Columnist Krauthammer to speak in lecture series

Friday, April 11, 2003 | 9:12 a.m.

Columnist and political analyst Charles Krauthammer will speak May 21 in Las Vegas.

Krauthammer, who is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, an essayist for Time magazine, an analyst for Fox News and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and the New Republic, will be at Temple Beth Shalom, speaking as part of the Shirley and Sidney Chaplin Lecture Series.

The 7 p.m. talk by the 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner is free.

Krauthammer is widely known for his conservative views, but the late Meg Greenfield, Washington Post editorial page editor, described Krauthammer as "independent and hard to peg politically."

"My beat is ideas," Krauthammer said, "everything from the ethics of cloning to strategy in Afghanistan. I also do public service, like reading Stephen Hawking's books and assuring my readers that 'It is not you, they are entirely incomprehensible.' "

In recent columns he has taken on media that have criticized the U.S. war in Iraq and encouraged President Bush to press on.

"Not since I studied bipolar disease 25 years ago have I seen such dramatic mood swings as in the coverage of the first week of the war," he wrote on March 28.

Krauthammer was trained as a doctor and was chief resident of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital before quitting the field in 1978 to a become science adviser in the Jimmy Carter administration. He later became a speech writer for Vice President Walter Mondale.

He joined the staff of The New Republic in 1981, where he was an essayist and editor until 1988. During that time he also started writing essays for Time.

He joined the Washington Post in January 1985 and now is syndicated in more than 100 newspapers.

Temple Beth Shalom is at 10700 Havenwood Lane, off Town Center Drive between Sahara Avenue and Desert Inn Road.