One thing, at least, we have learned from the sorry saga of the now-discontinued “JournoList” — which, according to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, has lately been trimmed down to its presumably more trustworthy members and renamed the “Cabalist” — is the extent to which the Internet is the cultural equivalent of the id of Freudian…
In this morning’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus turns the irony jets up to full blast in an apparent attempt to wither the whole Sarah Palin clan — not Ms Marcus’s favorite people in any case, we surmise — in their tracks. Guess what? That which, for most families, would have been the tragedy, hardship or at…
A curious article by Frank Mankiewicz and Joel L. Swerdlow in today’s Washington Post laments: “New Deal? New Frontier? The days of presidential slogans may be gone.” Now I will be the first to agree that there are lots of things to regret about today’s political culture and lots of ways in which politics in the…
This summer I am presenting on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in Washington a series of six films on the general theme of “The Pursuit of Happiness.” The films are being shown at the Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street N.W., Suite 600, and you can go to the…
[See “Entry from July 14, 2010” under “My Diary”]
What is it with these people? I keep telling them but they don’t listen! Today yet another New York Times editorial — headed, “No Honor, Only Horror” — reveals that it wasn’t only the Book Review editor at the Times who never got around to reading (or reviewing) Honor, A History. In that book, I…
Sunday’s Boston Globe reported on an article in the Review of Economics and Statistics which has revealed that the average college student today spends over 40 per cent less time studying than college students half a century ago did. “What happened to studying?” asks the Globe reporter, Keith O’Brien. According to time-use surveys analyzed by professors…
A fascinating document for future scholars writing the history of the American celebrity culture
This summer I am presenting on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in Washington a series of six films on the general theme of "The Pursuit of Happiness." The films are being shown at the Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street N.W., Suite 600, and you can go to the…
[See “Entry from July 7, 2010” under “My Diary”]
England, as you may have heard, is football- (i.e. soccer-) mad and so is in national mourning since the national team went down to defeat — and defeat by Germany, of all other countries — in the World Cup the weekend before last. In today’s Guardian, which I have taken to reading since The Times…
