Yes, Peggy Noonan is brilliant, and she does say so herself, frequently. In a recent column, which is 90 percent windup and 10 percent pitch—or 90 percent windup and 10 percent jive, depending on how you score it—Peggy bemoans the lack of “passion” in the current campaign. Naturally, she has an idea—almost an epiphany, as…
Romney folks hyper-sensitive, Politico folks hyper-shitty
Well, that’s a little harsh, isn’t it? Allow me to justify. Today’s Politico has one of those “a plague on both your houses” pieces, this one by Reid J. Epstein headlined “Campaign 2012 turns into a nasty schoolyard brawl.” As Epstein tells it “The decline began as soon as Romney clinched the nomination. The Republican…
Pseudo-New Yorker
Legal humor here. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Eddie. You’re a fucking genius.” “Shit! Do you remember when we used to eat logs? It’s been a hell of a century, I’ll say that.” “You know what would taste good right now? A hubcap.” “Yeah, four’s my limit. Lucky for us the kid will…
The Specter Haunting Europe
There is a specter haunting Europe—the specter of Marxism. It’s only a specter, of course, because Marxism itself is dead. Over at the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries gives us a rundown on current attempts to resurrect the corpse, whose grinning skull still catches the eye, despite his best efforts to conceal it. Twenty million deaths under…
Allan Bloom, orgasm in hand
Time to make fun of Allan Bloom again? Well, why not? Over at Spiked, Sean Collins has an excellent take on the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Bloom’s 1987 best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind. Collins kicks things off with the following juicy quote from the book: “Picture a 13-year-old boy sitting in the living…
Bad History Week at Robert Samuelson’s
There was a time—in the early days of the Clinton Administration, perhaps—when Robert Samuelson’s column on economics was worth reading, on a consistent basis. But the times, well, they changed a long time ago. Recently, Bob took note of the fact that, economically, things are pretty shitty these days, and the only people with a…
Faulkner was right
Andrew Sullivan picks up this piece from NPR’s Robert Krulrich on vultures: “They are built for this work. They will spot a corpse from high in the sky, swoop down, then cautiously approach, while tens, then hundreds of other vultures, seeing a gathering, will join in. If the meat is getting a little skanky, they…
Brilliant Corners
https://youtu.be/6QHposMOOzc “Brilliant Corners,” Monk’s “unplayable” tune—his one recording of it, back in the Fifties, required twenty takes, and, even then, required some primitive surgery to come up with an “acceptable” version. Stanislaus Loken does the arrangement here, featuring three trombones. I can’t resist that. Can you? More versions here. Clarinet – Andrew Conrad; Alto Sax…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “OK. We’re not going to end up like those people in “Lost.” Do you have any expectations beyond that?” “‘Meet the new guard, same as the old guard.’ That’s getting a little old.” “I think it’s a vast improvement. Remember the weekends? It used to be hell.” “I don’t mind bribing him…
Alan Vanneman, percipience personified, when not entirely out to lunch
Or asleep at the wheel. You’d think that a dude who has been monitoring the mouth and brain of Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia as assiduously as I have might have noticed that El Nino published a book last month. But I didn’t. The New York Times, which I also monitor rather assiduously, was…