As a lapsed Episcopalian,* I haven’t resisted having a chuckle at the expense of all the Catholics scurrying about trying to make sense of Benedict XVI’s decision to abdicate. Ross Douthat does a pretty good job, agreeing that it makes sense to have a vigorous and active leader seated in St. Peter’s chair, but then…
If guns are outlawed, only Obama will have one? How about “You can have my penis substitute when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers”?
New at Bright Lights
My take on Charlie Chaplin’s penultimate (and second-worst) film, Limelight, is available at the Brightlights Film Journal, along wtih a brief guide to Mozart’s operas on Blu-ray. The whole BL issue, NSFW as always, is here.My earlier reviews of Chaplin…
The Electric Slide
Two recent stories in the New York Times should serve as a primer, or perhaps prophylactic, for whatever electric car jive President Obama has up his sleeve for tonight’s “State of the Union” address. The first, a tale of woe entitled “Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway,” by the immensely put-upon John M. Broder, explains…
Pseudo-New Yorker
Legal humor here. “If that were the case, he’d be reacting to the sunlight, wouldn’t he? Or is that just another myth?” “Don’t cover for them, Jerry. They were fools to go with E-Z Balm, and you know it.” “It is better than rouge, but it’s so intrusive.” “We all have a little Edgar Allan…
Ah, Brennan! Ah, humanity!
If you haven’t read Herman Melville’s more than classic short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” well, you should. Bartleby, as the title suggests, was a scrivener on Wall Street, someone who copied documents in long hand prior to the development of the typewriter. At the outset a compulsive worker, Bartleby gradually…
Dianne Feinstein, Pretty but Dumb, or Pretty Dumb?
Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, led off her committee’s hearing on John Brennan’s nomination to be head of the CIA by proudly announcing that the CIA’s “Death from the Skies” drone program, which is pretty much John’s baby, had been able to keep civilian casualties “in the single digits” for each year…
Editing “On Editing and Being Edited”
Sal Robinson, an editor at Melville House, in a post headed “On Editing and Being Edited,” muses on two articles on editing by John Simon and Tim Parks, and comes up with the following: “There is, indeed, a conservative tendency to editing at times — a worry that the book won’t sell or will be…
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Imminent is maybe sometime
Americans are shocked, shocked to learn that their President is a murderer. Well, it’s nice that they can be shocked. President Obama’s “Terror Tuesdays,” his rules that if you’re dead you’re a “militant” and that if you ask questions you’re a traitor have been SOP, and have been known as such, for several years, but…
Beirut and Benghazi: A Tale of Two Administrations
On April 18, 1983, a truck carrying 2,000 pounds of explosives crashed into the American Embassy in West Beirut, killing 63 people. On October 23, 1983, 241 American Marines and 48 French soldiers stationed in Beruit were killed by two truck bombs. A day later, both American and French intelligence felt they had hard evidence…