And now, here's a soothing musical interlude......
May 23, 2023

The Musical Innertube - Volume 2, Number 101 - Dick Polman tries to make sense of it all

On many political issues, the polls say one thing, state legislatures do the opposite. Political columnist Dick Polman says that's the result of years of behind-the-scenes work by political operatives on the local level.

Lately, we've noticed that, on many political issues, the polls say one thing, state legislatures do the opposite. Political columnist Dick Polman says that's the result of years of behind-the-scenes work by political operatives on the local level.

Dick Polman Profile Photo

Dick Polman

Dick Polman is the Maury Povich "writer in residence," a full-time member of the CPCW faculty, as well as a political columnist and daily blogger forThe Philadelphia Inquirer. He spent 22 years on the Inquirer writing staff; most recently, as the national political writer from 1992 to 2006, he covered four presidential elections and dozens of Senate and House races nationwide. At other times, he was a foreign correspondent based in London; a baseball writer covering the Philadelphia Phillies; a general-assignment feature writer; and a longtime regular contributor to the newspaper's Sunday magazine, where he wrote long-form pieces about everything from Nazi war criminals to the comeback of the condom. Prior to the Inquirer, he was a metro columnist on the Hartford Courant, and was the founding editor of an alternative newspaper, the Hartford Advocate. Dick attended George Washington University, where he served as managing editor of the college newspaper, and graduated with a BA in Public Affairs in 1973. He first came to Penn in 1999, when he audited classes during a one-semester fellowship, and he started teaching at Penn part time in 2003. Dick and his wife, Elise Vider, live in Center City. They have a son, who works at Comcast in Center City, and a daughter who is a web designer in San Francisco.