Head football coaches live in a terrifying dream world. In that world, tumultuous laughter and happiness can instantly turn into a nightmare. Great victories are the other side of the coin to heartbreaking defeats. These coaches are very much like politicians. They are addicted to adulation. They distrust and dislike…

To me, Craig Tribken was the white knight in the battle against the forces of darkness. When it was still politically dangerous, Tribken led the way in the battle to create a public park on the site of the old Phoenix Indian School property. The Barron Collier family of Florida…

There, up on the stage, was Annie Leibovitz. At the very sight of the celebrity photographer, the standing-room-only audience in the theatre at Phoenix Art Museum burst into applause. Leibovitz is a tall, angular woman with a nose as prominent as the one that gave the late writer Lillian Hellman…

It was early Christmas Eve morning. Wade Arnold, 34, climbed into the back seat of the transportation vehicle at the state prison facility in Tucson. Hampered by leg irons and handcuffs, Arnold moved awkwardly. The night before,” Arnold remembers, I had packed up my 13-inch television set and all my…

I arrived at the Ritz-Carlton hotel early. It was raining heavily. The inadequate parking lot was jammed with cars and trucks sent out by all radio and television stations in town. Governor J. Fife Symington III’s press conference was going to be broadcast live. There was an air of feeding…

It was an uncommon funeral service. The mourners, most wearing cowboy boots and ranchers’ rough clothes, sat in makeshift pews at the rear of the cavernous Matt’s Saloon on Prescott’s Whiskey Row. The honoree was Dave Horn, an old horse lover and racetracker. For years, he ran the tote board…

Almost reverently, they stood in line. In their hands were clutched the oversize volumes of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North’s best-selling memoir, Under Fire. Blissfully, they withstood an early morning downpour while waiting patiently for their hero to arrive at a place in Tempe called Books Etc. “I fell in…

Al Heinze was powerful for a while. And why shouldn’t he be? Heinze was the man who made life fine and mellow for the men who run the various prosecutors’ offices around the state. Anytime a prosecutor wanted to go out of town on a seminar, it was the money…

1. Charlie Keating finally took the great fall. These days the headline writers use words like “fraud” and “bilked” in writing about him. Not too long ago, Keating was Senator John McCain’s biggest backer. He did everything for McCain. He held fund-raising events. He flew the senator around on private…

It was midafternoon. As usual, CNN was playing in the background. Most of the time, when I’m home, it remains that way. A promo that Larry King’s upcoming guest will be Joan Rivers or a reference to Patrick Buchanan is not enough to make me turn up the television sound…

I have finally figured out the Redmond murder case. Since I am not extremely quick on the draw, this has only taken me ten years and a few months. I sat in front of the television set Sunday night watching a show based on the Redmond killings called False Arrest,…

There has been so much speculation surrounding the Arizona State University and Phoenix Cardinals football teams that I decided to see for myself. I drove over to Tempe to see the ASU-UCLA game hours before it was scheduled to start. It was a sunny day with temperatures in the 80s…

Bad things often happen to good journalists. Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio and Juan Williams of the Washington Post played key roles during the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Clarence Thomas. Both, however, have come away from the event with their reputations under fire. This doesn’t really surprise me…

LATE SUNDAY NIGHT–Finally, it is over. In Washington, D.C., it is past 2 a.m. This is the hour for stealth; a perilous period when muggers rule the streets. It’s a time for the criminal class to prevail and congressional pay raises to be voted. The faces of the senators are…

I went back out of curiosity. They were presenting this year’s Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia University in New York City. It was the 75th-anniversary celebration of the Pulitzers, and they had actually taken the trouble to invite every previous winner to come to New York to attend both the ceremony…

Mike Tyson’s lifelong criminal tendencies have overtaken him. His life has become the classic cautionary tale of the talented young man who zoomed to the pinnacle of the brutal sport of boxing at the unprecedented age of 20, achieving wealth beyond his ability to comprehend–or to handle. The incredible physical…

The level of fear has risen. I don’t think anyone realizes just how seriously. The murders of the Buddhist monks on August 10 have changed the climate of this city. The other day I saw a housewife call out to two workers hired by the city to do a repair…

Once again, on Sunday night, there was the irate face of J. Fife Symington III. The governor’s moistened lips were pursed with aristocratic disdain. I thought that was just fine. After all, any governor worth his salt should come equipped with a certain aristocratic demeanor. In politics, appearances are everything…

They sit there in growing awe. The silence of the darkened theatre is broken frequently by applause. It is billed simply as “A Tribute to Jodie Foster.” They do this for one film legend every year here at the Telluride Film Festival. Often it is for some dead actor from…

“Should we assume there are violent criminals on the loose?” asked the woman reporter from Channel 12. This is what you might call a “sound bite” question. It is not designed to obtain information but merely to elicit an answer that will sound important on television. They are comparable to…