the Little Rock area. The Lyons live on a cattle farm near Houston, Ark., with a half-dozen dogs, three horses, and a growing herd of Fleckvieh Simmental cows.
Current Samples
September 8th, 2010
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EDITORS: Please be sure that the e-mail address you run at the end of this column has an "at" sign in it. The symbol may not transmit over the wire. The address should read eugenelyons2(at sign)yahoo.com.
GENE LYONS
It's good to have this Obama on the campaign trail
By Gene Lyons
Among the enlightened, dialing the psychic hotline is considered superstitious, although watching TV pundits call elections two months before the vote is taken seriously. True, political forecasters have opinion polls to guide them, but then it's also a safe bet that anybody phoning a psychic has a troubled love life.
History suggests that Democrats are in for a tough November. But will Republicans succeed in retaking one or both houses of Congress? Anybody who professes certainty is either blowing smoke or watching too much Fox News. Two months can be an eternity in politics. Unanticipated events can cause dramatic shifts in public sentiment.
Besides, now that Labo ...
September 1st, 2010
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GENE LYONS
Beck's politi... religious rally nothing new
By Gene Lyons
Here we go again. A self-promoting TV evangelist has summoned yet another gullible throng to a Washington pep rally/prayer meeting, and everybody's expected to ponder its vast significance. But what if it hasn't actually got any? Except perhaps as a validation of H.L. Mencken's timeless observation that "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
To Fox News impresario Glenn Beck, who staged the so-called "anti-Woodstock" at the Lincoln Memorial, its impact was literally cosmic. In promos, Beck modestly compared the event to such landmarks in American history as the Declaration of Independence, Iwo Jima, the moon landing, the Montgomery sch ...
August 25th, 2010
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GENE LYONS
To all real journalists: Stop being such cowards
By Gene Lyons
"These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith, and it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that." -- President George W. Bush, at the Islamic Center of Washington, September 17, 2001
They've finally made it official. Although you're not likely to see it reported on Fox News, media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., parent company of Fox, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc. recently donated a cool $1 million (that's $1,000,000) to the Republican Governors Association. While corporate donations to political parties are common, media conglomerates are normally careful to give to both parties fo ...
August 18th, 2010
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GENE LYONS
Smut yes, mosque no near 'hallowed' Ground Zero?
By Gene Lyons
"It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg." -- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
Maybe Republican savants who want to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment should "refudiate" the First Amendment while they're at it. That would simplify things enormously. No more of this foolishness about due process and equal protection under the law. A citizen would be anybody Sen. Lindsey Graham and Newt Gingrich deem worthy.
Mexican children and Muslims need not apply.
Religious rights could be left to Sarah Palin. The First Amendment clearly confuses and annoys many of her followers. "Congress ...
August 11th, 2010
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EDITORS: Please be sure that the e-mail address you run at the end of this column has an "at" sign in it. The symbol may not transmit over the wire. The address should read eugenelyons2(at sign)yahoo.com.
GENE LYONS
Blunt Gibbs should 'shut up'
By Gene Lyons
If nothing else, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' recent attack on the White House's liberal critics demonstrates why frankness often backfires in politics. Speaking with a reporter from The Hill, Gibbs lampooned President Obama's Democratic detractors in unfortunately sharp terms. His remarks sounded more like something a White House loyalist might say after hours in a bar than in a formal interview.
When he hears Democratic purists compare Obama to George W. Bush, Gibbs complained, "Those people ought to be drug tested." People who accuse the administration of cutting too many deals with so-called "centrists" on issues like health care "wouldn't be satisfied if Dennis Kucinic ...
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