Politics
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Sympathy for the Truth I almost felt sorry for President Obama for a little while this week, because of the “you didn’t build that” controversy. In case you managed to miss all the fuss (which actually I think got relatively little attention from the pro-Obama press), he included the following words in a speech: If…
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Harsh words, I know, but on the basis of this piece by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic, they seem justified. I've seen references in other places to most of the ugly stuff related here, and no one seems to have denied very convincingly that it's true. I have always been completely immune to the fascination the…
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Last July 4 when the SyFy Channel was having its Twilight Zone marathon, I recorded a number of episodes, so many that I still haven't watched them all. And now it's almost July 4 again. I don't think I'll record any this year, though I do enjoy most of them. Last night we watched one called…
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Probably the best thing I've read about The Wire. And also very astute on the condition of our society. Thanks for the link, Grumpy.
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I've just been browsing in the most recent issue of The New Criterion, which is a memorial issue for Hilton Kramer, the magazine's founder, who died recently. During the time I've been reading TNC–a little over ten years–Kramer hasn't appeared very often in its pages, and so I really don't know that much about him,…
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Dialogue and Motive A few days ago in a comment thread Paul linked to this interesting report on a study which claims to find that conservatives understand the views of liberals better than liberals understand the views of conservatives. I take Studies of this sort in general with a pretty big dose of skepticism—after all,…
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There But For Fortune I watched, in snippets over a week or so, the above-named documentary about Phil Ochs. Once considered along with Dylan a major "protest singer," Ochs had a considerably lesser artistic gift, and stuck with left-wing activism long after Dylan had withdrawn from it. I never listened to him very much, because…
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Microfascism Several weeks ago, in a comment on my post about David Bentley Hart's essay on American religion in The New Criterion , Rob G mentioned another TNC piece, this one by William Gairdner, called "Getting Used to the F-Word," saying it was "even better" than Hart's. I had read it when it came out, and…
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Sunday Night Journal — November 20, 2011 Today is the feast of Christ the King. The archdiocese of Mobile has a traditional celebration of this occasion which still involves an actual public procession. I was going to say that that’s probably a rare thing in this country in these days, but I decided to look…
Light On Dark Water 