In a recent issue of the London Daily Telegraph Michael Simkins wrote of the contrast between British and American humor that, However much editors may gaze longingly at the US and its sanitised, sassy sitcoms, sauce has long been the bedrock of both British humour and culinary heritage. From Chaucer, through Shakespeare and music hall to…
What’s the news depends on which team you’re on — From The New Criterion of June, 2011
Well, that’s a new one. The inevitable thumb-sucking occasioned by the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was always going to produce its share of brickbats from the Blame America First crowd. I had thought, however, that I had already heard all the ill-natured things they had to say about us and about the leadership of George…
Here’s a question that some Tea Party Republicans are beginning to ask about our future as a self-governing people. Is it good that the polity should be divided into two classes: those who pay for the benefits of government and those who only receive those benefits? What are the likely consequences of a political system…
Just as they are here, in Britain the public prints — perhaps these should now be called the public screens — are periodically agitated by concern over a decline in the study of history among the young. Here there was a flurry of such concern back in June, but in Britain it usually coincides with…
Over and over again the media loves to tell us that President Obama may be unpopular, but Congress is even less popular. Way less popular. Rosalind S. Helderman and Peyton M. Craighill of The Washington Post have some fun listing some of the other things that Congress is less popular than: “Cloning sheep. Cloning humans,…
Better wear some flowers in your hair
What a joy it always is to read Tom Friedman’s column in The New York Times! The guy is a paragon of bad writing. Or, as Matt Taibbi memorably put it a few years ago on the publication of The World Is Flat, Mr Friedman is “such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most…
Who says women can’t be just as good at gross-out humor as men? — From The American Spectator of July/August, 2011
Further to my last post on the late riots in Britain and fear of the police as a deterrent to violence and civil disorder, I note that, according to the London Daily Telegraph, the British police are no more afraid of the Prime Minister, David Cameron, than the rioters were afraid of them. The aftermath…
Jailed for arson? Poor Danny! Don’t you know he did it for our vanishing wilderness? Soft-core propaganda from the environmentalist left.
