For more than forty years now, Americans have been engaged in a furious culture war, disputing the significance and worth of that fast-receding decade, the “Sixties.” What were the Sixties about and what did they mean? Fortunately, the good folks at Merriam-Webster have been keeping track. Back in 1961, Merriam-Webster created a mini-culture war of…
David Holland Chris Potter Newport Jazz Festival 2008
David Broder, straining mightily to rain on Obama’s parade
Sick of my whiny, bitchy posts about the Post’s whiny, bitchy columnist David Broder? Well, skip this one, then. In today’s bitch, Dave comes up with a headline that must have had his blood a-pumpin’, “An Early Drubbing for Obama.” The awkward, “No, we won’t, okay, maybe we will” response of Senate Democrats to the…
Roy Hargrove November 2007
Joe Klein II
For several years now, Time Magazine’s Joe Klein has a been a relentless foe of the Bush Administration, and has heaped ridicule on neocons like Bill Kristol to the point that he’s been called, more than once, an anti-Semitic Jew. Just recently, he’s posted a withering denunciation of the Bush Administration’s shameful record, closing with…
Jack Goldsmith, still trembling before the truth
I’ve cast a cold eye on Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under W, before and I’m going to do it again. In the current Vanity Fair article on that debacle known as the Bush Presidency, Jack has this to say about how George and Dick Cheney seemed, well,…
Duke Ellington 1943
One good thing leads to another, right? Especially when the good thing is Duke Ellington. This is a “soundie” from 1943. “Soundies” were cheaply filmed musical performances. The band is actually playing, but the soundtrack is pre-recorded, so what you see doesn’t always match what you hear, allowing the musicians to ham it up if…
Those socks won’t coordinate
Over at the New Republic’s lead blog “The Plank,” Jason Zengerle makes mincemeat of Tom Brokow’s tribute to Tim Russert in the NYT (Yes, this is awfully inside, but it’s the Internet, damn it! It’s supposed to be inside!) Zengerle’s takedown needs to be read in full, but the essence is that Tim and Tom…
Ruth Marcus: just too damn much mercury in her sushi
Or else she’s just too damn stupid. Just weeks after demanding that Caroline Kennedy be appointed to the U.S. Senate because it would a fairy tale come true, she’s saying that Ronald Reagan was right to pardon Mark Felt for conducting illegal bag jobs on Bill Ayers and his Weatherman pals and that, by extension,…
Blogojavich. Rod Blogojavich.
I am one of those who think that B-Rod is getting a bit of a raw deal here. Sure, he’s talked a lot of trash, but if your name was Rod “I’ve heard all the jokes so shove it” Blogojavich, you’d talk a little trash too. Despite his mighty efforts to get people to do…