Back in the day—that long ago day known as “the Fifties”—all good liberals regarded Time Magazine with loathing and contempt. Henry Luce, Time’s founder and publisher, was the Rupert Murdoch of his day. Millions of people across the country felt they knew what was happening around the world thanks to Time, much to the liberals’…
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Someone owes Ben Stein an apology (ugh)
So Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a swaggering, philandering grab-ass who, it seems, did not sexually assault a maid at the swank Sofitel New York in Manhattan. And so Strauss-Kahn’s career is in ruins even though, it seems, he’s not a rapist. And so it seems that in the case of the Duke lacrosse team preppie not…
The silence of the Post
Have you heard about the big controversy in New York? I mean, the decision of the board of trustees of City University of New York not to grant an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner, because he isn’t pro-Israel enough to suit their tastes? The controversy, and the backlash—the board says it’s reconsidering—has been huge….
Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics and Censorship
I’m a huge fan of Brad DeLong’s “Grasping Reality with Both Hands” blog. Like Brad, I’m a pro-stimulus Krugmanite (or at least “Krugmanite-ish”) with a special interest in economic history, particularly the whole “European Miracle” thing. Unfortunately, I part company with Brad on global warming. My position is, yeah, it’s getting warmer, and it’s definitely…
Wolcott Gibbs
Wolcott Gibbs is practically unknown today, except to that small and no doubt dwindling band who know a great deal about the early days of the New Yorker. Founder/editor Harold Ross once told James Thurber “There wasn’t anything the three of you [Gibbs, Thurber, and E.B. White] couldn’t do. You could have got the magazine…
The Customer Is Always Wrong
by Wolcott Gibbs Just as the advance agent for a circus is not likely to be disturbed by even the largest elephant, so his metropolitan equivalent, the Broadway press agent, can look on the most succulent actor and still remain composed. This is a natural condition, since both actors and elephants, observed for any length…
The Art of the Dick
“What could I have done differently? In certain conversations, what should I have said, what could I have done?” This is what Richard Fuld, lately CEO of the late Lehman Brothers, asks himself a lot these days, according to Steve Fishman’s excellent article in New York magazine. Since there’s nothing I enjoy more than helping…
The Mind of Ross
Ross Douthat, whom I sometimes like to call Ross Dumbfuck,* leaves off caterwauling about the possibility that the Republican Party will abandon its “abortion is murder” mantra (which does not, of course, imply that women who get abortions are murderers) to say what needed, so much, to be said about … Adrian Grenier: Sometimes I…
Two-fisted financier, seeks someone to fist
I’ve always been a fan of capitalism, even though it sure hasn’t been making me rich these days, but if you want a picture of Wall Street’s seamy side, check out James J. Cramer’s cri de cœur, “Last One Left, Please Turn Out the Lights—Wall Street is in the midst of its biggest, ugliest, worst…
If it walks like a kangaroo
In the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin has an article on Guantánamo that tries very hard to sound even-handed, pumping only slightly for a proposal from Georgetown law professor and former Clinton Administration official Neal Katyal and Harvard law professor and former Bush Administration official Jack Goldsmith, which “is attracting a great deal of attention in…