Articles of Lasting Interest: Jazz: I post a jazz video every week, usually but not necessarily featuring a performance of a composition of Thelonious Monk. These videos can be accessed as a group here. “Harvard douchebaggery not exclusively a left-wing phenomenon, study reveals” is an unfriendly take on Harvard Professor Robert Barro’s disingenuous claim that…
Search Results for: ROSS DOUTHAT
American Catholics and American Jews are not happy campers. And neither, it seems, are America’s evangelicals
This conversation didn’t happen, but it could have: Monseigneur Vivaldi: “Have you read that Pennsylvania grand jury report? Over three hundred priests accused of sex abuse! We’ve hit rock bottom! It can’t get any worse than this!” Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: “Hold my beer.” Yes, Viganò’s now notorious letter is rockin’ the church in ways…
“Thoughtful” conservatives getting awfully tired of thinking. But not all of them.
I remember reading as a boy that one can think for three days on the energy contained in a peanut. On the right, it seems, peanuts are getting scarce. Over at the New York Times, David Brooks is finding solace in Donald Trump’s lizard brain, which, it appears, is kicking ass all over the world:…
First Things First: Uncle Reno’s Just So Stories
What do you get when you click on an article in First Things, that heady brew of theological harrumphing first set in motion by frenzied spiritual striver Richard John Neuhaus, about whom I (mostly) snickered here? Well, judging from this piece by the site’s editor, R.R. (Richard Russell) Reno, “End Times Anxiety”, you’ll learn a…
The Snake at the Table
A month ago, thoughtful conservative Ross Douthat wrote a column, “The Necessity of Stephen Miller”, in which he argued that if liberals want a deal on immigration, they’re going to have to allow White House dude Stephen Miller a place at the table. Yes, Ross acknowledges, El Stevo has views on immigration that are at…
What’s worse than suffering through the faux double entendres in those insufferable Duluth Trading Co. ads? Suffering through the insufferable whining of New York Times “conservatives”
Yes, NYT-approved conservatives Ross Douthat, who has, on occasion, received a hearty thumb’s up from me, and Trump-hatin’ Bret Stephens, whom I’ve basically ignored, have both been actin’ conservative and actin’ out in recent days. First up, and the more dispensable, is Ross, who’s actin’ all Catholic and accusatory, heading off a recent column on…
The boring Mr. Hefner. The second of a two-part series on the memorable departed
When Hugh Hefner died, I honestly assumed that the reaction of many people would be “He was still alive?” Well, I was wrong. In fact, ole’ Hef’s death served as the springboard for an astonishing amount of tongue-clucking from a wide variety of double-dome bigwigs, including Ross Douthat and David French. Mr. Cotton Tail, it…
If you’re reading this, that proves Trump isn’t so bad
You aren’t dead yet, are you? So what are you bitching about? That’s the gist of the latest posts from right-wing double-domes Eli Lake and Ross Douthat, who sound pathetically grateful that they haven’t yet suffered personal beatdowns from the Donald. “If we’re nice he probably won’t hit us.” No president has ever told as…
Explaining the Trump “Boom”
Ross Douthat and Tyler Cowen have a question for Trump-loathers like me: If Trump is so bad, why is there no evidence that (as Tyler puts it) “America’s intellectual and media mandarins have been busy liquidating their long positions and buying puts over the past two months”? Okay, I guess I don’t really qualify as…
Vanneman praises Friedman; Heavens sway, just a little
Yes, it’s true. Thomas Friedman—the guy who said we should invade Iraq “because we can”—has written a brilliant column, “Bibi Netanyahu Makes Trump His Chump”, whose first two paragraphs read as follows: “For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it…