Joel Mathis

Me outside the Empire State Building (on the right!) on the trip in question. The first time I stayed at the Hotel Pennsylvania was in the fall of 2004. I had turned 30 a year previously, and had recently concluded it was time for me to be done waiting. I had spent the bulk of my adult life waiting for a mate -- somebody to make me complete, an actual grownup. It was only then, I thought, that I could embark on grownup adventures like trips to New York. Who would ever do such a thing on their own? There was an obstacle, however: Money. I wasn’t poor, exactly, but I was a journalist, and of course had little money saved. But the idea of a New York trip -- centered around the annual New Yorker Festival -- had taken hold of me. So I resolved to be profligate -- I would use a credit card -- but not too profligate. I would stay at the cheapest non-scary hotel I could find in Manhattan. A search at Hotels.com gave me just one plausible answer. For less than $200 a night, I could stay

More than most American leaders who might run for president someday, Sarah Palin has made a career of dividing "us" and "them." Most famously, she spent parts of the 2008 dismissing her opponents and their allies as residing somewhere outside the "real America" -- and while she apologized for it , her constant grievance-mongering suggests she sees the world, and this country, mostly in terms of its divisions. Don't get me wrong: Other leaders can be "divisive." Palin is different: The divisions animate her. I mention all of this because of a recent posting to her Facebook page, which features this title: " An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground ." She is, of course, talking about the proposed mosque to be located 600 feet or so from Ground Zero in New York. I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pi