What is a curate’s egg? Webster’s Third International defines it thusly: “something with both good and bad parts or qualities [so called from a cartoon in the weekly Punch depicting a curate who was given a stale egg by his bishop and declared that parts of it were excellent]”. So what is an inverted curate’s…
Alas, Poor Hillary!
Only in America (probably) could a woman running for office who received 2.7 million more votes than her opponent be reviled and ridiculed as a “loser”. Yet such is the hard fate of the hard to love Hillary Rodham Clinton. If I were really mean, I would say that Hillary can’t stop stepping on her…
Larry Summers is a big, fat liar
Maybe I should just change the name of this blog to “Harvard Sucks”. After spending 9,000+ words last week whaling away, largely on Harvard Law Professor David Kennedy but also on Harvard Law Professor Samuel Moyn, I’m back on the attack, this time beating up on former Harvard President Larry Summers, now “only” Charles W….
Oh, Say, Can You Tone It Down A Bit?
Back in the day, there were two things that I actually liked about being in the army. One was free cigarettes, but you had to go to Vietnam to get those. The other was getting to salute the flag—like a damn man, damn it—instead of standing there like an idiot with your hand over your…
Ramesh Ponnuru gives advice to Donald Trump—Yes, he’s that stupid
Over at the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru provides some serious right-wing inside baseball regarding whatever the fuck it is Donald Trump is doing playing footsie with Nancy for God’s sake Pelosi—which, if you like serious, right-wing inside baseball, is worth reading. But in his final paragraph, mighty Ramesh whiffs mightily, as it were, with the…
A World of Struggle at Harvard Law
(Author’s Note: The following is a sprawling takedown of David Kennedy’s A World of Struggle, a book that clearly got my goat.) Pankaj Mishra is the author of several fascinating books, including From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and his new one Age of Anger, which I am struggling to get…
George F. Will Still Hates Football!
There are many things about George F. Will–“F” for “Fucking Amazing”–that I, well, that I totally fucking hate!, but there is also one thing that I find totally fucking amusing, and that is that Georgie, in open and explicit opposition to “America”, totally fucking hates fucking football!. George’s latest harange on the evils of America’s…
Jerry Lewis, you’ll jamais walk alone
Since the American media agenda looks to be waterlogged for the rest of the week, it might be “appropriate”, faute de mieux, to revisit the recent passing of Jerry Lewis. For my money, the greatest contribution Jerry ever made to comedy was to inspire Martin Short’s deliciously malicious SCTV parody, “Jerry Lewis, Live at the…
Jonah Goldberg, down with both the Inquisition and the Crusades!
Well, first of all, there were a lot of inquisitions, which is just Latin anyway for “inquire”, which is what, you know, inquiring minds do—a lot!—because, you know, they want to know! And the Crusades, well, they were “largely defensive wars intended to beat back the aggression of Muslim colonizers”. My own “take” on the…
O Captain! My Captain!
Some years ago, I did some reading regarding the downing of Iran Airlines Flight 655, shot down, with the loss of 290 lives, by the USS Vincennes in 1988, a cruiser captained by one Will Rogers III. Rogers, known for his aggressive attitude, deliberately took the Vincennes into Iranian waters, in contravention of his standing…