The Fromson File

Until November 4th, the prospect of recovering America’s battered image around the world seemed dismal at best. The prospect of recovering it seemed unlikely until the day that millions of citizens went to the polls freely to elect an articulate and charismatic black man as their next president. The election was not only historic, it [...]

Over the past weekend, sold-out audiences in Los Angeles attended an L.A. Theater Works production of Norman Corwin’s The Rivalry, a radio play about the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Lincoln was the anti-slavery candidate of the newly-formed Republican Party that stood for racial equality through the end of the 19th century. But in the past [...]

The past two weeks in election year politics resemble a script that might have been written by Woody Allen or the late Peter Sellers. But the story has lent itself more to tragedy than comedy. What was on John McCain’s mind except his own desperate need to be president when he chose a gun-toting radical [...]

Tears of nostalgia filled my eyes Monday evening, watching Caroline and Ted Kennedy open the Democratic National Convention in Denver. It reminded me of a reporting assignment I had at the so-called Kennedy Convention that was convened in Los Angeles 48 years ago. The setting was concentrated in the city’s Sports Arena that seated no [...]