The Eternal Oval: NASCAR’s Global Relevance in an Age of Electric Regret By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent-at-Large, still jet-lagged in Charlotte CHARLOTTE—Somewhere between the smell of burnt ethanol and the distant hum of a C-130 practicing touch-and-go at the nearby Air National Guard base, it dawned on me that NASCAR is either the last honest religion…
A Shot Heard from Dallas to Djibouti: How JFK’s Exit Became the World’s Favorite Morality Play The global village didn’t wait for fiber-optic cable to synchronize its gasp. On 22 November 1963, the news moved at the speed of short-wave radio, ticker tape, and whispered rumor, and every capital—whether sipping post-prandial grappa in Rome or…
From the Roman Forum to the Champs-Élysées, humanity has always enjoyed a good dynastic soap opera. Enter John F. Kennedy Jr.—or, as the international press politely nicknamed him while he was alive, “America’s most famous magazine publisher with the world’s worst flight instructor.” Dead for a quarter-century, he remains the Zelig of global conspiracy culture,…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Swims the English Channel of Global Paranoia—And We’re All in the Same Boat by “The Continental Curmudgeon,” London Bureau Chief PARIS—From the banks of the Seine to the back alleys of Jakarta, the mere mention of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now evokes the same diplomatic shrug you give a flatulent uncle…
The Curious Case of Luther Burden III: How a 19-Year-Old from East St. Louis Accidentally Became a Geopolitical Pawn By the time Luther Burden III stiff-armed his way into the end zone against Kansas State last November, grain futures in Kyiv ticked upward 0.3 percent. Not because the sophomore wide receiver has any known sway…
PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine’s grey ripple and the seventh espresso of the afternoon, word reached the international press corps that Brian Schottenheimer—yes, that Schottenheimer, scion of football’s most reliable family tragedy—has been handed the keys to the Dallas Cowboys’ offense. The planet, distracted by minor irritants such as record heat in Delhi and the slow-motion…
The Crescent City has always been a place where the dead refuse to stay buried—levees break, jazz funerals turn into block parties, and the Saints keep rising from the crypt like Bourbon Street vampires with season tickets. From the banks of the muddy Mississippi, the New Orleans Saints have quietly become America’s most improbable export…
CeeDee Lamb and the Global Theater of Catch-and-Release By The Foreign Desk, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the neon shrine of JerryWorld and the algorithmic bowels of TikTok, CeeDee Lamb—wide-receiver, reluctant fashion influencer, and occasional human piñata for defensive backs—has become the latest export in America’s ongoing experiment: turning kinetic talent into soft power. To the…
Tory Horton and the Global Glitch: How One Man’s Name Became the Planet’s Newest Rorschach Test By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between Despair and Duty In the grand, gaudy casino of world affairs—where microchips play roulette with truth and every national leader claims to hold the winning chip—there emerged this week an unlikely ball bouncing across…
Rylan Clark and the Strange, Borderless Afterlife of British Camp By Our Correspondent in a Marriott Lounge Somewhere Over the Atlantic Somewhere between the croissant basket and the CNN ticker announcing yet another currency nosedive, the hotel television flickered to a clip of Rylan Clark—yes, that Rylan, the one whose teeth once outshone the Blackpool…
Gridiron Geopolitics: How the NFL Standings Quietly Rule the World Order By A. Correspondent, filing from a hotel bar in Singapore that still thinks the Patriots are the bad guys — The NFL’s weekly standings, for the uninitiated, look like a benign spreadsheet of wins, losses, and a few decimal points masquerading as science. But…
From the banks of the Mekong to the back alleys of Marseille, the phrase “NFC North” sounds like a cold-weather banking syndicate rather than a quadrant of American gladiatorial theatre. Yet here we are, in a year when even the Arctic Circle is on fire, watching four Midwestern franchises try to convince a planet drowning…
