Oy vey. Perhaps this blog should simply be titled “O the Times”, because it seems that that’s all I write about. Anyway, I was reading, with no little schadenfreude (which Word can spell—how “continental” is that!), “Giuliani Divorce: It’s Ugly, It’s Operatic. What Did You Expect?’, since Rudy is easily my least favorite former New…
Author: Alan Vanneman
How often can the New York Times keep stepping on its own penis?
Hard to say. The Times recently got itself a lot of bad publicity for its massive exercise in nation shaming, aka the 1619 Project, wherein the Times nobly accepts the burden—the Gray Lady’s Burden, one might call it—of explaining to us yahoos just how benighted we are on the subject of race. But that was…
David Brooks writes a good column. I did not see this coming!
Yeah, not only does shit happen, sometimes amazing shit happens. The amazing shit in question is this post by Big Dave, on whose unprotected dome have I poured unrelenting ridicule for lo these many years. Dave’s column, titled “The Meritocracy Is Ripping America Apart”, subtitled “How savage exclusion tears the social fabric”, is, mercifully, not…
Carmen McRae—“Round Midnight”
Clearly (I guess) an early/mid sixties broadcast, probably public television or a local LA or New York station. The sound is a little iffy and there’s no information available on her accompanists. A wonderful little present from the evil empire of Google. Posted by mrdantefontana666 Need more Monk? Of course you do, Go to Mostly…
Literature R Us has moved!
Tumblr lost porno, and now it’s losing Alan Vanneman! It’s true. I’ve moved my website, as you can tell if you’re reading this. I (naturally) didn’t know what I was getting into when I moved my now-ancient “blogspot” blog to Tumblr, which was rumored at the time to be cool. As it turns out, what…
Myth Busters! Afghanistan ain’t that rich!
Well, it ain’t. Propagating the myth is the sometimes sensible paleo-populist James K. Pinkerton, who, while parking his fedora at the American Conservative, serves up a sensible take on Afghanistan, a-wishin’ and a-hopin’ that his sometime main man Donald Trump would not listen to the military intellectual complex and get the hell out of central…
Three Bullets revivified!
If you’ve been trying, in vain, to download my free Nero Wolfe threesome, Three Bullets, well, I apologize. Thanks to a computer glitch unseen by me, they were unavailable. But that’s all in the past! The three novellas, Invitation to a Shooting Party, Fame Will Tell, and Politics Is Murder, all featuring Rex Stout’s inimitable…
Yes, Republicans, the FBI is corrupt. THANKS TO YOU!
Over at Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes explains the tragedy/farce farce/tragedy of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s dismissal and now impending indictment for false statements made in the course of an internal investigation. The record is perfectly clear: Andrew McCabe was fired immediately prior to the vesting of his pension and now very likely will be…
Dolchstosslegende at the Washington Post
Over at the American Conservative, Gil Barndollar, former Marine Corps officer and currently Military Fellow-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship, has an excellent article on the modern American version of Dolchstosslegende (“dagger stab myth”)—the claim made by the German Right and immensely amplified by Adolf Hitler that Germany’s…
Michel Petrucciani—“Round Midnight”
1993 – Stuttgarte. Posted by boogieonlineat