The End of the News
The media have left their first love, the news, and their own raffish past for what they imagine to be a high-class mistress called "narrative" — From The New Criterion of September, 2016
Entry from September 22, 2016
By now, God knows, I should be used to it, but the irony of yesterday’s New York Times headline, caused me to laugh out loud — though as usual I was only laughing so as not to cry. "Donald Trump Jr.’s Skittles Post on Twitter Fits a Pattern," read the head to a piece by…
Hell or High Water
A sometimes amusing but morally illiterate "neo-Western" which seems likely to spawn numerous imitators
Entry from August 30, 2016
In yesterday’s New York Times, Neil MacFarquhar explained how Russia has been seeking to advance Vladimir Putin’s agenda by using both its own, government controlled media outlets — the Sputnik news agency and the RT (or "Russia Today") TV channel — and false rumors planted on and spread by social media. In Sweden, for example,…
Florence Foster Jenkins
A bittersweet but well-executed comedy to which there is much more than may at first appear.
Entry from August 18, 2016
With Barack Obama, the Democrats first made the leap to choosing a presidential nominee solely on the basis of his rhetoric — just as it was his speech at the Democratic National convention in 2004 that catapaulted him from obscurity to a U.S. senate seat and thus into contention for the presidency — and without…
Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
If this is how both sides in America have decided to do politics in the age of Trump, there’s not much point finding fault, is there?
Entry from August 9, 2016
Oh, the agonies of America’s conscience-stricken journalists — forced as they are to maintain their always high standards of professionalism, balance and objectivity when faced with the sheer loathsomeness of Donald Trump! That’s according to Jim Rutenberg who writes the "Mediator" column for The New York Times: If you’re a working journalist and you believe…
Entry from July 28, 2016
"Migrant-filled Europe is spiralling into chaos," read the headline to an article by Roger Boyes in The Times of London yesterday morning after the murder on Tuesday by knife-wielding teenage Islamicists of a French priest while he was celebrating mass. It created a nicely ironic contrast with the headline to Dan Balz’s article in this morning’s…
Captain Fantastic
A movie to promote the self-conceit of ageing hippies left behind by "history"
Entry from July 21, 2016
Though never a big fan of Donald Trump, I find myself becoming more and more thankful for the Trump candidacy — mainly for saving me so much of the time that I would once have had to spend with America’s media. Now, as my eye travels down the scroll of the day’s articles in this…