Criticism

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

There was a moment in the postseason when I asked Lakers Coach Mike Brown if he had any idea how his team would respond to that evening's challenge, and his answer stunned me. "I really don't have any idea," he said. He admitted he could not predict its energy or focus but added that he didn't think any NBA coach was capable of such powers. Well, Phil Jackson always seemed to know, and Pat Riley made a cottage industry out of knowing, and though it is unfair to compare Brown with two of the best coaches in NBA history, it is completely fair to wonder if he fits into the Lakers' championship culture.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

A scathing review of the new stage musical "An Officer and a Gentleman" has prompted the show's writer to hit back in an editorial that recently ran in the Australian press. Douglas Day Stewart co-wrote the book for the musical, which based on his original screenplay for the 1982 movie starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger. "Officer" opened earlier this month at the Lyric Theatre in Sydney, Australia.

Don't get mad, get even. Good advice for those who find their exasperation at excessive pay packages bursting out of control. Shouting abuse at bankers might not do much to persuade compensation committees to reduce salaries at the top. A calmer and more reasonable discussion could achieve more. In the opening pages of his slim new book "Pay Check," David Bolchover says he is keen to steer a middle way between the outrage of the envious and the disdain of those who see nothing much wrong with the current situation.

He knew it before you did, before you began to question the Lakers' obvious weakness, before you hit the message boards with mounting criticism of Derek Fisher. "I knew it before the season began," Fisher says, then mentioning Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Ron Artest, Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom. "Where else is anyone going to point?" He's not scoring like he has, as the criticism goes, little help in reserve behind him, and the Lakers are vulnerable at point guard as the playoffs loom.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told law students Tuesday that he found it "very troubling" to be surrounded by loudly cheering critics at President Obama's State of the Union address, saying it was reason enough for the justices not to attend the annual speech to Congress. "To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I'm not sure why we are there," Roberts said at the University of Alabama School of Law. Obama's speech in January came a week after the high court ruled 5 to 4 that corporations had a free-speech right to spend unlimited sums to elect or defeat candidates for office.

The Washington Redskins' loss to the Detroit Lions, ending the Lions' 19-game losing streak, opened the floodgates of media criticism in and around D.C. The Washington Post's Mike Wise, in a column headlined "A Debacle From Top To Bottom," called the Redskins' performance a "dumpster fire -- this abomination of a loss." Post blogger Dan Steinberg called the defeat the worst sports moment of the year in D.C., which is saying something in the home of the Nationals. Steinberg wrote: "Redskins lose to the NFL's worst team, ending the Lions' 19-game losing streak.

Determined to make the rags-to-riches drama "Slumdog Millionaire" as authentic as possible, director Danny Boyle reworked his film's first act, casting Hindi-speaking children from Mumbai's slums in two lead roles. Now his choice to put the impoverished 7-year-olds into the film has sparked a growing controversy that is threatening to overtake the movie's global goodwill.

Well, not everyone loves it. "The Gates," Christo and Jeanne-Claude's temporary, mammoth installation in New York's Central Park -- 7,532 plastic gates hung with orange fabric panels -- opened Feb. 12 to some rhapsodic reviews. New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman called it "a work of pure joy, a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple eloquence, the first great public art event of the 21st century."

An environmental group that has supported a proposed downtown Los Angeles football stadium and helped the developer secure special treatment in the courts issued a sharply worded critique Tuesday of environmental documents prepared for the project. In a 16-page letter to city officials, the Natural Resources Defense Council called on Anschutz Entertainment Group to rewrite and recirculate a recently released environmental impact report on the proposed stadium, saying it failed to fully analyze health risks created by cars that would travel to and from the 72,000-seat facility.

WASHINGTON - As the Obama campaign doubles down on the use of Bain Capital to question Mitt Romney's economic philosophy, Newark Mayor Cory Booker is backing off his criticism of a line of attack he called "nauseating. "   During an appearance Sunday on "Meet The Press," Booker, an Obama supporter and rising star, seemed to equate the Obama campaign's Bain strategy with the scuttled plans of a GOP "super PAC" to raise Obama's past ties to Jeremiah Wright, a retired Chicago pastor whose controversial speeches became a campaign issue in 2008.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who was championed by watchdogs for his cautious approach to nuclear power but criticized by Republicans in Congress for an overly hard-charging style has announced he will step down. Gregory Jaczko, who led the commission's efforts to protect Americans in Japan during the nuclear crisis at Fukushima and played a key role in fighting the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain as a former top aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat Thomas McNamee Free Press, 339 pp., $27 Ask your average Food Network viewer or Yelp poster about Craig Claiborne and you're likely to be met with a blank look and a "Who?" How fleeting is fame in the food world. Claiborne is one of the giants of this modern age, even if today - less than 20 years after his passing - he is largely forgotten. People remember James Beard because of the foundation that keeps his name alive. Julia Child lives on in television reruns (even if some fans now believe she looked just like Meryl Streep)

I was a pioneer of childhood obesity. By the time I was a junior in high school, I weighed more than 200 pounds. I was a fat kid before being a fat kid made you the topic of a national conversation and the first lady's pet project, back when Gatorade still tasted gross and no one knew how many calories there were in anything. For most of my childhood, I was the only fat girl in my class - I can still name the other two fat girls in my grade. Now, fat kids fill the playground and the high school bleachers, including a whole new breed of fat girl who wears skin tight jeans and mid-riffs and dares anyone to say anything.

LAFAYETTE, La. - Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spill and subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. "Now hiring" signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can't find enough workers for the jobs they're listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%. Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she'd feel if he went to work on a rig. "I can't stop him," said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband's death.

Chicago reviews of "Monty Python's Spamalot" and "All Shook Up" finally appeared last week -- the fourth week of five-week pre-Broadway tryouts the musicals are having in the city. Critics are kept out of tryouts at commercial Chicago venues until late in the runs so that producers can tweak the shows as much as possible before any appraisals are published.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai, perhaps best known in the West for periodic well-aimed jabs at his NATO allies, is embarking on a determined charm offensive as he faces the prospect of seeing troops and, perhaps even more crucially, dollars slip away from his country. The Afghan government has long regarded the NATO alliance and its partners as a seemingly bottomless source of funding. But aides to Karzai say the president is heading to a landmark NATO summit in Chicago this weekend with a keen awareness of the financial pinch being felt from London to Tokyo.

As he sat at the podium, Coach Mike Brown's infectious smile and enthusiasm suddenly evaporated. It had nothing to do with the Lakers' 2-0 deficit to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals. It had nothing to do with basketball.