Nobody at The New York Times or The Washington Post has made an announcement about those papers’ decision to treat opinion as fact under the Trump régime, at least not that I am aware of — unless you count Jim Rutenberg’s front page, signed editorial in The Times of last August advocating journalistic advocacy against…
Among the many political truisms suddenly transformed to falsisms by the magic of Trump is the one about never picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Variously attributed to Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill (of course) and Tommy Lasorda, this saying used to be invoked every time another politician fell…
Irony is the principle by which the meaning of words is affected and often radically altered according to where, when, in what context and by whom they are spoken or written. It’s pretty basic to all human discourse, but it is something that Americans, in particular, have never been particularly comfortable with. A few years…
First, cartoon movies; then, a cartoon election. Seems logical. Yet the media affect surprise — From The New Criterion of December, 2016
Notice anything different about the news this morning? I did. While dressing, I listened as usual to the radio news report from the top of the hour through "traffic and weather," sports (the Redskins lost, it seems, though on the bright side they still get to be called "Redskins") and "your money" until the abbreviated…
At least this election has taught us to get our priorities right. From The New Criterion of November, 2016
A fine war movie in spite of its being pitched to an audience with a pacifist predisposition
It is already becoming clear that, in the Trump era, we’d better get used to the ubiquity of virtue-signaling on the left, as it has lately become even easier than it already was. "Not my president!" reads the message that lots and lots of our fellow citizens apparently feel it incumbent upon themselves to share…
An adaptation which brings out the worst in Philip Roth’s novel
Someone said to me way back in June, after the nominees of the two parties had clinched their respective nominations, "Well, are you voting for the crook or the creep?" I assumed that there was intended in the question an allusion to that memorable election for governor of Louisiana in which the once-indicted but not…
Just whose "truth" is it we are now all supposed to be "post"? — From The New Criterion of October, 2016
Writing in yesterday’s New York Times, Ross Douthat makes a common mistake about honor. Actually, two common mistakes if you count his use of the word "honor" in the first place. So common are they, indeed, that it would hardly be worth pointing them out if they didn’t involve him in the outrageous falsehood that…
