"When something really comes from the soul, I think it has a truth that you cannot find in politics." -- Frank Rich
Frank Rich (born June 2, 1949) is an American essayist and columnist. Since 1980, he has written for The New York Times, when he was appointed its chief theater critic. He has since held various roles with the Times...in 1994 he became an op-ed columnist, with his weekly essay appearing in the Sunday Week in Review section starting in April 2005.
"After 9/11, we realized that all these silly culture wars, and arguing about rock lyrics... who cares? You know, we, for some reason, remembered what our real problems are.""For a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.""I grew up in Washington, D.C. But also loving the theater.""I'm always struck by the kids who turn up in New York and LA, and places in between. Chicago. Wanting to do theater, wanting to do independent film. Wanting to break into television or radio.""In that sense, when a Bush or a Gore, or whomever, goes on David Letterman, that's the news, too.""It is kind of tedious after a while, to parse politicians doing the same thing over and over again. The facts change from week to week, but the sort of masquerade doesn't.""There have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. It was a really good tour. It seemed maybe about a week too long.""While F.D.R. once told Americans that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Mr. Ashcroft is delighted to play the part of Fear Itself, an assignment in which he lets his imagination run riot."
Rich grew up in Washington, D.C., attending public schools.
He attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied American history and literature. While at Harvard, he became the editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson, the university's daily student newspaper. He became an honorary Harvard College scholar, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship. He graduated in magna cum laude with a B.A. degree in American History and Literature in 1971.
Before joining The New York Times in 1980, Rich was a film critic for Time, film critic for the New York Post, and film critic and senior editor of New Times Magazine. In the early 1970s, he was a founding editor of the Richmond (Va.) Mercury. At The New York Times, he has been the chief theater critic, senior writer for the New York Times Magazine, and as of January 1994 he became an op-ed columnist.
Rich first won attention from theatre-goers with an essay for The Harvard Crimson about the theatre musical Follies (1971), by Stephen Sondheim, during its pre-Broadway tryout run in Boston. In his study of the work, he was "the first person to predict the legendary status the show eventually would achieve", and the article "fascinated" Harold Prince, the musical's co-director, and "absolutely intrigued" Sondheim, who invited the undergraduate to lunch to discuss further his feelings about the production.
A collection of his theatre reviews was published in a book, Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980-1993 (1998). He also wrote The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson with Lisa Aronson in 1987.
Since 2003, Rich has written regularly for The New York Times on the mass media and public relations, particularly on its coverage of U.S. national politics. His columns make regular references to a broad range of popular culture ... including television, movies, theater, and literature ... and draw connections to politics and current events. His column is also published in the International Herald Tribune, the international edition of the Times.
As a political commentator, Rich is often criticized by Bill O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor, a television talk show on the Fox News Channel. Rich is openly critical of Fox News, accusing it in 2004 of having a politically conservative media bias.
In a January 2006 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, a weekday television talk show, commenting on the James Frey memoir scandal, Rich expanded on his usage in his column of the term truthiness to summarize a variety of ills in culture and politics.
His book The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (2006) criticized the American media for its support of George W. Bush's administration's policies following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Rich dismissed the historical-drama film The Passion of the Christ (2004), directed by Mel Gibson, as "nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots", and praised Christopher Hitchens's description of it as "a homoerotic 'exercise in lurid sadomasochism' for those who 'like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time.'"
A July 2009 column focused on what Rich believes is the bigoted nature of the U.S. president's detractors. On the Tea Party movement, which emerged in 2009, Rich opined that at one of their rallies they were "kowtowing to secessionists". He also wrote that the death threats and a brick thrown through a congressman's window were a "small-scale mimicry of "Kristallnacht" (or "night of broken glass", the November 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria).
In 2005, Rich received the George Polk Award given annually by Long Island University in Brookville, New York, to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting.
Rich is married to Alexandra Witchel, who also writes ... as Alex Witchel ... for The New York Times. He has two sons from his previous marriage to Gail Winston; as of 2010, one, Simon Rich, was a writer for Saturday Night Live, a live, late-night television sketch comedy and variety show.
His memoir Ghost Light (2000) chronicles his childhood through his college years in 1950s Maryland with a focus on his lifelong adoration of the theatre and the impact it had on his life.
