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…
Workers of the World, Unite!
Over at Reuters, Felix Salmon gets into it over the seemingly esoteric topic of whether the “Uber” rent-a-limo folks have an economic justification for charging customers an $8 base fee plus $3.95 a mile for a Lincoln town car, compared to a base of $5 plus $3.25 a mile for a Prius. Previously, Uber had…
Joe Walsh, probably not a true hero
Freshman Republican Congressman Joe Walsh (IL) has a problem. His Democratic opponent is Tammy Duckworth, former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, who retired after losing both legs when her helicopter was hit by an RPG in Iraq, while Joe never served. What to do? Attack the colonel for having a big mouth! “Understand something…
Mississippi being Mississippi
Yes, there are a lot of nice people in Mississippi, but Roy Nicholson, Chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party, isn’t one of them. Reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, Nicholson went ballistic in a truly southern manner: “With its 5-4 ruling upholding Obamacare the US Supreme Court has joined…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “Wow. This one takes me back. ‘New boy in town,’ that pretty much says it. Lots of hair, not many inhibitions.” “Okay, this is from my first race for citywide comptroller. Obviously, I had found my voice. I never looked back, and neither have the voters.” “New York, 1998, Givenchy….