What to make of the fact that Alessandra Stanley in today’s New York Times treats Fox News the way conservatives commonly treat the news shows on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC — on all of which, reporters are now trying hard not to give free rein to their smug confidence that the election is in…
Or, are the computer screen and the deluge of information washing through it about to make reading a lost art? From The New Atlantis of Summer, 2008
The movie industry no longer aspires to portray genuine heroism — even though that’s precisely what audiences want to see. From The American of July/August 2008
Colin Powell was not the only person from the supposedly “conservative,” right-of-center side of the political spectrum who came out for Barack Obama yesterday. In the Sunday Telegraph of London, the writer and Conservative member of the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan did the same. Here is part of his reasoning: The election of a mixed-race…
I skipped last night’s “debate.” I skipped the previous one too. And the first one. Oh, and also the vice-presidential debate watched by more Americans than any vice-presidential debate in history. When nearly 70 million viewers tune in to watch two aspirants to the office that one of its holders once described as being “not…
These are remarks I delivered to a roundtable discussion at the America’s Future Foundation in Washington on the topic: “Pop Culture: Conservatives vs. Libertarians” on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008. Also taking part were Kelly Jane Torrence of The Washington Times, Philip Terzian of The Weekly Standard and Ross Douthat of The Atlantic Monthly. The discussion…
Sometimes you can only shake your head in wonderment at the obtuseness of the media in failing to understand the world that they themselves have created. In a column titled “Running from Reality” in today’s Washington Post, the veteran commentator and pundit, David Broder cited something that stood out as “strange” even in this, the “strangest…
Readers of my last post here who are fans of Rudyard Kipling will have recognized the allusion in it to his great poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” The fact that liquids only trickle downwards, I wrote, is one of those inescapable realities — as, for instance, that “water will certainly wet us” and “fire…
The Repeal of Reality. . .Whenever I hear anyone use the expression, “trickle-down economics,” I want to reply — though I rarely get the chance to, as it is mainly on TV or in the papers that one hears or reads the people who are using it — “As opposed to what? Trickle-up economics?” I…
In defense of the House Republicans. . .As soon as someone tells me that one particular political measure or decision is the right or moral choice and the alternatives to it are irresponsible and immoral, I start to feel an almost irresistible urge to do the immoral, the forbidden thing. It’s not that I am…
How to be an Intellectual: black and white and gray all over — From The New Criterion of September 30, 2008
