Three Days of the Condor
[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 19, 2012]
Entry from July 16, 2012
The recently expired 14th Earl of Loudon, known to his Aussie mates plain Mike Hastings, was described by The Daily Telegraph as “a beer-swilling, rotund Australian rice farmer and former jackaroo” whom one medieval historian thought the rightful king of England. A documentary on Britain’s Channel 4 took up the case, purporting to show that Edward…
Entry from July 12, 2012
This summer I am presenting on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in Washington a series of five films on the general theme of The Enemy Within. The films are being shown at the Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street N.W., Suite 600, and you can go to the EPPC or…
Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)
[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 12, 2012]
Entry from July 9, 2012
The “Opinionator” blog of The New York Times the other day ran a piece by Cynthia Wachtell, the author of War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861-1914, repeating Mark Twain’s facetious claim that Sir Walter Scott was responsible for the American Civil War but without the facetiousness. What lies behind so extraordinary a…
Intouchables,The
An unexpectedly amusing variation on an old French theme
Welcome to Fantasyland
The New Reality: left-wing historicism and the promise of economic salvation — From The New Criterion of June, 2012
Entry from June 29, 2012
Lost in the outcry over one regrettable Supreme Court decision yesterday was what ought to have been an equal degree of public outrage over another one, namely the Court’s upholding of a decision by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court to strike down the Stolen Valor Act. Passed in 2006, this statute…
Laughing on the Wrong Side
On the apparent impossibility of our culture’s learning anything from the past — From The American Spectator of June, 2012
Entry from June 28, 2012
This summer I am presenting on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in Washington a series of five films on the general theme of The Enemy Within. The films are being shown at the Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street N.W., Suite 600, and you can go to the EPPC or…
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
[See discussion under “My diary” entry for June 28, 2012]
Your Sister’s Sister
Weird but not nearly weird enough to escape from being really boring and self-indulgent.