(Author’s note: Easily the greatest piece of literary criticism in American letters is Mark Twain’s “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”, though I believe Mark might have titled it more euphoniously. My piece takes a much more somber hue than Mark’s, exploring, to be blunt, Faulkner’s frequent failure to free himself emotionally from the limitations of his…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Allstate regrets nothing, not even using Edith Piaf to hustle car insurance to gays
Okay, I’m not saying that all thirty-something dudes with neatly trimmed beards and, you know, fabulous hair, who are good drivers and keep goldfish and live in “charming” houses are gay, but, well, I have my suspicions. But, anyway, what is the deal using “Non, je ne regrette rien”, the theme song of ultimate Greenwich…
Barack Obama, still not getting it after all these years
I confess that I have not read President Obama’s recent memoir, A Promised Land, nor am I likely to, because I have convinced myself that the political pressures on American politicians make it impossible, or at least exceedingly unlikely, for them to ever write anything that resembles an honest book. I would say that this…
Is Donald Trump making some Republicans “smarter”? Well, if by “some” you mean “two or three”, you may be on to something!
Okay, I don’t want to go out on a limb here, but I do detect a few signs of intelligence on the “right”, largely prompted by disgust over Trump’s hysterical reaction to his defeat and, even more, his clear willingness to overturn the results of the election by having state legislatures appoint their own electors…
Donald Trump tries to do something right. DC aghast.
Yes, you read that right: Donald Trump is trying to do something right. Not only is he trying to take a staggering 2,500 troops out of Iraq, he’s trying to take a staggering 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan as well! Effectively ending America’s only official shooting war! Almost as if we weren’t, you know, in…
Political Notes From All Over, Volume II
Barack Obama and the Ministry o’ Truth Oy vey, mon president! In a recent interview with the BBC former President Barack “if you like your health care plan you can keep it” Obama complains about the lack of truthiness currently available in the USA: There are millions of people who subscribed to the notion that…
Political Notes From All Over
Steven Pearlstein: Even-handed or Empty-Headed? I report, you decide. In a recent column, WashPost business dude Steven Pearlstein says what I have been saying about the Republican Party: …[B]roach-no-compromise obstructionism has been the strategy of congressional Republicans since the mid-1990s. Since then, two Republican House speakers have been run out of town for their lack…
Talia Rubinstein—“Think of One”
Up for some serious recorder? I thought you were. Posted by Talia
Yes, Donald Trump is destroying American democracy and the Republican Party is helping. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
Only eight years ago—how time flies!—Republicans were actually embarrassed by the fact that since 1988 their nominee for president had won more votes than his opponent only once, compared to five second-place finishes. Now if you ask a Republican “strategist” about the fact that it’s now one out of eight, he’ll explain to you genially…
Happy Days Are Here Again! Comparatively speaking, I mean.
Anyone reading this under—well, under fifty, I’m afraid—may not get the reference, to the once famous Democratic victory song, which goes back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, but getting Donald Trump out of the White House is sweet indeed, though taking the 2020 election results as a whole, it’s rather like sitting down to eat…