Who

The liberal pundit-in-residence for the Times' "Week in Review" section, Rich preaches to the choir about American politics.

Backstory

Frank earned his first byline in the New York Times when he wrote a piece for the op-ed section as a student at Harvard. The opinion editor of the Crimson while in college, Rich started his career as founding editor of the Richmond Mercury, a Virginia alternative weekly. Following a stint as film and TV critic for Time, he joined the New York Times in 1980 as the paper's chief theater critic, quickly earning the moniker "The Butcher of Broadway" for the acidity of his reviews and his ability to kill a show. But Rich's opinions weren't uniformly harsh: He also championed the work of a number of emerging playwrights, helping to draw attention to the early work of David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner and August Wilson.

In 1993, Rich relinquished his theater critic gig to serve as an opinion columnist. These days he writes long op-ed pieces for the Sunday "Week in Review" section in which he champions the liberal cause du jour, lambasts perennial bogeymen like George Bush, Bill O'Reilly, and Mel Gibson, and extrapolates wildly to prove some overambitious, tenuous thesis about American social or political culture.

In print

Rich has written two theater-related books, Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980-1993, and Ghost Light: A Memoir, about his own life. He also co-authored The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson with Aronson's widow, Lisa. Rich's most recent book is the 2006 anti-Bush tome, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina.

Personal

Rich was previously married to Gail Winston. Since 1991, he's been the husband of novelist and fellow Times writer Alex Witchel. He and Witchel (who were turned into characters for the 2005 John Malkovich movie Color Me Kubrick) live on Riverside Drive. They spend the summers in Napa Valley.

Family ties

Rich has two sons from his first marriage, both of whom have managed to carve out impressive literary careers thanks in no small part to their father's connections. Nathaniel, the older son, is an associate editor at the Paris Review; hotshot literary agent Elyse Cheney scored him a book deal for his first foray into fiction, The Mayor's Tongue. Younger son Simon landed a two-book deal with Random House before he'd even graduated Harvard; the first volume, Ant Farm, was released in April 2007 to mixed reviews. A former Lampoon president, Simon has also published several humor pieces in the New Yorker.

No joke

Slate made a verb out of his name, meaning "to persuade your readers of what they already know."