Okay, that’s a little too cheerful, isn’t it? Well, when God gives you lemons, pour yourself a double shot of Tequila, I always say. It’s sure as hell better than lemonade. No, the return of Magnum, P.I. to television won’t compensate for much of anything, but the “good news” is that’s significantly less irritating than…
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Daniel Drezner, harrumphing audibly, but not (alas!) intelligibly
Okay, whole lotta’ unpackin’ goin’ on here, whole lotta’ unpackin’ goin’ on. A couple of weeks ago, WashPost guy Dan Drezner, whom I (sometimes) like, uncorked a whole lotta nonsense due to the death of Princeton professor of international affairs Robert Gilpin, writing in praise of Gilpin in a column bearing the pungent subhead “It’s…
Anthony Kennedy: Wasn’t he the guy who appointed George Bush president of the United States?
Yes, he was. Anthony Kennedy was one of the unholy five justices so damned afraid Al Gore might have actually carried the state of Florida, as he carried the nation by a plurality of almost half a million votes, that they rammed through Curious George’s election the Constitution be damned. “Great cases, like hard cases,…
The Post? What about The Times? What about The Truth?
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks seem to be involved in a conspiracy to bore us to death with virtuous films, first with Bridge of Spies and now with The Post, films that consist almost entirely of old white people standing around and talking, a lot. Bridge of Spies is about one honest man who makes…
Polite Conversation
(Editor’s Advice: If you don’t know who Colly Cibber is, you probably shouldn’t read this piece.) In one of W. H. Auden’s essays, he remarks that English literature had a strong tendency to become a sort of cozy, family affair, full of in-jokes that bound everyone who was in together and excluded all those who…
Tempest in a Teaspoon—The Exterminating Angel. You’ve seen the movie, now hear the opera!
Fewer sheep, more tunes! That’s the short take on composer Thomas Adès fascinating new opera, The Exterminating Angel, enjoying its Metropolitan Opera premiere on October 26. The Exterminating Angel, with a libretto by Tom Cairns, is based on Luis Buñuel’s 1962 classic exercise in Iberian surrealism, directed by Buñuel using a screenplay he wrote in…
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald Trump
On November 9, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte engineered a coup that made him First Consul and ended republican government in France. By the date of the Republican calendar then in effect in France, the date was 18 Brumaire in the year VIII.1 In 1852, Karl Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, commemorating in contempt…
WRAVALJAZZ, Jazz Jam Quartet—“Straight, No Chaser”
Wouldn’t it be GREAT to have a jazz quartet right in your own living room? Well, not everyone would agree, but still. Winston Raval on Piano; Jonathan Bautista on Sax; Emerson Cardenas on Bass; Rehmannia-Dean Thomas on Drums. Posted by Winston
William F. Buckley, still racist after all those years
As is (fairly) well known, back in 1957, William F. Buckley wrote the following: “The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here “The rain does fall on the just and the unjust alike. For the immaculately coifed, things are a little different.” “Hey, hey, Mr. Skeptical Environmentalist! Wet enough for you?” “Okay, ‘It always rains on the unloved’ is a saying. You know who said it? Charlie Brown. Do you want your psyche to…