Horror show! Horror show! Wash Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, aka Fred Hewitt’s wooden-headed dummy, has a serious anxiety attack over the Republican condendahs’ Thrilla in Tampa on Monday. “I share my colleague Marc Thiessen’s horror at the dreadful display of foreign policy foolishness at the Republican debate last night,” exclaims Jennifer, who clearly needs to…
September is the coolest month
Over at the New Republic, Ramblin’ Jed Perl begins his latest peregrination through the windmills of his mind thusly: In the autumn, everybody wonders what’s going to happen next in the arts. This is a natural feeling, a good feeling. Optimism is in the air. But if you’ve already spent your fair share of autumns…
Slate: Incisive Press Criticism No, Mindless NFL Blather Sí!
There’s been lots of talk on the internet about the cost-cutting decision of Slate to pull the plug on peerless press critic Jack Shafer, who’s going to work for Reuters. I particularly admired Jack’s work in policing the NYTimes’ endless capacity for detecting non-existent trends, not only those involving the latest in “killer drugs” and…
Why do the heathen rage? From Perot Party to Tea Party
Yes. As I’ve asked so many times in the past, why do the heathen rage? The Tea Party folks do have roots. Sarah Palin’s self-pitying tirades against the lamestream media could have been lifted, almost word for word, from George Wallace’s attacks on Yankee liberals, biggity Harvard professors looking down their noses (as they most…
Rick Perry: Eisenhower Republican or High Country Mussolini?
Yeah, it’s Rick, Rick, nothin’ but Rick here at Literature R Us. The man who could be president is certainly becoming a bee in my bonnet, and I’m longing to let him out soon. But the fact is that I’ve applied both lapels to Rick in recent posts. Can’t I make up my mind? It’s…
Rick Perry: Mandatory Health Care Insurance No, Mandatory Health Care Sí!
Over at Slate, William Saleton catches Texas wild man Gov. Rick Perry in a massive contradiction over his continuing condemnation of the President’s ObamaCare and Rick’s 2007 executive order mandating inoculations of teenage girls against the HPV virus, which can cause cervical cancer. The pro-life (or anti-sex) crowd was particularly irked by this because they…
9/11, not so bad as 8/14, one can hope
Yes, one can hope that Osama Bin Laden was not as “lucky” as Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian nationalist/terrorist who assassinated Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria in the summer of 1914 and unleashed the dogs of war as they had never been unleashed before. The arch duke’s murder was seized upon by the military aristocrats at…
Apologizin’ for the fonts
Google has a new blogging system—which is why the fonts are lookin’ so lame these days. I hope I’ll get the hang of it in a month or so.
Divorce, Anglican style—a sheer series of accidents? I don’t think so.
I’ve been reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s big, fat, excellent history, The Reformation. Near the end of the book, discussing divorce, he says that “Alone among Reformed Protestant polities, England did not introduce a divorce law, and that stemmed from a sheer series of accidents.” According to MacCulloch, Archbishop Cranmer had a divorce law all ready to…
Who are the Apple Police?
The bad news is that Apple has lost another iPhone. The good news is that they have the San Francisco police helping them look for it. The SF Weekly fills us in on the “bizarre saga” of the missing iPhone 6 prototype here. SF Spokescop Troy Dangerfield, who definitely has the name for the job,…