Man of the Year?

I am currently watching a really self-indulgent program on CNN in which they take cameras behind the scenes at TIME magazine while the editors deliberate who should be the TIME Man of the Year. It is kind of a sad personal admission. But there it is.
In any event, right now they are rolling through the [...]

Sacre Merde

Troubling news from the land of froggery. Ultra right-wing National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen (proof that in France the more rabidly draconian one’s politics, the girlier your name) has taken a significant hop in the opinion polls. According to a survey conducted for Le Monde and reported in Le Figaro (sorry, in French. You [...]

A Reminder

Making my way through the Sunday papers I was floored by a small article buried on page A33 of The Washington Post.  The article is an Associated Press dispatch from Kabul that reports that 20 teachers that have been murdered by the resurgent Taliban this year. (198 schools have been burned down as well). Apparently [...]

A Stronger Advocate Than Sen. Kennedy?

Can Mitt Romney’s stance on gay rights really be as opportunistically bigoted as this 1994 letter suggests?

Banal-Retentive

It is the centennial of Hannah Arendt’s birth and the business of commemoration and hagiography is in full-swing. Several prominent writers have taken to the page to re-assert her relevance to contemporary politics.
Arendt is certainly and revered and controversial figure, especially when it came to Jewish affairs where Arendt seemed of two minds. In [...]

The Post Weighs In…

 …with characteristic subtlety.

Quote of the Day

George Will on last week’s leaked Donald Rumsfeld Memo:
“It is beyond dispiriting that after 45 months of war an American official can think that this semi-genocidal conflict over the survival of groups divided about the meaning of God’s will can now be dampened by clever economics.”

Golda’s Gramophone

This little story has a definite apocryphal quality to it, but it is charming nonetheless. In September 1921, Golda and Moris Merison (later Zionized to “Meir”) arrived in Palestine and sought inclusion in the Merhavia kibbutz in the Jezre’el valley. The kibbutz members were wary of the American couple. They suspected them of being spoiled [...]

Dennis Prager

That Dennis Prager is a banal and mediocre blowhard is a bald fact that has not recently been in dispute. Prager has carved out a career as that limited commodity, the token Jewish paleo-conservative. Most often, he can simply be ignored. But he has caused a bit of an uproar with his most recent syndicated [...]

Insatiable

The ravenous pilfering continues unabated. (Have you no decency, Goldberg! Vanden Heuvel!) The latest perpetrator is none other than famed novelist Scott Turow, who took to the opinion page of The Wall Street Journal this week to say…well, to say exactly what my partner in thought said a few months ago.